[Newsletter] Feel like you need to drill the boring stuff before getting to the good stuff? You don't.
Kerry 2 Smooth teaches one exemplary song; Practice first principles thinking
Hello!
Welcome to new subscribers this week. If it’s your first time receiving one of these emails, I write about strategies, tips, and frameworks to help self-taught guitarists have the best guitar playing experience they can.
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Something to think about
Feel like you need to drill the boring stuff before getting to the good stuff? You don't.
A huge benefit for any guitarist is to have their own interests and projects.
Not passions. Passion for guitar comes and goes. But a self-taught guitarist who is interested in their own ways of exploring their sounds can sustain themselves for years. It's an important thing for everyone to think about: what do I really like about guitar playing? What will sustain me through the ups and downs?
Two thinkers that complement each other with this idea are Paul Graham and Robert Duke.
In this essay, Paul Graham makes the case for the benefit of a project of one's own.
"It's not clear to a kid building a treehouse that there's a direct (though long) route from that to architecture or engineering. And instead of pointing out the route, we conceal it, by implicitly treating the stuff kids do as different from real work."
The discipline of music is notorious for taking something sacred and making it all about work. A kid picking up a guitar for the first time and messing around with it is heard as a racket. I'm guilty of this, too. Beginner guitar lessons can be a slog to get through, but if the learner has a spark that defies the unpleasant sounds, it changes everything.
"It's a bit sad to think of all the high school kids turning their backs on building treehouses and sitting in class dutifully learning about Darwin or Newton to pass some exam, when the work that made Darwin and Newton famous was actually closer in spirit to building treehouses than studying for exams."
The consciousness of the time is that no one has time to make the errors or mistakes necessary to really learn guitar. Many want a step-by-step guide without the meandering their influences had to work through to get good.
In this talk, Robert Duke argues for getting to the good stuff right away.
"Now, the question I ask everyone to think about who's imagining redesigning a course or redesigning a curriculum is how long does it take to get to the good stuff. And the answer, inevitably, is not nearly as long as we make it out to be.
[...] what are the underlying principles of the discipline that make this what it is? What's most important that branches out and reaches to all aspects of whatever discipline we happen to be teaching, and can we introduce that effectively at the earliest stages of a student's experience, whatever it is that we happen to be teaching? And the answer is always yes."
How quickly can you get to the point of playing something actually satisfying with your guitar? What would that look like? Are you playing open chords with a basic strumming pattern? Are you playing easy riffs and it sounds like what it should? That's the good stuff - basic things that can be learned relatively easily and are satisfying to you personally. And a lot of times, you can learn it within a short time.
Although there's tons of information out there, find your own path.
Exploring on your own is what separates successful guitarists from unsuccessful.
There are no right or wrong answers. People that tend to have a positive guitar playing experience know what they want and how to get there. Some people drill themselves relentlessly for improvement, while others lackadaisically try out different things and make less progress.
Both have positive guitar playing experiences because they both meander, finding one rabbit hole wasteful and the next one fruitful.
Something to watch
Kerry 2 Smooth hits on something interesting with this video: one exemplary song from his genre.
He takes a few fundamentals of R&B, shows how they're applied in practice and cuts out everything else. A big issue with teaching yourself guitar online is sifting through random resources and picking out what's important. The song he chooses has a melodic hook, colourful chords, and hammer-ons and pull-offs in the chord shapes. These 3 concepts give the learner an idea of what's common and expected so they can most easily get started with R&B. Repertoire beats exercises every time.
I also like how Kerry 2 Smooth is an authority on the genre.
He's not a hack who picked up bits and pieces from secondary sources. He's played with lots of people in the genre and has spent time living in it. Any time I want to look at a genre-based online lesson, I prefer to go with someone who has some life experience in that genre - a genre is like a dialect and it’s always best to learn from native speakers.
Something to practice
There's usually a simple way to learn complex ideas.
I find this comes up a lot with modes. Either modes are oversimplified (you just start the major scale on a different note, that's it!) or they are overcomplicated (here are 7 new Greek words and a bunch of scale degrees to memorize!). It's hard to know what is important and actually worth worrying about.
Let's say you've taken an interest in modes, found some resources online, and you're starting to get the gist. You've got an idea of what they are and what the words mean, but the point of learning them is still lost on you.
If you find yourself in this situation, ask yourself some questions to break down the problem into first principles:
Why are modes important to know? Each mode has a different sound so I will be able to play different colours, vibes, and moods.
Beyond terminology, what are modes? When I'm learning modes, I'm essentially just playing different scales. Modes are scales.
What are scales? Scales are just series of notes separated by a specific sequence of whole steps and half steps.
What makes one scale different from the next? A scale has a certain mood based on usually 1 or 2 key notes. For example, a major scale has a major third and seventh, while a minor scale has a minor third and seventh.
What does it mean to know modes? It means I know the key notes in each mode and what mood they evoke.
So to most effectively learn modes, you'll want to know how they sound in the context of some harmony. Modes are the sound of a certain scale over a certain chord type. How can you design practice routines and exercises that get you closer to that definition?
Try practicing this type of thinking.
If you get stuck on something you don't know, that might be a good time to look up whatever it is. In the example above, you've followed a line of reasoning that led to the question "what are scales?". Maybe it occurs to you that you've never thought about this - what the hell are scales? If you find some resources on what scales are, you'll help with your current problem and solidify your overall understanding of music for future problems.
This is the spirit of teaching yourself guitar - asking questions and finding answers on your own.