Reflective Journal

This reflective journal is about my progression on my playing speed as a second year popular music undergraduate student and an electric guitar player at Leeds Conservatoire. Needless to say that musical instrumental performance at this level requires more than just musical expressivity but also a high degree of technique and control, of which speed is a fundamental component, thus the focus of this reflective essay is to outline the process of my developing my faster guitar technique, particularly in relation to accuracy, coordination, and fluency while gradually increasing the tempo. In order for this to be successful, a structured regime for my guitar practice is required including technical exercises, (the spider warmup, scales, arpeggios) as well as building a repertoire of songs and licks that would be tailored to improving my speed. I predominantly used  Eric Johnson’s, Cliffs of Dover as  the standard to measure my current top speed at playing the guitar but also focused on learning a plethora of different songs to improve my general technique so that I would be able to play cleanly at high tempos.

I have used Kolb’s experiential learning cycle to break down my method of learning and reflective practice. Kolb’s model teaches us four fundamental principles of learning; that learning is a cyclical process that involves a continuous cycle of experience, reflection, conceptualisation and experimentation. The second being that experience is the foundation of learning, meaning that knowledge is created through the transformation of experiences. The third is reflection is crucial for knowledge development, because reflective observation makes for individuals to be able to analyze and make sense of their experiences, and finally the application of knowledge is essential because it allows for us to apply concepts into real world understanding and reinforce it. Kolb’s Model  has four parts, which explains that individuals have four key distinct learning styles, implying that we have both differing and preferred ways of processing, learning and internalising information. The four parts to Kolb’s model are Concrete Experience(having the actual experience), Reflective Observation(reflecting on the experience), Abstract Conceptualisation(learning from the experience) and Active Experimentation(trying out what you have learned). The four learning styles are ‘diverging,’ who benefit most from a combination of concrete experience and reflective observation, ‘assimilating,’ benefitting from mostly from abstract conceptualisation and reflective observation, ‘converging,’ benefiting from abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation, and ‘accommodating,’ benefitting from concrete experience and active experimentation. After taking a brief test I discovered that my learning style was accommodating, meaning that I would have to prioritise on physically applying and continuously practicing on my electric guitar. “Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience”(Kolb, 1984, p. 38).

Concrete experience in terms of practicing the guitar involves a number of things, the first and most important  being the guitar itself, time and the appropriate space, so this began with scheduling my practice for the week looking for the most convenient times of each day to practice whether it be before university, in between seminars of late night sessions, this also involved planning ahead with the room booker. The most important focus was to broaden my overall technique before attempting to increase the speed at which I would play. It was important to get into the habit of warming up as often as I could before I play, this involves going over the modes and scales preferably with metronome, going over arpeggios and the spider warmup exercise. I broke down my practice into separate parts to allow me to focus on individual aspects of my guitar technique and help me improve more efficiently. One thing I work on is sight reading chord charts, so this would often include using the ireal Pro app to access different jazz standard charts, usually picking out one I had heard earlier that week and enjoyed listening to. I believe it is essential to always love or at least try to enjoy whatever it is you’re playing to maintain a decent motivation for practice, so being able to look forward to the song I was going to be practicing made the practice a lot more fun. After this I would prioritise whatever work I had been given from university that week, this often Included more detailed practice of the major modes from the performance in context module, specialist group study would usually leave me with either some songwriting to be done, or potentially a solo or practice for a performance in room 218. This also included general assignment practice for my January technical assessment. This combination of work occupies the largest portion of my practice. Then I would practice transcribing, usually a song of recent that I wanted or needed to learn or sometimes a saxophone part to a jazz standard, for example the first solo in Dexter Gorden’s ‘Blue Bossa.’

I would also leave room during practice for general noodling and personal songwriting. At the end of every practice I would play ‘Cliffs of Dover’ by Eric Johnson and the revise the introduction to the song while playing along to a metronome and gradually increasing the speed every few practices, this would act as a form of ‘end of practice assessment’ to determine whether or not my speed was increasing or not.

The second stage of the cycle, reflective observation, involved taking a step back from my creative activity, the physical practice and reviewing my activity. This gave me the space to analyze my experience and think about how I felt. This took place at multiple times, sometimes it would be right after practice while sitting with my guitar or cooking or during a seminar, however it is easy to be distracted and sometimes the tim for reflection would be pushed back to much later either while during a moment of quiet, often in bed or in a transition activity to something else such as waiting for a bus before going out.

Very often the main question being asked during reflection was did the speed increase, and if so by how much?  The greater part of focus during these periods were centred around the final fifteen minutes of the practice and were rooted solely in my accuracy report and speed evaluation, this often overshadowed any evaluation of the other elements in my practice. This led to certain frustrations of how effective my practice was if my speed was not constantly improving. Coming to terms with the fact of the matter being it would take its time and lots of consistency to improve, feelings of frustration dimmed and I was able to feel satisfied with other successes and elements of the practice, as other aspects to my technique were still improving. In addition to self reflection, I also sought out external feedback and advice from my one-to-one guitar tutor, this was extremely helpful as he was able to identify areas in my practice that could be altered and improved, as well as helping apply more detail to my speed training so I could also improve on Cliffs off Dover quicker.

The third part of Kolb’s cycle is abstract conceptualisation, this is the process by which I was able to make sense of what really ‘happened’ during my concrete experience and thoroughly explain what I have observed during reflection, this takes place as a sequel to reflective observation in the sense that it occurred in the same times and spaces as it was still an instance of reflecting on the past, and so again it would happen in my free time or while laying in bed at night. Through reflection I was able to identify recurring issues in my practice, such as rhythmic inconsistency when playing at higher speeds, or less attention to detail such as hammer-ons and pull-offs becoming less dynamically clear. Abstract conceptualisation allowed me to reframe these observations as technical concepts such as inefficient movements in the right hand, or poor synchronization between the two hands, thus transforming my subjective experience into structural understanding. In the context of playing speed, abstract conceptualisation has further helped my guitar pedagogy, Guthrie Govan emphasises that speed on the guitar is not achieved through increased muscular effort, but through the elimination of unnecessary tension and the refinement of efficient movement. In Creative Guitar 1: Cutting-Edge Techniques, Govan argues that fast playing emerges naturally when movements are relaxed, economical, and well-coordinated, and that attempting to force speed often results in technical breakdown and loss of control (Govan, 2002). I also found through abstract conceptualisation that the structure of my practice needed work; I was incorporating too many dimensions of practice into each session, resulting in me cramming too many tasks in at once thus spending less time on each one, I later found it would be easier and more efficient to split up these different areas into multiple practices through the day and/or week, so that i could focus on each individual one for more time and in greater detail

The final stage of Kolb’s learning cycle, active experimentation, involves applying newly developed concepts to practice in order to test their effectiveness. During this stage of the cycle I altered the structure of my practice, as well as modifying certain exercises as well. The first modification was the practice structure, I found it would be more efficient to alter my practice so that it would always incorporate every aspect of technique development, in the new regime for example, I would still incorporate the same warmup, however instead of trying to rush through sight reading, then uni work, then transcription, then songwriting and then playing cliffs of dover to measure my speed as well, after abstract conceptualisation i found that warming up and then only doing for example my uni work for an hour or so, and then spending another hour later on in the day on transcription alone and then perhaps measuring my speed at the end of the day or the day after, meant that I had more time to focus on each individual aspect of my technique so that I could practice more efficiently. Another change I applied to my practice thanks to feedback from my one-to-one tutor during reflective observation was slowing down the song back to a stage where I was already comfortable in playing it, and playing it staccato to help synchronise my left and right hand, gradually increasing the speed afterwards this way meant for a more fluid and clean finished product once I had increased the playing speed. Having structured rest periods during my practice also helped me manage any wrist pain or aching in the left hand that commonly occurred previously during longer practices. I also found that it was helpful to warm up my wrist and left hand before even picking up the guitar for practice to further prevent any injury when playing. Active experimentation has supportet my autonomy and self-directed learning. Rather than relying solely on external instruction, I have become an active agent in shaping my own development, using reflection and experimentation to guide my progress.

Through my application of Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle, I have been able to understand that the development of my guitar playing speed is a dynamic and reflective process. Concrete experience provides the physical foundation of learning, reflective observation enables critical evaluation, abstract conceptualisation transforms experience into understanding, and active experimentation applies that understanding in practice. Engaging fully with each stage has supported my sustainable technical growth.

Bibliography

Govan, G. (2002) Creative Guitar 1: Cutting-Edge Techniques. London: Sanctuary Publishing.

Kolb, D.A. (1984) Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.