The Punk Rock Method
The Punk Rock Method is a way of thinking. You simplify everything down to the essentials.
The first part of the punk rock method is that the musicians just learns a few chords, enough to be dangerous. And then they milk it for everything it’s worth.
They don’t need jazz or classical theory to get by. Learn a few things and put them into action.
The second part of the punk rock method is related to the guitar, but you can see how it relates to all other creative work.
There are a lot of guitarists out there who only know the guitar based on the dots or fret numbers (I am sort of in this category).
They don’t know all the notes that are being played. But they know to move their fingers up a few frets or down a few frets to play that lick.
If you ask them to explain to you how the song works, they’ll say “I go there, and then I go there”.
This focus on patterns above specific notes is a big part of what makes the guitar more fun than the piano.
So think about dumbing down your processes into this type of punk rock thinking.
“I open my notebook, I scratch a few ideas out and then I post them”. Rather than the extensive dialogue that we often fall victim to.
A big part of the punk rock method is also excessive drinking and drugs, but we can skip that part while we just grab the essence of the idea.
Credit to my guitar teacher Peter who taught me this concept after he observed hundreds if not thousands of guitarists and their habits over his career to date.