Matt Helm

Just because you don’t have an instrument in your hand doesn’t mean you can’t be practicing. Read on for some ideas and suggestions.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. It’s also the mother of learning really quickly. We’ve all experienced it. When we have a deadline, an exam, a performance or a meeting – one that really matters – we stay up all night cramming, preparing, practicing, learning.

If you learn something without the pressure of necessity, chances are that it won’t really stick. If you read a book of Jungle Survival Tips while relaxing on the sofa you might remember a few interesting snippets but not much more. If you read the same book while stranded in an actual jungle then you can bet most of it will sink in.

Smartphones have made our lives a lot easier and more convenient. For those of us who make music that’s no exception.

I’ve already blogged about my favourite free metronome app that means you’re never stuck for a click when you need one. Right next to it on my phone is a free tuner called gStrings. This is a chromatic tuner which you can use to tune any instrument, or your voice if you fancy singing at your phone.

In this article I want to talk about that particular kind of disappointment that hits you when you look at your audience just before the show and it’s not what you expected.

Many of you will know the feeling. You look out from backstage 15 minutes before your stage time to get a feel for the crowd. When you look, that A&R guy from Sony you were assured would be there hasn’t turned up. Or that hot guy / girl you were hoping to impress isn’t there. Or your best mates have failed to escape from the local pub. Or there are only 3 people and the sound engineer in total.

Do you ever have trouble motivating yourself for a gig? You get there and the crowd isn’t quite as big as you’d hoped or you’re tired or not really in the mood? How do you deal with that?

Names are important. Imagine you go to an event, maybe a rehearsal, and meet a load of people who’ve never met each other before. Next week, you all meet up again. Some people only remember two or three names and will probably go back and talk to those people again. Some go round to each person, address them by name and ask how they’ve been doing. Who’s the better networker?

What this means is that it’s useful to be good at remembering names. Not many of us are blessed with this gift. We all know that horrible feeling when we see someone we know we’ve met several times before but we can’t remember their name. How can we avoid this?…

It’s easy to overlook things that take a little bit longer to give us a result. We dismiss actions that don’t have a short term payoff as ‘not worth the effort’. In the last week I’ve had a few opportunities come up because of things I did months ago. I had written those activities off as a waste of time because I hadn’t had a positive response within a couple of weeks. It turns out I was wrong, they have worked, it just took longer than I thought. They laid the foundations for opportunities that have only just materialised.

I’m going to talk through what they were in the hope that it might inspire you to do whatever your ‘difficult thing’ is with a view to laying foundations for the long term.

Don’t fall into the trap of dismissing and avoiding small talk. It serves a very important purpose. You can learn a lot about someone from their small talk.

There are a lot of free guitar video lessons out there on the internet. I’ve come across some really good and some really ones. To save you trawling through the worst here’s my pick of the top 5 free guitar video channels.

Even among the best of friends emotions can sometimes get strained. In order to keep things running smoothly it’s vital to have a good understanding of your own thoughts and feelings. Without a clear insight into your own state of mind emotions can steam-roll over you before you can do anything about them. That’s why self-awareness is critical for maintaining band relationships.