Indeed, you don’t have to talk to too many guitarists before you’ll hear the view expressed that there is actually something pretty uncool about being able to read music – almost as if gaining this particular skill will somehow strip you of your ability to play spontaneously or with feeling.

Yet, if you ask anyone who has taken up guitar after having cut their teeth on a different instrument; one that is usually taught using standard notation; then I guarantee you will never hear them complain that understanding standard notation is any kind of disadvantage when it comes to learning to play guitar.

There are of course several notable examples of truly great musicians who never learnt to read – the incomparable Django Reinhardt being, to my mind, the best of these. But there are also many great rock guitarists who were classically trained and most definitely can read music: Brian May of Queen being the first one who comes to mind.

What we may never know is: – could Django Reinhardt have been somehow even greater if he had learnt to read and write music? Or, would Brian May have played even better had he never learnt to read music?

Let’s get away from these imponderable questions a moment and also away from the sphere of the immortals and concentrate on the more familiar world of your average guitar player trying to improve their playing skills and their understanding of music.

In this world, I believe there is a better question to ask: When does it make sense to invest the necessary effort to learn to read and understand standard notation?

From my experience as a guitar teacher I would immediately say that the answer is different for each individual, depending on a variety of factors that I think are worth outlining. For beginners, I have to say there are only two circumstances where I have found it useful to introduce the reading of standard notation from day one:

• For some very young students (age 6 – 8) who have a leaning towards playing melody as      opposed to strumming chords
• Anyone wanting to learn classical guitar

I have to say that, for all other students (those with a preference for Blues, Rock, Country and even Jazz guitar) I have found only a disadvantage in introducing the learning of standard notation in the first year or so of their learning. However, it should be noted that other guitar teachers may have very differing views on this, largely depending, I think, on how they themselves learnt to play guitar.

For more advanced students the early introduction of standard notation is I think, definitely appropriate if they come for lessons with one or more of the following specific goals in mind:

• To play guitar in a big band or orchestra
• To pursue a career in mainstream music, particularly as a session musician
• To help with passing music exams
• To gain entry to a mainstream music course
• To be able to write parts for other instruments (saxophone, trumpet, keyboards, for example) in their band

But for most guitarists, I personally believe in a more gradual approach to coming to terms with the various ways of understanding music. I believe that to progress through the various stages of learning guitar in a way that is in itself, both rewarding and genuinely educational, I suggest the following path.

First, by being shown that there is nothing better than being able to physically see another, more experienced guitarist, hold down a chord shape or play a simple melodic or lead guitar phrase.

Next, by learning to understand grid-type chord diagrams. Most of us (but, I should stress, not all of us) think of chords as shapes, and grid diagrams are a great way to represent chords in this way. For those that don’t think in shapes, the various methods of showing chord grips numerically are well worth exploring. ‘X02220’ for an A major chord for example.

Then, I advocate learning to read basic guitar tab. By basic, I mean the style of guitar tab that doesn’t give you time values for notes – just fret numbers on strings. With the rapid rise in popularity of tab sites on the Internet, gaining confidence in reading tab is an essential step towards being able to access music in written form.

If you find yourself mystified by tab then don’t panic, you are not alone! Here is a short video lesson designed just for you:

How to Read Guitar Tab:

I think it is fair to say that, for a great many guitar players, this is as far as they feel they need to take the process of learning to read music. After all, what more is required? There are hundreds of publications, web sites and iphone apps that will produce grid diagrams for every chord under the sun. There are tabs available, both online and in book form, for practically every guitar solo or rhythm part ever recorded.

So what, if anything, is wrong with playing guitar from tabs and rhythm charts alone? The answer is that by restricting yourself to reading music in this way, you are limiting the growth of your understanding of music.  You are literally just following instructions. This may still result in your playing perfect sounding copies of other people’s music and if that is what you enjoy about playing guitar then personally, I think it’s fine to stop right there.

My teaching experience tells me though that it doesn’t matter whether you learn one piece of music from tab, or two hundred – because you are relying on someone else’s instructions you will never scratch below the surface and gain any real insight into what notes you are playing, nor why those notes work over those particular chords.

But now we come to the crunch. I think the heart of the issue lies in how you answer the following question:

What kind of guitarist do you want to be? 

We’ll go on to explore some of the answers to this question in “Part Two” and then look at how your own answer might determine when, if ever, you may best be advised to bite the bullet and expand your ability to read music to include standard notation.

Happy Playing!

Nick Minnion

Lots more lessons, articles and videos by Nick available at his main websites:

For guitar players: www.secretguitarteacher.com

For guitar teachers (or aspiring guitar teachers): www.teachguitar.com

To Read or Not to Read? Part 1 – The Tyranny of Tablature was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Easier said than done though isn’t it? Don’t worry! There are many guitar players who fall into a rather frustrating gap between learning their scale patterns and finding themselves spontaneously able to play great-sounding blues solos!

Guitar teachers often find that they have to devote a considerable amount of lesson time to helping their students bridge this gap. I think  there are actually several elements that need to be in place before this gap is successfully spanned and, although the mix of these elements will vary from student to student, I would list the following as being typical:

• Confidence to enter wholeheartedly into the ‘trial and error’ process that improvising necessarily entails.
• Development of good left/right hand coordination
• Mastery of basic technique (bends, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, vibrato etc…)
• A ’library’ of well-rehearsed licks (both original and er…borrowed!)
• An understanding of typical blues phrasing patterns (‘call and response’ or ‘question and answer’ for example)
• A good ear for tension and resolution as used in blues
• An intuitive sense of blues phrasing and timing

The first item on my list, confidence,– will of course vary from one individual to another at the outset, but proactively focusing on the other  items on the list will itself result in an increase in your level of confidence.

Good coordination, technique and a stock of licks comes from lots of practice, but the last three items on the list are probably best improved by simply listening to as much great blues guitar playing as you can.

Many years ago, I wrote a six-verse long Texas style blues instrumental specifically to help students bridge the gap between scales and solos.

This tune is designed to help you use the scale notes in simple phrases that resolve to the chords used in the twelve-bar sequence and to establish a feel for how the lead lines fit in with the chords (the ‘call and response’ pattern mentioned earlier).

The first verse, shown in detail in the video lessons below, starts by establishing a rhythmic pattern typical of the style most associated with Stevie Ray Vaughan and if you want to progress onto learning some of his tunes, this is a great primer!

These lessons are designed for beginners or near beginners, but I am sure that more experienced player will enjoy them too – they’ll just whiz through them quicker!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs4oFM9MqIc

The trickiest part is the timing, shown here in standard notation:

Notice the one beat rest at the start. This is best dealt with by counting yourself in:  1 2 3 4 1 … and then playing the notes on beats: 2 & 3 & 4 & 1. In the ‘call and response’ pattern these notes are the ‘call’ and the response comes from the chords played on beats 2(&) 3& (4)& of the second bar.

This rhythmic pattern is repeated throughout the verse.

If that explanation leaves you wondering if this is a bit more complex than it claims – please check out the video lesson – hearing it will make a lot more sense than my attempts to convey the idea in text!

Hope you enjoy learning this – if you do, hop over to www.secretguitarteacher.com where you’ll find a whole course that goes over all six verses on videos and you can also download the tab and backing tracks.

Copyright © 2011 Nick Minnion, (used by permission)

Nick Minnion has recorded over 100 video guitar lessons that can be found at his new site, www.secretguitarteacher.com.

He also runs TeachGuitar.com, a website designed to support guitar players who want to make a living teaching guitar. Visit TeachGuitar.com for loads of free resources to help you get into teaching guitar and also probably the biggest global forum for active guitar teachers.

Putting the Rhythm in the Blues was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

There’s an element of salesmanship, in the way I use this description, when I’m introducing the CAGED system to a student for the first time. I see this as necessary because I appreciate that it is not immediately obvious exactly what the CAGED system is, nor what it is good for. 

Let’s attempt to address the second issue first. If you ask me ‘What’s it good for?’ I think the best answer I can give is: ‘It’s good for finding things on the guitar fretboard. 
Think of a five-drawer filing cabinet, but instead of the drawers being full of old correspondence and copies of long-expired legal contracts and things, it has folders with much more interesting (to the guitarist) labels, such as: ‘Chords’, ‘Scales’, ‘Licks’, ‘Riffs’, ‘Arpeggios’ and  ‘Modes’. Also; quite unlike any filing cabinet I have ever actually been personally in charge of; everything in the ‘CAGED’ filing cabinet is beautifully and elegantly organised and always found in exactly the place it should be!

The CAGED system is taught in a wide variety of ways simply because it has a wide variety of applications. It is a system that is both very powerful and very adaptable. 

However, because it is powerful and adaptable it can easily be presented to the student of guitar as being more complicated than it really is. This is a little ironic, as the CAGED system is really a system for simplifying learning the guitar!’ 

I think the problem arises because the use you are able to make of the CAGED system is dependent upon other areas of knowledge – especially guitar music theory knowledge. 

So, how you use the CAGED system may ultimately be unlimited, but initially it will mostly depend upon what level of understanding you have of guitar music theory.  

With this in mind, I set out to record a video lesson that enabled guitar students to make good use of the CAGED system at the lowest possible point of entry – i.e. at a level where little, if anything needs to be known about guitar music theory.  Here’s “Part 1:”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8a5SsbG-1Y

In this video, as well as in the following ”CAGED system Parts 2,” I’ll show you how to use the CAGED system simply to find notes on the fretboard. For example: to find all the ‘C’ notes on the fretboard – how long would that take you do you think? If the answer is greater than about five seconds then you will find this video lesson useful, interesting and immediately applicable. 

And here’s the second video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7MoHfh0ZvM

But, more importantly, both these videos will hopefully help you gain a very good understanding of the CAGED system and what it actually is! You will, metaphorically speaking, take delivery of a shiny, brand new five-drawer filing cabinet that magically organises itself!  

It’ll then be up to you, over time, to fill it up with other musically useful things.  

Hope that has whetted your appetite for the videos…because, did I already mention that the CAGED system is probably the single most important thing I ever learnt about playing the guitar…?

Nick Minnion has recorded Over 100 video guitar lessons that can be found at his new site: SecretGuitarTeacher.com. Nick also runs TeachGuitar.com, a website designed to support guitar players who want to make a living teaching guitar. Visit TeachGuitar.com for loads of free resources to help you get into teaching guitar and also probably the biggest global forum for active guitar teachers.

Cracking the CAGED System was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Now, forty-five years on, I’m proud to say that not much has changed and although I have since learned to play thousands of songs written by non-Bob Dylans, he remains for me the archetype of all singer/songwriter/guitarists and in this, I know I am far from alone.

In 1971 I recall lying awake deep into the night listening to Radio Luxembourg on headphones as they serialized Tony Scaduto’s “Bob Dylan: a Biography” and I found myself drawn into the myth of the folk singer’s life story. Within a week or two I had gone out and bought a denim jacket, some dark glasses and a harmonica and rack. I was planning on leaving home, jumping a freight train and heading off to the nearest city to hang out in cafés and bars and make my way in the big wide world as an itinerant balladeer. Unfortunately though, the freight trains that ran through our London suburb refused to slow down below 30 mph so I was left with nothing but bruises, some embarrassment and wishful teenage daydreams.

I finally got my first gig when I was fifteen, at the Weston-Super-Mare folk club. I told the man we were going to sing Bob Dylan and he said that’d be just fine. There were a few looks of consternation however as we set up on stage with my younger brother playing electric bass through a converted valve TV set as amplifier. We launched into a spirited version of “Like a Rolling Stone” – I was really proud that I knew every word of all four verses which meant that there was plenty of time for the audience to almost completely evaporate into the bar next door. Happy days!

By 1977 my capacity for memorising Dylan lyrics reached its peak with my studiously learning all ninety-nine lines of “Hurricane.” By this time I was finally travelling round Europe scratching a living as a street musician (still wearing the same denim jacket and dodgy dark glasses). I liked performing “Hurricane” because it took so long to get through, that the crowd had completely changed by the time I reached the end of the song. This meant that I could start it from the beginning again without fear of anyone noticing the narrowness of my repertoire. Then one day in Copenhagen’s pedestrianized Stroget I was about halfway through the song for the sixth time when a woman opened the window above my pitch and shouted out in a strong Danish accent:

“You have been singing the same song for three hours now! Don’t you know any other songs?!”

My cover blown, I shamefully collected up my takings and moved round the corner to start again: “Pistol shots ring out in the baaaarroom night…”

Me and Bob Go Back a Long Way… was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

A piece of music in 4/4 time (meaning four beats to the bar) may commonly be expressed in a straight eighth feel, a syncopated feel, a 12/8 feel, or a 16-beat feel.

Straight Eighth Feel

Each note is kept to exactly the same length in straight eighth feel. The result can be verbalised like this:

“One and two and three and four and”

It is normally best played with all down strokes.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

A shuffle pattern is often applied to this in blues, R&B and rock music, emphasising the backbeats (beats 2 and 4 – also called snare beats as they are commonly picked out by the snare drum):

“One and two and three and four and”

On rhythm guitar this is often reinforced by adding the sixth note of the scale to a power chord like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

12/8 Feel

This is the one I find people need the most help with. First of all I recommend forgetting the number 12 – it’s just too big a number to count. Counting “One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve” every bar is likely to just result in you spitting all over the front row of your audience as you play!

Better to go back to the description of straight eighths and instead of dividing each of the four main beats into two equal halves, divide them into three equal thirds. This is best verbalised:

“One-and-a two-and-a three-and-a four-and-a”

And should, except at really fast tempo, be played with all down strokes to keep it smooth.

It is the staple rhythmic diet of slow blues (Jimi Hendrix’ ”Red House”), some soul and gospel (Sam Cooke “Bring it on Home”) and 8-bar country blues like “Key to the Highway” by Big Bill Broonzy.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Swing Feel

There is a great deal of discussion about exactly what constitutes a swing feel but, in the simplest of terms, swing rhythm differs from straight time by making the first of each pair of notes slightly longer at the expense of the second.

Strangely enough, this is done through triplets, like those you counted out in the 12/8 feel. But instead of playing all three notes of the triplet, you just play the first and last notes of each set. Swing, in its simplest form, can be verbalised like this:

“One  a-two a-three a-four a-”

It is almost always better to play swing rhythms with alternating strokes:

Down up-Down up-Down up-Down up-

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

16-Beat Feel

Most commonly found in funk, jazz, disco and heavy rock, the sixteen beat feel is probably the last of these four feels to try and master.

Again, the notes are all of even duration. This time each of the main four beats are subdivided into four lesser beats. As with the advice on the 12/8 feel, don’t try counting from 1 – 16! Better to think of it as:

“One-e-and-a   two-e-and-a   three-e-and-a   four-e-and-a”

And play it with a nice free right hand, strumming evenly, strictly alternating up and down strokes.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

We have barely scratched the surface with this article, but I hope it will inspire guitar players to look deeper into this aspect of their playing. A great way to expand your understanding is simply to try to figure out which of these four categories the music you are listening to falls into. There are, of course, other time signatures, feels and many sub-varieties of those listed above; but you may be surprised just how many popular songs have rhythms that fall into one of these four basic categories of rhythmic feel.

The author welcomes feedback from guitarists and teachers alike. You’ll find more such articles plus loads of other free resources for guitar teaching on www.teachguitar.com

Solving Timing and Rhythm Problems Part 3 – Left-brain Left Behind was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Getting the measure of the metronome

Guitar teachers and authors of books on this subject often extol the virtues of playing along to a metronome, click track or drum machine. Now I am going to add a note of caution to this advice – there’s a knack to playing along with a mechanical timekeeper and teachers are often guilty of overlooking this fact (or may simply be unaware of it).

If you try and follow a metronome by listening or watching it and then responding with your picking or strumming movement, you will not play with a natural rhythm. This is because our natural rhythmic sense is not part of our higher analytical functioning (left brain) – it is more intuitive (right brain). (Some people express it as being centred more in the middle of the body rather than being in the head).

A good way to help students appreciate the difference between the analytical approach and the intuitive approach is to get them first to attempt to keep in time by following the metronome as described above, then after a minute or two, to try this method instead:

First just listen to the metronome for a few seconds. Then allow your body to respond to it by tapping a foot, moving the head or swaying from side to side – whichever feels most natural. I call this “internalising” the beat.

Now start playing guitar along in time to this internalised sense of rhythm. No longer consciously listening to the metronome.

From time to time check in with the metronome just to see if it is keeping time with you!

Most students I try this with, immediately get the difference and, as a result, play with a more natural rhythm.

Stifling the stage fright

Quite often, when coaching people prior to a big performance, I hear them express their concern about not knowing how to strum a particular song – being afraid to start out with the wrong strumming pattern, or start out too fast or too slow. I think most performers have experienced these problems at one time or another and insecurity in this area can contribute significantly towards your level of stage fright.

There is one remedy that works for all these problems:

A few seconds before you are ready to start a song, pause and hear the sound of the song in your head. Then, with your guitar muted start strumming softly along to what you hear in your head. As with the metronome exercise above, allow your body to respond to what you are strumming so that you internalise the rhythmic feel of the song. Then launch fearlessly into performing it to that internalised rhythm.

Sorry songbooks

Finally, a word about one of my pet peeves as a guitar teacher: songbooks that print chord symbols over lyrics without any indication of bar lines.

Musical orchestration has a natural rhythmic hierarchy – the drummer lays down the beat; the bass player locks into that. This then provides a strong outline to the rhythm. I think of it as a bit like one of those kiddies’ colouring books where the shape of each object is clearly outlined in thick black ink. The rhythm guitarist and keyboards then paint in some nice block colours between these strong lines leaving the vocalist or soloist to add detail. Ok, I guess it’s not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.

If you’re talking about just acoustic guitar and vocals then the acoustic pretty much does the job of the whole band, but the same principle applies.

My point is that vocals are sung over the rhythm guitar – not vice versa.

So teaching beginners to fit their chord changes and strumming pattern to the rhythm of the vocal line is just completely back to front. Time and again I have had to help students who started out learning guitar this way, completely relearn to play by becoming aware of music divided into bars (or ‘measures’ in American).

The trick is to use the guitar to lay down a nice flowing consistent rhythmic pattern, then sing over the top of that pattern.

In part three we’ll look at problems understanding time signatures and the most commonly used rhythmic ‘feels’ (straight eighth, syncopated, 12/8 and 16-beat feel).

Nick Minnion is a guitar teacher of some 38 years experience and is the author of several courses, books and articles on guitar teaching that can be accessed from his main website: www.teachguitar.com

Solving Timing and Rhythm Problems (Part 2) was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

*Note: In this article, the author assumes one is playing right handed, meaning that the right hand is doing the strumming and the left hand is fretting chords on the neck. So for all you lefties out there, and again for the purposes of this article, the “right” hand is the one you have dangling at the end of your left arm. Being left handed, you’re smart enough to figure that out!

Why we all learn to play guitar the wrong way

Students of the guitar in their first year of learning often complain that they can’t “seem to get a good strumming rhythm going.” They will inevitably attribute this to there being something wrong with their right hand action. They ask for advice about strumming patterns, pick grips, finger style patterns and so on, but all the time, what is really wrong with their right hand … is their left hand!

The fact is that almost everyone learns to play guitar with their hands working the wrong way round. Not, I hasten to add, because they’re stupid (otherwise they wouldn’t have chosen to learn guitar, would they? ), but because there is actually no real choice. Let me explain and I think you’ll see what I mean.

The “correct” way to play guitar is to establish a continuous steady rhythmic strumming or picking pattern with the right hand and then superimpose fretting chord shapes, licks and riffs on that pattern with the left hand. This is variously described as “right hand leading” or “making the left hand the slave of the right.”

When you first start learning guitar however, this “correct” way of playing is nigh impossible to achieve without guidance from a good guitar teacher. The problem lies in the fact that the left hand simply can’t at first, move anything like quickly enough from chord shape to chord shape. So the “continuous steady rhythmic movement of the right hand” is frequently interrupted by having to stop and wait for the left hand to catch up with it. Of course this is always more evident with the trickier chord shapes: C, F, B7, Dm etc…

As a teacher you can first help your students resolve the concern this causes them, by proving to them that actually their right hand works just fine; that they don’t “simply lack rhythm” or suffer from any other kind of musical blind spot.

This can be done by getting them to mute the guitar with their left hand (or by tying a sock round the neck!) and playing the guitar purely as a percussion instrument. I usually play a song in the normal way and ask them just to strum along on “percussion guitar” any way that seems, to them, to fit the rhythm I am playing. This approach instantly leads to a strong sense of confidence that the right hand actually works beautifully. This of course helps shift the attention back onto the left hand, which is where 99% of the work needs to be done in the first stages of learning guitar.

First beat, first priority

Over many years of teaching guitar, I have developed a method of ensuring that students learn to play in time from lesson one onwards. This approach really pays dividends, as it is always easier to make new habits than to break old ones.

To teach (or teach yourself) good timekeeping I suggest this approach:

1. Pick a simple chord sequence – for now let’s use this easily recognisable generic sequence, done in 4/4 time, by the way:

G | Em | C | D7 :||

2. Take time to see that your student memorises each shape, and then have them play each chord just once. One strum on G then one strum on Em and so on, round and round the sequence just practicing changing chord shapes.

3. Once they can do this okay in their own time, set a timed task. How many times through the sequence can they get in sixty seconds?

4. Whatever result they achieve, repeat the test. Have  them attempt to break their record.

5. If any one change (for example Em to C) appears more problematical than the others, then focus in on it and iron it out by lots of repetitions. Then get back to the record-breaking test on the complete sequence.

6. Once they can get through the sequence at least four times in sixty seconds go to the next step, otherwise it’s best just to keep repeating Step 5.

7. Explain that you want them to strum the right chord on beat one of each bar, but for the other three beats they should focus on getting the next chord shape ready. Then count them in and strum along with them. You strum all four beats to help them keep count, but encourage them to join in only on the first beat of each bar. You encourage them with something like:

“Ready with the G chord? …One…Two…Three … Four … Strum! Ready with the E minor ?…Three … Four … Strum! Ready with the C? …Three … Four … Strum! Ready with the D7?…Three … Four … Strum! And back to the G … Three … Four. .. Strum!…”

As they get the hang of it you can catch your breath and cut out the blow-by-blow instruction.

This is actually a great exercise for all sorts of reasons:

• It underlines the importance of arriving on time for the first beat in each bar.
• It teaches the student to think ahead and move shapes early
• It keeps them focused on the changes, which is where the work most needs to be done.
• Above all it imprints them really early on with an experience of keeping in time.

This all helps build a really firm foundation for future development.

In Part Two we’ll look at the dangers of using a metronome as well as how to find your “internal rhythmic centre.” And I why I hate songbooks that print the chord symbols above the lyrics!

Nick Minnion is a guitar teacher of some 38 years experience and is the author of several courses, books and articles on guitar teaching that can be accessed from his main website: www.teachguitar.com

Solving Timing and Rhythm Problems was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

But what do we mean by “musicianship?”

What’s the difference between someone who can ‘play a bit of guitar’ and someone who can confidently describe themselves as a musician? What is it exactly that a ‘musician’ can do that a mere ‘guitar player’ can’t?

Let’s take this a radical step further and cut out all thoughts of technique. This isn’t to say technique isn’t important. Far from it! But for the sake of this article let’s look at “musicianship” as a mindset. Better than that, let’s think of the “musicianship” as a point in our lifelong musical journey. We start as a “want-to-be guitar player” and then progress to “guitar player.” “Musician” will be a point further along our road.

Personally I have pinned it down to three specific main skills that have to be mastered to earn your ‘I am a musician’ badge.

These are:

• The ability to improvise music
• The ability to compose music and
• The ability to transcribe music

I consider these skills to interact in a similar way to the three sides of a triangle. If you increase the length of one side of a triangle it forces the length of the adjacent side to increase.

It works like this: if you improve your improvising skill, your ability to compose automatically improves (composing is really just improvising done more slowly!) The insight gained from composing or improvising goes a long way to improving your listening and music analysis skills, which in turn enhance your ability to transcribe music, such as working out a song from a recording you’re listening to so you can write it down on paper in either notation or tablature. Transcribing is really reverse-engineered composing!

The more music you transcribe, the better your understanding of how music works. This newly gained understanding then feeds back into your ability to improvise and compose.

The interesting thing about each of these skills is that they all have a slightly high entry price. Left to their own devices, guitarists seldom teach themselves to improvise without help from a teacher or another musician. Composing music is seen by most as something akin to a black art and, again, few people start composing entirely under their own steam. Demonstrating the ability to instantly transcribe music is even more likely to get you burnt at the stake – I have literally seen students’ jaws drop when witnessing this skill in action.

So if you are teaching yourself to play guitar and want to work towards mastering the subject I recommend starting with improvising. It’s not necessarily the easiest one of the three for everyone, but I think it is slightly more accessible than either composing or transcribing. It’s also more fun!

What’s the best way to learn to improvise? Well, there are several approaches and, to be honest, each approach has its advantages and disadvantages.

The simplest approach is just to start. Play along to a song and use your ears to hear which notes seem to go with it and which ones don’t. This is a very direct approach, but I have to say that most people find it to difficult to get a satisfying result early on and so, for them, I’d recommend approach number two.

The second approach is to learn scale patterns. The most easily applied scales are the minor and major pentatonic scales and their derivatives: the blues and country scales. Drilling scale patterns may seem laborious, but it is a most effective shortcut to finding the right notes to play.

To play Rock ‘n Roll style lead or Jazz, you need to progress to improvising directly over chords. This can be done using the chord shapes themselves (Django Reinhardt, Eddie Cochran and Mark Knopfler are all ace exponents of this approach) or by learning arpeggio patterns (check out Charlie Christian’s jazz style or Joe Walsh on his Hotel California solo).

Improvising directly over chords is, in my view, much harder and takes lots of practice, but ultimately produces a much richer result. If you can, team up with another guitarist and take it in turns to play lead and rhythm. The next best thing is to use backing tracks.

Once your fingers are up to speed (and that can take a while), the most important thing is careful listening. You have to simultaneously listen to three things: (1) The rhythm section, (2) your own playing and, (3) the combined effect of both those things!

The final step is to learn to appreciate the subtle effects of timing. The rhythmic element of great lead guitar is often underestimated. If you listen to B.B. King and Peter Green you can really appreciate what can be achieved with only a few notes but a divine sense of timing!

Once you feel you’re getting the hang of improvising have a go at composing. Record yourself playing a simple chord sequence then play it back, and using your improvising skills, work out a great tune to go with it. If you have the right kit to do multi-track recording you can then record yourself playing the tune and listen appreciatively to the playback! Like improvising, your composing skills will develop with practice and will benefit from swapping ideas with fellow guitar players and other musicians as well.

Finally, have a crack at transcribing. Listen to a song and work out in this order:

1. What key it’s in.
2. What notes the bass is playing under the chord changes.
3. What the chords are.
4. What the melody is.
5. Any lead lines, keyboard or horn parts.

If you have studied any amount of music theory you will find that will help greatly in narrowing down the likely chords and notes used. If you struggle with music theory (and in that case, welcome to one of the largest clubs on earth!) you will find transcribing harder, but if you stick at it you will gradually gain an intuitive understanding of how chords and notes work together in keys to form music. You will then find the theory making a lot more sense.

So use the Magic Triangle of Improvising, Composing and Transcribing to work your way up from being ‘a bit of a guitar player’ to being a fully competent Musician and above all enjoy the process!

About the author:

Nick Minnion runs TeachGuitar.com, a website designed to support guitar players who want to make a living teaching guitar. Visit teachguitar.com for loads of free resources to help you get into teaching guitar and also probably the biggest global forum for active guitar teachers.www.teachguitar.com

The Magic Triangle Of Musicianship was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

The popularity of the guitar continues to increase, so the demand for good guitar teachers remains strong. The question is, are you the right sort of person for the job?

Part of my activity over the last several years has involved the recruitment and training of a great many music tutors. I can say with certainty that the four items uppermost on peoples’ minds when they apply for a job as a music tutor are:

1. You have to be an expert musician
2. You should have some sort of teaching qualification
3. You have to be a university graduate
4. You need to be a music theory wizard

But these four items aren’t even on my tutor recruitment checklist.

I’d like to explain why:

Item 1. You have to be an expert musician

Of course you have to be a reasonably good musician for two reasons. First, you have to have credibility. Second, you have to know something about the territory into which you are going to lead your clients. After all, if you were hiring a guide to lead you up a mountain, you would want to hire someone who had climbed that mountain before, wouldn’t you?

But being an expert can actually be something of a liability when teaching guitar. This is because the vast majority of your work is going to be with people in their first year of playing. If you have played for twenty years and performed on stages all over the world, cut albums and written hit songs, you’ll have heaps of credibility. However, you are really going to struggle to relate to the guy sitting in front of you, with five thumbs on each hand, who is trying to understand why the ‘top’ string is at the bottom!

If you have been playing three years or more, are committed, and making good progress yourself, then you have every chance of being a better guitar teacher for beginners than any “expert musician.”

Oddly, people who themselves learn slowly are often better teachers. I think that’s because they’re conscious of the small details that new students often need help with, but that are invisible to people who learn like greased lightening.

Item 2. You should have some sort of teaching qualification.

If you have any amount of experience in teaching or training, you would definitely meet one of the requirements on my recruitment checklist. Expertise in teaching is undoubtedly gained from experience more than any other factor. But qualifications from mainstream education of teachers do not by themselves make you a good teacher. All of us can think back to our time at school and bring to mind teachers who were certainly qualified but perhaps shouldn’t have been!

Item 3. You have to be a university graduate.

A university education provides you with a chance to hone your intellectual skills and discipline your mind. These are fine things to do and there is little doubt that, when it comes to grappling with the intricacies of advanced music theory, an academic background is definitely going to make things more comfortable for you. But, to be honest, this is a relatively unimportant aspect of guitar teaching and generally overrated. What matters more is the ability to put yourself in your client’s shoes, to empathize, to understand and to accept people as they are.

So, if I had to choose between someone coming from four years at a university and someone who had spent those years travelling the world, working in a variety of settings, rubbing shoulders with rich and poor and generally experiencing contact with people from all walks of life, I would not hesitate to choose the latter, all else being equal.

Item 4. You have to be a music theory wizard.

Music theory is not something you need to understand in order to start teaching guitar. Music theory is something you will grow to understand as you teach guitar.

The process of teaching guitar puts a natural demand on you to continually think about the subject and work with its basic elements, so a deep knowledge of music theory is a result of being a guitar teacher!

Most of your teaching time is spent getting people to string a few simple chords together or playing some basic scale patterns. Every now and then a student will ask a question about what they are doing. You will either know the answer or not. If you don’t, and you believe answering the question is appropriate to the level of the student, be honest and say, “I’ll check that out for you and answer it in full next week!”

After a few hundred lessons your own knowledge and confidence with the subject may lead you to take on more advanced students. At this point you will need to have a higher level of understanding. You will find a wealth of resources on the Web to help you with this.

So if you don’t need to be an expert musician, qualified teacher, graduate or theory wizard, what do you need? What does it take to be a good guitar teacher?

I have isolated four essential qualities a person should have before I recommend taking up guitar teaching as a career. Here they are in order of importance:

1. Patience – an infinite amount of it

Patience is essential because you have to create a safe space in which people feel they have time to apply themselves to the tasks you set.

2. The ability to communicate with confidence

Students’ confidence in their ability to learn is the energy that you work with as a guitar teacher. Confidence is contagious, so if you communicate confidently then some of that rubs off on them.

3. The ability to play guitar reasonably well

As mentioned above, you are going to lead them up the mountain. So it helps if you’ve made the climb before!

4. Commonsense

Teaching is a specialized form of communication. The art of teaching is based almost entirely on the application of commonsense. Having said that, you can gain a lot of insight from reading articles by experienced teachers who have distilled their knowledge gained from many years of teaching experience.

Finally, here are some of the positive rewards of developing a career as a guitar teacher:

1. You’ll be doing what you love and – better still – sharing that love of music with others.
2. You’ll have the freedom to work the hours you want to work.
3. You’ll be in control of your income. Want more? Teach more hours or put up your prices. Need less? Allow natural fall-off to reduce your teaching hours.
4. You’ll be your own boss. You’ll have no one to answer to but yourself.
5. You’ll have plenty of scope to express your creativity, both as a musician and teacher.
6. Best of all, you won’t even notice you’re working!

I hope you have found this article stimulating. If you would like to look closer at teaching guitar as a career, or if you are already a guitar teacher and would like some support, then please visit my website www.teachguitar.com, where you will find a wealth of resources to help you.

Could You Teach Guitar? was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise