Ignorance is not bliss.

There is a LOT of guitar instruction material on the internet. I’ve been exploring lately, looking to see what other teachers are up to as I organize my own thoughts. And while there are plenty of smart and talented people out there with something to offer, they sometimes seem to be islands floating in a sea of….well, fill in the blank.

To make a sweeping generalization instead of a blanket indictment: there are no magic bullets. Learning to play an instrument is a lifelong journey, there’s always something else to learn, and all of those things are going to take work. Anyone who promises you shortcuts, secrets, or tricks is minimizing that fact, but it’s a common thread I keep seeing in so many of these courses.
There ARE simple ideas that can make a huge difference in how quickly and how efficiently you learn, but these are concepts – a mental approach that pave the way for the work to follow. My issue with a lot of what I’m seeing out there is the repeated assertion that it’s not important to know about music….that these so-called shortcuts do so by eliminating pesky details like vocabulary and musical literacy.

You certainly CAN choose to learn that way, and there are plenty of working professionals….even stars….who did just that. We all did in the beginning: here’s a chord, memorize it, here’s a lick, memorize that. And it’s true that you don’t need to know how to read music or how to spell a minor 11th chord to be a songwriter, or an artist, or even a professional musician. There are many who don’t, they just do what they do and some people do it amazingly well.

But realistically, unless you are a genius savant and really don’t need to (and even then), knowing more about what you do can only help. Musical knowledge gives you more choices and more options. Musical literacy makes it easier for you to communicate your ideas to others and to absorb theirs. Even Mozart had teachers and went through a process of musical education. (He may have mastered it all by the time he was ten, but that’s a separate point).
This is not the sexy stuff, this is the grunt work. Not instant gratification but a payoff that comes down the road. Like any investment, it takes time to mature. See the shortcuts for what they are: a means to get a little taste of the good stuff, and enjoy them…..but don’t mistake morsels for a meal.

The great jazz pianist Bill Evans had this to say on the subject:

“It is true of any subject that the person who succeeds in anything has a realistic viewpoint at the beginning in knowing that the problem is large. He has to take it a step at a time, and he has to enjoy the step-by-step learning procedure".

We’re talking about applying a small idea to a big thing: be aware of the big picture, but process information in snapshots.

It’s not a secret or a trick, just the recognition that music is an interconnected system with many, many interwoven relationships. Start by knowing these relationships are there, and then start looking for them, one by one. Be aware that this is going to take a long time to really get to know the material….but the beauty of it is, you don’t need to know everything to make music. Every one of these small pieces can be put to use right away. Learn a chord, use it in a song, then use it a different way and it will lead to another new chord. Every piece of the puzzle brings you closer to seeing the whole picture.

Adopting this mindset will keep you from getting stuck; stagnation in any aspect of life happens when you no longer see possibility. Acknowledging how big a thing we’re tackling here should make it clear that you’ll never know everything, so there’s no way to run out of possibilities…unless, of course, you decide some things aren’t worth knowing.