Last week, I stared to learn a Doc Watson arrangement of the song, “Deep River Blues”. [Doc was a multi-Grammy winning singer, song writer, and guitar player, a huge influence in the folk music revival of the 1960s and 1970s. More about Doc here. ] As Doc describes the song in the recording, “…a blues that might have been kind of popular in the days of the steamboat.”

He accompanies himself on the guitar, finger picking. I admire Doc’s work, I love that song, and I had the thought that I would like to pick the song exactly as Doc did it in the recording.

The song as a whole is pretty easy, well within my technical capabilities, and I thought I could nail it in one practice session except… there were two points in his performance that I just couldn’t get. Over the course of the week, I invested, literally, hours attempting to master about 20 seconds of music. Not sure why it was so challenging… and I felt sharply frustrated. As in, “I know what he’s doing and I know how to do that”, but it wasn’t happening. Occasionally, during my practices, I’d get it right … and then, a minute later, I couldn’t repeat it.

I moved on to other pieces for a couple of days.

Then, in a quiet moment over the weekend, I remembered once again something that I’d heard from one of my music teachers about how to practice when I was struggling to learn a difficult piece: “If it sounds like music, you’re not doing it right.” In other words, slow down. Forget about the end product. Start at the speed in which you can play the notes in the correct sequence, one at a time. Once you’ve mastered that, increase the speed.

Doc plays the song at 180 beats per minute. For my challenging 20 seconds, I started at 40 beats per minute…. frustrating in a different way…but I’m gaining on him!

Nick Miller and Clarity train banks and bankers to attract and develop deeper relationships with small businesses. Many more Sales Thoughts like this and a host of other articles and resources at https://clarityadvantage.com/knowledge-center/ .