Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 214 Location: Hong Kong
Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 3:37 am Post subject:
Haha... that must be quite frustrating. It's like when I used to teach guitar and you get students who wanna play like EVH after the first lesson! Mind you, when you get a great student come by it's a real joy, and they know these things take time and practice. Same with selling gear I guess.
When I was a kid I remember some shops in Australia would have a sign that read "Play Stairway to Heaven or Smoke on the Water at your own risk!". I could imagine working in the shop you would get pretty pissed off hearing the same licks day in and day out, and have to put up with a lot of wankers that think they know everything about guitars and amps!!!
GOD DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON TEACHING LESSONS!!!!!
I have 25 students so far and I swear that they all think this 'guitar thing' is really easy. I have guys/gals coming in asking me to show them 'something cool'...like tapping or hammer-ons, yet they can't even play a G major chord, let alone know how many notes are in the major scale. They think to get their favorite guitarists tone, they need to buy the same gear and PRESTO - Instant Tone.....
We live in such an 'instant gratification' society now. Kids just don't have the type of structure to sit and work on ONE thing for more than 5 minutes. I know we all hear the great 'my child has a learning disability' or 'my child suffers from ADD' etc etc. excuses parents use these days to basically say that there child has no focus or discipline to LEARN.
The reason kids can't concentrate on anything is because the new generation of parents OVER SATURATE/STIMULATE their kids with an abudance of toys, games, activities, technology, etc. I am not sure about any other people on this forum, but I am only 33 and I remember growing up my parents gave me toys, but there simply wasn't all this technology to 'distract' my development. You sat their and played with Legos, Linking Logs, etc and LEARNED SOMETHING!!!!!. Now it's all text messaging, MP3 Downloads, Web, Email, Cell Phones and really bad TV.
No wonder younger people can't find the time to dedicate to an instrument. I practiced 8 hours a day EVERY DAY from the age of 14-22 to get my playing together and learn something, and I am still learning every single day. When you hear players like Guthrie, Lukather, Vai, Landau, etc., these guys spent countless hours WORKING to become who they are and knew that it wouldn't come over night.
I will end with this analogy I use when dealing with new students:
"I know that the road to becoming a good player is long. But don't look to the horizon line as your final destination....you'll never get there because no matter how hard you try, the horizon is always there and always looks far away. Look toward the next block down the street. Get there first, then look toward the next block and so on. Before you know it, you will have gone a long way and realized that it wasn't as hard or as unreachable as you thought."
Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 214 Location: Hong Kong
Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 3:08 pm Post subject:
Hey man, really well said! I don't teach guitar anymore, but I'm 37 years old and didn't learn to use a computer until I was 27 (can't live without them these days as I'm now an IT specialist for my "real" job).
I've seen kids send emails these days and you can't even decipher it - it's like another language albeit without any grammar!
God, I remember putting in solid 6-8 hours a day practicing and I'm still just an above average guitar player - it really does take time, as most of us here on this forum know that all too well.
I remember my first guitar teacher telling (after I wanted to learn some Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page licks after about a month of lessons) "You can't put the cart before the horse!" - I think this still applies today in a lot of things...
GOD DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON TEACHING LESSONS!!!!!
I have 25 students so far and I swear that they all think this 'guitar thing' is really easy. I have guys/gals coming in asking me to show them 'something cool'...like tapping or hammer-ons, yet they can't even play a G major chord, let alone know how many notes are in the major scale. They think to get their favorite guitarists tone, they need to buy the same gear and PRESTO - Instant Tone.....
We live in such an 'instant gratification' society now. Kids just don't have the type of structure to sit and work on ONE thing for more than 5 minutes. I know we all hear the great 'my child has a learning disability' or 'my child suffers from ADD' etc etc. excuses parents use these days to basically say that there child has no focus or discipline to LEARN.
The reason kids can't concentrate on anything is because the new generation of parents OVER SATURATE/STIMULATE their kids with an abudance of toys, games, activities, technology, etc. I am not sure about any other people on this forum, but I am only 33 and I remember growing up my parents gave me toys, but there simply wasn't all this technology to 'distract' my development. You sat their and played with Legos, Linking Logs, etc and LEARNED SOMETHING!!!!!. Now it's all text messaging, MP3 Downloads, Web, Email, Cell Phones and really bad TV.
No wonder younger people can't find the time to dedicate to an instrument. I practiced 8 hours a day EVERY DAY from the age of 14-22 to get my playing together and learn something, and I am still learning every single day. When you hear players like Guthrie, Lukather, Vai, Landau, etc., these guys spent countless hours WORKING to become who they are and knew that it wouldn't come over night.
I will end with this analogy I use when dealing with new students:
"I know that the road to becoming a good player is long. But don't look to the horizon line as your final destination....you'll never get there because no matter how hard you try, the horizon is always there and always looks far away. Look toward the next block down the street. Get there first, then look toward the next block and so on. Before you know it, you will have gone a long way and realized that it wasn't as hard or as unreachable as you thought."
Hope that made some sense to you guys.
amen dood....even though I'm basically just a kid myself...I feel your pain
Joined: 10 Sep 2004 Posts: 2783 Location: Chino, CA
Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2005 8:45 pm Post subject:
shredizalive wrote:
GOD DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON TEACHING LESSONS!!!!!
I have 25 students so far and I swear that they all think this 'guitar thing' is really easy. I have guys/gals coming in asking me to show them 'something cool'...like tapping or hammer-ons, yet they can't even play a G major chord, let alone know how many notes are in the major scale. They think to get their favorite guitarists tone, they need to buy the same gear and PRESTO - Instant Tone.....
We live in such an 'instant gratification' society now. Kids just don't have the type of structure to sit and work on ONE thing for more than 5 minutes. I know we all hear the great 'my child has a learning disability' or 'my child suffers from ADD' etc etc. excuses parents use these days to basically say that there child has no focus or discipline to LEARN.
The reason kids can't concentrate on anything is because the new generation of parents OVER SATURATE/STIMULATE their kids with an abudance of toys, games, activities, technology, etc. I am not sure about any other people on this forum, but I am only 33 and I remember growing up my parents gave me toys, but there simply wasn't all this technology to 'distract' my development. You sat their and played with Legos, Linking Logs, etc and LEARNED SOMETHING!!!!!. Now it's all text messaging, MP3 Downloads, Web, Email, Cell Phones and really bad TV.
No wonder younger people can't find the time to dedicate to an instrument. I practiced 8 hours a day EVERY DAY from the age of 14-22 to get my playing together and learn something, and I am still learning every single day. When you hear players like Guthrie, Lukather, Vai, Landau, etc., these guys spent countless hours WORKING to become who they are and knew that it wouldn't come over night.
I will end with this analogy I use when dealing with new students:
"I know that the road to becoming a good player is long. But don't look to the horizon line as your final destination....you'll never get there because no matter how hard you try, the horizon is always there and always looks far away. Look toward the next block down the street. Get there first, then look toward the next block and so on. Before you know it, you will have gone a long way and realized that it wasn't as hard or as unreachable as you thought."
Hope that made some sense to you guys.
Totally agree on all of your points. I have a boy who will soon turn 5 and I already see that it's hard to keep him concentrating on one thing for long with all these toys, cartoon programs, and gadgets floating on about. It's going to be quite a chore to get him to focus on anything with the long-term in mind.
And he's not even in the video games stage yet. I'm not looking forward to having him beg me to buy him a PS2 or an X-Box, etc. It's really sad to think about teenagers mindlessly wasting away their hours during the most important years of development on such a thing. _________________ Ed Yoon
Certified Guthrie Fan-atic
BOING Music LLC - Managing Partner
.strandberg* Guitars USA
Ed Yoon Consulting & Management
Guitar Center Inc.
Joined: 10 Sep 2004 Posts: 2783 Location: Chino, CA
Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2005 8:52 pm Post subject:
You know, the guitar is a hard instrument to play. Of course, all instruments are hard to play and require a lot of effort and practice, but the guitar presents some unique obstacles and it's so easy to get lazy on it compared to other instruments, IMHO. What I see are too many players who just rely on finger memory to play known licks and patterns that they played while watching TV on the sofa. I should know, I'm certainly guilty of it. _________________ Ed Yoon
Certified Guthrie Fan-atic
BOING Music LLC - Managing Partner
.strandberg* Guitars USA
Ed Yoon Consulting & Management
Guitar Center Inc.
WOW!!! Man, I was SO guilty of that for over 10 years. The simple pentatonic blues/Dorian licks that sound 'cool' and aren't too hard to execute were such an easy way out.
But after a while of hearing guys like Scott Henderson, Holdsworth, Lukather and Greg Howe do what they do, I realized it was time to start using my ears. As hard as it was to really overcome many of the comfortable obstacles I had worked myself into, I came to realize that the only way to make my playing sound better was to sit down and learn every note on the guitar backwards and forwards. I then bought a Charlie Parker Solos for Guitar book, cried alot when I tried getting through 2 bars of 'Donna Lee' and gave up for a month. Once that fit wore off, I slapped myself in the face, said 'Toughen UP!!!' and went to work on that book again. It took a whole year to get through two songs, but once I managed to really get those solos under my fingers, it was like the floodgates had opened.
I really believe that the mind/ear control everything you do as a musician. Sure, it's a bitch learning all these fingerings and licks, but like you said Ed, it's all just muscle memory. It's so much harder to ride a bike than play a simple scale on the guitar. Think about all the things that go into riding a bike: Balance, cooridination, direction, speed, control, sight, dealing with obstacles, vehicles, etc....
With guitar, it's a more direct way of dealing and reacting with the instrument. If you can think it/sing it, you certainly will be able to play it. It just takes a real LARGE amount of discipline to go past the comfort zone and really explore your inner 'mind's ear'.
To all of the players out there stuck in a rut, seriously listen to Parker, Coltrane, Tatum, Jarret and such. Don't think of the music as 'sax', 'piano', 'trumpet'....LISTEN to the notes and all of sudden you may hear alot of cool ideas that will trigger your playing into a whole new direction.
Ok, I'm done. ONce again, sorry for such long posts, but I have lots to say on the subject of music education.
The original book I used is long out of print and I don't think I even have it anymore, but this link to AMAZON has this GREAT book which I've looked through at the shop I teach at and it's pretty dead-on as far as accuracy.
But, my strongest suggestion is to try and transcribe his work by ear. It will take some time (maybe), but it will really help.
As for busting fingers....hang in there. The material is challenging but greatly rewarding. Shred-on.
Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 214 Location: Hong Kong
Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 10:10 am Post subject:
Yep, too right re using one's ears.
When I used to have lessons with the late Ike Isaacs (Stephan Grapelli fame), he used to tell me he would copy licks of Django Reinhart while listening to an old crystal radio! Forget about using a vinyl record and lifting up the needle and dropping back, trying to find the right spot! Oh, those were the days... NOT!
We really do have it easier these days with some of the technology that's out there...
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