The other day I talked about a little glitch in my emails that went out.
I was talking about how the little things do make a big difference.
…But today I want to flip that on its head and talk about the importance of not “sweating the small stuff”.
Here’s a little story about this…
Back in 2013, I was in a band and we were playing our first “official” gig.
The promoter running the show was also a skilled music producer.
He wanted to record every band’s set and give them a CD of the gig.
It was a great idea.
So, there we were up on stage.
I was playing my Yamaha Pacifica 812V electric (a guitar I still love – it’s like the wonderful standard Pacifica guitar but on turbo drive).
The gig was going great, but there was a problem…
It was a scorching hot summer’s day, and the lights on stage were melting us.
I could taste the sweat dripping off me.
And as we were getting to the climax of a song called ‘Apollo Creed’ (yes, this song was a reference to the ‘Rocky’ movies, haha).
The deadly moment happened.
…My pick flew out of my hand in the middle of the song.
I’d had no time to get a new pick from my stand, so I had to play the rest of the song with my fingers.
The trouble was, I’d never fingerpicked this song before…
How did it go?
Well, as good as possible.
I knew there was a mistake as I lost the pick and I knew this would be on the recording.
…But I was reasonably pleased I managed to recover the mistake.
We loved the gig, but that mistake nagged at me in my gut.
About a week later, we stuck the CD in the player and heard the final recording of the show.
I paid attention to that part of the song and I was getting ready to cringe when the mistake was about to pop up in the song…
…And I was waiting for everyone else to laugh.
But guess what…
You could not even hear the mistake.
The mistake was so inaudible no one other than me noticed – at least not until I pointed it out. Even then, it was super slight.
Phew.
So that nagging feeling I had was much ado about nothing for sure.
Moral of the story…
Go easy on yourself when you practise.
Mistakes happen. Just try to be kind to yourself when they do happen and prepare, so you don’t make the same mistakes over and over.
I hope this email was helpful to you.
By the way, for every gig after that, I made sure I had fresh guitar picks everywhere within reach at all times, haha.
If you want to learn more from me, and my experiences of teaching and playing guitar, then check this out…
It’s called the ‘Acoustic’ academy as that is the style of guitar playing that I prefer to play and teach these days… but everything you learn inside can be played on the electric too.
So give it a go if you’re on the fence. It can be a game-changer for your playing.
The Dan Thorpe Acoustic Academy
Dan Thorpe
Guitar Domination
P.S. This post was originally taken from Dan Thorpe’s private email list. To get blog posts like this sent to you which are full of great tips to make fingerpicking, strumming, and learning guitar more enjoyable (especially if you are over 40) join Dan’s list. It’s 100% free, HERE.
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