Newsletter Vol. 2 # 103 – December 12, 2004
Welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News.
In This Issue
- News and Announcements
- New Articles and Lessons
- Sunday Songwriter’s Group
- Thoughts and Feedback
News And Announcements
Greetings!
Welcome to Guitar Noise News!
I hate to start out a newsletter, or any conversation, like this, but I think that we should take a moment and offer our thoughts to the family, friends and bandmates of Darrell Abbott, lead guitarist of Damageplan and Pantera, as well as to the families, friends and loved ones of the other people, simply fans attending a show, who were killed this week in Columbus, Ohio.
Situations like this tend to bring out both the worst and the best in people. It’s my hope that the readers of Guitar Noise can get beyond the music-genre baiting and bashing and instead be true pillars of support.
This week, we’re fortunate to get pieces from Tom Hess and Mike Walsh, both of which address a very important issue to most guitarists, that of education:
New Articles And Lessons
Do You Really Need A Teacher?
by Tom Hess
Tom examines this question, as he tends to look at everything, in a very thoughtful way. Not only does he look at the pros and cons musically, but he also discusses the many non-musical benefits that one can get from having a teacher.
Are Lessons And Music School Really Worth It?
by Mike Walsh
Mike returns to Guitar Noise with a very enthusiastic article I think most of you will find very informative. In these days where we put a lot of stock in gear and equipment, he tells us not to neglect the most important investment of all – your own skills and learning!
Sunday Songwriters Group
Year Three, Week 6
As previously mentioned, in the first weeks of SSG III we’re going to look at inspiration. We’ll try to find it in the strangest places. Places you’d never think of looking.
Eavesdropping: This week I want you to listen carefully to people and write a song about an overheard snippet of conversation. It may be that someone says something just as the room goes quiet or as you walk past a coffee shop. Either way try to write a song incorporating that snippet and fill in either side of it to complete the story it immediately brings to mind.
Good writing
Bob
Thoughts & Feedback
These past two months, I’ve been trying to answer a few questions send to me by one of our readers, especially since we get a variation on many of these ideas quite often. Here’s the last of this particular group. I hope you’ve enjoyed thinking about them as much as I have!
What pitfalls should I avoid as a beginning student?
As I wrote down the usual list of items that teachers tend to discuss when asked this question, I realized that most of them, if not all, could be lumped into a single category: Impatience. Perhaps this is a bit of my trying to lump a lot of stuff into a small and neat package, but I think that it is impatience, however it might be disguised, is at the root of a lot of frustration, for guitarists and many other people as well.
Think about it. In our brains, we can easily understand that, having picked up the guitar all of a week, month or year ago, we’re certainly not in the league of our favorite guitar idol. And, again in our brains, we pretty much know that couldn’t be otherwise.
But time after time we curse ourselves for not being as good as we could be. Of course, the “good as we could be” is often not rooted in much reality. I’ve discussed this in numerous articles in the past, such as If I Only Had… and I think, unfortunately, the whole concept of learning as a process, and a process to b treasured at that, is in danger of being lost.
And that, to me anyway, is the real problem: that our desire to be perfect, and instantly perfect at that, steals the joys and pleasures of learning from us.
This is one of the main reasons that I teach. I know that probably more than ninety-nine percent of my students are not going to become professional guitarists. But I fully intend that one hundred percent are going to be able to enjoy making whatever music pleases each of them.
It’s been said millions of times before and much more eloquently than I could ever hope to say it, music is not a competition. Making it so tends to bring about the frustration that most musicians feel and that frustration usually revolves around one’s impatience with the learning process.
You’re going to be playing music for the rest of your life. Take the time to enjoy and savor each moment of the trip. It’ll make you happier and, believe it or not, it will make you work harder at getting better. That’s what life’s all about.
I hope you all have a grand week. Stay safe.
And, as always,
Peace
David