Topic: Grading Your Guitar Skills
The question of how good you are as a guitar player is one of those ying and yang issues. On the ying side is forgetting about what you know and just listening to the music you're making. If you are happy with your sounds, you're good! In the ying world, everybody's got their own goals, ears, styles, likes and "good" is completely arbitrary. And I don't mean this to be a hypothetical concept - some of the most enjoyable music listening experiences I've had have been with street corner music makers who clearly had very limited skills, but who were just out there making their music, and putting everything they had into it. Ultimately the technical skills we develop are about creating channels for creativity and artistic expression. If you can achieve those same artistic goals with few skills, then "ying" is your thing. However, there is a definite yang to this story.
The yang of how good your are has to do with measuring guitar knowledge and skills against an objective, measurable benchmark. This provides an opportunity to measure progress and chart the needed learnings ahead. You may be happy with the sounds you're getting, and people may compliment you on your playing, but you wonder what else you need to learn or what you should work on next. That's the yang of the "how good" question, and in this post we take a look at the guitar grading system offered by the Registry of Guitar Tutors. See the rest on my blog <a href="http://www.notesandlines.com" target="_blank">Notes and Lines</a>.
Jeff