Playing Guitar is really an attitude
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Playing guitar, be it electric or acoustic, is playing the most versatile of instruments. You can strum a few chords, adopt a highly disciplined classical guitar technique, or play sophisticated jazz chord and scale progressions. The choice is yours. Whatever your bag, the journey to achieving your goal and the fundamental sound is reflecting your attitude, the one whose playing the guitar.
It’s a funny thing, but music is unlike most other activities. Take football for example, there is no escaping the fact that if you want to play pro-football you had better be good and there are no short cuts. Technique and fitness is an absolute must. Musical expression is different and shares many similarities with the spoken word. A few well chosen words can be far more effective than a tidal wave of sophisticated verbal statement. So it is with playing the guitar.
Arguably, the most successful singer songwriter who ever lived is Bob Dylan. His delivery is based essentially on guitar sounds combined with an awesome skill as a lyricist. His musical structure is generally simple – but the simplicity of the music combined with great hook lines and lyrics is bang on the nail as a musical statement.
So the fact to understand here is that technical ability has little to do with musical talent. If your groove is a simple country, reggae or blues feel you can be damn good and highly relevant without being a musical genius. The simple player who plays with attitude is a musician, the same as a highly accomplished classical or jazz guitarist. It’s amazing how formally trained musicians, like classical, or other technical jazz players, are usually the most ineffective exponents of rock, country, pop or blues music.
Playing guitar is essentially an attitude, combined with feel and the necessary musical knowledge to express what you want to play. Don’t be fooled into following the path of so many potentially great musicians and be fazed by more accomplished players. When you tune in to the simplicity of a player such as the great blues guitarist B. B. King, you can’t help but be affected by his simplicity of notes, played in such a meaningful, soulful musical attitude.
Playing guitar has an infinite number of possibilities. It is the most adaptable, useable instrument, and it’s the journey to your goal that’s the fun part. Once you start you’ll never stop learning guitar. Each time you pick it up you’ll discover something new and it needn’t be hard to play to be relevant!
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