The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

He/She with the most patience, wins.

Patience is a highly sought-after, and usually unavailable, commodity. I often wonder if the people who are patient and are willing to wait in order to get what they want get ignored needlessly. It's not like having patience is sexy. It's not like it's the meaning of life either. It sure helps though. The trick with patience, as my good friend Jay puts it, is learning how to play with tension. To play chess, one has to rely on strategy. Strategy relies on tension. Playing with tension means having patience.

Guitar could be enhanced by developing all three. The tension of not knowing how to do a particular skill that is beyond one's technical ability often is the reason why many people quit. Taking lessons from any teacher is a great strategy for learning because the teacher can help to alleviate that tension with empathy (hopefully). They know where their students are at, and they know how to help. The students learn, let go, and then move on.

Learning to play with tension means learning how to let go and have patience that eventually we will be on top. The reward is monstrous anyways: Satisfaction.

A common statement, spoken by musicians who love to think about what they do, is that music is the most common language. No matter where you go, if two people can read sheet music, they can play music together. Perhaps this is a good argument for learning how to read music after all! Being literate can't be a bad thing. It can't be bad to be able to communicate with others, but the same could be said about guitar.

There is a common language spoken between most guitarists. It's a simple one that we can use to skirt past language difficulties. Pop songs are popular by definition. If two radically different persons both played guitar, chances are they will be able to communicate if they know the same song. If by chance these two people knew how to play the chords D, G, and A on the guitar, they could both play Twist and Shout by The Beatles. Or Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones. Or Turn it On by The Flaming Lips. The list goes on.

Maybe it's just me: Fluency in all the languages of music is nice, but I dig guitar's vernacular the most.

I'll admit it: I love learning more than I love teaching. Don't get me wrong; Teaching is a good way to go about my days and I do enjoy it. However, I gaze in wonder of all that I have learned about guitar, music, life, art, people, and I realize that it's just a drop in the bucket of all I can do. I won't stop learning as long as I am alive because it just feels so good. It's been less important to me to make the rent (sometimes) than it has to make sure I'm learning something new. This is why it's such a natural fit for me to teach. I like learning, and what better way to learn than help a bunch of other people learn? Part of teaching, for me, is how to present concepts in such a way that saves someone five years of running around in circles. Learning how to do this requires quite a bit of my energy, but I enjoy it. It's a worthy goal to be user-friendly. As a martial arts instructor once told me, "If I don't make you better than I am, then I'm not doing my job right."

I am wondering if I will think of 2010, and the years surrounding it, as the golden age of user-friendly design. I won't go so far as to repeat what's already been said about how awesome Apple is doing when compared to other computing companies, but I will say that their example is extremely inspiring. What better example exists of a computing experience? Who better defines ease of use? What better example allows the user more depth if they want it, and what better example is there of a well-designed atmosphere that allows users to ignore the depth? These are important points.

Depth and Simplicity

I don't mind being the only guitar teacher in Austin who is taking user-experience seriously. It seems to work okay for me (check out my schedule). The trick with my work has been how to synthesize every single aspect of learning guitar from scratch into a beautiful user experience. For example, not every single person I've taught wants to learn music theory, but it's available for anyone who is looking for it. I like this approach. The user experience is such that it doesn't automatically include theory, but allows an in-depth review if anyone wants to check it out. Having the option doesn't mean utilizing it. Options are our green light for more depth if we choose it, but are also the gates keeping us from needlessly complicating things.

Perhaps we are in an age now where we are just expecting more services, products, and designs to be simpler and clearer. Perhaps we are starting to demand a better designed information architecture. I love to pick on guitar teachers for this: Do we really need to teach scales if all our students are interested in learning is how to strum along to Beatles songs? No, we don't. Nor do we need to learn how to program in C to know how to use an iPhone! It's all about depth if you want it, and simplicity in it's initial presentation and use.

Guitar is a fascinating instrument. So few instruments have been used in as diverse a way. Few other "mediums" offer as many interesting configurations as guitar. So it comes as a bit of a surprise to me, sometimes, that the guitar itself is often seen as the end as opposed as a means to an end. In other words, playing guitar just to play guitar is cool but using it to create a song, a noise, a whatever, yields even cooler results.

To take the idea further, there is a difference between a guitarist who uses a song to play a blues solo and a guitarist who creates an entire song that features a beautiful guitar solo. The first example demonstrates that the song is basically nodding to the guitar. The song comes second because the guitar comes first. The second example demonstrates that the song comes first. True, people do remember guitar solos (if they are memorable), but we all remember the alphabet song mostly because of the melody and how catchy it is. Adding a guitar solo to a new version of the alphabet song would accentuate the song. Wow. As a sidenote, that sounds like quite a fun idea. Hmmm.

What if the guitar could be used to create a song first, and even become more memorable? What if it could even, dare I say, become disposable for the sake of the song? What if the guitar could become the medium that a person uses to create as opposed to the only reason to play music? No judgements on either approach of course, but it's worth thinking about if it means more fun could be had.