Transcript included below…
I took my car in for an oil change recently, and as I suspected, the brakes had worn down to where it was time to talk about replacing them.
The guy at the counter said they were at 3 millimeters, which is dangerously close to being gone.
After a quick phone call to my wife about the timing of having the brakes replaced, I told the guy at the shop, “My wife and I have decided that it would be good for us to be able to stop.”
Out of nowhere, a very clever bystander quipped, “Well, you’re gonna stop…it’s just a question of how and when.”
Very true.
I definitely think it’s better to be able to have some control over stopping my vehicle, rather than the alternative.
You may be a musician or worship guitarist who plays music full time. You may enjoy music as a hobby.
But if you’ve ever tasted burnout in any aspect of your life you know that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Sometimes it can be exhilarating to skirt the edge of burnout with all the things we’re trying to tackle, but there can be a mental and physical toll on us of we push ourselves too hard.
And then we crash.
Whatever your musical posture and skill set, I’ve got a few ideas to share with you today along the theme of rest.
Let me ask you a rhetorical question. Are rests a part of music?
Absolutely. Whether we play from actual notation, or just charts with words and chords, a well-written song will have moments where some musicians play less or not at all at times.
If you want a clear indicator of the importance of rests in songs with lyrics, think about what a 4-minute song would sound like with non-stop vocals. I mean literally, a voice singing throughout the entire song without taking a single breath.
With a little studio digital magic, this is actually one of many things that are possible. But our ears need breaks where the vocalist stops singing, if only for a moment, as the band takes over.
Ears can get fatigued as well. More on that in a bit.
Guitar may be the undercurrent of a song, especially if it’s strummed rhythm guitar, but even if we drill down into a strumming groove, we typically find that the pick isn’t grazing the strings every time it passes over them.
Ergo, there are even rests in strumming patterns.
As I talk about in GuitarSuccess4U, there are an infinite number of strumming patterns, due to the characteristics of when we are not making contact with the strings.
And in terms of the bigger picture of our daily rhythm, perhaps there are times when we pause from our guitar playing as well. What does that look like, and how does it help us to resume with greater focus, passion and momentum?
Now as I mentioned in Guitar Through the Seasons, Guitar Serious Fun Episode 17 and Episode 18, there will be times in our lives when we set down our guitars.
But what about incorporating rest as a part of our routine?
Here are a few thoughts.
1. Good sleep helps us play better.
If you’ve ever pulled an all-nighter or two with studying for an exam, you know that in the short-term, sleep can be postponed. But it can’t be eliminated.
Having multiple gigs in a row, or a very late night can be doable, but it’s not sustainable. Getting good rest, especially when a musician is on the road, is essential.
Younger folks tend to want to stay out late, push the limits, and think about their choices later. I’ve played late night song sets, and closing sets at festivals. These sets have been 10 p.m. or even as late as midnight, to ring in the New Year.
They can be super fun, especially since they can draw a crowd of fans that is just getting their evening started at that point. One of our members in GuitarSuccess4U went to a multi-day bluegrass festival where folks were informally jamming until 5 a.m.
For the festival, that’s fine. As a habit, eventually there will be a price to pay, and that includes compromising our health and our concentration…to say nothing of what sleep deprivation does to someone’s singing voice.
And in terms of safety, I know people personally, (including musicians) who have been so tired that they’ve fallen asleep at the wheel and experienced a rather intense “wakeup call” when they’ve driven off the road.
Caffeine can help, but when it comes to rhythms of rest for our recovery, there’s no substitute for literal rest in the form of sleep.
2. Taking breaks preserves our muscles.
If you’ve ever played a really long concert set, practiced for multiple hours straight, or tried to get the most out of a block of studio time, you could be overdoing it with your hands and voice.
The intricate muscles of our hands and vocal cords are fearfully and wonderfully made by our Heavenly Father, but they have also been entrusted to us for the long game.
I’ve met folks who have sustained injuries like chronic vocal fatigue, carpal tunnel syndrome or repetitive strain injury. They have regretted how aggressive they’ve been with their bodies, and in retrospect, they wish they had heeded the early warning signs of injuries they’re now recovering from.
I certainly don’t want to be negative, but I do want to be realistic. If we don’t build in regular intervals in our routines to rest and not play or sing, we could overdo it.
But there’s something also to be said for warming up and stretching.
As I talked about in Guitar Serious Fun Episode 34, “Can Practicing the Guitar Be Harmful?”, There was a season early on in my career where I played so much guitar that I overdid it. How did I know? I was unable to pick up my firstborn infant daughter without experiencing shooting pain through my wrists.
Fortunately, these were early warning signs that I was on my way to injuring myself…I had not yet permanently done so.
So, what did I do at this point? Well, I read multiple books on carpal tunnel syndrome prevention, as well as the prevention of repetitive strain injury. These books are written for people who do things repetitively like painting, assembling things in an assembly line or pulling espresso shots.
But more importantly than these books, I sought the counsel of a very gifted physical therapist who was able to observe my posture, down to the angles of my wrists as I played my guitar. He was able to diagnose the problem.
But beyond this, he prescribed three very specific stretches that have been absolute game-changers for me. Not only do I use these before I practice; they have prevented further injury and pain for over a decade and a half.
I have taken intentional steps inside the early lessons of GuitarSuccess4U to demonstrate and teach all three of these stretches, and my members have benefitted tremendously from them.
I will say that everyone’s physical limits are different; some folks come with previously existing injuries, so I always caution everyone who tries these stretches out, to take them slowly and listen to their bodies.
But if we are playing demanding passages of music on our guitars, especially acoustic guitars with steel strings, and we feel our fretting hand forearm getting warm, that’s a sort of caution light.
So, it’s important to take breaks, but also to stretch and warm up (or even warm down) around our practice, performing, worship leading or studio time. Rhythms of rest are found in these avenues as well.
3. Building in margin keeps us balanced.
Younger kids get recess during school. Adults get coffee breaks at work. We all need breaks.
When it comes to the recording studio, typically time is blocked out in hours. But here’s the thing; unless we’re able to take a few breaks during our recording sessions, we can overdo it, especially if we’re “on the clock,” and we’re the ones paying for the time.
Some of my most relaxed recording studio sessions have been shorter, like less than two hours, because I came well-prepared and didn’t have to play a segment over and over. I was able to avoid repetitive strain injury because of this.
So here’s some wisdom: don’t let the studio be your experimental space where you’re creatively coming up with new ways of playing your song on the guitar.
Sure, there may be slight spontaneous variations, but if someone is exerting their hands on a piece over and over and trying to mentally grasp what they want from the song, and they don’t have a clear idea, and it leads to hours of playing the same thing over and over, it can be a recipe for fatigue.
Having a game plan, and an end of session time marking can be good. It sets an expectation that we come prepared and – wait for it – we stop, even if we haven’t gotten the takes we want.
There’s no shame in coming back later to do a better take. There is a problem with playing for many hours, hoping to get it right, even as focus and strength are waning.
A much lower pressure environment is the practice space. We can assign ourselves a practice regimen that stays limited to 30 or maybe 60 minutes. Anything more than 60 minutes of guitar playing needs to be followed by an intentional break.
Trust me – your mind, hands and ears will appreciate the margin.
As for the concert or the worship service, typically your hands will get breaks when other musicians play, or you tell a story, or there are other components of the service like the sermon, etc. Unless you paint yourself into a corner with a 4-hour concert, you’ll be fine.
The only 4-hour set I did that I can remember was a farmer’s market, but what I was able to do was alternate between guitar, keyboard and hammered dulcimer, and I made sure that the songs I was playing were not too demanding.
I also had the option to stop for a few moments between songs to grab a sip of water, or greet friends who had come to the market. It was a pretty low-key venue.
Even when I’ve heard performers do longer concerts, whether at a coffee shop or a grandstand, they’ve taken breaks.
With a coffee shop venue, it’s almost expected; the proprietors want the artist to stop and let the people queue up for beverages and refreshments. It adds to their profit for the evening.
We have a venue here in Washington State called the Gorge Amphitheater, right on the Columbia River. It accommodates about 19,000 people. I remember attending a sold-out concert there performed by James Taylor in 2003. The show was almost three hours long.
Halfway through the concert, James said with a twinkle in his eye, “We’re going to go backstage and…think about what we’ve done.” That was his way of saying he and his bandmates needed a break.
Where were 19,000 people going to go during James Taylor’s break?
The answer is: nowhere.
We just sat in our seats, some of us stood up and stretched, chatted with our neighbors, and we took about 20-30 minutes to give James the margin he needed so that he could come back and give us a great closing set.
So, a rhythm of rest in taking breaks that lead to margin in any venue helps us find that balance that allows for our best musical offerings.
4. Time away from music keeps our ears fresh.
My parents gave my eldest daughter a t-shirt for her 16th birthday that said, “A day without music is like…just kidding – I have no idea.”
She has such a deep love for music of many styles, eras and genres that it’s rare to witness her not listening to music.
And that’s ok.
But studio engineers will tell you that they need time away from an audio project to keep their ears from playing tricks on themselves. They literally build in time away from their studio, not listening to music, or at least not listening to the music they’re mixing, so that they can get the right mix in the end.
One of my dear friends and collaborators is a studio engineer, and he has literally told me that if he spends too much time mixing a project without a break, he’ll have to go back and start over, because he’ll experience what he calls “ear fatigue.”
So even a rhythm of rest when it comes to listening can be important to consider.
Wrap-up
As we wind down today, I’m hoping you’ll take away from our discussion that it’s not just about rest. It’s about a rhythm of rest. Where we work, and then we relax. We play, and then we rest. We pursue another aspect of a project, and then we sleep.
Rhythm is all around us. It’s in our heartbeats, our breathing, and our footsteps. The conversations we have with others, whether verbal or musical, have a sort of rhythm that involves exchanging ideas and thoughts. We alternate listening with speaking, or listening with playing.
Why should our music and our resting be any different? So, whether you’re thinking it would be important to get good sleep, take breaks, build in margin, or even take time away from music, these thoughts could be good medicine for your long-game success.
The Lord set a beautiful example for us when He rested on the seventh day. Although the Lord’s Day is typically a day when I’m serving with music, I do try to build in a day of margin on the weekend so that I, too can have rest.
But the beautiful result of building in the rest we need as musicians is this: when we get back to work, we are refreshed, more focused, and ready to make great music again.
I also find that I think more clearly and creatively when I’ve had good rest. And clarity and creativity are essential to my work. Even the words I’m stringing together for this episode require tremendous focus and creativity, which I love to pour out…but only when I’m well rested.
Well, I hope today’s discussion gave you some good insights and provided the opportunity to reflect and perhaps strategize about your rhythms of rest.
If you have thoughts on what I’ve shared here, please comment.
Also, feel free to share today’s episode of Guitar Serious Fun with someone you know. We’re working to make these episodes available to more listeners and readers, because we think they could enrich the lives of a lot of Christian guitarists.
Lastly, if you don’t have a guitar teacher and you’re looking for a game-changing learning experience for your next season of guitar playing, take a moment to explore GuitarSuccess4U.com.
Talk about intentional rhythms that allow for rest. Our six stage Success Path, the sequence of weekly lessons each month, the carefully timed guest expert interviews…they are all laid out in a clear, intentional rhythm that allows for plenty of rest and refreshment.
GuitarSuccess4U could be the rhythm you need in this season of your guitar journey.
So, get some rest, take some breaks, build some margin, and take a little time away. And watch how refreshed you become when you get back to the music you love to play.
Thanks for experiencing my thoughts here at Guitar Serious Fun. I’ll see you next time.
Rhythms of Rest for Guitar