Learn the piece, spoil the magic?

[Spivonious]

I can't even imagine learning Watchtower stuff!

[Stijnson]

For me it depends on the song, but if I turn out to be able to play a song I'm amazed by, then yeah it does kind of ruin the magic. Some songs however i appreciate more after i've learned them, others just turn out to be easier then I expected and then i kind of lose interest.

[ezbprimerib]

yes, to a degree, it ruins it

[shredmonster]

I would have to say yes also.

Although I recently learned Michael Schenker's intro to Save Yourself and I still love that song. But I only learned the intro solo and thats all I am going to learn.

But just about 100% of the time it ruins it for me.

[tanpsi]

I would say to people who have lost the emotion after you learn the songs:

Don't despair! you can get the excitement back, I still enjoy playing along with Back in Black (the whole album) for example even though I learned all the songs a long long time ago.

Maybe when you learn the songs to the point where you are not thinking about them so much, you start getting the magic back. Maybe that's why people say they can still get excited with the less difficult songs, there's less thinking involved.

I agree with this dude 110%, In the past year I've really started to move past the thinking and spelling out keys and scales to just playing!

[GryphonGuitar]

See, I'm just the other way around... I want to learn the intricacies behind everything, and that makes me "feel" the music more - Listening to some John Petrucci solo or whatever, it's so much cooler when You can sort of put Yourself there on stage, and You know what it is... It bothers me whenever I can't figure something out.

I guess it's like analyzing love. I'm part of the school that doesn't mind love being boiled down to molecules in the brain - in fact that only makes me more fascinated with it. Others will argue that magical things like the perfect golf swing just have to stay magical...

[Chester73]

Ruined for me too... rather than try to learn entire songs note for note, I'm one of these guys that just learns bits and pieces, although I do spend time jamming on parts to see where I can go with them. These days I'm more into learning the techniques of my favorite players, and then trying to utilize those techniques in my own playing, and working on my phrasing- I don't practice anymore- I just play, record what I do, and have fun with it.

[kalapoka]

i agree. it sometimes kills the fun. especially when i love the song so much that i learn the piece and keep playing it everytime i pick the guitar. after a while it gets boring. lol.

[broken_fusion]

To be honest I think learning an instrument has robbed me of listening to a song as a whole. Now I tend to dissect what guitar,drums and bass do most of the time. Its not intentional but I'm pretty much unable to just hear a piece of music as a single entity.
.

Agree 100%.