So you want to be a guitar player, a good one?
If you’re young and have reasonable intelligence, what I’m writing here will be of incredible use to you and in the long term will help you be not just a good guitar player but a great musician. It’s a surprise to some people that a good guitar player doesn’t equal a good musician.
Guitar players annoy me more than anyone else. As a guitar player who has played for thirty nine years I’m in a reasonable position to have an opinion that could easily be worth listening to. I have played with hundreds of guitar players of every imaginable standard, this expereience has enabled me to come to very sensible conclusions about what works and what doesn’t, who is easy to work with and who is a waste of time being with, what is musical and what sounds like crap.
There is one very, very, very simple ingredient that will sort players out immediately and when this is understood you will be able to make a snap decision on whether a musical venture is worth persuing. What that thing is, is the ability to listen. Here’s an example:
You arrive somewhere to work with a new band, you walk in, unpack and another player just starts playing and doesn’t even consider that there is another player in the room, even though they were the one that invited you in the first place. The player doesn’t look up, doesn’t communicate in any way, just keeps on going without even bothering to check whether they are too loud, whether their part is so overpowering that it’s impossible for anyone else to fit in the room, let alone add something that is musically valuable. This sort of scenario is what bothers me more than anything else (apart from playing out of time). And to be honest, the above scenario is very common.
Each new meeting with musicians is an opportunity to create something new, there is no need to rehash what has already been done week after week, month after month. If a musician does not take the time to understand the skills that each new player is bringing to a group, to listen to their approach and style, there is absolutely no chance of making what I call real music. The ability to listen is what will help a musician to know when to play and when not to play. If you just play non stop and don’t create any space to breathe it will become very uncomfortable for the other players.
It’s very easy to become a very skilled guitar player, it’s a no-brainer really, learn the right stuff, practice for hours and you’ll have a technique to die for and show off to other players that aren’t as good and were a lot lazier than you. But to become a great musician requires sensitivity, and by sensitivity I don’t mean learn to play softly or be timid; I mean quite simple to have a decent set of ears and be able to calculate whether what you are doing is really too much for a song when there are other players of around. For me, the more players there are, the more space and restraint is required, but that does not mean not to let loose when required. It just means to listen and allow different players or aspects of players come to the fore when necessarily. It’s a bit like when you sit in a conversation with a group of people, one person talks non stop, hogs the conversation, every one gets so tired of the one person talking and then at the end of the conversation the persion says “it was great talking with you”…. well the only one getting anything out of it is the person that likes the sound of their own voice, everyone else doesn’t want to ever see that person again.
I remember years ago talking to one of the worlds great jazz guitarists and about another exceptional guitar player, he said “…he’s a great player but he plays everyhing he knows in the one song.” That as a very true observation and after seeing the player play live and almost falling asleep, it was clear that the comment was very true.
This article was prompted by an experience that I had recently, and no I won’t be going back.
