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Posted by: Toroso Aug 30 2008, 02:50 AM

Jeez I have watched Ivan's video on muting, and paying really close attention now. I feel like I'm starting all over again... Oh well. I practically am. You guys are all so practiced, and I suck.

Posted by: Scott Gentzen Aug 30 2008, 04:24 AM

You're not the only one.

Actually, I've noticed that guitar players at all levels that say they suck. Problem is that we tend to forget how bad we used to be and keep looking higher. You go from thinking you suck cuz you can't play Kurt Cobain's stuff. Then you suck because you can't play Kirk Hammett's solos but forget that Smells Like Teen Spirit is easy now. As you get advanced, you look at Rusty Cooley and hear how much you suck again.

Bad cycle to get into. We all suck. Get over it and move on or I'll bring out the video of Kirk messing up Some Kind of Monster again.

Back to the muting thing, yeah, that was a really eye opening video for me too. It's a lot to keep track of when you start out, but he's right...if you slow down and stick with it, it really does tend to start becoming automatic. I'm still not as good at it as I'd like but I don't have to think about it as much as I used to.

Posted by: kjutte Aug 30 2008, 07:25 AM

But it's worth it

Posted by: wrk Aug 30 2008, 07:42 AM

It is completely normal to change your technic over time, this will lead to your own technic you feel comfortable with. It's not a start-over, its more a adaptation to technics you want to incorporate in your playing. Trying to do so means you progress, so you don't suck ..

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Aug 30 2008, 12:02 PM

There will be more points in time when you will have to change and adapt your techniques again mate, don't worry it's not that big of a deal. We all do that. Remember how you played a while ago or back when you were starting. I remember those days. Now that sucked indeed, I have some recordings! So the point is keep pushing, and keep a positive attitude, as soon as you start paying attention to muting during practice, it will very soon be visible in your playing, sooner than you may think.

Posted by: Marcus Siepen Aug 31 2008, 01:19 PM

Ivan is absolutely right, you way of playing will change many more times, but it will improve your playing for sure. We all start on a very low level, then we learn some things and get better, and this changes your way of playing. But you will NEVER reach the point when there are no new things to learn, there are always techniques that you can explore, new styles, so you can always improve and therefor change your way of playing.

Posted by: black and white Aug 31 2008, 01:49 PM

I would like to address the I suck syndrome. People tend to assume that learning occurs in a linear fashion. Unfortunately for people, animals too, this does not occur. The general pattern of learning occurs something like this...

Acclerated learning
Plateau
Dip
Repeat cycle forever....

All people start to learn a new skill and go through an accelerated period of improvement. Even new guitar players go through this. Learning to hold the guitar, tune the guitar, hold the pick and even strum your first chord and are all skills that are obtained very quickly. This period is generally accompanied by very high levels of motivation, fun and excitement.

The next period is generlly defined as a plateau. Learning becomes much slower as we are starting to master these skills, but not pick up new ones. This plateau period can be frustrating because we generally feel like we should be learning these new skills as fast as we picked up the initial skills in the accelerated period. Remember, organisms do not learn in a linear way and these plateau are NORMAL. Everyone experiences them. The plateaus can be frustrating and worse still, there can often be a small dip at the end of the plateau period where skills and motivation get worse. But do not worry, the dip is usually the first sign that the plateau period is ending and you are going to enter into another period of accelerated learning.

So how does one deal with this. There are a few keys that can help.

1 Recognize the pattern......accelerated learning, plateau, dip, accelerted learning, plateau, dip......repeat, repeat, repeat.........

2 When in a period of plateau, take a step back and play music that you are familiar with and can execute perfectly. Keep pushing forward with new things, but every once in a while, play something that makes you remember all of your previous accomplishments. Do this BEFORE you start to get frustrated.

3. Expect the dip. Do not be surprised if one day, you are messing up even easy things. It happens and everyone experiences this. Again, these dips usually occur just before you experience a quantum leap to another level.

Understanding how beings learn, can help you to maintain a positive attitude and a high level of motivation, which are the real keys to improvement. Anyway......beats breaking your guitar or lighting it on fire.