What a classical guitarist taught me about mastery, creativity, and learning to express what you already hear.
There is a point in learning almost anything when technical ability stops being the objective. You still need the technique. You may spend years developing it. Eventually the question changes. It is no longer, “Can I make my hands do this?” It becomes:
Can I make what comes out match what I hear in my mind?
That idea came up near the end of my conversation with classical guitarist Jonathan Taylor. I asked him what advice he would give two people: someone beginning to learn classical guitar, and an expert who had mastered the instrument.
His advice to the beginner was what you might expect: listen to great players, watch them, find a good teacher, learn to read music, develop your ear, and study the masters. Taylor did that himself, including studying privately with Pepe Romero for five years. But his advice to the expert was different.
“Always make sure your head is matching with your fingers.”
Then he explained what he meant:
“The music is already there in your mind.”
For Taylor, the instrument isn't where the music originates. The challenge is translating the feelings, emotions and ideas about phrasing that already exist in his mind through his fingers and into the guitar.
There's something bigger in that idea than learning to play guitar.
First You Learn the Instrument
Taylor knew from an early age that he wanted to play classical guitar.He had been picking out tunes as a child, but seeing Andrés Segovia perform when Taylor was around 16 crystallized what he wanted to do. What struck him wasn't Segovia's technical ability. It was that one person with one instrument could produce something that felt complete.
The classical guitar can simultaneously carry melody, bass and accompaniment. Taylor was fascinated by the technical complexity and the beauty that could emerge from it. He went on to study guitar, composition and arranging. That required learning an enormous amount of technique.
Technique matters. You cannot express something through an instrument you cannot control. A guitarist has to learn where the notes are. A writer has to learn how sentences work. An engineer has to understand the physical system. A painter has to learn what paint does on a surface. At the beginning, much of learning comes from outside of us. Someone shows us how. That's why Taylor tells beginners to study the masters.
Mastery creates an interesting problem. Eventually, you know how.
Then what?
What Happens After You Master What Exists?
Taylor described reaching a point in his career. By his mid-20s, he had worked through much of the established classical-guitar repertoire. He had learned and recorded the masters. That left him with a question:
Where do you go after you've learned what everyone tells you to learn?
His answer wasn't to keep recording the same repertoire. He began taking music that hadn't traditionally been played on classical guitar and figuring out how to bring it onto the instrument. His arrangements have drawn from folk music, film music, psychedelic music, Chopin, Beethoven, Scott Joplin and other sources.
That's a transition.
At first, mastery means learning to do what the masters did. Eventually, mastery may mean stopping, stopping the imitation. Once you have learned the rules, techniques and traditions of your field, there comes a point where continuing to reproduce them may no longer make you better. You have to decide what you want to do with them.
Creativity Isn't Magic
During our conversation, we talked about Taylor's arrangement of Over the Rainbow. That led into a broader discussion about where ideas come from. One thing that interests me about creativity is how often we describe it as though an idea simply appears.
Someone writes a great song. Someone invents something. Someone solves a problem nobody else could solve.
We call it inspiration. An idea may arrive unexpectedly. Recognizing it and doing something with it requires preparation.
The importance of capturing an idea immediately.
I mentioned that when I have an idea for a song, or any idea, I look for something to write it down on before another thought pushes it out of my mind.
Then there is everything that happens afterward.
Taylor's explanation of arranging music wasn't magical. He talked about understanding composition, knowing the instruments of an orchestra, understanding the peculiarities of the guitar, thinking about musical themes and deciding what to add, remove, move or develop.
The initial idea matters, as does having enough knowledge to recognize what you can do with it.
Perhaps creativity isn't the opposite of expertise. Expertise gives creativity more possibilities.
The Work Doesn't Necessarily End When You Finish
I asked whether he always plays an arrangement the same way.
Taylor answeed, no. He described looking at a year-old recording of one of his James Bond arrangements and realizing that somewhere along the way he had removed one section and added another. He hadn't even remembered making the change. For him, arranging can remain an ongoing process. That challenges another assumption we often make about creative work:
When is something finished?
Maybe sometimes it isn't.
You publish the article.
Record the song.
Release the software.
Design the product.
Solve the problem.
Then you learn something.
You see another possibility.
The next version becomes different—not because the previous version was wrong - your understanding of it changed. Taylor made a similar observation about recording multiple takes. Sometimes he can't say that one is better. One may have a better feel in one section, and another somewhere else.
Sometimes, he said, “it's not better or worse, it's just different.”
In a culture obsessed with optimization, that's an important insight. Not every choice has a single best answer. Sometimes there are different expressions of the same idea.
Technique Can Become a Barrier
There is a paradox. At the beginning, lack of technique prevents expression. You know what you want to do; you can't do it. You practice. Eventually, technique can create a problem. You become very good at doing what you have learned to do. You know the accepted process. You know what someone in your field is “supposed” to produce. You know what has worked before.
Now all of that knowledge can make it harder to hear what was originally in your head.
Taylor said something during our discussion of composition that initially sounds backwards: “I try not to write anything on the guitar because you don't want to write on the instrument that you're good at.” He explained that he sometimes uses other means to explore sounds rather than allowing his familiarity with the guitar to dictate where the composition goes.
The tool you're best at using can also constrain what you imagine. A programmer thinks in terms of code. An engineer thinks in terms of familiar designs. A consultant reaches for a familiar framework. A guitarist's fingers move toward familiar patterns. Expertise expands what you can do.
It can quietly define what you think is possible.
If I temporarily took away the way I already know how to do this, what would I try to create?
Your Head Has to Match Your Fingers
That brings me back to Taylor's advice to the expert guitarist. At the beginning, success might be playing the correct notes. Later, that isn't enough. Your fingers can execute something perfectly while still failing to produce what you intended. The goal becomes closing the distance between what you imagine and what you can express.
I think that applies far beyond music.
A writer can know grammar and still struggle to say what he means.
An engineer can master analytical tools and still solve the wrong problem.
A painter can possess extraordinary technique and have nothing distinctive to paint.
Someone can become skilled at a profession, and gradually lose sight of why they entered it.
Mastery has two stages.
First:
Learn to control the tool.
Then:
Stop letting the tool control what you create.
The technique, knowledge, practice and experience are still there. You don't discard them. You internalize them deeply enough that they become a means rather than the objective. Then you can return to the more difficult question:
What is it that you're actually trying to express?
By then, as Jonathan Taylor put it:
“The music is already there in your mind.”
Editor's Note
This article is based on my podcast conversation with classical guitarist, Jonathan Taylor. The ideas discussed here originated in that conversation, while the structure, emphasis, and commentary are my own. Any errors or interpretations are mine, not Jonathan Taylor's.
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About the Author
Daniel Stih (danielstih.com) is an aerospace engineer, software engineer, indoor environmental consultant, and author of 12 books. For more than 30 years, he has investigated complex problems spanning engineering, technology, the built environment, and human decision-making. His work explores how evidence, assumptions, and systems shape the conclusions we draw—and whether we're solving the right problem. Learn more about his approach in Why I Think This Way.