turning off the brain

[DHW]

As my hands speed up I am finding I outplayed my brain. I try to distract myself and not think about the specifics of what my fingers are doing and then it will rear it's head in the middle of a run that totally spoils it. I'm trying to make a conscience effort to not think about each individual finger and what it's going to do next and I am sure with time I'll get over this plateau but do you guys have any tricks?

 

[vchizzle]

How well do you know the fretboard? Sometimes just working within one scale or mode at a time can help. You know the shape of the scale on the fretboard, then don't need to think as much. I'm speaking of improvising here. Take small passages of something specific to work on, once you get that part down perfect when you can play without think much about it, move on to the next part, then work to connect them together. Everything is a repetition process.

 

[DHW]

How well do you know the fretboard? Sometimes just working within one scale or mode at a time can help. You know the shape of the scale on the fretboard, then don't need to think as much. I'm speaking of improvising here. Take small passages of something specific to work on, once you get that part down perfect when you can play without think much about it, move on to the next part, then work to connect them together. Everything is a repetition process.

That is part of what I am working on now. Getting every note of the Am scale completely down. I can be running through even first position at times and my brain just goes "hey, jerk, are you doing that right?" and it all goes out the window lol... I think I'm too stressed with work or something, I never can just shut off. One of the reasons I am enjoying learning this instrument because it forces me to try and turn off.

 

[László]

It's funny that you mention this because my partner just asked me to lay down a very simple solo line that he had written on keyboard (he doesn't play guitar) for one of our ad projects.

Because he doesn't think like a guitarist, his lines aren't usually intuitive to play, but he likes me to play exactly what he writes. I have to think the entire thing through each pass, and no matter how simple the line is, things always go awry! Takes forever to do it right.

Back when I was a good tennis player, I always played better when I just turned off the thought process and it became more intuitive, too. I think there's a lot to what the OP says!

Of course, the more you play, and the more you practice, the more intuitive everything becomes.

 

[Bill SAS 513]

As my hands speed up I am finding I outplayed my brain. I try to distract myself and not think about the specifics of what my fingers are doing and then it will rear it's head in the middle of a run that totally spoils it. I'm trying to make a conscience effort to not think about each individual finger and what it's going to do next and I am sure with time I'll get over this plateau but do you guys have any tricks?

Not here...until you have your first (of hopefully many) AHA moments, where the brain was off, the notes sounded good, and you weren't actually thinking too much...just playing and listening. Still hasn't happened to me too much, but I'm thinking you'll know when it does happen to you. These are usually most players' favorite moments.