So what was the best advice you've ever gotten from a teacher or musical mentor?

Mark Wein

Mark Wein

Grand Poobah
Staff member
For me it was my college guitar teachers' constant pressure to listen to more music. And to listen to what comes out of my instrument.
 
Mine... "Don't give up your day job, kid." :ack:



Victor Wooten:
Space/Rest: We should “play the rests.” “Learn how to make a rest speak louder than a note.”

Articulation/Duration: “Notes are alive and like you and me, they need to breathe. The song will dictate how much air is needed.”
 
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Oddly enough, it wasn't really advice. It was an apology from my mother a few years back. But it definitely helpful.
 
The best piece of advice was to learn how the Modes apply to the Circle of Fifths as I would have the tools to solo in any key
 
The best piece of single advice regarding playing i got from Steve Morse - not directly sadly for me. He said:

"When you are practicing someone should be able to walk in - AT ANY TIME - and feel the rhythm and hear music."

I can't stress the importance of this enough. I heard it 20 years before I GOT IT. When I did finally I felt like an idiot.
 
Jeremy_Green said:
The best piece of single advice regarding playing i got from Steve Morse - not directly sadly for me. He said:

"When you are practicing someone should be able to walk in - AT ANY TIME - and feel the rhythm and hear music."

I can't stress the importance of this enough. I heard it 20 years before I GOT IT. When I did finally I felt like an idiot.
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I like that one a lot.
 
Not a teacher or musical mentor but I once went trying out dirt boxes with an ex-GF who with a classically trained ear who couldn't make out the difference between a dirt box being on or off never mind the differences between brands and types of OD.

My guitar GAS disappeared after that and now when I get GAS for something ridiculous in my DJ rig like speakers worth more than I spent on my car, I think back to that afternoon and remember that if she couldn't tell the difference then some drunk prat at a wedding isn't going to know shit between a top of the line RCF rig and something much more sensibly priced.
 
Probably some zen shit that, at the time, made me feel to like rolling my eyes. Like: "you can never play great until you've got the whole piece of music in your head, every instrument, every note, start to finish, and you can never play great until you can get inside of it, too."

And you're like "wtf is that supposed to mean?" until it just clicks.

Similarly, my lighting design prof always used to say "never use more lights than you can keep track of in your head; at any given time, you should know exactly how many lights are hung, where they are, what kind they are, how they're focused, what colour they are, whether they're using an iris or barndoors or a gobo, etc. So start with a modest number, like 5 or 6, and build from there until you can handle dozens."
 
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Flamencology said:
Probably some zen shit that, at the time, made me feel to like rolling my eyes. Like: "you can never play great until you've got the whole piece of music in your head, every instrument, every note, start to finish, and you can never play great until yo can get inside of it, too."

And you're like "wtf is that supposed to mean?" until it just clicks.

Similarly, my lighting design prof always used to say "never use more lights than you can keep track of in your head; at any given time, you should know exactly how many lights are hung, where they are, what kind they are, how they're focused, what colour they are, whether they're using an iris or barndoors or a gobo, etc. So start with a modest number, like 5 or 6, and build from there until you can handle dozens."
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This has been along the lines of how I've been trying to play lately. I haven't been very successful at it but I've also been simplifying what I've been trying to play to get at it better.
 
"Two hands, ten fingers, six strings...we all got the same toolkit...if he can play it, if I can play it, YOU can play it!"
 
Jeremy_Green said:
The best piece of single advice regarding playing i got from Steve Morse - not directly sadly for me. He said:

"When you are practicing someone should be able to walk in - AT ANY TIME - and feel the rhythm and hear music."

I can't stress the importance of this enough. I heard it 20 years before I GOT IT. When I did finally I felt like an idiot.
Click to expand...

I got very similar advice from a teacher; "always make sure you sound like you're playing music, even if your exercise is harmonically ugly, always strive to produce a good tone."
 
It wasn't much advice as example.
When I was a kid I had a buddy that could learn a song by playing along with the record a couple of times.
I wasn't playing myself yet and it seemed like magic.
So when I finally started playing I said to myself "I have to learn to do that"
Maybe it was a bad example but ever since then I've valued playing by ear above reading. Much to the detrement of my reading skill.



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I took lessons twice. The first time was for one day because the advice I got was something like "get rid of that stupid ovation. It just slides off of your knee all the time" (it wasn't doing that at all, I had the strap on and was standing).

The second time was when I took lessons focusing on jazz for about 6 months last year. Unfortunately we moved. He was an awesome teacher. No sage like advice though except when we would play he always told me "stop worrying so much about playing at my level and play your guitar. You're here to suck so start doing it!"
 
I had an electronics teacher in high school who stood in front of the class and told us "Electronics don't spark and explode like they do on TV. They generally just stop working"

Since my dad was an electrician and had told me about high voltage arcing and I'd seen electronics catch on fire... I did a little experiment in the lab when the teacher was out of the room.


When he left the room we were trying to keep the smoke from setting off the smoke alarms in the building and we threw the smouldering, melted electronics out in the snow....... :embarrassed:


After I graduated, I told him about it and he said "I tell that story to the classes to keep mad scientists like you from trying things like that." :helper:
 
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