Music guitar (Photo credit: @Doug88888)
Just something to get the ol’ brain working at the start of the week…
A friend of mine posted something on Facebook last week:
I can play guitar!
After thinking, ‘well done you,’ my mind immediately went something along the following lines:
What do you mean? Are you celebrating the fact that you have the physical ability to lift a guitar and hit the strings to create noise? Or have you learnt every finger combination possible and could theoretically play any song every written?
Or somewhere inbetween those two?
Obviously, playing the guitar is a bit too qualitative; it’s far easier to measure when someone has learnt to ‘count to ten’…or is that just memorisation? I’ve not discussed with her exactly what she meant, but I expect she was trying to publicly celebrate the fact that she has learnt a few basic chord shapes and strumming patterns, and can play Oasis’s Wonderwall or something. And well done to her for that achievement.
But I can’t help asking: At what point should we objectively measure that someone has moved from a position of not being able to play the guitar to having that ability?
Or is it something more ingrained than that? In other words, can some people play guitar and just need a guiding hand, while others simply can’t?
Is this the same with everything?
Does it even matter?
A difficult question. I have been learning to play the violin for 8 years but I still don’t feel that I can say I can play the violin. I’m not sure I will ever get to that stage!
I think there’s a difference between playing and (italicized) *playing* the guitar in most people’s eyes. Wonderwall? You can play. The Mario Theme? You can *play*.
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I’d say as long as you can do the basics of that particular instrument you can say you play it. But if you are really good at it you can either choose to say ‘yeah i’m grade 8 piano’ or you can choose to be modest and just say ‘yeah i can play the piano’