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At an advanced age, after decades of trying, I gave up. I stopped trying to learn new scales, chord subs or technique (well, pretty much) and decided that I would work on forging a personal style using the tools that I already had. This meant relatively unsophisticated harmonic content, no double timing except at slow tempos, very limited jazz vocabulary and not trying to learn 300 standards by ear.
All things I found hard to learn or do. As it turned out, trying to work within these limitations worked out pretty well - in my semipro context.
I wish I'd given up sooner.Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 10-25-2025 at 03:32 PM.
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10-25-2025 02:18 PM
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Not so much giving up - with its negative connotations - as relaxing into yourself, with your own voice. I can only offer my congratulations, and best wishes for the coming journey.
I think more people would be happy if they stopped banging into that brick wall, and started cultivating flowers in the soil around it.
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That's what I have done as well!
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I am doing it currently.
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I think your thread title should not be "Giving Up" but "Waking Up" (to Reality).
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This is what the kids call “clickbait.”
For shame.
But, then again, I did click.
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The subject is, when to pursue further theoretical goals vs. mining the knowledge you have already gained.
Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I wouldn't call that clickbait. My guess is that it's a real issue for some players and worthy of discussion. Of course, not everybody will be interested.
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I'm not sure you can do that consciously, it's something that appears naturally, if at all, usually after a lot of hard work for its own sake and not with the motive of attaining a personal goal. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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This is so important, thank you for starting a thread on it. It’s not bait, it’s real experiences.
I gave up twice. Once on gigging in the 1980s, which led me to a wondrous journey through world music that landed me in Japan.
Now in my mid-60s, I gave up again, this time on practicing technique and studying theory, preferring to make the most of what I have and to plant those flowers in the fertile soil around the walls I kept hitting, as noted above. I now enjoy music, world and jazz, more than ever before.
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This all reminded me of the frustration of being in school all the time… on and on and on.
Twenty years of constant proving-time… aaaargh! It really messed up my perception of reality.
Best thread of the year btw!
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There is a point where you have to do what you enjoy. After years your vocab is probably larger than you state. Enjoy making music. I stepped away from guitar for a long, long time. I pursued saxophone and then the making of custom saxophone mouthpieces. Upon return and being older I find I hear things I used to not. I enjoy playing. Sometimes I work on new things...sometimes I just mess around.
There is no rule that you just have to keep pushing the envelope. In my experience, working with musicians to achieve their sound, Ive found that driven mindsets sometimes leads to people actually quitting. Its ok to enjoy the ride. Sometimes you discover things that way too.
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Frank Zappa proved he's a wise man when he said "Shut up and play yer guitar." To do that you learn to listen to yourself and not to others who you feel an obligation to hear through.
Jazz is a personal thing, and everyone who wants to learn to play the music comes to that point where they find the thing that brought them to the music.
Congratulations on passing that threshold.
Have fun playing
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I'm also in this club.
I WILL "learn new things"... but only in the context of learning/writing new music. No scales or chord charts, etc. I learn songs I want to learn, and in the process discover a new fingering or position I hadn't known yet. Also, when writing, I'm really trying to connect to the "whatever"- muse, universe, whatever you want to call it.... and sometimes that brings out a melody or chord or progression or something I hadn't done before. I hear it in my head, sound it out on the neck, find the chord I hear in my head, then look up what it is LOL.
Music has become much more therapy for me, a meditation if you will.
Conversely, I'm also in a (rock/pop) cover band, learning new songs all the time, and all the same applies. It's not for money (our food & alcohol tab take alot of the pay LOL), it's just for fun & camaraderie with my friend musicians. Also a form of therapy. But we do get to improv, so there's also that element there.
I'll never give up trying to improve, but just in the ways I described. No more sitting with chord charts or theory/technique books.
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I've given up jazz guitar in exchange for classical guitar a few times. Mostly to do with right hand technique, but from the experience I have now I know classical fingerstyle technique is more difficult or takes longer. But I could only practice so much Bach. I still practice a bit of Bach with a plectrum these days, but my heart is in jazz guitar.
I guess you could say I'm still in the formative stage on my jazz guitar journey so I haven't yet got to the stage where I stop trying to do stuff that experience tells me is not a fruitful area of endeavour, if I've interpreted the OP correctly. But I do try to make the most of what I think could be my strengths and also work on weaknesses...
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I think maybe there’s a misunderstanding of what clickbait is. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Not a comment on the subject of the post. Just on the title.
As you were.
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As for the subject … I think I’m just pretty wary of the difference between “things that have not proven fruitful” and “things I’m bad at.”
Things that don’t work for me, I try to jettison.
Things I’m bad at, I try to work on. To the extent that an ideal day would probably be just those things.
So with chords, for example, drop voicings of most types really aggravate my carpet tunnel. So I just steer clear. But comping in different registers and across string sets, I’m bad at, so I try to live there as much as I can.
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I turn 68 in a few weeks and have dialed back a 20 year run as a pro jazz musician. This year, I will have done 30 paid gigs by year end. I used to do around 200.
Gigging with seasoned pros moved my playing forward and I got to a point way beyond I ever imagined with my jazz guitar playing. At this point it is probably going to be a downhill slide, but so long as I still enjoy playing the guitar, I will continue to do so.
A wise rabbi once said " happiness is not having what you want, it is wanting what you have". This can be applied to playing jazz guitar. Not all of us are born with the gift to play like Joe Pass. I sure wasn't. Some of us will be shitty jazz guitar players no matter how much effort we put in. Do your best and be happy with the result. If you enjoy it, it is all good. If you are frustrated, at some point, move on.
Sadly, the money is not much better for the best players compared to the reasonably good players. Don't stress it and be happy with your playing. Play what you hear and tell your story. At the end of the journey of life, all we each have is our story. I have spent almost 68 years working on a pretty good one. I suggest everyone who reads this post should do the same.
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Pretty much the same here... although I've not completely given up on "raising the bar", every now and then, time permitting...
Sometimes pushing myself outside my comfort zone can be rewarding, too...
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Very cool topic that probably is open to many interpretations.
For me, in the last couple years I have had a very specific vision for a style of playing.
The "giving up" part is technique. The style I'm developing accounts for my limitations and saves me from technical upkeep.
I am still looking at plenty of resources, even taking lessons.
The difference is a very specific sound in my mind and exactly a plan of how to get there.
So what is huge about that is a letting go of anything that is outside of that plan. The giving up of trying to be well rounded.
The transition to "this is honestly all I have wanted to do this whole time, so I'm just going to do that only"
I didn't always know what it was, but now that I do it feels like I dropped a heavy load of things I felt like I had to do.
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Hard to expand on what Marc posted above, but it may be worth reinforcing the point that we probably make music because making music satisfies some needs we have. And not necessarily the same needs in all of us. I've observed players for whom technical achievement is really important, and they follow practice regimens that reflect that need. And for some of those, the technical achievement becomes musical achievement, and the rest of us get to enjoy the results. (And for ambitious professional players, keeping the skills sharp is part of the biz, over and above whatever aesthetic goals there might be.)
Myself, I'm a lazy and unambitious amateur (even when playing in public with pros), so "practice" means "learning a tune" and expanding my technical chops just enough to execute it adequately. Though I've been known to amuse (and stretch) myself by figuring out varying ways of executing. (Did that with "Black Orpheus" and "Cherokee" and learned some things I hadn't expected.) There's a reason we call it playing music. But then, I only ever had to play well enough to be tolerated in the band.
I've carried this bit of Robert Frost in my head for decades:
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
("Two Tramps in Mud-Time")
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I panicked a bit when I saw the thread title because you’ve been on these forums as far back as I can remember, and if you’re giving up, well, that’s just a bad sign. Fortunately, though, you’re not. I would just describe it as being done getting ready and just using all the knowledge and experience you’ve gained over the years. To borrow a phrase I heard somewhere, “nevertheless, we persist.”
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Branford Marsalis' thoughts about building a personal style are characteristically clear, terse and helpful. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Please see my sig line here on JG.be.
There's also this from the visionary author William Gibson:
"{T]echnique becomes the enemy. The thing that was keeping me from doing something new was how comfortable I'd gotten doing something I already know how to do."
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I "gave up" several years ago. Originally Posted by unknownguitarplayer
It took a while before I thought I had something worth posting.
I think the outcome eventually turned positive, but if I hadn't been so frustrated with my prior path, I wouldn't have done it.
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I never gave up anything because I liked what I was doing, still do. If I didn't like it I wouldn't have started in the first place.
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