When I was in grad school, practicing was what you did instead of homework, or for some people, instead of life. You spent hours secluded in the blue concrete practice rooms of the Cincinatti Conservatory, or in the moldy green-carpeted practice rooms of Juilliard School, practicing repertoire, practicing scales against metronome beats, trying to ignore the musicians in the adjacent cubicles who were also practicing: the french horn player blowing down the Wall of Jericho behind your back, and the mad pianist shaking the rafters in front of you, that same violinist still repeating the same insanely virtuosic passage in a distant corner of y0ur ear every time the other two let up for a moment.
With those kind of practice conditions, it's not surprising that most students end up getting good at playing loud and fast: it's a daily race, a buzzing hive of practicers, frantically inspiring each other, and competing with each other, and irritating each other, and at the same time, trying to drown each other out along with the rest of the world.
Since then, I've come to realize that the essence of practicing is about consciousness and becoming progressively more conscious---bringing more and deeper qualities of the music into your consciousness, achieving more awareness of your fingers, your body, your breath so that they can come together in a focused way and achieve little miracles. It's about becoming aware of things that were subconscious, working with them, playing with them, finally transcending them by including them in your repertoire of moves and sounds and expression.
In other words, I think that really good practicing involves opening your mind and your body and your awareness to sensation, to understanding, to sound, to motion...to whatever needs to be known, so that it can be taken in and become part of who you are.
And it's hard to open yourself up when your environment is requiring that a part of you be working hard to close itself down. It is possible, though----as I understand it, Shostakovich composed incredible music (using his inner ear, no less) while his wife was in the next room teaching loud piano lessons all day.
A friend of mine, Gene Pritzker, also a composer, had his studio literally twenty feet away from the 125th street subway bridge, with bone-rattling trains going by day and night. He said he loved it, that it inspired him. He calls himself Noizepunk now and he seems to have transcended and included the sounds of 125th noise traffic in quite a bit of his music. That took practice, and he had the ideal practice room.
Nada Brahma, I say. (Sound is God) Actually, that's a part of my daily practice.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Friday, November 24, 2006
2. The Keys to Technique
So now it's time to zero in on one aspect and look at it in more detail. I want to start with technique because it's so essential. Without technique, when you perform, not much music gets through to the listener---what does get through is a mostly unintentional side-show. You do communicate something, but it's not what you intend to communicate---it might be nervousness, or shyness, or twanginess, or good intentions. A common excuse for having no technique is "It sounded a lot better when I was practicing..."
Technique is glossed over in most popular method books, and the result is that those who aren't as intuitive physically tend to develop limiting habits, and eventually they get stuck, usually before they've gotten anywhere worthwhile.
Levels of Mastery
What is the difference between an absolute beginner, a competent player, a virtuoso, and a great musician?
It can be almost shocking, even energizing, to sit down and listen to someone play what should be difficult---even impossible---with absolute ease.
It's almost as if their purest and best energy is there, manifesting in front of you, dancing, shooting out in all directions, engaging your senses, waking you up. There's no denying its simple miraculousness---what has evolution (or God) wrought, producing human beings with fingers and hands that can dazzle so?
Technical fireworks are not even necessary---something as simple as playing a focused, powerfully expressive phrase, or even a sparkling single note, can almost literally blow you away, especially if you've tried it yourself and know how difficult it is to do really well.
Many people simply take such playing at face value as "a talent" or "a gift," which it certainly is, but not in the way the term is usually understood. It's really a combination of gifts, which have all come together, focused over time by passion and intention, to produce a highly developed skill.
These gifts are usually some fortuitous mixture of the following:
---- love/obssession for the physical act of playing,
---- which led to a dedication to practicing (often there is the presence in one's young life of a parent or guardian who made sure they practiced---because kids will be kids)
---- there is usually an optimistic belief in one's ability to surmount numerous obstacles (whether or not that optimism exists in other areas of life
---- there is the time and opportunity to spend hours hashing it out, to grow one's skill through stages, over a long period (i.e. hours that add up to growth over the years)
---- usually there's a good teacher somewhere in the mix, which can save years of time floundering and stumbling by making sure the right things are practiced and that they're introduced in the right sequence...
And there is a certain sequence to things, even if it 's a bit messy.
The basic sequence is this: what starts as an idea or a desire, is attempted, explored, practiced, and eventually stabilized and made second nature.
The following list compares the stages in the sequence to another physical feat that most of us have mastered long ago: "bipedal propellation" (my fancy name for "walking") (pink is for the baby, and yellow is for the guitarist
A Baby Learns to Walk, and an Absolute Beginner becomes a Competent Player:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Awareness that walking exists as an option to look into:
I want to go there!
1. Setting your sights:
I wish I could play guitar/I want to play guitar
... A desire arises. Supreme Optimism inspires you to get started..
...................................................................................................
2. Crawling around: -wow--there' are things I can touch and grab! I can almost get to them if I move whatever these things are that are sticking out of me...
2. Exploring the guitar: "this does this, and this does...this! Wow!"
...Exploring, holding, touching, pushing, pulling, seeing how the fingers work, Trying, getting aquainted with the possibilities,
...................................................................................................
3. Walking 1.0
I can do it! Oops--waaa! I fell down! I can do it! Oops...waaaah...I fell down again...etc, etc. etc.
3. Basic survival
If I practice and practice, I can sometimes get through the whole tune...
Left hand position, right hand position, sounds, notes, buzzes, muffled strings, posture..etc..Slow. messy improvement in all these areas. This often takes a long time to slog through!
...................................................................................................
4. Walking 2.0 Look, ma, no hands.I'll see you on the other side of that door.
4. Got it!(Almost) If I learn a few more songs, more chords, more scales, this might actually get easy. Let's do more of this. this is fun!
.... Stabilization through reinforcement.and perfection of motor movements, further exploration.
...................................................................................................
5. Walking 3.0 and beyond. It's hard to imagine that this was ever difficult. I'm going out to play now!
.5 No Problemo. I'm no longer a beginner. So, what's next? A sonata? Blazing fast scales? Jazz improvisation? A host of new possibilities arise.
... Basic Mastery (what was impossible is now second nature) This is a sort of final stage which leads to the next level of exploration.
...................................................................................................
6. Beyond Walking---jogging, running, acrobatics, rock climbing, bike riding, etc. there's a whole world out there.
6.Intermediate Guitar---learning repertoire, mastering all kinds of chords, harmony, improvisation, etc.while still honing basic skills.
Time to set some new goals....
...................................................................................................
Mastering beginning guitar involves "learning to walk" in number of separate skill sets: left hand and right hand strenghth, motility, agility, etc . When enough of these basic "walking" skills come together this translates as "being able to play."
Intermediate:
From here you move into the world of "intermediate" playing, which is a catch-all term for all the things that happen before you begin to touch on "kick-ass" or "virtuoso".... There are many paths here, many styles to explore and master, many technical skills to hone---speed, tone, expressivity, endless songs to learn, chords and theory and scales to explore. Whereas before the goal was simply to be able to play, here you have to choose among different possible goals, based on what you are drawn to most.
Advanced:
Once enough of these goals, skills, styles and so on, have congealed into mastery and ease (in much the same way you moved through the first stages) you start experiencing the fruits of being an advanced player. In any given area, you can eventually start calling yourself "kick-ass" (or "extraordinary", a more polite way to put it) or "virtuoso" if you like the sound of that word...
...and Beyond:
Once you reach this level, you start coming up hard against a new set of issues---"I can do anything," you realize, "I can play anything, learn anything I set my mind, heart and fingers to master, and often rather quickly, since I've mastered my learning process to a degree." The question is one of blazing a trail that has some excitement, some significance, that communicates to the world at large, that contributes to society, that changes people....whatever it is, you start struggling to create true art of some sort and to have your art heard and to be seen and to make a difference. It's wide open here, the possibilities go up and down and sideways in all directions, and here is where the term "great" can start to be gently applied, as long as someone else is doing the applying...
The same system of stages can be applied to any aspect of guitar playing, not just technique. Also, the more advanced you get, the more the other areas, such as artistic expression, communication, and theory, come into play and start feeding each other in a big, messy celebration...
You can also practice the "technique" of aspects in these other areas---the "technique of expressivity" (practice getting deeper and clearer access to your inner artistic experience, and practice of translating that into physical music) which leads to the development of performance technique" (practicing performing, communicating on ever deeper, more successful, and more profound levels)
Next: What happens when things go wRONG (and how to make them Right again)
Technique is glossed over in most popular method books, and the result is that those who aren't as intuitive physically tend to develop limiting habits, and eventually they get stuck, usually before they've gotten anywhere worthwhile.
Levels of Mastery
What is the difference between an absolute beginner, a competent player, a virtuoso, and a great musician?
It can be almost shocking, even energizing, to sit down and listen to someone play what should be difficult---even impossible---with absolute ease.
It's almost as if their purest and best energy is there, manifesting in front of you, dancing, shooting out in all directions, engaging your senses, waking you up. There's no denying its simple miraculousness---what has evolution (or God) wrought, producing human beings with fingers and hands that can dazzle so?
Technical fireworks are not even necessary---something as simple as playing a focused, powerfully expressive phrase, or even a sparkling single note, can almost literally blow you away, especially if you've tried it yourself and know how difficult it is to do really well.
Many people simply take such playing at face value as "a talent" or "a gift," which it certainly is, but not in the way the term is usually understood. It's really a combination of gifts, which have all come together, focused over time by passion and intention, to produce a highly developed skill.
These gifts are usually some fortuitous mixture of the following:
---- love/obssession for the physical act of playing,
---- which led to a dedication to practicing (often there is the presence in one's young life of a parent or guardian who made sure they practiced---because kids will be kids)
---- there is usually an optimistic belief in one's ability to surmount numerous obstacles (whether or not that optimism exists in other areas of life
---- there is the time and opportunity to spend hours hashing it out, to grow one's skill through stages, over a long period (i.e. hours that add up to growth over the years)
---- usually there's a good teacher somewhere in the mix, which can save years of time floundering and stumbling by making sure the right things are practiced and that they're introduced in the right sequence...
And there is a certain sequence to things, even if it 's a bit messy.
The basic sequence is this: what starts as an idea or a desire, is attempted, explored, practiced, and eventually stabilized and made second nature.
The following list compares the stages in the sequence to another physical feat that most of us have mastered long ago: "bipedal propellation" (my fancy name for "walking") (pink is for the baby, and yellow is for the guitarist
A Baby Learns to Walk, and an Absolute Beginner becomes a Competent Player:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Awareness that walking exists as an option to look into:
I want to go there!
1. Setting your sights:
I wish I could play guitar/I want to play guitar
... A desire arises. Supreme Optimism inspires you to get started..
...................................................................................................
2. Crawling around: -wow--there' are things I can touch and grab! I can almost get to them if I move whatever these things are that are sticking out of me...
2. Exploring the guitar: "this does this, and this does...this! Wow!"
...Exploring, holding, touching, pushing, pulling, seeing how the fingers work, Trying, getting aquainted with the possibilities,
...................................................................................................
3. Walking 1.0
I can do it! Oops--waaa! I fell down! I can do it! Oops...waaaah...I fell down again...etc, etc. etc.
3. Basic survival
If I practice and practice, I can sometimes get through the whole tune...
Left hand position, right hand position, sounds, notes, buzzes, muffled strings, posture..etc..Slow. messy improvement in all these areas. This often takes a long time to slog through!
...................................................................................................
4. Walking 2.0 Look, ma, no hands.I'll see you on the other side of that door.
4. Got it!(Almost) If I learn a few more songs, more chords, more scales, this might actually get easy. Let's do more of this. this is fun!
.... Stabilization through reinforcement.and perfection of motor movements, further exploration.
...................................................................................................
5. Walking 3.0 and beyond. It's hard to imagine that this was ever difficult. I'm going out to play now!
.5 No Problemo. I'm no longer a beginner. So, what's next? A sonata? Blazing fast scales? Jazz improvisation? A host of new possibilities arise.
... Basic Mastery (what was impossible is now second nature) This is a sort of final stage which leads to the next level of exploration.
...................................................................................................
6. Beyond Walking---jogging, running, acrobatics, rock climbing, bike riding, etc. there's a whole world out there.
6.Intermediate Guitar---learning repertoire, mastering all kinds of chords, harmony, improvisation, etc.while still honing basic skills.
Time to set some new goals....
...................................................................................................
Mastering beginning guitar involves "learning to walk" in number of separate skill sets: left hand and right hand strenghth, motility, agility, etc . When enough of these basic "walking" skills come together this translates as "being able to play."
Intermediate:
From here you move into the world of "intermediate" playing, which is a catch-all term for all the things that happen before you begin to touch on "kick-ass" or "virtuoso".... There are many paths here, many styles to explore and master, many technical skills to hone---speed, tone, expressivity, endless songs to learn, chords and theory and scales to explore. Whereas before the goal was simply to be able to play, here you have to choose among different possible goals, based on what you are drawn to most.
Advanced:
Once enough of these goals, skills, styles and so on, have congealed into mastery and ease (in much the same way you moved through the first stages) you start experiencing the fruits of being an advanced player. In any given area, you can eventually start calling yourself "kick-ass" (or "extraordinary", a more polite way to put it) or "virtuoso" if you like the sound of that word...
...and Beyond:
Once you reach this level, you start coming up hard against a new set of issues---"I can do anything," you realize, "I can play anything, learn anything I set my mind, heart and fingers to master, and often rather quickly, since I've mastered my learning process to a degree." The question is one of blazing a trail that has some excitement, some significance, that communicates to the world at large, that contributes to society, that changes people....whatever it is, you start struggling to create true art of some sort and to have your art heard and to be seen and to make a difference. It's wide open here, the possibilities go up and down and sideways in all directions, and here is where the term "great" can start to be gently applied, as long as someone else is doing the applying...
The same system of stages can be applied to any aspect of guitar playing, not just technique. Also, the more advanced you get, the more the other areas, such as artistic expression, communication, and theory, come into play and start feeding each other in a big, messy celebration...
You can also practice the "technique" of aspects in these other areas---the "technique of expressivity" (practice getting deeper and clearer access to your inner artistic experience, and practice of translating that into physical music) which leads to the development of performance technique" (practicing performing, communicating on ever deeper, more successful, and more profound levels)
Next: What happens when things go wRONG (and how to make them Right again)
1. The Keys to Great Guitar Playing
My name is Jay Kauffman.
I've been teaching people guitar for a long time. And I've been teaching myself guitar for even longer, for most of my life.
The learning never stops---how can you even begin to think you've learned it all, mastered it all? In my case, I'm quite far from mastery in quite a number of areas. And in spite of the fact that I've had the fortune to study wiith some great players and excellent teachers, (and I wish I'd had more such opportunities), most of my learning has been on my own time, scrapped together within my own brain, inspired by numberless influences, with the help of an occasional major insight or shift produced by one teacher or another.
I'm still learning how to learn. What I want to do here is to share my process, in this blog, of figuring out how to better teach others, and how better to teach myself. For me the two always go hand in hand.
So what are the Keys to Great Guitar Playing?
The master key, of course, is love of playing.
Beyond that, as with anything that you love doing, and want to do well, it seems as if there are an infinite number of keys, which open infinite doors, that open onto numberless paths, And the paths are scattered with stones to turn over, and stones to trip over.
You'll discover that you have to keep coming back to these doors, these paths, these territories, day after day, year after year, and continually re-open, re-discover, re-explore, and re-create while mastering them bit by bit.
It would help to have a map, wouldn't it?
But can that map be found in one of the inch-thick Master Chord and Scale Guides, or one of the $19.95 "X,Y and Z Made Easy" Books, or the 1000 page Ultimate Tab Anthologies?
Marketing seems to dictate that anyone trying to sell a guitar book make claims on the cover of the book that cannot be lived up to. Sometimes this means that the book's title is only tangentially related to what the book actually contains. Even if you know pretty much what you’re looking for, you’ll still often end up with a lot of stuff you can't use, either because it's too advanced, or too skimpy, or pretends to make it "easy" by barely explaining anything at all and giving no context other than "be sure to practice this in all keys.."
I've got a shelf-full of these books, and most of them actually contain great information. The problem is knowing which of the info will help you at which point in your development as a guitarist. It's really a problem of contextualizing the all this information so you know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and how much to do it, so you can hopefully avoid spending years just diddling around on the strings, not really ending up with a whole lot to show for it.
So, using an AQAL approach to help me in this task, I'm going to set about creating a map, for myself, for the benefit of my students and hopefully for the benefit of many others as well.
I've broken down things into several general areas of interest.
The big 4 are:
1.Artistic Expression and Aesthetic Growth
How do I experience the music? How do I express myself through music?
2. Communication and Performance
How do I communicate with and contribute to all others who experience music?
3.Technique and Music Theory
How does my body and my instrument physically produce the music? How does the structure of the music itself--- the melody, harmony and rhythm effect the meaning of the music?
4. Cultural Styles, Trends, Music as effected by Society (including Music Business)
Blues, Jazz, Rock, World, Classical---what do they all mean? How do I relate to them as part of my personal expression? How do I interact with society's use of music as a functional commodity? (i.e. how do I pay for and/or make money at music?)
As you can see these are very broad, so broad as to be almost meaningless, you might say..there are reasons for why I divide them this way, though, and if you're curious, check the footnote at the end of this piece.
What's important to understand is that these master categories need each other, they are part of each other. You might be more advanced in some of them than in others, but it's really impossible to be a guitar player without having all four of these areas come into play in some way.
Another thing that I would posit: if one of these areas is ignored for too long, if it's not explored or developed or at least dealt with, then then it will drag down all the others.
And equally important: if you start paying attention to a neglected master category it tends to magically awaken and invigorate the other categories!
For instance, in order to express yourself, you've got to have some technique. (category 3) You can't move hearts if your fingers can't move from one chord to another. But if you do practice and improve your technique, you begin to invigorate and deepen your vocabulary of self-expression. (category 1) Good technique can awaken all kinds of expression you thought you never had..
And you can have all the technique in the world, be able to blaze through the keys and modes and chord substitutions (category 3)---and still be so out of touch with yourself that listeners turn away---only negative communication happens. But imagine what can happen with all that technique when you are willing put in enough thought, effort, and soul-searching to uncover and then fully inhabit your own, rich, unique voice.
(category 1)
All of these considerations are pretty meaningless without someone to express yourself to---there has to be some way of connecting with the musical community, (category 2) even if it's only a community of two---you and your teacher, or you and your kid, your significant other, your cat. The more you communicate, the more magic can happen which feeds every aspect (all categories) of your guitar playing, and goes beyond it.
And then there's the question of functional fit within society at large! (category 4) A huge, many-faceted question, one that artists struggle with all the time---for example, can I really be a blues guitarist if I'm from a rich suburb? How can I find the most original, coolest, least "been there, done that" way to make a musical splash in the pan/cultural ocean, and maybe even make a bit of money while I'm at it? Making inroads into all these questions will hugely effect your sense of direction and effectiveness in all the other three.
I'll be looking at each of these in further depth soon, but let me point out one more thing: within each category you will find many individual aspects, or developmental lines, which have a life of their own (i.e. physical technique, music theory, performance skill etc.) These lines of development are somewhat independent even if they are related to each other in the ways I've just described. If they weren't somewhat independent, there wouldn't be such a thing as as rock stars who can only play a bare minimum of chords or technically accomplished classical guitarists who have no idea how to play chords at all (such a thing does exist, believe me)
Within these individual aspects, or lines of development, you always improve bit by bit, along a continuum that is measurable and meaningful.
For example, Technique starts at basic survival, passes through adequate playing, on to virtuosity and on to greatness, with less momentous stops along the way. If you can get an accurate idea of where your technique is, where it's stuck, what needs to improve, what's possible, then you can know what to do to improve it more rapidly and effectively.
Next: A baby learns to walk, a beginner learns to play...
Jay Kauffman
Footnotes
Why these 4 categories? Basically it's about looking at the same thing, Guitar Playing, from 1st, 2nd, and 3ed person perspectives. Everything we do can be looked at from these perspectives and they are reflected in the language we use to talk about them and explore them..
1.The aesthetic and artistic perspectives tend to use "I" language. This is the view from inside your head and heart.
2. Performance and style tends to use "We" language, because it involves the views from within collective heads and hearts. This perspective is about how we keep our inner worlds relating to each other, You, I and we.
3. Technique and Music Theory exploration tends to use "it" language, because it is about how things look from the outside. How do you get your hand (it) to play the scale (another it) How do you transpose a song (it) from one key (it) to another key (it.)?
4. The study of Cultural Styles and the Society/Business of Music tends to use "its" language. In other words, it looks at more than one "it" or "him/her/she" at a time, and speaks of them in aggregates (e.g. Classical music is obviously not one piece of music, but a whole category, within which there are trends, social currents, styles, and so on---study of "it" really is the study of whole systems of "its" and involves so many aspects that they must be grouped together in terms of how they relate to each other and to society at large....)
For the best treatment of these considerations and how they relate to pretty much everything but guitar playing, I suggest reading a Ken Wilber book or accessing the material at the Integral Institute. It costs money but if this is your cup of tea, then it's worth it.
I've been teaching people guitar for a long time. And I've been teaching myself guitar for even longer, for most of my life.
The learning never stops---how can you even begin to think you've learned it all, mastered it all? In my case, I'm quite far from mastery in quite a number of areas. And in spite of the fact that I've had the fortune to study wiith some great players and excellent teachers, (and I wish I'd had more such opportunities), most of my learning has been on my own time, scrapped together within my own brain, inspired by numberless influences, with the help of an occasional major insight or shift produced by one teacher or another.
I'm still learning how to learn. What I want to do here is to share my process, in this blog, of figuring out how to better teach others, and how better to teach myself. For me the two always go hand in hand.
So what are the Keys to Great Guitar Playing?
The master key, of course, is love of playing.
Beyond that, as with anything that you love doing, and want to do well, it seems as if there are an infinite number of keys, which open infinite doors, that open onto numberless paths, And the paths are scattered with stones to turn over, and stones to trip over.
You'll discover that you have to keep coming back to these doors, these paths, these territories, day after day, year after year, and continually re-open, re-discover, re-explore, and re-create while mastering them bit by bit.
It would help to have a map, wouldn't it?
But can that map be found in one of the inch-thick Master Chord and Scale Guides, or one of the $19.95 "X,Y and Z Made Easy" Books, or the 1000 page Ultimate Tab Anthologies?
Marketing seems to dictate that anyone trying to sell a guitar book make claims on the cover of the book that cannot be lived up to. Sometimes this means that the book's title is only tangentially related to what the book actually contains. Even if you know pretty much what you’re looking for, you’ll still often end up with a lot of stuff you can't use, either because it's too advanced, or too skimpy, or pretends to make it "easy" by barely explaining anything at all and giving no context other than "be sure to practice this in all keys.."
I've got a shelf-full of these books, and most of them actually contain great information. The problem is knowing which of the info will help you at which point in your development as a guitarist. It's really a problem of contextualizing the all this information so you know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and how much to do it, so you can hopefully avoid spending years just diddling around on the strings, not really ending up with a whole lot to show for it.
So, using an AQAL approach to help me in this task, I'm going to set about creating a map, for myself, for the benefit of my students and hopefully for the benefit of many others as well.
I've broken down things into several general areas of interest.
The big 4 are:
1.Artistic Expression and Aesthetic Growth
How do I experience the music? How do I express myself through music?
2. Communication and Performance
How do I communicate with and contribute to all others who experience music?
3.Technique and Music Theory
How does my body and my instrument physically produce the music? How does the structure of the music itself--- the melody, harmony and rhythm effect the meaning of the music?
4. Cultural Styles, Trends, Music as effected by Society (including Music Business)
Blues, Jazz, Rock, World, Classical---what do they all mean? How do I relate to them as part of my personal expression? How do I interact with society's use of music as a functional commodity? (i.e. how do I pay for and/or make money at music?)
As you can see these are very broad, so broad as to be almost meaningless, you might say..there are reasons for why I divide them this way, though, and if you're curious, check the footnote at the end of this piece.
What's important to understand is that these master categories need each other, they are part of each other. You might be more advanced in some of them than in others, but it's really impossible to be a guitar player without having all four of these areas come into play in some way.
Another thing that I would posit: if one of these areas is ignored for too long, if it's not explored or developed or at least dealt with, then then it will drag down all the others.
And equally important: if you start paying attention to a neglected master category it tends to magically awaken and invigorate the other categories!
For instance, in order to express yourself, you've got to have some technique. (category 3) You can't move hearts if your fingers can't move from one chord to another. But if you do practice and improve your technique, you begin to invigorate and deepen your vocabulary of self-expression. (category 1) Good technique can awaken all kinds of expression you thought you never had..
And you can have all the technique in the world, be able to blaze through the keys and modes and chord substitutions (category 3)---and still be so out of touch with yourself that listeners turn away---only negative communication happens. But imagine what can happen with all that technique when you are willing put in enough thought, effort, and soul-searching to uncover and then fully inhabit your own, rich, unique voice.
(category 1)
All of these considerations are pretty meaningless without someone to express yourself to---there has to be some way of connecting with the musical community, (category 2) even if it's only a community of two---you and your teacher, or you and your kid, your significant other, your cat. The more you communicate, the more magic can happen which feeds every aspect (all categories) of your guitar playing, and goes beyond it.
And then there's the question of functional fit within society at large! (category 4) A huge, many-faceted question, one that artists struggle with all the time---for example, can I really be a blues guitarist if I'm from a rich suburb? How can I find the most original, coolest, least "been there, done that" way to make a musical splash in the pan/cultural ocean, and maybe even make a bit of money while I'm at it? Making inroads into all these questions will hugely effect your sense of direction and effectiveness in all the other three.
I'll be looking at each of these in further depth soon, but let me point out one more thing: within each category you will find many individual aspects, or developmental lines, which have a life of their own (i.e. physical technique, music theory, performance skill etc.) These lines of development are somewhat independent even if they are related to each other in the ways I've just described. If they weren't somewhat independent, there wouldn't be such a thing as as rock stars who can only play a bare minimum of chords or technically accomplished classical guitarists who have no idea how to play chords at all (such a thing does exist, believe me)
Within these individual aspects, or lines of development, you always improve bit by bit, along a continuum that is measurable and meaningful.
For example, Technique starts at basic survival, passes through adequate playing, on to virtuosity and on to greatness, with less momentous stops along the way. If you can get an accurate idea of where your technique is, where it's stuck, what needs to improve, what's possible, then you can know what to do to improve it more rapidly and effectively.
Next: A baby learns to walk, a beginner learns to play...
Jay Kauffman
Footnotes
Why these 4 categories? Basically it's about looking at the same thing, Guitar Playing, from 1st, 2nd, and 3ed person perspectives. Everything we do can be looked at from these perspectives and they are reflected in the language we use to talk about them and explore them..
1.The aesthetic and artistic perspectives tend to use "I" language. This is the view from inside your head and heart.
2. Performance and style tends to use "We" language, because it involves the views from within collective heads and hearts. This perspective is about how we keep our inner worlds relating to each other, You, I and we.
3. Technique and Music Theory exploration tends to use "it" language, because it is about how things look from the outside. How do you get your hand (it) to play the scale (another it) How do you transpose a song (it) from one key (it) to another key (it.)?
4. The study of Cultural Styles and the Society/Business of Music tends to use "its" language. In other words, it looks at more than one "it" or "him/her/she" at a time, and speaks of them in aggregates (e.g. Classical music is obviously not one piece of music, but a whole category, within which there are trends, social currents, styles, and so on---study of "it" really is the study of whole systems of "its" and involves so many aspects that they must be grouped together in terms of how they relate to each other and to society at large....)
For the best treatment of these considerations and how they relate to pretty much everything but guitar playing, I suggest reading a Ken Wilber book or accessing the material at the Integral Institute. It costs money but if this is your cup of tea, then it's worth it.
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