Quitting My Job And Dedicating 8 Hours A Day For Practicing Guitar |
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Quitting My Job And Dedicating 8 Hours A Day For Practicing Guitar |
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Nov 15 2010, 07:44 PM |
Hi everybody,
This will be a long post so I put the idea in the title to get your attention because I really need your opinions and advice on this. On short: I want to save some money, give up my daily job and practice about 7-8 hours a day for one year. To me it's clear now, playing guitar is what I like to do the most and I never stopped dreaming that one day this is what I will do this for a living also. I know it is possible (even here in Eastern Europe) because I have lots of examples and I am willing to pay the price to get there, but for this, there is one essential condition: to be VERY GOOD at it. You don't need to be a guitar god but to be VERY GOOD at it. And here is the problem. I discovered this instrument (and all the related stuff) at 22 years old. Now I am 26. It's been almost 3 years now since I have taken practice seriously which means that I invested 90% of my free time to this. I tried to get to a an average of 4 hours a day for practice but, unfortunately these are after about 6-8 hours of programming which is what I do for a living for 6 years now. All this is starting to be really toxic because a have very little time to spend with my family and fiends, read a book, watch a movie and the list can go on and beside this, I kinda feel that most of the time was just wasted because you cannot really assimilate much after working a day in front of a computer. As a result: my skills are still pretty low. (you can check out my REC takes if you like: https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...p?showuser=8284 or https://www.youtube.com/alexandrugeorgescu) So, my plan is to save some money until around March next year that should last me for about 6 months, quit my job and start practicing 7-8 hours a day after a efficient agenda which I am sure I can find on GMC. Of course, to take some private lessons from a teacher in my town and there are some local bands which I can jam with. (I don't plan to practice alone for the whole time). So this will be the main activity of the day, just as I would have gone to a music school , and this way I will progress a lot better. I know I said 1 year in the beginning but the 6 six months will be a milestone because my fear is that I still don't know if I have real talent at this. All I know I that I like it more than anything else and I want to do this for the rest of my life. I keep blaming it on the lack of time and on tiredness but I don't want to lie to myself and figure out some stuff about me. (I am not in high school anymore, not even college so I it is about time . Anyway, if after 6 month of practicing like this I still feel that I am not too far from the level I am now, then.. maybe this isn't my thing after all, or maybe 22 years old it is just to late to start playing guitar. But if is the other way around then I will do anything I can to get another 4-6 month of practice like this. And maybe after one year I will have the necessary skills to join a let's say.. semi-professional band an develop from there on. And on. And oooooon, it's Heaven and Heeeell \m/ !!!. Ok, got a little carried away here . Anyway, rock and blues are the styles that I want to study. Would like jazz also but I haven't tried it before and I know that one year is not enough for this. I will approach it however. So, please tell me, am I crazy ? is this a good idea ? do you think that one year is enough to get to a decent level ? (please check my REC takes also before answering to this one so you can have an idea of where I am now). I know there are still lots to talk about, planing, etc but his was just the spark so.. please enlighten me -------------------- |
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Apr 30 2012, 09:44 AM
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Hi everybody, This will be a long post so I put the idea in the title to get your attention because I really need your opinions and advice on this. On short: I want to save some money, give up my daily job and practice about 7-8 hours a day for one year. To me it's clear now, playing guitar is what I like to do the most and I never stopped dreaming that one day this is what I will do this for a living also. I know it is possible (even here in Eastern Europe) because I have lots of examples and I am willing to pay the price to get there, but for this, there is one essential condition: to be VERY GOOD at it. You don't need to be a guitar god but to be VERY GOOD at it. And here is the problem. I discovered this instrument (and all the related stuff) at 22 years old. Now I am 26. It's been almost 3 years now since I have taken practice seriously which means that I invested 90% of my free time to this. I tried to get to a an average of 4 hours a day for practice but, unfortunately these are after about 6-8 hours of programming which is what I do for a living for 6 years now. All this is starting to be really toxic because a have very little time to spend with my family and fiends, read a book, watch a movie and the list can go on and beside this, I kinda feel that most of the time was just wasted because you cannot really assimilate much after working a day in front of a computer. As a result: my skills are still pretty low. (you can check out my REC takes if you like: https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...p?showuser=8284 or https://www.youtube.com/alexandrugeorgescu) So, my plan is to save some money until around March next year that should last me for about 6 months, quit my job and start practicing 7-8 hours a day after a efficient agenda which I am sure I can find on GMC. Of course, to take some private lessons from a teacher in my town and there are some local bands which I can jam with. (I don't plan to practice alone for the whole time). So this will be the main activity of the day, just as I would have gone to a music school , and this way I will progress a lot better. I know I said 1 year in the beginning but the 6 six months will be a milestone because my fear is that I still don't know if I have real talent at this. All I know I that I like it more than anything else and I want to do this for the rest of my life. I keep blaming it on the lack of time and on tiredness but I don't want to lie to myself and figure out some stuff about me. (I am not in high school anymore, not even college so I it is about time . Anyway, if after 6 month of practicing like this I still feel that I am not too far from the level I am now, then.. maybe this isn't my thing after all, or maybe 22 years old it is just to late to start playing guitar. But if is the other way around then I will do anything I can to get another 4-6 month of practice like this. And maybe after one year I will have the necessary skills to join a let's say.. semi-professional band an develop from there on. And on. And oooooon, it's Heaven and Heeeell \m/ !!!. Ok, got a little carried away here . Anyway, rock and blues are the styles that I want to study. Would like jazz also but I haven't tried it before and I know that one year is not enough for this. I will approach it however. So, please tell me, am I crazy ? is this a good idea ? do you think that one year is enough to get to a decent level ? (please check my REC takes also before answering to this one so you can have an idea of where I am now). I know there are still lots to talk about, planing, etc but his was just the spark so.. please enlighten me Think very carefully about what you're about to do. The idea of becoming great at guitar is really something quite like nothing else. However, you say you do a programming career and you have no time for family? Maybe it's the way you are approaching life. I work as a developer (Java & PHP). working 35.5 hours a week, naturally a light/middleweight developer this has a lot of priorities within the work place and often I am tired when I get home at approximately 7pm. That being said - after a while of working I assessed how much free time I actually had. Considering that going to bed at 12 was really just an average time (unless of course I've had a very stressful day in which case I'd go at like 10 / 11) for people I had about 30 minutes for supper and the remaining evening was spent with a few hours with the family and a few hours on the guitar. The weekends I would alternate, one weekend at the gym for a few hours the other weekend flying my plane (no, nothing special just a pitts aircraft). There was still LOADS of hours I had in between for guitar. Now, I'm not amazing at all, nothing like the chaps here. But when I was in a band we did accrue some cash from gigs and got some recognition in the few towns with a thousand or so follows on our facebook page. This is with a little dedication and thought to lifestyle. I'm sure this could be argued in your case that with more time you will be 'great'. But I don't think it's really something one should rush into thinking it will lead somewhere - I think things like this should be weaned into before actions such as this are taken. Either way, if you can afford it and it won't impede your future career in programming should this route fail, then go for it. But a year out of the technology field is quite risky as there will be people who can attain a lot of knowledge in a year and then be the top of their field making it very difficult to get back into. Mike |
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