The Truth About Natural Talent For Guitar Players
Do you ever wonder if you have enough natural talent to become a great guitar player? Many guitarists become depressed after seeing or hearing their favorite artists play and begin to think that these musicians were born with high levels of natural talent for playing guitar enabling them to quickly develop their awesome musical skills.
The subject of natural talent for guitar players is one of the most misunderstood elements of musical development. Doubting your level of natural talent for playing guitar can easily leave you frustrated and make it seem as if your potential to become a great guitar player is dependent upon external forces of genetics which are outside your control.
The true story about the influence of natural talent on guitar playing is a lot more encouraging and is completely different from what the conventional wisdom may have led you to believe.
In reality, the result of becoming a great guitar player and expressing yourself through music is achieved not by being born with superior natural ability but rather by learning and mastering specific musical skills that are needed to play guitar the way you want to play. Although becoming an expressive musician requires a highly unique and specialized set of both creative and technical abilities, the overall process of becoming a great guitar player takes no more natural talent than becoming a skilled scientist, brain surgeon, airplane pilot, accountant, lawyer, movie producer, graphic designer, or any one out of thousands of possible fields of study. The potential for success in any of these demanding professions is rarely thought about in terms of "level of one's natural talent". Instead, success in mastering these fields is expected with some degree of certainty if one is prepared to go through the work required to reach his goals.
Great guitar players who inspire you found some way of mastering the needed skills for expressing themselves on the guitar either on their own or with a great teacher. Unfortunately, the level of guitar instruction is far below the level of teaching in most other fields (including most other musical instruments). There are some musicians who, through sheer force of discipline are able to stick with the guitar long enough to figure out effective ways of improving their guitar playing by trial and error, but most will give up in frustration long before they get to become great guitar players. This reality leads to perpetuation of the myth about natural talent for playing guitar and also explains why there are so few great guitar players compared to masters of other fields (and other musical instruments).
What all of this means is that if you haven't yet become the guitar player you want to be, the reason for this has nothing to do with a lack of natural talent for playing guitar. Your favorite guitarists were not born with the guitar in their hands. They had to go through the process of developing the specific musical skills needed for their guitar playing style and YOU also can do the same.
What you need to do now is two things:
- Become excited about your potential to learn to play guitar the way you want! You CAN learn to become a great guitar player if you want to be one. Break away from your misconceptions about natural talent for playing guitar.
- If you are struggling with playing guitar at the level you want (and are not making consistent, measurable progress in your guitar playing), understand that this is never caused by your lack of "potential" to become a great guitar player. Instead, the root of the problem is in the approaches you are taking to learn to play guitar. You can turn everything around by analyzing what you are currently doing when you practice guitar and making improvements where needed. Seek out other sources of music instruction, refine your guitar practice habits and do not stop until you find the approach to learning guitar that produces results!
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