On not speeding up

Speeding up is one of my worst habits. Other people's too.

I don't mean speeding up as the song goes along, although I have to watch that too. I mean speeding up too soon as I'm learning. Eighth notes for example. If you are playing fast as you can, just gunning out two blasts every time you see a couple of eighth notes seems to work. But play more slowly and you really have to get those "ands"—as in one, two-and, thee, four-and—right on or else it sounds foolish.

The same is true for hitting the right notes. Move long fast enough and I'm off the note I missed is gone before it sinks in. Play it slowly and really matters whether you hit a note or not.

Tone matters when we go slowly too. A slightly muffled note because it wasn't fretted properly or a note that is sung on the right pitch but sounds thin won't be as noticeable.

When we're learning, it feels like we're always playing too slowly and we can convince ourselves that getting faster means getting better. But it's actually really hard to play slow and make it musical. There is a reason why punk and metal bands play fast—it's because they aren't good enough to play more slowly.

Lots of slow this week. Lots of shifting from quarter notes to eighth notes and I'm going to begin working on strumming and singing at the same time.