Skill levels as a player

[Durham52]

In my categorizations, I try to address this with the concept of internalization, because I personally don't believe anyone can be anything other than a highly skilled technician if they are not internalizing the music and developing the ear.

This is controversial, but I think even at what most would consider the expert level you will find many technicians who can't move away from notation. I don't think that's expert. That's technically highly proficient, but if you're not getting it from the inside out, you aren't really there. Just my opinion, of course.

I think you said it better than I did, (this is sort of what I was getting at) but in way fewer words...

 

[Leigh Semmens]

Who cares, as long as you can enjoy yourself. Yes, I can read music, I understand numbering systems (not fluent, though), don't like tab. Cannot play by ear, (must have a chart or another instrument, keys, guitar or bass) to "read". As a guitarist I am certainly better than the "average" but will not call myself anything more than competent. As a Bassist, I'm still very much a learner, but I do (thanks to my guitar history) know my way around the fretboard and chord construction. Others may class me differently, but, in reality, I still get to play in my Church band regularly even getting to fill in at short notice on occasion, 99% of the time, on Bass.

 

[Cal03]

After reading through everybody's own classifications, I can safely say I'm in the "intermediate" camp.

I used to be a bit apprehensive about where my skill level is supposed to be since I only started playing a few years ago and I haven't taken any in-person instruction at all. Plus I only played bass in my previous church's Worship Team, an especially limited and narrow environment where the best of us would struggle to reach "intermediate" at their respective instruments. But it seems that it's necessary to acknowledge one's progress from time to time.

-Cal.

 

[callofcthulhu]

Jeeze remember when people would talk about Berklee and Juliard in the same shaging breath?

Guess they're just shaging Buzzfeed now. What a navel-gazing pointless puff piece, practically emblazoned with "HAVE YOU CONSIDERED OVERPAYING FOR OUR ONLINE WEBINARS?"

 

[BlueTalon]

About 7-8 years ago, my friend gave me the phone number of a guitarist that was looking for a bass player. I called, introduced myself, and said I'd heard he was looking for a bass player, which he in fact was. Of course, one of the first questions he asked me was how good I am. My response: "I'm not the best that ever was, and never will be. But I can hold my own in most situations I find myself in." He liked that answer.

I met him for the first time on stage moments before our first gig together. I ended up playing with him for over 5 years, and I still sub for him regularly.

 

[FritzM]

Here Are My Own Groupings (based on my own progress and watching many others):


Super Advanced: Can read music at speed. Can improvise most anything. Not limited by genre.

IMO, this is it. I work with people who can read anything you throw at them. However, most of them can't improvise or play in any other genre than what they know. Their egos are astounding. If you can't compose, improvise, or play different styles of music, are you really a top shelf musician? It's an interesting question.
For me:

1. Acceptance of different styles of music.
2. Ability to improvise and adapt.
3. Developing your ear.
4. Mechanics of music. Music theory.
5. Ability to read music. (I know players way better than me that cannot read.)

BTW, I am a Music Theory professor. Not that it matters. Just my opinion.

 

[lfmn16]

This sounds excessively cynical, but maybe it varies from country to country. I live near a major US university, and know people who are teachers, students, and graduates, in their music programs. I played a gig with several of them today. I think I was the only person on the bandstand without college level music training. In my view, it would be freakishly difficult to get through a music performance degree without becoming a very good all-round musician.

Just getting into such a program in the first place requires an audition where you show a very high level of proficiency. That proficiency typically comes from private study plus performance experience.

The education is not pure classroom learning. Each student takes lessons from a professor, for the duration of the program. That professor is required to be a performing musician themselves. Technical ability is just a small part of what music students learn. The students are also required to play in student ensembles, that are coached by faculty members. They are immersed in an atmosphere where music is everywhere, and is experienced in the ways that you describe, including just plain good fun.

+1

I don’t know any musicians that regret the knowledge they acquired from getting a degree. The people I know who downplay the value of an education are the ones that don’t have one.

As far as trained musicians that don’t play with feeling; yea they exist, but they are outnumbered exponentially by untrained “musicians” that play without feeling.

 

[DTRN]

Anyone that picks up an musical instrument and gives it their 100% best is a pro in my book. I have heard bands with excellent musicians sound terrible and I have heard bands with so-so musicians sound awesome. The skill is in the team work and comradery and not the individual skills. I will never be as good as I wish...never. So...I practice, practice and practice some more. Having fun is really the bottom line. I would rather be mediocre and have fun than the best ever and miserable.

 

[Wesley R]

How about:
Suffers from delusions of adequacy
Or
Extremely adequate

 

[rashrader]

After all of my years of playing, I would say that…. I’m not interested in pigeonholing any of my fellow bassists.

 

[SteveCS]

Where are the criteria that address audience communication, i.e. actually being able to say something or touch people through the music. Without that it's just noise, n'est pas?

 

[bon viesta]

i’d be a “craftsman”, after only one year of dedicating myself to bass. wow.

 

[logdrum]

Forcer sounds badass

 

[Kipp Harrington]

Looks like the category I belong to was left out... Accomplished Hack.

 

[revd]

I thought I was lower intermediate cos I can play a few more complicated songs, know multiple scale patterns and can improvise baic basslines (been playing keyboards for years).

But as I can't read music on bass and I don't know chords (chords on bass?) I guess I'm still a beginner.

 

[LBS-bass]

I thought I was lower intermediate cos I can play a few more complicated songs, know multiple scale patterns and can improvise baic basslines (been playing keyboards for years).

But as I can't read music on bass and I don't know chords (chords on bass?) I guess I'm still a beginner.

Don't feel bad. I don't play chords, my reading is pretty basic, and my stiff, old hands will never be fast. But nobody I play with seems to care much about any of those things. So if I'm a beginner, I've been stuck at that level for many years, and done hundreds of shows there.

 

[LBS-bass]

reading tab comfortably is something

Tab one of those weirdnesses that probably doesn't cleanly fit in here. I abhor tab; I can make sense of it but I'd never find it really useful. But others do use it. I don't see reading tab as a skill; it's sort of like painting by numbers in the sense that it's telling you what to put where but not giving you a whole lot of information about nuance. Anyone can learn to read it pretty easily. But some do find it very useful. I wouldn't use reading tab as a yardstick for anything.

I'm lucky in that I was introduced to standard notation early, but I never learned to read all that well. Still, I'd rather have specks in front of me because once I have deciphered them I feel like I have a lot more useful info.

You could probably make the same argument about SN though, since there are some amazing players who don't read at all. Someone will come by shortly and say "yeah, but you're not them," and I would argue that you'll never know who here is them, because they're not going to talk about it.

 

[IamGroot]

I heard this in jazz twenty years ago. There's a book called "Effortless Mastery"

Lowest To Highest
4 Unconsciously Incompetent -sucks and doesnt know it
3 Consciously Incompetent - sicks and knows it
2 Consciously Competent - can play with effort
1 Unconsciously Competent - Effortless Mastery

Still the best system I have seen.

 

[honeydorick]

I heard this in jazz twenty years ago. There's a book called "Effortless Mastery"

Lowest To Highest
4 Unconsciously Incompetent -sucks and doesnt know it
3 Consciously Incompetent - sicks and knows it
2 Consciously Competent - can play with effort
1 Unconsciously Competent - Effortless Mastery

Still the best system I have seen.

JAMERSON #1

 

[IamGroot]

…Jaco didn’t need a Berklee music teacher to define his skill level as a player…

He taught at Univ of Miami jazz dept?