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Comment by lisasays | Hacker News Reader

The only real way to get to advanced levels quickly is with a shit load of practice.

That, and actually digging music through forces coming out of your own soul (and not for the sake of meeting your parent's expectations ... or worse, serving as fodder for their half-baked education experiments) might have something to do with it.

Don't see why your comment should be downvoted, BTW.

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> digging music through forces coming out of your own soul

Agree. Art is art, and why do we make art? Well...?

Technical skill helps with the nuance of the creation, but not with the "why."

IMO, as a lay guitar player of 25 years only recently taking it a little more seriously, overfocus on technical skill and overtraining can actually be a detriment. Overplaying is absolutely a real thing, and nothing kills the soul like being self-conscious.

Heh, 25 year overplayer on guitar here. My teacher’s advice recently was to quit trying to impress myself or others. I went home and ripped into some stuff by ear and I am the happiest I’ve been with my playing after years of overplaying and overanalysis. It’s nice to be able to say “oh in that section I played 42 notes demonstrating Lydian b2”, but it also feels entirely useless for what I’m trying to accomplish.

I think graduating from endless analysis and “lots of notes” playing is a part of the journey.

Playing more the strings of soul instead and less the strings of the brain?

I think there’s kind of a delicate mix. When I practice analysis can be a good tool for idea generation, but I only have so much CPU and it leads to boring playing.

> why?

Isn't it (like with most things) to get laid?

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