Who are you? What kind of musician do you wish to be? This is one of the most important questions when learning music.
Are you a jazz musician? The next Kurt Cobain? Do you love learning scales as much as I do? Knowing who you are, and who you wish to be, as a musician, is fundamental to learning your instrument. If you know what you want out of music, you can make sure you're moving towards your goals as quickly and easily as possible.
Let me give some examples to make my point:
If you're going to be the next great jazz guitarist... you had better learn every scale, every mode, and every chord that you possibly can. You're probably going to want to get a jazz "fake book" (a book that contains progressions to many jazz standards) and learn it cold. You're going to need to train your ear to recognize chords and different chord progressions. You will need to know more music theory than just about any other musician out there (except for maybe other jazz musicians).
If you want to play some funky bass lines... you're going to need to learn your scales, some modes, how to slap and pop notes, and study some classic funk bass lines.
If you're a punk rocker who wants to stick it to the man... you probably want to learn some power chords, and you're probably going to want to learn some punk songs (I'll leave it to you to do the research). You probably should learn your scales, too (but you won't, because you're too punk). Or you can do whatever you want - I'm a teacher and maybe you think I'm "the man" you're sticking it to.
If you'd like to know more about any particular style of music, check out my introduction to various music styles below:
In the future I will continue linking to introductions to various styles of music from this post, so you can get an idea of what's involved in learning any particular style of music. But for now, just ask yourself what you really want out of your instrument, and start figuring out what it's going to take to get you there.
Temet Nosce.
No comments:
Post a Comment