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What is skill?
Mitu
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What is skill? Is it a riff you learnt with absolute precision? Is it the musical theory work? Or is it technique?
This question popped into my mind whilst I was hanging out with my guitar friend.
I was hanging out with this friend, he is really into rock and all of that kind of music which is whatever, each to their own. But we were having our first jamming session, me and him sat down, told him to play in the key of C in any chord progression and I'll lead over it. He looked at me like I was speaking some otherworldly language, I seen him play before, riffs from soundtracks of games he likes and other bands he listens to and he was pretty good at it and I got the impression he could handle himself with a guitar.
I was a bit shocked that he had so little knowledge of actual playing, without tabs he didn't know much. I taught him a little bit of everything I could but he seemed very uninterested in actually learning something so I just gave up on it and we played a few guitar duos instead.
To him, skill presented as riffs and songs he learnt with precision which is fine but it really eats at me when people dont bother learning actual stuff because guitar is so much more than repeated riffs.
To answer my own question, I think that skill with the guitar is a mix of technique and book knowledge, theory. Much like some of you, I love improvisation, and for that you need to know ball, scales, arpeggios, all of that jazz.
Now, what is skill to you? What does it represent and how do you spot it? I'd love to hear everybody's thinking.
Thanks!
Comments
But we were having our first jamming session, me and him sat down, told him to play in the key of C in any chord progression and I'll lead over it. He looked at me like I was speaking some otherworldly language
Tbf, I'm not sure if many players can do this even in GJ because most guitarists rarely spend time learning how to play all the scales in full chords...hell, only reason why I did is because one of my teachers sat me down at a piano and showed me C-to-C, D-to-D, E-to-E, etc. (which was pretty mind blowing for 18 yo me and made me become obsessed with modal jazz).
Anyway, I do agree that learning scales/chords/arps is huge but I've also met so many great GJ guitarists who don't know them or have no understanding of the theory behind them. Some of the best players don't even really understand key signature because they learned everything by ear.
So yeah, imo I think this is kinda subjective "ymmv" territory for each individual player depending on innate skill set and prioritizing what they want to focus on while learning.
A lot of the leading players in this style wouldn't be able to play an arpeggio if you asked them to. If you played one, they'd likely be able to shoot it right back at you but they might not get the concept and likely never specifically practiced one, or at least knew they were doing so.
I mean if you're saying to just have someone play any diatonic chords in the key of C, I guess you could play the C major scale and it would sound consonant over that? Are we talking about playing any progression in the key of C and you can play over it without knowing the chords? Like...Stella in the key of C? That would be impressive.
Well, when I play with a baking track or other people, I usually just say the key and I play in the same scale/arpeggio, maybe mix in an other scale from the circle of fits, I don't know what they're gonna play, so I just try to follow, assume what could come next. Obviously I'm not always right and I mess up but that's alright, you just got to keep playing. I don't have the same ear that the players to, not yet at least, my ears are quite untrained.