The exact moment I transitioned from intermediate to advanced
Designing your projects to lead to the right kind of progress
Hello everyone,
As you know, I’m currently sharing a system of using projects to consistently and reliably improve your guitar playing.
I’m telling you about a new part of it each week for the next little while.
Last week, we figured out how to be more strict about which projects to tackle. Once you have a batch of good projects, the next step is figuring out how to design your projects to lead to the right kind of progress.
But first, I’ll tell you about how project design helped me transition between intermediate and advanced.
Do you remember the transition from feeling like a beginner to intermediate? Or intermediate to advanced?
I’d love to hear: respond to this email or reply in the comments!
Photo by Kolya Korzh on Unsplash
I remember when I officially felt like an advanced guitarist.
I got into the world of acoustic Blues music on a recommendation from my buddy. "You've got to check out '32-20 Blues' by Robert Johnson," which led to other Delta Blues artists, Eric Clapton, and lots of other little rabbit holes.
Without a teacher at this time, I learned a bunch of this music from video tutorials. I was definitely improving as a musician. I enjoyed playing a whole arrangement by myself on guitar, but I still felt like I was firmly in intermediate land - being shown stuff and playing it verbatim.
Fast forward to a concert in my hometown. I saw this guy playing who I'd never heard of before: Matt Andersen. He’s now a very popular Canadian Roots and Blues guy and his performance blew me away. I found a live album he recorded on iTunes, bought it, and made it my mission to learn his playing.
This was a small, niche album, though. There were no TABs or videos tutorials.
I had to learn it by ear.
So I did. Learning his playing note for note was the transition between intermediate and advanced. The playing wasn’t super advanced, but the skills I developed, the way theory came into practice, and the way I learned to adopt his voice in my own playing was a giant leap ahead for me.
Everything I learned as an intermediate (Johnson and Clapton) led to my breakthrough.
And here is what’s interesting:
Although I didn’t have this trajectory mapped out from the beginning, relying on my interests and following my nose let me make up the map as I went. Becoming more skillful in one direction made it WAY easier to become more skillful in an adjacent direction.
This was a first step toward taking ownership and designing my projects for certain goals.
I didn't want to just play his solos verbatim for the sake of performance. I wanted to adopt his playing and mix it with my own style. The design of this project was the best thing for me at that particular time - it propelled me from intermediate to advanced.
How to design your projects for the right kind of progress
Last week, we looked at being strict about what you want to learn. Once you have a list of fruitful project ideas, the next step is to figure out what kind of project to make.
In other words, what kind of concrete, tangible artifact best demonstrates the knowledge and skills you want to learn?
The type of project you decide to produce has a big impact on how you learn the new skills and knowledge you want. It all depends on your goal - how and why you want this particular skill or bit of knowledge to become part of your musical DNA.
Do you want to learn a song for the sake of performance? Do you want to learn to play like a certain guitar player? Do you want to be able to freely solo over the fretboard? Do you want to play in a certain genre?
Here are my usual goals and how designing projects works for me:
If I want to learn a song to perform, I will produce a video or audio recording of myself playing it.
If I want to learn to play like a certain player, I will learn some of their work verbatim and create a video or track playing it, plus improvising in their voice.
If I want to learn some different chords, I will create a beat or loop in a DAW using them.
If I want to learn a genre, I will write and record ideas and motifs in the genre.
If I want to learn a piece of music for future reference, I will create a chord chart or lead sheet.
Changing the outcome changes the steps
The outcomes (concrete, tangible artifacts) are based on why I want to know certain skills and knowledge and how I want to use it.
If my goal is to play in the voice of a certain player, it wouldn’t do me any good to make a beat using the chords from a song of theirs. I wouldn’t necessarily get anything about their playing style that I’d like to incorporate into my own. However, if I wanted to learn how a certain player made harmonic choices, then maybe I would take some of their chords and produce a beat.
The right outcome is comprised of the right steps that help me reach my goal.
Anything can be included in the system
From learning songs, to writing songs, to learning scales, chord changes, techniques, or anything in between.
The only thing that matters is knowing how and why you want to learn the new skills and knowledge that move you.
Once you’ve got this figured out, it’s easy to come up with a concrete, tangible artifact to produce.