wait⌠what? so you donât actually wait until youâre confident playing it before playing it in front of an audience?
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I play it alone, then I record it many times, then I play it in online open mics, then in front of an audience.
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Some of us have a mighty mismatch of confidence and ability 
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Most of us? Just in diffenert directions⌠
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wow! yeah⌠itâs hard to imagine alexey not having confidence playing anything 
Thanks for sharing your process @Alexeyd 
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I suspect itâs just another level - not unlike when you think youâve got a song learned and then point a camera at yourself to record it and it all falls apart 
I guess heâs saying that itâs not until youâve got several live playthroughs, to an audience, that you can say youâve cracked it for sure
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My uncle, who was a gigging Jazz pianist, always used to say - musicians should never practice - we should play!! (as in put your heart and soul in each time you lift up your instrument)âŚI get his point, but Iâm not âprofessionalâ âŚeven so, I turn off the TV/ radio etc and concentrate on what Iâm playing/ practicing.
Anyway, Iâve been wondering about this as well - there are lots of annoying ads on youtube, FB etc promising to teach me magical techniques that will help me memorize stuff more easily or improve my practice, all of which I try to ignore. But thanks @chris_m - will check out that book rec.
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Oh wow - Iâm so glad this happens to people other than me (the point a camera thing)!!!
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Hereâs a good lesson on learning faster using Neuroplasticity
https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/neuroplasticity-to-learn-guitar-faster-bg-1806
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Ah, yes. That does make sense, but whole other level 
Definitely not alone there! It all falls apart even when I just imagine playing in front of an audience
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I get such terrible stage fright - Iâve just downloaded that book that @chris_m was talking about. I reckon: the brain is plastic - we can train ourselves to practice properly - get organised and feel confident, tell ourselves a new story about the whole thing - bye bye stage fright. Thatâs my theory anyway!!
Câmon @Avalon426 we can do this!!! 
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I love it! Yes! Weâve got this! 
That book sounds great, Iâm going to check it out too. I love your theory, and I agree. We can do it 
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Hi friends, Iâm usually posting in BLIM so I havenât met all of you, but just wanted to add a few things:
Thereâs also a spectrum of what it means to be a âprofessionalâ or an âartist.â Most pros are not Eric Clapton or Steve Vai, you know? Players like that arenât representative, so I want to gently push back a little on what it takes to be a pro, or the idea that clocking whole days in practice rooms every day is the sole barrier. It feels a little like that thing we tend to do as guitarists, where weâre only thinking about soloists when we think about being great at guitar.
Gillian Welch, Jeff Tweedy, Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan, and a thousand other guitarists we could all name in a thousand genres, are primarily known for their songwriting, for example. Theyâre pros, and theyâre also good guitaristsâŚbut theyâre never going to be on those lists you see in magazines, you know? Their practice routines are going to look different from someone like Clapton.
I had a guitar teacher (who was a professional jazz player) growing up who used to tell me that the best way to learn was to jump in and play with others, even if it was rough. That performing is the key to being a good performer, not solely practicing alone. Thereâs a lot you learn on stage that you canât anywhere else (that pressure, and even the embarrassment, are really valuable teachers).
The audience also has no idea whatâs actually difficult, so much of the time. That means that the bar for being a âproâ is actually a lot lower on the actual instrument than developing musicians might describe it. I can name a couple of people in my town who make their living playing and teaching music, and honestly their real super power is their organizational skills, not their guitar playing. Itâs hard work booking gigs while also getting students or writing music (donât forget how much harder it makes your taxes if youâre in the US). Plus you have to be charismatic and something of a risk taker on top of it.
When I was in college, I played in a jazz combo (that I used to lose sleep overâit was all hard, and I barely saw the sunlight some days hanging out in a practice room) and I also had an original band that played pop punk-style songs with three chords and a lot of yelling and a handful of radio hit covers. Guess which band actually had an easier time getting shows and making money. It wasnât the one with the virtuosos in it! (To be clearâI was never the virtuoso LOLOL, but our pianist and drummer were absolute monsters, both childhood prodigies with perfect pitch and the whole nonsense, bless them.)
You can be an artist without being a virtuoso, and being a pro just means someone is paying you. The question might be better framed as âhow does [the guitarist I admire] practice?â Or âwhat will it take to become the sort of guitarist I want to be?â (And like @GrumpyMac pointed outâyou can probably go look! Most of them have biographers or have even written about it themselves!)
I agree that time is the key, and it mostly correlates with effort, but I donât want to create an unhelpful dichotomy between âthe prosâ and the rest of us. Itâs more complicated! Plus, weâre all artists! Weâre making artâweâre artists. 
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Dr. Josh Turknettâs Brainjo material is also an excellent source of information on leveraging neuroplasticity for learning how to play a musical instrument. Hereâs a good review of the book. The basics used to also be available as a series of blog posts but I canât find them at this point.
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Iâm conflicted on this. He says in the reviewâŚ
âŚthose people who we might consider âtalentedâ or âgiftedâ are not born that way. They develop their skill because they have learned how to practice deliberately, intelligently, effectively and efficiently. They also have the ability to keenly focus and pay close attention, and they are not afraid to continually push themselves forward by stepping outside of their comfort zone.
Arenât all those attributes something you are âborn withâ? My son picked up musical stuff incredibly easily, but he certainly never practised âdeliberately, intelligently, effectively and efficientlyâ. In fact, quite the opposite.
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Classroom teacher here! Special interest activated! 
(sorry for the incoming word dump)
Children absolutely have proclivitiesâinclinations, preferences, plus physical attributes that make some skills easier than others. Thatâs true. But youâd be shocked how much they learn just by watching the adults and other children around them, even from the time theyâre very little. If I hang out with a child, I know an awful lot about their household even without meeting the parents/siblings. Iâm not saying itâs foolproof or that Iâm always right, only that we often donât realize how much kids are learning just by virtue of being hyper observant of their caretakers (It makes sense! This is a survival skill!).
But people learn focus, discipline, the ability to analyze, patience, how to think (what often gets called âintelligenceâ), and how to pay attention to certain things over others. Thatâs a big part of what teachers are actually doingânot just imparting their subject expertise. The hard part is often figuring out which strategies work for different kids. And environment absolutely matters. The high performing kids in top programs arenât magically giftedâusually what they are is supported (by very involved caretakers, by an abundance of basic resources, by having had access to such a thing at all especially from a young age). Parental income is one of the best predictors of both literacy and college acceptance (in the US and elsewhere), for example. Thatâs not because wealthy kids are born smarter, itâs because those kids tend to have access to education that other kids donât get (and itâs easier to focus and learn when you arenât anxious about other things).
Anyway, what does that have to do with guitar! Itâs just encouragement for how our learning isnât inborn. We might have proclivities (great hearing, big flexible hands, innate curiosity about sound, an ability to recognize patterns, you name it), but training will always trump un-nurtured natural ability. We can learn how better to learn. Sure, that gets tougher as we age, but human brains are pretty amazing, and we can do incredible things even if weâre doing them late in life (my best students at my university, hands down, are older returning studentsâand itâs because theyâve already learned focus and discipline, and how to direct themselves more effectively toward their goals).
So Iâm one of those people always saying that talent isnât real. Proclivities are! So is support! So is luck! We can use the word talent instead, I think thatâs fine. But first we have to de-mystify it. Itâs not magical! And itâs no match for effort and opportunity. Outliers exist, of course, but thatâs true for everything and focusing on them doesnât help.
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@coyotesnacks, @telemann1 â I really like the term âproclivitiesâ here, even if the general population would still think of them as âtalentsâ. In my experience, proclivities or the lack of them is certainly real.
I had a proclivity for music: started learning the organ around age 9 or 10, and then the guitar a few years later, and picked up each of them quite readily. What I lacked was the focus / determination / drive to apply myself to take those abilities that came easily and develop them into really solid skills along with repertoire (my mother often reminded me that playing a piece through once in my daily session was really practicing). As a consequence Iâm in my mid-60s and I remain an OK bedroom player. (Not complaining, just stating facts).
I think it would have been really helpful to have run into material like Dr. Turknettâs Brainjo or the book First Learn How To Practice while in my teens.
My wife, as a teen, taught clarinet and had a student who basically never improved although she diligently stuck with it for several years of private lessons in addition to what she got through band at school. My wife describes her as having âa tin earâ and really unable to hear what she needed to strive for. So, she lacked proclivity for music making. They crossed paths years later and the student thanked my wife for sticking with her, as the student was quite aware of her limitations.
I think the bottom line is: what you get out of it will certainly be related to what you put into it but as some of us are just better suited for some things than others (@coyotesnacks âproclivitiesâ). And, regardless, there will always be someone better at X than you are.
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Yeah, I know it sounds like semantics, but reframing the words we use and how we think about them can really impact our attitudes.
Something I didnât mention, too: with kids who have a lot of musical aptitude (and adult musicians who are amazing who started playing as kids), the question that tells me the most is, âDid your parents encourage you to play music?â
There is often a huge disparity in folks who were even tacitly supported (their parents liked music and thought it was good their kids wanted to learn) versus folks who werenât (disapproving parents, parents who didnât listen to music at home, parents who just werenât very interested). What we call talent is usually environmental.
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I feel âtalentedâ is a very loaded word. It often gets used as an excuse by people, âtheyâre good at guitar because theyâre talentedâ, where the inconvenient truth is they are good at guitar because they put the work in! The âtalentâ is a product of the work done.
Itâs also worth remembering that the earlier you start something, the easier itâs likely to be as our brains are more flexible. Itâs possible to learn a lot just by playing (I donât just mean guitar, it could be learning to do jumps on a bike). Sometimes formal practice can be an obstacle to learning, you end up relying on being spoon fed rather than discovering things for yourself - this probably varies from person to person as we all learn differently and what works for me might not work for you.
By the way, Iâm not completely dismissing that there are differences in us all. My brain is better at logic and analytical tasks than it is creative tasks for example. Thereâs other people who arenât stupid but never take to maths. Overall though, if Iâd put the hours into playing guitar that I put into videogames over the years, Iâd be a much better player than I am now and likely some people would say it was because I was talented
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