How long did it all take to Click????

I've been playing seriously for about a year and a half. I still feel miles away. Part of that may be limited practice time due to family contstraints. But most of it, IMHO, is that there is so much to learn. So many different songs and styles. Just one man's opinion though. I hope it goes quicker for you.

This will be different for everyone - depending on inherent talent, previous musical experience, access to teachers and other guitar players and, probably most importantly, the amount of time and discipline devoted to practice.

I am with Bgdaddy - been playing for about 10 months and, while I have made a lot of progress, I am still far from where I want to be. I don't make enough practice time and when I do I am usually tired and not pushing myself hard enough to make quick progress. On the other hand, I really look forward to the time I do get and I enjoy playing what little I can at this point. I know eventually it will come and the most important thing to me now is to keep learning and having fun with it.

Decide what your goals are and stick with it...

Short answer - when picking your guitar up and playing seems as easy and natural as picking up a pen and writing your name.

Long answer.....I've been playing on and off for about 30 years or so now and it still hasn't all come together! This time around though, I've been playing around five years and taking it very seriously - and in those five years, I've learned a lot of theory (and still got a hell of a lot more to learn!) improved a lot as a guitarist and songwriter (well I like to think so, anyway!) and sometimes even surprise myself!

After a while, like everything else, you begin to develop your own style, your own way of doing things - they might not work, or seem unwieldy to someone else, but they seem natural to you. That style, or method, is instinctive - it's you, subconsciously filtering all the advice you've been given and adapting it for your own use. That's when it STARTS to all click into place - I'm not sure that everything ever does all come together in some grand unified cosmic guitar plan.

Ask the real musicians (D Hodge, Noteboat, Kingpatzer, Fretsource to name but a few) on this site if it's "all clicked together" and they'll probably tell you, "I'm still learning - there's always something new to learn!"

That may seem a little negative and downbeat - it isn't meant to be. Even the newest of guitar players will have days when it feels like the music's flowing from his brain through his fingers into his sensory pleasure receptors via his guitar! And there'll be days when the guitar's just a plank with wires....trick is, enjoy the good days and forget the bad days.

It hasn't ALL clicked into place yet - but there are days when it feels like I'm getting somewhere, and the bad days seem pretty few and far between - and hey, I still love playing guitar, so I must be doing something right!

And to go back to the short answer - how long DID it take for your childish scribbles to develop into YOUR recognisable signature? From scrawl, to recognisable writing, to cursive, to developing your own unique handwriting style? Guitar playing's like that - from those early fumbling attempts to a nice relaxed playing style, it takes time to evolve.

Until it does, enjoy the good days and forget the bad ones!

:D :D :D

Vic

I think you get a series of click-moments over the time you've been playing. And that's a good thing, it means you're taking your playing to new plateuas each time you, um, click. Music is a constant progression. :wink:

I'm with Scrybe, there's a lot of Clicking to be done lol
... 1st song ever played, 1st song "arrangement" (without the David Hodge step-by-step explanation :wink: ), 1st song that actually sounded like the song :lol:
The 2 month mark was pretty big, it all started to come together (15 months thus far and counting!) but the most helpful thing (in my case ) was to let go of expectation (other than to learn some simple songs EVENTUALLY) and just let it happen :wink:

clicking does not stop. there are long endless intervals between clicks. I hate that. there are minor clicks...like 'aha' or 'oh that's what that is' . there are medium clicks where one jumops up and down with excitment..and then there are golden clicks. those are rare. I only had one of those. it took forty years. that click Vic alluded to...your own style.

Not much more than a half second.

I've been playing for five years, learned a truckload of theory, wrote and recorded over 150 songs, played in a fair number of bands, performed live and still havent had that click moment. Forget about it, there'll never be an ultimate click moment where you know it all. Just rock on and enjoy the present.

Besides that click could be a loaded gun.

rofl

just when you think it clicks you find out otherwise. watch, you'll see. all clicks are temporary.

just when you think it clicks you find out otherwise. watch, you'll see. all clicks are temporary.

Ah, but to quote Stephen King, "Sometimes they come back!"

:D :D :D

Vic

Clicks are the intermittent payoff of practice. Kind of like gambling gives intermittent payouts.

I think it starts with a piece that you're pretty proud of. Then you work on another and eventually get that one. And then you go back and improve the first one. And add another. And another and another.

I've got one song I've been working on regularly for about 35 years. I do it well but I also continue to improve.

Lately I've been working on a couple of pieces that are pretty far over my head. They are full of nice riffs and transitions and moves that are very different for me and looked darn near impossible at first. Each little move that goes from a very slow painful finding-it-there series to being stored in executable memory is a form of click- like reading a paragraph or chapter in a good book.

There isn't likely to be a moment where you realize you know it all. But there will be moments of victory where you realize you can do THAT.... and that.... and that... and it adds up to something pretty cool.

Enjoy the journey because it has no end. There's always something more.

i agree with all those people who say there are many clicks

eg i've been learning about pentatonic scales and the other day i finally employed 3 patterns which covered the fretboard, i could solo over a chord progression using the three patterns, so that is when it clicked for me

but theres still a LONG way to go! :)