3 levels of guitar playing

I have found another way of describing the skills of guitar player. It can be understood as a PC-game with levels.

1st level

First level is completed, when fingers are moving in a decent way, there are no obvious problems in this area.

2nd level

In this level one has nice finger-movements with nice sound quality. Most guitar players have stopped here. There is no need to go further - just play smoothly with nice tone and it's all right. It's a bit boring, but isn't this the essence of classical music - to be boring, "serious", fulfilled with things which are not for human being but for "übermench", the high standard yet to be understood, but not reachable for average Jack. Those high standards are so high that even the player himself barely understands them, though.

3rd level

This is for those who have some doubts about the boring seriousness of classical idiom. This can be described as introducing the musical ideas into playing. There must be done revolution - musical meaning must take the power over fingers. I'll not say that this be some kind of intellectual analysis of music, making excel-table or reading fat books. Not at all - it's about listening to the very sound, the output of your activity and making decisions in that soil. Not for the sake of finger-comfort or tone but for the sake of captivity or "meaning"* of musical content.

The reason

The reason, why I described those levels is mainly in the obstacle between levels 2 and 3. One can play smoothly with nice tone, but this can still be boring. there must be done some effort for reaching 3rd level. There is risk to loose the nice tone at the beginning. It can be taken as moving backwards. In India there is even special practice - making deliberately false, bad sound to make progress in over-all process. One can make living with playing just nice tone, so jumping to next level is risky business. But It pays back in joy of doing It, the divine thing, the Music itself not the crap to played daily in elevator loudspeakers.

*meaning is in parentheses because it has nothing to do with intellect

Muscular trap

When guitar-player needs to play music, He must "translate" musical language to language of finger movements, "language of fingers". I made schema about relations between brain, hand and "holy spirit" or musical meaning.

When I listen to guitar player, It's quit obvious whether musician is just moving his fingers, makes just nice sounds or is related to the musical idea.

There are three degrees:

1. It's just successful finger-movement. Everything happens in "language of fingers". The movements are smooth and fingers are happy. It's must-be in guitar playing. But it's not all.
2. It's producing nice sound. Here the ear is involved. Ear listens to separate sounds, but not to the music itself. It's like a dog, who can listen to separate notes, but is not capable of forming music on those sounds. It can be called the trap of nice sound.
3. It's upon the previous two - It's listening to musical content produced by smooth finger movements and nice sound.

Signs of evil

When musician thinks, that "musical development" is giving to the main vote of decision to finger-comfort, destroying musical persuasiveness, then He is in muscular trap. Other obvious sign is, that musician tries just play such pieces, where there are technical difficulties, ie musician thinks that making music is just moving fingers and being successful in it. He is not able to play easy pieces in decent manner, He feels boredom, tries to accelerate and find some extra-work to His itchy fingers. Making music from rare notes is hard task, but this goal does not bother the one trapped in "language of fingers". Unfortunately contemporary schools are trying to produce "finger-geniuses", leaving music on second place.

Other sign is random, schizophrenic use of tricks - It's just making things deliberately harder to follow. It's like convincing the listener: "I can play such a hard thing, I'm a true master!". It's like nowadays politicians, who are trying to be on picture, making fool things just for being admitted. One of trademarks of such unneeded activity is use of 'metallico' sound in random places by Julian Bream. It's weird and confusing, making things just for the sake of the things himself, forgetting about musical content.

Way out

One must be capable of thinking music without fingers in it. There is such technique as visualization - It's going through music and thinking about fingerings. Musical thinking is more like "audioalization", forgetting about fingers, thinking about musical character, the accents, the tempo, pauses between sessions, overall "feel" of the music. Recording is an invaluable tool for finding the musical shortcomings.

The goal of music

In modern world there are two kinds of people - the ones who have no time at all ("successful" ones) and those who have it too much ("losers", jobless ones). The guitar playing being rather hard and time-consuming thing is not for the first class of people. For those, who have lot of time, the guitar can be nice vehicle for relaxation and feeling the love of God. With guitar one forgets about excess-time for sure. The main issue of music is loving it, showing your love to others and enlighten them with it. Fingers are important, but they are just the side-issue of the whole mystery.