What is technique?

I think it does indeed mean different things depending on the context of the statement. To be sure, vibrato, bends, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, tremolo picking, etc. are indeed technique. The word "technique" comes from the Greek techne -- to make. So there are ways of "making" different sounds -- different techniques.

In the larger context, I think people say technique when they really mean style. They're speaking of the way a musician takes a piece of music and plays it expressively. And each artist will be somewhat idiosyncratic in this, employing a variety of techniques and employing them in a certain structure that reflects her playing -- a kind of grammar or syntax if you will. In the aggregate, that constitutes the musician's style -- her or his personal stamp on the musical material. That's style (or technique).

At least that's my take on it. Hope it made sense.

usually when people talk about technique with guitarists, its reffering to how well they attack each note, and is usually combined with metal shredding guitarists.

In context to guitar playing I've always seen it as being proficientcy at various skills. Bends, picking, hammer-on's, pull-offs, ect, ect.

As far as Hendrix goes... It's hard to say. He was notoriously inconsitient in his playing. One night he'ed be flaming and in the zone, the next he'ed sound out of tune, without a purpose, and overall bad. There's probably parts of his playing that you could criticize, but he made up his own little tricks and techniques to make up for it. He was a really experimental type of guy and not afraid to take risks, that's where he's pretty unique.

Highly varying responses.. hmm. Allow me to add some more variation.

When I think technique, I'm thinking sheer ability to accurately play an instrument. What I think of as technique exercises are simple little repeated licks that improve your accuracy, flexibility and speed.

From that stand point, Jimi would be an example of a player with poor technique: That is, he played sloppily. Players I would consider extremely technically proficient would be guys like John Petrucci, Joe Satriani, EVH, etc, they are extremely precise.

This is semantics, but I will add my interpretation. Technique is simply the mechanics of how one approaches and uses the instrument to create music. Technique should not be confused with the actual result -- the music produced. Nevertheless, when "people" rate technique, they often rate it by that result, because for most players there is some connection between how they execute and the sounds/music produced. But this is not a perfect correlation (examples to support this in a moment). People also tend to judge technique against the generally accepted standards for execution. For this definition, it is easy to give concrete examples of so-called "bad technique": thumb-around-the-neck grip, playing with the guitar around one's knees, using a pick on a classical guitar or bass, fingerstyle using only p and i.

Back to correlation between technique and results. It's not too difficult to find examples of people who are/were judged to have lousy technique (by generally accepted standards) yet produce excellent, enjoyable music (or other results). Here are some:

Dizzy Gillespie (puffed his cheeks, embouchure from heII)
Jimi (wrong grip, wrong posture, 'different' articulation of notes)
Arnold Palmer (sideways wacky golf swing -- okay, not a musician, but a perfect example)
Doug Kershaw "Ragin' Cajun" ("That there boy don't hold his fiddle right.")
Al Dimeola (plays classical with a pick)
EVH (ditto Al's issue -- is totally pick-bound for every style)
Stanley Clark (jazz geek, chest-high bass positioning -- once considered bad, now accepted)
Dick Fosbury (went over the high jump bar on his back, instead of doing the classically correct western crawl -- now "everyone" does it his way)
Jimmy Page (too low, too sloppy ... waaaay too sloppy)

Learning good technique will usually help a newbie get there faster, but if(s)he has an unsual way of doing something that produces very good results -- who cares?

But it all comes down to this: I don't care if Jimi used bad technique -- I don't listen to technique, I listen to music. His music and performances are great. OTOH, there are many guitarists who have mastered technique, but will never master the art of making good music.

-Greg

I second Greg on technique = mechanics. Technique to me is correct position; accurate timing; execution of things like vibrato, hammers, etc.; changing hand/finger positions without excess motion.... technique is the stuff that will assist you to play well. Some people play well with poor technique, and some people have very good technique without the ability to interpret a song in a musical manner.

The majority of good musicians have good technique. Accepted technique comes from emulating them. New techniques get added from time to time (like tapping, which was unheard of 30 years ago), and some old ones fall by the wayside - the best picking technique was once thought to be a downstroke every time you changed from one string to another, regardless of the direction. I don't know of anyone who teaches that today.

This is certainly a semantic issue. Considering that there were some different responses, I am going to guess my question wasn't completely dumb. I usually considered technique to be mechanics but reading different posts on GN, some were ambiguous on what "technique" they were refering to. More specifically, I was reading the "Who is Yngwie Malmsteem" topic and the use of technique varied along with whether or not he was a bit sloppy - I was confused because either Yngwie has great technique and isn't sloppy or despite being really fast, he is somewhat sloppy which means he has "not great" technique. Does my confusion make sense? I just humbly attempt to play and have minute knowledge about guitarists and the guitar so often I am not acquainted with the guitarist or his music that people are discussing. I am cleared up on how Jimi has good and bad technique. I am hoping I will at least fall into the bad technique/good musical expression category because I certainly will not be in the good technique/bad expression or for that matter good technique/good expression... sigh. My fave guitarist is Page, I love LZ, his sloppiness will always takes a back seat to writing songs like Kashmir. Don't worry, I will try to improve my technique, I personally hate when i play sloppily. Hmm.. that means I pretty much always hatewhen I am playing the guitar!

Thanks for all of your responses, they were definitely helpful.

Yes, your confusion makes sense, Purple.

I think semantics is a good description... to ramble on a bit (it's after 2am here, and I just got home from a gig, having a few beers to unwind...), words mostly describe things we see, and sometimes things we feel in the tactile sense. We can see a mountain, we can say a painting is a picture of a mountain, but we can't really see that night on Bald Mountain, even with Mickey Mouse's help in Fantasia.

We have some musical terms that have universally accepted meanings, like 'higher' and 'lower' for pitch - but we don't comprehend them without actually hearing the two. When we start talking about somebody having a 'fat' tone, we hit some very subjective issues.

Technique is probably a catch-all word for most of us. Having good technique means either a) that person could hold his own in a playing situation, or b) I can't for the life of me figure out how he gets that sound.

We've also got a shorthand of sorts, and in some ways it's personal to our experience. When I talk about somebody's 'chops', I really mean his or her ability to present a musical idea I relate to... maybe they're good at mechanics, maybe they're not - and maybe they didn't even intend to play what they did, but by happy accident it came out and impressed me - I still say it's good chops.

I sometimes say somebody's got big ears. I don't mean their piercings are dragging the lobes down to shoulder level, I mean that when I played with them, they took my musical ideas and wove the core into their own thing and threw it back at me. Somebody else listening might not make the correlation I do, and think the two melodies totally different. Maybe they are, and I'm just inserting my own head into what I hear. Who's to be the judge? They still have great chops and big ears to me, and that's what matters.

In the end, I think technique is a relative thing. If someone does something better/faster than I do, I might say their technique is better. On the other hand (referencing recent Clapton threads), if I can play everything they've done note-for-note, I won't think their technique is better. If my ego is big enough, I might even say that he doesn't have good technique.... he can't play as fast as I do, or whatever.

Carlos Santana. You hear one note, you know it's him playing. Maybe it's technique, maybe it's gear, maybe it's the gods choosing to smile on the son of a mariachi trumpet player the day he was born (I think that's what his father did, I could be wrong).

As a guitar teacher, I work on improving technique. The definition I use for that is improving mechanics so they can play something they didn't before. I don't teach fingerpicking the way Merle Travis did it - but that doesn't mean he had bad technique, it's just different from what I've found to work the best for me. Since Merle isn't one of my students, we haven't had to critique his style yet :)

Next time people start talking about technique and are ambiguous, I am going to ask they explain what they mean. I really am not as simple minded as I come across, I sware, most my friends think I am actually kind of smart. I promise!

Noteboat, how do you teach fingerpicking? I play thumb top three strings and then pointer, middle, and ring each get their own. I usually try not to break the "rules" except I have found some songs where I need to. How does Merle teach fingerpicking? I really don't know other styles of fingerpicking, I have heard of just a 2 finger approach.

Speaking of mechanics, should I try and keep my thumb in the middle of the back of the neck? I notice I sometimes place it on top. Sneaking in some questions that I don't feel like posting a new topic for :D

Thanks to everyone again.

Ah, the two finger approach (Carter Scratch), I have a friend that uses that method. It sounds like he's using ten fingers, simply amazing.

Merle (who used a thumbpick and bare fingers, if I'm not mistaken) used just index and middle. The hand moves around a lot.

The way I teach fingerpicking is thumb-index-middle-ring. Each of the fingers gets one string (index = 3rd, ring = 2nd, middle = 1st, thumb gets all three bass strings). On classical guitar I start out the same way, except for the labels - they're pulgar-indicio-medio-anular, because so much of the repertoire that's labeled is done in Spanish.

Once a classical student is comfortable with basic arpeggios similar to folk picking, we then add the equivalent of alternate strokes, doing I-M-I-M (then M-I... M-A...A-M patterns). After that, triplets: I-M-A, P-I-M. At this point, we've got to start moving the right hand around a lot... doing scales with thumb on strings 6-4 going up, alternate fingers down 1-4, then thumb on 5 and 6. Because all of the speed comes from your picking fingers, we work the basics of that a lot harder... things like accidentals I teach a lot later on to a classical student than a steel string one, because it's so much harder to get right hand independence than it is to do alternate picking.

I don't think you're simple minded... and I doubt anyone else here does either.

i dont see how you can call someone like page or hendrix sloppy?

i dont see how you can call someone like page or hendrix sloppy?

page and hendrix are both incredibly sloppy in their execution, but for the most part, it all turns out alright.

Here's a thread that's pretty similar question to this one. Except the specific question was on what is great guitar playing technique.

It's a massive thread so you'll no to be patient while it loads.

http://www.guitarprinciples.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=2&topic_id=9670