How long does it actually take to get better at guitar?

our journey as guitar players is full of ups and downs sometimes We're Riding High and other times we're wondering if we're ever going to have the freedom we really want on this instrument it turns out if we can calibrate to the various stages that human beings go through when they learn new knowledge or build new skills we can turn times of real frustration into Times of real inspiration [Music] welcome back to the channel my name is Chris today you will learn about the four stages of competence [Music] now I was on a live stream call recently on my teaching platform called the studio and I was talking about sort of knowing the difference between different stages of learning right and specifically I was talking about training a new skill going from something you didn't know how to do and training it like that initial stage of how you build something brand new versus and the difference between that and practicing something that you already knew and just sort of getting it good right polishing it up and making sure there are no errors in it and the difference between those two things and getting something performance ready or getting something to the capability that you were so good at it that you really didn't even have to think about it well during this call a student of mine named Eric piped up and he said have you ever heard about the four stages of competence well this led us down a rabbit hole of a conversation that was very inspirational so I wanted to shout out to Eric and say thanks very much for bringing it up it inspired me to make this video so if you haven't heard about the four stages of competence this idea is a framework that was built in the late 60s early 1970s around tracking the various stages that people go through when they're learning new skills or getting new information now this was largely done under the umbrella of Academia and productivity how students get new information in universities or how people learn new skills on the job but it totally applies to guitar players in our journey so what I want to do is explain these levels of Competency and show you how as guitar players we move through them things that we might say things that we might experience and stuff to look out for as we move through each one of these stages the first stage is called unconscious and competence and this is basically where you don't know what you don't know you don't understand the thing that you don't know you don't know if it's valuable you you there's not a lot of information there guitarists in this stage say stuff like this oh I don't need to learn scales they're boring or uh I don't need to learn any music theory because Jimi Hendrix didn't know any and he's pretty good I'm sort of creating a story that I can attach to because I don't understand the value of the thing that I'm dismissing I don't understand why it's valuable I certainly don't understand how much work it's going to take to get and so I don't really care right in order to move out of this stage you really have to have some sort of a spark of curiosity about something right which puts you into the next stage and this is called conscious incompetence this is when I know the thing that I want but I don't know how to do it yet right I can understand the value of it I can see that I want it I really want that skill or that knowledge base and I can see that it's going to take some effort and time to get it's in this stage when you can identify knowledge gaps or skills that you have to build and it's also in the stage where your tolerance for failure should be very very high because you are going to sound crappy for a while you understand what you want but you don't know how to do it yet it's in this phase you want to exercise a lot of patience and again increase your tolerance for failure when you do put in the time and you build the skills and you close those knowledge gaps you enter the next stage which is conscious competence I know how to do this thing I've closed those knowledge gaps I've built the initial skills I can do it but when I do it it still takes some effort right it still takes some Focus again more patience here because this is a long phase depending on the skill that you've selected or the knowledge that you've decided to go acquire this can take a little while so patience here is really important when you put that effort in and you polish these skills and you really internalize the knowledge you enter the final stage which is called unconscious competence now this is the stage where we all want to be this is where we see our favorite guitar players while they make it look so easy right the danger here is in assuming that they got here in one giant leap right like oh geez they're so good I can never be that good right maybe you'll hear them on an interview so say you know what how do you do that how are you doing that thing I just I don't know I just don't think about it right it's important to realize that these people Our Heroes right the people we admire that have this unconscious competence didn't get there overnight it wasn't a skill that they obtained by magic or sorcery it wasn't given to them by a deity they had to go through every one of these stages to get there right so this is why understanding where you are in one of these stages will allow you the opportunity to recalibrate your expectations when you're in certain stages you want a lot of patience high tolerance for failure when you're in other stages you want a lot of curiosity right and so just knowing which stage you're in helps you calibrate to what your expectations should be all right now let's zoom in I want to show you a very specific example of how I went through all of these stages with a very specific technique okay I'm going to take you back to 1981. that's when Van Halen released fair warning and if you're a Van Halen fan and specifically a guitar player Van Halen fan from that era you'll know that was one of his finest moments his playing had matured his melodic sensibility had gotten really great and his technique was at its height really um so I sat down to to learn all about what Eddie was up to in 1981. however I was in a serious state of unconscious incompetence around arpeggios the word arpeggio confused me it was a weird Italian word I didn't understand what an arpeggio was so I assumed they were unimportant and in fact I probably thought something like well if Jimmy Page doesn't use it or if Joe Walsh doesn't use arpeggios or if Eddie Van Halen doesn't use arpeggios then I don't need him they're for other people that doesn't concern me unconscious incompetence right so I sat down with a record making some progress specifically on a solo for a song called push comes to shove and I'm making its progress getting some work done and then this comes out of the speakers [Music] and I was a little baffled I didn't understand what this was I had the minor minor pentatonic scale down [Music] and the blue scale [Music] and that was my vocabulary I had some page licks down and stuff but I didn't know what this was and I didn't understand it so I went around I've learned I thought I figured it out but it was wrong and I played it for some other guitar player friends of mine and finally somebody said that's an arpeggio he's just playing an A minor chord and I was like What a minor arpeggio chords played one note at a time now I moved into conscious incompetence I know what an arpeggio is I can see the value because Eddie uses them that made it really special for me I wanted that solo I saw the value I understood what it was and I was crappy at it I couldn't make this sound so I worked really hard at there's like some there's some heel muting on the bridge there's there's a there's a certain amount of applying and lifting pressure in time that has to happen [Music] so I wore worked and worked and worked and worked this is where I entered conscious competence I knew what it was I knew how to do it I had closed my knowledge Gap I had found the technique I recognized the value and I could play it but it was hard for me right conscious competency so I moved it around the neck [Music] so I can get it all over the place then I played it backwards so I could play it back and forth then I decided if I ever learned a chord I want to learn how to make an arpeggio out of it so if it was uh you know an E minor seven or something I could then arpeggiate it I worked really really hard at this so that finally after all of that effort and after all of that moving around and sort of challenging myself and drilling the capability I moved into unconscious competence so now when I see a new chord or I want to hear an arpeggio I don't have to think about it I don't have to worry about the technique failing me I can just play it [Music] it just comes out it's just at my fingertips it's effortless and I don't have to think about it so I've moved all the way from unconscious incompetence oh I don't even know what an arpeggio is don't need it to unconscious competence I can play arpeggios Whenever I hear them coming whenever I feel like I want to and this is where when you take a skill to this level to this stage of learning you can play things without thinking about them okay I hope you found this interesting I hope you found it helpful this idea of really keeping track of where you are in the stages of learning can help you move through these ruts and understand that maybe you're in a situation where you're going to sound pretty crappy for a while and that's okay because that's what's supposed to be happening at this point big shout out to Eric for bringing this up in that live stream and allowing the inspiration for me to do this video I hope you've enjoyed this stay curious and I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Chris Sherland Guitar

Views: 19,253

Keywords: music theory on guitar, chris sherland guitar, chris sherland, music theory guitar lesson, how long does it take to learn guitar, how to improve on guitar fast, how to practice guitar, best practice for guitar, how to learn guitar quickly, improving on guitar, best way to improve on guitar, how long does it take to master guitar

Id: SqLFAs9Sm1U

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 14 2023