Quote: (07-08-2014 06:38 PM)unbowed Wrote:
Much respect to thedude3737 for playing classical guitar. The amount of dedication and practice it takes is intense. I want to expand a bit on what both thedude3737 and Ethan Amarante mentioned in regards to theory.
But first OP, what's your goal for the guitar?
Guitar can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. It's important to keep in mind why you want to play guitar. There's different goals to set if you want to strum some chords to girls in the park, play in a garage band, or seriously start gigging in a jazz ensemble or have a solo classical recital. The jazz/classical path require a large chunk of time and dedication on multiple fronts. Being able to play to a metronome using different patterns will be useful in many situations, as has been discussed.
I talked to a jazz guitarist once and he said guitarists have massive egos, that guitarists think emotion and heart is all you need to play. And I don't want to say you should be a pure technical speed demon, because you do need the heart, but technique and theory will open up a whole new frontier, which will end up giving you a wider range of emotion.
While technique and theory are important foundations, it's still music and there has be room for emotion. You can "master" vibrato and bends and such, and yet still, as new agey as it sounds, there is a "soulful" way to it. I know a Chinese girl who could play Chopin "flawlessly" but didn't give two shits about him or the Raindrop Prelude. The heart has to be there, otherwise we might as well have a player piano (guitar?)
Scales are good and terrible. Scales aren't music, they're just a framework for making sense of things like melodies and chords. In addition to practicing your scales, make sure you have a harmony book to help give perspective on scales and chords.
It may seem overly mathematical and technical at first, but once you get the hang of harmony and intervals, you'll be able to weave in and out of scale patterns. Instead of just playing up and down scale patterns, you will understand how to derive chords and melodies from scales. Silence and ommission are necessary parts of music.
I like to play guitar as a form of meditation. I find myself exploring it in different ways depending on my mood, literally watching my disposition transform or sometimes randomly discovering a new idea I can write down.
Again it's all about what you're looking to get out of it. Some people want to bash away, others want to serenade, still others want to break it down to the last interval or everything and then some.
You make some solid points.
There are plenty of guys coming out of Musician's Institute that are playing scales at 200+ bpm on the metronome. Guys that study Steve Vai and John Petrucci like they're gods (and they very well might be). Much of the time these guys are lacking feeling in their playing and get caught up in jerking themselves off with fast licks.
In the classical realm it's the same. I've gone to classical recitals at USC, where the department is headed by members of the LAGQ and Pepe Romero, and been terribly disappointed. Kids that were biting off more than they could chew, completely lacking feeling, etc.
All I can say is, like any art, I find it's best to know the rules before you break them. It's best to be able to play each note perfectly on beat before you start breaking out the legato and rubato.
And yes it is about what any music student wants to get out of it, but I still maintain that scales are the ultimate practice. I'm not just talking major/minor scales. I'm talking learning pentatonic scales in each key and in each fret position. If you can play your pentatonic scales in each key and fret position, you can solo along to 99.99% of any rock or blues song in existence. At first it'll sound mechanical, that's fine. Play your scales. Then when you can do this shit with your eyes closed, that's when you smoke a blunt, think about your childhood dog that got hit by a car, and really let it rip.