The very first thing we imagine, when we hear about beginner guitar playing, is some sloppy & unbalanced sound output – especially if you’re @ intermediate or advanced level in music. And it is something we cannot control, due to the fact that we often forget we were once beginners too…
WHY IS THIS A MISTAKE?
- First of all, nobody wants to hear a beginner play guitar, because they want to “protect” themselves from bad music… or worse: good music in the wrong hands.
- Secondly, no beginner wants to perform for anybody else than their very familiar environment, because… well, see the first bullet
This is how you get a loophole, based on a seriously damaged image about reality.
And with this primitive way of thinking, we wouldn’t have any professional musicians on the planet.
The truth is that being a beginner doesn’t mean that you have to sound all sloppy and out of tempo; it rather means that you can play simple tunes.
As you may notice I didn’t say easy. A tune or a lick can be easy for me, but difficult for you. When we say that something is easy or not, we are always considering our experience, our perspective about a musical piece (in this case) and, mostly, our personal skills.
For example, you might be tented to state that a tune is easy or not being very influenced by your personal taste in music. Very often the jazz musician says: ‘Blues is easy (cause I don’t like it)’ and, in the same way, a rock musician states: ‘Jazz is difficult (cause it’s freaking me out and I’ve never tried it)’ and so on.
So EASY (or difficult) defines a more subjective approach and it’s a term we cannot use as a standard in a well-built methodology.
In the learning process we normally follow the arrow that goes from SIMPLE to COMPLEX.
And SIMPLE is not the same with BAD or SLOPPY; nor with EASY.
Now SIMPLE can be both easy and hard, depending on where you’re standing on your way from SIMPLE to COMPLEX.
Of course, SIMPLE can sound sloppy or bad if:
- you are not properly guided in your learning process
- you don’t practice the way you should or
- you don’t practice AT ALL
As you can see, if you are fitting any of the 4 bullets above, you most probably are that beginner that we were talking about at the top of this page. So why not DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT TODAY?