in episode 65 of the guitar music theory podcast. I answer questions about keeping time, the cage system,

using modes over chords, teaching children, playing what you hear, stubby fingers, and more. Greetings guitar engineers.

guitar engineers.

Welcome to the guitar music theory podcast.

I'm your host Desi Cerna. I've got some great

guitar questions to answer today. But before we get started, I want to remind all my podcast

listeners to visit my website guitar music theory

dot com answer the questions I ask you about your playing and I'll give you

free custom video instruction calibrated to your current level I'll show you how to get your guitar skills in order

and understand everything you play. Enroll in your free course now at guitar music theory

dot com. You should be able to click on a link in the podcast show notes. Hey, did you get a chance to listen to my previous podcast where I interviewed Carrie Underwood guitarist Matt Revere. If not, check it out. It's really cool. He talked about how he prepared for going on tour with Carrie and the gear that he used and how he practiced and it's a really good inside look at what it takes to be a professional guitarist and there's a lot that you can take away from that even as a hobbyist.

And if you liked me having a guest on the podcast that I interviewed,

you will have more of that because next week I have some guests from

Nashville Artist Development University and we're going to talk about the music business and how people develop as

artists and it's going to be really cool.

So that should be in my next podcast and I plan to do more interviews here on the Guitar

Music Theory podcast but today I'm answering email questions I got a lot of

them and there's some good ones so let's dive in here's the first question. He says do you actively keep time and count while

you're playing? I play with backing tracks or just to songs I'm trying to learn but I rarely count if ever. I kind of just

feel the music. If you keep time is there a benefit to counting that I'm missing.

When I try to count, the whole process of playing

just seems very mechanical and arduous to me.

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