Comment by williamcotton
2 years ago
I’m not talking about concert footage, I’m talking about James breaking the song down and showing you the riffs at quarter speed.
Until a recent YouTube video I was playing the song incorrectly. It’s blazing fast and the mix is sort of insane so it’s very hard to hear exactly what is going on. And the tablature isn’t going to let you see how his body fits into the groove.
This is tacit knowledge we’re talking about, not book learning. Guitar instruction is always hands on.
Almost everything is hands-on (everything apart from things you really can't do hands-on, like exploring black holes): I don't remember seeing someone come out of reading a book on programming and being a master programmer.
But video is not hands-on any more so than text: if it was, live concerts and sports games and other performances would not be such a big deal. Sure, video is richer in some signals (audio/video), but poorer in others (introspection, pacing and focus...).
That does not mean I can't read to understand a new topic or to be prepared to look for subtleties in a hands-on performance.
If anything, to a great student, they should be complementary, but still, each student will have one or the other contribute more to their learning, and that depends both on the teacher, but also on the student.