Something Advanced Musicians Don't Understand
This post will be best understood by people who have been learning a stringed instrument for at least a year.
I recently started my 11th grade in college (the system is a little different where I live, so just accept it). There's different clubs in college, and I've signed up for a club as a performer.
Today I had to go for an audition for one of the inter-collegiate events coming up. I was looking forward to this audition, because I knew I would nail it, but things didn't go exactly the way I thought they would. The person who took my audition (let's name him A) was a part of the club, and a fellow organiser and performer.
For the audition, I carried my acoustic guitar. They didn't have an amplifier, so I couldn't use their electric guitar or bring my own (I didn't carry my amplifier because I was traveling in a train, very inconvenient).
He asked me to play something. I told him I had just started working on 'Rain' by Vinnie Moore. I took my bluetooth speaker out of my backpack and started playing the backing track for the song.
When you play a song like Rain, it has very light picking, and it was obviously played on an electric guitar, and if I would pick the acoustic hard so every note could be heard, it would take away the feel from the song. I did light picking anyway. I'd rather have some notes inaudible than having the whole song sound like it was played by a beginner.
However, this wasn't taken very well by A. He thought my lead was weak, when it clearly wasn't. I came to realise that he had very little idea of the instrument and about the feel of music. If you're reading this, I don't mean any offence, you were really kind to me, but you just weren't able to realise that by letting a few notes be inaudible due to slides and bends, I was giving you the best quality of music that I could. Believe me, I could have made everything audible but you wouldn't like that either. I could pluck the strings as if they were my enemy, and you wouldn't like that.
What Does This Prove?
Most of you are convinced by now that this is a rant of some sort, and it is, but there is something I learnt from all this.
I don't know about you, but earlier I believed that the people who were considered advanced by most people were actually extremely good at what they did, but this isn't actually true.
The man I came across today, might know how to play some really fast riffs, he might know how to shred, he might know how to rock a stage, but he lacked basic understanding of emotion and feel in notes.
This clicked. I remember there was a boy who used to come to my guitar class, who really knew the guitar very well. He could play those notes like a dream. However, there was only one thing that he lacked. He lacked the understanding of the depth of notes, the meaning of plucking a string hard, and lightly grazing your pick across the string. He lacked a sense of emotion in notes.
If you consider yourself an advanced musician, think again. Have you really understood the depth of notes?
I recently started my 11th grade in college (the system is a little different where I live, so just accept it). There's different clubs in college, and I've signed up for a club as a performer.
Today I had to go for an audition for one of the inter-collegiate events coming up. I was looking forward to this audition, because I knew I would nail it, but things didn't go exactly the way I thought they would. The person who took my audition (let's name him A) was a part of the club, and a fellow organiser and performer.
For the audition, I carried my acoustic guitar. They didn't have an amplifier, so I couldn't use their electric guitar or bring my own (I didn't carry my amplifier because I was traveling in a train, very inconvenient).
He asked me to play something. I told him I had just started working on 'Rain' by Vinnie Moore. I took my bluetooth speaker out of my backpack and started playing the backing track for the song.
When you play a song like Rain, it has very light picking, and it was obviously played on an electric guitar, and if I would pick the acoustic hard so every note could be heard, it would take away the feel from the song. I did light picking anyway. I'd rather have some notes inaudible than having the whole song sound like it was played by a beginner.
However, this wasn't taken very well by A. He thought my lead was weak, when it clearly wasn't. I came to realise that he had very little idea of the instrument and about the feel of music. If you're reading this, I don't mean any offence, you were really kind to me, but you just weren't able to realise that by letting a few notes be inaudible due to slides and bends, I was giving you the best quality of music that I could. Believe me, I could have made everything audible but you wouldn't like that either. I could pluck the strings as if they were my enemy, and you wouldn't like that.
What Does This Prove?
Most of you are convinced by now that this is a rant of some sort, and it is, but there is something I learnt from all this.
I don't know about you, but earlier I believed that the people who were considered advanced by most people were actually extremely good at what they did, but this isn't actually true.
The man I came across today, might know how to play some really fast riffs, he might know how to shred, he might know how to rock a stage, but he lacked basic understanding of emotion and feel in notes.
This clicked. I remember there was a boy who used to come to my guitar class, who really knew the guitar very well. He could play those notes like a dream. However, there was only one thing that he lacked. He lacked the understanding of the depth of notes, the meaning of plucking a string hard, and lightly grazing your pick across the string. He lacked a sense of emotion in notes.
If you consider yourself an advanced musician, think again. Have you really understood the depth of notes?
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