From: goodrich@lynx.larc.nasa.gov (Mike Goodrich)
Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.guitar
Subject: Re: What makes a giid guitarist?
Date: 10 Nov 1992 18:23:14 GMT
Organization: NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA  USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: lynx.larc.nasa.gov

In article <10NOV199209245199@elroy.uh.edu>, math1rb@elroy.uh.edu (92F07486) writes:
|> My wife and I were discussing what makes a "good" guitarist...
|> I said I thought it was someone who could hear a song and instantly
|> replay it, but she pointed out that is a "natural" sort of gift and
|> didn't think that could be necessarily learned. She gave the example of
|> my younger brother who after only playing for a few months, can pick out
|> the notes and melodies to a lot of differnent songs, although he doesn't
|> have the proficiency to play them at full speed or without being sloppy.
|>  She said a good guitarist would be someone who could look at some sheet
|> music and play the song without previously hearing it before. Well I
|> can sort of read music but I really need to practice. After I graduate in
|> December I'll have more time, and we debated whether I should get lessons
|> as sort of a regimented program, so I have to learn. But on the other hand
|> I'm pretty disciplined, and don't have a lot of money, so I figure I could do
|> it on my own.
|>  Any thoughts, any similiar expweriences? Later,


I want to disagree with your wife's comments. After having played guitar for
some 19 years in several different styles I feel that I have some observations
for you to consider. "Having good ears" as they say is definitely a gift - one
that to my dismay, I do not posess. But I find that hard work can make up for
anything; it's just that I have to work on what others can simply "hear". In
terms of duplicating something, I feel that you must carefully distinguish
between the
"music" of what is happening and those stylistic or perhaps I should say
technique oriented apsects. What I mean by this is that the guitar, like any
other instrument, has those things that it simply does better than any other.
It's relatively easy to rattle off a list of what these things are, and most
folks would nod their head and say "sure - that's obvious", but I find it's
a different thing to REALLY learn WHAT'S BEST TO DO WITH YOUR INSTRUMENT at
any given moment. This, I beleive, ultimately comes with experience. And I've
learned a few of these the hard way, like e.g., "don't compete with the
keyboard player for the harmony" (i.e., chords). By the way, learning how to
leave space for other instruments, or how to stand out in a crowd are two of
the more diffucult things to learn and simply require experience. As far as
formal training, I HIGHLY recommend it - if you really want to learn how to play.
It's been my experience that trying to do it on your own subjects you to far
fewer enlighting ideas than playing by yourself - and if you have an instructor,
you will be playing with him. Finally, I find that after some experience with
pianos and alto saxes, that the guitar is easily the MOST DEMANDING instrument
I have ever attempted to play, and I frequently get frustated in my attempts
to get what I hear in my head down on the fretboard. I also paradoxially find
that I am a better guitarist than I beleive myself to be anytime I stumble
across one of my recordings and listen to it as a "listener". 


...mike