forever learning

[Nick]

Maybe this ones for teachers:

What are the 'key stages' for learning guitar?

How good should you be after 5 years

and when can you finally say 'I can Play Guitar' ?

[Krieselman13]

This would be the best thing for Shawn to answer. But it truely does depend on the person for different results after about5 years, right?

[eische]

yepp, and there are some guitarists of great reputation out there (in this case I refer to Slash) stating that they still have a lot to learn.....that depends on how good you would define »can play«, I guess.

[Krieselman13]

I get what Slash means, he is pretty much saying that he is no
HENDRIX.

[slaughteredsoul]

There's probably always someone better than you in their own way so i don't think you ever quite "stop" learning..there's always something new to learn from other guitarists around you...thats why no one agrees on a single guitarist to be"THE BEST".

[55'gibby]

The answer to your question is: depends on how well and how hard to want to work at it. I have taught a coupla hundred folks how to play and they run the gambit on how fast they progress. I have been playing for 35 years and learn something about every time I play... yep thats right, the learning never stops. I feel you can say "I can play the guitar" when you have the confedince to show people how you can play. I would hope that doesn't take 5 years.
I practice about 75% of the time without a guitar even in my hand, I read articles, books, and watch other guitarists. I do visualization and stretches when I drive to and from work, I listen to what others are really playing. I even still take lessons from time to time. I would say I'm a good guitarist, but, I will never stop learning. Music is not a static art form, it's always changing, just to stay current, you have to learn something new all the time.

[gck]

The definition of "I can play guitar" can be tricky, so I'm leaving that out.

About how good you should be after 5 years: well, I know a lot of people who play instruments. Some of them simply do it as a hobby (besides others) and don't practice that much, maybe 3 or 4 hours a week. They concentrate more on learning new songs that are on their level, so they do not work on their technique but on their song repertoire. They don't really get better, they just can play more songs.

However, I know others that are really obsessed with their instruments. They practice like crazy, sometimes even more than 5-6 hours a day, they practice very aggressively and therefore have much more technique improvement in a month than the first type in a year!!

So it's really hard to tell how good you *should* be after 5 years, it just depends on the amount of time you have for practicing and how good your practicing is organized. Dogged repetition of the same picking (whatever) patterns over and over won't get you that far.

By the way, I count to the second types, together with 2 of my closest friends. We will probably study music at the university after school, so we try to get as good as possible with at least two instruments!