When do you "know" an instrument?

I’ve been teaching myself to play two instruments, guitar and piano, though I’ve been “learning” them for the past three years. I don’t have a tremendous amount of free time to play, but I played trumpet in the school band years back, know a fair amount of music theory, and have a pretty good ear, so I’m able to pick things up with a fair amount of competence in the lesson books that I work through.

The thing is, when I walk into a guitar store I can’t just sit down with an electric and start free styling or riffing like most of the other customers can. If you gave me a tab or some sheet music I could probably play it competently with some practice, but nothing too outlandish.

Then again, I had a friend in college who fancied himself a guitar player, and had blown thousands of dollars on all different models, but was incredibly mediocre when it came to actual skills, IMHO.

So I’m curious, at what point do you consider yourself someone who “knows” an instrument, rather than someone who’s “learning” an instrument?

Uh… when the instrument becomes “with child”?

When the sound you make is a seamless match to the song in your head – when there’s no mind/muscle translation interfering with the process of creation.

I think it’s not something you can learn. You either have the right brain structure to be able to play by ear, or you don’t. Sure, lots of people can learn the fingerings and whatnot, there is a certain amount of rote learning involved for most. Still, all the lessons and practice in the world isn’t going to turn someone without that native ability into someone who can just pick it up and play.

I took lessons on an instrument from 4th grade all the way through high school, and learned to play 2 others besides. I got quite good, making all-state orchestras more than once. That was because I was simply intelligent, though. I never developed the ability to look at a piece of sheet music and “hear” it in my head, nor could I simply pick up my instrument and start to play something off the top of my head. Sure, there were pieces I memorized, but that’s not the same.

Can you whistle, hum, or mumble a top-of-your head/improve tune? I’ve shared time with scores of people, from the most rigid concert players to first timers. While there is a lot of structure and form to traditional African percussion, western-style free form jamming is what many people imagine when they think drum circle. I’ve yet to meet someone who didn’t or couldn’t ‘get’ it in relatively short order.

I think what you’re talking about is a mindset, not an inherent skill or trait. I run into a lot of self-consciousness and lots of ‘but I’m supposed to color in one direction and in the lines!’ thinking, but it takes just a slight shift in attitude and a world opens up. There’s a real joy in watching someone’s face when they really hit it for the first time. Years of forced conformity (again, there is a great need and appreciation for conformity, I’m just addressing what you seemed to consider a limitation of yours) wash away and they have their first eargasm.

I know this isn’t the answer you’re after, and it’s a bit of a cliché, but you never stop learning an instrument. When you’ve reached a certain level a satisfaction with the way you play a particular piece, or with a particular technique, there’s always going to be something more difficult waiting.

See, I’ve been trying to play the guitar for well over a year now, and I’ve made little to no progress. It seems that not only am I tone deaf, but I also have no sense of rhythm. Those seem like good reasons to give up, but for some reason I keep trying. So hopefully your right and it just a matter of get the right mindset, and hopefully one day I’ll ‘hit it’. I’ll keep some Q-tips close by while I’m playing, just in case.

This. If you’re still thinking about scales, arpeggios and on guitar particularly shapes/boxes then you’re still learning the instrument. Once you are just thinking of a sound and that is what comes out then you know how to work your instrument.

To complicate things, I’d be confident to say I know how to play rock guitar and I’m getting better at ragtime picking. I can sit down and read Bach (not that you’d want to listen to the result but it is something I can do). But I can’t play Jazz. I could in principle get my fingers to play the notes but I have no ear for playing over complicated chord changes, I grew up playing music that hardly has changes at all so it’s just not there.

I’m not a musician, but I noticed this phenomenon when I was a child playing trombone at school (reading sheet music), and then later when I had a friend who could jam and make up his own music all he wanted. So I’ve payed some attention to threads like this.

My personal theory would be that there are three different skills that one can have:

  1. Playing sheet music
  2. Playing by ear
  3. Jamming

2 might lead to 3, and that’s what the point of the Suzuki method is (vaguely). Item 1, however, most certainly doesn’t seem to. You’re not going to get to jamming for as long as you’re expecting it will just come one day.

If you want to learn to jam, you need to throw away the sheet music and figure out how to play along (listen by ear), improvise (add notes, but not make up original music as such), and then perhaps jam.

Well stated. I also agree with the mindset statements from **Rhythmdvl **- there is a flow, a sense of being “lost in the music and swept along with it” - yeah, I know, a total cliche - but then most cliche’s have a kernal of truth in them. I think back to my just starting to play guitar - as I have stated in Beginner threads, I’d spend, oh, 15 minutes doing practice stuff - chords, strums, whatever; and 15 minutes playing Smoke on the Water (or Rock the Nation, or Sunshine of Your Love, etc.) on 1 string. That 1 string stuff was mostly fantasy, like singing into a hairbrush in front of a mirror, but it also gave me a simple place to get comfortable with the ***groove ***of the song. I wasn’t encumbered by finger placements, strum patterns, picking from string to string - all the stuff that would hang me up for years and (ahem) clog my groove.

But, within that groove is the heart of the music - the joy.

All of that is a way of saying, that Rhythmdvl’s statement about the seamless use of the instrument as a tool is correct IMHO, and also that, at its simplest, if you can use the instrument, however poorly, to tap into the joy of the groove, you are doing okay…

My $.02

There’s so much to talk about in a seemingly simple question. As others have said, you never stop learning. There’s nothing wrong with reading, either - it is a skill which is envied by many accomplished musicians who don’t have it, or don’t feel comfortable with their level of reading. You already know more than you know you know, you know? :slight_smile:

There are many ways of ‘knowing’ an instrument. When you look at the chord symbols and can shift smoothly between all of them without looking at your fingers, for example. That might involve only 4 chords, but it’s still an accomplishment, even if all you do is a simple strum. Frank Zappa said he didn’t think he was a very good guitarist because he still had to look at his fingers when he played. (!?!)

Playing with others can help to increase you confidence. Don’t sweat it - think of it as a number line. You will fit in somewhere between total beginner and monster, just like the rest of us. When you work with someone less experienced, less confident, whatever, be respectful and try to find something the two of you can do together. Teach - it is one of the best ways to learn. And if you’re with a better player than you are, keep what you do simple and try to fit in with them. It can be discouraging to work with someone you feel is totally beyond you, but when that person hears something you lay down and says “Nice!”, you will glow with the earned compliment for days.

If you want to build up your ear, there are lots of things you can do. I find transcribing stuff is helpful; playing along with albums, or using programs like Band in a Box or Garage Band can be extremely useful, esp. for ear training on your own.

What goals do you have in mind? Where are you at in your playing right now? I like to divide my repertoire into four stages - 1) sight reading 2) work in progress 3) polish and perfect and 4) maintain. Looking at it that way, where does the stuff you’re teaching yourself fit in? I don’t play anything from stage 1 or 2 in public if I can avoid it, but everything I play started out as sight-reading somewhere along the line. The goal is to take each piece through all four stages.

Memorization is a different skill - for me, it comes easily, in that by the time I’ve made all the mistakes in a piece at least once and shaken them out, the piece has been gone over so many times that I can’t help but have memorized it. Your results and techniques may well differ.

Anyway, to finish for now, that’s my advice - pick one or two pieces that you already know, (and it doesn’t matter how simple they are!) and polish them to the point where you would feel comfortable picking up a strange guitar or opening a strange piano and playing them. If you need your music, fine, bring it with you. You might be surprised at the reactions of some of the people around you. (‘You can read? Cool! I never learned…’)

Nope, don’t know one, but I’m working hard to learn the piano, sans sheet music. Doing so involves learning a lot of things simultaneously: ear training, chords, rhythms, independent hand movements, and on and on and on; then there’s the little matter of actually hitting the right keys.

I’ve been taking lessons for about a year now, and mostly it’s just been hard, grinding work. I’m beginning to see the slightest glimmerings of a payoff, though. Another five years and I hope to be fairly okay at it; five years after that I might be pretty good. The good thing is that I’m now starting to do it to relax, instead of dragging myself to the instrument for another grueling learning session.

I find it much more rewarding to know that I’m responsible for every sound that comes out of the instrument, and not leaning on somebody else’s idea of what I should be doing. At this point I’m only rarely quite in that position, but I’m gradually getting closer all the time.

If I were aiming to play Oscar Peterson or something, it’d be depressing. That’s like wanting to play b’ball like Jordan. Ain’t gonna happen. But I think I can get to be the equivalent of a decent guard on a liberal arts college team.

It can be learned. It just takes time.

J. S. Bach said there was nothing to playing the piano; you just had to hit the right notes at the right time.

Sure, but that’s not the same thing as playing an instrument. There’s an enormous difference between making my voice do something and making my fingers/breath do something on a piece of machinery to make a certain sound come out. There’s a brain-body connection that is innate in some people, and some people have the ability to pick it up with some training, an others (like me) who don’t have it. It’s the same as being able to decorate a room or build a piece of furniture or create a new recipe. Some people have the eye/understanding/palate to do these things, others could never learn it in a million years.

I wonder if you can learn to play by ear with work. IME, learning comes by doing, although of course some have a born ability greater than others.

Having only played the violin in a classical style (as a kid), I was going to say, “When you can daydream while you play.” I think that does count, but it doesn’t take into account free soloing, which is a different thing altogether. I really envy people who can just hear something in their head and then make it come out the instrument.

Focusing on this part of the OP: walking into a guitar store is always intimidating – there’s some stud riffing out complicated stuff, and you’re embarrassed to pick up a guitar and play C/G/D open chords or whatever. It’s okay, the next person into the store will probably suck more than you. :slight_smile: Just pick up the axe and play anything; the Guitar Police won’t show up, and that stud on the other side of the store won’t even notice. The GMart staff will especially not notice anything you don’t play well; they’re specially trained to ignore beginners who don’t have a checkbook handy. Which is really cool if you think about it – you can pick up a $6000 Les Paul, plug it into a Marshall stack, and play whatever the hell you want! Guitar stores are freaking Disneyland if you apply the right attitude. And you sure as hell can come up with something interesting to play in that environment; if you can’t, keep picking up instruments – something will speak to you, and then off you go. Just stop overthinking it, and let it be fun!

There is always more to learn. It is endless. That is one of the things that is so cool about learning music.

You “know” an instrument when someone tosses said instrument to you in the middle of a song and you can find the next note/chord in a 1/4… and follow along. You really know an instrument when you forget it, when it is just touch or finesse that guides you. Synthesis.

Absolutely!!! Back when I was in university, I taught at our local guitar store, as well as tuning/tweaking instruments so that even people as brain-damaged as the guy that sold boom-chick organs could pick up any axe and sound decent. If I taught past closing, I got to lock up and hide the key, but I was also welcome to stay and try out anything in the store. Mmm, mmm! I had a great time! I used to plug in two or three electrics at a time, leaving them hanging on the rack and crank them, to explore how feedback worked. It was great until the bowling alley next door complained to the manager about the strange noises… The manager said to me “Boy, what the hell have you been doin’ in here, anyway? You made a BOWLING ALLEY complain about NOISE?!?” One of my prouder moments, in a way…

I agree with Claire here. I played trombone for over 10 years, and sat first chair in most bands for most of that time, and I would still say that I don’t “know” trombone. I know how to play music, I know how to play a trombone, but 8 years in jazz ensembles and 2 years in improv class did nothing but encourage the fact that I am not in tune enough with the instrument to jam in any capacity. I can translate the ticks on a page to a movement of my lips and a placement of my hand but that’s about where my skill stops.

I know a lot of great musicians who definitely know their instruments. I am definitely not one of them