how important is technique?

[Rudi]

On a guitar forum, it became apparent that some musicians believe technique to be the primary (or even the ONLY) component for a player to excel.

 

I offered the opinion that knowledge was more important. This was not understood by one contributor. He asked if I meant knowledge of technique? 

When I clarified it as 'knowledge of music'. He gave up trying to understand me. It was as if he thought they were the same thing.

 

As I understand it it makes no difference if we are thinking of guitarists, singers, drummers etc. To me techniques are a set of tools we all acquire. Even composers (non performing musicians) use techniques for composition.

 

I think some wonderful musicians get by using a minimum of technique.

So is technique there to enable us to access our understanding of music? Or is it something else? Does more technique make for a better musician or is it merely a bigger bag of tools?

 

Sitting on top of all of this is creative expression. If what we do doesn't serve that, then we just rehash everything we have heard before.

 

 

 

 

[Rudi]

You can tick more than one box in the poll

[TapperMike]

Technique is what you make of it.  I cannot properly emulate delta blues to save my life.  There is something intrinsic about it's nature.  It isn't rubato and it's not really "freely" either.  When I listen to Bill Evans I'm swept away by his sense of timing.  I have no doubt it would crash a beat meter tool.  It was a technique of timing that took years to master and lead him away from playing with others or a metronome.

 

We are fools if we thing we can master all techniques,  And trust me I've tried.  Technique and Knowledge work hand in hand with each other.  Some people can work with a minimum of knowledge that works for them and then focus on technique.   Stevie Ray Vaughan worked within the blues framework and meticulously copied the techniques of those who had come before him. Eric Clapton once exclaimed... I Loved SRV after he stopped trying to be Albert King and started to be himself.  We don't become original until we merge our experiences of playing into a solidified sense of self.  I could play The Beatles perfectly every day for the rest of my life and I still wouldn't be a member of the beatles nor write exactly like Paul McCartney.

 

Technique and knowledge do walk hand in hand.  As a jazz musician I actually shy away from teaching jazz from those who aren't fully into jazz and aren't going to give the commitment it requires.  Learning jazz can only slightly impact ones performance / skill sets as a blues player.  It doesn't help heavy metal or country or prog rock players.  Maybe it might help if you want to learn fusion.

 

Technique is something very important to me but it's not something someone else can teach me right now. I'm trying to develop the smoothest legato playing I can.  If you've every tried to practice scale patterns on the guitar... Lets say 4ths in the key of C: C-F-D-G-E-A-F-B-G-C-A-D-B-E.  It will always be stiff. There will always be chunkiness to it.  On the other hand practicing 4ths on the piano can be a no brainer for fluid legato playing.  The piano can have seems as well.  Ztar and tapped guitar can make the seems go away but...it's work (yes I got one of my ztars working again and it's rough many buttons don't work)  It's something that's work but worth the effort to me.  I have the goal I'm pushing the techniques that I've had for years to the limits and I'm getting better.  It's something that's important to me.  Is it important to you?  Generally we work to a certain level with a specific technique until we are comfortable.  Trying to master all techniques all the time is lunacy.

 

And that's the big question.  Is something important to you enough that you'll commit effort in?  Technique, and theory are only as good as the person who commits themselves to it.  Back in my early teens I had a black belt in TKD.  Practiced every day.  Took as many lessons as I could.  Trained and trained and trained.  It was hard work.  Then one day I noticed that girls liked guys who played guitar.  Lost interest in martial arts.  I'm sorely out of shape and lost many skills I worked forever on. Martial arts not an important part of my life now.  I don't make it important.

 

Unlike the martial arts much of what I've played before has still stuck with me in regards to technique.  If I want to play "Stairway to Heaven" even after ten years of not playing it I can get through it and within a week I can expect to be fairly close to the best I've ever played it in the past.  And I used to be pretty good.  Getting standing ovations in front of crowds of guitarists at jams / open mics.

    

I'm not saying it's everything all the time.  I am saying it's my main thing because articulation matters a lot to me.  The more comfortable I become the less important it will be.  But I do believe in setting goals if you want to advance.

 

 

[Rudi]

19 hours ago, TapperMike said:

 

 

We are fools if we thing we can master all techniques,  And trust me I've tried. 

 

 

 

 

Yes so have I. In doing so I have become a jack-of-all-trades / master-of-none. 

 

Quote

If you've every tried to practice scale patterns on the guitar... Lets say 4ths in the key of C: C-F-D-G-E-A-F-B-G-C-A-D-B-E.  It will always be stiff. There will always be chunkiness to it. 

 

I've just tried this. I see what you mean. Seems to sound slightly smoother going downwards.

 

Quote

 I have the goal I'm pushing the techniques that I've had for years to the limits and I'm getting better.  It's something that's important to me.  Is it important to you?  

 

No. It may have been early on (teens) but even then it was a half formed notion. I never learned any technique. I never had lessons. I had to discover stuff on my own, so what I did was never exactly what everyone else did.

 

Quote

And that's the big question.  Is something important to you enough that you'll commit effort in?  Technique, and theory are only as good as the person who commits themselves to it. 

    

I commited to learning alternating up & down strokes for legato etc. If anything, the dedication to this blunted my inventiveness. It gets in the way now because I do this too often. Its been the only period (some years!) where technique has been practiced (mostly) for its own sake. I sounded better when improvising before this period.

 

Before and since this period, the music has determined what I learn. When at 17 listening to Dark Star,

I realised that Jerry Garcia was playing a major scale with a dropped 7th. It was another 30 years before I heard this described as 'mixolydian'. I practiced this scale because it was used extensively in Garcia songs at that time. Thats why I practiced it. 

 

When learning All My Friends Are Gone (again  at about 17)

 

 

The technique came along with it. Such technique is now part of my toolkit. Thats the only way I learn technique really.

 

The whole point I am making is that (apart from the alternating thing) everthing I learn is incidental to trying to play the music. I learn the tunes and the technique establishes itself only through that process. I dont have the patience to do exercises. 

 

Quote

I'm not saying it's everything all the time.  I am saying it's my main thing because articulation matters a lot to me.  The more comfortable I become the less important it will be.  But I do believe in setting goals if you want to advance.

 

Well I dont set goals, but if there is a period when no music is exiting me, my playing becomes more neglected and suffers. It is at the moment. 

 

I was in a waiting room in hospital waiting room yesterday and there was a radio playing current pop music. It was all female soul diva stuff. I really wanted to turn that radio off. Its part of why I have to actively hunt down music to listen to. Everthing via the regular media is just annoying noise. 

 

I think the guys that I was in dicussion with were kind off classic rock / blues players (probably my age) who were of the opinion that modern metal players were the best players because of the (undeniably) incredible techniques they have aquired. That is what I took issue with. Thats why I started this thread.

[TapperMike]

1 hour ago, Rudi said:

I think the guys that I was in dicussion with were kind off classic rock / blues players (probably my age) who were of the opinion that modern metal players were the best players because of the (undeniably) incredible techniques they have aquired. That is what I took issue with. Thats why I started this thread.

 

 

I listen to a lot of modern metal at work because a coworker likes it.  I hate it.  But he also is in control of the radio (speakers) and he listens to more than contemporary metal.  So I've grown to tolerate it.    There is this belief that the early guys of rock were lazy and didn't study which couldn't be further from the truth.  Eric Clapton would listen to something as simple as a three note riff and continually play it for days trying to get as much nuance as he could from it.  That's quite different than someone who simply listens to something and then just goes through the motions.   Sure there were the guys who touted laziness and were lazy and then there were those guys who touted laziness even through they were very practiced.  Sometimes it's just the hype machine.  I knew many a would be rapper in my day.  Some were very nice people who created an image of being tough to fit the persona and some I wouldn't want to be in a dark alley with.

 

 

Yes so I agree with you that many contemporary metal players have sacrificed musicality for technique.  And yes I know what it's like when you turn into a new direction and it has adverse affects initially with what you, I and others have done and been most comfortable with.  I too wanted to master greater speed picking control....  If you ever want to get into it... Troy Grady is the guy to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xYcl6mKTwdnuMV76lb_vQ

 

He has made speed picking an art out of science (seriously)  Once you get past the cracking the code series. It takes a lot of practice to learn the method.  I too have abandoned this for two reasons.  One it's not taking me where I can play my best and two...  I really hate the harmonic minor scale.  He covers a lot of yngwie malmsteen early on.  and Yngwie loves the harmonic minor scale.

 

Don't discount the technique you have now.   It's carried you a long way and is part of you.  Though we always think that the grass is greener on the other side.

 

Getting back to education.  Firstly there are a lot of crappy teachers out there.  I went through quite a few before I found the right one.

Back in High School.  Got a guitar, bought, song books with chord diagrams and picked up on the basics of rhythm guitar fairly quickly.  And even though I knew what the major scale was I couldn't play a lead to save my life.  My first band the lead guitarist was good (I thought great at the time) Pete Zagone.  Pete had taken lessons.  I'd constantly ask him for advice and he'd always say... Just keep doing what you are doing.  The rest of the band said the same thing.  I was good at what I did and we played well together. If I was smart I would have taken lessons.  But I was against it for some odd reason.  Mostly due to tales of those who never took a lesson and were great.

 

I bought books tones of books.  Some of them contained theory that I could recite chapter and verse verbally but never came the day that I could implement things like modal playing.  Finally I decided to find a teacher.... It took awhile to find the right one.  I gained more working knowledge with him in the first 6 months than the previous 4 years.  I was much more confident on all levels and the lessons learned from him have lasted me a lifetime.  He didn't teach me everything under the sun.  When I experimented with various ideas for technique or theory that were not in his domain he'd always be encouraging.  At one point I became the teacher and he the student.  He was always a great soundboard for ideas.  Although I can't afford him anymore I still think of taking a class just to show what I've been up to and jam with.

 

Setting goals helps me keep my interest alive.  Take busking that I did this summer.  I haven't really played out regularly since the 90's  Do to issues I've had with Youtube over the years  I'll never post on YT.   I'm not the only one who has gone through that.  

 

 

[TapperMike]

13 hours ago, Rudi said:

I was in a waiting room in hospital waiting room yesterday and there was a radio playing current pop music. It was all female soul diva stuff. I really wanted to turn that radio off. Its part of why I have to actively hunt down music to listen to. Everthing via the regular media is just annoying noise. 

 

 

I was watching this very long video blog by Rick Beato  and somewhere along the way he states:  The music industry bigwigs have decided that kids who buy music are stupid.  And as such all music must be dummied down.  Lyrics, the structure and more.  It is exactly that mentality from the top down which is making music that gets airplay so trite and filled with emotion but not substance behind it.

 

If there is anyone who knows how the system works from the inside it's this guy.

[Rudi]

18 hours ago, TapperMike said:

Don't discount the technique you have now.   It's carried you a long way and is part of you.  Though we always think that the grass is greener on the other side.

 

Well without it I would be entirely mute. What is surprising is that my lead playing seems to be eclipsed by my fingerstyle playing (which I've invested less time in). Listeners certainly seem more drawn to my acoustic stuff anyway.

 

I suppose many players use technique as badge. Guitar store staff will still pick up a guitar and insist on playing a lightening arpeggio before handing it to you. You see it on YT also. Its used like a statement of authority. It works on people that buy into this and it reinforces that whole attitude. This attitude is what I am challenging.

 

Can you weigh up a persons musical credentials as simply as this? I dont think so.

 

I watched the (2nd) vid. I do wish some bloggers would script before they record, as few people can just wing it naturally. Very interesting what he said about movie soundtracks. I would love to do something like that despite all the negative warnings.

 

 

[TCgypsy]

Technique is extremely important as a "guitarist" but not as much so as a "guitar player." I make a distinction between those two. If you are billing yourself as a guitarist you better be able to play extremely well. Even then technique is not the paramount issue. Are you tasty? Do you have feel? Are you inventive? Do you play well in a group of musicians? There are others but overall musical saavy is just as important. I am not that impressed by guitarists who can cover advanced material but who can't write a lick of their own.

 

So many examples of guitar players who were great who had some deficiencies in technique but I don't want to start naming them and divert the thread!

 

Peace,

TC