Dave Wirth
What does it mean to play guitar correctly anyways? I propose that if you can answer yes to the following two questions, you are playing guitar correctly:
- Are you pain-free when you play?
- Are you having fun?
The first question is a bit elusive. Good technique is different for every single person who decides to pick up the guitar. What works for one person doesn't neccesarily work for another. Consider this little gem I like to harp on guitar teachers about: "Place your thumb on the back of the neck of the guitar at all times." The trouble with this advice is that it doesn't work with everyone, especially the ones with longer thumbs. If people with longer thumbs always placed their thumb on the back of the neck, their wrist would be bent on a number of occasions (a precursor to tendonitis if ever I saw one). I personally have seen student after student respond best to having a strait wrist:
The more I try to play without pain, the more it ends up being more enjoyable.
The second question is also an elusive one. "Are you having fun?" This is a really good question that I'll ask my students sometimes, especially if they are frustrated! If the fun still out-weighs the frustration, we're in good shape. If not, I have some serious work to do. Guitar ought to be fun. If it weren't, then why play it at all? Why take lessons? Why try to do it? Why? It'd be just another expensive hobby.
The trouble with musicians is that many of us over-complicate why we do music, and that unfortunately transfers to everyone else who wants a piece of the action. There doesn't need to be some huge burden, a heavy philosophy that we must shoulder in order to play guitar. Neither do we need to be weighed down with the idea that our contributions to guitar aren't worth it ("so why try?"). No. We all have something to give to guitar, as long as we're doing it without chronic pain and we're having fun with it. That's my two cents, at least.
