You're obviously highly motivated, and that's really important. I get students who are too, but unfortunately an awful lot of advertising, and the magazines that write content which is essentially fully-structured so as to attract advertisers - they're all selling "THE" secret. And what's the secret? There is no secret, and it's all the secret... everything matters. Same as "the" secret tone fix, or "the" secret to anything else, really. And I buy the idea that different people learn in somewhat different ways, but as you can obviously see living in Los Angeles (and you work on it) reading and writing music is the language, and the fact that Jimi Hendrix and Wes Montgomery weren't conversant in the language means that if they were living in LA today they'd be waiting tables. Go hang around the Baked Potato and talk about preserving your soul and individuality by not learning what everybody else knows.
Of course it depends entirely on what you're trying to do, but that will inevitably shift around over the years - I can see what I did wrong a lot more than what I did right. I could sight-read jazz bass charts at 15 but then I decided I want to play guitar - INSTEAD of bass, rather than "i could do both"; and I decided that since I want to rock, my time would be better spent on learning that by ear specifically - which
is true short-term, you get good at what you practice and you don't get good at what you don't. But once your reading slides, it can be really hard to get it back. In fact, without motive, I still haven't really, just enough to use lead sheets to get a handle on stuff.
And being able to play
excellent soulful blues-rock guitar is about as rare a skill now as being able to blow your nose or sharpen a pencil these days (though somewhat less useful :laughing11
, and dog knows where the music business is "heading" - you hear that the only young people staying above water are touring, touring, touring, and then somebody like "Say Chance" comes along and it's likely that they're going to own the universe in a few years... nobody knows nuttin', the only thing
I know is I love to play. My best student of the last batch got accepted at Berklee and he was trying to teach me how to help him record the submissions to get a full scholarship, but then he got all realistic and realized that since he could get academic scholarships to real colleges about three different ways he's going to be an international finance & government expert instead - he'll be president in a few years, just one of them types. Going into debt to get a "degree" from M.I.T. or Berklee without having a specific goal it will help with is nuts, for sure. It seems like the most successful students there didn't graduate, just went in and grabbed what they wanted and split - John Mayer, Dream Theater etc.
The one thing I hope you also do is play with people, because that's where I see holes in knowledge that can't be addressed without a teacher or just playing every gig, every opportunity, every time, freebies* included. You can't know what the holes are, until you see what the holes are. I can't, nobody can. And getting up in front of strangers to play music you don't know with people you've never met before does
such a great job of clearing out the pipes in your adrenal glands.... :icon_biggrin:
*(But don't be an idiot, either. If somebody's paying a caterer at a wedding, but you can play for free "for the exposure!" why isn't the caterer giving away food
"for the exposure...?" :redflag: grrr.... you can
expose yourself anytime you want, anywhere for free!)
P.S. (If you want a list of great music books (various types) and why and what for I can reciprocate. My faves are the ones that mix practical exercises with the origins and needs of those exercises, not just up-down-up-down.)
