How could I possibly get that good?

abiliog
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Wed Aug 22, 2012 10:34 am

Hi Tony,
I have the same thoughts sometimes, but they never took me anywhere.
If I want to go somewhere I have to walk. So visiting one song after another, enjoying every step, every silence, that will fill my something :)
My goal is not to reach a destination, is to visit as many places as I can. It happens that I want to visit a lot of songs and for that, I need to keep walking. That's my goal, keep on walking :)
Abilio


willem
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Wed Aug 22, 2012 10:56 am

Its a pity we can't put up the video that put Tony to this thread,,I send him the link 'cos it was jamming the bleus in such a enjoyble way that I wanted to share that with him,,It was also jamming the way I really would able at someday.....

pm me if you want the link toooooo...

Willem


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daryl
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Wed Aug 22, 2012 11:03 am

tovo wrote:
I think something important to keep in mind is that no really good player got there overnight, and no great player became great without a hell of an amount of work. If it's worth doing, it's worth the effort it takes to get there. That's the attitude I try to bring to my practice each day and I just accept that with intelligent application and plain hard work I will get better. Might not be as quick as some, or as good as others, but it will do me. I try now to enjoy the journey, hoping that one day I'll reach a destination. More likely though is that I will just keep traveling the road.

Any thoughts on the issue?
The lines in bold are direct quotes from Tommy Emmanuel! Not only does Tommy perform nearly every day but he also practices EVERY day and is always trying to "get better". I keep that in mind whenever I pick up my guitar.....


dtaylor
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Wed Aug 22, 2012 11:47 am

When I started playing it was prompted by seeing friends playing and singing and I thought 'I want to be able to do that'.
I can do that now so I feel I've accomplished my goal.
I get a lot of pleasure from being able to learn new songs and practicing in general.
I guess I might reach a point where this isn't enough and I might share your goal Tony of jamming and extemporising or writing songs, if you have a long term goal, as others have said, you need to be realistic, set goals, track your progress and don't forget why you started playing in the first place, for the joy of it.


Hydroman52
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Wed Aug 22, 2012 12:16 pm

I had the opportunity to play along with a person of lesser guitar playing ability than myself within the last couple of weeks. He stopped in during rehearsal night at Bassman Jerry's as he had done occasionally in the past. We scrapped our plans for working on some of our new songs, and played ones out of his songbook most of the evening. This required Bassman Jerry and I to slow down and help him along. After playing a song, we'd talk a little bit about it and how we could improve. Then we'd play it a couple more times to see how our ideas sounded. It always sounded better than the first time around. We all had a fun time.

The point is, years ago, I was the one being helped along. Now, there are times when I hold my own and can help others along, too. That can be quite satisfying and is a gauge as to how far I have come. Of course, I can also play a recording or two of myself from a couple of years ago . . . . . that usually does the trick to restoring confidence. Actually, I have reached many of the goals that I have set for myself. I make an extra effort to retain the memories of those achievements, and that keeps me from getting discouraged when I feel doubt in where I am headed.

Hydroman52


tovo
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Wed Aug 22, 2012 2:23 pm

daryl wrote:
tovo wrote:
I think something important to keep in mind is that no really good player got there overnight, and no great player became great without a hell of an amount of work. If it's worth doing, it's worth the effort it takes to get there. That's the attitude I try to bring to my practice each day and I just accept that with intelligent application and plain hard work I will get better. Might not be as quick as some, or as good as others, but it will do me. I try now to enjoy the journey, hoping that one day I'll reach a destination. More likely though is that I will just keep traveling the road.

Any thoughts on the issue?
The lines in bold are direct quotes from Tommy Emmanuel! Not only does Tommy perform nearly every day but he also practices EVERY day and is always trying to "get better". I keep that in mind whenever I pick up my guitar.....
I jut want to make it clear, they are MY words; I didn't plagiarize Tommy or try to pass his words off as my own. They are not "direct quotes from Tommy Emmanuel".

Thanks all for your thoughts. Nice to see there's still people out there! :-)


suziko
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Wed Aug 22, 2012 2:31 pm

I'm really enjoying reading everyone's responses. It was especially nice to read Hydro's and to get a view into what it's like "from the other side." I guess most guitarists are just happy to be playing with someone else and sharing their love of music. I know that whenever I've played with someone who is more of a beginner than me, I never feel impatient with or superior to them. It's just fun to share.


dtaylor
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Wed Aug 22, 2012 2:58 pm

tovo wrote:
daryl wrote:
tovo wrote:
I think something important to keep in mind is that no really good player got there overnight, and no great player became great without a hell of an amount of work. If it's worth doing, it's worth the effort it takes to get there. That's the attitude I try to bring to my practice each day and I just accept that with intelligent application and plain hard work I will get better. Might not be as quick as some, or as good as others, but it will do me. I try now to enjoy the journey, hoping that one day I'll reach a destination. More likely though is that I will just keep traveling the road.

Any thoughts on the issue?
The lines in bold are direct quotes from Tommy Emmanuel! Not only does Tommy perform nearly every day but he also practices EVERY day and is always trying to "get better". I keep that in mind whenever I pick up my guitar.....
I jut want to make it clear, they are MY words; I didn't plagiarize Tommy or try to pass his words off as my own. They are not "direct quotes from Tommy Emmanuel".

Thanks all for your thoughts. Nice to see there's still people out there! :-)
When I read the highlighted text I thought 'Hey Tony... you're good an' all but you're no TE(!)'
I'm kidding, interesting that you'd share sentiments with the great man though, just goes to show we're all human and have the same basic thought processes.


dennisg
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Wed Aug 22, 2012 4:12 pm

About 30 years ago, my brother Ken talked me into going skiing with him. The idea of trying to learn (and possibly fail at) something new terrified me, but the image of me skiing down a mountain effortlessly is something I also found intriguing, and I agreed to go -- with very mixed feelings.

I remember feeling totally nauseous as we took the chair lift up to the top of our first hill. And when I stepped off of that slow-moving chair, I immediately skied directly into a snow bank, since I had no idea how to turn a pair of skis. Ken decided that was a good place to begin my lessons -- how to turn. He demonstrated how to snow plow, and I was able to follow him.

Then we moved over to the top of the hill. And while it may have been a bunny slope, I felt as if I were standing on the top of Everest. I looked down the entire length of the mountain, and my knees started knocking, and I said, "I can't ski this! The mountain is too big!" What he said next surprised me; he said, "It doesn't matter how big the mountain is because you're only go to ski one turn, and then stop."

So I pushed off, snow plowed through one turn, then stopped. He skied over to me and said, "Now that you know you can do that once, you can do that again." And I pushed off, made another turn, and stopped. And then did it again for a third time. And again and again -- until, pretty soon, I was at the bottom of the hill.

What I learned from that day, and it has stuck with me ever since then, is that everything that's worth doing is difficult and potentially scary and might seem like an insurmountable mountain to be conquered. But, in reality, it's just one turn at a time. Remembering that has come in handy in my career as a writer, where I often face mountainous projects like book manuscripts or screenplays -- projects that look like Everest until I realize that every book manuscript begins with a single sentence. And then the next one. And the one after that. Until I've metaphorically skied the entire mountain.

I try to apply that to guitar playing, too. I remember back at the beginning of my playing, I'd listen to songs like Eva Cassidy's "Autumn Leaves" or Queen's "Love of My Life", and I could never imagine playing such huge and daunting songs. And then I thought about Ken's "one turn at a time" philosophy, and I decided to make my goal to learn only the first measure. I'd practice that for a solid day until I could comfortably play it, then I'd turn to the second measure, and learn that one, too. Then I'd link these two turns together. And pretty soon I'd be at the end of the song.

I have enough experience now to realize that if I apply Ken's philosophy to just about any song (or any daunting activity), I'll eventually be able to learn it. A song isn't Everest. It's a series of notes that make up a measure, and a series of measures that make up a song. One turn at a time.


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daryl
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Wed Aug 22, 2012 7:07 pm

tovo wrote:
daryl wrote:
tovo wrote:
I think something important to keep in mind is that no really good player got there overnight, and no great player became great without a hell of an amount of work. If it's worth doing, it's worth the effort it takes to get there. That's the attitude I try to bring to my practice each day and I just accept that with intelligent application and plain hard work I will get better. Might not be as quick as some, or as good as others, but it will do me. I try now to enjoy the journey, hoping that one day I'll reach a destination. More likely though is that I will just keep traveling the road.

Any thoughts on the issue?
The lines in bold are direct quotes from Tommy Emmanuel! Not only does Tommy perform nearly every day but he also practices EVERY day and is always trying to "get better". I keep that in mind whenever I pick up my guitar.....
I jut want to make it clear, they are MY words; I didn't plagiarize Tommy or try to pass his words off as my own. They are not "direct quotes from Tommy Emmanuel".

Thanks all for your thoughts. Nice to see there's still people out there! :-)
I should have said....The lines in bold could be direct quotes from Tommy Emmanuel. I didn't mean to imply that Tony was plagiarizing Tommy. I was just trying to point out the even the great players feel the same way about the guitar.....


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