{"id":887,"date":"2012-10-08T09:12:19","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T17:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/?p=887"},"modified":"2012-10-08T09:12:19","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T17:12:19","slug":"playing-from-the-heart-learning-new-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/?p=887","title":{"rendered":"Playing From The Heart; Learning New Material"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hello fellow players,<\/p>\n<p>This is Vic Lawson with today&#8217;s newsletter.<\/p>\n<p>Music is a language so the only way for people that don&#8217;t speak it is to feel it through our emotions. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s so important to learn to play from the heart. Once you&#8217;ve learned to translate what you feel into your instrument, that&#8217;s when you can touch people with your playing.<\/p>\n<p>Think about being somewhere where you hear a conversation in a foreign language. You really can&#8217;t understand what they are saying, but if they start to raise their voice, you know they are frustrated, or if they are sobbing, you know they are sad. It&#8217;s the same with the language of music.<\/p>\n<p>When I play with a good band, I sometimes think about this. I hear so many subtle things come together in a moment and wish everyone could appreciate what just happened. I believe that&#8217;s why a lot of players tend to play just for each other, because we get it! But that&#8217;s where playing from the heart comes in. If we learn to do that, the audience doesn&#8217;t have to technically understand it, but they can feel it.<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t have to know how to make biscuits to know whether they taste good. But as long as we can appreciate it, that&#8217;s all that matters.<\/p>\n<p>So think about this and the next time you play try to play with enough emotion that people will say &#8220;Wow! That made me cry.&#8221; Or try to play so your music gets them dancing. You will feel the satisfaction and that will make you a better player.<\/p>\n<p>As a professional steel player, you&#8217;re constantly being challenged to learn new material on short notice. I played 12 hours on Saturday and 4 hours last night, I&#8217;m playing three shows this week with Darryl Singletary and Justin McBride so the next couple of nights will be spent learning Darryl Singletary&#8217;s material.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve played for Darryl before but unfortunately I didn&#8217;t retain it so now I have to refresh myself and do it in a hurry. The older I get, the harder it is to retain things, so what I do these days is learn the signature licks, solos and fills the way I want to play them so I don&#8217;t have to copy everything note for note.<\/p>\n<p>I make generous use of my Tascam Guitar Trainer. It&#8217;s really the best tool for the job and I&#8217;d be hard pressed to keep up if I didn&#8217;t have it. A good suggestion for anybody learning new material is when you start having to replay the same part to remember it, get up and take a 10 or 15 minute break and come back. That gives the material time to sink in before you start cramming new material in on top of it.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;ll be three fun shows. If anybody wants to come out and say hi, we&#8217;re in Austin, Texas Thursday night at the country fair. We&#8217;ll be playing from 8 to 10 PM. Friday night we&#8217;ll be at the Cotton Club in Granger, Texas playing from 8:30 until midnight. Saturday night we&#8217;ll be in Delhi, Louisiana at the Cooterville Mud Rides playing from 11 PM until 1:15 AM. Come and say hi if you can.<\/p>\n<p>For Columbus Day we have reduced all of our tracks CDs to $9.99, down from $15. Time to load up so you can practice playing with emotion. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.steelguitar.net\/playalongtracks.html\">www.steelguitar.net\/tracks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Check out our monthly specials at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.steelguitar.net\/monthlyspecials.html\">www.steelguitar.net\/monthlyspecials.html<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.steelguitar.net\">www.steelguitar.net<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"mailto:sales@steelguitar.net\">sales@steelguitar.net<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/bobbeseymour\">www.youtube.com\/bobbeseymour<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"mms:\/\/radio.tnweb.com\/steelguitar\">Listen To Steel Guitar Music Streaming 24 Hours A Day!<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Steel Guitar Nashville<br \/>\n123 Mid Town Court<br \/>\nHendersonville, TN. 37075<br \/>\n(615) 822-5555<br \/>\nOpen 9AM &#8211; 4PM Monday &#8211; Friday<br \/>\nClosed Saturday and Sunday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello fellow players, This is Vic Lawson with today&#8217;s newsletter. Music is a language so the only way for people that don&#8217;t speak it is to feel it through our emotions. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s so important to learn to play &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/?p=887\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bobbeseymour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":888,"href":"https:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions\/888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pedalsteelmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}