TOP 10 GUITAR LESSONS MYTH #8| You Either Have Talent or You Don’t | FALSE!
In guitar lessons I deal with the core assumption that can really impede your progress: “Well I wasn’t born with musical talent so I’m not sure how much of this I’m going to be able to do.” I don’t have the kind of talent that Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix or whoever has so I don’t know how well I’ll be able to play.” The myth of “talent” is a really interesting one because we all believe that you either have musical talent or you don’t: at some point I think all of us have thought that. But as more research actually shows, excellence and mastery of anything really has to do with the amount of time invested and the critical “tipping point” to borrow from Malcolm Gladwell is 10,000 hours invested.This has profound implications for guitar instruction .
Invest 10,000 hours into anything and suddenly you are an expert and the research quoted is really fascinating. They do studies on violinists and they look at the ones who were acceptable, and then the ones who were good enough to get the teaching job to work in academics, all the way up to the ones who were performing at the highest level and getting critical acclaim. And without exception, it was completely a function of how much practice each group invested. According to Gladwell’s book, there actually were no exceptions to this! In other words the person that may have had a natural proclivity or seemed to be more “talented” in fact just practiced a lot more than the other people in the other groups did. Another Book called “This is your brain on music” promotes the same thesis and this has a lot of implications for guitar students taking guitar lessons.
None other than distinguished actor Harrison Ford says that 90% of what he does his craftsmanship only 10% of his acting is actually “art” or creativity. This means really anyone can learn the skills and what separates “average” from “good” and “great” is simply a function of hours invested. In fact when I was in med school which I did some time ago for the first two years of it before deciding to change career course, we actually got to disscet the brain of a virtuoso violinist who had donated his body to science. And what the professors told us was the part of the motor cortex that controls the hand and was actually enlarged relative to the average person. So there is a neurophysiological change that goes on as we practice guitar: it develops those motor neuron connections in more sophisticated ways. So I really can’t stress enough to decouple yourself from the social conditioning once again that talent is what matters; it simply doesn’t and the quote from President Woodrow Wilson really speaks to that. If you only take one thing from your time with me learning guitar , if you remember nothing else from guitar lessons , I hope it’s not a scale or lick or your favorite song. I hope it will be this quote.
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; un- rewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan press on has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
SOURCE ULTIMATE-GUITAR.COM
Guitarist Proves That Djent, Jazz, and Funk Can Be Combined With Brilliant Results
Spanish guitarist Mike Le Rossetti is a highly skilled axe-wielder who demonstrated that seemingly completely different music genres can be combined with killer results.
Specifically, Mike took djent, jazz and funk, and mixed ’em up in an appropriately-titled ditty “Djent Jazz Funk.”
“I really enjoy playing these three music styles, so why not mix them?” he rightfully asks.
The song sees Mr. Le Rosetti jamming on his 8-string guitar, utilizing a variety of playing techniques such as slap, tapping, bass guitar-like finger picking, a pinch of shredding and more.
To give credit where credit is due, we’d like to thank UG user LightxGrenade for pointing this video out in one of the recent news updates. You can check out the clip below.
TOP 10 GUITAR LESSONS MYTH #7 | I’m Too Old To Learn Guitar | FALSE!
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.” • Henry Ford
The idea that anyone is too old to play guitar. well, it is simply not true. American media is obsessed with youth in a way that no other country is: only in America are you told that your best days are behind you at age 30! The rest of the world by and large views age as irrelevant. I work with all ages from eight years old to people who are enjoying retirement. And while it’s true that I have mentored child prodigies who had a natural gift for music and were guided to it by parents at a very early age, some of the most successful guitar students I have ever worked with are baby boomers in their 40s. It’s a bit like the varsity quarterback and homecoming queen in high school and then 10 years later at the reunion, they’re both overweight and working a dead end job. Complacency and contentment are the great enemies of success! One of the reasons I think “older” (read: more mature) do so well in guitar lessons is that you’re very often dealing with people who have experienced a lot of success elsewhere in life. And so they went out, built the great career in business, corporate or entrepreneurial, built a family, did all these things and there the guitar sits in the corner.
And one day, they will go over and see it there and say “I really don’t want to give that up” and then the Bob Seger song starts playing in their mind: “Come back baby rock-and-roll never forgets.” And they go “You know I’m not giving this up, I can do this! When you have someone that’s focused like that – at any age – well, hard work and focus is the name of the game. You really can’t stop someone like that from being successful. So what I really try to stress to everyone as a guitar teacher is to just disconnect from the social conditioning we’re bombarded with: this idea that once you get the age of 30 you have nothing to say musically anymore because the music industry sees you as “old.” Well, that’s a funny thing coming from them because they sound old and crotchety now: That music industry in all its “youthful” “brilliance” is what took a successful iconic business and drove it right over the cliff with its refusal to embrace the digital age via Napster etc. etc. Time and again, it’s been proven these people simply most of the time do not know what they’re doing and countless artists that became mega successful: Van Halen, Ozzy, Poison, Meatloaf, ad infinitum were turned down 20 times by every record label.
Being a “rock star” is about freeing your mind to do what you want, on your own terms, to do it your way, and to get there in a reasonable amount of time, with your own hard work and determination. And not to let anyone tell you it cannot be done! I taught a child prodigy who was eight, many who were 10 and 11, lots of ambitious teenagers, touring people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and baby boomers in the business world. The “oldest” person I taught was a semi retired cardio thoracic surgeon in the military. He had way more energy and drive than most people in their 20s: he still gave physicals a couple times a week at the VA hospital he took up the guitar – his wife was a singer and I taught him for a couple years. He started touring in the church playing acoustic folk guitar accompanying his wife. He was 82 years old. Les Paul played until he was 91. BB King played until 86. Jeff Beck is at the top of his game playing better than ever and you can name countless examples of others doing the same, never letting “age” or rather society’s perception of it – get in the way. And you shouldn’t either! You might not be able to go out there and play pro football anymore and get your head bashed in, but chances are you are actually way smarter and wiser now and that is one of the greatest assets of all when it comes to long-term success. Your age and wisdom are weapons in your success arsenal for guitar lessons in atlanta. Use them!
Copyright © 2009-2012 Eprom. All Rights Reserved.