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Better Hearing In Old Age?
From Mediplacements.com
"Lifelong musicians experience fewer hearing problems in old age than those who do not play an instrument, it has been revealed.
"A study published in journal Psychology and Aging studied musicians who had began their training by the age of 16 and continued to practice until the day of testing.
"It was found that when it came to detecting sounds which grew increasingly quieter, musicians did not have an advantage in old age.
"Despite this, when it came to detecting a gap in sounds, identifying the relationship between different sound frequencies and the ability to hear speech among background noise, musicians fared better than their non-musical counterparts.
"This suggests that being a lifelong musician could combat age-related changes in the brain due to the constant use of their auditory systems on a high basis.
"Lead investigator Benjamin Rich Zendel said: 'What we found was that being a musician may contribute to better hearing in old age by delaying some of the age-related changes in central auditory processing.
" 'This advantage widened considerably for musicians as they got older when compared to similar-aged non-musicians.' "
I often get new students who have tried and failed at learning guitar by watching YouTube videos. I have a couple of videos myself, so I’m certainly not against the idea of learning this way! In fact, many budding guitarists benefit from the generosity of players who demonstrate songs and techniques by video.
However, it is something akin to learning something by reading a book; some can, and others are only more confused. So don’t be discouraged if YouTube videos are not making you a guitar virtuoso! Now I will explain why.
First of all, you might be a beginner and not up on the “lingo”. A video can’t look at you and assess how much you know. So if you simply don’t understand the terminology used, or if a demonstration goes too quickly, it can be a complete turn off.
Secondly, those who can play, can’t necessarily teach. They may say that they are going to show you how to play something and go ahead and play it, and explain nothing! While some might be able to pick up on what they are doing, many can’t.
Thirdly, you may not realize what you need to learn first in terms of which videos to watch. If you want to learn to play solos, you need to learn scales…if you want to play your favourite Neil Young song, you need to learn chords and some strumming techniques. Again, videos can’t assess what you know, or don’t know. If you don’t know how to swim, don’t jump in the deep end!
Videos can also be wrong. When I say “wrong”, I also mean that people tend to play their own versions of songs, for instance, and it doesn’t quite sound like the original. You may have already come across that in terms of looking at chords and tabs at some of the more popular sites dedicated to it. When you try it out, it doesn’t really sound right, but you might blame it on yourself rather than on what the tab or video is showing you.
If you are a guitar enthusiast, videos can be a great way to augment your learning experience. But don’t consider yourself a failure if you are having trouble learning how to play from them! Therefore, I always encourage getting an instructor or taking some guitar classes so you can learn at a pace that works for you.
In Part 1 of this article, we discussed how keeping your hand in motion is key to strumming, and learned how to play along with a couple of basic strums. The standard strum that I used as an example, can be played more than one way, however! So let’s review what the first way sounded like:
This time, we’re going to put the emphasis on the DOWN stroke and have a shorter up stroke, and that changes the feel of the strum entirely. Take a listen and play along if you like:
One of the main problems many people have with playing guitar over a period of time, is always resorting to the same strum for pretty much every song. After awhile, even songs that should sound very different, don’t!
If this is something you’re experiencing, then let’s go back to some basics and see what we can do to get you out of the rut.
First of all, many people will strum in an inefficient manner. Rather than keeping the strumming arm in constant motion, they will pause at the up stroke or at the down stroke in order to achieve a certain groove. When you strum, do you ever pause your arm? This usually becomes part of the problem; you haven’t learned to strum correctly! Hit the play button on the Flash animation below; as simple as it seems, try strumming it. If you’re doing it right, you’ll notice there are no gaps and your arm is in constant motion:
Count along with the numbers underneath. This is a full bar of a 4/4 (or common time) strum. Sometimes counting helps, sometimes it gets in the way, but for now, just count as you strum and if the strum is too quick at first, do it on your own and go at a pace that feels comfortable for you.
Okay, now we’re going to look at the strum again, but with a small change. Hit the play button on the following animation:
When it plays you’ll see that the first down stroke is the same, but the first up stroke is in grey, dotted lines. This is what I call a “ghost strum”. What you are doing now is strumming the same pattern, but leaving that second up stroke out. You still move your arm, but don’t strum the strings as you come up. You’ll notice that you are leaving the same “space”…you’re not rushing to the 2nd down strum, but moving your arm up at the same speed as you do for the rest of the strum. You need to think of your arm like a metronome or the pendulum on a grandfather clock; it keeps a consistent movement, back and forth, back and forth.
When you’re first learning to play guitar, you might find yourself constantly hunching over watching either your chording hand or your strumming (picking) one. Of course you need to do that when you’re very new to playing because how else are you going to get a sense of where the strings and the frets are?After awhile, however, you may find yourself at a disadvantage if you are habitually watching your hands. How can you read chords and lyrics or tablature and watch your hands at the same time? Well, you can look back and forth, but you’ll likely lose your spot on the page pretty easily. And once you’ve firmly established this habit, it’s pretty hard to break. I’ve had some students who’ve come to me after having played for awhile, with the habit of watching their hands. That’s pretty much the first habit I try to break them out of.
The truth is, after awhile, you don’t need your eyes for playing guitar any more! You won’t believe it until you try it. Even with my beginner students, I work to get them to stop watching pretty soon in the game. They don’t believe they can do it either, until they try it a few times. The fact is that your fingers have muscle memory and they will begin to remember the shapes of the chords pretty quickly. They might not always hit the right string or the right place on the fret, but the shape will be there. Certain chords will come more quickly than others…for instance and ‘A’ chord where you place all your fingers in the second fret, is easier to find without looking. A ‘C’ chord does not come as easily to some, so this one will take more work.
If you have a habit of watching your chording hand, try it out. Discipline yourself to move between two chords that you know fairly well. You’ll be surprised at how many times your fingers will hit the right spot without the need for looking. If you MUST look, look AFTER you move, not AS you’re moving. This will help you to get out of the habit too.
Now of course you’ll notice that there are dots on the neck of your guitar indicating certain frets. Most guitars have fret dots on the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th and 12th frets. Those dots are there to help you see your way to another fret, especially when you are playing up and down the neck. And this is because sometimes you need to look in order to hit the right fret. Classical guitars do not have these fret dots, but most other guitars do. And when you watch Eric Clapton play, sometimes he looks down so he gets to the right fret, although most of the time he doesn’t have to look at all. So there are certainly instances where glancing down helps.
But the sooner you get out of the habit of looking, the sooner you will be liberated! How many times have I seen a guitar student’s fingers go to the right chord, and then look and second guess themselves? The eyes and the thinking can actually GET IN THE WAY of playing more smoothly! When you don’t have to look any more, you will be depending on your muscle memory and your touch rather than your eyes and your thoughts, and that’s a lot faster!
So do yourself a favour and break yourself of the habit of watching your hands…and the sooner the better
If you’ve got an older guitar and you don’t know when the last time the strings were changed on it, you might consider buying a set and learning how to change them. Or if you’ve had your new guitar for awhile and you need to learn how to change strings, I’ll give you a few tips. These tips are primarily for acoustic guitar.
First of all, people always question “when?” There are many different opinions on this one. Some people suggest if you’re playing regularly, change them every couple of months. I don’t think that’s really necessary and I don’t even change them that often! I met a performing guitarist once who changed them every day! The reason he did was because he liked the sound of new strings Well, I guess a performer has the right to change strings as many times as he/she wants. Luthiers (people who make stringed instruments) will have varying opinions too.
A good sign that your strings need to be changed is when one of them breaks! But you don’t have to wait that long. If you have a classical or spanish guitar with nylon strings, they rarely break anyway. Steel strings break more often. Usually you will see that the areas of the string that you touch most, where you play chords or notes, will get a little darker. Over time, the oil and skin from your fingers and the dust from a room will start to gather especially on the wound strings, the fatter ones. You’ll see the effect of time on the fat strings first. It dulls the sound of the string when you play it, although you won’t really notice because it happens so gradually. As soon as you put a new string on, you’ll notice the difference right away!
Most of the time you can buy a new set of strings from your local music store for about $10 or $12…some are a little more expensive. Talk to somebody at the counter about buying strings if you’re not sure what you need for your guitar. For instance, a classical guitar needs different strings from a steel string guitar.
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