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A wise lesson once given to me by a person I can't recall: If you're going to "practice" guitar, then actually concentrate on what you're doing - don't just ha

A wise lesson once given to me by a person I can't recall: If you're going to "practice" guitar, then actually concentrate on what you're doing - don't just have one in your hands and fumble around with it while you're watching TV - focus and you will improve. ...which blends with another maxim I picked up: There are some guitarists who can truthfully say they've played for 40 years - and it sounds impressive until you find out they've only played the same 9 chords the entire time. So I can appreciate what the article is kind of pointing out in a lot of words - "Practice makes better" - it's a perfectly reasonable message to put forward. The examples are okay overall. There's a lesson in there about the ceramics class, but it seems like a setup from the beginning - a lot of varibles in the outcome depending on the professor, right? I mean, just letting the non-quantity group sit there and drool or goof off isn't maximizing the actual concept of reaching for perfection. Oh, and I listened to a 60 minute long tape of Kanye from that prolific period. The end results are really cookie-cutter. He basically found a sample of music that somebody else wrote & recorded, stretched/looped it, added a hip-hop sounding MPC kit line under it, and called it done. It's a strong example of mechanical repetition to hone the tools of a trade (production/sound engineering). Personally I view it as the antithesis of writing original material, but like I said, personal opinion.

Jormundir 11y ago
I think your analysis is spot on. Improving is a slightly more complex cycle. Improvement looks something like this: Do -> analyze strengths and weaknesses -> try to do better. That middle part is way more successful with the help of a good coach. Really quick learners ("talent") can fill in that middle step on their own, but would ultimately benefit from a coach. When your work cycle is: do -> do again -> do again -> do again you'll improve a bit, but pretty quickly plateau.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  Nicely laid out in the flow chart style. I agree that the middle part is essential in the conversation. Also on the point a good coach should show value! Now and then I see 'self-help' or motivational type pieces encouraging a type of "Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses" which can be applicable in a lot of arenas. However taking on that mentality fully strikes me as missing an important long-term perspective. I say this as a person who was really deficient in one digit's dexterity (pinkie) and instead of just kinda shrugging it off, I spent many years and sessions trying to bring it up to par. Now I'm happy to say I can really only remember it as a past weakness, due to the focus and attention to improvement!
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  Analysing your own strengths and weakness is a classic Dunning-Kruger problem - you don't know what you don't know, so you can't assess your work accurately. You can either fix this by trying to copy what other people do in as many different ways as possible, or having a real expert around to say "No, try this instead." Doing stuff over and over only helps if you're creatively blocked and are terrified of producing crap. It's a good first step towards building momentum, but it's just a beginning.
beat 11y ago
Eventually, Kanye went on to craft some astoundingly original sounds and beats. We don't all just appear like Athena bursting full-grown from the head of Zeus. Kanye would never have become the incredibly successful musician he is today without going through that period of mediocre practice.
- sehr 11y ago
  'Lock yourself in a room doing 5 beats a day for 3 summers'
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  In some circles, sure, but in other circles he's known as the guy who tried to unapologetically rip off Aphex Twin[1], ruined a perfectly good Daft Punk song, and is pretty much a punchline. As in, I don't think he ever got beyond mediocre. Mediocrity and accessibility are significant elements to success in popular music; kind of like the other side of the coin to Max Martin's genius when it comes to the perfect song formula which is complexity posing as simplicity. [1]http://pitchfork.com/news/56459-aphex-twin-speaks-on-his-new-album-being-sampled-by-kanye-more/ http://pitchfork.com/news/56459-aphex-twin-speaks-on-his-new...
  - beat 11y ago
    Really good pop is almost never mediocre. If it was mediocre, it wouldn't break through. The difficulty and sophistication of ongoing pop success is underestimated. There's an important distinction between "I don't like this", and "This is not good". Most people fail to make that distinction - they think that if they don't like something, it must be bad. Taste and quality aren't particularly congruent. (As a corollary, sometimes we like things that are actually bad.)
    - 6stringmerc 11y ago
      Well I'll have to disagree with you in that my belief is really good pop has to be mediocre otherwise it will alienate its intended demographics for maximum monetary gain - the 14 year old girls & their mothers group. That's what drives pop music sales. They don't dig complexity, they latch on to simple things. While the theme song for 'Frozen' is most definitely a well crafted tune, it's absolutely engineered to not be challenging or revolutionary. Regarding quality, subjectively speaking individual composition/talents/efforts tend to influence one's opinion of the work seen/heard/etc. This is why music does, in some avenues, resemble a competitive avenue in the collection of skills and techniques. For a not-insignificant number of people, Kanye's music is subjectively bad in quality, which is irrespective of popularity.
beat 11y ago
I should add too, that as someone who has personally played guitar for 30+ years, "the same 9 chords" is a good route to extraordinary musical depth. Music isn't just technique - it's expressiveness. Knowing more chords won't necessarily make you a better musician, or even a good one. My own technique hasn't improved significantly in ages, but I'm a better musician year after year. Why? Because I become more profound. I have better things to say with the technique I have.
- devonkim 11y ago
  This is pretty similar to how Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath has described how he tried for a while to play real fast like a lot of the younger guys and focused instead on playing what does do well with better understanding and execution than those with less experience but more technical skill could manage. Similarly for us engineers, a real "10xer" is not just someone that ships fast, you must ship something that is efficient with time and resources. This can be done with luck but is more often done after lots of experience and mistakes are made. Hence, the lesson from W. Edwards Deming about how experience teaches nothing without a framework or theory of concepts and knowledge is applicable very much at the individual level as well as organizational. You can practice the same punch 1000 times but if you do not really experiment a little, never measure your punch effectiveness, or try to understand why your punches are not getting any better even though you are stronger, you will lose against someone that has carefully analyzed 1000 punches they've thrown and practiced with that knowledge to shape their efforts.
- ChemicalWarfare 11y ago
  probably depends on the style of music you play. music I listen to/play is an "athletic event" (in addition to the actual "music" part lol) where technique is a crucial part of the execution. for me personally just to stay at the level I'm at I need to practice every day for about an hour.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  True; vocabulary isn't just about knowing words, it's about knowing the right words. That applies to playing an instrument as well, especially soloing. I'm glad I spent a half-dozen years wanting to be a shredder, because learning the speed and stamina is extremely useful later on when playing slower and more contemplative. It's back to the vocabulary thing though, in that having the choice of what to use tends to come along with having the prowess to afford the choice.
devonkim 11y ago
Hip hop and rap creative processes bear much more resemblance to a combination of poets and musical arrangers that historically haven't gotten much wide appeal critical acclaim or anything (who the heck knows about Sammy Nestico except jazz students that read his charts?). Everything else is about finding something catchy enough to loop together as support, but that is something that does require some form of pop taste intuition to be successful where this is done in a lot of electronic music far outside pop (power noise, ambient, and even dubstep do an awful lot of samples and looping of one lick or two and transpose or invert chords or something as tricks).

Jormundir 11y ago

I think your analysis is spot on. Improving is a slightly more complex cycle. Improvement looks something like this: Do -> analyze strengths and weaknesses -> try to do better. That middle part is way more successful with the help of a good coach. Really quick learners ("talent") can fill in that middle step on their own, but would ultimately benefit from a coach. When your work cycle is: do -> do again -> do again -> do again you'll improve a bit, but pretty quickly plateau.

6stringmerc 11y ago
Nicely laid out in the flow chart style. I agree that the middle part is essential in the conversation. Also on the point a good coach should show value! Now and then I see 'self-help' or motivational type pieces encouraging a type of "Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses" which can be applicable in a lot of arenas. However taking on that mentality fully strikes me as missing an important long-term perspective. I say this as a person who was really deficient in one digit's dexterity (pinkie) and instead of just kinda shrugging it off, I spent many years and sessions trying to bring it up to par. Now I'm happy to say I can really only remember it as a past weakness, due to the focus and attention to improvement!
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Analysing your own strengths and weakness is a classic Dunning-Kruger problem - you don't know what you don't know, so you can't assess your work accurately. You can either fix this by trying to copy what other people do in as many different ways as possible, or having a real expert around to say "No, try this instead." Doing stuff over and over only helps if you're creatively blocked and are terrified of producing crap. It's a good first step towards building momentum, but it's just a beginning.

beat 11y ago

Eventually, Kanye went on to craft some astoundingly original sounds and beats. We don't all just appear like Athena bursting full-grown from the head of Zeus. Kanye would never have become the incredibly successful musician he is today without going through that period of mediocre practice.

sehr 11y ago
'Lock yourself in a room doing 5 beats a day for 3 summers'
6stringmerc 11y ago
In some circles, sure, but in other circles he's known as the guy who tried to unapologetically rip off Aphex Twin[1], ruined a perfectly good Daft Punk song, and is pretty much a punchline. As in, I don't think he ever got beyond mediocre. Mediocrity and accessibility are significant elements to success in popular music; kind of like the other side of the coin to Max Martin's genius when it comes to the perfect song formula which is complexity posing as simplicity. [1]http://pitchfork.com/news/56459-aphex-twin-speaks-on-his-new-album-being-sampled-by-kanye-more/ http://pitchfork.com/news/56459-aphex-twin-speaks-on-his-new...
- beat 11y ago
  Really good pop is almost never mediocre. If it was mediocre, it wouldn't break through. The difficulty and sophistication of ongoing pop success is underestimated. There's an important distinction between "I don't like this", and "This is not good". Most people fail to make that distinction - they think that if they don't like something, it must be bad. Taste and quality aren't particularly congruent. (As a corollary, sometimes we like things that are actually bad.)
  - 6stringmerc 11y ago
    Well I'll have to disagree with you in that my belief is really good pop has to be mediocre otherwise it will alienate its intended demographics for maximum monetary gain - the 14 year old girls & their mothers group. That's what drives pop music sales. They don't dig complexity, they latch on to simple things. While the theme song for 'Frozen' is most definitely a well crafted tune, it's absolutely engineered to not be challenging or revolutionary. Regarding quality, subjectively speaking individual composition/talents/efforts tend to influence one's opinion of the work seen/heard/etc. This is why music does, in some avenues, resemble a competitive avenue in the collection of skills and techniques. For a not-insignificant number of people, Kanye's music is subjectively bad in quality, which is irrespective of popularity.

beat 11y ago

I should add too, that as someone who has personally played guitar for 30+ years, "the same 9 chords" is a good route to extraordinary musical depth. Music isn't just technique - it's expressiveness. Knowing more chords won't necessarily make you a better musician, or even a good one. My own technique hasn't improved significantly in ages, but I'm a better musician year after year. Why? Because I become more profound. I have better things to say with the technique I have.

devonkim 11y ago
This is pretty similar to how Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath has described how he tried for a while to play real fast like a lot of the younger guys and focused instead on playing what does do well with better understanding and execution than those with less experience but more technical skill could manage. Similarly for us engineers, a real "10xer" is not just someone that ships fast, you must ship something that is efficient with time and resources. This can be done with luck but is more often done after lots of experience and mistakes are made. Hence, the lesson from W. Edwards Deming about how experience teaches nothing without a framework or theory of concepts and knowledge is applicable very much at the individual level as well as organizational. You can practice the same punch 1000 times but if you do not really experiment a little, never measure your punch effectiveness, or try to understand why your punches are not getting any better even though you are stronger, you will lose against someone that has carefully analyzed 1000 punches they've thrown and practiced with that knowledge to shape their efforts.
ChemicalWarfare 11y ago
probably depends on the style of music you play. music I listen to/play is an "athletic event" (in addition to the actual "music" part lol) where technique is a crucial part of the execution. for me personally just to stay at the level I'm at I need to practice every day for about an hour.
6stringmerc 11y ago
True; vocabulary isn't just about knowing words, it's about knowing the right words. That applies to playing an instrument as well, especially soloing. I'm glad I spent a half-dozen years wanting to be a shredder, because learning the speed and stamina is extremely useful later on when playing slower and more contemplative. It's back to the vocabulary thing though, in that having the choice of what to use tends to come along with having the prowess to afford the choice.

devonkim 11y ago

Hip hop and rap creative processes bear much more resemblance to a combination of poets and musical arrangers that historically haven't gotten much wide appeal critical acclaim or anything (who the heck knows about Sammy Nestico except jazz students that read his charts?). Everything else is about finding something catchy enough to loop together as support, but that is something that does require some form of pop taste intuition to be successful where this is done in a lot of electronic music far outside pop (power noise, ambient, and even dubstep do an awful lot of samples and looping of one lick or two and transpose or invert chords or something as tricks).