I totally agree with Mathew
This struck chord with me, hereâs as brief as possible run down of my early music and guitar years. To set the scene I had no siblings, was a bit of a loner as a child, we lived in the country 45 miles South of London.
From 1966 - Age 8-10, my lovely cousin , 5 years older than me, Linda introduced me to The Monkees, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Hendrix, Moody Blues, Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, CCR and various Motown artists. We learnt and would sing to many songs, with and without them playing on records. At home in my bedroom I had a cast off old Philips valve radio and I would spend hours listening to Radio Luxembourg and any pirate radio station I could get. Later on I would record the weekly top 20 on a 2nd hand reel to reel tape recorder. When just over 10 having spent 9 months saving weekly pocket money I had about ÂŁ10 and I sold my Dawes racing bike for ÂŁ12, and pestered my Mum for the rest to get a beautiful used Guild Red arch top (no pickup) for ÂŁ32 from a music shop in Southampton, it was in their window and I had lusted after it for over half a year, I did not realise but it was very cheap at that time. I also got a chord book and Bert Weedonâs - âPlay In a Dayâ. I spent months trying to learn and looking back got to about JG grade 2. My father absolutely hated me playing guitar, said I was wasting my time, should focus on my studies at school, and threatened to take it away.
Age 11 - I started at Grammar school, I went to Headmasters office on my own after 3 months and asked for guitar lessons as the new Music teacher played guitar. He refused saying it was not a Classical instrument and told me to learn trumpet and join the school orchestra.
11 to 14 - I kept trying to learn and play guitar, I asked my parents many times for private lessons, always firmly rebuffed. I gave up Trumpet after 6 months as my parents complained about the noise when I practiced. One day the guitar was no longer there, it had been removed, I was told I needed to focus on O-levels, it never re-appeared, to this day I do not know where it went.
14 -19 - Usual stuff, 6th form college and A levels. Left feeling lost and not knowing what to do, spent a year doing various temporary jobs, my father pestering me to go to University and then become an Engineer. I gave in and went to London University to do a Mathematics degree and escape. That did not work out, what a surprise - my heart was not in it. I returned home to much criticism. A year or so later I got a well paid job, at the time, back in London in the Civil Service as an Executive Officer. I was still avidly listening to music and going to see bands.
20-22 - Sharing a house with other young Civil Servants, I brought my first electric guitar, a Shergold Masquerader, got some books and started learning again when not at work, and had some lessons. After 6 months I joined 3 lads in an amateur band playing rhythm. My parents visited several times and always was told âYou are wasting your time and will never amount to anythingâ. I left first band after a year as they wanted to play Heavy Rock. Formed another band, one member shared the house with me and played keyboards. A local Pro Musician we hired a Prophet 5 from heard some rough tapes of us and offered us a demo recording session on a Sunday in his studio, he liked our songs, and sound. It all fell apart when a band member failed to turn up due to going to a party the night before. I became quite depressed, hated work and was signed off sick for 6 months. Parents visited me, having been prompted by a good friend of mine. They said I needed to come home. But there was a condition I had some debts for the band PA system, and amp, they said I had to sell everything including 2 guitars and they would settle what debt was left. I could not see that I had any other way out at the time, and it was all too much.
That was that, I spent 6-9 months getting back on my feet doing odd jobs to pay rent to my parents, it felt like an eternity. One evening my father thrust the London Evening Standard newspaper with an advert for a training course in London saying get a career or get out. There was an advert for a government sponsored training course, I went for an interview, took the tests, passed, and joined the course and got out of my parents. I ended up in IT as a trainee programmer. I met my lovely Sue and got married 2 years later, aged 25, and that set my life and career. Sue gave me an electric guitar for my 30th birthday and I dabbled with it over the coming years.
My point sharing this story is that my âproclivitiesâinclinations, preferencesâ were very clearly Music and Guitar early on. It was my dream to be a guitarist in a band and playing on a stage. Unfortunately my father in particular did not see it that way, and far from encouraging and supporting me he pushed me down a path I did not want. Out of necessity and because I took the tests and had an aptitude for it I ended up in IT. I was fortunate I did very well in my career, and it paid the way for some nice homes, cars and holidays. But I never particularly enjoyed it, it was a means to an end for just over 35 years, no more than that.
Back in the 60âs and 70âs many parents had a different view of the world that harked back to Victorian and Edwardian values. I now see that my father had the best of intentions for me but I resented what he did as it shaped my life forever. Rather than being encouraging and supportive in what I loved he sadly rubbished it, from me playing guitar to any rock, pop, Blues or jazz music I listened to. I think my mother tried to restrain him but did not succeed. When I was 42 near his passing my father apologised to me, saying he should have helped me more to find my own path of my choosing in Music, along with some issues we had over the years.
You could read this and think if Adrian wanted to be a musician and play guitar he would have and would have overcome the obstacles, and there is some substance to that argument. But the point is it would have been a much more likely the outcome if I had been encouraged and supported, then I might have ended up doing the thing I loved as a career. What happened did, and I recognised some of it was also my own fault, due to naivety and lack of experience in my early 20âs.
I am sure there are many others with similar tales.
With respect to the actual thread title:-
A music teacher when I went back to college at when I was 45 said to the students on day one when asked, âIf you want to become a proffesional musician, whether playing in a band, doing session work, teaching but essentially earning a living from it, then you need to practice hard, and that means 5 to 6 years of daily practice of around 10,000 hoursâ she also said it would vary up or down by 1-2k hours depending upon individuals aptitude. If you do the maths it equates to 4.5 to 5.5 hours everyday for 5 to 6 years. I think this is likely to be very realistic.
Whether you want to achieve a professional level of playing or not is down to each individual. IMHO I think most people will become reasonably proficient intermediate players over 2-3 years doing around 2 hours a day practice and songs, if they stick to that. But will need to continue to practice to maintain that and even improve further. That does not mean they will necessarily emulate their heroes, or not struggle with harder or complex material, but they should be able to pick up a guitar and play favourite songs, play with other musicians, sound quite good to others and enjoy doing so.
My personal challenge is to become as good a guitarist as I can over the next few years with my now slower brain, hands and ability to learn. That is fine, most days I pick up a guitar and enjoy it, some days it is frustrating but I work on it and get over issues causing the frustration if I can. Eventually I hope to play in a small band locally for fun with like minded people.
Happy playing to you all, set your own personal guitar goals and go for what you want to achieve from it and have fun.
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This is great, Adrian, and really resonates with my own experience as well. Itâs a million times harder to be great at something when your parents tell you itâs wrong and youâre constantly told itâs a waste of time. I wasnât allowed to study music unless I did a double major in university, and before that I had to bring home top grades in everything else in order to be allowed to take guitar. It was also the first thing taken away when my parents were angry with me over anything. I absolutely seethed with envy over my classmates whose parents justâŚtook them to shows, bought them instruments, and went to their recitals. Itâs hard to take advantage of talent when access and encouragement have to be in place first, and they arenât.
The only other thing Iâll addâand itâs really more of an FYI because it comes up still, this isnât a critique of Adrian and I think your guesses about practice time are reasonable enoughâis that the 10,000 hours was popularized by the American self-help industry guru Malcom Gladwell (who is not a psychologist, and has been heavily criticized on many other fronts as well). Both that number specifically and the assertion that practice produces an objective kind of âmasteryâ have been challenged since they were proposed, and itâs widely regarded as a myth by psychologists today, at least in the way Gladwell framed it. Even the originator of the idea, K.A. Ericsson, criticized Gladwell for misinterpreting his work (the original point was something more like the number of hours professionals had put into focused practice by adulthood, determined via interviews and estimationânot that they were âmastersâ).
I donât want to clutter the forum with library links, but a search will pull up some good summaries from some generally good pop science magazines like Smithsonian. Even the Wikipedia page gets into it. I like to say something when I see it, because it still pops up sometimes. But everyone is different! Hours isnât an objective measurement for a subjective aspiration, and there isnât a hard line we have to meet or fail at.
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Yes that was exactly my take from what my College music teacher said. Becoming a âMasterâ of an instrument is a very long term, probably life time to achieve, and in some cases it will be entirely focused around particular style or aspect, good examples might be BB King and Blues, or possibly Lang Lang for classical pianist (maybe still developing), Wes Montgomery - Jazz Guitar, Michael Hedges - a unique and virtuoso guitar player primarily on acoustic utilising aspects of traditional folk, and modern jazz(well worth listening to)
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Wes and Hedges are two of my favorites!
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This has been a fun read this afternoon.
My sonâs 12 and heâs always had a great ear. He doesnât have âperfect pitch,â but he is far, far better than I am at identifying notes. He started playing piano when he was young and almost immediately was able to hear something and pick it out on the piano. But, he doesnât practice that much. Heâs getting by on natural âtalentâ and neuroplasticity for now and itâs taking him a good way, but he could be much further along if he put the time in. On the other hand, my wife and I donât push him to practice too much because we donât want music to stop being fun for him. Weâre happy to let him guide himself to a point.
He recently asked me to teach him some things on guitarâspecifically âWonderwall.â Heâs picked it up astonishingly fast. He started playing maybe three weeks ago and he and two friends have started a band. I heard them play a song and you know what? They sounded pretty great. After three hours of playing together they put out a pretty decent version of âWhen I Come Around.â (Itâs really funny to me that he wants to learn songs that were big when I was around his age!)
He picks things up so much faster than I do, and faster than I did when I was learning instruments. Is that talent? He might have some proclivities (a great word!) for music. But itâs also the environment heâs grown up in. Weâve always just sort of made music and musical instruments available to him, and encouraged him to play. I think he has the potential to be come a very fine musician if he wants to. But most importantly, heâs having fun and I think that will take him a long way toward whatever he wants to be, music-wise.
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