A few months back a wrote a blog entitled Practice Plateaus: Thoughts on the "Bad Days" where I talked about how to deal with the inevitable "off day" where we feel like all the progress we have made suddenly disappears. One of the things I mentioned in that blog was the benefits of limitation exercises that are designed to stimulate creativity and get your brain thinking in new ways. I figured I would go one step further and create a video series that presents these limitation exercises in a series of "challenges". This is the first video in that series. In this challenge, we limit ourself to only using the first four frets of the guitar (plus open strings). For anyone who is not a guitarist, you can still experiment with this exercise by playing in a defined range. The point is to focus on creating something interesting and as fresh sounding as possible without having expectations. Try to block out thoughts like "this isn't interesting" or "this is horrible"; they have no meaning here. Simply sit down and follow your fingers! If you attempt this exercise feel free to film it and send it to me!
Until next time!
-Ryan