The Intermediate Wall
Please indulge me in painting a bit of a picture for some context.
It’s been a couple of years that you’ve been playing guitar, and today starts off by feeling like any other. You’re currently practicing some solo you’ve just learned but you begin to notice something different. What is that feeling? Confidence? Pride in yourself? You start think back to all you’ve accomplished in 2 years: some scale positions, barre chords, basic sweeping technique, and you’ve maybe even started jamming with friends, trying to play your favourite band’s songs. It seems there is no end in sight to your obsession and every time you get to play, the day gets a little bit better. Maybe it’s even time to start calling yourself an intermediate-level guitarist when you talk about your hobbies at dinner parties.
As you put your guitar away and close your eyes that night, you’re transported to a barren landscape, nothing around but faint echoes of incredible guitar playing – Jimi Hendrix’s blues-based expressiveness; Ben Monder’s contrapuntal chord melodies; Allan Holdsworth’s extraterrestrial improvising, and Tosin Abasi’s percussive, thumping storm. It’s inspiring and you want to find your own way there. You begin looking for the source of the sound, hoping that if you find it, you’ll learn its secrets and claim the power for yourself. The landscape is daunting and vast but something far off in the distance catches your eye, appearing as just a line on the horizon. As you squint to see it better, the space between you and it suddenly contracts and you find yourself right next it. A looming wall, high above, casting shadows of doubt over you. You have found the intermediate wall. You hear the music from before - it’s coming from the other side. You look around for a way through, but instead, all you find are discarded picks, method books, and broken 1/4-inch cables littering the landscape, discarded by those who came before. Underfoot, the ground is made up of screens that are perpetually-scrolling through webpages and blogs, all titled, “Breaking Through the Intermediate Plateau,” and “These 5 Tips Will Help You Become an Advanced Guitarist.” Then you hear a thud and a shiver runs down your spine. Nearby, something has just hit the ground. Slowly looking up, you see people on the wall, trying to climb with guitars strapped to their backs. Some appear to be successful, but the longer you watch, the more you see eventually drop off from fatigue, and hit the ground. Those who survive the fall crawl away, sit down, and begin noodling on an E Blues scale. You can’t help but feel a little sick. Having come so close to the sounds, you are unwilling to turn back and abandon this opportunity. The only way through is up, and you decide to try to climb. But you don’t even know where to begin.
From top-left, clockwise: Jimi Hendrix, Ben Monder, Tosin Abasi, & Allan Holdsworth. Some personal heroes of mine.
While that was a bit of a dramatic, TTRPG-tinged, description of what it feels like to plateau on the guitar, for many, it can actually feel like trying to overcome a literal wall, at times. How to get over it is the most common question (phrased in one way or another) that prospective students ask me in our consultations, so it’s worth talking about. I’m going to briefly examine what this wall is actually made of and when it tends to show up, along with how I think it is best tackled.
To begin, let’s look at when the wall tends to come into focus for most people. The first period of a person’s guitar journey is usually characterized by learning some basic technique, learning some easy songs and riffs, looking at riffs that are too hard for you, figuring out what techniques you need to learn to play them, and then pursuing those in the hopes that one day, they will be playable. This period is also populated with many moments of discovery and awe as the player sees and hears things they never thought were possible. This is also accompanied by a new appreciation for the depths and subtleties that exist inside of the seemingly simple things they thought they understood.
At some point in this period, an infectious thought usually takes root: “How do I make my own versions of these sounds I love?” This is the first brick being laid in the wall; however, they haven’t made it there yet. What is more likely is that this thought will send the player down a rabbit-hole of music theory acquisition where they will gain insights into the inner workings of music. A bit of it will be easily applicable to the guitar, but most of it at this point will only amount to a vague understanding that feels disconnected from instrument itself.
Next, hoping to marry theory and playing, the player begins putting more effort into things like scales, triads, and chord shapes after seeing some video-lessons promising that these things are necessary and will advance their abilities. But months pass and after hours of learning scales and arpeggios, the player has a new bag of tricks that they’re not sure how to use. So, they decide to return to the source – the original music that inspired them – with all of this newfound knowledge. They find in-depth tutorials for their favourite songs that at one point were unreachable, both to play and understand, but now, they can follow along and even put together a rough cover of the song.
Success.
But they not happy. Why? There is still the matter of that little question that was asked all those practice-hours ago: “How do I make my own versions of these sounds I love?” There is still no answer and there appear to be no more paths, just more lesson tutorials about other people’s music.
Now they have arrived at the wall, and spray painted onto it, over and over, is that question: How do I fully merge theory and practice so I can make my own music?
Inevitably, eventually, this leads a player to look at improvisation (in some capacity), which is a terrifying thing for most. Having to play in real time, hit the right notes over changing chords, with good rhythm, taste, and style, potentially in front of people? No thank you. However, when the player examines their guitar heroes, there is a very good chance that what they do involves some level of improvisation. This doesn’t help the player though as when they begin searching for lessons and tips, they find a lack of understanding and standardized methodology to begin learning how to improvise. Often, they’ll even find people saying things that push them away, like, “you’re either born with it or you aren’t,” or, “you just have start feeling it.” In my humble opinion, that is BS.
To return to and amend my earlier metaphor of the intermediate wall, improvisation acts as stepping stones to begin your climb, but the route is obfuscated by a heavy fog. When faced with this route, many opt to take different paths they can see and understand, even though those routes don’t go all the way to the top of the wall. With so much mystery around improvising, how to learn, practice it, and make it part of your creative practice, it can take courage to choose that route instead of the safer one. It feels like putting faith in something that you’re not confident actually exists.
But take it from someone who went through 4-years of jazz school, there are definite and tangible ways to learn it and practice it, just as you would any technique. You just need someone who knows what they’re doing to take an honest look at your abilities and guide you through the process. While I cannot take a look at your playing (at least not unless you’re one of my students), I can offer some tangible, entry-level exercises to begin working on improvisation. Exercises that don’t target finger dexterity, or learning theory and scales, but instead target how you think about the things you already know how to play. Exercises that work your brain rather than your hands. Those exercises are the subject of my upcoming video, which you will be able to find over on my YouTube channel. My hope is that it gives you the first steps to start up the wall that you’re facing and if you’d like to continue climbing, then I would be happy to be your guide.
This Saturday, we are having our normal monthly meetup where we will be talking about what teachers were most influential in our lives. Following this meeting, we will be meeting over on the discord channel to chat about transcription and begin our monthly transcription challenge. Hope to see you there, or at our meetings in the future!