I got this note from Jim of Pennsylvania and thought I’d share it with you all:

My joy of music story is of a friendship that has bloomed from music. When I moved to central Pennsylvania I did not know anyone. As I got acclimated to my new job I met some people and eventually the subject of playing music came up. One of the guys invited me to his home to play guitars. The first time we played it was awful, my friend’s sense of timing and hearing a song made it very difficult to play together. Each week we would get together and play the songs and each week he just didn’t improve. It was frustrating but we didn’t give up. Our mantra was, we are here to have fun (knowing neither of us would ever be a professional) so we kept after it.

After a year of playing and not seeing any improvement I got frustrated and said you know this isn’t all that hard you just need to… Well, it was the one thing that finally turned on the light and since that time my friend has made remarkable improvement and we are enjoying our sessions greatly. He thanks me profusely for sticking with him and helping get him to where he is today.

That is not why I am writing this. As I thought of the joy of music, sometimes the music is just a vehicle for better things. As I think of the friendship we have enjoyed, the meals we have eaten together, the things he has introduced me to that I had never experienced, I think how blessed I have been and what I have gained. I have improved my own playing a hundredfold by practicing and playing regularly.

I didn’t what this to be a book, but thanks for making me think about what music has meant. A friend told me a long time ago, don’t ever give up playing music, when everything else is going bad it will never let you down. There is a lot of wisdom in that.

Thanks for writing, Jim! And our best wishes to you and your family and friends this holiday season!

Peace

Hello to all!

Even though we can certainly do it every day all year ’round, there’s something about this particular time of the calendar that makes us reflective. At Guitar Noise, we try to encourage everyone to share their music and their joy of music whenever possible. We even have a whole page devoted to stories on the Joy of Music that we’ve collected from our readers throughout the years.

This year, I’ve ask our readers to once again feel free to chat with us about their experiences and we’ll be posting them here on the Guitar Noise Blog as well as putting some in our newsletters. This one comes from Peter of New York:

Mr. Hodge,

In a busy and often out of my control world I find joy in little improvements. At night the wife and kids are asleep, and I strum and fingerpick and sing the songs I like. Few of the songs are anything I would want others to hear yet, but every once in a while I notice something gets easier, something gets better and it feels really good.

I change the key the song is written into the key I sing in, or figure out where the capo should go, the barred F chord doesn’t sound like pots falling out of a cabinet, my fingers find the right strings for the Bm chord easily after more than a year of struggling, a new fingerpicking pattern takes a song to a new level. I feel I am polishing the songs I sing and discover different facets as my skills/knowledge improve.

To me the joy of music is standing alone in my living room playing something and going “wow… that sounds nice”.

Thanks for “Margarettaville”, “For What it’s Worth”, “Bookends”, “Time After Time” and all of your lessons.

Take care…

Thank you, too, Peter for sharing with us!

And if you’d like to do so, please either post directly here on this thread or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com and be sure to include “Joy of Music” in the subject line.

We at Guitar Noise would like to wish each reader, not to mention his and her families and friends, a wonderful and safe holiday season. And thank you again (and always) for having us be a part of your lives.

Peace

We’ve got two big pieces of news from our Guitar Noise Forum pages -

First, I’m pleased to announce that the Sunday Songwriters’ Group has just begun its sixth year. The SSG is a weekly workshop that helps songwriters of all skill levels practice their craft by giving weekly assignments for lyric writing. Many truly terrific songs have been written as the result of the assignments given in the past six years.

And, second, in addition to the Sunday Songwriters Group, we’ve just added the Sunday Composers Workshop, which will be devoted to helping songwriters develop their music writing skills. You can find the first assignment here.

I hope you’ll come by and participate in these group programs. We look forward to seeing you and hearing your music!

Peace

Hi to all

We’re currently experiencing a glitch in the Forum pages of Guitar Noise and will hopefully have it fixed soon. Hang in there!

Peace

Meeting a new student, or a new class full of students, is always a bit of a challenge. I want to make sure that we’re a good fit, and just like on a first date, there’s only so much you can know about each other after a few minutes. Taking up the guitar is adding another relationship to one’s life and, as we all know from experience, there are all sorts of different kinds of relationships. Even a single relationship, be it a friend, family member, loved one, roommate, workmate, playmate, bandmate or acquaintance, tends to go through a wild, wide spectrum of changes during the course of a lifetime.

Taking up the guitar is a relationship. Taking up with a guitar teacher makes it a three-way street. This adds an interesting dynamic and it’s (usually) up to the teacher to be the “wise” one of the group, taking the lead and guiding the student and the guitar through the often awkward first steps of getting to know each other.

So whether the student is five years old or seventy five, it’s important, to me at least, to give them one rule that should guide him or her throughout the entire relationship and this is:

Playing guitar is supposed to be fun.

Regardless of why one takes up the instrument (girls, prestige, artistic pursuits, pure competitiveness, wistful nostalgia), enjoyment of playing and enjoyment of music has to ultimately be the core reason if the relationship is going to continue. That may sound very simple and that’s for a good reason. It is simple. If you picked up the guitar because you want to impress someone (even if that someone is just yourself), if you took it up to meet girls, if you decided playing guitar might be your ticket to fame, if you simply want a way to unwind at the end of a day - these reasons will get you started. They might even carry you quite a ways. But ultimately they will run their course and something else will have to supply the motivating force behind your continued playing (and learning to play).

If you are playing for enjoyment, for the enjoyment of making music, you will never have a bad day. Even on those days when your fingers seem to be on holiday from playing, you’ll still have fun challenging yourself to come up with something halfway decent. And on the days when everything is clicking, when the timing and rhythm and picking and chord changing and riffs all seem to magically fall into place, you’ll be in heaven.

So have fun. And if you ever find yourself not having fun, take a break so you can ask yourself why. Quite often you’ll find that there’s something else going on. We all have lives, no? Take a little time to deal with your life and then you should find you’re back to having fun playing again.

And there’s more - by taking time for your own enjoyment, you might find that other people find you more enjoyable to be with. It’s kind of contagious that way.

Plus (and don’t stop me ’cause you’ve heard this one before…) - by sharing your enjoyment of music and playing with others, you will increase both your and their enjoyment a thousandfold. That’s some serious fun!

Peace

Whether you’re five or seventy-five, there is one factor that solely accounts for many people giving up on the guitar - frustration. And while this is not news or even mildly surprising, it is astonishing that in one’s lifelong adventure with the guitar the spectre of frustration often guides our actions or inactions.

Worse, a good part of the frustration is pure silliness. In our heads we know that the odds of sitting down and trying something for the first time and being so good at it it’s scary are slim to none. But that rarely stops someone from wondering, “Why can’t I play like (pick your favorite guitar idol and place him or her here)? I’ve been at this for all of two months now!” Laugh as much as you want, but I’m sure you’ve been there for a visit and you probably know countless people who are still living there.

But here’s a question few people ask themselves when learning: Why shouldn’t this be somewhat difficult, especially since I’ve spent (fill in the blank here) years of my life not playing guitar? If you’re starting guitar at forty, you’ve probably spent at least thirty-nine years of your life not playing. For those of you who like more of a perspective, that’s more than 98% of your life.

If you look at things in this manner, you’ll take all of the “young people learn quicker” out of the equation. Someone who’s starting at eighteen has spent more than seventeen and three-quarters years, 99% of his or her life, not playing guitar. It’s not about age or anything other than what you personally have to overcome. You’re trying to teach your hands, your fingers, all of you to do something that you’ve spent almost all of your life not doing.

But there’s good news, too. When I tell someone that I’ve been playing for thirty years, I’m truly lying through my teeth. Maybe I started playing guitar thirty years ago (okay, it was really thirty-three), but I certainly haven’t been playing all that time. With a lot of luck, not to mention a hazy memory and a wee bit of more lying, I might have put in about five to ten percent of that time playing. That’s how life is.

To play music, to enjoy making music, you have to be in it for the long haul. There will be days when you can’t think of a time in your life when you couldn’t be happier and days when you wonder why you even bother. That’s all part of the big picture.

And, again, this is something that you know in your head and in your heart. When you picked up the guitar you signed on for a trip, not a destination. If you’re only concerned about the end, you’ll never enjoy the trip. And learning should be a constant joy - just as much fun as playing and performing.

For more helpful tips on this subject, read the Guitar Columns A Question of Balance, Recharging Your Batteries, or any of the other many excellent articles on the Guitar Noise Practice Page.

You already know this, but it truly bears repeating - playing music, playing guitar, is a journey of a lifetime. Enjoy your trip. And be sure to write and post pictures!

Peace

None of us practice as much as we’d like to, let alone as much as we think we should. There’s work, school, family, friends, and no end of the little things that happen in life. And when a moment of free time comes along, well, who wouldn’t like to sit and just enjoy it by doing nothing once in a while?

And then, there are the times that we could practice, but alas we don’t have our guitars with us. Practice without a guitar? Sure! As much as we might think otherwise, we tend to concentrate our guitar practice on just the “finger” aspect. We strum and play scales and riffs and songs and work on getting our muscle memory in shape. But there’s a lot of “head” work that could be going on as well. And when better to practice using your head when you’re not preoccupied with your fingers?

When I lived in Chicago, I realized that I could have easily gotten in anywhere from an hour to two hours practice time a day by playing my guitar on the bus or train during my commutes to and from work. But that’s not an ideal place to practice, with a guitar anyway. So I started working on the other aspects of playing, the “head work” as it were, during the commutes and found that it truly helped me a lot when I got that guitar back in my hands.

You may not be able to practice guitar as much as you’d like, but don’t think you can’t be improving your skills just because you don’t have a guitar with you. Here are four easy things you can practice when you’re away from your guitar:

Rhythm. Strumming and keeping rhythm tends to be one of the biggest challenges for beginning guitarists. Often it takes a while before the act of strumming becomes fluid and natural. But there are a lot of ways to develop your sense of rhythm and timing that don’t require you to have a guitar in hand.

Do you tap your foot along with the beat of a song? Take that a step further and use your strumming hand. Tap out a strumming pattern on a desk or table, or use a pick to strum on your leg. It’s a great way to get a rhythm into your hands before you try it out on your guitar.

Ear Training. Who wouldn’t like to pick out how to play a song just by listening to it? Ear training might seem beyond your abilities and skills, but it is something that most people can develop with time and practice and repetition. And there are tons of opportunities to practice!

Chances are you listen to music pretty often. Take a little time to concentrate on what you’re hearing. You can do this in a general way, such as trying to pick out major or minor chords, or in a more specific way, trying to figure out what the guitarist is doing. Are they chugging out power chords, fingerpicking, or playing a riff to help out the rhythm? As you learn more about intervals and chords, you might even find that listening in this way helps you learn songs by ear.

Print out a few of our lessons on ear training to read in your spare time. You can find them here: http://www.guitarnoise.com/ear.php

Chord Makeup. What’s six times four? Twenty-four, of course. What notes are in a G major chord? If you couldn’t automatically answer “G, B, and D,” then you might make it a point to learn three or four chords a week. Soon, you’ll know your chords as well as your multiplication tables. You’ll find this very handy when you’re trying to come up with different chord voicings (alternate ways to play chords). Combining chord knowledge and ear training makes it easier to let the music you hear in your head come out in your playing.

Start out simple, working on things that you use every day. In other words, concentrate on your major and minor chords in “guitar friendly” keys such as C, G, D, A and E. Once you’re good with those, try adding sevenths and major sevenths. Then you can really test yourself by picking two or three notes and then naming chords that use the notes you chose.

Again, and I really can’t stress this enough, learning the makeup of your chords is not all that different from learning your multiplication tables. If you take the time, it will become second nature to you before you know it.

Sight Reading. Reading music notation is another thing that gets incredibly easier with a little practice. When you know you’ll have time to read, carry a piece or two of sheet music along with—or even instead of—your newspaper, book, or favorite guitar magazine, and try to listen to the music in your head while reading it.

A lot of people couldn’t be bothered to learn to read music, preferring to argue instead about how (insert your guitar icon here) doesn’t know how and it doesn’t stop him or her from being great. I can’t help think that in the amount of time it takes to write and post a response about why you don’t have to read music, you could learn six notes on the staff.

Reading music is simply a tool, a color to add to your crayon box, if you will. And for many people, it can be a huge help, if for no other reason than to learn to read rhythms and to use that skill to enhance their strumming. Even if you decide you can’t read the notes, notation will allow you to read a rhythm, which kind of brings us back to step one again!

So the next time you find yourself without a guitar, get in some practicing! You’ll find that this supplemental work with your head will help you improve the work with your fingers.

–David Hodge