[dabluz]

here's a little story that really illustrates the value of basics and technique. i play fingerstyle delta blues guitar. i thought long ago when i mastered alternating bass thumb technique independent of my fingers picking out the melody i had arrived at the gates of blues heaven. recently i've been focusing on slide guitar. my friends and fellow musicians would say "your pretty good" but i was stuck in a rut, couldn't get where i wanted to be. So i got the bright idea of taking some lessons from a "REALLY GREAT SLIDE PLAYER"

i showed up for my first lesson and was ask to play something. ok, how about come on in my kitchen. when done the teacher said "that was pretty good", however "thats all you'll ever be is pretty good". he proceeded to play it GREAT. it was all about technique, his technique produced a beautiful piece of music, mine produced a pretty good piece of music.

needless to say, i'm starting over with my slide playing, working on day 1 technique from scratch till i master it. then go to step two of technique till i master that and so on. it's all to easy in this or any sport to blow right by the basics and end up a pretty good player, but as my teacher said, never a great player.

the moral of the story, especially if a beginner. master technique first.

[Chaotic Kittie]

Too true... I'm going back to ultimate basics myself right now, working on stuff much like the very basic beginner stuff on this forum, and I've played for 1,5 years or so. Technically, I've grown a lot, I can do a s**tload of stuff... and yet I can't do them, because I didn't learn the basics properly.

For some things I guess I could blame my last guitar teacher, for not telling me I was doing wrong when taking chords. He was one of those never to criticize, always just said "that's very good" even though it obviously wasn't. Now I have to do those simple chord progressions that are the very first things you learn... I have to relearn to do them, and to do them RELAXED, which I never did at first.

So I can play a lot of technically hard stuff, but at the same I can't, because I can't play them relaxed. I get tense throughout my entire body.

Well, I don't really complain, I don't mind how good I am, as long as I CAN play.
Strumming chords with 1 strum/beat might not be so fun to practice at my "stage", but at least it's a lot better than not being able to play at all!

[Bearz]

As a addendum - the moral of the story is also don't listen to anyone who tries to tell you you are not good enough to be a great player. If everyone listened to that nobody would get anywhere. One thing I learned as a guitar player is that there are many paths to any one thing. If we want to copy someone exactly note for note and emulate their feel, then maybe we can do this but hey, we got to find our own feel, and not a second hand version of someone else's music. Sometimes those who can emulate really well only do this because they cannot write a single original riff. Originality has its own greatness.