So Stu Ham came into BIMM today to give an hour and a half masterclass. He played some badass bass and answered questions and told us some funny stories, and gave some good advice.
When asked “If you could go back to when you were 18 and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?”, he replied, “Yoga.”. He went on to talk about how a good posture is vital to playing to avoid injuries (something I’ve learnt from my golfers elbow), and how staying relaxed when playing is important – you shouldn’t be straining yourself, and yoga is good to relax your muscles and get used to a good posture. Little breathing exercises to relax yourself, etc.
Other advice he had, which I thought was ace, was to go home and dismantle our instruments. Just unscrew the neck and put it back on again (obviously, after slackening the strings). Learn how to adjust and remove/replace each little thing on your guitar. He made an analogy with US Marines having to be able to dismantle an re-assemble their weapons in the dark. I liked this, especially as learning to do the little jobs on a guitar saves you paying someone else to do them! Whether or not I’d dismantle my guitar unecesarilly is another question…
When asked on how to learnt to play fast, he replied with (and I paraphrase) “Learn to play slowly. You can play a million notes quickly and get away with poor technique, but when you play them slowly, you have to conisder the attack, dynamics and quality of each note. Learn to play accurately slowly, and speed will come with time.”. In light of this, I might do slightly less brutal metronome practice in the future! Which probably also aid with avoiding injuries.
I think that was the best bits of what he had to say. He played some pretty awesome tuff to us too. I asked him if he had any advice on applying to Berklee (which he attended) and he said to be as prepared as possible. Can’t argue with that! Apparently the question warrented a handshake, and it was nice to see he didn’t have some girly, limp shake like some people do.
Overall, a nice guy, a fantastic musician, and a great performer!
