Playing guitar

[Mr. Torture]

I've been playing on and off for many years, I am not a bad player and I have some skill but I feel I will never get to the level as some I have seen on You Tube. There are young people out there that just smoke what I can do, the entire process of learning and developing that much skill seems daunting, especially at my age.

You Tube has been a double edged sword for me. Great to learn about different things, but really humiliating when I see kids half my age playing stuff that would take me decades to learn. It makes you wanna quit all together. 

Just rambling some thoughts on a Tuesday morning, feel free to add your .02

 

[Bapu]

My advice to me: Never! Give! Up!

There will always be better and not so better than me.

But I can always be me (even though paulo would love to change me ?).

Edited July 21, 2020 by Bapu

[synkrotron]

my zero point zero two is,

wot he says ^ ^ ^

or play some ambient stuff

loads of echo and reverb

or punk rock... it's much the same, in a way...

 

[S.L.I.P.]

17 minutes ago, Mr. Torture said:

Great to learn about different things, but really humiliating when I see kids half my age playing stuff that would take me decades to learn.

That must be torture...

[Mr. Torture]

28 minutes ago, S.L.I.P. said:

That must be torture...

I see what you did there

[bayoubill]

Two things 

Practice something I'm not good at 30 minutes a day

One the day I'm going to record something don't touch a guitar before I hit the record button

note : first take is the best take for me

[craigb]

*Pfft!*  I only need one take to get it right!

(Unfortunately, that one take falls inside of possibly 2,000 other takes...  Give or take. ? )

[paulo]

6 hours ago, Bapu said:

But I can always be me (even though paulo would love to change me ?).

 100% wrong.

 

I would never ever want to do that.

 

Somebody has to be the Bapu, so it might as well be you.?

[Pragi]

There  are many young guitar player on YT aso which are technical  /shredding guitar master,

playing very fast complicated stuff  .

To have an own guitar tone takes many years , to get your own feel,stroke  idea , vibe, scales

and at last the  skillls to express  your own character .

There are not many young guitar player out there who are not trying to play everything fast .

,To many young guitar acrobats.with no character in sound out there.

To play slow  seems to be a  forgotten art and is a chance to create an own style ,

specially for 50 plus aged gents.

Just my 2 cents.?

Edited July 21, 2020 by Pragi

[Sheens]

55 minutes ago, craigb said:

*Pfft!*  I only need one take to get it right!

(Unfortunately, that one take falls inside of possibly 2,000 other takes...  Give or take. ? )

same here, just with 2,000 not 1 acceptable take.

[Tezza]

I don't see many good young players on youtube at all. All they are doing is using a guitar with a flat neck and extremely low action and playing scales up and down at great speed. I did that when I was 16. Shredding or heavy metal style leads is just one aspect of playing the guitar.

 

[Christian Jones]

You don't have to be a great guitar player; you have to have great songs. That's why Kurt Cobain was one of the best guitar players of his generation; dude was sloppy af and messed up badly every time he stepped out on stage, but he had great songs. 

And remember, it's ok if you don't know what you're doing as long as you can do it intuitively. 

[Byron Dickens]

Shredder or not, the best guitarists are the ones who have their own unique voice on the instrument.

[Tezza]

Agree, uniqueness and songs win.

 

[fitzroy]

On 7/21/2020 at 3:24 PM, Mr. Torture said:

I've been playing on and off for many years, I am not a bad player and I have some skill but I feel I will never get to the level as some I have seen on You Tube. There are young people out there that just smoke what I can do, the entire process of learning and developing that much skill seems daunting, especially at my age.

You Tube has been a double edged sword for me. Great to learn about different things, but really humiliating when I see kids half my age playing stuff that would take me decades to learn. It makes you wanna quit all together. 

Just rambling some thoughts on a Tuesday morning, feel free to add your .02

 

I used to teach guitar and (easily) the most frustrating thing I experienced with my students was exactly this attitude.

“I’ve been practicing hard for weeks/months/years now, and I feel I’m nowhere nearer to be able to play like you / How many hours/weeks/months do I need to practice to play that particular song the way you do? /I know I’ve made significant progress, but it all seems so little compared to others”

To me, this is getting it all wrong. Music is supposed to make you happy, it’s not a damn chore. If you can’t find the joy in playing the guitar (or any other instrument, for that matter), whatever your level and your audience, you need a full reset and a new approach. Or a different hobby. Life is too short to be chasing rankings, unless your explicit goal in playing the guitar is to win silly shredding competitions.

[RobertWS]

Oh the other hand (to steal an old joke):

"How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"

"Practice, practice, practice".

Most people are completely unaware of how much time elite musicians dedicate to their art.   It's almost like they devote their lives to it!

[Tezza]

Reminds me of when I went to my first sports psychology lecture. The lecturer was a well respected international sports psychologist. He wrote on the board:

"practice makes perfect"

Some smart idiot down the front said " is this what we will be learning today? my mum has already told me this".

The lecturer smiled and said "how many believe this to be a reasonable statement?"

I think everyone put up their hand or most did, I remember doing so.

Then he whirled around and yelled at the smart idiot "WRONG! COMPLETELY WRONG!"

Then he wrote on the board "practice (the results of which are known) makes perfect".

There was a bunch of stuff he explained but the gist of it was, how do you know that what you are practicing is the right thing to do to improve? If you just practice the same old thing the bad way again and again, there is unlikely to be any improvement past a certain point, "the plateau". When you hit the plateau, you are likely to experience self defeating thoughts or just give up. The best way to get past it is to enlist the help of someone who is a professional and knows more than you do about what you are doing, a good teacher for example.

The problem is, our ego's can sometimes prevent us from seeking or listening to such help because we feel we should have the answers and can do it better ourselves, we want to be "original" and feel that if others teach us, they are invading our sacrosanct original creativity. We go to our teachers already primed to argue with them, not listen to them and think our way is better.

He gave golf as an example because developing a good golfing swing is a bit counter intuitive. People think they need to hit the ball harder but the harder they hit it, the more that goes wrong. Doing it the bad way may get you to a certain point but you can't get past it. If a professional golfer comes along, they will show you the correct way to hit the ball and it will feel completely wrong to start with, but then, if you persist you get it. Just because a teacher can make you technically better doesn't mean that you lose your originality.

The moral of the story is, if you hit the plateau, get a teacher.

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by Tezza

[craigb]

 

Needless to say, considering what my PhD work was in, I learned a lot about this area.  Tony Robbins (a graduate of the same college I was going to) was famous for claiming to a military officer that he could improve the shooting abilities of his men despite the fact that he, himself, had never shot a gun before.  First he spent some time with two of the best shooters and modeled them.  Then he indeed was able to improve the other shooters.  NLP is wonderful stuff!

The better suggestion is that only "perfect practice makes perfect" and you will almost certainly require a teacher to help you ensure you're practicing correctly. 

However, what's interesting, is your brain can't tell the difference between an action you're only imagining and one you're actually doing!  Sure, you DO need to develop the muscles (etc.) to perform a task, but the repetition required to make it a muscle memory can be reduced with modeling (using NLP) and proper visualization.  Again, notice the word "proper" being used here.  Just thinking about something helps but, to be really useful, you have to make the process as real as possible in your mind (which can require learning how to visualize well first; many people have trouble just holding an image in their minds without training this area first!).  You'll want to see yourself doing the task as vividly as possible.  Make the area bright, really feel what you're doing, add sounds and smells too!

As anyone who as ever driven a manual transmission knows, the first few (or many) times will feel completely uncoordinated.  This is mainly due to the fact that you're having to use your conscious mind to think about each part of the task.  Eventually, an actual program will be created in your brain that can then be run unconsciously (i.e., by your subconscious mind which can handle thousands of times more information).  There's so much more to this, but I think you get the idea. ?

[StudioNSFW]

+1! on this.  

YouTube is no substitute for 1:1 instruction if you actually seek to improve your craft - the feedback from someone who is dispassionately evaluating the performance and able to make suggestions  will be the best way to know what to focus on. 

 

2nd best way is to just play out, a lot - which is sadly not practical right now.  My "talent" goes up and down in direct correlation with how much playing I am doing.  And all of the best pieces of feedback and advice I have gotten have been from fellow band members.  BUT - there is a trick to this - I always try to be the worst player in any band I am in. 

[Tezza]

It's also about the end goal, for example, if you are practicing guitar, what is the reason for that, the end goal? Are you practicing just to improve yourself for enjoyment or to play for others or to join a band or to do some DAW recording of your songs? Or are you practicing out of boredom or because it is just a repeated behavior because you've always done it. If you know what the end goal is, you know what kind of instruction you need to take yourself to the next level.

There are many rungs on the ladder in the music business and there are plenty of teachers around to help you up each rung. If you want to improve your personal guitar technique then a guitar teacher might be the answer, if you want to get better at writing songs then a song writing teacher might be appropriate. Same for learning to operate a DAW or learning to mix. If you want to market your songs then a producer or marketing teacher might be the best bet.

A "teacher" can be different things. I personally believe that nothing is better than having a live human teacher on a one to one basis, however this is not always possible or financially viable. There can also be local classes and of course, there are many on-line courses or downloadable tutorials available that can also do a very good job at giving you the specific instruction you need to get past a block in your growth, but.... if you don't know what the end goal is, you don't know where you are going, then it is a lot more difficult to find the appropriate teacher for where your at.