Hey Friend,

Wow - January 31st! One 12th of the year - gone, already! I hope the rest of the year doesn’t fly by so fast.

And yet I know, in eleven months I’m going to be looking back thinking the same thing.

Here it is, though - we all know we can expect the days, weeks and months speed by us as we live our lives.

That’s predictable. 

There’s nothing we need to do to ensure time is going to pass except keep breathing. It’s how we use that time that determines how the end of the year looks.

Just like in music, life is filled with patterns - predictable chains of events, activities or procedures that make up daily life. If you want to affect how your life looks, you have to change the patterns that make it up.

If you want to affect your guitar playing skills, you have to add new patterns and/or revise old ones.

Beginners have to train their fingers to make all sorts of fun shapes. 

Intermediate players continue to learn, and might need to completely drop some of their patterns in order to move up to the next level. Everyone develops bad habits, and sometimes you have to step back to move forward.

Even advanced players must work to learn new patterns and perfect the ones they already know.

Learning guitar is no different than life. It's a continual progression of exploring the best ways to accomplish something (learning), trying out different approaches until you find what works best for you.

Then, once you’ve found a good pattern, you work at it to build the skill up (practicing). 

As the skill becomes second nature, then you can start adding it to your playing style (integrating). The pattern works its way into how you play and becomes comfortable in your skillset.

After that, you start to master those patterns and they become second nature. You don’t have to think about how to breathe!

I’m going to keep hammering on this idea of patterns, because it’s such a simple way to present everything we do on a guitar and in music. We are pattern-driven animals.

With that, I’m off to start the next pattern - getting ready for the j.o.b.

Y’all have a great day, ya hear!

Peace~

Dave