{"id":115648882,"date":"2023-04-19T23:30:54","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T23:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/a-method-to-sort-through-methods\/"},"modified":"2023-04-19T23:30:54","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T23:30:54","slug":"a-method-to-sort-through-methods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/a-method-to-sort-through-methods\/","title":{"rendered":"A method to sort through methods"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not just for actors<\/h2>

You hear people use the term \u201cmethod\u201d often, usually, in conjunction with insane thespians like Jared Leto<\/a>. If you\u2019re one of my upper middle class friends or a similarly distasteful person without being my friend, you may know the term as the brand identity of cleaning products<\/a>. And they\u2019re great cleaning products. But that\u2019s not what we\u2019re looking at when we talk about methods for guitar. <\/p>

If you\u2019re gone to music stores, whether iconic local stores like Strait Music<\/a> and Guitar Rez<\/a> or mega-chains like Sam Ash<\/a> or Guitar Center<\/a>, you will see lots and lots of books for sale under the category of \u201cguitar methods.\u201d And they are all seemingly about the same things, but differently, or about the different things. It\u2019s almost as insane as the ads for weight loss treatments and diets. Believe me, that stuff is insane. I saw one for using laxatives to drop pounds<\/a>. NUTS.<\/p>

So, what is it that we\u2019re talking about when we talk about methods, and what\u2019s a way to sort them out, or a method for methods? Let\u2019s dig in.<\/p>

Thanks for reading Learning Jazz From The Masters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<\/p><\/div>

<\/div><\/form><\/div><\/div>

When trying to understand what something is, it\u2019s helpful to go to the roots. This is good advice for parsing chords, and also for understanding the meanings of words with rigour and clarity. It\u2019s good advice for everything. <\/strong> Let\u2019s talk about method.<\/p>

We see here that \u201cmethod<\/a>\u201d is an English word that we get from Greek, by way of Latin. In Latin, the word was used to mean, \u201ca way of teaching or going\u201d, built from a Greek preposition, used as a prefix, \u201cmeta\u201d and a Greek noun, \u201chodos\u201d. Meta is a weird preposition, it can mean a lot of things<\/a>, and hodos<\/em> is used to mean \u201cpath” or \u201croad.\u201d So, combined, we get \u201ca road towards\u201d, or, perhaps, a route.<\/p>

The idea of a route means that we know a starting point and an ending point. For functional purposes, we assume the starting point is knowing little, if anything at all, and we assume that the ending point is some kind of knowledge. Between these two is what is of interest, by following this sequence of steps, we acquire the knowledge we seek.<\/p>

Keeping this notion of route, a starting and ending, you can consider each step along the way to be a choice of what to do, where to go, in distinction to all other choices. This means that the map assumes many other decisions that we could have taken, many other routes. Some will have not just different stations along the way, but different starting and ending points. In this sense, a method is a model of possibilities, along with decisions about what to do, in what order and in what ways. A method, is a problem statement and intended solution.<\/p>

With this in mind, it makes more sense why learn from the masters<\/em>. How much more interesting is it to get a comprehensive understanding of the problem from a true master, someone whose practice has helped define the work, than from some random guitar magazine? The understanding that a master has can show you wonderful things.<\/p>

What to do when masters disagree? Suppose you are asked to play somewhere and you need to take a solo. <\/p>

Do you dig a groove, like Kenny Burrell<\/a>?<\/p>

Do you blast lighting, like George Benson<\/a>?<\/p>

Do you get chordal, like Lenny Breau<\/a>?<\/p>

A good method will help you develop all those techniques and approaches, and more, it will teach you how to frame and define problems and solutions. Look through the books available to you, see how they talk about the problems and what they prescribe. Does it seem sensical and sensible to you? Does the method give you the tools you need to accomplish what it lays out? Is it a general map of the territory or something very precise, like a map of a neighborhood?<\/p>

I\u2019ve picked some amazing general purpose methods and some pretty amazing topical methods to get through, all of which are based on the approach that we should be learning to play songs in ways that sound exciting to us. We\u2019ll be highlighting them as we go on. For now, let\u2019s say that Jody Fisher\u2019s method<\/a> is the umbrella, the framework, and that we\u2019ll take some diversions into specific topics and may look at some other things here and there. But Jody\u2019s the guy whose recommendations we\u2019ll generally follow.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not just for actors<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115648882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115648882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115648882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115648882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115648882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115648882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115648882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}