That quote comes from the movie Rat Race. A ridiculous comedy where a bunch of normal people compete to find a bag full of money.

And as silly as that movie is…the quote stands true.

You see, good things do take time. You must work at them. Build them.

But then suddenly as if by some sudden force of nature, those good things turn into great things. And it happens faster than you can imagine.

Seemingly “all at once.”

Imagine yourself trying to push a boulder off a hill. You push and strain. You get tired but you keep pushing and the boulder barely seems to moving at all. You nudge it one inch. Then another inch. Until suddenly…

It rolls down the hill at a blistering pace. Taking out the obstacles in its way.

The momentum that YOU gave it from pushing makes it a near impossible force to stop.

See, mastering the fretboard works on the same principle as the boulder. (Except without the sweating and pushing…and a lot less hard work)

All you have to do is take one small action towards improving your “neurological contact” with the fretboard every day.

You may not see any changes in your playing right away.

But you keep doing that “one small action” (tinylesson) until BOOM. You can quickly pick out notes across the fretboard.

Then you keep going…and BOOM again. You can play scales in ALL 5 positions - with your eyes closed!

You see, guitar playing doesn’t always improve gradually. You won’t see incremental changes every few days or each week.

It improves in “leaps and bounds” and these leaps generally have an “absorption period.”

tinylesson: Mano’s Triangle

My good friend, Mark Lucas ("Mano") once told me that part of the toughest part about learning to play guitar is that you typically have to learn across three different modalities.

So let’s think about that.

When you want to learn a new piece of music.

In no particular order, you typically search out:

Written Medium - tabs, sheet music, chord charts, etc. Use Auditory Engagement - Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, etc. to contrast what you’re playing with how the music is truly played Build the “Neurological Contact” with the guitar by playing the music

And it’s because of having to cross these three modalities that there’s an “absorption” period to learning the guitar.

However, you can significantly reduce that absorption period by focusing on fretboard muscle memory.

Good news, if you’ve ever lost confidence playing beyond the 5th fret… chances are you will see changes in your playing almost overnight.

So if you’ve made it this far you’ve clearly read this the whole way through.

Thank you.

As an added bonus I’m gifting you: Scales in 5 Zones and Chords in 5 Zones.

On any given gig, I’m leveraging these scales and chords in my playing.

Candidly, if you master these, there’s not much need for chords and scales outside of that.