# How long does it take to be an elite performer? - about 10,000 hours



## Blackrg (Dec 2, 2008)

Like many here vainly attempting improve, I have often wondered whether I'd ever get any better by practicing, and how long it might take.

According to Malcolm Gladwell in his new book about success, after studying a number of genii, the magic amount of practice is 10,000 hours, or approx 20 hours per week for 10 years. 

Interesting article here at the Grauniad

Extract from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: Is there such a thing as pure genius? | Books | The Guardian


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## Deschain (Dec 2, 2008)

Looks interesting. Might have to pick it up.

You should check out the book "This Is Your Brain On Music". Covers some similar ground. Thanks.


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## Blackrg (Dec 2, 2008)

Hey thanks, that book looks excellent. - could be on the christmas wish list!


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## Scali (Dec 2, 2008)

I've always wondered about that though...
On the one hand I've found that I am able to get pretty good at whatever I try, as long as I put enough effort in, so I thought it would be the same for others.

On the other hand, especially with music, I found that it's not just important to put in the hours of practice, but also to be your own worst critic, and know exactly what to practice and how (unless you have a teacher that performs that role for you, which I didn't).
That is, I see a lot of guitarists who practice hard, but are mainly focused on one or two aspects of their playing. Like, there may be guys that are good at playing blues, but they don't have enough speed, technique or knowledge of chords, scales and harmony to play faster, more complex music.
Or there are guys that can play really fast, but don't really know how to create nice catchy melodies, or convey emotions with what they're playing, because they lack timing and control... they're too mechanical.

There aren't that many guitarists that have a good natural sense of taste and balance, where they know how to play both tastefully and technically challenging enough to be able to play various kinds of music and express different kinds of moods/feelings/etc.
Guys like Joe Satriani, Andy Timmons, Steve Lukather etc...
Most guitarists seem to be good at a few things, but are far from the complete package.

Perhaps it's different with classical musicians because they have more supervision, and the path to becoming a good player is more clearly defined. You will naturally have more variation anyway, because you're expected to be able to play music of a wide variety of composers, and a lot of classical music is both very challenging technically and very emotional, so they have to live up to very high standards.
With guitar/pop music it is often 'accepted' that the music isn't very technical or even well-executed.


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## Blackrg (Dec 2, 2008)

Very good point about having emotional range. 

I've been doing a lot of technique practice, but recently watched the Scott Henderson Melodic Phrasing video, and had a similar realisation. Basically, its also important to work on my musical ideas as much as my technique.

BTW I've seen some of your videos Scali, and your playing is excellent ! - How many hours of practice are you up to  ?


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## Scali (Dec 2, 2008)

Blackrg said:


> Very good point about having emotional range.
> 
> I've been doing a lot of technique practice, but recently watched the Scott Henderson Melodic Phrasing video, and had a similar realisation. Basically, its also important to work on my musical ideas as much as my technique.


 
Yes, I suppose you have to keep in mind that you don't need to be able to play megafast and technical in order to play good music... but on the other hand you shouldn't be completely minimalist about technique and theory either. Your music will be one-dimensional and boring if you only play pentatonic licks at low speeds. You need a bit of flash to spice things up every now and then. That's how I think about it anyway.



Blackrg said:


> BTW I've seen some of your videos Scali, and your playing is excellent ! - How many hours of practice are you up to  ?


 
Thanks!
I've been playing for over 13 years, so I guess I've past the 10.000h-point already


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## Demeyes (Dec 2, 2008)

I saw this posted somewhere else. It's very interesting to think about. I'm nowhere near 10,000 hours in my 6 years of playing. However you do see people who can progress much faster naturally than others. After you get over the initial stages though I'd say people plateau out.


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## hairychris (Dec 2, 2008)

A very interesting read!


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## Scali (Dec 2, 2008)

Demeyes said:


> I saw this posted somewhere else. It's very interesting to think about. I'm nowhere near 10,000 hours in my 6 years of playing. However you do see people who can progress much faster naturally than others. After you get over the initial stages though I'd say people plateau out.


 
Perhaps that can be explained because not everyone really starts from 0.
For example, I already played keyboards and had some experience with writing and recording music with the computer when I picked up the guitar.
So I was already familiar with the basics of playing music... keeping rhythm, chords, scales etc.


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## TonalArchitect (Dec 2, 2008)

Demeyes said:


> I saw this posted somewhere else. It's very interesting to think about. I'm nowhere near 10,000 hours in my 6 years of playing. However you do see people who can progress much faster naturally than others. After you get over the initial stages though I'd say people plateau out.



Scali makes a good point. That's one thing to consider with multi-instrumentalists. They're to be respected, no doubt there, but it's not like they have to start from the ground up and learn the absolute basics.

So, I think, it's a little less horrific than one might think. 

About people progressing faster than others, that's a very complex answer.

There might be different levels of motivation, one might be encouraged more, be more confident than the other (insofar as they believe that with practice they will improve and as such are more inclined to practice). 

Another, very important, point which has already been mentioned is the focus of practice. Working on technique will, in general, improve. But some, I feel, equate this to playing will improve technique. 

To a degree, this will work-- assuming that the basic technique is correct. But running through pentatonic scales will not improve sweep picking. Also noodling-- that is, improvising with no goal or direction-- will not do much for advancing technique. 

Practice what you want to improve. Sounds simple, but some guitarists seem to neglect this.

Personally, I keep my playing and composition pretty separate. I only practice raw technique unless I'm learning a song. Although I do improvise for fun. 

I compose away from the instrument, usually on Guitar Pro, though lately I've been working out most of the details in notebooks and will give it flesh later. The former keeps my composition from being limited by technique, and the other from getting ideas I hear in my head down on paper faster than I'd be able to on Guitar Pro. 

Anyway, the 10,000-hours thing is indeed mentioned in _Your Brain on Music_, since a friend of mine read that while taking A.P. Psych and passed that bit on to me. 

Another read about Psych/Neuroscience and music is Oliver Sacks's _Musicophilia_. It talks about all kinds of stuff-- savants, amnesiacs, composers, I think practice, and lots of other subjects.

Books on Neuroscience, especially, tend to be pretty useful. For instance _Poe's Heart and the Mountain Climber_ deals with fear, stress, and anxiety. And _Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot_ deals with memory. They are by the same author, by the way.


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## Scali (Dec 3, 2008)

TonalArchitect said:


> Another, very important, point which has already been mentioned is the focus of practice. Working on technique will, in general, improve. But some, I feel, equate this to playing will improve technique.
> 
> To a degree, this will work-- assuming that the basic technique is correct. But running through pentatonic scales will not improve sweep picking. Also noodling-- that is, improvising with no goal or direction-- will not do much for advancing technique.
> 
> ...


 
Funny enough I was never good at just sitting down and practicing scales or things 'dry'. I find it too boring and lose concentration (ADD?).
I'm a noodler.
However, I love to improvise, and that's where I get my practice from. I will just jam along with the radio or put on a CD or backingtrack or whatever, and just play.

Perhaps my saving grace is that I'm a perfectionist by nature. Ever since I started playing, I wanted every note to sound as good and clean as possible, so I did put in quite a bit of practice on getting my muting, bending and vibrato in check, and laying down the basics for a good technique.

The speed and knowledge of the fretboard came automatically from all the jamming and improvising I did over the years.

As for composing... Generally my music is a result of 'noodling'. I'll just noodle around and stumble upon something that sounds cool... Then I'll work it out into a full song.
I was never very good at sitting down and saying "I'm going to compose a song now". I'd have no idea where to start really.
I need something that sets off the creative process, some inspiration. That could be either my own noodling, or a basic track from someone else.
I think my best work is when someone supplies a rough idea that somehow 'clicks'. Then I can automatically hear all sorts of melodies, ideas and embellishments.
I think the best example of that is the song 'Alive' that I did with a friend:
SoundClick artist: Scali - page with MP3 music downloads

It started out as that piano-line that he came up with, and some strings and other things he put underneath.
Almost immediately I got the idea to put heavy guitars underneath, make the thing twice as long by repeating the whole thing, and building it up, adding drums, more orchestral elements and putting some harmonized guitar lines in the background.

I only compose on the instrument really. I need a What You Hear Is What You Get-approach. When I do a guitar or synth solo, I tend to improvise it, usually starting from some rough melodic idea. My compositions are never that technically challenging.


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## TonalArchitect (Dec 3, 2008)

Scali said:


> Funny enough I was never good at just sitting down and practicing scales or things 'dry'. I find it too boring and lose concentration (ADD?).
> I'm a noodler.
> However, I love to improvise, and that's where I get my practice from. I will just jam along with the radio or put on a CD or backingtrack or whatever, and just play.
> 
> ...


 
I haven't practiced scales either. I use a legato exercise that uses shapes that move about the strings. So I've become used to the shapes. And some practice I have comes from songs, particularly "Fantasia Suite" and "Mediterranean Sundance."

Yeah, you have some focus in your improvisation, which makes it productive. You said you focused on making it clean and correct. What I meant by noodling was, say, playing things unrelated to the technique and/or not focusing on the technique itself. 



Scali said:


> As for composing... Generally my music is a result of 'noodling'. I'll just noodle around and stumble upon something that sounds cool... Then I'll work it out into a full song.
> I was never very good at sitting down and saying "I'm going to compose a song now". I'd have no idea where to start really.



I think composition is pretty misunderstood among guitarists. It's more like an editing and arrangement or ideas along with their creation. I said in another thread that one doesn't say "And now I shall compose!"

When I say composition, I use it mainly to differentiate it between recording improved takes of, say, a solo and keeping whatever came out without ever revising it.

Basically the difference, in my opinion, is that with composition, while you might improvise an idea, but you might alter it and its arrangement, and go back and revise the idea. 

I do personally write most everything down meticulously. It seems more permanent, tangible to me if it's written.




Scali said:


> I need something that sets off the creative process, some inspiration. That could be either my own noodling, or a basic track from someone else.
> I think my best work is when someone supplies a rough idea that somehow 'clicks'. Then I can automatically hear all sorts of melodies, ideas and embellishments.
> I think the best example of that is the song 'Alive' that I did with a friend:
> SoundClick artist: Scali - page with MP3 music downloads
> ...



 If it's to be good, the creative spark must be there. I don't compose 'cold' ; I wait 'til I hear something in my head, then try to capture it in some way. 

My compositions, I think, aren't technically challenging insofar as the "shred" idiom goes. It's not as though I put in a bunch of scale runs, but the parts are occasionally awkward technically, with alternate picking riffs that crosses and skips strings with every note and uneven patterns. That kind of thing. Still probably sounds like shred, but it's not! 

"Alive" was excellent by the way.


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## Johann (Dec 3, 2008)

interesting... so i'm doing fine practicing 56 hours a week?


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## Scali (Dec 3, 2008)

TonalArchitect said:


> Basically the difference, in my opinion, is that with composition, while you might improvise an idea, but you might alter it and its arrangement, and go back and revise the idea.


 
I take the term quite literally... Composing as in putting different parts together in order to form a new whole. So putting together a drum track, bass, chord changes and some melody... pretty much.
When you improvise, you focus solely on a single part, generally the melody.



TonalArchitect said:


> "Alive" was excellent by the way.


 
Thanks!


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## TonalArchitect (Dec 3, 2008)

Scali said:


> I take the term quite literally... Composing as in putting different parts together in order to form a new whole. So putting together a drum track, bass, chord changes and some melody... pretty much.
> When you improvise, you focus solely on a single part, generally the melody.



Ah, I see. Words seem to fail me now, but I mean that improvisation can be a tool for composition, or at least a place to get/work out ideas for composition. And that the two aren't necessarily inextricably bound, nor are they mutually exclusive.


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## Naren (Dec 3, 2008)

TonalArchitect said:


> Ah, I see. Words seem to fail me now, but I mean that improvisation can be a tool for composition, or at least a place to get/work out ideas for composition. And that the two aren't necessarily inextricably bound, nor are they mutually exclusive.



I agree. A lot of the riffs for my songs come from me jamming and improvising for several hours and picking the improvised/jammed riffs that jump out at me as COOL and then improving on them. You could hear a recorded version of a song on a demo and if you go back to the original version that I just improvised one day, you'll notice that the notes are mostly the same, but that the version that has become a song has been more specified, cleaned up, and had its tempo and so forth adjusted.

I usually write solos for songs by improvising over the backing (guitars, bass, drums) over and over and over again and composing the solo from that. There have been a few songs where I write the solo first without any backing guitar and then make the backing guitar to fit the solo, but I usually write the backing guitar, bass, and drums first.

Everyone has their own way of composing, but improvisation is definitely one of them.


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## Jachop (Dec 6, 2008)

Johann said:


> interesting... so i'm doing fine practicing 56 hours a week?



Holy smoke dude! I wish I could be half as dedicated!


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## Johann (Dec 6, 2008)

Jachop said:


> Holy smoke dude! I wish I could be half as dedicated!




haha, it's what i do, i actually dropped out from school to dedicate full time to guitar  next year i'll have to return, though, lol.


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## TheSixthWheel (Dec 10, 2008)

The main article was very interesting, but it imbellishes in places and assumes a lot. A wise vagabond once told me - 'Everything is right in a sense, and wrong in a sense.' I think that of this article....Come to think of it, he could have just been tripping.


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