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Guitars and Humility


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I attend guitar player annonymous. "I am bbach. I am a guitar player and I am really not very good". (Please respond with "Hi bbach, welcome to the meeting")

 

I keep trying though. I'm determined to feel really comfortable with these damn guitars I own if it kills me. I'm currently taking lessons again and I sit down every day and practice. My family thinks I'm getting pretty good, but I know better and I'm not being modest. My soloing sounds too simple and uninspired. What I hear in my head I can't put into my fingers like I want to. If I were to golf this bad I'd break my clubs. Oh, I forgot, I already broke them.

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I've been strumming the six string for 32 years.


And, uh...


I'm actually pretty damn good at it. Sorry guys. Keep practicing, though!
:lol:

 

Hahaha. :mad:

 

Actually, I'm fairly satisfied with certain aspects of my playing. Other abilities I'm still working on. There's a certain place where you can be satisfied with what you can do, but still reach for more. It's not really for me to decide, but from a detached point of view I feel like there's some good stuff in what I play. :cool:

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My technical skills were so much better when I was younger. I can not commit to the practice regimen that I once had. I'm still happy with my technique, but it shames me that I've gone backwards.

 

 

Yeah, I used to have a lot of chops, but in comparison I wasn't playing meaningful, thoughtful, evocative stuff.

 

OTOH, I know that when I've made myself get in the woodshed for specific projects, I can build those chops back up pretty quickly.

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Nothing like 6 strings to keep one humble. Been playing since I was 13 and honestly cannot say I`ve improved all that much.

 

 

The funny thing is that when I saw the 'guitars and humidity' thread, I thought it said 'guitars and humility.'

 

I was really expecting something about shredding/chops/etc and growing past that kind of juvenilia.

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I'm also in agreement that my chops were considerably more technically oriented 20 years ago.


However, my feel has improved to an even higher degree than my chops have diminished. I find I don't miss them, and like Bill says, I can bring most of it back with a little focus.

 

 

Surprisingly, I used to sit and work on vibrato. I would play phrases and change the intensity and type of vibrato I was using. I would do this for 30 to 40 minutes sometimes, or I might focus on microtonal bending. I am such a guitar geek.

 

I also worked on my speed and accuracy as all good little shredders should. I can still play a blur of notes, but I miss my subtlety, strength and endurance.

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I've been playing for nearly 23 years (since I was 11). My technique has improved vastly over that time frame. I had way more stamina from 18 to 23 or so with regards to endless shreding, but now have a much broader sense of what a good solo is and where to place the speedy stuff for maximum impact. I also have a much stronger grasp on theory and different styles of music than when I was younger. However, there's always room for improvement and I don't think I'll ever master the instrument.

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re: chops, competitiveness

 

I was 'lucky' in that I didn't start playing 'til I was twenty and at that point was surrounded by people who'd been playing since they were kids. There were always buckets of guys -- and more than a few gals -- who could outplay me like nobody's business.

 

Still, I was a kind of competitive guy so I kept whacking on it. I got kind of fast but my skill set was limited and my understanding was, too.

 

When I started working as a fader pusher and producer in commercial studios, I put what was left of that (after my immersion in the often anti-chop early days of punk/no wave) way on the back burner.

 

And, in the 90s, I got a lot more serious about playing slow... it's a real educator.

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Well, OK... I once thought Ted Nugent and Mark Farner (and Eric, while with Cream) were the ultimate guitar players, when I was around 13. Then I started delving into the blues, and some 12 years later began to realize it isn't how hard you scream or how fast you jabber, but what you say and how you say it that matters.

 

Nowadays I don't shred much, and rarely practice any technique (this is more a symptom of having a life than any aversion to practice). When I do practice, it's mostly to perfect my memory of my own songs, which tend to lean toward the non-linear (no discernable verses or choruses, more a series of 'movements' that fit together), and so are sometimes hard to master.

 

OTOH, I did notice, when my Ex left, ("when my woman left home with a brown eyed man, I still don't seem to care") that going down into the studio and playing piano or guitar for 3 or 4 hours was the only thing that made me feel good, for about a year and a half.

 

Lately I only play when performing... I don't seem to need intense practicing any more, for some reason.

 

As far as my abilities go, I have my shining times and once in a while I have my 'dogger' nights, where everything I try turns into crap. The latter are, thankfully, pretty rare. I'll never be Segovia, or even Steve Howe, but I'm very happy being myself... That's just about as good as it can get.

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I'll borrow a line from Anchorage session dude Stu Schulman...Stu would say "I'll never say I'm really killer, I'll just say 'I'm competent'".

 

Great line. I can hang with a lot of decent musicians. I'm not a flashy guy at all, but, if I don't flat-out suck, that's all I can hope for.

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Nothing like 6 strings to keep one humble. Been playing since I was 13 and honestly cannot say I`ve improved all that much.

 

 

I've been playing since I was 6 and I've come a very long ways since then and could've gone alot further but I put alot of time into bass, synths and drum machines too(not to mention computerized headaches). Its not only what you learn but what you create too. You can never master it all and that's what keeps it eternally interesting.

 

Steve

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I`m more of a keyboardist but always found the guitar to be this mysterious woman. The keyboard was a little girl but the guitar... a sexy dark haired woman with that look in her eyes. Still can`t figure her out but she always gets my attention and I`ll never master her whereas the keys... I can get my chops up to snuff in several weeks with some attention.

 

So after all this time, do you feel that individuals take to certain instruments better than others? The piano was easy. Guitar.... nope.

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I've been playing guitar for 45 or 46 years. Over the years, I've been experiencing a reasonable steady improvement (although it usually feels like "fits and starts").

 

I remember when I first learned the "F chord" fingering, I thought, "man, I'll be REALLY GOOD when I can do this!"

 

....When I learned to do it, the "F chord" turned out to be a gateway to a whole other body of knowledge I wasn't ready for previously.

 

Same with pentatonics, or sweeping, or voice-leading, or... whatever....

 

Today, my concept of "good" is MUCH further away than it was when I started. Even though I know I'll never be "good", I love to play guitar anyway.

 

Humility is the absence of ego. Ego, ironically, can be a giant obstacle in musical improvement. At least that's my take.

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I like my guitar playing. I hear things in it that are uncommon, like lots of internal melody in rhythm parts and such--but I also feel I have very formidable acute motor limitations or at least, uh resistance, a theme well articulated in other areas of my life as well. This is not to say I am not facile on the instrument. I can play tricky, if not outright fast. More that I have accuracy issues that don't resolve quickly even with moderate, consistent practice...I was tested by nuns when I was young. There's something going on in my brain, but it was the pre-diagnostic age. (II should mention that I am not Catholic. Nuns was the only ones doing this particular kind of testing in those days, oddly, at St. Mary's College.

 

I get plenty enough personal satisfaction and positive feedback to keep twanging, and the money's been better too and I would love, at some point, to really woodshed on certain aspects of my playing that are lacking and take the whole enterprise up a notch, but given the choice between that and writing more songs, recording more with bands, taking more gigs on bass, well you know, guitar facility is maybe not the most important thing out there, right?

 

Mostly, I love songs and, even in my tastes in Jazz, I am very compositionally minded, preferring the great composers in jazz (from Ellington to Mingus to Carla Bley) over the hottest blowers.

 

Still, I would love to be a better pure instrumentalist. I would love to experience the expressive freedom I hear in John Scofield or Brad Mehldau, which is as much conceptual as technical, moreso even, though the technique is the vehicle.

 

Funny, though, I can barely think of a single rock or blues guitarist that keeps me enchanted for more than a chorus or two. I prefer rock/pop guitar as a textural and song support art. All may faves in that genre live there--providers of tricky bits and counter melodies, the occasional solo. You know, I really prefer Jimi and Eddie VH as rhythm guitarists...seriously. Great rhythm guitarists, in Jimi's case completely blurring the lines between rhythm and lead...but anyway.

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