I often think, would I be a better guitarist now compared to back in the 70's when I firstly picked up a guitar? I'd say, probably not, as I've had years of internet opportunities to learn from.
...
I just tend to see people with a guitar and automatically think that they will be better than me, but now I'm thinking I'm no different to most people on here.
I'll keep on learning new stuff as long as I have blood in my veins and hope I can get a few "tricky" (to me) guitar parts learned before I pop my clogs.
Dixie, I totally identify with this. (I first picked up a guitar in the 80's, not the 70's, but otherwise....)
Now, as it happens, I do think I'd have been
a bit better if, back in about 1990, someone had sat me down with Troy Grady to help me understand my own picking technique, and Uncle Ben Eller to tell me why I suck at guitar.
I think I wasted a lot of time never quite understanding my pick-escape issues, and writing it off as solely a consequence of insufficient quickness of my whole nervous system. (I've never been terribly co-ordinated at sports, either.)
Now, don't get me wrong: I still believe that my nerves don't twitch quite as quickly as other peoples': Depending on the day, 600 n.p.m. is my practical limit even for tremolo picking a single note, and I get the impression that's kinda slow.
(If I flail uncontrolledly I can go higher, but for neatly grouped sixteenths and sextuplets, 600 n.p.m. is about the best I can do, playing with a metronome.)
But what's crazy is that as soon as I recognized that I was using a "downstroke escape" (upward pickslant) motion, and that all the others felt bizarre and uncomfortable to me, it explained the difference between the scale-sequences that I
could play at 550 n.p.m., and the ones that just ground to a halt at 400 n.p.m. And, by reworking the latter ones to start on an upstroke (or an extra note at the beginning to change pick direction), suddenly those patterns sped up to 450 n.p.m. If that had happened when I was twenty or thirty, instead of when I'm
fifty, I think there might have been more artistic freedom and less discouragement along the way. I think that could have made
some difference.
But, yeah, I have had plenty of opportunities. And I didn't
need to let discouragement get in my way. That's on me.
I totally identify with this statement, also: "I just tend to see people with a guitar and automatically think that they will be better than me...." Now, part of that's realistic: There just ARE people online who seem to have that slightly-faster muscle-twitch than I, or who figured out the pickslanting thing earlier, or who just naturally played with a better mechanic from the outset. But, a lot of folks on here are just trying to muddle through without the benefit of mutant nerve cells!
And, although it's a cliché, we (or, at least, I) have to remember: Although the inability to play certain songs/riffs
does, objectively, present an obstacle to
certain (rather fun) forms of musical expression, and although that's a slight downer, the fact remains: There are so many, MANY other forms of musical expression that lie under the 600 n.p.m. "shred barrier" that,
really, we shouldn't feel very constrained at all. Especially since, beyond that barrier, very few listeners' ears can even distinguish what's going on!
At least, I keep reminding myself of that. One of these days, I'll be able
maintain that attitude, even while listening to my guitar heroes blazing their way through some monster run or other, and be able to respond with
pure enjoyment unmixed by wistfulness.
Baby steps.
