Quote:
Originally Posted by SunnyDee
I think what you may be missing is that it already clicked. I went from knowing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about music or guitar to a solid intermediate level in ear training, guitar technique, theory, and fretboard knowledge in a bit over a year, because I did NOT simply try to copy songs.
I can play to campfire level probably 12-20 songs and anything you put in front of me with chords I know and am strumming, but that alone would NEVER have taught me how music is structured, how to play in EVERY key, how different styles differ musically so that I can borrow from them, the architecture of the fretboard so that I can improvise melodies all over it, and all the fundamental guitar techniques that don't happen to be in those campfire songs, and, yet, from learning what you call a waste of time, I now know ALL of that.
For some reason, naysayers seem to think that we are not loving the music or enjoying the study, but I have loved it! I just wish that other beginners like me were not being scared away from the same level of learning.
I guess the point is that, no, I can't perform that many songs that other people wrote, but I can play guitar. I can play the music I hear in my head for the songs I wrote and that was my goal from the beginning.
|
Just ignore those who say, "oh we learned by ear, so stop wasting time on that theory stuff." It's one of the reasons I rarely come here, I do not appreciate how the forum operates in a lot of ways.
You and I are learning the right way-because by using a structured environment we can become guitar players, not song players. We are learning the chords and their forms all over the guitar so that once we hear something and know its a dmaj7, we know how to form it instantly and where on the neck it should be formed.
As someone who has played other instruments for decades, I never saw people mocking another for learning theory alongside their ears, this seems to be something unique to guitar, and am glad that people like Justin Sandercoe, who is an outstanding player and learned by ear, exist and recognize that a structured learning platform based on theory plus ear training is the best means of becoming a complete player.
Those older players who sat listening to records and tapes and worked out what the guitarist was doing and are acting like martyrs for the cause don't engage me as a player; it is a different era and the 1960s and 70s are over.
I wish this thread I started did not get derailed as it has, but it is another example of what I DON'T like about the forum. On to other things...