{"id":402,"date":"2011-09-07T22:06:06","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T03:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?p=402"},"modified":"2012-08-27T10:44:58","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T15:44:58","slug":"floating-into-the-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?p=402","title":{"rendered":"Floating into the Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most valuable techniques my teacher Jim Goelitz has taught me is his &#8220;trademarked&#8221; method of learning chords, which he calls &#8220;float and drop.&#8221; The goal is to learn the chord shapes as a grip that your hand remembers with precision. To practice chords, you <strong>very<\/strong> slowly position your fingers just above the strings\u00a0(float) and frets you want to press for a chord. Then you <strong>very\u00a0<\/strong>slowly drop your fingers to the strings and strum the chord to make sure it sounds clear. You repeat this process with the next chord.<\/p>\n<p>I find this is an especially helpful way to practice two or more new chords when I&#8217;m having trouble getting reliably from one chord to the next. Recently, Jim had me demonstrate &#8220;float and drop&#8221; for a couple of chords that were bothering me. He noticed that I was moving too fast. He stressed that the movement needs to be like slow motion in a movie. This helps ensure accuracy and precision. Before your fingers touch the strings, they need to be in the exact position for that chord.<\/p>\n<p>It may seem obvious, but in working on a transition from one chord to the next, I realized it helps to notice the most direct path your fingers can take between the two chords. Perhaps a finger stays on the same string and just moves up or down. It&#8217;s more effective to practice following this path in slow motion with &#8220;float and drop.&#8221; It may take a lot of repetition, but eventually\u00a0it leads to improvement.<\/p>\n<p>Once I&#8217;m starting to get familiar with a chord grip or transition, I find it helpful to practice it with my eyes closed. The ultimate goal is to &#8220;find&#8221; the chords without looking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most valuable techniques my teacher Jim Goelitz has taught me is his &#8220;trademarked&#8221; method of learning chords, which he calls &#8220;float and drop.&#8221; The goal is to learn the chord shapes as a grip that your hand remembers with precision. To practice chords, you very slowly position your fingers just above the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,42,12,115],"tags":[109,110,60,32,180,132],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=402"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":589,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402\/revisions\/589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}