Okey after the recent ammount of posts and stuff about Yngwie and Pavels lesson I'm gonna write you the grand
How to give criticism and voice your opinion without coming of like a moron-guide. This is
not aimed at anyone it's just a little guide in case you are wondering if you are giving good criticism or if you are coming on like a numbwit.
Let's break down the phrase "Constructive Criticism" into two small patterns. We take the first word which is Constructive. The litteral meaning of the word means(the relevant meaning anyway) "to build up", "aimed to build up in a positive meaning" and/or "derived through perception". Fancy stuff but it basically means an opinion formed through ones perception in a positive spirit. Great, now what's criticism you may sit eagerly wondering - and that myfriend is what we are gonna answer next. Criticism means; "evalued review" or "verbal attack (aimed at somebody)". I like to stick with the first meaning of criticism since a "positive attack" sounds wierd. Wait, what did I just do there? That's right I put the two patterns together.
To make it more clear here's the tab:
Constructive - "derived through perception, to build up (positive meaning"
Criticism - "Evalued Review"
If we put them both together we get: "An evalued review derived through ones own perception in the purpose to build something up in a positive meaning".
Now if all that theory gets to your head we're gonna use some examples as well:
"You suck!" - Not constructive since it doesn't build up to anything even though it is derived from a perception of a matter at hand it just doesnt quite qualify. And it's not evalued, it's just a review. Too many flaws to be qualified.
This is not constructive criticism!"You lack a bit in playing ability but you make up for your lost technique with excellent phrasing! I especially liked this specific phrase of the song where you did a totally exotic phrasing. If you had just worked that sort of thinking into the earlier parts where you just tried to play like a speeddemon the whole thing would've been awesome" - If you're thinking "wow that's way to many words" don't worry we will have easier examples ahead. By containing both positive and negative comments this qualifies as an evalued review because there is a lot of though behind it. It's derived from our own perception because we liked a phrasing but thought the speedpicking was a bit off. To build it up in a positive meaning we urge the recipent to combine his phrasing which was so excellent to the a bit sloppy playing to get better overall quality and help him improve his playing.
"Your phrasing is total shit, your speedpicking is slow and sloppy and quite frankly your tone makes my ears bleed." - You can sense the negativity in this statement and it really doesn't bring anything positive to make up for the negative crap thrown at the recipent. As usual with comments this is formed from an opinion but it isn't put down to make it an evalued review. So in order to learn how to turn your feelings as posted in the beginning of this paragraph into a constructively written post I'm gonna show a few of my secret tips. First thing you have to do is write down what you want the reader to get out of your post, in this case we want to get through: bad phrasing, slow and sloppy technique and he sounds like crap. Not very nice stuff and there is nothing pointing out the good parts. Even so it could be turned into a bit more constructive points with just better use of the colorful language we all share.
First item on the list: bad phrasing.Ok so we did not care so much for how he phrased the licks, they might've sounded steril or boring so what do we do? We could say something like: "Your phrasing is a bit steril, try to lighten up while you play and have more fun. You could also check Kris's lesson to get more inspiration. WIth just a bit tweaking those licks will most likely rock!" - What we did here was say the same thing but with better language, we gave him some pointers to build up on in a positive way, we gave him the resource and finally the inspiration to check out and grow as a guitarist. Now that's constructive criticism!
Second item on the list: sloppy and slow technique.This one is a bit harder to get across in a friendly manner but we mustn't let our barbarian flame-feeling take control over our minds. So how do we help him instead of making him feel lousy? We use all teachers favorite words: "slow down" and "practice, practice, practice" and with a bit of manner you can turn those two phrases into a full sentence without anything negative in it. This can be your homework!
Third item on the list: sucky tone.Okey, so the tone actually made my ears bleed. In stead of just saying "oh hey btw your tone sucks" you might wanna ask what sort of gear he has, and then follow-up with tips on how to set the eq, distortion, reverb, other effects etc. in a more pleasing way or if you're not a techie you could always direct him to someone who knows or a page with information. And it could just be a bad mic on the recording side of the story and that's nothing that actually affect his playing and therefore can be totally irrelevant.
And there we go, if we put our new-found knowledge into practice we can transform it into a friendly post that still points out what we mean, but in a better and in a more educational way.
Okey, this concludes the first lesson in how to post a post without neccessarily start a flame-war. Be sure to practice each moment slowly with a metronome and you too will soon able to write as fluently as anybody else out there! Stay tuned for the next lesson, if there is one.
Peace.
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This post has been edited by Steelkonsum: Jan 25 2007, 09:04 PM
Steelkonsum Lesson: Constructive Criticism 101 Jan 25 2007, 09:04 PM
