What Is a Musician — And What Does That Have to Do With Your Guitar?
I have been playing guitar for a long time now.
For most of that time, I called myself a guitarist.
The Question Nobody Asks at the Beginning
When you first pick up a guitar, nobody asks you what kind of relationship you want with it. Nobody sits you down and says — before we talk about chords or scales or any of this — who are you, and what are you bringing to this instrument?
Jimi Hendrix said it. Not as a lesson, not as advice dispensed from a stage — just as a truth he had arrived at through living: know yourself first, and then your tool.
I did not hear that when I was starting out. I was too busy trying to learn the tool. But somewhere in all that attention to the instrument, the prior question got lost. The one that mattered more. Who are you? What are you bringing here? What do you hear when there is no guitar in your hands?
What Is a Musician — Pablo Picasso Had an Answer
He said it himself, much later, looking back at everything he had made: he had been a painter his entire life. But it was only after the decades, after the mastery, after the rules had been learned so thoroughly they could be broken with precision — that he could call himself an artist. The distinction is not false modesty. It is the most honest thing a person who makes things can say.
A painter applies paint. An artist uses paint to say something that could not be said any other way. The mechanics are the same. The relationship to the work is completely different.
Victor Wooten — one of the most extraordinary bassists alive — has said something that has stayed with me since I first heard it: don't be a bassist. Be a musician. Find music in a car alarm. Find it in an alarm clock. Find it in the sound of rain on a window or traffic on a wet street. Because a musician does not need an instrument to hear music. They need ears and intention. They just need to listen — to others, to their instrument, and to themselves.
The Vessel and the Light
Steve Vai described practice in a way I have never forgotten. He said practising is preparing your vessel. So that when inspiration strikes, your mechanics are ready to realise it without thinking. The vessel. Not the destination — the vessel. The preparation is not the music. The preparation is what makes the music possible when it arrives.
The musician as a prism. The inspiration as light. A single, undifferentiated light. And the prism, when it is clear, when the glass has been prepared and polished through years of honest work, refracts that light into a spectrum. Every colour visible. Nothing lost in translation.
Bob Dylan's voice would not pass an audition at most music schools. And yet when Bob Dylan sings, something comes through that very few technically perfect voices have ever managed. The glass is clear. The light refracts. The colours are entirely his own. Paco de Lucía never needed to sing. His flamenco guitar spoke in a language that had no need for words. The vessel was prepared over a lifetime of discipline so deep it became invisible. These are musicians. Not because of what they could do with their instruments. Because of what came through them when they played.
What Makes a Great Guitarist — and Is That the Same Thing?
There are guitarists who have dedicated their lives to pushing the absolute boundaries of what the instrument can do. Yngwie Malmsteen once heard Jeff Beck playing and said — I cannot believe it, he is out of tune! He was not wrong, technically. Jeff Beck has never been a guitarist who prioritised precision of intonation above the feeling of a note bent to exactly the right emotional place. By one measure, Yngwie was correct. By another measure — the measure of what came through — Jeff Beck was saying something that precision alone cannot say.
Joe Satriani — who has the technical command and the musical depth — once said something that speaks to where the two roads might meet. When you learn your first three chords, make a song out of it. Do not wait until you are ready. Three chords is enough to say something. Say it. That is the child Picasso was talking about. The one who does not yet know enough to be inhibited.
How to Become a Musician — Two Journeys, One Instrument
There are two journeys available to you on the guitar. The first is the journey of preparation — of building the vessel, training the hands, clearing the glass. This journey has no ceiling. There is always more speed, more precision, more technical territory to explore.
The second journey begins when you start listening. Not to the guitar — to yourself. To what you are trying to say. To whether the thing you are practising is in service of something you actually want to express. This is the journey Hendrix was pointing at. Know yourself first. Then your tool.
The musician is asking a different question. Not what can I do with this instrument — but what does this instrument let me say that I could not say any other way? A musician hears music everywhere. Because the music is never really in the instrument. It is always in the person holding it.
Back to the Root Note
I have been playing guitar for a long time. For most of that time I called myself a guitarist.
Picasso spent a lifetime with paint before he called himself an artist. The title is not a reward for hours spent. It is a description of a relationship — between the person, the instrument, and the something that moves through both of them when everything is working.
Jimi Hendrix said know yourself first, then your tool. I am still working on the first part. The second part, I think, takes care of itself.
Slow and steady. Always. — Rex 🐢