Friday 11th January 2013 – Lunch Report – Desert Island!

Lunch: Ah, Friday lunch, always one of my favourites of the week! I bank the week’s takings on a Friday, and just around from the bank is the most spectacular delicatessen. I brave the lunchtime queue, which goes out into the street, and buy a couple of slices of their rare roast beef. By rare, I mean dripping blood. And I buy one of their home baked Ciabatta rolls (only about 8” but it’s enough to satisfy).

Once home the ciabatta gets a thick layer of butter on one side, a combo of mayo and Horseradish sauce on the other, the meat goes in the middle (after the cat has pestered for his portion), and the whole lot goes in the microwave for 15 seconds on full, just to raise it a touch above room temperature and bring out the flavours, without melting the butter! That’s the usual – today no microwaving was needed – the bread had just come out of the oven at the deli. Fabulous!


G&L Topic of the Day: Desert Island! For my last G&L TotD, an easy subject with no controversy!
You’ve been exiled to a desert island for a year. The electric eels love hearing guitar and are pleased to provide power for an amp and effects pedals!

You can only take one G&L guitar, one amp, and as many pedals as you like.

Question: Which G&L guitar/bass, amp and pedals do you take?
Part 2 of the question: when you get home after a year, which guitar will you have missed most and be desperate to play?



Non-G&L Topic of the day: Practice! It’s a bit long, but I hope you like it – it’s a biggie subject for me. I work with athletes who are looking for peak performance in their sports, and they put themselves through hell to achieve it – as I did when training in Asia. One of my friends is an ex- concert pianist, and now teaches others at the highest levels. Sports or music, the road to highest achievement is the same…

‘Deliberate Practice’.

The road is now well mapped, so I thought I’d summarise it here:

1. Design your practice to improve performance. Many of us pull out a guitar and play for a while and call it practice. Most of the time we are playing stuff we can already play well. We could probably play it well 5 years ago.

Designed practice needs to identify the elements we are not good at; activities that are just beyond our current abilities. Then we need to work out how to most efficiently improve them – a good teacher can help greatly – even world class athletes have coaches/teachers. Picasso, Mozart, Tiger – they all had fathers who carefully designed their practice strategies when they were young and developing. Age is irrelevant though; the principle is the same.

2. Repetition. Once a skill just beyond our current abilities has been identified, and a strategy for practicing it has been worked out, it needs to be practiced until that ‘weak’ area becomes our strongest area, or at least as good as anything else we do. Only when it is should we identify our next weakest skill.

For Christmas I got a pile of ‘LickLibrary’ DVDs on what I consider my weakest areas. There’s months, probably years of work for me to go at!
Repetition was something I learned the hard way; in Penang I had a Chinese teacher who would identify my weak area, correct it, then say “Do thousand times!” Then he would disappear. Often he would be watching from a distance. After a couple of hours he would come back and say “Show me!” Then he would correct me and say “Do thousand times!” and walk off again. That would go on until he was satisfied, sometimes just doing one movement combination for several days. It was f***ing painful, but it worked.

3. Mental focus. Repetition is bad news if it’s done badly! It needs absolute focus and concentration on making every rep as perfect as possible, which is mentally exhausting. That doesn’t sound much fun! But after a while, it becomes meditation.

I used to shoot competitively (target rifle, practical pistol and target archery); I loved that moment when only the target existed – I had disappeared, the bow/rifle/pistol had disappeared. That’s what I look for in repetition. And it’s so satisfying when you feel something that was beyond your abilities a few hours before becoming easier by the rep.

4. Feedback. I knew however well I thought I was performing a movement, my teacher in Penang would be able to spot mistakes and correct them. Trusting our own judgement of our improvement isn’t enough. A good teacher can’t do the practice for us, but their feedback is invaluable.

My pianist friend, after every 500 times he plays a phrase he’s working on, records it, then compares it to the greatest known recording of that piece being played. After he works out where he falls short, he isolates the problem parts and practices just those. Then puts them back into the phrase and starts again. I’d love to have the time to do that with a few famous guitar solos!


The reality that deliberate practice is hard is good news. It means that most people won't do it. So your willingness to do it will distinguish you all the more.

Do I practice guitar like this? Erm…. no!
I know I could become an excellent guitarist by strict application of these principles, but I just play for my own enjoyment.
With everything I competed in seriously, I applied these methods and they work. But the two things that make it possible to work that way are absolute desire to achieve, and absolute belief that you can be excellent.
‘Talent’ has been proved to be imperceptibly important compared to hard work, so the ‘self-belief’ part is easy, compared with the ‘desire to achieve’ part. And that part I don’t have when it comes to playing. I just want to enjoy it.
I don’t much care that most people are better than me. But I will casually work through my Christmas LickLibrary DVDs!

Question: Would you take this type of approach to practice? Or do you just enjoy playing?


Well, that’s my first tenure as Lunch Reporter done! I have enjoyed the challenge of it, but most of all I’ve enjoyed ‘meeting’ some of you guys who make this forum what it is. Thanks guys.

Next week…. I’ll find the time to play my lovely new G&L a bit!!!

Well, you did a terrific job as LR. Congrats.

I really enjoyed your week.

Desert Island. Interesting, I have been travelling and had my knee operation (worse than expected) and I haven't picked up a guitar in almost a month. Just an hour ago, I looked at my "keepers" and decided that I needed to play for an hour. I went immediately to the old standby, my 2008 bluesboy. Its always the easiest to play and after not playing for a while, it was great. So, that's my desert island guitar. It was still in tune as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If I came back from the Desert Island, I would miss my 535 (gibson 335 like) guitar, by far the most fun.

Practice - Damn you make me feel embarassed by my practice routine. Normally I get my lesson every two weeks, he always gives me a new song to learn and then I try everyday or almost everyday to play an hour, 1/2 hour on stuff I have done before (scales, warm up, songs) and 1/2 hour on the song he just gave me. Sometimes they are easier to learn, othertimes I just give up on it as being too hard.

I wish I could put more discipline and more practice time into it, but for some reason I don't want to.....so I'm still a hack

Thanks for the week and welcome to the club!

Alf

Goat, just add some good spicy mustard to that sarni and your gold!

Lunch today was Kraft dinner. Good stuff....

My desert island guitar would be my SC-2, it sounds awesome on its own so I wouldn't need any pedals. Ok, I guess I would bring my British blues overdrive pedal that I made a couple years ago but thats it. The guitar I would miss most would be my Gibson acoustic ( my first nice guitar ).

My practice routine consists mostly of playing songs, then sections of the song till I get it. I usually last 20 to 30 minutes then move on. When I come back to it later it seems to click. With me, I burn out if I practice something too long.

The only time I really concentrated on learning something well was when I wanted to learn " blues ". I went through all the minor pentatonic positions one at a time and learned 5 licks on each before moving to the next. That approach really helped. I started doing the same thing with the major scale but it petered out. I just wasn't as keen to learn the major scale positions. I'll get back to it.

Thanks for the week Goat, nice to meet you !

Desert Island has to be the Will Ray Asat with a Deluxe Reverb, preferably with a Cannabis Rex in it. No pedals. Amp volume on 10, to bypass the Bright cap, and then drive from the guitar (the hiss is hardly going to bother anyone). Obviously the island will have soldering and component supplies to keep the amp running.

Plus just a quick one (I'm on cooking duty) concerning one of your last points, TALENT.

What thoughts...

Artistic talent is:

Finding deep study / practice / application to be natural and rewarding, and less tiring than some might find it.
Finding a special pleasure in the art, which is very valued, and helps support study and the fun realities of economics.
Loving to share the art as a social goodness. Desire and motivation to build an honest adventurous art, that can be shared without discrimination of any kind. Finding it huge fun, regardless of any marketing aspect (or lack of it).

Having grown up with a gut hunch that new strings / colours / pickups are not really important.

But having a hunch that a physical relationship with an instrument will have to be respectfully developed.

Being a glad, willing hard worker.


Dear Goat,

Your lunchtimes have been great; I don't have much time to look in, but whenever I have you've had something good going on, got some really good discussions going. Thanks most sincerely!

I like your definition of artistic talent Nick!

desert island, asat special with dfs, #3 quartersawn neck tinted satin, stainless mj frets, maple board, ash body, nena finish, forearm and belly contour. no pickguard.

amp, two rock custom reverb signature 50 watt.

pedals, all the ones i have. about 50 or so.



i do practice that way, but that only covers the technical aspect of playing. for classical music, this approach is all that is needed, but when improvising comes into play, that requires other elements.
when it comes to sports, it is also different with different sports. preparation is different for shooting or gymnastics than, say, ping pong, where you are directly interacting with the opponent. team sports also need different approach.
i also work with athletes at all different levels.

Lunch: Home made Spaghetti with a high protein noodle and a beer.

Desert Island: My WR Signature, a feature rundown when it arrives. Amp, This I am undecided about because I am still looking for "the one", pedals- my 20 year old VOX wah, the BBE Sonic Maximizer I got for doing LR duties, and maybe a tube screamer (depends on the amp). The amp will likely be a Class A all tube hand wired thingy...

Practice: I agree that discipline and repetition are keys to being fluent enough on your instrument to be emotionally authentic and have a large enough musical vocabulary to improvise well. As Jimi Hendrix purportedly once said, "People are copying me so much, they are even repeating my mistakes." Real mastery it me, is about capturing and effectively communicating the emotion of a piece and/or lyric. Proficiency of technique is a means to that end and listening closely to how the instrument evokes emotion in me, informs what techniques I want to pickup.

Frankly I never learn to copy someone else, I learn how to play the piece as I best relate to it. Is that an artistic talent? Goodness I hope so, because I am no technician.

Thanks for a good week Goat! Pleased to make your acquaintance.

That island thing happened to me and I brought my SC-3, my Gibson Skylark amp and a wah-wah. Been there ,done that.
You did a great job this week.

y2kc

Hey KC. Great to see you post. How've you been? - ed

i do practice that way, but that only covers the technical aspect of playing. for classical music, this approach is all that is needed, but when improvising comes into play, that requires other elements.
when it comes to sports, it is also different with different sports. preparation is different for shooting or gymnastics than, say, ping pong, where you are directly interacting with the opponent. team sports also need different approach.
i also work with athletes at all different levels.

Agreed. It would also be plausible to draw some parallels between team sports and band/orchestra playing. Or this type of practice routine for aspects (though not the whole) of team players requirements - David Beckham would spend whole days just making free kicks and corners, and Pete Maravich would spend whole days by himself shooting hoops....

My concert pianist friend would be the first to say that he's not great at improvising - although I've heard him do it very many times and he's freaking awesome - his idea of 'not good' is 'not good compared to his classical ability'.

'Practice' is a huge subject and I could only approach it as a Lunch Report. It's a very limited look at the subject to be sure.

I've been kinda using the LRs to introduce myself and find out a bit about you guys. Good bunch of guys from what I've seen so far! I doubt I'll ever really advance my knowledge of G&Ls to the level of Louis or many others here, but if I hang around and learn from you all, it will increase my enjoyment of playing. And isn't that what we are here for?!?

goat, i know less abut g&l's than just about everyone else here. i do have a lot of experience with lots of different guitars and amps and pedals, but as far as g&l's, i am a noob compared to ken and jos and darwin and bill just to name a few. about specific areas, leo era is ken, asats is jos, legacies is boogie bill.

Great week Goat!

Just having had dinner, lunch has become irrelevant. Even the memory of it ...

Desert Island: I would take my www.guitarsbyleo.com LE, Mesa Express 5:25, and Carl Martin Quattro effects pedal (which is actually a compressor, 2 overdrives, chorus, and echo). I would have missed my Butterscotch ASAT Classic the most, shortly followed by my Collings DH-2 on the acoustic side of the house.

Practice: I definitely fall in the category of noodling and not really practicing. My work, especially over the last year, has demanded all my attention in quite similar fashion as you describe for sports and music, particularly the aspects of focus and dedication. And also there, I only go through that regimen because I do enjoy what I'm doing. Otherwise I would have changed jobs a long time ago. Playing guitar and tending the collection are just perfect ways to get your mind off its main occupation.

- Jos

G&L Topic of the Day: Desert Island! For my last G&L TotD, an easy subject with no controversy!

You can only take one G&L guitar, one amp, and as many pedals as you like.

This is easy (except for the amp). Mahogany bodied L-1000, as many pedals as I can pull off (it's going to get boring) and a multitrack recorder with integrated drum machine and headphones as the amp. I'll use the headphones as a mic too and record some stuff. Gotta be resourceful on the island.

Hey KC. Great to see you post. How've you been? - ed

Hey Ed,

I am doing well thanks. Been playing these old G&L's and lurking at the G&LDP. How about yourself?

Also recently completed a project with Heritage Guitars so I am playing my new H-125 plenty. There is a photo of it in another section of the G&Ldp somewhere.

There seems to be a very enthusiastic G&L crowd posting here these days and it is always cool to see folks nice guitars. My SC-3 gets played everyday.It is the only guitar that is always out.

y2kc

Hey KC. Great to see you post. How've you been? - ed

Hey Ed,

I am doing well thanks. Been playing these old G&L's and lurking at the G&LDP. How about yourself?

Also recently completed a project with Heritage Guitars so I am playing my new H-125 plenty. There is a photo of it in another section of the G&Ldp somewhere.

There seems to be a very enthusiastic G&L crowd posting here these days and it is always cool to see folks nice guitars. My SC-3 gets played everyday.It is the only guitar that is always out.

y2kc

Hanging in and doing well, all things considered. Would love to hear about your Herritage Guitars project.

Funny you mention your SC-3. Mine has been "up" and on the stand for the last month or so, and have enjoyed rediscovering it. Just put new strings on the old SC-2 last night, so the three is going to have to step aside again for a bit.

Yeah, some good new folks have found there way here. Always an enjoyable mix. I think we needed a Goat in the house. Ha! -ed