Hi Chris, question abt the breaking point of choosing Classical or Electric style?

[blurx]

Hi Chris,

Thank you for being such a great player, of course you hear that a lot, but really it's because of your dedication towards practice that really really motivates me and you being once a classical guitarist and now super electric guitarist

I'm a classical guitar player taking lessons for a long time and now am teaching myself. I have always been playing electric guitar along with my classical, mostly metal stuffs and took lessons last year and now I'm learning improvising and it has really opened up my world; serious work for the guitar there.

So basically I'm taking both lesson classical and electric, but my classical maestro is telling me that I have to give up one in order to move to the next level and I'm quite apprehensive abt it.

My job is a classical teacher, doesn't seem like I have much of a choice here right? But I like the fact that playing electric makes me a better musician, learning to improvise, learning so many other styles of playing and I love it!
Classical will forever be about getting that perfect tone, perfecting your repertoire, it is nice but it sometimes gets to me.

So I just want to know if you may be kind enough, how and why did you make your choice to give up classical? Not including other circumstances like monetary and stuffs lol.

Also if you are kind enough shine some light on my situation, but I understand that I need to work it out on my own but just really cannot get myself over it.

Thank you Chris, sorry for the long post and you having to be like a shrink for this one, but you've been there before, really hope you can help me out.

Thanks and regards
blurx

 

[jimiclaptoncarl]

Hey blurx,

I'm no Chris Broderick but I can tell you what I think.

First of all, I don't think you have to give up anything to "move to the next level." Not even referring to guitarists, there are classical trained musicians who play in orchestras, and they ALSO play at a high level in jazz, pop, and any other style you can think of.

Electric guitarists can learn much from taking classical lessons, even if they don't wish to play classical guitar. Some of these things are good posture, correct hand technique, reading music, etc...

When you say "sometimes it gets to me" what do you mean by that?

Obviously, the classical guitar is not Chris' primary instrument..but he can still play it at a very good level.

I think you need to choose what you want to spend the most time doing, playing classical, or electric.. and what are your goals, play in a metal band? Certainly you would not spend as much time on classical guitar as you would on electric, but there is no reason why you can't get good on both.

Hope this helps a bit!

 

[da.benson8r]

Amen, jimiclaptoncarl. As an example, my main style in hard rock/metal, and I love it, but I also love listening to and playing country, blues, classical, jazz... I don't study them as much, but being able to play them opens up your eyes to different harmonic sensibilities and possibilities. Some of those riffs and licks you learned in metal could be applied in country or jazz, just like a nice turnaround or chromatic-tinged jazz run can be thrown in front of some heavy palm-muted riffs.

 

[blurx]

Hi guys thank you for your replies, it's really cool.

Well when I mean it gets to me it means, playing classical requires you to really concentrate on your tone projection, and sometimes your nails are bad and you gotta change the angle of playing to try to get that tone you want to get.

Now getting a nice tone is already difficult but you have to have different color tone for different parts of song to bring out that flavor you want.

Sometime you want to express the song in a certain way, but you have to follow the rules you know and it's not that cool.

Not to mention sight reading damn! lol

Now nothing related to knowing your 12 keys, the safe notes, improvising in general. I like to improvise it's nice if you do it good it really is something of your own, and well just plain cool.

Ya playing good is fine but at some point you gotta concentrate on only one style to be a great player not just good you see so now it's like at the crunch point where I think I gotta choose one.

So looking at Chris he must have went through some thoughts and thus I just wanna know what were his thoughts then.

Thanks for the replies again!

 

[da.benson8r]

Ah, okay, makes more sense now that you put it that way.

I guess the best way to look at it is: which one do you like playing more? Are you a bigger fan of playing the classical stuff, or do you enjoy getting on stage and shredding like hell? Cause yes, both are very different, and you should focus on just one if you want to be great at it, but if your heart isn't into what you're playing, no matter how good you are, it's never going to be the best it really can be.

Just another quick little opinion blurb. Glad to help you out. :Spin:

 

[blurx]

Hey da.benson8r,

Thank you for your reply, ya I understand your point, gotta sort it out myself, anyways the only thing that won't go wrong is just practice so suppose I'll just have to keep playing and suppose that will make things easier lol.

Thanks again!