Some recent thoughts about learning the basics.

[MattANJH]

It got me thinking. How is it that the basics aren't dragged up to spec automatically? Do many of us revisit techniques again and again to refine them with our latest learning?

I still do. A bulk of my practice time is spent on basics, scales and simple chords, constantly improving their clarity and definition. This works its way through to the rest of my playing automatically.

[frankus]

I still do. A bulk of my practice time is spent on basics, scales and simple chords, constantly improving their clarity and definition. This works its way through to the rest of my playing automatically.

Cool, I'd been thinking of refining stuff as breaking a few bad old habits but as your post shows, the refinement can be gradual. I don't know if I've that kind of patience, yet, but I'd like to have it

[MattANJH]

If you can give yourself the motivation, I find the patience comes along.

Being the metalhead that I am, I started playing in the first place to learn stuff like Iron Maiden. Now there's some pretty fast playing in their stuff, and start looking further afield to the likes of Metallica, some VERY fast playing. So of course I did develop a bit of an obsession with speed. Trouble was I found any attempts at fast playing were noisy, messy, uncontrolled and nothing like what they sounded like.

I consulted friends and the internet, and after hours and hours of various conversations and searching had come across one very consistent piece of advice. Concentrate on making everything you play clear and defined at a slow speed, and the fast, fancy stuff falls into place on it's own.

So, I started practising with that mentality. Concentrate on the slow things, the sound, the quality and fluidity. I like to think I can now, after nearly 12 years, play to a pretty high standard. And I keep the mentality. Talk to the non-guitar playing folk who attend jam nights, and I seem to have a reputation for being able to play just about anything (though granted these are rock and metal jam nights lol) and being very fast and flashy. Talk to the guitarist types, and what I'm best known for is precision and clarity, EVERY single note that I play is exactly how I want it to sound. People enjoy what I play and I want to maintain this reputation, so that's enough to motivate me to keep everything neat and tidy.

Find what will really motivate you to improve and the patience will come

[monquixote]

If you can give yourself the motivation, I find the patience comes along.

Being the metalhead that I am, I started playing in the first place to learn stuff like Iron Maiden. Now there's some pretty fast playing in their stuff, and start looking further afield to the likes of Metallica, some VERY fast playing. So of course I did develop a bit of an obsession with speed. Trouble was I found any attempts at fast playing were noisy, messy, uncontrolled and nothing like what they sounded like.

I consulted friends and the internet, and after hours and hours of various conversations and searching had come across one very consistent piece of advice. Concentrate on making everything you play clear and defined at a slow speed, and the fast, fancy stuff falls into place on it's own.

So, I started practising with that mentality. Concentrate on the slow things, the sound, the quality and fluidity. I like to think I can now, after nearly 12 years, play to a pretty high standard. And I keep the mentality. Talk to the non-guitar playing folk who attend jam nights, and I seem to have a reputation for being able to play just about anything (though granted these are rock and metal jam nights lol) and being very fast and flashy. Talk to the guitarist types, and what I'm best known for is precision and clarity, EVERY single note that I play is exactly how I want it to sound. People enjoy what I play and I want to maintain this reputation, so that's enough to motivate me to keep everything neat and tidy.

Find what will really motivate you to improve and the patience will come

I found that post quite inspirational.

I know my playing could be much better if I took the time to practice more than I do. I've always associated practice with speed which I don't need. Precision is really what I want.

As a matter of interest how much time do you usually dedicate to practice a day/week?

[DaveMcK]

I think it is interesting that a lot of the real innovators, "great" guitarists used an "unconventional" style.
Someone put up a vid of someone showing you how to "strum like John Lennon". It was very good, it instantly reminded me of JL. To use his style it seemed you had to do the exact opposite to what most people seem to consider the basics.
When Jimi was at his peak there were no books explaining this style, no lessons, it was totally new...but it became standard. Now you can buy books explaining the basics of his style. Without doing things differently new standards wont come to be.

I wonder if Lennon had went back and practised those basics it would have been to his benefit.

What is being discussed seems to be efficiency of a certain discipline rather than artistic flair.

Not that I'm saying there is anything wrong with that...but if you look at the likes of Page you might actually say he was a very inefficient player.

[MattANJH]

At present I'm unemployed, so I've been playing A LOT, not all practice, playing songs and stuff like that, but probably a good 3 hours a day of pure practice.

When I am working, on average I'll play guitar every night to some degree or other. Formal practice is for a couple of hours maybe 3 or 4 nights a week.

[MattANJH]

What is being discussed seems to be efficiency rather than artistic flair.

Is artistic flair something you can practice though? Look at the world of guitarists, there are lots and lots of very good players out there, the shredder camp especially. You can't exactly claim they can't play. What they don't do however is appeal to a lot of people, it's an almost robotic approach to playing. Some people though can play with that level of ability, yet still be massively musical.

So I'd put my neck out there and say technique, or efficiency as you've called it, can be practised, the artistic flair though can't, you've either got it or you haven't. People will either love what you play, or be left unmoved.

Though then again, what I consider musical, others may not. I personally love Paul Gilbert and Joe Satriani. For me they are a fantastic combination of technical ability, and musical talent. I know a lot of others though consider them not very musical. Similarly, a lot of people rave about Hendrix as being an amazing musician, personally he leaves me stone cold, I've never liked his music and never wanted to play it or play like him.

[monquixote]

What is being discussed seems to be efficiency of a certain discipline rather than artistic flair.

Not that I'm saying there is anything wrong with that...but if you look at the likes of Page you might actually say he was a very inefficient player.

I watched a few Guthrie Govan vids on youtube a few days ago and was really struck by him saying that the goal of technique was so that you stopped thinking about your hands and you could simply think of the music you wanted to create and it just happened.

In that way technique opens the door to total artistic freedom.

[DaveMcK]

Is artistic flair something you can practice though? Look at the world of guitarists, there are lots and lots of very good players out there, the shredder camp especially. You can't exactly claim they can't play. What they don't do however is appeal to a lot of people, it's an almost robotic approach to playing. Some people though can play with that level of ability, yet still be massively musical.

So I'd put my neck out there and say technique, or efficiency as you've called it, can be practised, the artistic flair though can't, you've either got it or you haven't. People will either love what you play, or be left unmoved.

Though then again, what I consider musical, others may not. I personally love Paul Gilbert and Joe Satriani. For me they are a fantastic combination of technical ability, and musical talent. I know a lot of others though consider them not very musical. Similarly, a lot of people rave about Hendrix as being an amazing musician, personally he leaves me stone cold, I've never liked his music and never wanted to play it or play like him.

I don't know. I don't think that Hendrix, Page etc were amazing straight away. Lennon's "practice" was probably gigging every night and reading the crowd.
I say Page was inefficient because him and Hendrix made a lot of mistakes...but that's probably because they were playing stuff they had never played before. No muscle memory there. I think they took a chance though and that's where the "flair" came from...letting go of convention.

Definitely different styles though, as you say.

[DaveMcK]

In that way technique opens the door to total artistic freedom.

Yeah but what I'm saying is people have different techniques and new or unconventional techniques are there to be found too. JL had his own technique it might not have been "by the book" but it worked.