although i’m pretty sure i mentioned this already, probably even more than once, it belongs in this series – so here’s the appropriate entry :-)

it’s about messing around……badass style. and it’s something every artist i look up to does in some way. i once read about an experiment (long ago, so i don’t know anymore who did it – scientists probably :-) ). if memory serves correctly, it was about piano. people could win one piano lesson and the ‘winners’ were divided into two groups. the people of the first one got a standard lesson and afterwards they were told to pratice exactly what they learned in exactly the same way over and over again. the other group was told (after the lesson) to ‘play’ with it. they should play it slow, fast, soft, loud, with different sounds (if they had a keyboard) etc. anything they could think of. in a nutshell, they were told to mess around.

three things happened: first, the people of the second group learned more. second, they were rated better by independent teachers. and third, they had much more fun, were a lot more motivated and wanted to continue with the lessons, so this incidently became kind of a marketing strategy :-)

in other words, our brain likes to explore all aspects of something in order to ‘get it’, the more the better. imagine a kid with a ball. do you think the kid would learn more about the ball and related physics by reading a book on that matter or by simply go out and play? see? and again there’s that other point: messing around is just so much more fun – but let’s save that for a different entry…

so messing around with something lets you learn it better, faster, more efficiently and more complete. but there’s another advantage as well. if you play an instrument, maybe even in a band, you might know this situation. you practice something like a solo or a lick you want to add to a certain song, you practice it a lot until you’re sure to see some jawdropping during the next rehearsals. but what really happens is, you completely screw it up. the reason for that is, it’s a different situation. sitting at home and practicing is a lot different than a band rehearsal, a recording situation or live. and that’s almost a guarantee to fail.

there are two ways to get through this, though. one of them will be covered in another post and the other is: mess around! by practicing it each and every way you can think of, improvise with and around it and having just fun, you’ll get used to it, it becomes more familiar and you’ll shed light on every aspect. and that will help you using it in a variety of situations….

so go ahead, mess it up!