Lead Guitar Practice 3 - How To Learn To Live Alone (Mary Gauthier Cover) - Liz Snavely of LVNMUZIQ

I'm still teaching myself how to play lead guitar, and it's going very well, though I'm still very much a rookie. But I've at least taken steps forward to learn what I used to think was impossible, lead guitar. I've been listening to Mary Gauthier a lot lately. Mary is one of the many amazing songwriters that have taught and mentored at Song School in the Rocky Mountains of Lyons, Colorado, which I had the honor of attending more than a decade ago. This is a song called How You Learn To Live Alone By Mary Gauthier and Gretchen Peters. I am still teaching myself to play lead guitar, which is challenging when you don't read music, but totally possible. Each day it is becoming easier. The key is practicing. Many people want to improve their guitar skills but don't want to practice. It's hard to improve at anything without putting in the time to practice. I didn't feel well at all today, and I blame it on maybe the past few weeks of extreme heat, which can make my lyme stir up more, which hasn't given me as much of an issue until the heatwave, but today was a tough one. I become paralyzed, not physically necessarily, but mentally when that happens. Rather than ignore it, I try to face those tough days head on by turning to music, which always makes me feel better, even if only slightly. Slightly is still better. I'll keep sharing these videos of me learning lead guitar, and I hope to continue to get more accurate, faster, and able to play lead without looking at my hands. It's like typing. If you never stop looking at the letters on the keyboard, you won't excel at typing. If you never stop looking at your hands playing guitar, you won't excel at playing guitar as much as you would if you would try to play, eventually, without looking. Learn it, then slowly learn small sections without looking. That is the key. Take it a section at a time rather than a whole song at a time. For me, breaking it down into sections makes it less overwhelming. I am also only starting off playing one string at a time and only using two fingers. I didn't plan on starting that way, but that's how it happened organically. And I'm okay with keeping it that simple for now. When I first began playing music publicly, I was so hard on myself to be perfect that it took my heart out of the equation. I was doing music, my lifelong dream, and yet I wasn't enjoying it. When I allowed myself to NOT be perfect, it gave my heart more freedom to improvise and truly play from the heart. If and when I make mistakes, I learned to make fun of it and kind of get the audience involved in a fun way usually by making fun of myself if it's a pretty big blooper, or it's easy enough to just smile and pretend like I meant to do something unplanned, which I truly don't mind doing. Playing lead by improvising all of it is really allowing me a lot of creative freedom unlike anything I've allowed myself before with playing music. It's similar to the creative freedom I'm feeling by trying to learn blues harmonica totally by improvising as well. When I play music, I'm not trying to be perfect, I'm trying to reveal my heart, which is also not perfect, but it's perfectly and tenderly mine. The lyrics are too wonderful to omit... First you fall, then you fly And you believe that you belong Up in the sky Flap your arms, as you run Every revolution brings you closer to the sun You fall asleep in motion, in unchartered hemispheres And wake up with the stars fallin' down around your ears When they hit the ground, they're nothin' but stones That's how you learn to live alone That's how you learn to live alone Bit by bit, you slip away You lose yourself in pieces And the things that you don't say You're not here, but you're still there The sun goes up and the sun goes down And you're not sure you care You live inside the false Till you don't recognize the truth And people send you pictures And you can't believe it's you It's been years since your house has felt like home That's how you learn to live alone That's how you learn to live alone It don't feel right, but it's not wrong It's just hard to start again this far along Brick by brick, the letting go As you walk away from everything you know When you release resistance Leaning into the wind Till the roof begins to crumble And the rain comes pourin' in And you sit there in the rubble Till the rubble feels like home That's how you learn to live alone That's how you learn to live alone You. Can. Do. What. You. Love. Even. On. Tough. Days. Don't. Ever. Give. Up.