I was reading an interview with Paul Simon the other day.
He was talking about the classic song…
“Still Crazy After All These Years”
This is what he said about it…
“It’s funny, that’s one of several of my songs that I gave over to be played on piano, and I can’t remember what the chords are anymore.
…Because I never play them. I don’t know what the chords are to “Still Crazy”. I could figure it out, but I don’t know what they are.
If somebody said, “Play ‘Still Crazy’ on the guitar,” I couldn’t play it.”
The interviewer said back to him, “I can show you how”. (I would love to have seen Paul’s face at that point!)
Anyway, this is a good reminder that if we don’t use it, we lose it.
I was guilty of this myself back in the day and I can’t tell you the number of times back in my early teaching days that a student would learn a song, get good at it, only to stop playing it and then later forget how to play it.
They would then need to put in more time to re-learn the song.
Once I realised this was a problem for students, I would ensure we would jam the song regularly in a lesson (I used a software called Evernote to keep track of what each student had learnt) and this would help.
That’s some important advice there from Paul…
Play your songs regularly. If you don’t, you might well forget them.
It happens to us all, me, you, and even the greats of music, like Paul Simon.
Anyway, for more help with your playing, including how to fingerpick from the ground up, and how to get started playing in the style of Paul and other great fingerpickers, check out my Fingerstyle 101 video course on sale this week.
You’ll also see my solution to remembering more in Part 3 of the course titled 10 Steps on Learning to Fingerpick Faster…
Find out more about the Fingerstyle 101 Video Course
Plus, as an added bonus not mentioned on the sales page, if you get it before the sale ends, there is a bonus section on how to get started playing in the vintage Travis picking style of Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, and Tommy Emmanuel.
Enjoy your day!
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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