Keep it simple

It has become clear that choice is not what it is cracked up to be. Choice was always the flagship of marketing whether it is a number of TV channels, the treatment options for health or what we can buy in a supermarket, but in reality it has become a curse. We are drowning in choice and it leads to confusion and lack of decision and certainly contributes directly to a lack of staying power required to learn.

With regard to learning musical instruments such as the guitar there are so many lessons and technical videos out there anybody wanting to learn will literally drown in them. I am not sure that it works at all particularly if you are starting out. In the past there was a lack of information so if you got a scale, some chords or small solo from a recording you spent a lot of time on that small amount of information and really got into your fingers before moving on and that is what scarcity did, it made you a better player.

The people that are supplying this information free have contributed to its devaluation so unless one puts a value to something it is not taken seriously. This is a problem for people teaching where the value of information has been devalued by oversupply. The fact that there is more out there does not necessarily make it better, often information is directly related to the need someone has for it. Sometimes people just aren’t ready for certain things.

Before we can have complexity we must have the basics, something that we can build upon and make sense of. The information that follows builds on the basics which if learnt act as good foundations because without them whatever follows will not hold.

What is it that you need to know to play an instrument? It is now quite common to find somebody playing the electric guitar who have some complex technical skills but they don’t know the basic chords or the basic scales that are required to map out the fretboard. Joe Satriani tells the story of somebody who came for lessons who could play guitar solos by the band Anthrax but did not know any chords. I have experienced this as well with a new pupil playing fragments of Metallica solos and part of Eddie Van Halen’s Eruption solo but knowing no major or minor chords unless they are in a song that he was playing by rote.

How good were the old rock and roll and blues players and how much did they know? Probably the answer to this is that the old players didn’t know very much technically, probably not very much in terms of scales and chords and techniques but what they had they used well, and that is the point, we know too much and what we have is of little use or benefit.

So less is definitely more.

Vic www.bluescampuk.co.uk learn to play in a band in 3 days