Hi Friend!
This week is all about a strategy you can use to make practice more effective and enjoyable, by tapping into the innate problem solving nature of your brain. Thanks to my student Mandy who’s passing comment inspired this idea. 

Something To Think About

Solve a puzzle to make it stick

Whatever you happen to practicing right now, if you can find a way to turn it into a puzzle to solve you’ll experience better retention and hopefully more enjoyment from the process. This reframe is great because it not only turns what you’re doing into a game, but it’s also backed by a growing body of evidence that demonstrates that problem based learning results in better rates of acquisition and retention of knowledge (sources – 1, 2, 3). I believe this strategy is effective because it’s a form of self-testing. This is well known to improve the rate of learning, but that’s a discussion for a future newsletter! .

Something To Practice

Design your own puzzle

Here are a few ways you can transform what you’re practicing into a puzzle. 

If you’re working on technique get away from the tab and start looking at section of the exercise that is causing you the most difficulty. Treat it like a puzzle to solve. Are there things you can change in your technique that will make it easier to play? 

If you’re studying theory try writing your own piece of music that puts that piece of theory into practice. Or try using the theoretical concepts to analyse someone else’s music.

For those working on improvisation like me try to find a backing track that isolates the improvisational challenge you’re working on. The backing track below is designed to practice switching keys during the solo. Treat it like a puzzle to solve. How can you get from one key to the next in a musical manner? 

Here’s an example of me trying this exercise. The backing track is available below.

Have a go with the backing track

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Something To Enjoy

The ultimate key change exercise


The incredible Alex Hutchings pushes problem solving to the extreme in this exercise where his friend gets him to improvise through key changes with only 1 seconds notice! 

That’s it for this one. If you got something out of this Fretboard Philosophy simply reply to this email and let me know your thoughts.

See you in two weeks!

Alasdair 🤘

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