A "crutch" is a crutch is a crutch.

Much like the millions of small home electronic keyboards that one can find in the thrift shops and garage sales that have those little stickers plastered all over the keys to identify the notenames, said instrument never having been learned by the previous owner and soon relegated to that status. The owners of said keyboards likely still don't realize that it was the presence of those stoopid stickers that prevented them from moving past "hunt and peck" status. All they really "practiced" was, "seek and ye shall find" *grin*.

IF the act of performance was a situation of "seek and ye shall find" then such crutches would have validity. But that is not the goal if you are trying to master an instrument. In reality, it has nothing to do with it at all as the learning of where the notes are and their notenames is quite elementary and should be tackled and conquered as quickly as possible. And those lights prevent the brain from doing what it does best, which is to memorize that bit of information.

At the end of the day, there is nothing like the time-honored methods of repetition known as practice. Memorization will indeed come of its own accord when such is the case -- and a lot faster when there is no "crutch" or guide to refer to as a shortcut.

As with the student who smuggles the "cheat sheet" into the examination room at test time, the real victim of such is the student. Far too much time and energy wasted in taking the "shortcut" when simply doing the job and accepting the day-to-day programming marvel of the human brain through repetition results in actually owning that bit of information for the rest of your life.

"Mapping" the guitar neck mentally is the real goal.

That can be done away from the instrument, too, using graph paper and a pencil. A time-honored method that works.

But one has to be willing to get started in doing that. Quite often it is the First Step that seems to be the hardest step to take.

Or as Sir Edmund Hillary once stated, a mountain is climbed by taking that first step. Once you do take the first step, he said that Providence kicks in and takes you the rest of the way.

Or, as Frank Zappa put it, "Shut up and play yer guitar!"

We don't need no steenking bleenking lights.

Gimmicks are gimmicks.


--Mac

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