chinanight
Strummer
Posts: 25
My main instrument is: Taylor and National
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Post by chinanight on Apr 27, 2015 8:27:42 GMT
Hi all, Often when looking for new stuff to play its tagged Intermediate,Novice or advanced. I find most advanced very challenging and it can take months for me to learn something this difficult if at all. However with Intermediate and Novice I find some of each either difficult or fairly easy. I just wondered how and who decides in which box to put this music. Also I would be interested to hear from anyone who has played Robert Johnson and whether they found that difficult or not. Im trying to gauge at which level my playing is at as I really don't have a clue.
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ocarolan
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Post by ocarolan on Apr 27, 2015 8:42:50 GMT
I reckon the terms are all but meaningless - only the person doing the categorising knows how and why they assign a particular skill/difficulty level to a piece. In a different sphere, the grading for classical exams, though based on a staged technical approach, can be confusing. It's not really my thing but I do dabble at what I'd call beginner/intermediate level, and on looking at various exam pieces I reckon some Grade 2 pieces would be quite a challenge for me whereas some Grade 6 pieces look to be relatively simpler. I doubt you'll ever guess/assess your own capability in the same way as whoever grades the pieces - I would recommend finding stuff to learn firstly by listening and then chosing ones you particularly like - that will give you the motivation to learn it. If/when you come up against particular difficulties then look for ways of overcoming those to enable you to complete the piece to your satisfaction. You'll eventually learn a lot more this way than by looking for pieces within your capability (though you obviously need some of those too!). Sorry I can't help on the Robert Johnson aspect of your query, I'm just off down to the crossroads..... Keith
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Post by scripsit on Apr 27, 2015 10:25:04 GMT
The three categories are not very helpful because most of us have aptitude for some genres of music more so than other, in addition to physical attributes like the size of our hands or fingers.
I remain relentlessly intermediate with, for instance, ragtime pieces in normal tuning, but can often be successful with so-called higher level pieces when they are to my taste (usually when they are in DADGAD, for some reason).
I'm between beginner and intermediate on jazz arrangements, mainly because my hands don't agree with those chords with all four fretting hand fingers jammed into two fret spaces.
Pierre Bensusan, and some others, create simple and lovely little 'intermediate' pieces which involve a single bar or two of six or seven fret stretches. I find these impossible.
I thought I'd be good at Robert Johnson and blues in general because that was where my chops were in electric playing, but I find his stuff very difficult to make authentic. It's similar to the reason why it's so hard to sound like John Lee Hooker with an electric guitar: his technique and feel is quite eccentric. Yet some people get that feel straight away.
I'd grab a piece you want to play and try it, without worrying about the 'level'. If you can actually get through it, keep playing it until it becomes musical, rather than an exercise. Don't be afraid to have a go at several different styles of music at once: you might surprise yourself.
Kym
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Post by vikingblues on Apr 27, 2015 11:15:18 GMT
I'll admit I often don't find the categories particularly useful as a guide either! I'm also finding more and more with increasing age that what appears to be simple often isn't due to physical strains imposed by those sort of horrible stretches that Kym mentions ... or even less extreme stretches for that matter. For me a lot of it comes down to whether I can get the "feel" and "flow" of a piece of music.
Though a bit of judicious adjustment to the arrangement and the fingering can sometimes save the day regarding stretches - like that oft seen DADGAD one of a B on the 2nd fret of the 2nd string and G on the 5th fret of the 6th string being much more playable as a pair if the B is on the 5th fret of the 3rd string.
I'll also go along the same lines as Kym on Robert Johnson - it might be relatively simple to play the notes but to get the feel of the way they're played and the character of the music that results is way more difficult. Blues is like that though - the basic arrangements and rules may be very simple but to play it well with feeling is damnably tricky.
So many of the old blues players were successful because their idiosyncrasies made them unique - John Lee Hooker a major case in point. It's tricky to play and sound authentic copying somebody elses idiosyncrasies if it is not natural for you. So maybe the easier blues players to emulate are the ones whose feel and style is closest to your own tendencies rather than ones with the less technically difficult arrangements. Maybe! Possibly the best thing with blues is to try to develop your own style so you sound like yourself - something that the by far the best teacher in blues I have ever encountered often says.
Mark
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Post by creamburmese on Apr 27, 2015 19:44:54 GMT
Really I think there is a need for something like a 10-step scale for each guitar genre. Personally I don't consider myself to be a beginner any more, but then a lot of the "intermediate" classical guitar stuff is too challenging for me, and it will be a long time (maybe never) before I reach the level of a high school student looking to study in a lower level college. Fortunately I"m too old and wise (!) to worry about such things, but in the meantime perhaps I shall describe myself as a begintermediate Perhaps those of you with more stratospheric abilities could be interdvanced??
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Post by Mike Floorstand on Apr 27, 2015 21:01:34 GMT
...in the meantime perhaps I shall describe myself as a begintermediate Perhaps those of you with more stratospheric abilities could be interdvanced?? I shall probably be interd before I ever get described as advanced...
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Post by scorpiodog on Apr 28, 2015 10:29:20 GMT
Begintermediate. What a great term. That's for me!
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