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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Actually, let's focus on this video a bit. There's a brilliant bit at around 8:35 which is really profound. Mayer teaches a bunch of riffs and a bunch of techniques, and then suddenly shifts gears to talk about something more conceptual.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
And John Mayer teaching guitar: youtube.com/watch?v=MXxLR8 Which, whatttt?
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Replying to
@ejames_c
"What we're all learning how to do is ... to do THAT, THEN. You know all the letters in the alphabet, they're really easy to learn on the guitar — that's the minute to learn. The lifetime to master part is: how do you implement it and how you think."
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
"At a certain point, all learning guitar from records is 'Oh! You can do that then!' So you're not learning HOW to play that type of thing, you're learning that you CAN play that type of thing at that point in time." (Demonstrates a riff). This is 2 types of tacit knowledge.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
The first type is what Harry Collins calls 'somatic tacit knowledge'. This is the tacit knowledge for embodied things — like riding a bike. Playing the guitar is obviously this, since it's physical. You have to know how to hold and pluck and strum and a dozen tiny things.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
But say, once you master that, the layer above is pattern recognition. You are actively building the prototypes in your head of when you can use what riff, or what variation of riff, when, and for what effect. This is where the recognition-primed decision making model comes in.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Step 1, learn the moving parts. Step 2, actively increase the collection of prototypes in your head, which you can do pattern recognition against:
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Which is where the copying and the emulation comes from. I see this everywhere. In writing, the basics are things like grammar and sentence structure. But the second layer — the 'lifetime to master' — is building a box of rhetorical tricks, and knowing when you can use them.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
When I was a teen, I went through periods of copying J.K. Rowling and David Foster Wallace and Stephen King. Each period of imitation added new flourishes to my toolbox. But they are so internalised today that I don't necessarily know where they come from; I just use them.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Similarly in Judo: you learn one technique, you get it to work, and this takes maybe a year or so. But then the lifetime to master is knowing all the possible grips and entries and putting the moving parts together, to form a fighting style that is your own.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Related:
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Eric Weinstein
@EricRWeinstein
It’s a pity @johnmayer is so famous as a performer. It overshadows just how amazing he is as a music teacher, theorist, analyst and curator. And oddly I feel the reverse about @ggovan_official. Man can that teacher play!! I’d love to talk guitar on “The Portal” with either one.
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