I started playing guitar at age 12. It was a homemade instrument with a stretched string. I didn’t know how to play back then, so I watched the guys in the yard and the stars on stage on TV. And eventually, I took it seriously. At first, it was just a wooden plank with frets and imaginary strings marked on it. Then my father made me a semblance of a guitar out of wood, and only two years later did I buy a real dreadnought. And then the internet came along…
For those just starting to play this wonderful instrument, I’d like to wish my fellow musicians that you spend a lot of time studying videos of different guitarists and absorbing a multitude of techniques on a subconscious level.
I’ll explain why later…
When you see a guitarist play for the first time, you don’t notice a lot. You can see a musician playing in a variety of situations. It could be a get-together with friends, a guitarist performing on stage, or a video lesson.
If you’re a guitarist, or want to become one, you’ll understand everything by the end of this post.
Depending on how often and how much time we spend with guitarists, we train our visual memory.
For example, do you remember what you noticed the first time you heard a song on guitar?! What did you see then?! Agree, nothing, just the sound and various hand movements. Then the movements became uninteresting, and you began to pay attention to details. By applying these “details” to your own playing, you copied your model. Once you learned, you began to look at smaller, seemingly inconspicuous things that are very important to a guitarist.
So, when watching someone else play guitar, you went through (and maybe still go through) 7 stages of visual memorization:
- (from 0 to 5-10 times) – At first, they only see the guitarist, not paying attention to their hands.
- (10 to 50 times) — Then, after a long period of viewing, they begin to “see” the left (pressing) hand. Specifically, the main positions of this hand. At this stage, a person identifies the barre and on which fret it is pressed. If there is no barre, then the position is determined by the leading finger, most often the index finger.
- (50 to 100 times) — The next, longer stage. We see the second hand—the right (plucking) hand. Up-and-down movements indicate strumming, fingers flicking—aha, plucking begins.
- (100 to 150 times) — The fourth stage. We easily correlate the movements of the left and right hands.
- (150 to 300 times) — We notice the left hand, how and which strings are pressed, and the right hand, which strings are plucked.
- (300 to 500 times) — We notice how the left hand plucks the chord; we know what chord it is. With the right hand, we notice the combination of strings and the different number of strings involved in the plucking.
- (500 to 1000 times) — We distinguish the notes in the left hand, and see the strumming in the right.
You might say, “Really? We couldn’t watch that many times in a lifetime.”
I’ll tell you, even if you just count how many get-togethers you’ve had with friends and add not just one, but everyone who can play at least a little, plus concerts on TV, several guitarists on stage back-to-back (don’t forget the guitarist in a band, and the other concert participants), plus YouTube lessons, the total is quite substantial. You don’t even notice how many times you watch someone play the guitar.
It’s a different matter if you’re not paying attention, not interested, simply because you don’t want to learn to play the guitar. Then even several thousand views will not produce any effect.
I suggest you watch others play as often as possible and apply what you see to your own. Then your vision will open up new horizons of unexplored and exciting guitar playing.
Learn to play the guitar without playing!
