[WernHalen]

Hey,

I have mentioned this a couple of times before, but I have struggled with a mild case of lysdexia when i was younger... Sepcifically with regards to maths...

Anyway I am having problems with putting together full free flowing solo's. I play short licks and then i miss a couple of notes and then I pick it up again. It seems that I cant concentrate on the notes enough to see where I should be going next. I get carried away in the music and then I forget where I was and where I was going... This is sometimes (seldom though) a problem even for music that i know and have played fluently before...

Anybody have similar problems? Have you found anyway to get around this?

[Stratrat]

Glad to see you back, WernHalen. Good to hear everything is going well. Keep your chin up and keep playing, you're probably just in one of those temporary "slumps" that we all go through! It sounds like all the conditions are right and the willpower is there, so I'm sure you'll see a turnaround in no time.

[starsailor]

Hi WernHalen,

Good to see you around again and that things are going well for you, I agree with Stratrat about your recent setback, your post says how well you've done and people like hearing you play maybe you just need a bit of time to take stock, my future son in law who as I mentioned has dyslexia recently hit a bad patch, we thought he was going to drop out of college but with some support we managed to turn it around he did get quite depressed though. You have the ability so I'm sure you can get back on track, I wish you the best of luck and once again good to see you back.

Best Wishes

Chris

[carol m]

Hi Wern - we missed you! I'm sure you will hang in there because you always have done in the past. I find your determination to keep going is an inspiration. I know I don't spend enough time practicing in an organised way, and I don't have dyslexia (that I know of).

One thing though......how does dyslexia and Archery go together!!!! Hopefully your spacial skills can keep you aiming in the right general direction, or do your friends and family wear armour?

[WernHalen]

Thanks for the good wishes everyone,

I am sure it will pick up again... It always does...

it is fun to see all my old compatriots are still very active on the forum and that they still remember me...


Carol,

I am actually fairly good at this archery thing... I grew up shooting guns all my life and even though shooting a bow is completely different I have the muscles trained that help to keep me steady.

I am not brillinat and there are lots of people that are better than me but i am doing well based onthe time I have been doing it. Especially if you consider my level compared to my level of guitar playing vs. the time i have been doing it...

Hopefully the more relaxed lifestyle will help with my concentration on the geetar as well.

[Teddy Madison]

I think you can relax. I only recently started to get out of the very place you are in (but it seems you are getting there). It started with the pentatonic scales; my teacher would give me one, I would learn it, then he would give me another and say "Integrate this with what you already know". I would rip along and then hit a wall, totally lost as to where to go next. I can now move through all of the pentatonic scales with ease but guess what, he's throwing modes at me now.

Wayne

[solidwalnut]

Hi Wern--

Glad to see you back on the boards. I'm not on here as much as I would like, but....

Anyway, I'm glad to hear that your new life changes have been agreeing with you. I know that a change of life's speed as you've done will most likely do you a great service as far as learning the git.

I just wanted to share with you my brief story about learning the guitar. I took some test years ago when I was in grade school that said I had some pretty big disparities and learning disabilities. The bottom line of it was that the test told the experts that I would never be able to do anything very well if it had to include brain-hand coordination.

That was back before they had names for all this stuff, so who knows what they come up with. But I saw this as being inherited: my dad is pretty much this way and his mother would trip over a twig when it got in her way...

So I tried not to take this too much to heart. When I decided to learn to play at the age of 12, I learned what I could because I spent an enormous amount (probably some would say imbalanced) of time learning to find the note or sequence of notes that I just heard. Or to listen to a recording and then tell myself 'what chord was that they just played? Was it a G chord? If it was, was it a barre shape of some kind? What were the sequence of notes I just heard (not names. I'd just hum them back to myself and then find them on the guitar)'.

I just kept telling myself that if they could do it, so could I. Hey, there's only so many ways somebody can play a G chord, and these people playing were most likely playing it the most simple way they could...or they were playing the chord where they were on the neck because of the sequence of notes they wanted.

To me, it's all about the ear. It's all about listening, listening, listening and then learning to play back what you hear. Not to become the fanciest guitar player out there, but just to master the basics.

At the same time, I learned basic rhythm. I learned to listen to what they were playing and then tap back what I heard. Then I'd try to incorporate that into learning to strum. They were separate, but inseparable, issues.

Steve

[WernHalen]

Steve,

Thank you for the wonderfull inspiration. I have in the last couple of days been practicing more regularly and with a new love of the sound form the guitar.

Even though i understood the principles of Planetalk and I swear by it I was never able to see the whole fretboard in one go, but I seem to be getting this right as well.

Now I just need to sharpen my rhythm playing and I will be happy... I am practicing with a metronome but I find certain fast movements with my hands just does not want to happen It is a lot better than it was three years ago but i just dont seem to move my hands fast enough and with the amount of control necessary...

Practice practice practice...

[Nutty]

Originally Posted by sboswell

... For writing, I found a technique called "mind map" which is great for outlining your ideas in an artistic way. Well worth it to learn. Use it myself to write papers for work.

Do you have a link to information on this? My youngest daughter has real problems in school. She is going into grade 8 and still can't right complete sentences. She has serious difficulty putting her thoughts into words. She struggles in math as well. So if you have any tips there, that would be great.

She has been diagnosed with ADD and short term memory problems. I think there is more than that and she is slotted to be retested this year.

Sorry this doesn't relate to guitar, but I thought I could get away with it once LOL.

Thanks.

Nutty

[carol m]

Glad to hear you are hanging in there Wern. Moving the hands and fingers fast enough? Exactly, and remembering what note comes next It takes me an embarrassingly long time before I get it into my dumb-skull brain. I get distracted by the harmony/sound as I play and instead of knowing/thinking about what comes next, I'm thinking 'mmm, that sounds fastastic'....or 'this is going really well'.....and then stumble, crash, disaster and start over again, and again. and again......
But I love it

Good to hear from you again Wern

[WernHalen]

Carol,

Things are hectic on my side at the moment, but i have decided that i have to make time for all the things that make my life enjoyable.

Like you i also start playing something , think to myself: "hey this sounds gre..." crash boom bang... ok lets start over...

Nutty, sorry to hear about your daughter... I cant really say anything for the mind map thing, but I can definitely say that I benefitted from a program called Audiblox...

I was labled as being a bright young kid at primary school but due to my attention span it was said that i would flunk out of school at a young age... My mother bought audiblox and we did the exercises religeously. My school work inmproved drastically and I actually enjoyed classes more. Today I am an engineer and I can concentrate on things for a more than a couple of minutes.

Maybe i should buy some audiblox again just to sharpen my pencil again... plus it would be great for my kids...

good luck...

[sboswell]

To Nutty and Wern,

Wern,
good luck with the playing. We all have problems that interfere with our playing and practice. My practice time is usually right after the kids leave for school and before I go to work. Or it is some time around midnight when everybody has gone to bed. Not the best times to practice. I do keep a cheap classical in my office at work, so I play my guitar for a few minutes for my "smoke break". The problem with that is I have about three people wanting me to teach them guitar now! My problem with playing is not concentration but in the arthritis in my hands. I love classical and playing chord-melodies, but they don't work so well some time. Especially with all the far reaching frets. I help this by changing keys to the key of A and now I have all these open strings A,D,E as the major chords so I don't have to worry about my base notes.
When I have problems with a piece, I go off and play something I know well and come back later to wrestle the beast (song I can't play) again. But, my issues are different than yours. Anyway, I am sure you will find a way to help your concentration. Maybe using one of those fancy playback devices that can change the speed or tempo and still sound good would be helpful. You can keep it going along with you at your speed. I don't know, I hav looked at them myself because I have a terrible time picking out chords and notes.

Nutty,
Mind maps have been around for a little while and made more famous with Tony Buzan. There are some nice expensive software packages out there to help you draw them, but really all you need is a blank piece of paper and a pencil. The sw programs never have the icon you want and they are limiting in creativity, but they can be edited and changed alot easier. Erasers make a mess sometimes

I hope I don't get into any trouble supplying links, but they are not to guitar sites. Here is a link to an article that briefly describes a mind map technique. Both just using lines and also with colors and drawing icons.
Learn how to draw Mind Maps with Mind Tools - MindMaps, Note Taking Skills & Techniques, and Reviews of Mind Mapping Software

Buzans web site is at imindmap. Nice but a little expensive. A free version made by the open software folks is called freemind. It doesn't have much in the way of art but it is good at organizing your thoughts with the branching.

Your child couldn't carry in a computer to class anyway so it is best to learn to draw them. Amazon has books on mindmaps and has one made for children. I don't have it with me, a friend has borrowed it or I'd give you the title. I have done papers at work, sermons, presentation notes and other things with them. I have all my notes on one page instead of multiple pages of a normal outline.

As far as the math, I just think of different ways of presenting the material to my daughter (when she was younger). The new math techniques or good for some things (what they are I do not know), so being old enough to remember the "old way" of doing things, sometimes she would learn these better.

I am not knocking teachers. They work very hard. Sometimes they are not the best choice for a subject and they cannot teach alternate methods because they do not know the methods themselves.

I hope your state has an IEP program where she can be tested and get some help. THis allowed my daughter extra time for tests and essays, and this helped her GPA and grades quite a bit. No A student but not flunking out anymore either.

Write back if you have questions, sorry for the length of the post.

Steve

[Nutty]

Thank you very much WernHalen and Steve.

I'll definitely check those sites out. Whatever tools I can find to help make this easier for her will be a blessing. She wants to be a doctor, so we'll have to get those grades up!

Thanks again.

Nutty

[WernHalen]

After browsing through the Audiblox site for a bit I mentioned it to the missus and she said we should get a set for the family. For our children specifically, but I think I would definitely benefit from a couple of exercises a week myself.