Playing the Guitar

The Glass Wall

I’ve been playing the guitar for close to 30 years now. I still have major problems. I can’t honestly say that I’ve mastered any non-trivial piece from beginning to end. There is always at least one section of every piece that I am unable to play smoothly, with the proper emotion, or at the proper tempo. I’m trying to learn to improvise, but I find that my technical limitations get in the way of presenting the ideas and/or emotions that I want to get across.

I feel as if I’m standing before a glass wall. The wall is far too high to scale, and it extends outward in both directions as far as the eye can see, so going around it is not an option, either. There are no doors or windows in the wall, as near as I can tell. I’ve tried every ladder, step stool, hammer, chain saw, or other tool I could find, and nothing seems to help.

On the other side of the wall are many happy, fulfilled, and perfectly normal-looking folks, with no obvious super-human abilities. So I know that there must be some passage that I can use to gain access to the other side. Those people weren’t born over there – they all stood where I am at one time. But they can’t tell me how they got there. I can see them over there, smiling, beckoning, almost taunting my lack of ability to progress to their side of the wall.

I keep trying to go over the wall, and falling back down. I keep walking along the length of the wall, hoping for an opening or to find its edge. I suspect that my approach is all wrong. I suspect that the true answer to overcoming the wall is to make some fundamental change in my approach to it. It is as if there was some secret way of thinking about the wall that would render it penetrable, allowing me to simply walk through it as if it were no more substantial than a bank of fog. Once on the other side, I would laugh and wonder why I ever had such trouble to begin with. I’m hoping to find someone that can help me to discover the secret of penetrating the wall.

Practice doesn’t “make perfect” if you’re practicing something incorrectly.

I just read something on the web about John Williams, who has always been my favorite classical guitarist. (Please listen to the Bach Lute Suites album, if you have not yet done so. Immediately. Stop reading this, and go listen, NOW!)

One interesting thing that I discovered from this web essay (if it was true) is that Williams reportedly practiced very little. In fact, for many years, he was not even allowed to practice unless supervised by his teacher (who was his father). Presumably, this strict supervision lead to the development of only the best technique, which allowed John to master pieces without endless repetition and frustration. He didn’t need to practice more, because he wasn’t spending all of his time overcoming poor technique. Williams was quoted as saying that he owes his ability to the fact that he was “extremely well instructed.”

The apparent moral of the story is this: practice playing well, or you will only be teaching yourself to play things poorly. You’ll never learn good technique through repeated practice of poor technique. So, the dilemma is this: how does one learn to play well? I guess you must have a teacher to show you how to practice well. This assumes that one can find a teacher that not only knows how to play well, but that can also translate that ability in a way that you are able to understand.

I’ve had a few teachers over the years, though never any one for more than a couple of years at a stretch. They have all been extremely good musicians, and I admire each of them. However, I have yet to find anyone that can really reach down into my particular bag of bad habits, invalid preconceptions, and personal doubts and find a way to teach me to achieve in music despite what I imagine is a particularly stunning dearth of innate musical ability.

Tension, Posture, RSI

Pat Metheny (my musical standard) has said that he maintains such a light touch on the guitar, you could easily knock it out of his hands as he plays. Mick Goodrick, in his book “The Advancing Guitarist” makes an exercise of finding the least amount of pressure that the student can apply to the neck of the guitar and still maintain a clear tone. This concept was also put forth by my former instructor, Jazz guitarist Tom Byrne. He also used to try to get me to raise the neck of the guitar, to play in a more classical posture. But I persist in resting the guitar on my right thigh, and hunching over the instrument. I find that when I can manage to raise the neck, rest the instrument on my left thigh, and keep my head up, my playing improves. But I’m only able to keep it up for a short time before reverting to the poor posture that I’ve maintained for the last 27 years.

I know I’m doing many things wrong. I’m certainly using way too much pressure, because in the past two or three years I’ve developed persistent pain in my left elbow, wrist, and thumb. My fear is that I will do permanent damage by practicing through this pain, which is obviously the result of inflamed tendons. Yet when I try to use a lighter touch (especially on classical), I get buzzing and sloppy tone. And I can’t stop practicing, because I have a strong desire to reach beyond a “he sucks” level of musicianship before I die. I need to find someone who can cure me of my own bad habits.

(By the way, I have several DVDs of Pat Metheny concerts, and when he plays sitting down, he plays just like I do: head down, hunched over, picking sideways, thumb wrapped around the neck. He does everything wrong, like me, but he sounds so freaking good. How can that be? And did you ever see Wes Montgomery play? His technique was simply bizarre, but nobody ever sounded better. I can’t explain this.)

Natural Talent

So, I’ve already alluded to this, but I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the concept of “Natural Talent”. Is there such a thing? I think there must be. But is the lack of natural talent an insurmountable deficiency?

Jamie Andreas has a website called Guitar Principles. He sells books. But he also publishes essays about guitar playing. Not just “put your little finger here and wiggle it” technical topics, but more on the “Zen” of guitar playing. He’s really not a great writer, I’m sorry to say, and he seems very rock oriented (or maybe he’s just playing to the “Guitar Player Magazine” headbanger crowd to attract the largest audience, because he also seems to know a fair bit about classical). But he has a lot of thought-provoking ideas.

One thing Jamie implies is that “Talent” is really just the ability to do something “the right way”. Those of us that don’t have “talent” need to be shown the right way to do things. But once we achieve the necessary knowledge (which may take a long, long time), we may be just as “gifted” as someone with talent.

Of course, while you’ve been struggling for 4 years to get your right hand in the correct position, the “talented” individual has transcribed all of Wes’s solos and is writing original tunes for his first CD on Warner Jazz. Oh well.

Another person on the rec.music.makers.guitar.jazz Usenet group responded to the question of “is there such a thing as talent?” I’ll paraphrase his response: Playing the guitar is all about overcoming obstacles, both real and imagined. It doesn’t matter if there is such a thing as talent, or if there is, whether you have it or not. All that matters is finding a way to reach your goals with the tools that you have at your disposal.

The thing I’ve heard over and over about the people that I feel are talented is that they practiced constantly. So the question arises in my mind, is talent (if it does indeed exist) worth anything without hard work? Can a person waste a natural talent if he refuses to work to develop it? Conversely, can a lack of talent be overcome with an insane amount of work?

The talentless hack in me wants to believe that there is no such thing as talent. There is only hard work and endless practice. Maybe talent is really just the inclination and ability to practice to the extent necessary to achieve. And yet, when you hear certain players, you just know that they have something that most people don’t have. Is it a gift from God? If so, is there any point to struggling for musical achievement if you have not been divinely gifted? And how do you know if you are gifted or not? Maybe your gift is covered with layers of grime, and 32 years of practice will make it shine. Well, OK, probably after 30 years, if it isn’t shining by now, then it isn’t going to shine after two more.

Play what you hear – unless what you’re hearing is boring.

When most people get into jazz, or improvisation in general, they say that they want to reach the point where they can play what they hear in their head. They don’t want to have to think about the effort to translate the notes they are hearing into sounds that the rest of us can hear. They want to get over that hump. It should become natural, like driving a car. If you had to think about every movement necessary to get your Toyota across town, you would certainly plow into a tree, wouldn’t you?

And I’m no different. I definitely want to be able to play what I hear. But what I’m really most interested in is hearing something that I want to play. Is that something that can be developed? Is it something that can be taught? When you hear a chord progression, can you hum an original, pleasant, interesting melody against it?

I’ve read a lot of theory books, and they never seem to tell you anything about melody. There is always tons of information on harmony: what chord should follow which, what chords can substitute for others, what scale belongs to which chord, etc. But nobody seems to give a thought about how to construct a pleasant melody. What notes should follow what? Is it more about intervals? Rhythmic motifs? How to strike the balance between repetition and innovation? What makes one melody sound so interesting (So May It Secretly Begin) while another sounds so lame (Havin’ My Baby)?

Two masters of melody are Wes Montgomery and Pat Metheny. Neither one of these guys earned a degree in music. How did they learn to develop such beautiful melodies, both in their compositions and in their improvisations?

Why do I want to play?

The Grand Unified Theory of Music according to Me: There are four components to musical achievement: Desire, Technique, Musicianship, and Musicality. Each one leads to the next.

• Desire leads us to work in order to overcome our ignorance and achieve better technique.

• Technique frees us to express our inner feelings and emotions, and to communicate with other musicians.

• Musicianship allows us to use our technique in a pleasant manner, in time, and in the proper context with other musicians.

• Musicality is the ability to provide innovative, beautiful, complex, new music to the world (as opposed to skillfully regurgitating someone else’s performance).

That’s just my opinion, and I’m sure I’ve stolen most of this theory from other places.

So what leads to the desire to play music? I feel that I definitely possess this desire. I still get the guitar out every night, and many mornings before work, and slog through the same old exercises and butcher the same tunes.

But for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. I certainly am not an extrovert. I don’t seek out opportunities to perform in public. In fact, to a certain degree, the thought of it terrifies me. I’m a perfectionist, and I think that “perfectionist musician” is probably an oxymoron. I would be mortified to perform before an audience and make a mistake (which would be inevitable and come quickly).

So maybe I play for the fulfillment of making music? Well, most times, when I put the guitar back in the stand, I’m feeling a lot of things, but fulfilled is not one of them. Frustrated, discouraged, self-loathing, self-doubt, disgust, but fulfilled? Not often.

So maybe it’s the joy of communicating with other musicians in our own special language? That doesn’t work either. When I play with other musicians, including trusted friends and teachers, even yahoos at the Guitar Center, I freeze up. I forget much of what I’ve learned. I lose track of the form. I play in the wrong key. I can’t find a freaking B-flat to save my life. It’s a train wreck.

So why am I compelled to continue to punish myself? Why can’t I put that damn plank with strings back under the bed and leave it there for my heirs to discover? Why do I spend so much time reading about music, the guitar, jazz, and improvisation? What a pointless waste of time and energy!

But I do get a certain satisfaction from it. I must, or I wouldn’t do it. I’m not a particularly persistent person, prone to self-sacrifice and discipline. And I am compelled to make music. So there must be something missing inside when I fail to do so, which logically implies that I enjoy doing it.

I suppose the bigger question is, why am I writing this pointless drivel?