Achieving Mastery!

[Sonics]

Despite what your teacher might tell you, playing 1 hour a day won't do it.
Playing 3 hours a day will take you about 10 years. If you're a professional musician, or your circumstances allows you time to practice 12 hours a day, then you can get there in 30 months. It takes that time to get the experience, according to Malcolm Gladwell...

[Wild Bill Jones]

I went to art school. Over the past 50 years I’ve put in a lot more time than that. Still nowhere near Michelangelo. Lot of time on the guitar too. Bryan Sutton doesn’t have to worry. But have I had fun? You bet!!

[Ludere]

Ok, now you're just bumming me out ...

[383]

No matter how much basketball I practice, I'll never be LeBron James. Some people have more natural talent than others, I believe I'm one of the others with no talent. I have fun though, so I'll keep plugging along.

[Mandobart]

Most of you know I'm an optimistic skeptic. Its worth taking a look at other points of view.

[Sonics]

Gladwell isn't the only one...

[Paddy1951]

The great jazz drummer, the late Buddy Rich, was asked about how much he practiced. He responded more or less that he didn't. But the rest of the mere mortals had to.

I think Tommy Emmanual may be the best living steel string guitar player around. Even he practices hours and hours.

There are the one in a million people in any endeavor. Talent certainly isn't distributed equally.

But most can enjoy and have fun.

[J. Scott]

I think that for most of us talent is a better predictor of a high level of proficiency. Every great musician that I have encountered seemed to be extremely talented.

[tbeltrans]

Stories of the "urban legend" type abound of the uncle who just sat down at the piano and suddenly played p a storm, shocking all those within earshot who knew him well and had no idea he was so talented.

Stories circulated about the "kid" Johnny Lang, the blues guitarist who suddenly appeared on the scene, having only played guitar two years and at 15 years old, was fronting a band of otherwise adult players. Then, digging a bit, the truth comes out that he had been playing for 10 years by then, and was being coached by relatives and their circle of friends, who were themselves proficient guitar players.

When people cite sports figures or many well known musicians at the higher levels, the story is pretty much the same. These people were recognized for their intense desire and that was fostered, and then they had GOOD coaches and teachers to help maximize their practice time so they were working on the right things, not spending too much or too little time on these, and generally being groomed to succeed.

To me, it seems that it is the intense focus and desire that seems front and center, so I don't think we really know how much raw talent lays into it. Here in the Twin Cities, one ball player who achieved professional stature was Kirby Puckett. He often talked about how physically, he had a "body like a seal", rather than that of a honed professional sports athlete, and that he spent many, many hours practicing long after his teammates went home. That story seems much more realistic and probably is much more common than that somebody just discovered s/he had "talent" and off they went to stardom.

We really want, and often seem to need, to believe that it is only the massively "talented" that achieve greatness, because that lets us off the hook instead of facing the fact that just maybe we don't have the desire to spend all those focused hours, and/or to seek and invest in professional coaches and teachers beyond the common music store variety to get us to where we are so driven as the one thing in our lives, to go.

For me, the guitar is but one small part of my life. As such, it doesn't matter to me that I don't play like <insert name of favorite player here>. Instead, I have retired early, after having a very good and respectable career as a software engineer, and have been able to pay all my wife's medical expenses over the years, pay off our mortgage early, and live responsibly debt free (both of us having graduated without student loans by working our ways through college). That, to me, is just as much "success" as anything that could make the media headlines. I had my two years as a full time musician in a road band earlier in life, and it was fun for a while, but I chose to pursue another life and have long been content with that. I know I am not the only one here who has accomplished that, so hopefully others here will recognize their own accomplishments and keep the guitar part of their lives in perspective.

Guitar can be very enjoyable regardless of how well we do or don't play, and anyone with average ability can become quite good with the proper instruction, direction, and even an hour or so a day to practice. It happens over a lengthy period of time, but if the process is enjoyable, so will playing at every new level you reach. If it isn't like that for you, then maybe some other avocation would be a better pursuit. To me, asking questions about talent and how long will it take, are signs that maybe the journey isn't as enjoyable as it should be for an avocation.

Tony

I did the whole 10,000 hours+ thing. Did I get better? Yes. Did I achieve "mastery"? Maybe in some small ways. Does it really matter? Nope.

[Dog Shape Cloud]

Originally Posted by tbeltrans

We really want, and often seem to need, to believe that it is only the massively "talented" that achieve greatness, because that lets us off the hook instead of facing the fact that just maybe we don't have the desire to spend all those focused hours, and/or to seek and invest in professional coaches and teachers beyond the common music store variety to get us to where we are so driven as the one thing in our lives, to go.

Quite so. But I'd add that the idea of "mastery" as some distinct yet nebulous, simultaneously attainable and far off goal (e.g. 10,000 hours, which is counterproductive nonsense for all intents and purposes, and has been soundly and repeatedly debunked, including by the people who conducted the original study, who say Gladwell didn't really understand their results) can also all too often serve as a disingenuous excuse to avoid leaving our comfort zone.

It's true that people take different routes to wherever they're going, but the "natural" who never needed a lick of study and the "great master" who practiced 8 hours a day for decades under a freezing waterfall are both ultimately fictional characters, who can either serve as useful lessons or, less happily, remain backdrops onto which we project our personal insecurities and fantasies instead of overcoming or traversing them. Beyond a certain baseline, what matter are focus and determination (and a generous amount of not giving a $#!%), not time or talent.

[Arthur Blake]

Haven't read the book, but pretty sure he just made that up, or it is an estimate.

Why is it 10,000 and not 8,253 or 9,042.

I do know one thing for sure -- one of my favorite things is finding new and better ways to play -- even one tiny improvement, and so far, I keep finding them.

[billyboy1962]

Best advice I ever heard about wanting to improve guitar skills...

“Start 5 years ago”

[tippy5]

I took an art history class that declared that Japanese Calligraphy masters take 20 years to be a "Master".

[Golffishny]

In my mid 20's I was told I had a "natural" golf swing. No one saw the thousands of hours and the several hundred thousand balls I hit in specific tasks of deliberate practice to get it there. The world is full of "overnight sensations" who have been working diligently for 10 years or more. Some people don't want to accept that excellence is within their reach, but they still have to grasp it on their own. You may not reach world class, but you can go farther than you may realize. I've made similar improvements in bowling, basketball, music and academics. They all take work.