I think everyone else is wrong about getting better at guitar.

So I posted yesterday about learning a hundred guitar solos of increasing difficulty over a year, until I can play solos like "Cliffs of Dover" or "Tornado of Souls". In short, people thought this to be a dubious proposition. The consensus response seemed to be something along the lines of "Not gonna happen, speed doesn't equal difficulty, and you have no idea what you're talking about." Since I'm smarter than you, I wanted to take the time to slowly explain my position and give you another opportunity to say wrong things.

Everyone keeps saying "Speed doesn't equal difficulty", which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I get that tapping isn't the same as alternate picking, and that number of notes does not directly correlate to difficulty level, but to pretend that there is no correlation is just wrong. I've learned a number of guitar parts over the years that fall within my speed ability, and I'm not sure I've ever thought one single note phrase was that much more difficult to play than any other phrase, given similar notes per minute. Again, I'm not talking about different techniques. Obviously Sultans of Swing is more difficult to play than a simple strummed progression at the same BPM. But I'm pretty sure every solo on this list consists of single note lines.

So, let's say I can comfortably play sixteenth notes at eighty BPM. Is there a phrase from Cliffs of Dover that would just be impossible for me to play at that speed? Please let me know which phrase that would be. I mean it's only notes on a fret board, not nuclear physics. I've looked at several of the guitar solos that people said would be impossible to play, and they really just seem like regular notes played very fast. There's nothing special about the notes themselves.

The fastest sections in Cliffs of Dover are eighth note triplets played at One Hundred Forty BPM, which comes out to Eight Hundred Forty notes per minute, which would be the same as sixteenth notes played at Two Hundred Ten BPM. Given my current ability to play at Eighty BPM, if I wanted to play Cliffs of Dover within a year, then that means that I would need to increase my playing speed by at least Two point Five BPM per week. Does that really seem all that impossible?

If my post were instead " I want to increase my playing speed from Eighty BPM to Two Hundred BPM by increasing my speed by a third of a BPM per day over a year", do you really think anyone would doubt that I could do it? I don't.

All that being said, here's what I think what people are really taking issue with and my response to each.

"That's going to take a lot of consistent practice, and most people aren't willing to stick with long term goals"

- That's true. I've given up on a lot of goals, but I've also accomplished a lot of goals, so we'll see.

 "That's a lot of notes, and it's going to take a long time to memorize them"

- Nobody said I was going to learn them one at a time. Imagine I got hired for a cover band and had to learn a hundred guitar solos within a year. Sounds doable, especially since I don't have to remember the ones I've already learned.

"When you say the end goal out loud, it seems big and scary"

- True again, but I'm looking at one day at a time. To me it looks like a few hours a day getting better at guitar. It really doesn't seem that bad.

In the end, I've just always dreamed of being one of those shreddy guys. Hopefully in my Fifties I'll be able to impress a bunch of other old guys at a blues jam.