Knowing what to do, being able to do it, and making it part of your everyday practice are different challenges. In this episode, Simon offers a way to distinguish them—and to understand why progress can feel slower as your playing develops.
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CGC Podcast 102 · approximately 17 minutes · recorded in September 2020. Show notes below summarize Simon’s discussion; the opening event announcements are historical.
Episode guide
Approximate timestamps in the original recording. Use the player to move to a section.
- 5:05 — Learning, motivation and feeling stuck
- 6:49 — Knowledge acquisition
- 9:59 — Skill acquisition
- 11:31 — Behavioural learning
- 13:14 — Bringing skills together in repertoire
- 15:21 — Reflect on how you spend your practice time
1. Knowledge: understanding an idea
Learning string names, discovering a fingering or understanding how a technique works can bring an immediate sense of progress. Simon notes that adult learners are often experienced researchers and enjoy finding and analysing information.
The difficulty comes when gathering information displaces the work of applying it. A clear explanation can show you the way forward, but it does not automatically establish a physical or musical skill.
2. Skill: putting the idea into practice
Skill acquisition involves focused work over time. Simon uses a cross-string trill as an example: knowing the fingering is different from producing a clean rhythm and fitting the ornament smoothly into a phrase.
Musical gestures also need practice. Understanding tension and resolution is a starting point; shaping that movement convincingly requires listening, repetition and adjustment.
3. Behaviour: changing how you work
The third challenge is changing established practice habits. Slowing down, staying with a small amount of material, and choosing focused practice over another play-through can require sustained effort even when the underlying advice is simple.
Simon also discusses the larger task of bringing tone, rhythm, technique and musical understanding together in repertoire. That synthesis does not always provide the quick, measurable rewards of learning a fact or improving an isolated exercise.
Use the distinction to understand your progress
These are Simon’s working categories for reflecting on learning, not a claim that every learner fits a fixed scientific model. His central encouragement is to recognize the kind of work you are doing and give longer-term development the time it needs.
At your next practice session, ask:
- Do I need information, or do I already know what to try?
- Am I developing a specific skill through focused repetition?
- Is the harder task changing a practice habit or integrating several skills into music?
That distinction can help you choose the next action and interpret a period of slow progress with more patience.
Hello Simon and CGC Academy,
A wonderful podcast which I think warrants examination of our individual attentions to these three areas of learning. I believe there is a ratio between the intellectual acquisitive learning for classical guitar and the physicality of playing … which would be the skill and the behavioural aspect of learning. The ratio varies for each individual and in adult learners, the knowledge acquisition will often be given more attention than the physicality. I think it’s the opposite for children. None of this is cast in stone of course! But each person has to find that balance in order to achieve success and as you say, being forgiving and kind to oneself along the way helps a great deal with perseverance and determination. Thanks Simon for the clarity you provide with this issue. I’m also excited about the Ukulele project!! Good for you!