Mike Schway told me he'd stopped playing for a year, then, when he started playing again, found he could no longer play as fast as he wanted to. He'd become a clumsy picker.
To fix the problem, he devised some musical exercises for himself and a practice program. At first they didn't seem to help. He worked harder and gave himself repetitive-motion injuries.
While he was recovering, brooding about the possibility that he'd never be the guitar player he used to be, he read Carl Sagan's Pullitzer-prize-winning The Dragons of Eden. Part way through the book, Sagan solved Steve's problem.
If you want to throw off your opponent's tennis game, Sagan said, ask him how he holds his racket.
Different parts of the brain do different jobs. Your hypothalamus decides which sex you're attracted to. Your medulla helps you vomit when you've been drinking too heavily. Your cerebral cortex does math problems.
Once he starts thinking about his grip, his cerebral cortex gets in the way of actually playing. Motor control is the job of the midbrain.
Trying to think your way to faster picking is like trying to type with your tongue.
The big light bulb went on. He stopped worrying about how to play fast, just let his body figure it out, and came back up to speed in no time.
I took this story to heart. If I'm having trouble playing a passage, the best thing I can do is, often, just stop thinking about it.
"Great," you're saying to yourself, "for the next two minutes, don't think about an elephant." How do you not think about something?
I think about something else instead. What tune can we switch to? What's that bass run he's doing? That dancer -- is she really not wearing underwear? One trick I fall back on is if I'm having trouble with my right hand, I focus on my left, and vice versa.
Many musicians use more booze and smoke more dope than the general population. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison would be a lot less dead if they hadn't been smack freaks. I sometimes wonder whether it's just another way to stop thinking, whether we just discover that intoxication helps keep our higher brains from intellectualizing away our musical skills.
