You are practicing to try and pull yourself up ability-wise, so you should
be choosing songs to work on that are 5 to 10% above your present abilities
- a challenge that you will be able to conquer. Looking at my awesome
chart below again that is the Fuchsia block, Practice/develop. I know,
catchy title. Songs are a wonderful, organic method of getting better;
the majority of naturally talented, famous musicians learned this way
pretty exclusively; that is they played millions of songs for thousands
of hours until they could play really well. About a third of students,
believe it or not, lean towards exercises and theory and shy away from
perfecting their songs. But this is a great way to play and sing amazingly.
Of course it may be hard to estimate if a song is in the fuchsia bracket, but if you'll keep at it, you'll soon be able to tell within thirty minutes whether a song will eat your lunch or be the next rung on your ladder to magnificence. Now these fuchsia songs are not for jamming or filling up your demo album or showing off to your girl; they are to teach you things. They'll be a bit clunky for a while. I've talked in earlier posts about how to practice to make these songs excellent and move them from point A to point B (and will discuss this more in time) but for now, suffice it to say that the idea is to move a song you had some trouble with into a song you've mastered and have no problem with: into the green zone. So we are working on songs a little too hard and moving them consistently to the kinds of songs you can do well. And that green zone of ability is where you pick your songs for performances, jams, fun with others, et al. Go Green! Go Fuchsia!
