I see these terms bandied about regarding guitar playing a lot in magazines, and online. This is one of those ineffable ideas in which everyone ‘knows’ what this means, but nobody can define it…

I have seen a number of different ways to describe these different states of being, in the metaphysics of guitar playing. One could be how fast you are making progress as a guitarist…Beginners could very easily become 10% better every week, and the transition to where you start to plateau could be what defines an intermediate player.

The amount and complexity of knowledge as a guitarist could be used to define these stages…but where would you make the dividing lines?

There is, however a difference between merely being an advanced player, and a pro… almost every pro I have ever seen, watched, listened to, or talked to spends a great deal of time on maintenance of chops, on strength and endurance (it takes plenty to play well for hours at a time). You could be an intermediate guitarist (with regard to technique and knowledge) and still be a pro.

This sounds a lot like Zen…

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