When I think about “learning to play guitar,” I think of the 4 stages of competence to help me as my skills develop. It’s a framework that I aim for whenever I’m trying to learn a new song, or even a lick or a phrase or technique.
When you sit down to play a song for the first time, you don’t know that you can’t competently play it. You look at the sheet music or you listen to a performance, and you attempt it. At this point, you’re still in the Unconscious Incompetence stage.
Once you run through it, you transition out of the red base of the triangle (Unconscious Incompetence) into the yellow Conscious Incompetence stage. You can’t play it, but you know that you can’t play it, and you know the parts that are giving you trouble.
As you continue to attempt runs at the song or the phrase or technique, it starts to feel more comfortable to the point where you can start to do it, but you have to commit all your focus and go slow. This is that transition into the 3rd Green stage of Competence with full Consciousness. A lot of people stop learning to play something here. If it’s a curiosity with a technique or a novelty moment, then by all means stop there.
But… I find that if I really want to enjoy playing something, I need to go further. With more repetitions in the green stage, it will eventually transition into a mode of playing that becomes effortless. That’s the Unconscious Competence destination stage.
Playing it well enough to play it without thinking is really how you unlock the creative choices available to a player. It’s also how you get to that elusive and prized flow state of playing, where you’re free to experience the creation in real time or interact with other players or an audience. Getting there means you’re really climbed the top of the mountain (or triangle, as it happens).
