Do You Value Opinions More From People You've Heard?

[bertie]

It's a forum, everyone's advice is equally unqualified.

Is a good performer automatically a good teacher?

BINGO - we have a winner

[frankus]

I think everyones opinion starts equal, but over time you start to rate some peoples opinions above others. For example if two people disagreed how an amp or pedal worked I'd trust ICBM, or Sporky because I know they have worked in the field and tend to talk sense.

Some people prove themselves again and again. For me I'd rather judge each comment on it's own merits. Some stuff people say resonates some stuff really doesn't. For me, it's the view point that's important - often people have fixed view points, but even then that view point will seem appropriate some times for me. The idea of discounting people fires an alert in my head: it's a musical alert: "well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool and makes his world a little colder"

I think being a good performer helps you to be a good teacher, but it's not the be all. My old guitar teacher wasn't all that in the technique stakes, but he was very good at showing a 15 year old the basics. I wouldn't be using him to learn about sweep picking for example.
I suppose If a teacher wasn't an especially good player it would make me wonder if his method was all it was cracked up to be.

The best teachers I've had are able to provide a variety of ways to describe the same thing to find the best way to help their student understand the point being made. They keep a mental note of the methods the person uses and have experience of "if they think that way for that they'll probably understand this other thing this way - so I'll start teaching that way and measure the reaction". This is certainly true of Mr Sandercoe, Mr Cortese, Mr Govan, Mr Hodgson... great performers no doubt but great educators too - for a different set of reasons.

I've had other teachers who's approach to teaching is a little odd: "do this, it worked for me" - as performers it really does work for them, but if I say I tried for 3 months to do that method and I didn't find it settling in, I was aware of how it could work but felt an impediment - they'd shrug. I had this with reading notation, song-form and chords - in my twenties.

[thereformant]

Something that occurred to me when reading the "is notation important" thread.

Many of the members on here share their music online. When I thought about it I realised when getting advice I tend to value opinions more from members whose music I have heard.

I suppose there is some element of proof that the advice paid off in their case.

Interested to get peoples thoughts on the subject.

It depends on the topic. For instance I put up a thread asking for mix opinions recently and the people who have responded all have extremely high quality recorded output of their own. In that instance I value their feedback more.

Basically this comes down to credibility and there's various ways to achieve it. One is demonstrating ability in practice, another might be the method of communication, another might be experience and the exact mix that is most credible to me will often vary depending on my own position with the subject matter.

[Neil.C]

As said it depends on the topic.

I'd have taken Leo Fenders advice about guitar building back in the day even though he couldn't play one.