A reader recently emailed me asking for some advice. He has suffered from a stroke and lost use of a couple of his fingers in his left hand. I’ve got his original email and my response response (with some editing to make more sense in a blog format and fixed typos).
Here is the original email:
Hello Sam. I dont know if you or anyone can advise me. Earlier in my life.
I recently received a message from someone lamenting that they felt like they hadn’t improved much over the last thirty years. We had a bit of a back and forth and hopefully he’s got a path to improve. The conversation was one I could imagine a lot of guitarists benefitting from, so I’ve put it out here.
I started off asking a few questions:
What do you want to be able to do on guitar?
A former student recently emailed me with the following question:
Hey Sam,
In one month we´ll be playing the final concert for this semester. We´re doing one song that has a rather tricky Intro Riff.
The target BPM for the riff are about 90 to 93. I can play it reliably at about 80 Bpm. That means at 80bpm I´m not making any mistakes. As soon as I crank it up to the target speed I´m starting to struggle and mistakes start to occur.