Guitarist Levels, Your path to 1000 hours Options

[DarkWaveRiffer]

I think its safe to safe if you have a 1000 hours under your belt, you have a good understanding of what you are doing. I am going to be using this for my progress. I have come up with a fun way of reaching goals. I would like to invite the instructors to give their input, but I have come up with dividing up the hours from 0-1000 into 7 levels.

Hours Title
0-10 Guitar Hero Defector
11-50 Air Guitarist
51-100 Guitar Not A Zero
101-300 Ax Grinder
301-500 Shred N Butter Man
501-750 Guitar Virtu-So-So
751-1000 Guitar Hero

What I would like to know is given the average person what things should the know at the various levels? Do you think we could quantify? I like the idea of having a measuring stick to strive to meet, and beat. I have made the hours not to be too long between titles. People can get to Ax Grinder pretty fast. We could create a chart to show what kind of techniques, scales, chords, songs would be equivalent at this level. We could take this beyond 1000 hours, if others who are past this want to develop this further.

To me, its about the practice time, the good practice time. I can riff away aimlessly and not get better. I think if we record, observe, and evaluate our practice time. We will see great strides in progress. We all know its not how long you have owned a guitar, or had access to one, but how long you have been playing, and pushing yourself to get better.I would like to hear your thoughts. I think this could be a lot of fun.

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[DarkWaveRiffer]

I would probably double my practice time if I didn't read, and reply to the forum so much. lol But it does fuel my desire to play.
Great points, and I am going to, and do practice regardless of levels, and titles. I just thought this would be a fresh, and fun way of approaching practice, and also see how hours practicing really make a difference. I am an engineer by trade, but I have a strong creative streak, and I often times feel like the black sheep there. I approach my engineering creatively, and I also see merit in bringing some engineering methodology to my music endeavors. I know from a pure technique stand point, applying those principles can have you practicing more efficient, and progressing faster.

My mind asks the question, all things being equal, such as skill, access to information, and feedback, two guitarists learning hammer on techniques, both applying the techniques they learned from the same instructional exercise, how many hours would it take for them to play the exercise at cleanly, and what would the BPM of the exercise be at. Controlling such conditions, given enough data points, you would definitely see a trend.

Let me be clear on my motives, through my own journey of learning to play guitar, I want to analyze how do I practice, and progress efficiently, and steadily. Also by my experimentation, and asking these questions will get others to think about these things as well.

Where it becomes tricky is the creative application of the techniques, but by controlling your practice, you develop your vocal vocabulary so you can have more to apply, and experiment with. We all want to express ourselves, and all of us here have chosen guitar to express ourselves. It really about developing the tools to express yourself the way you want. Some do it more organically. They learn a song, or part of a song, play it to the point where they learn some of the techniques, pick up more songs, more techniques, and given enough desire they continue through the rough spots, if they selected a really hard song, where most would have likely given up.Or you can define the variables you can control, tweak them, check the results, compare them to your expectations, tweak them, and come up with something a little more predictable.

Ben, I like your analogy of guitar to a the perfect statue, or perfect guitar player all of us are, but we need to chip at it (practice) and reveal it. Things changed for me, when I realized, and made up my mind that guitar would be a life time thing for me. Its where I find comfort, and often revelation. So a lot of the answers to our questions about guitar lie in playing, and listening to what your guitar tells you.

I guess to sum up the whole reason for this thread. I like milestones. Short term, and long term. Creating some common milestones that people can competitively reach for, gives extra motivation to practice more, and also its nice to share the journey. Which is why most of us are here.

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