Over the years you may have heard me talk about “Hows” and “Whats,” when referring to skills or ideas you will need to be proficient at…<\/p>\n
Well I’ve also heard them referred to as “hard skills,” and “soft skills,” which might make a bit more sense… plus it also tells you a little bit about how well you need to know them.<\/p>\n
For example, ‘how to play a G7 chord’ is, most definitely, a “how” in my book, and it would be a “hard skill” that you need to be able to do. You don’t just “sort of know it,” and you aren’t just aware of it – you simply have to be able to do it on command or you won’t be able to play an awful lot of music.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, something like playing the minor blues scale is, to me, a softer skill.<\/p>\n
How fast do you need to play it?<\/p>\n
What positions do you need to play it in?<\/p>\n
Simply having the scale memorized really isn’t going to do much for you if you can’t play it in a position that is useful to you when you are soloing.<\/p>\n
And if you are working on ‘how to solo over a 12 bar blues,’ (which is even softer because there are SO many options when it comes to soloing) you need to define your goals within that goal or you’ll just flounder around.<\/p>\n
But notice the most important thing – the softer skills rely and lean on the harder skills. For every soft skill you want to work on, you can always boil it down to a list of hard skills…<\/p>\n
And what’s more, if you can’t boil it down to just one set of hard skills, then it’s a clear indication that your goal isn’t firm and your focus is not clear. You’ll need to isolate what you want to improve on more clearly if you want to make the most progress on it.<\/p>\n
Take as an example a song like Sweet Home Chicago… let’s say you want to play it in the common shuffle style… what would you need to know?<\/p>\n