Mediocre Guitar Player Magazine

MichaelHorowitz

We will soon be carrying this fine periodical:



Guitar out of tune? We're now offering guitar tuning services at DjangoBooks.com! Just ship your guitar here for and for $75 we'll get it tuned perfectly. (Please allow 6-8 weeks for turnaround.)

Jojo

Ha! Excellent. They should have it in guitar shops mainly for 50% of the staff

NylonDave

How about some headlines for the next edition.

1. Why you don't need to transpose.
2. Notation versus tab, why ignorance really is bliss.
3. Online lessons versus knowing music teachers.
4. You don't need to sing to play patterns.
5. Picks, the secret to tone.
6. Gear, the secret to tone.
7. What pedals do the greats use.
8. Buttons or fly, what kind of pants to the greats wear.
9. Books, if someone printed it it must be true !!
10. Rhythm guitar, how to drown out a soloist.
11. How to solo over a tune you can't find the tune to by ear.
12. What to buy when you're not practicing.
13. Home recording, tool for improvement or excuse to faff about while not practicing.
14. Getting into jazz, how to transform your teenage prejudices into grown up pretension.
15. Music is democracy, online debate and the triumph of the deluded.
16. Style over substance, a guide to condescension for the cloth eared.
17. Stuck in a rut ? How to avoid challenging your first principles.
18. Cliques, why politics is more important than personal development or how to have the same jam over and over.
19. Glib truisms and how to appropriate them as wisdom.
20. Waltzes, how to start at 180 and accelerate till the soloist cant phrase.
21. Why guitar based music is better than the considered work of serious musicians in musics you don't understard.
22. Rhythm, why you don't need to be able to read it to pay for new tab books.
23. Satire, a guide to punching down for the lazy.
24. Hats, why a hat is a kind of musical personality.


I need a cookie.

D.

Jazzaferri

How about a quote from Salvador Dali

Painter (substitute guitarist), no matter that you try to paint very badly, it will still be evident if you are mediocre

NylonDave

Jazzaferri wrote: »

How about a quote from Salvador Dali

Painter (substitute guitarist), no matter that you try to paint very badly, it will still be evident if you are mediocre

I like Orwell's comment on Dali's autobiography, and in particular Dali's contention that for fun as a child he had kicked his sister in the head..
Don't have Inside The Whale to hand but it was along the lines of.

'It should be easy to admit that while Dali is a fine draughtsman and may well be a great artist he can still be a reprehensible human being.'

Perhaps I should have checked that......
I should be less creative when I quote.

D.

Jazzaferri

A number of people in the art world consider Dali to be the greatest painter of the 20th Century. I don't know how one comes up with that but I have loved his work since I was 14 and been to the DAli museums in Figueres and St. Petersburg Fla.

As to his personality, wildly egocentric and his Surrealist colleages nicknamed him AvidaDollars

NylonDave

Hey Jay I visited the Theatre Musee de Salvador Dali in Figueres. I didn't get round everything in my two hour visit but that is fine as I will most certainly go again next time I am cycling in Spain. I especially liked some of his little naive studies in oil and the more convoluted ones which could only be viewed through the empty brandy bottles that they had been drawn through.

I would recommend the collected essays of George Orwell to anyone and he is as impatient with the fellow as I imagine I would be if he had the misfortune to meet me.

That quote of Dali's has always annoyed me. Firstly because it is an open invocation to snobbery which I always loathe and secondly because he, or his translator, seems to have been ignorant of the true meaning of mediocre.

Mediocrity is the phenomena of doing poor work when one is capable of doing good work. Given the legion bad advice offered on guitar playing in magazines and elsewhere, mediocrity amongst guitarist is often the consequence of bad advice too easily accepted and, once accepted, defended in the face of protracted failure.

The staggering frequency of competency among Gypsy players, both professional and amateur, must surely be helped by the fact that little advice is ever disseminated amongst them that has been mediated by the need to please advertisers.

With the exception of pick choice.

D.

Jazzaferri

I suspect that Dali was referring to artistic vision rather than technique in the mediocre comment.

If you get a chance take a day at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg. My wife didn't like his stuff at all until she went there. Looking at the huge 2 storey high paintings the power and scope of his internal vision is overwhelming.

Figueres is a great place. Want to go back and spend another day there next time in Barca.