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Your Growth As A Guitarist: Vertical Or Horizontal?
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Stephen Maxwell
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Aug 16, 2000 17:15 PDT
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Your Growth as a guitarist: vertical or horizontal?
By Jamey Andreas
As the years go by in the life of a player, there are
two kinds of
growth we
can experience. Both are necessary for our development
as musicians and
guitarists. I call them Vertical Growth, and
Horizontal Growth.
Here is a common scenario. A person comes in for
lessons after already
playing for awhile. Maybe they have played for a year,
maybe a few
years,
maybe many years. I say, "play something for me,
something you are
comfortable with". Now a few different things may
happen. They may play
nicely, strumming and singing, maybe even throw in a
few runs. So I see
that
for the level they are at, they play well. I then try
to find out what
they
are here for. "What do you want to do, that you find
you can't do."
They may say "Well, I play lots of things, but I play
them all the same
way.
I want to learn how to do chord melody solos, more
interesting chords
and
strums, and also improve my fingerpicking so I can try
some
classical.". In
other words, they want to move to a higher level as a
player. They want
to
make VERTICAL GROWTH.
They don't want to continue to learn new songs and
play them the same
way.
That would be HORIZONTAL GROWTH. Everyone can always
make Horizontal
Growth,
even on their own. You just learn more material, but
you don't actually
play
any differently, musically or technically.
Vertical progress as a player is the tough one. It
requires what is
usually
considered "work", although I have always found it
enjoyable, although
challenging.
Here is another even more common scenario. Someone
comes in for lessons
after
playing for awhile, and when I ask them to play, they
make a couple of
excuses, and then they play really badly! Then I ask
them to play
something
else, and they play that really badly! This is the
person unable to
create
Vertical Growth. The reason they cannot raise their
level as a player,
is
because THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO PRACTICE TO SOLVE
PROBLEMS AND ACHIEVE
RESULTS! Also, because of this, there is no solid
foundation of
technique for
Vertical Growth to be built upon. So there is only
Horizontal Growth,
more
things played the same way, in this case, badly.
Do you know how many young players I've seen who play
only the
beginning of a
hundred songs, and play them badly? Lots.
Or how many people playing classical who go from piece
to piece,
struggling
with and mutilating pieces as they go? Lots. It is
sad, and
unnecessary.
If you love the guitar, and are dedicated to your own
development as a
player, if you are dying to play the way the
guitarists you admire
play, you
must know how to create Vertical Growth. This is done
through an
understanding of HOW TO PRACTICE. I am of course
talking about REAL
PRACTICE,
not repetitive "run throughs" that only re-enforce the
muscle tensions
causing the problems you already have.
| | From my experience as a player and as a teacher, it is
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extremely
difficult to
create Vertical Growth, once bad, or insufficient
practice has locked
in
tension and bad habits. The good news is, it is not
impossible. In
fact, the
word difficult is not the best word. I use it only
because we have such
a
tendency to under-estimate the intensity of
concentration it takes to
undo
past damage. A better word is challenging. And if you
want to keep
getting
better and better as a guitarist, you'd better learn
to love
challenges! As
Mark Twain said "Life is one damn thing after
another", and that is
what
playing and practicing are. One damn problem to deal
with after
another.
But as we learn to actually deal with and solve those
problems, what a
sweet
reward we earn.
In fact, it is not the problems we face in our playing
that are really
the
obstacle to our growth. It is the growing feeling of
frustration and
helplessness we experience as time continues to go by,
and we see no
fundamental improvement. We start to feel helpless. We
may not admit
this
feeling to ourselves, we only notice that, for some
reason, we are
beginning
to lose our motivation to practice.
When we learn how to really practice, we start to feel
powerful.
Problems and
challenges don't frighten us, they excite us. Because
we know that we
can
look forward to those problems getting smaller and
smaller, weaker and
weaker, as we continue to apply the Principles of
Correct Practice.
It is important to realize that the quality of our
Vertical Growth
determines
the quality of our Horizontal Growth. Any ability we
have gained as
players
has been our Vertical Growth. If our Vertical Growth
has been shaky,
with
weaknesses built in, (which was true of myself, and I
think, most
players),
that shakiness will be in everything we play, so our
Horizontal Growth
doesn't do us much good, it just keeps us busy,
feeling like we are
making
progress because we are learning a new song or piece.
This is why so
many
teachers turn the page and assign new material to a
student, even
though the
student can't play the material from this week. The
teacher doesn't
really
know how to create Vertical Growth, and so is trying
to keep a feeling
of
movement going. Most students, if they are paying
attention, will catch
on to
this.
If Vertical Growth is strong, than all new material
learned will be
strong,
and will help you grow as a musician, as you absorb
new music, and are
able
to play it well. This is the kind of Horizontal Growth
we want.
If you want to learn how to have this Vertical Growth
as a regular
experience
for you, I invite you to visit <A
HREF=3D"http://www.guitarprinciples.com">www.g
uitarprinciples.com,</A> and learn more about "The
Principles of
Correct
Practice for Guitar". It is the approach I have found
to work for
myself, for
my students, and anyone else who actually understands
it, and uses it.
copyright 2000 by Jamey Andreas (www.guitarprinciples.com)
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