What are your goals as a guitar player?

[Sodaross]

I play purely for fun. I’d love to be able to pick up my guitar and just improvise…bang out a cool solo over a nice chord progression and have a good understanding of what I’m doing. I play ok from tab or notation but my lack of theory and experimenting have really hindered my growth. This past year I’ve made good strides in that direction and enjoy playing even more.

[Rodger]

Continue writing songs and recording them. I've written 18 songs in the past two years... 6 from scratch and the rest completing songs previously started. I have about 30 songs recorded with a bunch more in progress.

I released two CDs previously to absolutely no fanfare. So that bucket list itch was scratched. Played in several bands from the early 70's into the 90's. No desire to do that again.

I quit playing covers a couple years ago. No more "working songs out from the record."

[rick-slo]

To continue to compose, play and record instrumentals well enough that I myself enjoy listening to them. Also to have more time to devote to it.

[mr. beaumont]

To keep making progress, and to help others with theirs along the way.

[menhir]

1. For enjoyment-playing well enough so that I'm happy with my playing.
2. See #1

I have/had plans to get back on stage when I retired but the coincident arrival of the Covids closed out that option. Then I got lazy developing and maintaining my repertoire...something I'm working on rebuilding.

[rllink]

My passion is to sing songs and share them. The guitar is there to accompany me and to add flavor. So my goal is to get better at it and to find more opportunities to do it.

[Bluenose]

To play Classical Gas note for note. I got the A part down but the B part is kicking my butt.

[FrankHudson]

Let me extend the OP a bit and look at what goals I had six years ago with now. Goals work best in that sort of feedback loop where you assess where you went with past goals as you continue or change them.

My old goals (circa 2016)

1. Using what guitar playing skills I had to compose and record 100 (stretch goal 200) pieces combining mostly other people's words.

2. Add skills as an electric guitar bass player, including baritone and down-tuned guitar to fill out pieces.

3. Figure out how to deal with a largely unacceptable singing voice. Yes, not guitar playing as such, but as instrumental guitarist know, most audiences prefer vocals along with their music.

4. Deal with increasing finger joint stiffness, pain, and lack of flexibility that was limiting what guitar playing skills/knowledge I had.

How it worked out?

1. Blew past 100 fairly quickly and 200 amazingly quickly. I'm now over 600 publicly presented pieces! I basically learned how to compose as one would learn any other craft, like playing guitar, or making watches, or fine meals.

2. Odd path in this one. Never bonded with baritone (B to B tuning mostly) for some reason, and just used the upper range on a conventionally tuned bass guitar including my Squier Bass VI. I've started playing more D to D or other dropped guitar tunings more often however. Got very comfortable for a while playing bass guitar, and then for some reason in the past year or so, my bass playing/bass range ideas have just gone down my own self-assessment.

3. Settled on spoken, chanted, and talk-singing style vocals a good deal of the time at first. Continued to work on being relaxed with my poor vocal qualities and pitch control, and the feedback loop of listening critically at my vocals in the light of my own rather accepting level of enjoyment of other singers that don't have traditional "good voices." I resonate with Ray Sachs every time he talks about his vocal journey: I sort of got to the level that not everyone will be driven away by what I'm doing when I sing, and then to be effective in conveying the message of the vocal to those people.

4. I still have bad days, but mostly less severe more often. Playing itself probably helps, but I credit general aerobic exercise with a lot of benefit. At my older age I'm not sure how long I'll be able to do that, but I've been happy with the progressing being slowed and even somewhat reversed.


New goals?

1. Have I run out of compositional ideas, or expressed what I have to the point I'm now bored by them? I'm trying to figure that one out now. I'm returning more to pure improvisation (the original well-spring of compositional ideas for me, as in "Why was that improvisation more interesting? Can I repeat that if I know what it is?" Also considering just getting better at reiterating the ideas I have is another options I'm considering. Audiences don't really care if every piece is a new idea if I can get over my "addiction" to novelty to inspire myself.

2. Someone has to play bass if I can't do it well enough for whatever reason. Wondering if I should break up the One Man Band for creative differences. If so, I can once again do more playing with others either as a bassist or guitarist.

3. Extending that thought: as hard as it is not being able to play every day for social/external as well as physical reasons I think before I have to stop playing altogether I should try to play with others more again. I know this has huge potential, even if it has real challenges too.

4. My long-time (more than 40 years!) keyboard partner is no longer able to play much (physical issues) and I've started figuring out what I can do on keyboards. I can sort of hack it for recording, but I'd be hopeless playing "live." Can I improve that skill even if I'll never be a "piano player?"

5. Alt tunings. I started with a single alt tuning I used on "bad days" with my finger joints and now have branched out so that some weeks I'm in the my lower-genius level Joni Mitchell/Nick Drake phase of things where every composition comes out of dealing with or devising an open tuning. Very early days for me and alt-tunings, not sure how far I will go with it.

[menhir]

Originally Posted by Twiddle Dee

To play Classical Gas note for note. I got the A part down but the B part is kicking my butt.

Been there.

In my early teens when I got my first guitar, I attempted to learn Classical Gas...Mostly by playing along with the record and trying to figure it out from there. For the next five decades, I would just noodle around with the first part but never really pursued it past that...just noodling...until I found a decent transcription on the November 2017 issue of Acoustic Guitar Magazine. Having the hard work, transcribing, done for me, I finally finished learning and memorizing it.

https://acousticguitar.com/watch-mas...classical-gas/

What's lacking in the transcription can be deduced by watching the video above.

If you can find a back issue, there it is.

[Jamolay]

Originally Posted by menhir

Been there.

In my early teens when I got my first guitar, I attempted to learn Classical Gas...Mostly by playing along with the record and trying to figure it out from there. For the next five decades, I would just noodle around with the first part but never really pursued it past that...just noodling...until I found a decent transcription on the November 2017 issue of Acoustic Guitar Magazine. Having the hard work, transcribing, done for me, I finally finished learning and memorizing it.

https://acousticguitar.com/watch-mas...classical-gas/

What's lacking in the transcription can be deduced by watching the video above.

If you can find a back issue, there it is.

https://store.acousticguitar.com/pro...-november-2017

Here it is.

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by menhir

Been there.

In my early teens when I got my first guitar, I attempted to learn Classical Gas...Mostly by playing along with the record and trying to figure it out from there. For the next five decades, I would just noodle around with the first part but never really pursued it past that...just noodling...until I found a decent transcription on the November 2017 issue of Acoustic Guitar Magazine. Having the hard work, transcribing, done for me, I finally finished learning and memorizing it.

https://acousticguitar.com/watch-mas...classical-gas/

What's lacking in the transcription can be deduced by watching the video above.

If you can find a back issue, there it is.

It is great to see real musicians backing Mason Williams in that video instead of karaoke with a looper, recording, or Band In A Box type backup.

Some people think that stuff is great for performances, but to me it is a step backward except for practicing purposes.

Tony

[Vognell]

Have fun. Make progress. Keep challenging myself.

[KevinH]

To get to a point where guitar playing, finger style in my case, is a creative outlet and not just practice. Until recently I would just work on and memorize a tune from tab or a video. I've been working on the music theory part more lately, learning the fretboard, alternate chord voicing and all that, so I'm starting to get glimpses of what its like to just sit down and make up something that doesn't sound horrible.

I listened to Carl Miner talking in an interview recently and he mentioned that all of the demos he does for TNAG are just made up on the fly. I suppose that's common for someone at his level, but that really impressed me. I don't have enough years left, not to mention skills, to get to that point, but it's at least a nice road to be on.

[Methos1979]

I've met (and surpassed) all my goals. When I started at 50 I just wanted to be able to play chords well enough to move smoothly from chord to chord and actually play songs from start to finish. That's it. That's all. Then it was to learn 4 songs for an open mic. Then 10 songs. Then enough for a set. The 2 sets. Then 3 sets. Then be able to play a paying gig! Then to be good enough to book steady gigs. At 60, that's where I am now and I couldn't be happier.

If I had to list some dream goals, I'd say to have the discipline to write enough original material and have it be good enough (both in content and presentation) to be able to book all-original gigs and get paid to do them. And then from there, record and build a following. But I seriously doubt that will happen because we (wife and I, duo) are just having so much fun doing the 'another old fart playing and singing acoustic songs' thing.

[blews]

Simple - to be able to play proficiently until the very last day I have on this planet......