G
Guest
Guest
Hello, World!
Id like to take a moment to talk about something thats quite important, and its about confidence.
confidence part 1;
I believe that confidence is in everyone. We don’t necessarily learn to be confident, we unleash. It’s always there. We can’t really get rid of it either, it’s definitely somewhere there, and we often find a certain job or hobby helps us unlock confidence. And its important to know confidence comes as a strength and as a weakness, and let me explain why.
Confidence comes in a strength. Your strengths are what you are good at. This doesnt only apply in music, but across all industries too. We all have them and its very important to know what our strengths our and where they come from. From a musical point of view your strengths could be; sight reading, alternate picking, sweeping, music analysis, music tech, finger picking, a specific genre, certain knowledge or anything like that. We find that our strengths are techniques we practice more so than others, or techniques we believe we are good at. From this we build confidence as we are satisfied with our own ability and become more ‘expert’ in a certain topic.
We then have our weaknesses. Our weaknesses tell us what we are not so sufficient in. A weakness is definitely a weakness, but why does it lead to confidence? Because if you are aware of your weaknesses, you are in a powerful position to do 1 of 2 things (or both). 1) We use our weaknesses as a source of motivation using the “I can do this” attitude, or 2) We are aware of our weaknesses and disguise with our strengths.
Confidence part 2;
I think strengths and weaknesses should be identified because you need to know what it is you need to work on. I strongly believe that we all have strengths and weaknesses, and the thing with strengths and weaknesses is, they change between person to person. We sit and practice day and night towards certain techniques (say that technique was tapping) and I mean say a guitar player practiced specifically on this technique for a very long time. They are building towards a strength that will make them ‘wow’ audiences and colleagues, and this will give them a great feeling of satisfaction. This gives them confidence.
Weaknesses I find are very complicated. Because they are what they are, but could be used as a fantastic tool. When I was younger, I was guilty of being ‘wowed’ by my heroes because they mastered their strengths. At the time I was only aware of strengths, but sadly only their strengths and not their weaknesses, but when I analysed my playing, I was aware of my own weaknesses and not my strengths. For years I had this frame of mind and essentially was comparing my weaknesses to their strengths. When really, my weaknesses (as mentioned above) should have been a source of motivation). You kinda give up.
We find our heroes do nothing but impress us, which is very true. They are the fuel to our motivation and they influence our musical taste and because of this we try to copy what we see and hear. After all, the saying goes ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’. But its important to know that these guitar heroes have weaknesses like the rest of us. I am in no way shape or form, trying to insult the greatest, but merely say they are human like us, and are probably in our shoes when they talk about their heroes.
From this, Id like to give you a task. I would like everyone to comment constructively on their own playing. And I will give you an example with myself.
I believe a strength I hold as a guitarist is I really like how I’ve progressed with my sweeping and arpeggios. I find that I was really weak with my finger rolls, and could only play a C major or A minor shape patterns. I practiced sweeping and arpeggios for ages to learn other shapes, to get cleaner and to incorporate other techniques in there too. For example, I like tapping the arpeggio when following a sweep to cover more area of the fret board, and also find string skipping breaks the technique up a little bit.
Another strength is I’m technically a “Master of Music’ through academia. It took a lot of work and because of this I believe I can cover a bit of ground across the board of music. I by no means ‘master’ anything, but in order to achieve a qualification like this I had to study my ass off.
A weakness I carry is that I’m quite a sloppy and lazy guitar player. You will occasionally find in my videos I miss notes, I slip up, my bends and vibrato can be off and I can get upset by this. However, to overcome this, I spend a bit of time going backwards a little bit. For example, playing 1 note in as many embellished ways as possible.
So the idea for the strength is you say something you believe you are good at and explain why. Then for the weakness, you state a weakness and say “my weakness is…BUT heres what im going to do about it’.
I’ve wanted to write something like this for a long time, because I sometimes find people are really unhappy with their playing or feel like they are just not getting anywhere, and where I dont message or comment much, I’d like to contribute to something.
I really do hope this helps. And it doesnt matter how experienced or un-experienced you are, we all have strengths and we all have weaknesses.
Id like to take a moment to talk about something thats quite important, and its about confidence.
confidence part 1;
I believe that confidence is in everyone. We don’t necessarily learn to be confident, we unleash. It’s always there. We can’t really get rid of it either, it’s definitely somewhere there, and we often find a certain job or hobby helps us unlock confidence. And its important to know confidence comes as a strength and as a weakness, and let me explain why.
Confidence comes in a strength. Your strengths are what you are good at. This doesnt only apply in music, but across all industries too. We all have them and its very important to know what our strengths our and where they come from. From a musical point of view your strengths could be; sight reading, alternate picking, sweeping, music analysis, music tech, finger picking, a specific genre, certain knowledge or anything like that. We find that our strengths are techniques we practice more so than others, or techniques we believe we are good at. From this we build confidence as we are satisfied with our own ability and become more ‘expert’ in a certain topic.
We then have our weaknesses. Our weaknesses tell us what we are not so sufficient in. A weakness is definitely a weakness, but why does it lead to confidence? Because if you are aware of your weaknesses, you are in a powerful position to do 1 of 2 things (or both). 1) We use our weaknesses as a source of motivation using the “I can do this” attitude, or 2) We are aware of our weaknesses and disguise with our strengths.
Confidence part 2;
I think strengths and weaknesses should be identified because you need to know what it is you need to work on. I strongly believe that we all have strengths and weaknesses, and the thing with strengths and weaknesses is, they change between person to person. We sit and practice day and night towards certain techniques (say that technique was tapping) and I mean say a guitar player practiced specifically on this technique for a very long time. They are building towards a strength that will make them ‘wow’ audiences and colleagues, and this will give them a great feeling of satisfaction. This gives them confidence.
Weaknesses I find are very complicated. Because they are what they are, but could be used as a fantastic tool. When I was younger, I was guilty of being ‘wowed’ by my heroes because they mastered their strengths. At the time I was only aware of strengths, but sadly only their strengths and not their weaknesses, but when I analysed my playing, I was aware of my own weaknesses and not my strengths. For years I had this frame of mind and essentially was comparing my weaknesses to their strengths. When really, my weaknesses (as mentioned above) should have been a source of motivation). You kinda give up.
We find our heroes do nothing but impress us, which is very true. They are the fuel to our motivation and they influence our musical taste and because of this we try to copy what we see and hear. After all, the saying goes ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’. But its important to know that these guitar heroes have weaknesses like the rest of us. I am in no way shape or form, trying to insult the greatest, but merely say they are human like us, and are probably in our shoes when they talk about their heroes.
From this, Id like to give you a task. I would like everyone to comment constructively on their own playing. And I will give you an example with myself.
I believe a strength I hold as a guitarist is I really like how I’ve progressed with my sweeping and arpeggios. I find that I was really weak with my finger rolls, and could only play a C major or A minor shape patterns. I practiced sweeping and arpeggios for ages to learn other shapes, to get cleaner and to incorporate other techniques in there too. For example, I like tapping the arpeggio when following a sweep to cover more area of the fret board, and also find string skipping breaks the technique up a little bit.
Another strength is I’m technically a “Master of Music’ through academia. It took a lot of work and because of this I believe I can cover a bit of ground across the board of music. I by no means ‘master’ anything, but in order to achieve a qualification like this I had to study my ass off.
A weakness I carry is that I’m quite a sloppy and lazy guitar player. You will occasionally find in my videos I miss notes, I slip up, my bends and vibrato can be off and I can get upset by this. However, to overcome this, I spend a bit of time going backwards a little bit. For example, playing 1 note in as many embellished ways as possible.
So the idea for the strength is you say something you believe you are good at and explain why. Then for the weakness, you state a weakness and say “my weakness is…BUT heres what im going to do about it’.
I’ve wanted to write something like this for a long time, because I sometimes find people are really unhappy with their playing or feel like they are just not getting anywhere, and where I dont message or comment much, I’d like to contribute to something.
I really do hope this helps. And it doesnt matter how experienced or un-experienced you are, we all have strengths and we all have weaknesses.
