1. Inspiring and motivating your students – teaching guitar well is often more about inspiring your students than teaching a new scale, chord or song.

2. Teaching them ‘new things’ to play/practice – Most guitar teachers understand this basic concept, but often struggle to know exactly how much ‘new content’ is too little or too much for each student. Most teachers ‘overwhelm’ their students with simply too much material in a short amount of time.

3. Helping them to solve their playing/musical problems – The best way to improve your guitar teaching is to understand exactly how to help any student overcome any problem.

Each of these areas has its own challenges, but for most teachers it is the last category (helping students solve guitar playing/musical problems) that can be the most difficult to consistently do well.

When teaching guitar to solve problems and bad habits, the first thing to do is be clear about  the process itself:

Identify the true cause of the problem. Remember that ’symptoms’ of problems and ’causes’ of problems are often totally different things. A misdiagnosed problem (just like a misdiagnosed medical problem) can make things worse than doing nothing at all.

Find proven solutions to overcome this problem. Yes, this seems like an obvious point, but often teachers ‘guess’ or use the trial and error approach to teaching guitar. Surround yourself with other experienced guitar teachers. Ask them for their advice on your specific challenge, doing so may save you and your student a lot of time and frustration.

Communicate the causes and your solution to your student’s problem. Again, this may seem like common sense, but fact is, most teachers do not fully explain the cause and solutions to the problems students have, they sort of skip this part and move directly into implementing the solution. The reason why communicating the cause and solution to your student is so important is that, without the student truly knowing what these things are, they often won’t truly practice your solution diligently at home.

Implement the solution (training). To be the most effective, you need to do more than ‘teach what to do’, you need to ‘train’ them to do it. The ‘teaching part’ can usually be done quickly, but it is the ‘training’ that takes the time. Think more like a sports trainer and less like a school teacher as you implement solutions while teaching guitar (more on this below).

Hold their hand – You do not need to treat all your students like children (unless they are children), but when teaching guitar, it is important that you monitor your students’ motivation level and help them to keep it high. A mediocre guitar teacher who keeps his/her students highly motivated will almost always get much bigger results than a great ‘technical’ teacher who does little or nothing to keep students inspired and motivated – yet this is an area most teachers don’t do consistently well in – because they underestimate its importance.

Because students typically have multiple problems in their playing (inconsistent articulation, weak sense of timing, excess body tension, inefficient hand movement, excess string noise, just to name a few common ones), and because there are typically multiple causes to each of those problems, the hardest part about teaching guitar, as it relates to solving students’ playing problems and breaking bad habits, is knowing the best order to deal with the causes of a student’s problems. Timing is critical and so is the order.

Many (well intentioned) teachers make the mistake of trying to use ‘linear logic’ to help students break bad habits and overcome challenges. There are many problems with this, the main one is we don’t teach machines, we are teaching people. Everything we do, and when we do it, has a positive or negative impact in the mind of our students. In theory it might make perfect sense for a teacher to make the student deal with the most basic problems first. That seems logical right? Well, those that follow this all the time will have a hard time keeping students long enough to help them become the guitar players they wish to be.

Contrary to what many guitar teachers believe, fixing the most fundamental problems your students have in the beginning (or trying to break too many bad habits at once) does more harm than good for most students. Yes, problems and bad habits must be dealt with in order for your students to reach their maximum potential, but too much of this at the same time may kill the will for your students to endure the natural frustration that comes with learning to play guitar.

Each student is different and you need to get a sense of how much tolerance the student sitting in front of you can handle in the present moment. If you overestimate this, the result is likely going to lead to massive amounts of frustration for your student and he/she may give up lessons and playing guitar completely.

How long does it usually take your beginning guitar students, as an example, to sit or stand with ‘perfectly correct’ posture, use perfect left and right hand positions, use the correct picking motions and articulation etc. etc. when playing and practicing? Sure you can teach this in a minute or two, but how long will it take that student to instinctively do this all the time on his/her own without you reminding them? For most students, it takes a long time.

Is it okay to let your students continue to play and practice guitar when you know many basic things are wrong and that they will form bad habits by allowing them to go on in this way?

Most guitar teachers would say, “no, it’s not okay” and then proceed to immediately try to correct all of them as soon as possible. Other guitar teachers simply don’t notice or don’t care enough to address these things. They figure as long as students keep coming back to lessons, everything is good.

The best approach for teaching guitar is neither. To be clear, your top priority should be to keep your student coming back for as many lessons as possible – not simply because you make more money that way, but because, if a student gives up lessons, you can do nothing to help him/her. Obviously, you must deal with problems and bad habits though (to not do this would be the same as only feeding kids candy and never real food).

When teaching guitar to solve a problem, avoid dealing with the entire problem and all its causes at once. Begin with the one thing you can do for your student that will be easiest for him/her to correct. This will help to build confidence that he/she can begin to overcome the problem and that doing so wasn’t extremely hard to start with. Pay attention to how much of this you think they can handle right now. If it looks good, then give them the next thing to fix.

Although some guitar playing problems and bad habits can be really big issues to deal with, try not to make the entire lesson only about solving problems. Most students need to get a sense of forward progress and even though solving problems is forward progress, they can’t always see that themselves even after you explain it to them, so give them something else that is fulfilling for them to play and practice.  A little sugar with the medicine helps it go down easier .

Test your guitar teaching skills.

About the author: Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, professional touring guitarist and recording artist. He coaches other guitar teachers on how to teach guitar

© Tom Hess Music Corporation All Rights Reserved

There can be more than one reason why a student may struggle when trying to change chords smoothly. So the first thing to do when dealing with this challenge is to diagnose why the problem exists. You need to determine if your student has one of the following problems:

• A. A physical coordination problem
• B. He/she has not been practicing
• C. A lack of understanding of what needs to be done
• D. A mental processing problem

Most guitar teachers assume the reason is either A. (a physical coordination problem) or B. (little or no practice). Fact is, most of the time this is wrong. The majority of students actually do attempt to practice. And true physical coordination problems are rare.

For most guitar students almost all guitar playing problems are caused by their brains, not by their hands! This is why many efforts to help them may not work well.

As I mentioned before, there can many reasons why a student is struggling with this (or any other issue) so it is not possible to give a one-size-fits-all solution in an article. There are however three powerful guitar teaching tips that can help solve this problem with beginning guitar students.

1. Get your students to keep their strumming hand moving in correct rhythm no matter how far behind the fretting hand may be in forming the next chord. In other words, tell your students (when practicing this way) to not allow the strumming hand to wait on the fretting hand! Practicing in this way will solve a lot of other rhythm and timing problems in the future for this student! The student should practice this way about one third of their practice time until the problem is resolved.
2. Get your student to not use the strumming hand at all and simply change chords with the fretting hand quickly (rapid fire, one after another). The student should practice this way about a third of the time until the problem is resolved.
3. Make your student play a chord he/she needs to master. Tell him/her to grip the strings hard when playing the chord, then to relax totally (without taking fingers away from the strings/chord), then tell the student to squeeze again all fingers at the same time! Then relax.

The goal here is to train his/her brain to make all fingers move and relax together and not one finger at a time (which is how beginning guitar students make chords on their own – big mistake)… Repeat this exercise until the student can do it well.

Next, have the student move fingers off the strings but maintain the basic chord shape while hovering over the strings…. Then press down on the strings and make the chord… repeat this many times and then gradually move further and further away from the strings before making the chord again. Eventually from an open hand the student should be able to form the chord easily… but in each case you must be sure all fingers are moving and relaxing at the same time, not one finger at a time! The student should practice this way about a third of the time until the problem is resolved.

Notice that these solutions of the problem are all ‘physical’, but they are designed to overcome the student’s “mental processing problem” because the student has not learned to separate and isolate each motion. The beginning guitar student’s brain is overloaded with too much information to apply at the same time, this is why we work on method #1 and #2 above to free the brain from too much processing at once. The last method (#3) is designed in order to break the student’s mental processing habit of sending separate and linear messages to each finger of the hand. What we want is to train the brain to process and send one message to all fingers involved.

To get more help on teaching guitar and building a successful guitar teaching business, check out these fifteen free guitar teaching tips.

About the author: Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, professional touring guitarist and recording artist. He coaches other guitar teachers on how to teach guitar.

As the famous saying goes, “you do not get a second chance to make a first impression.”‘ And, as guitar teachers, this saying is paramount. As our business dealings are periodic, it is important that from the start students have trust and understanding in their learning which in turn will bring them back week after week.

Student goals

It is imperative to establish student goals early on so you, the teacher, are able to create an appropriate route to which they can be attained. When asking new students why they left their previous teacher I am often given answers like, “They had me playing chords when I wanted to play lead,” or “I like Punk but was learning Blues.” These answers show that the students’ goals were never explored and they were taught on the teacher’s standard syllabus.

Always start lesson one with a few questions such as:

• What made you want to learn the guitar?
• Have you ever played any other musical instruments?
• What sort of music do you like?
• Who’s your favourite guitarist?

These four questions will give you an overview of why the student wants to learn the guitar, allowing you to start planning the most appropriate route to take in achieving his or her goals.

What to teach?

All students will be different, each having his or her individual learning needs. But having a core teaching syllabus (consisting of essential scales, chords and exercises) is essential and most beginners will be happy to follow the same syllabus. Once the rudiments are in place you can then focus on their particular style of music and personal goals.

Remember “quality not quantity.” Many teachers will pile work on students in a vain attempt to “get their money’s worth,” hoping it will bring them back next week. But what usually happens is the student leaves feeling swamped and disheartened. The best thing to do is start slowly, gradually building the students confidence as you go. Start small by firstly introducing the instruments’ main parts and string names then introduce the plectrum and how to hold it. Next, look at the frets and how they are used to produce sound. The student will now not only better understand the instrument but more importantly feel confident enough to start playing it.

A good first song is “Horse with No Name,” as it only consists of two chords. It will not take long till they are committed to muscle memory and the left hand can happily go back and fourth between them. Next, introduce a few simple strum patterns to work in the right hand.

A good rule of thumb to remember here is “ears before eyes.” For example, have the student strum once, twice, three and four times on each of the chords and only when he has truly mastered that should you introduce the strum patterns in notation.

For the last part of the lesson I like to end with a guitar riff such as “Smoke on the Water” or “Sunshine of your Love.” It is a good way of introducing lead guitar and tab reading and gives them something cool to go home with.

Before they go

The first lesson is the ideal time to explain payment and cancellation policies and other terms and conditions, it is a good idea to have a guitar teaching agreement or studio policy, listing what the student can expect and also what you expect from your student. Having such a document leaves nothing to chance and everybody knows exactly where they stand.

Here is an example learning agreement. This document can be freely edited to include your details and also any extra conditions such as a maximum number of cancellations per term.

I hope this article has been of interest and given you a few useful ideas, pleas visit onlineguitartutor.com for more information on guitar teaching and loads of FREE resources.

Not surprisingly, we have a good number of guitar teachers in the Guitar Noise community. Again, they also fall into many different varieties and bring many levels of experience to their students.

Some of you may remember that last year, August 18, 2008, saw Tom “Noteboat” Serb open the Midwest Music Academy in Plainfield, Illinois. Tom and his school had a wonderful first year, giving over a thousand lessons to close to two hundred students.

This fall, Guitar Noise Moderator, Alan Green, is also embarking on a huge undertaking, teaching for the Essex School Music Service in England. Those of you who have been a part of Guitar Noise for some time will recognize Alan from his participation in the Sunday Songwriters’ Group as well as his Guitar Noise articles and his musical adventures as part of the Cambridge Guitar Orchestra. What you may not know is that he’s been playing guitar since 1974, has a Distinction at Grade 8 in Classical Guitar and a Distinction at Grade 5 in Music Theory (Alan’s tip for the Theory exams – know how to write out an ascending and descending scale of G# melodic minor, properly annotated for sharps and naturals).

Alan lives in Finchingfield, which is (apparently) Essex’s most photographed village, a few miles from where Dick Turpin (the highwayman) was born, and where some of the witches executed after the famous “Matthew Hopkins, Witch-finder General” trials of the 1640s were buried sitting up so they could never claim to have been “laid to rest.” The place is mentioned in the Doomsday Book so there’s a lot of history there.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Alan twice, once for breakfast and some poking around guitar shops in New York City on glorious April morning and once as a house guest here in Massachusetts last September, where we managed to put together a small open mic / songwriter performance for him to take part in. He is every bit as personable and friendly in person as he is on the GN Forum pages.

To celebrate this new stage of Alan’s teaching career, I asked him if he might take part in a little Q & A for the Guitar Noise readers and so, let’s get right to it.

GN: How long have you been playing? When (and why) did you first pick up the instrument? Have you been playing since day one or have you had the occasionally sabbatical? Who are your musical inspirations as well as your guitar heroes?

ALAN: There was this shop near my school run by Reg Roylance, a local jazz musician who could play anything on any instrument; records at the front, guitars at the back and I saw this beginner’s guitar in the window. I knew I wanted to be a pop star (at that time everybody my age did) and suddenly there in front of me was an inexpensive way of starting out. So I asked for it as a birthday present. I could already read music, having had compulsory recorder lessons as a six-year old at primary school, and it was “just” a matter of learning where the notes were on the neck. That was harder than you’d think, especially when you’re dealing with a lousy action and fingers that were glowing like light bulbs; and recorders don’t play below middle C, so 6th and 5th string notes were unbelievably hard to learn to read and play from sight.

My first public performance was as a chef in my primary school’s Christmas play. I had to bring out the figgy pudding on a large plate when the choir sang “now bring us some figgy pudding and bring it out here.” Applause is instantly addictive. My first performance with a guitar in my hand was playing the bass to Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” at a local Church Choir concert, and my first note on a guitar in public was a big fat “G.” It should have been a big fat “F” so I played a “C” on the fourth beat and got back to the “F” for the start of the second bar. Later, I played for the group that covered the 9:30 Sunday service at a local Church when the organist had his Sunday off, then learned to play lead guitar and played some punk/ metal with a band called “Block A” in Romford in Essex for a couple of years. So, anyone who knows a guy called John Hooper from Gidea Park (our singer, married to Wendy, last known of in Pitsea, Essex) let him know I’ve lost his phone number and I’ve got some songs he might like to have a go at.

I didn’t play much whilst my sons were small, just enough to keep my hand in. Eventually, I found myself 38 and single; I didn’t think anybody would take me seriously if I said I was trying to put a rock band together, but I’d had some lessons in classical technique for a while in my twenties and decided to pick up my guitar seriously again and go down the Classical Guitar route. I got into Classical Guitar listening to “Junior Choice” presented by Ed Stewart on Radio 1 one Saturday morning when he played “Classical Gas” by Mason Williams; I just knew I had to learn to play it. I used it as an audition piece for the Essex Music Service earlier this year and a certain editor at a certain Guitar Website not far from here got to hear a pretty jet-lagged performance of it at an open mic night in Massachusetts last year.

Inspirations, good question. I learned to play chords on my first electric guitar using songbooks of David Bowie and the Beatles. The first riff I learned to play was either “Ziggy Stardust” or “Jean Genie,” and the first song I played from start to end was probably “Hard Day’s Night.”

Guitar Heroes – I had a girlfriend who was into Queen and I picked up a couple of Queen songbooks. Brian May has to be the most technically excellent guitarist on this planet, and his multi-tracked work makes his guitar sound like nothing else on earth (check out “Good Company” on “Night At The Opera” for an object lesson in how to make a single guitar sound like a jazz quartet). Then one night I was sitting at home with my father, watching “The Old Grey Whistle Test.” The legend that is Bumbling Bob Harris introduced a band called Rush, from Canada. My father’s face dropped in that “Oh, my God” expression. Mine lit up in that “Wow, this is the meaning of life” expression, and Alex Lifeson has been my complete and utter absolute Guitar Hero ever since. I admire Slash greatly, and John Frusciante, too, and there are a lot of good guitarists around who haven’t quite made it into Hero status yet. On the Classical Guitar side, I like John Williams, David Russell and Craig Ogden, but there’s less difference between classical guitarists.

GN: How (and roughly when) did you first find out about Guitar Noise? What keeps you coming back (not to mention what made you say “yes to being a Moderator)?

ALAN: I was working in Germany. We didn’t have a lot to do and one afternoon I was surfing the Wholenote dot com website. They were in the midst of a massive flame war which had practically taken over their entire forum, and if anyone can tell me how America’s involvement in the two World Wars is relevant to playing the guitar I’ll give them a free lesson. Somewhere amongst the insults I found a post where someone was talking about a show they’d done and it had a link to an article on Guitar Noise. I noticed there was a forum page here and never went back to Wholenote.

Guitar Noise is a unique community, somewhere you can drop in and out whenever you want to talk about anything to do with playing guitar. I like the fact that there’s no chat room and anything off topic is stamped on by the moderators. If I want to talk politics or religion I’ll go somewhere else; if I want to indulge my guitar hobby I come to Guitar Noise. I do frequent other guitar forum pages too, for Classical and Flamenco Guitar, but nothing like as regularly as I do Guitar Noise. It was nice to be asked to be a Moderator, and I knew the existing team to be a decent bunch so I threw my hat in the ring.

Talking of hats – I have worn one of Nick’s hats.

GN: Congratulations on moving up big time with your teaching? How did all of this come about? How long have you been teaching? Why did you make the decision to get involved in teaching on such a bigger scale?

ALAN: Thank you. I started teaching in the UK in 2003, after I came home from Germany, and by the start of 2007 had built up a thriving little practice which brought me four students on a Saturday afternoon and the occasional midweek session. I have a little guy named Joseph to thank for starting me out on my Grades. We were sitting in his lounge one Saturday afternoon listening to his sister playing the piano. She’d just got her Grade 1 and Joseph asked me “Are there any Grades for this thing?” I nodded and made a mental note to order a few extra copies of the book so I could do the Grades myself otherwise he’d get the Step 1 (one of two pre-grade exams) and technically he’d be ahead of me.

Moving to the countryside destroyed my teaching practice as it wasn’t possible to do any marketing and still travel 90 minutes each way to work and back each day. Then the bank I was working for wrote off a bucketload of money (thirty four billion dollars, in fact – that’s nine zeros) in the first wave of the credit crunch and started cutting jobs. I survived the first six rounds of job cuts, training people to take routine work offshore to India (for a lot less money than I was paying people to do the same job in London) but eventually ……. well, when you get a call from your boss asking you to go to an unscheduled meeting in a meeting room in the building HR occupy you know what’s coming.

So, there I was, looking at being out of work at the worst time in my industry since 1929. I’d been made redundant ten years previously, and was determined not to be out of work so long this time so I took a good long look at everything I could do; amongst which was this guitar teaching thing, a little rusty perhaps but nothing that couldn’t be fixed. I figured I could probably make a break into the adult education service (you need a bachelor’s degree at the very least to teach in schools in the UK) teaching guitar. I looked up the adult education services in all the local counties to me (where we live is close to three other counties outside Essex) and e-mailed them all. I also started a degree course with the Open University in England, which specialises in remote learning, to beef up the qualifications. I got a reply from the Essex Adult Education people who said they didn’t have anything but put me in touch with the School Music Service. I sent them an application form.

Having registered with 40 recruitment firms in London over the weeks before my job finally finished in early April, I got a few calls about work after Easter and one call got me an interview. I started work with a Japanese bank the following week. After three weeks at the new job I got a letter from Essex Music Service inviting me to go along, audition and interview. I’d never failed an audition in my life so figured I’d be able to make a decent stab at it and chances like this don’t come up every day so I grabbed it with both hands and started rehearsing. I played “Capricho Arabe,” a 20th century classical guitar masterpiece by Francisco Tarrega, and “Classical Gas.” I’m used to long interviews, but I finally staggered out after being grilled for 90 minutes, fortunately having been told that I was on the teachers’ list for September 2009. Result. There was another candidate being interviewed after me to teach cello. I told her mine had lasted 90 minutes. Her face dropped, but I notice she’s on the same Induction Day as me in two weeks’ time.

GN: Are you excited by the challenge of teaching so many students? Will you be continuing with your private students as well?

ALAN: I’ve been put in touch with three schools, with kids all aged under 8 years old. Thirty-six students. The lessons will be 15 minutes each, so it’s only nine hours each week but it’s a start and I might still get some more schools when they go back the week after next and find they should have booked a guitar teacher.

I can’t wait. I find teaching absolute beginners most enjoyable whatever age they might be. If you deliver the lessons right you’re lining up a student who will stay with you for what might be years and develop onto a top class performer. If they decide that guitar’s not for them, at least they’ll have had the experience and got some skills in reading standard notation that they can transfer to piano or clarinet or tuba or something.

The postcard that I put in the local shop advertising me as a private teacher suddenly earned its keep – I got a call about some lessons and took on my first private student since we moved house. It felt good to get back to teaching old favourites like “Maggie May” and “Brown Eyed Girl” again, and I find private students buy lessons because they want to learn not because they think it might be easy and cool to be able to play a guitar, so they have more longevity as students. I don’t teach Classical Guitar unless asked to do so, but my students know I’m a classical guitarist because they sit in my study with all my certificates on the wall, alongside the Gold Disc we got Kathy’s son off e-Bay for his birthday the other year and is with us for safekeeping whilst he’s travelling the world. Nobody’s actually looked at it yet and said “Is that a Gold disc? Is it yours?”

GN: If someone was interested in having you as his or her guitar teacher, how should he/she go about it?

ALAN: I’m definitely very keen on expanding the number of private students I teach, they’re not impacted by school holidays and provide more opportunities to teach lead and rock guitar. Anyone wanting me as a teacher can PM me through the Guitar Noise website, phone me on my mobile (the number is on the Rollmop Music website (www.rollmopmusic.co.uk)), or they can e-mail me at alan@rollmopmusic.co.uk and we’ll talk days and times.

GN: In addition to teaching you’re also a performer, both solo and as a member of the Cambridge Guitar Orchestra. Are you planning on continuing to perform? Any concerts in the works that you’d like to mention?

ALAN: Absolutely. Performance is the life blood of what we do, and although I do know of guitarists who are happy to play at rehearsal but don’t like playing gigs much, I think they need their heads tested for thinking like that. Still it takes all sorts to make a world.

The Musical Director at Cambridge Guitar Orchestra is one Peter Rueffer, a member of the Pro Arte Trio and professional musician himself. He arranges all our music himself, including some works by Pat Metheny as well as Grieg and Stravinsky, and I’ve learned a lot from working with him. Ensemble playing is definitely one of those things where the sum is greater than the parts and if you looked at the parts I get to play with Cambridge, which is all single-line stuff, then listen to the final result you’d be amazed at how it sounds. It’s pretty good for your sight-reading abilities too.

Not only that, but also, I play for the Essex Guitar Orchestra under the Musical Directorship of Melvyn Willin, a hugely qualified chap with two PhDs. Melvyn has studied under David Russell (famous Classical Guitarist), argued with John Williams (very famous Classical Guitarist) and has perfect pitch (don’t you just hate some people). The Essex Guitar Orchestra are now in their 33rd year, and they’ve played in Australia, India and Hungary amongst other places, and done some TV work. Melvyn arranges all our stuff himself too, but he arranges pop songs as well as the highbrow classical stuff and there’s definitely a more anarchic feel to working with him as well as a huge learning experience. I get to play Guitar 1 on a lot of Melvyn’s arrangements, including 16th note rasgueados in Boccerini’s Introduction and Fandango (check this piece out on Youtube – there’s a good version there by a trio – and turn the volume up), and what the audience get to hear is incredible.

I did a bunch of lunchtime Classical Guitar concerts as a soloist at the pub in the village earlier this year, and I’ve had a chat with the landlady about getting my residency back. She’s keen to get it going again too, even more so when I told her I’d got some new material.

And, finally, I’m talking to the wedding venues and hotels round my way about providing music for weddings, parties and corporate events to expand my solo performance diary. Fingers crossed.

There are some concerts pencilled in for later in the year with the orchestras. I’ll announce details closer to the time (once they’re firmed up)

GN: Those who’ve been around Guitar Noise a while might also be aware that you’re quite a writer as well. You recently had a piece published back in May by Here Is The City and your contributions to the Sunday Songwriters’ Group have always been inspirational. Are you planning to keep up with your writing as you take on more and more students?

ALAN: I think it’s natural that if you enjoy listening to music, and the plethora of MTV-type channels on TV suggest that more and more of us do, sooner or later you’re going to think “Well, surely I could do that.” If you take a listen to what’s selling in the Pop charts, you might even think “Well, listening to that, it can’t be that difficult.” Everybody has something to say about most things, and just needs a way of getting it out there. From there, it’s only a small step to grabbing a pencil and paper and getting it written down. Most of us have bad experiences of poetry from school, but all of a sudden we’re thinking about rhyming patterns and how to fit what we want to say into a verse-length structure without running out of breath.

Any number of frustrated writers will sit there and say “Oh, I couldn’t possibly write anything that anybody else would like” and that’s simply not true. Luckily, we’re all different, which is why Slipknot appeal to one audience and Girls Aloud to another and why we have so many different musical styles on the planet – you’ve really got to go some to write something that nobody likes.

So, you’ve got some lyrics, a couple of verses and a chorus maybe – that makes you a poet. Put a guitar in your hands, learn a few basic chords, and that makes you an artist, which is probably where so many people run into a roadblock, back at the “Oh, I couldn’t possibly write anything that anybody else would like because it would be such a simple song and songs need to have a complicated structure” argument. I find most people who say that sort of thing have been told at some stage in their lives, by someone important to them, “That’s rubbish” about something that they’ve done, and it’s stuck.

I can’t sing for toffee, but that doesn’t stop me inflicting my songs on the neighbours and as soon as I get a rush of inspiration from one of Vic’s Sunday Songwriters’ themes or something in the newspapers I’ll be scribbling again.

The article on “Here Is The City” (which is an anarchic news site in London aimed at the Capital Markets/ Investment Banking community) was prompted by reading someone else writing about their experience of losing their job in the current downturn. I commented on the story, saying that I’d gone round the pub and played my guitar, and the editors asked me to write about it and published it. A few friends in Investment Banking recognised my writing style even though it was edited down by a few lines, which was nice. I don’t get to write like that very often; maybe I should blog more.

So, bring on inspiration; I definitely plan to continue writing songs and my students get the same advice.

GN: People are likely to ask how you’ve managed to keep music such an important part of your life. What advice would you give them?

ALAN: Music is the most powerful of all the arts, with the ability to lift or carry a mood and existing only in the time and space during which it is performed, which you don’t get from standing in the Louvre among all the tourists gazing at the Mona Lisa. I’m sure we’ve all been transported somewhere back in time in our minds by hearing a particular song on the radio, and all the important occasions in our lives involve some kind of song – weddings, christenings, birthdays, bar mitzvahs, the chant summoning the faithful to prayer, your team winning at football, and even funerals are all distinguished by having musical content.

Unlike painting or sculpture, music is solely an aural experience (although liner notes try to add a visual aspect) and that makes everybody’s experience individual and subsequent experiences different to the first because the circumstances under which we listen again will have changed – minute differences in the timing, a fluffed note or lyric during a live performance for example, or the difference between sunshine and rain outside when playing a CD. A painting will always be the same painting, likewise a statue, but a musical performance will always be a different work of art every time it is performed or played; and I don’t want to miss that.

GN: Finally, any advice for the person wondering whether or not he or she should take up the guitar?

ALAN: What would I say? I’d say grab the opportunity with both hands and dedicate a good amount of time to it. If you decide later that it’s really not for you, then you will have learned a bunch of skills and disciplines that you can transfer to another musical instrument, or might even help you in your working or academic life. It’s really sad to think that we might have missed out on the natural successor to Jimi Hendrix or Andres Segovia because somebody thought about playing the guitar but thought they might not be any good.

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

Printing tabs with notepad is awful. It splits tabs on multiple lines if they are too long, making the whole song a mess, while it is drastically filling our paper bin. This should be common experience for most of us.

On the other hand let’s say that formatting and printing high-quality (graphic) tabs is one of the most time-consuming activity you can run, and even if there are some good software that can help you with printing, they are all focused on media features you won’t ever use.

Building your own songbook (i.e. a collection of nice printed tabs) could possibly be an handy option, as it can save hours of your time when searching your songs, while it gives you some sort of satisfaction in making something by your own. But let’s trace the basic rules of making a songbook before going into details. The easy way of making a nice looking songbook is to define a certain look on the first page (song) then keeping it unchanged for the rest of the collection. Page numbers, images, chords explanation, legends and many other things can be added later, but keep in mind that you can NOT add something to just one of your tabs (a quote for example)! This will vain all your struggle in keeping a really professional and cool looking songbook. So take a word processor (Microsoft Word is ok) and paste one song you really love into that. Delete each single line which is not useful (internet tabs have thousands) and then take a look at it.

Does the title really shine?? Nope. So go, choose a font and a font size (or colour) you will always use for the song names. Do the same for all the other sections. Most of the times you should consider a TITLE, an AUTHOR, a TABLATURE section, a LYRICS and a COMMENTS one.

So it’s 5 “styles” in your page. The only important thing is to remember that you have to choose a mono-spaced font type for tablature (courier new will do, but there are many others) and to set this at least to size 9. Smaller fonts will make your eyes bulge off from your skull. Another nice option is to consider using the same font for the title, lyrics and comments sections, while changing the size. If you are used to Word you could even try to make a template with different background colours and frames.

As a guitar teacher I personally created a template I use for giving my students nice looking, sharp material. You can download an example of this here and if you like it you can use it as your own, free of charge.

Now that you have your song formatted into Word I recommend you to keep this simple rules in mind:

ONE – It’s better to modify the original template BEFORE than editing each single page!

TWO- Set the page margins to at least 1 cm but nothing more, because you don’t need such a thick border

THREE- When your tab is long and it splits into multiple pages try to replace a whole chorus with simply a [Chorus] remainder.

FOUR- If you are planning of printing hundreds of tabs, don’t choose any coloured font.

FIVE- Print only the tabs you really love, don’t print just for the sake of it.

SIX- If you have a long tab line that does not fit into your page width try to split it into two lines. This is a tricky thing to do, but you can use a free software that I developed to do this automatically. I’ve put a URL for this at the end of this lesson.

Well, if you followed all these rules you should have ended up with something nice. Of course you can consider adding chord diagrams and images, but it’s hard to do that by hand. I rely on a software that I made for myself and then decided to publish for splitting or merging the tab lines, or to generate nice chord diagrams to show my students how to play them.

The author is Simone Perandini. He is a student and a guitar teacher in Italy. He is also the lead developer of TabPlayer. He wrote “the ALL TABS METHOD”, and he’s working on the “DO-LIKE-THIS guitar method”, a 100% theory-free kick-start for beginners.

About the Author

Simone Perandini is a student and a guitar teacher in Italy. He is also the lead developer of TabPlayer. He wrote “the ALL TABS METHOD”, and he’s working on the “DO-LIKE-THIS guitar method”, a 100% theory-free kick-start for beginners. E-mail: simoneperandini@hotmail.com URL: www.simoneperandini.com

Since I had now had a guitar, I needed lessons. One of my favorite places on the Internet is the auction site, eBay. Off I went and searched for “learn guitar”. A lot of people on eBay want to sell you CD’s or DVD’s to teach you to play the guitar. The two times I tried to learn guitar before involved spending three weeks trying to smoothly shift between C, F, and G chords and then giving up because it seemed like it would take forever to make pleasant sounds. I was looking for a way to learn guitar that was different than my previous efforts. Guitar Concept sells their course at eBay and it seemed to be the thing I was looking for. I downloaded the demo, liked what I saw, and then bought the CD.

Guitar Concept starts you off with pentatonic scales and learning different modes. I was finally able to make pleasant sounds with the guitar – a major breakthrough. I was learning the minor pentatonic scale, going up the scale and then down, and thought it might be easier to memorize the scale if I played the notes of the scale out of sequence. The result sounded like I had just made some music. I stopped, laughed out loud and thought, “Wow, this is so cool”. One of the best things about Guitar Concept is that there’s a real person behind it who answers your questions.

The Guitar Concept web site has a links section that started me looking for sites with good information for a new guitar player. I discovered Guitar Noise (just as you obviously have!) and spent quite a few weeks trying to digest everything. I used Guitar Noise initially to help me figure out music theory. The Power of Three, and Moving on Up, both by David Hodge, were particularly helpful in taking the mystery out of chords. I could make chords all over the fretboard – not just in the “standard” places.

Another useful link from the Guitar Concept site is to Guitar For Beginners And Beyond. This site has free fingerstyle lessons. Most of the lessons even come with a movie. Always On My Mind is my favorite lesson here.

One of the links on the Guitar Noise site is to Darrin Koltow’s Maximum Musician site. I found a book here, “Blues Grooves for Beginners” that changed my life (really, it did). I discovered how much fun it is to play the blues. One of the songs in the book, “Souped Up Shuffle” seemed to be way too hard for me ever to play. One five-note section of this song took me twenty seconds to play because my left hand just didn’t get it. I stuck with it and now use this song as a warm-up exercise that I can play without even thinking too much. An important lesson for me – things that look hard can often be made easy with lots of practice. My success with this book gave me confidence to tackle other things that looked too hard.

While exploring the Maximum Musician site I stumbled across a link to Truefire. This was another life altering discovery. Truefire contains thousands of guitar lessons at a reasonable cost. A typical lesson costs $2.50 and comes with an MP3, PDF and often a Powertab file. Dave Rubin has an excellent lesson for a beginner called “Eight to the Bar”. Keith Wyatt has a blues primer that has lots of good bits. I thought that slides and hammers and pull-offs were too hard but I downloaded a David Blacker lesson called “Delta Blues Essentials” and can now slide and hammer all over the place. It sounds so cool doing a hammer on to the B string followed by a slide from the 2nd fret to the 4th fret on the high E string. If you can’t find what you’re looking for at Guitar Noise, head over to Truefire.

Mark Stefani is a major presence at Truefire. Some of his lessons are difficult but others, like, “Boogie Woogie Shuffle”, only look difficult and, with a lot of practice, are great fun to play. Mark has his own website that has many free lessons.

One of the lessons at Truefire contained a link to Acoustic Guitar Workshop. I thought that I would be happy to always use just a pick. After listening to some of the fingerstyle lessons here, I was hooked and purchased the course, “Fingerstyle Blues 1″. The last lesson in the course is a song called “Fishing Blues”. It sounds truly amazing when I get it right. I haven’t forgotten my pick but fingerstyle blues are a lot of fun to play.

One of my goals at the start of my guitar adventure was to learn my favorite song, If You Could Read My Mind. I got an “Easy Guitar” book from the library and managed to play the melody of the song without too much trouble but it was strangely unsatisfying. The song sounded too much like “plink, plink, plink”. Back to Guitar Noise I went and found Arranging Things by David Hodge and Birth of a Chord Melody by Graham Merry to teach me all about the wonderful world of chord melody. I now have a decent arrangement of the song. It still needs work but it no longer goes “plink, plink, plink”.

While I was looking for different versions of If You Could Read My Mind, I discovered GuitarPro and the GuitarPro archive. GuitarPro is a neat tool to let you edit music. MySongBook contains almost 40,000 songs in the GuitarPro format-something for everybody. One interesting use of GuitarPro is to change a song’s key. If a song appears difficult to play, you can try changing its key. Sometimes it becomes a lot easier in a different key.

During my never-ending search of places to help me learn guitar, I encountered Guitar Principles several times. The site’s main product is a book called The Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar. I was always a bit afraid to visit the site because I might learn I was doing everything wrong and was a hopeless case. I took the plunge and bought the book and found it extremely useful. I was horrified to see how much my left hand fingers were flapping in the breeze and how much tension I had. The book helps a player to recognize tension and to avoid it. Before this book I wondered why bending strings was so hard. I realized, after reading the book, that it’s almost impossible to bend a string with a tense left hand.

I spend a lot of time at Guitar Noise looking for interesting things to learn. In the blues section, I found a lesson from Olav Torvund, a Norwegian lawyer who also has a passion for the blues. His site has hundreds of lessons about blues guitar and, for people like myself who don’t speak Norwegian, the site is also in English. Playing the “Hoochie Coochie Shuffle” from this site is just so much fun it should be illegal.

While poking around at torvund.net, I found an excellent site to buy sheet music and guitar instruction books called SheetMusicPlus.com. This site is easy to navigate and the company is very reliable. I have already bought several books from the web site. You can search for “easy guitar” at this site and get hundreds of books that have songs from your favourite artists arranged for the beginning to intermediate guitar player.

I’m eight months into becoming a guitar player so what’s next? I seem to have a fairly common guitar disease – “75 percentitis.” I learn 75% of a song and then get distracted and don’t learn the whole song. So lately, I’ve been re-visiting my favorites and learning the whole song. I’m also learning St Louis Blues from the Acoustic Guitar Workshop and have just bought a book at SheetMusicPlus called Classic Blues for Easy Guitar that has songs like, Boom Boom and Sweet Home Chicago arranged for easy guitar. This book is going to be a lot of fun. Hurt by David Hodge at Guitar Noise is also on my current list of things to practice. I think it’s impossible to see the Johnny Cash video of Hurt and not get a lump in your throat.

I have also started working on the dreaded C, F, G chord change but something mysterious has happened. It’s not as hard as I remembered. Amazing.

Learning guitar is hard work but it’s really important to have fun and have your guitar make cool sounds while you’re learning all the hard bits.

Thanks for listening!

But there’s another bit of listening all guitarists wishing to improve should do; and that is listening to the recordings of the great guitar artists. By listening to the masters, we gain insights into the capabilities of our instruments. Moreover, by listening to great guitarists, we gain inspiration. The masters not only fuel our desire to work harder, they also provide us a source of musical ideas that might not have occurred to us otherwise.

Most any aspiring guitar player today has heard of, and listened to, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. But it’s rare for someone to explore more than the tip of his or her particular iceberg, that is, the handful of easily recognized star players of a certain genre. We are all, to a greater or lesser extent, trapped by our own styles and preferences. Jazz players may listen to plenty of Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass, but they barely pay attention to Ritchie Blackmore. Blues guitar players know every tune of B.B. King’s down cold, but they have rarely payed attention to Eddie Van Halen. And few modern guitar players are even aware of the contribution of niche players like Sol Ho’opi’i Ka’ai’ai.

The purpose of this article (and of the others to follow) is, hopefully, to serve as a reminder that there is a vast amount of guitar knowledge to be gleaned from listening to other great guitarists and to suggest various artists and specific recordings that all guitarists should consider owning not only because it’s great music to have in one’s CD or MP3 collection, but also because of the wealth of guitar technique and insight captured on the recordings.

Like all such collections, personal taste will obviously play a part. Hopefully no one I select here will be total undeserving of attention, but there will always be room for discussion as to the appropriateness of one choice over another. In the end, though, all such discussion is healthy if done in a way respectful of other people’s opinions. The real offering here is a challenge: Open up your horizons and explore the world of guitar music through listening to the great guitar artists.

To kick off our series, I want to give a “Top Ten” list instead of looking at a specific artist or genre in depth. But it’s not going to be your typical “top 10″ type offering. We all know who would be on that list, even if we might argue about the order: Les Paul, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, B.B. King, Andres Segovia, Stevie Ray Vaughn and fill in the last slots with other perennial favorites from jazz, blues, rock and classical greats.

This “Top Ten” is the “Top Ten Great Guitarists Who Never Make Top Ten Lists But Should!”

10. Al DiMeola

If you are a fan of the clean technique and blazing speed of guys like Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen, then you should know of Al DiMeola. A tour-de-force in the jazz fusion world in the mid ’70’s, DiMeola was the standard for blazing speed and flawless technique. His early efforts with the group Return To Forever (which included Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke) demonstrate his huge talent and incomparable mastery of fusion jazz. He left the band in 1976 to launch a solo career. His commercial and artistic success continued into the ’80s when he joined up with John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucía. In the ’90s DiMeola stunned the jazz world by turning his back on fusion jazz, and recording acoustic pieces based on various cultural music styles. Fans of DiMeola will undoubtedly have a particular disk as their favorite, but it’s hard to go wrong with Land of the Midnight Sun, released by Columbia records in 1976 and readily available on CD.

9. Derek Bailey

Anyone who’s parents every complained that all they did was “make noise” with their guitar should run out and buy a Derek Bailey CD to demonstrate what real noise making sounds like. Bailey is a very different kind of musician. His recordings are dissonant, atonal, non-melodic, and at first listen seem to lack any real direction. He has sat on the leading edge of avant-garde jazz for decades and has seen possibilities in the guitar few others have ever thought of. Perhaps the best CD from the “godfather of free improvisation” is the disc Improvisation, a 1997 re-release of an obscure 1970’s recording by Italian label Cramps. Derek Bailey is an acquired taste, and maybe his recordings aren’t your idea of music at all. But the thing to take away from the Derek Bailey experience is, if nothing else, the extreme range of tones and timbre a guitar is capable of producing.

8. Jimmy Nolen

Admit it, you’ve always loved James Brown’s rhythm section. Well, the heart of that undeniably great band’s rhythm was guitarist Jimmy Nolen. Johnny Otis said “Jimmy Nolen was the founder of funk guitar, yet the very people who are influenced by him are not aware of it.” Nolen, who died at the early age of 49 in 1983 from heart failure, had a number of early gigs with Johnny Otis, including playing on Willie and the Hand Jive, however it is as the heart of James Brown’s band that Jimmy will be remembered. Nolen’s distinctive sixteenth-note strumming techniques, his choppy styling, and chord voicing defined funk, and became integrated into nearly all modern R&B, funk and even disco guitarists style. If you can find a copy of Otis’ Rock and Roll Hit Parade, Vol. 1 from 1957, buy it at any price and never let go. Otherwise, look for any of James Brown’s recordings from between 1967 and 1983. You’ll notice that Nolen is not listed on the albums, a terrible injustice to one of the greatest rhythm guitarists of all time.

7. Robert White

Just as Jimmy Nolen was never recognized by James Brown, Motown records never paid recognition to their great studio musicians. Motown records could be instantly identified by the style of the studio musicians, but no one knew who they were, and they were never given credit on the albums they played on. Robert White was one of Motown Record’s famed “Funk Brothers.” Berry Gordy is said to have prevented them from touring as a band because he wanted to make sure he kept his best contract musicians all to himself. White played the intro to My Girl for the Temptations. The best disc for listening to this guitar master, besides the complete Motown box set, is the soundtrack for the movie “Standing in the Shadows of Motown,” the documentary film that tells the story of this group of the remarkable musicians that made up the “Funk Brothers.” While you’re at it, pick up the movie. It’s a story that deserves the telling, and the hearing and you’ll certainly agree that Robert White has contributed much to today’s guitar music.

6. Christopher Parkening

We’ve all heard of Andres Segovia, but unless you’re a classical guitarist, that’s probably where your knowledge of classical guitarists ends. Segovia’s mastery of his instrument was complete, and he could recognize the same talent in others. About Parkening, Sergovia stated that “Christopher Parkening is a great artist – he is one of the most brilliant guitarists in the world.” That alone should be reason enough to add a Parkening CD to your collection! He’s considered the best living classical guitarist in the world by many, and his devoted fans will argue vociferously that he could well be the greatest of all time. He also makes sure that his talent is shared with the world. If you happen to be near Bozeman, Montana in the summer, stop by the Montana State University Music School and sign up to take a master class with the man himself. Here, you can’t go wrong with any disc you choose, but Parkening Plays Bach from EMI is a personal favorite.

5. Paco Pena

We’ve all heard Flamenco guitarists, but few of them are household names. One that should be is Paco Pena. Pena’s biography is an amazing story of talent and dedication overcoming poverty. Pena was playing professionally by the age of ten. In his early twenties, he played at a “guitar-in” in London with Jimi Hendrix. Pena is a traditional Flamenco guitarist (as opposed to a modern Flamenco artist), and is recognized world wide for his virtuosity. If you can find a copy of the out of print, vinyl only, Paco Pena Live in London, you should definitely acquire it. For those of us with more modest means, however, the Decca label CD Fabulous Flamenco! is an excellent introduction to his music.

4. Phil Keaggy

It’s rumored that either Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton, when once was asked what it was like to be the greatest guitarist in the world, answered, “I don’t know, ask Phil Keaggy.” There’s no real proof to support either version of the story, though it does seem to be the case that Hendrix called Keaggy the best “up and coming guitarist today” on the Dick Cavett show. Keaggy really came to the national seen with his early ’70s rock trio, Glass Harp. An opening act for Chicago, Yes, Iron Butterfly, Hendrix and Traffic, Glass Harp was headed for rock-n-roll stardom. But it wasn’t to be. Keaggy’s parents were killed in a car accident and Keaggy left the rock scene a born-again Christian. Musically, Keaggy has remained innovative and vibrant, but few people outside of the Christian music circles are aware of his talent. Luckily, in recent years, Glass Harp has begun playing together again, and the superb rock imrov technique that made Keaggy an initial star can be seen showcased with musicians of equal talent once again. While Glass Harp’s self-titled 1970 debut album is a personal favorite of mine, being the first piece of vinyl I ever owned, the 3-disc set Stark Raving Jams is a delight that shouldn’t be missed. Taken from multiple shows, it’s a compilation album, so it lacks continuity, but it more than makes up for that with the sheer volume of magnificent performances. If you aren’t a fan of the extended improv jam sessions, no matter how tight, check out the live acoustic performance captured on the CD Philly Live! Phil Keaggy In Concert An Evening Of Acoustic Guitar.

3. Sol Ho’opi’i

Playing his own special C# tuning of a lap steel guitar, Solomon Ho’opi’i Ka’ai’ai was unquestionably the master of Hawaiian steel guitar from his first recording session in 1927 until he gave up his musical career to become an evangelist in 1938. Sol Ho’opi’i is to steel guitar what Les Paul is to electrics; he is simply the guy that did everything first. While much of Ho’opi’i’s music is still only to be found on old ’78s, the two CD set Master of the Hawaiian Guitar, Vol. 1 & 2 shouldn’t be missed. The recordings have all the defects of any recordings from those days, and you can tell that some songs are remixed from non-masters. But it doesn’t matter, no matter how grainy the recording, Ho’opi’i’s brilliant jazz and blues styling come through.

2. Leo Kottke

People don’t normally associate the Twin Cities in Minnesota with innovative musical talent (all you Prince fans can argue about that statement all you want, it’s still true!) But that’s where Leo Kottke’s unique acoustic sound was honed. Record labels kept trying to make Kottke into a “singer-songwriter,” a mold he knew he could never fit into. For one thing, he really didn’t write that good of a lyric. But more importantly, his singing voice, in his own words, is “geese farts on a foggy day.” He rarely plays live, though he does seem to manage to get to St. Cloud State University (his alma matter) in central Minnesota on a regular basis. A master craftsman on a 12-string, Kottke has a unique sound that is all his own. Kottke’s discography is a sketchy collection, his own experimentation combined with various attempts at vocals and backing bands seems to keep coming back to haunt Kottke’s recordings. His best work is without a doubt is his solo instrumental material. Mudlark, his first album with Capitol records from 1971 is most likely his very best individual work. The 2004 release, Try and Stop Me, is a more mature guitarist, but Kottke takes far fewer musical risks than on his earlier efforts.

1. Steve Cropper

Yes, the guy from the Blues Brothers movies. Yes, I’m serious. Steve Cropper’s career took an early jump start working with Otis Redding, he’s credited with helping write (Sitting on) The Dock of the Bay and Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa (Sad Song). His work with Booker-T and The MG’s is some of the tightest soul guitar work ever. Sam and Dave, Wilson Picket, and hosts of Memphis recording acts found their sound with Steve Cropper directing the studio recording, playing himself, coming up with pithy filler riffs, and doing the mix down and postproduction work. Cropper is best known for his minimalism. A guitar genius by any stretch of the imagination, he is an absolute genius in not to drawing attention to his playing while at the same time making it the center piece of the music. Listen to Booker-T and the MG’s Green Onions or the Blues Brothers cover of Sweet Home, Chicago and what makes them stand out is the amazing guitar work, but what you hear are the bass, organ, and horns. Cropper’s amazing ability to know when just enough is enough is unmatched. If you ever find the 1981 vinyl Playing My Thang! buy it and then let me buy it from you! You can hear Cropper at his very best with the CD re-release of the 1971 album With a Little Help From My Friends and you can always pick up a Booker-T and the MG’s “best of” collection as well.

So that’s our list for this column. It’s certainly not complete, and there’s more to come. In the meantime, hopefully, you can find at least one artist here that you’ve never heard of and explore their music or find a riff that inspires you and figure out how it’s played. Maybe you’ll hear a groove you’ve never heard before and bring it to your band or try to recreate it with your home gear to jam along. And maybe you can let me know what you agree with and disagree with in my list. Maybe there’s a better disc than ones I mentioned, or maybe you really, really think that one particular artist shouldn’t have been left off this list. That’s good too – talking about our music is almost as much fun as making it!

In the near future we’ll take an in-depth look at specific artists, with the intent of introducing you to the many great musicians out there who’s work can not only be great company, but which can provide the inspiration needed to take one more step on the path of guitar mastery. If you’ve suggestions for artists to cover in future columns, please feel free to write to me at David.Wagle@gmail.com

Those immortal words from David Letterman really hit home for me when we think of it in terms of playing guitar. Why do we have to think of playing guitar as a competition? The answer is fairly simple in terms of human psychology. Human beings are naturally competitive. We live in a world of competition, from sports, to battling for career advancements. Competition can be very healthy in the right areas. Let me share with you a few short stories and maybe a bit of advice on why I don’t see a lot of benefits in the competitive aspect of learning guitar.

I have been playing guitar for over 25 years. I play strictly for my own enjoyment, but over my years of study, have learned some advanced tricks and techniques. Our house is filled with teenagers and all their friends in that age group to mid 20’s. It is a very active household, so much so that I was contemplating installing revolving doors due to heavy traffic of all of their friends. Many of these people are guitarists. On one particular night, I fell victim to competition.

I was in the next room watching TV when I heard an amp fire up. I do not know who was even in that room, but he was playing guitar. It was a style of playing that I hadn’t heard before. He was playing a song that I knew quite well. Certain parts, he was playing hot, but other parts, he was just butchering. Next thing I knew, I had my guitar in my lap and my amp was turned up just a little bit louder and I proceeded to let this kid hear how that song SHOULD be played. After I finished, I heard total silence. I won, right? I showed him a thing or two!!! Next sound I heard was the front door closing, as whoever it was just left.

Believe it or not, my intentions were good when I fired up my amp. I thought that when he heard that song played properly, that maybe we’d hook up afterwards and I could help him learn it the right way. All I did was slam the door on this person forever. I definitely used the wrong approach. I never saw him again.

Another time a similar situation occurred. I was in the living room with my wife when somebody started playing guitar. The sounds I heard were definitely “rough,” to put it in good terms. I looked over at my wife and she said to me, in a rather sarcastic tone “OK Steve, go get your guitar and show him up!” This got me really thinking. Am I really like that? Am I that competitive? I didn’t like what I was realizing.

Many of you may know if you’ve read my previous article titled “Humble Pie” that I had a similar situation happen to me. The guitarist that I played with could have humbled just about anybody, and he knew it. He didn’t have anything to gain by getting competitive and beating me into the ground. He had a much better approach to teaching than I did, and I’ve managed to learn a few things from him on that topic.

The first thing I should have done would be to go into that room, introduce myself and say something like…”Hey, you play pretty good….I like your technique. I also play that song and if you don’t mind, I’d like to show you the way I play it. Then, maybe we can work on it together.” This approach would have opened doors where a competitive approach can close the doors for good.

You have to remember that when somebody plays something for you, they are doing the BEST job that they can do!! Respect that. Most people that pick up a guitar and try to learn to play simply won’t make it. They get discouraged and move on to something easier. They will never get past the early stages in their learning and the absolute last thing that they need is to get squashed like a bug by a far more experienced guitarist. Severe competition can squelch future talent.

Compliment people on their accomplishments, break the ice, challenge them, then show them the way. This way it will allow you to play your best for them in a non-threatening way. It will give them a goal to shoot for (to be able to play as good as you). Then the door is wide open for you to teach them how to get where they want to go. Who knows, you might just pick up a trick or two from them too. I’ve picked up a lot of tricks from other guitarists, some were better than me, some were worse, but one thing is certain, you will pick up absolutely nothing if the door is closed.

One of the first things I did when I was just learning guitar was to seek out other guitarists that played and tried to get them to help me. I will always remember the first contact I made. I saw this guy play a song on stage and it just totally blew me away. I wanted nothing more than to learn to play that song. I almost forced this guy to hook up with me and show me this song. At the time, I maybe knew 3 chords. I was a total embarrassment of a guitar player. I did manage to set up a time to go over to his house and he did work with me. Of course, I couldn’t execute anything that he showed me at the time, but I took good notes. I wrote down everything he said. I worked diligently trying to learn that song and after a short time, I could play it at will. To this day, I still play that song, or at least part of it almost every time I practice. I will always remember how I got my start.

Somebody that was MILES above my skill level took the time to help me, didn’t try to blow me away, and gave me encouragement. Might be the only reason that I’m still playing today. Dave, if you ever read this…..THANK YOU!!

Somewhere along my travels, I remember a quote (although I do not remember who said it, or the exact verbiage), it goes something like this: The more people you can help to get what they want, the sooner you can have anything YOU want. I guess I’m a firm believer in “what comes around goes around.”

The whole point of this article is simply this: Don’t try to blow people out of the water. This is not a race. There is no prize for the fastest chops. I know that at times it can be fun to compete, or maybe even necessary if you’re fighting for a spot in a band or something, but most of the time, it’s just ego. Ego will slam more doors for you than it will open. If you really want to take your playing to the next level, try to get as many doors open for you as you can. Sometimes, there could be a hidden gem for you behind one of the doors you might open.

When musicians perform, it’s all on display. Music puts you in an especially vulnerable position; especially if it’s music you’ve written yourself. The odd thing is, musicians should look out for each other. We have one major thing in common, yet we let it cause massive differences. Why? Surely we should encourage and nurture one another. But sadly, that’s not always the case. I, personally, think “Battle Of The Bands” nights are very mean-spirited, as it actually instigates arguments and comparisons. I would do an open mic night any night of the week opposed to a Battle Of The Bands, because the atmosphere’s better. Everyone’s having a go, nobody’s better than anyone else, it’s a much more pleasant situation to be in.

But there’s one thing that’s been bothering me ever since the question was posed to me – what does make us feel like performing is a form of competing? This is very deep stuff. It goes right to the very core of human instinct.

The reason why we perceive performing as a competition is because it’s the easiest way to gauge our own progress. I genuinely believe that. I don’t think it’s about satisfaction or winning (sure, there’s that side to it I suppose), I think we ‘compete’ with other musicians to measure our own skill. For example, if you’re at a gig and there’s another guitarist there, and you turn to another member of your band and ask them “is he/she a better guitarist than me?” you’re checking to see if you’re making progress. I do it all the time. In fact, I think the reason I possibly do it a little more than others (e.g. all the time) is that I’m self-taught, so I’ve never really had anyone telling me how fast I should be progressing (which is a bonus of sorts, I feel). And seeing as humans are, by their very nature, insecure, it’s only natural to seek assurance. This has nothing to do with who has the best gear, the best riffs etc. it’s about basic human psychology. The most competitive people in the world are often the most insecure, and that also applies to the world of performing.

As proof that this theory has merit, think about the last time you were in a music shop and there was a one-finger Smoke On The Water sensation doing the rounds (or something similar – it could be any of the Forbidden Guitar Shop Tunes, from Stairway To Heaven to Smells Like Teen Spirit). Did you ever compare yourself to them in a competitive light? Of course not, because you know you’re better than him. See? You don’t need to think about whether you’re better than him, so you don’t feel competitive (I happen to be very insecure at music shops, because I’m hit with Music Shop Amnesia – where you can’t think of ANYTHING to play – and, naturally there’s always someone at the classical guitar section shredding his way through a concerto while discussing the finer points of flatwound and roundwound strings and coming up with an alternative to fossil fuel).

However, the quality of your own personal playing definitely enters your head more when you watch the seven-year-old next to the Marshall stack reciting a Steve Vai solo perfectly. And you feel competitive and a little insecure in your own playing because you’re wondering if you’re better/could be better than the guitar shop virtuosos, whom I often suspect have been hired especially to stop me loitering in music shops when I’m broke. I’m not saying a little healthy competition can’t be good for you. If it makes you go home and practice then surely some good has come from it – I always practice more after seeing someone who’s a fret-board wizard. But “healthy competition” can often lead to “that lad’s wearing a Hendrix shirt, let’s dual” mentality, and it shouldn’t. Guitarists (all musicians, actually) have one brilliant thing in common – the ability to make music, and that’s something that should be shared and used to make new connections rather than used as argument fodder.

Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a man outside in a Jimi Hendrix shirt that I just don’t like the look of…

Things continued to move forward for me and I quickly outgrew my instructor. I had reached the point where I felt my skill level was equal to his and that he couldn’t teach me anything else. This is where I made my first mistake!

Rather than search for a more advanced instructor, I took matters into my own hands and decided to self-educate myself. Let me say to all of you reading this, that this is the long way to go about things. I should have looked for a higher quality instructor that could have made things a lot easier and quicker for me in the long run. I will explain why.

At first, the self-education process seemed to be going well. After all, I was playing the music that I wanted to play and I thought I was starting to sound pretty decent. I upgraded my equipment to an electric guitar and a nice amp with a few effects. Unfortunately, things unknowingly hit a peak for me. I was as far as I was going, but didn’t know it. My practice times grew shorter and shorter and my progress had all but stalled. I had nobody to challenge me and drive me forward.

Eventually, things got boring for me and I finally sold off my equipment and quit playing for a few years. My love for music eventually won me back over and I purchased a new guitar and a new amp and decided to dive back in. Before long, I was rocking like I had never taken any time off. I learned new songs and had a fire built under me that was burning hot.

I had the good fortune of meeting a very good lead guitarist who played in a huge local band in Indiana. His band sold out the house every night they played. We talked for a while and he agreed to come over to my house and play with me. I was so pumped up about this. I wanted to show off some of my stuff and try to learn whatever he could show me. What I got was nothing short of humiliating.

He got to my house, drug in his equipment, and set up. Once he fired up his amp and starting playing and, well, it blew me away!! He was WAY above my skill level and I knew it. After listening to him play for a few minutes, the songs I had planned to play for him suddenly became embarrassing. I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t even play. I just clammed up.

He started off with this little blues lead up and down the neck that just totally stunned me by his speed and accuracy. I mean, he was all over the place. Fast, and clean and never missed a note! He eventually talked me into playing some rhythm track for him. I got to pick the song. He didn’t know it. He watched me play the chords for about 2 minutes; then he determined the key that it was in. Without ever hearing the song I was playing, he told me to just repeat the chord progression that I was using, and he took the lead. Made it up on the fly! I’m telling you, his lead almost peeled the paint off of my walls. How could I play after listening to him?

Fortunately, this wonderful guitarist was also a wonderful educator. He sensed my discomfort and responded to it with praise. He got me to feel comfortable with my current abilities, but also focused on what I needed to work on. He gave me lessons in music theory, some cool stuff to play and some simple and fun stuff that I could learn on the spot and we could rock to.

He showed me the pentatonic scale. I had learned this scale a long time ago, but mostly forgotten it because I didn’t have much of a use for it. After running through this scale a few times, he showed me how I could use it to take a lead on almost any song I want to as long as you know what key you’re in. We discussed a little music theory on determining the proper key and then a challenge was issued. He laid down the rhythm track and told me to make up a lead. WHAT???!!!! I can’t do that! As it turns out, I COULD do that using what he had just showed me.

Of course the lead work I did was not going to make any hit CD anytime soon, but this was just a starting point for me. It took me over that hump and started me learning and advancing again. After he left, I found myself playing along with Clapton, and being able to make up a solo over top of the CD that I was playing along with and have it sound good!

The bottom line here is simple. He taught me more in 4 hours than I had learned on my own in probably 4 years! He realized what my current skill level was. He challenged me. He showed me how, and told me why I should do things. Perhaps a few people out there could have what it takes to self educate themselves, but I now know that I wasn’t one of them (even though I thought I was). We might not all be fortunate enough to meet a lead guitarist of a band that is willing to teach us, but one thing I took away from all of this is simple. Find a better instructor. They are out there, but don’t go it alone.

Guitar Noise is an excellent place to get great instruction. If you can’t make it to one of their workshops, then definitely find yourself a better local instructor to take you to the next level. If you can’t find a tutor, then play with every guitarist that you can that is better than you and try to learn as much as you can from them. I went from being embarrassed to play in front of good guitarists to “Bring it on!” I know you can too, but we all need instructors.

I hope this is helpful to most of us that are struggling out there. This is just the first tip of many that I have on how we can all….”Take it to the next Level.”

Enjoy.

If you’ve been involved in music for any stretch of time, and if you can look deep enough within music to find its social side, chances are you’ve thought about getting involved or are already involved in a band. Music cannot be a strictly individual affair; it’s one of the many things in life where two heads (or more) are usually better than one. Hey, if you think you can make it on your own, more power to you. There’s no reason you can’t.

But there are several reasons why people want to be involved in a band. They might get shy when performing and feel better when other people perform with them, they might see music as a strictly social affair (those two definitely apply to me), or whatever. Fact of the matter is, as long is there is music, there will be bands to play it. And judging from the page you’re on now, you’ve given it a thought. This article will cover starting a band, rehearsing, performing and finding work – the main things the average band works toward.

OK, so you’ve decided to start a band. Who do you include? Who does what? How many people? A lot of things have to be taken into consideration when you’re starting your new band. Now, just to get off on the right foot, don’t think of a band name BEFORE you’ve assembled a band and at least had one practice. Get the feel of the band before you brand it for life. You might call it The Exploited Youths and imagine you’re going to be a punk band, but you may discover punk isn’t for you. Then you’re stuck with an inappropriate name that you have to change. Don’t do it.

Assembling your band is probably a lot easier if your friends play instruments. The reason I suggest picking friends is because you know them (and they know you) better than a stranger you read about in the personals at Zed + Gimp’s Music Store. If it’s a choice between a friend and “22y/o drummer seeking band, n/s gsoh inf: Godsmack, RATM, Sepultura”, go with the friend EVERY time. Another thing – if you’ve got the choice between a phenomenal drummer who’s only a mild acquaintance and a really good friend who perhaps isn’t as technically skilled a drummer, go with the really good friend. Most musicians, and not just drummers (in my case it was a drummer, but it can be anyone), are bound to improve but relationships might not. I learned this the hard way – on paper, my last band would have set the world on fire, until I discovered our interests differed unbelievably. He has since left and we have taken on the very good friend, and the relationship within the band is much better… there’s a much better atmosphere.

Assembling a band, by the way, is a LOT easier if you are in school/work/somewhere you meet practically every day. Not only is it a lot easier to arrange rehearsals and establish a band to begin with, but you’ve also got an advantage over bands that meet in the Zed + Gimp personals. I’m sure 22y/o drummer is a very nice person, but you don’t know him or his style.

So now you’re in a band. Congratulations! But now, you need to rehearse. If you don’t, you’ll never get the better things about band life – One-hundred-date-mega-stadium-tours, fan sites spreading rumours about your personal life, people saying that one member of the band is dead based on “clues” on album covers, and executives camping outside your doorstep.

Starting out, depending on how well you know each other and how good you are at playing together, rehearsals will take time. You’ll need to learn a couple of sets of songs and get them down cold. Not only the songs themselves, but also whatever arrangements and presentation you choose. You should plan on doing some intense playing in order to get your act together.

But once you’ve gotten that down, you don’t need to rehearse that often, just enough so that the material doesn’t go stale and you don’t lose a feel for the other band-members’ tendencies. It may sound silly, but it happens – you come back after long hiatuses with different interests and ideas (“Guys, I’d like you to meet Yoko, and she’s got a lot of fantastic ideas.”) Don’t let this happen. Realistically, aim to practice at least once a month, but if you can manage once a week, that’s ideal. If you’re in school, try and find an empty room (a music room, a hall, whatever) to rehearse in. If not, try and rent out a local community centre for a few hours – I think you’ll find they’re very reasonable.

Now another crucial question arises – what do you rehearse? From personal experience, I usually find it’s better to rehearse something everyone in the band knows. For example, the band I’m in now (incidentally, it’s the most successful one yet) was really having trouble clicking as a group – we just couldn’t get it together. I was trying to teach the other members the parts for Nirvana’s epic Come As You Are, and it wasn’t going too badly either. But something was missing. Then, Electric Six released the controversial Gay Bar. We all found it hilarious, we all knew the parts for it, and we did it first time without a hitch. The next rehearsal, we did Come As You Are too, with very few problems. It’s simply a matter of finding a common interest and using it as a method of branching out.

Now for another issue that will come up forever – original material. Unless some members have been in bands before together, there’s probably no set-in-stone lyrics man, and usually in new bands the person with a lot of ideas doesn’t like to impose. If you feel one person (maybe it’s you, maybe it’s the keyboard player, whoever) has the majority of the good ideas, and they obviously have a gift for that sort of thing, use that person to wrangle ideas from other people. For example, Freddy Mercury (of Queen) was the main lyrics producer, if anyone else (usually John Deacon) felt they had a good idea he would sit with them and work on it. All original material should be a collaborative effort. If you’ve written the lyrics and the music, let the drummer pitch in with beat/fill ideas. Let the drummer write his own part – most drummers worth their salt can put a nice, appropriate beat to anything. When you work with other people, it’s surprising how easy it is to make music.

So now you have your band and some music for your band to play! Excellent! Now comes the part most bands (rock bands in particular) aim for – getting work. If I can give one piece of advice to you (I hope I’ve given you more than one piece in this relatively lengthy article, but oh well), let it be this – do NOT look at music as the solution to your financial struggles. I HATE to sound clichéd, but if you’re in music for the money, then you’re in music for all the wrong reasons. Most gigs pay pittance, and £50/$50 doesn’t go far when it’s split 3/4/5/6 ways. Some gigs won’t even pay at all. Just take work wherever you can find it. My band started out playing benefit concerts for issues we care about and school concerts, and we still are, and we’re still not being paid. The fact is we do it because we care about the charities we play for – and the more concerts we do, the more people have seen us. It’s all about EXPOSURE. At every concert you play, there could be somebody in the audience who’s interested in you. Spread yourself around. SOMEBODY is bound to like you.

I hope this has at least enlightened you somewhat, and I wish you every success in your band. At the very worst, you’ll have learned a valuable lesson about how NOT to do things and at least you can say you tried. At the very best, well… the sky’s the limit.

Good luck.

Practicing

Playing Versus Practicing – Recently Jennifer Batten (solo artist, Jeff Beck, Michael Jackson band member) did a seminar at Tokyo School of Music, the school I run in Tokyo. She said this about practice; “Practice as much as you possibly can stand without it turning into something you hate to do.” Practice should be fun but challenging. Practice should be done with specific goals in mind. I know tons of guitarists who think they are practicing but what they are really doing is just playing. Playing is important too but practice is something different. What you practice should come out in your playing. If it doesn’t, you’re not practicing efficiently. Before you sit down to practice, make sure you know what goals you are trying to reach by practicing, short term and long. It may even help to keep a log of your practice sessions. When and how long you practiced and what specifically you practiced. If you have a guitar teacher, go over the log with him at your lessons.

Continuance – Just like going to the gym, the important thing is to practice just about every day. Four hours today and nothing else for a week will amount to close to nothing. If you can only stand practicing an hour or so, that’s fine, just as long as it is almost every day.

Goals – Remember the dreaded F chord? You almost gave up didn’t you? Me, too. After you got it under your fingers, it was smooth sailing for a while until the next hurdle came up. More so than any other instrument, the guitar will challenge you this way. That is why it is important to set realistic goals for yourself. Always remember, nothing can be learned in an hour or so. The goals you set should be for weeks or months. Some of the things that I am currently practicing will take me a year to get together. Don’t get discouraged, anything worth learning will take time.

Balance – The way you practice should change with time. I’ve been playing for twenty somewhat years, so what I practice these days, is completely different than what I worked on my first few years. I know all my scales and have enough chops that I don’t need to work on those very much. I usually work on improvising over really hard chord changes. Stuff like John Coletrain’s “Giant Steps” or a Wayne Shorter song. I may sequence my own chord changes and try playing over them. I also find that working on the tunes for the gigs I do often turn into a good learning experience. For that reason I never turn down gigs that I know are going to be a real pain in the butt to get the tunes together for.

In the Beginning – If you are just starting out, you should dedicate a lot more time to technique than I do nowadays. But don’t let that be the only thing you work on. If I could change anything about the way I practiced when I first started out, I would cut down the time I worked on technique and would have dedicated more time to rhythm playing and reading. When I think back, it kind of cracks me up because I was working on scales and arpeggios for about five or six hours every day. I was sure that I was destined to be the fastest guitarist in the universe.

Life Lesson 1 (Chris gets forced to look in the mirror) – When I went to MI in the eighties, I was shocked because every student around me was really, really fast. You have to recall, this was about the same time Yngwie Malmsteen and Joe Satriani were at their zenith and Paul Gilbert was just getting his start in Mr. Big. Everyone was lightning fast and it dawned on me that I had been focusing on something that was soon to be in little demand. I completely failed to shine amongst my fellow students. I have to admit, all the scales and arpeggios I worked on in my younger days left me with chops that I still have today but there was a time that I struggled because I didn’t have my rhythm and reading chops together. I realized that I was way more likely to get a gig because I could play great rhythm or could read anything upside down than because I have fast fingers. It is now a whole different era of music and chops don’t count as much any more. That’s because the eighties was one big guitar sporting event.

I actually notice a whole different trend going on with young guitarists these days. It seems a lot of students have no interest in getting their chops together at all, which is a whole different problem. The point I’m trying to make here is that balance is the key to good practice. Work on your chops, your reading and comping skills, your ears and your theory knowledge.

Wasting Time – Don’t practice something you aren’t going to use. We guitarists often make the mistake of practicing exercises that have nothing to do with music at all. It makes no sense because there are so many things that we could be working on to increase our chops that we can actually use in a song or something. Instead we tend to work on these real mathematical chromatic exercises or something that will never find its way into a guitar solo. I often get students who ask me why, even though they practice all the time, they don’t have any chops. They haven’t realized it but they actually do have chops but the only thing they can play with real precision is these strange mathematical chromatic lines. Work on what you can use.

Ruts

Stop What you’re Doing – Sometimes you will feel frustrated about your playing. Don’t worry, it’s completely natural. It seems like you practice and practice and nothing seems to change. You sometimes seem to lose all your creativity. I often have this problem myself. This is what I do: I stop whatever I’m doing and get out a CD of some musician I really admire. I listen to the CD and find some phrase that I want to know and figure it our by ear. I may have to slow it down to do so. I then analyze it to find out how I can use it (this is why music theory is so important). Then I practice it over some chord changes and let it be come a part of my vocabulary. It never fails to amaze me how something like this can start to get my creative mind working again.

Life Lesson 2 (Joe’s Advise) – When I was studying guitar at music school in the eighties, I fell into a horrible rut halfway through the year. I asked Jazz legend Joe Diorio what he thought I should do. He asked me; “Have you been out on a date lately?” I answered; “No.” He asked; “How about to the movies?” I answered: “No.” He then asked me; “Read any good books lately?” I answered; “Well, I’ve kinda been looking at a book on orchestration these days.” Then he said; “No wonder you can’t do anything creative on the guitar, your life is a complete bore.” He then instructed me to not touch a guitar on Sundays and have some fun. Go on a date or read a book, see a movie, give your brain some food. To be a creative musician your life has to be somewhat creative. One time I sent all my guitar students of to make pottery one weekend.

Get Going on Your Daily Practicing

Some Practice Advise – Use rhythm whenever you can. The one thing that hasn’t changed about the way I practice is exactly that. When I started going to lessons my teacher would often give me scales and the chord changes that would work with them. I would tape myself playing the changes on one of them super gigantic tape players that we had back in the dark ages and jam along with it. These days I use a Yamaha QY20 that I program the changes into. It makes practice time way more interesting and helps to develop my ears. A metronome is fine for practicing but it will only help your rhythmic ear. It won’t help your harmonic ear.

The Five Areas of Practice – As I said before, what you practice will change as you advance as a player. No matter how long you play, the basic five things you work on will most likely stay the same. The amount of time spent on each of them will probably vary to accommodate your changing strengths and weaknesses. I can’t tell you exactly what and how much you should be working on any one of these five different sections because I have never heard you play so I don’t know your strengths and weaknesses. Nor have I ever discussed your goals as a guitarist with you. You or you and your guitar teacher will have to decide how much time to dedicate to each one of them. Use the following section as a guide.

Scales, Arpeggios and Chops

Single Note Studies – Scales and arpeggios are important to work on for two reasons. One reason is because the only way to develop chops is by practicing them and the other is because any solo you play, regardless of genre, is going to be based on a scale or an arpeggio. If you don’t have much experience working on scales and arpeggios, at first the whole thing will be just plain mathematics and that’s okay for the time being. Don’t worry if at first the whole thing seems a little mechanical at first.

Start with your major scales. There are five patterns, roots in black:

Start with just one and practice it up and down. Make sure to use a metronome or better yet sequence, record or get a friend to play a rhythm track for you to play over. What chords do you use to play over? Try starting in C major. Use any of these chords to make a rhythm track: Cmaj, Dmin, Emin, Fmaj, Gmaj, Amin and Bdim. If you want to, try using 7th. chords: Cmaj7, Dmin7, Emin7, Fmaj7, G7, Amin7 and Bmin7b5. Try moving around to different keys and use alternate picking.

After you feel comfortable playing up and down the scale try to work in sequences of thirds and fourths. Slowly work in all the other five scale patterns until you can play all over the neck.

Do the same with the arpeggios. Try to learn all the arpeggios that are inside each of the five scale patterns. That’s right, you’ll find a Cmaj, Dmin, Emin, Fmaj, Gmaj, Amin and Bdim arpeggio in each of the five scale patterns. See if you can match them up to the proper chords in the chord progression you are improvising over.

The goal here is to be able to improvise freely all over the neck so make sure to make some time to just play randomly. Try to make up your own phrases. A good guitar solo should have a motif so try to create melodies.

Your goal is to eventually learn and use to improvise using the: Major Scale, Minor and Major Pentatonic scales, The Blues scale, the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aolian and Locrian modes. After that, the Harmonic minor scale and the melodic minor scale and its seven modes. The symmetrical scales: the whole tone and diminished half/whole scale, triad and 7th arpeggios. Starting from scratch, it should take you a good ten years or so to learn how to use them freely. I’m still working on them myself.

You may choose to start on the blues rather than the major scale patterns. That’s what I did. There are also five patterns of the pentatonic and blues scales. Just record or sequence a blues and go to town.

Rhythm – Make sure to be aware of what you are playing rhythmically. Try playing whole, half, quarter, sixteenth notes and triplets. Sometimes we tend to just play without thinking of how we rhythmically play the notes.

Life Lesson 3 (Scott Henderson lets me have it) – One time I was in a guitar lesson with Scott Henderson. We where playing some Jazz standard or something and I was doing my solo. He stopped me in the middle of it and said; “Chris, you know what scales to play and you have a good sense of melody but your rhythm sucks!” He continued; “If you are going to play a triplet, play a triplet. If you want to play sixteenth notes, play sixteenth notes. Everything you play is in the middle somewhere”. I had never actually though about it before, as strange as it may seem. I went home that night and got out the metronome and made a conscious effort to divide up what I play in definite rhythmic subdivisions.

Chords and Rhythm Playing

Harmony – Harmony is one of the most overlooked aspects of practice. It’s strange because we generally start off playing the chords to our favorite songs. As soon as we learn to solo a bit, we never think about them again. When I started out, I made the mistake of buying one of those chord dictionary books that just ended up frustrating me because there was so many chords and no explanation about how to use them. It is important to see how the chords fit together with one another. I use the “Real Book” to practice with a lot of the time. The “Real Book” is a fake book of hundreds of Jazz standards. I look at the chords and try to find voicings that work well with one another. I may even record them and improvise over the changes after sight reading the head. I can knock off my sight reading, scales and chords all in one shot this way. It’s best to kill a bunch of birds with one stone when it comes to practicing. Each individual style of music has its own rhythmic styles and unique chord voicings so work a little on everything. Some styles lend them self well to the fingers rather than the pick in the right hand and some, like Funk, leave you little choice but the pick.

Reading

Get Going Now – This is where I made my big mistake as an aspiring guitarist. I didn’t dedicate enough time to reading. I still regret it to this day. I’ve learned to read okay I guess, but I wish I was a better sight reader. It would have saved me a lot of stress. As I said before, I tend to use the “Real Book” to practice my reading. Get going early on if you can.

Theory

Brain Power – Music theory is important because without understanding theory you will never really be able to analyze music. Without being able to analyze music you will never be really be able to understand why you like certain songs or guitar solos that your hear. Without being able to analyze music you will also never be able to conceptualize certain melodic or harmonic techniques and make them your own. Especially if you want to get into Jazz, you will need to understand theory because of the complicated nature of chord scale relationships in the genre.

Since you are working on your major scales, start working on writing them too. Get yourself a good theory book and check it out. Scales, intervals, chords and arpeggios are all important to study. The good thing about theory is that you don’t necessarily need a guitar to work on it. You can do it on your morning commute or while you are waiting in some line somewhere. Theory will help you glue together all the other things together.

Tunes and Your Ears

Use Your Ears – Figuring songs and solos are important for developing you ears. I was fortunate to not have all the resources that we have today. I was forced to get out the records and work everything out using my ears. I think it is great that we have everything transcribed these days but try to the transcriptions as a tool to help you figure stuff out. Try it first using your ears.

Life Lesson 4 (The most depressing day of my life) – When I was about fifteen, I was practicing in my bedroom with the windows open (the joys of suburbia) and the guy that lived down the street came to my window. He was, oh, I guess, about twenty-one or two or so and said he was playing the drums in this band that played around town and that one of the guitarists had just quit and that he heard me playing in my room and maybe I should audition. I told him I was only fifteen and probably couldn’t play in bars but he said we’ll worry about that later. He said he would pick me up at about 7:30 and bring me to the warehouse where his band plays. I was in heaven. While I put on my favorite concert T-shirt and jeans and got my guitar and amp together I imagined that I went to the audition, played some incredible stuff and everyone fell in love with me and hugged me and welcomed me into their band and I was on my way to being the most famous guitarist the world has ever known.

So, I get to the warehouse and the other guitarist was there. His name was George. He was the coolest thing I had ever seen. He had this real long hair and played a Flying V through a real big Music Man half stack. Anyways, he asked me what I wanted to play. I said I liked Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. So we started it and it fell apart because I only knew some of it. We went on to something else and it fell apart too. Finally he asked me if I knew something easy like “Johnny B. Goode” and I didn’t. I could tell that the whole thing was a fiasco and I had no right even being there in the first place.

George was a real decent cat. Even though he knew I didn’t have enough experience to ever play with them, he told me to get some songs together, really together, the intros, endings and everything in-between and come back again. I went home, and for the second time in my life debated quitting or not. As you know by now, I chose to not to quit.

What I decided to do was to build a repertoire of songs, from beginning to end paying attention to all the small details. I also decided that the songs I would learn would have to be universal standards, songs that I could pull out of my hat on a moment’s notice, on request, songs that I could play anywhere, on an audition or when I sit in on someone’s gig. And that’s exactly what I did.

Strangely enough I would end up working with George later down the road and we would laugh at times thinking about the little fifteen year old who couldn’t even tune his guitar who came to audition five years before hand. The lesson that George taught me became one of the most important lessons I ever had, and thinking back upon it, I never thanked him for it. So if you read this George, Thanks.

Whew, took me long enough to tell you the story. The point is: learn as many standards as you can, and every detail counts. The key word here is “standards,” songs that you can use and people will request you to play, not just your favorite songs. Those are okay to learn too but whether they will get you any work is a different thing all together. In the school that I run in Tokyo I have the students play in their instrumental ensemble classes such songs as: “Freeway Jam” and “Blue Wind” by Jeff Beck and “Footprints” by Wayne Shorter. “Watermelon Man” by Herbie Hancock and “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” by Joe Zawinul. By knowing tunes like these you will always be able to sit in on other musician’s gigs. I also have the students learn some Blues, Rock and Funk standards also.

Listen – One of the most important things you can do but a lot of people forget is to listen. You will be surprised how much you can absorb from just listening alone. I usually tell my students that they have to get the blues together before anything else. Blues is the mother to all modern music. For that reason I think some time should definitely be dedicated to at least listening to it while learning it. Besides the Blues, there is a ton of stuff to listen to. If I had to suggest some CD’s to learn from I would suggest these:

Blues

Stevie Ray Vaughn – “Couldn’t Stand The Weather” – Good overview of the blues.

Muddy Waters – “Best Of” – Once you hear these tunes you’ll understand how someone like Jimi Hendrix and the 60s musical era was born.

Albert King – “Best Of” – Just good plain blues. A dictionary of guitar blues licks.

Rock

Jeff Beck – “Blow By Blow,” “Guitar Shop” – An old one and a newer one. Jeff gave the guitar a voice in instrumental music.

Jimi Hendrix – “Are you Experienced,” “Axis: Bold as Love,” “Electric Ladyland” – Jimi Hendrix took various styles of music and combined them to make something completely new. He would change guitar playing forever. Without him, we would still be in the dark ages.

Led Zeppelin – “1″, “2″ – Jimmy Page is a genius song writer and player. The blues influenced him immensely.

Fusion

John Scofield – “Still Warm,” “A Go Go” – Great fusion guitarist. Before you start getting into scales other then the major scale and its modes and pentatonic scales, adjust your ears by listen to John. Warning: like anything great, it will take you a few listens to get used to.

Pat Metheny – “Bright Size Life,” “Letter from Home” – Again an old one and a newer one. Pat Metheny is a genius because he is a true artist who manages to appeal to a wide audience. A great improviser and writer.

Weather Report – “Heavy Weather” – No guitar playing going on here but great writing and incredible synergy.

Miles Davis – “Nefertiti,” “Miles Smiles,” “The Sorcerer” – Classic Miles Davis, No guitar here either but improvisation at its very best.

Chris Juergensen – “Prospects” – Just Kidding!

Funk

James Brown – “Best Of” – Just for the grooves.

Classical

Bela Batok – “Concerto for Orchestra” – Bold melodies. A dictionary of orchestration.

Stravinsky – “Symphony of Psalms,” “The Firebird Suite” – Scary. Harmonically intense.

Of course these suggestions are my personal favorites. Ask around and research yourself. If you decide to get any of these CDs or any CDs for that matter, I suggest you buy one at a time. Really ingest them one by one. Let each one become your personal friend before buying the next.

Education

Equations – Good practice is only half the equation. The other half is education. Although I’m a big fan of formal music education, there is informal education. I mean private lessons at your local music store or with someone who has enough experience to point you in the proper direction. You can even find ways to educate yourself. The site you are looking at right now is one good example. No matter how you decide to get a musical education, the musical education is only as important as the practicing. One without the other neutralizes them both. Remember this; education will not make you a great guitarist, it will only provide a map on how to get to that destination. You, as the driver have to get yourself there. If you think a million guitar lessons will make you the greatest player around your wrong. Only the practice in conjunction with the lessons will. I often get questions from students asking why, even though they come to classes everyday, don’t seem to be improving on the guitar. The answer is simple, they’re coming to classes but they aren’t practicing what was covered in the classes. Even if you understand the concept covered in the class, it will never find its way into your playing without some good old fashioned practice.

The Perfect Student – Before you become the perfect player try to become the perfect student. I personally believe the keys to me becoming a somewhat successful guitarist was one; all the great teachers I had along the way, and two; all the great students I have had. They both have been the source of endless inspiration. When you find yourself a great teacher, keep him on his feet. Ask questions and challenge him from time to time. I drove my first teacher, Wayne Reese, nuts. I asked him some questions he probably never heard before: “Mr. Reese, why does a blues scale work over both dominant chords and minor chords?” “Why are all the strings on the guitar tuned in fourths except the second string? Instead of a B string, shouldn’t it be a C string?” “Why does a melodic minor scale get played ascending one way and descending an other?” I bet he was researching stuff all over the place before the next lesson. When I shipped off to California, Mr. Reese told me that the lessons with me were fun and he learned some stuff too. The student teacher relationship is exactly that, a relationship. It shouldn’t be a one sided thing at all.

Finding a good teacher – Research is important here. Ask around. If your local community college has a music program, they may be able to point you to a good teacher. Most music stores offer lessons too. If you are in high school, even if you aren’t active in the school orchestra, ask the music teacher if he can suggest someone. Try a search on the Web; “guitar lessons in your town.” If you are in the Los Angeles or Tokyo area, ask me! Whatever you do, when you find a perspective teacher, meet him first. Ask questions. Ask him to give you a basic one year plan. If he is a good teacher, he will meet with you and ask you some questions too. Questions like; how long you’ve been playing, who you listen to, and what goals you have for the future. Like I said before, it has to be a relationship. And any relationship starts with communication.

What to look for in a teacher – A teacher should cover a lot of basses. He should be teaching you about chords and scales, theory, reading and even help you learn some of your favorite tunes and some standards. Too much of any one thing will be bad in the long run. It is also about motivation. Your teacher should have a genuine interest in your advancement. My first teacher turned me into such a fan of education that I quit taking lessons from him and enrolled at a school of higher (music) education. The goal of a good teacher is to provide the tools to the student that will eventually lead the student to outgrow the teacher. You, like me, may just decide to enroll yourself in a great school like MI, LAMA, Berklee or (shameless plug) Tokyo School of Music.

The “Real Book” – The “Real Book” that I use is pretty difficult to find these days. There are some other great fake books that you can get:

1. The New Real Book Vol.1
2. The New Real Book Vol.2
3. The New Real Book Vol.3
4. The Latin Real Book

Music Theory:

1. The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine

Book Link: http://www.shermusic.com/

Good luck on your never ending adventure because it is just that, never ending. I still consider myself a music student and I will continue to practice and grow as a musician for the rest of my days and I hope you will too. If you read this all the way to the bottom, I would like to congratulate you. You have taken your first steps in becoming the musician you are destined to become. Please e-mail me with any questions or suggestions you might have.

Until next time…

Betty - My heart was beating as I waited outside the door of the little studio where I was about to get my first lesson on the guitar at twelve years old. I prayed to God the night before; “I wanna play just like Jimmy Page.” My new teacher called me into the room and asked me to take out the $50 guitar my parents bought me for Christmas. He asked me to take a good look at it. He then asked me what I thought it looked like. I didn’t know the answer. He said; “it’s shaped kinda like a girl don’t you think?” “Kinda curvy,” he said. He then told me to treat it like a girl. “Hold it gently, treat it nice and don’t let it get dirty.” It’s true when you think about it though. Nobody I know names their guitar “Pete” or “Joe.” They usually give it a girl’s name, like “Lucille” or something. My guitar’s name is “Betty.”

Keep on moving - It is shaped like a girl, but why? Why did the guitar get built in the first place? What makes the guitar different from all the other instruments? I’ll answer it for you. Unlike a piano, you can carry it around with you. That’s why the guitar got invented. Most historians would agree that it was born in or around the desert, somewhere in the east, maybe around the Arabian Peninsula or the Persian Gulf. You see, people had to move around a lot in those days; you went where the water or game was. They couldn’t carry a piano around on a camel (or whatever guys rode around on in those days) so they wired some gut strings on a wooden thing with some holes in it to amplify the sound and carried it around with them. Without a doubt they used it by itself or in a group to accompany themselves, probably singing tunes about life and love and things like that. I must stress the word accompany. You can carry a violin around with you, but you are gonna look silly accompanying yourself singing a tune with it. The polyphony of the guitar, which would develop over time, is what would eventually make the guitar the most popular instrument on the planet.

Those guitars weren’t called guitars in those days and didn’t have six strings like guitars do today. And they probably looked different, although it was basically the same thing that Jimmy Page played on “Whole Lotta Love” that made me get down on my knees on the night before my first lesson. The romance of the guitar is found in its mobility. Even the first guitarists were rolling stones, travelers, playing under the stars.

Inroads - The guitar would eventually find its way into Spain and the Troubadours would carry it around Europe singing the same songs celebrating life in different languages. The guitar would get all its strings in Spain, become popular and eventually develop into the modern day guitar.

Appeal - One of the reasons the guitar is so accepted by the masses is that it is the true instrument of the common man. The problem back in the old days was there was no electricity. These days, if you wanted to throw a party and get all your friends over to dance, you would just plug in a radio and go to it. Four-hundred years ago, if you wanted to dance you had to hire an orchestra, since there where no radios. If you didn’t have any cash, you would have to make your own music. I imagine all the neighborhood cats would bring their guitars down to the local watering hole and play some tunes while the girls would dance and sing and generally have a good time. This tradition is still alive in Flamenco music today. The guitar is a radio.

Spending money - I’m gonna have to go backwards here and give you a little history lesson. In the 1300s all of a sudden, the European population got a middle class. It is for a reason you would probably never imagine: The Plague. The plague killed off about a third of all Europeans back in those days. Since all those people died, a labor shortage was born. Since there weren’t enough workers, the workers demanded better wages. Europe had some cash and they wanted to spend it. Since they didn’t have Gucci downtown they wanted silks from the Far East. Also, since they didn’t have electricity they didn’t have refrigerators. Since they didn’t have refrigerators they also wanted spices from the Far East, China and India. Spices would help preserve or, yes, cover up the taste of food that was getting a little too ripe. Spices were worth their weight in gold. Ever wonder why food around the equator is real spicy? Anyway, this gave birth to two things: the search for an all-water rout to Asia and to the African slave trade. I know, you’re asking what does this have to do with the guitar. I’m getting’ to it.

Birth of a new musical era - To make a long story short, Columbus rather than going all the way around Africa, decided to sail west. He knew the world was round rather than flat and figured he would sail into Asia using a shortcut. He wanted to get there through the backdoor using an Atlantic route. He misjudged the distance but in the process he discovered the South American continent. He never found out the truth, and died thinking he found India. That’s why Native Americans are known as Indians. Pretty silly if you think about it.

Anyway, when the news got out, a bunch of people wanted to go. Who do you think raised their hands? Remember that going in a boat to South America was probably a real drag. It probably took months to get there and once you got there all you had was a jungle. I can tell you for sure that it wasn’t rich people. Rich people weren’t about to give up their big houses to go live in the woods in a foreign land. It was the guys looking for a new life who went, and they brought their guitars along with them.

Africans - That’s right, it wasn’t the rich, but the other guys who went. You need a lot of people to build a New World, so at first the Europeans used the Native Americans as slaves. The only problem with this idea was that almost all of them died because they had no resistance to the diseases that the Europeans brought over. That’s why the scourge of mankind, the slave trade, started. On the way over to the New World they stopped off in Africa and got themselves cheap help.

To make a long story short (again), the Spanish and Portuguese workers brought over their guitars (radios) with them, combined their musical ideas with the percussive skills of the Africans and a new era of music was born. The Rumba would evolve in Cuba. Meringue starts up in the Dominican Republic. Argentineans create the Tango. The Portuguese, trying to get around Africa to East Asia, mistakenly ran into South America (pretty funny if you think about it) and since nobody is around, they claim part of it and call it Brazil. The music they make is called the Bossa Nova and the Samba. The Clave, the rhythm that can be found in all Latin music, is a present from Africa. If you ever get a chance to hear some genuine African drum music, you will hear the same Clave throughout. Even in Louisiana, blues players used the Clave to build rhythmic motifs. Check out Bo Diddly’s “Who do you Love” if you get the opportunity.

Birth of the Blues in America - In the early nineteen hundreds, ex-slaves started carrying the guitar around the south with them and playing blues music for mostly black audiences. The spirit of the guitar was still the same. It was perfect to carry around and accompany oneself with. Robert Johnson would end up making a name for himself before he dies at the tender age of twenty-seven in Mississippi. In 1948, twenty-eight year old Muddy Waters moves up to Chicago from Mississippi, looking for a better life away from the South.

Once again, a man in search of a new life carrying a guitar with him. He finds the clubs in Chicago overwhelmingly large. So he, like many of the guitarists started to do in those days, jumps on the electric bandwagon and begins to pave the way for electric blues to become musical force. Later on in the sixties Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix get into the old recordings of Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and make their own versions of their tunes, and I end up listening to Jimmy and Jimi at twelve and get hooked. And that’s why I find myself at twelve years old at my first lesson. And keeping with the tradition, my teacher, on this sunny Saturday morning, teaches me how to play a medium shuffle twelve bar blues that I still play today with the same feeling of adventure that I felt way back then.

Before you do anything - Before you start working on your scales and chords and all the other things you need to do to become the greatest guitarist around, start by understanding the spirit of the guitar. Let’s review:

1. The guitar is like a woman - Treat the guitar with respect. When I meet a new student for the first time I always play his or her guitar before I do anything else. I check to see if the guitar is clean and well cared for. It is a reflection of the student’s attitude about guitar and music in general. The Japanese say, if you want to find out if the Sushi chef is good or not, check his knife.
2. The guitar is a radio - The guitar was built to move, not for you to play in your room. It was designed for you to carry with you and tell your story with it. It was made so people could listen and sing and dance and celebrate life. The guitar isn’t about chops – it’s about stories. Every time I travel with my guitar, it makes me feel happy to know I’m carrying on in the tradition of the Troubadours and blues musicians of the past. I don’t care if the flight attendant is perturbed because my guitar takes up all the room in my overhead compartment. I’m bringing it with me. And when I get where I’m going, I’m gonna tell someone a story with it.
3. The guitar is about adventure - The guitar was brought around the world by people looking for new lives and new chances. All these people where risk takers, and their guitars were their best friends. Don’t be afraid to be a guitarist. No matter what bad luck comes to you in life, you will always have the guitar to play. And don’t forget, the greatest joy there is, is the joy of making music. I would rather live as a poor, happy guitarist than a rich, unhappy banker. Always follow your heart and you have nothing to fear.

Think about these things while I get my next column together, the one that will deal with the next step in becoming the best guitarist you can be.

Check out these links for some history lessons:

• Guitar History
• The Plague
• Blues History

Until next time…

Take it a little at a time, and let the student build up the calluses like the rest of us have! Even just strumming Em /A (the beginning of Somebody to Love, or Summertime) which may be easier to hold down may be ok. You can consider nylon strings for a year or two. They don’t sound as rich as the metal, but may be easier to hold down and strum. A luthier (if you know one, or if there is a good guitar store near you) may be able to lower the guitar’s action, making it easier as well.

Learning to read music is a good idea. Both of my kids learned to read music via the piano when they were 5 or 6, and I took lessons from that age as well. It’s a skill that will be useful for the rest of one’s life.

From the Editor: In addition to Laura’s comments, I’d also like to recommend a couple of things – first off, many teachers start off their younger students with partial chords, using just the first three or four strings. For instance, you can play a G like this: xx0003 and a C like this: xxx010. Another thing that one can do is to use an open tuning (usually G or D). This is especially good if the child it adept at strumming. You can show where to barre the frets (or even use a slide) for your typical three chord song and the two of you can have a blast.

For even more on teaching guitar to children check out Laura’s lesson How Young is too Young to Play. Laura’s latest article discusses children and musical instruments. How young can one start? What things should be taken into consideration? There’s some wonderful tips and advice here.

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to teaching children and select edit to make improvements.

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.

First of all, mistakes have a special place in my heart, because I am a mistake. I don’t want to get too personal, here, but my birth was not planned by the people who made me. I wasn’t supposed to be conceived. I wasn’t supposed to happen. But I did, and most people are pretty happy how this “mistake” turned out.

But what about mistakes in music? How are we supposed to look at them in a way that helps our playing? Let me ask you this: have you ever made a mistake that introduced a new sound to you? Haven’t there been times when you wanted to play a particular chord but ended up playing another, and the unexpected sound made you say, “Oh, wow! That was cool! Let’s do that again!”

I know you’ve experienced this, if you’ve been playing for any length of time. When you make such cool sounds from so-called “mistakes,” you begin to appreciate them. In fact, you begin to see that mistakes deserve a more accurate, positive name. Maybe we ought to call mistakes “alternatives,” or “options.” Instead of saying, “Darn. Why do I keep making the mistake of playing that C#m in stead of the D major,” you might ask, “What would happen if I continued pursuing this alternative? What new sounds could I get if I followed this unexpected option?”

This is not easy at first. Most of us have been conditioned to see mistakes as bad, or as something that has to be corrected or rectified immediately. We see mistakes as mental cockroaches, to be stamped out or destroyed, instead of seeing them as the rays of insight and avenues for growth they really are.

If you’re hard at work on a song you love, and you continue to make a mistake during a particular part each time you play it, it’s hard to be understanding and calm toward that mistake. Yet, you need to be, if you want to play that song well. You need to take a deep breath the next time your hit a #9 instead of a natural 9, and say, “Okay, Mr. Mistake. I acknowledge your presence. I see that you want me to pay attention to you. What is it that you want me to play?” Then, spend just a bit of time exploring the path that the mistake/option is introducing you to. You may discover that, after you’ve done this with sincerity, the mistake disappears.

Mistakes in Transcription

Mistakes can be highly valuable when you’re doing transcription. I once worked on a transcription program, which had a CD of about 10 jazz tunes to transcribe, and sheet music for those tunes. I listened to the CD, doing the best transcription I could of each song, listening to every note.

After I completed each song I would compare my transcribed notation with the sheet music. The problem wasn’t my accuracy. I did pretty well, hitting 85% and up in relation to the sheet music. The problem was that I was getting too stressed out over that 15% of “mistakes.” It was getting to the point that I no longer wanted to transcribe, so I wouldn’t have to face seeing these mistakes.

That’s not productive. And it sure as sheet cake was not fostering a positive psychological environment to learn in. I needed to adopt a new attitude, and I did. I adopted the attitude that my mistakes were simply alternate ways of creating music that sounded good. Comparing my version of the music with the “actual” sheet music was instructive, but not absolutely critical for learning music. The critical part was turning my mistakes into music, and creating many options that were similar to — or better — than the sounds I was hearing in the tune I was transcribing. Today, transcribing music is a pleasure for me.

It’s critical to your success in music that you take a more objective, yet sympathetic, view of your mistakes. To help you acquire this perspective, I want to offer the following resources:

The Guitar Noise article Playing the Guitar while Singing by Charron. Charron says, “Let’s face it: everyone makes mistakes live, even the best.”

Learn how Coca-Cola, Post-it notes and other things we value in this loony society were the results of mistakes – The Greatest Mistakes of All Time.

Here’s another way of looking for inspiration about mistakes while you’re surfing the Web: enter this exact search term in the Altavista.com search engine: “title:inventions and text:mistake” You’ll find a bunch of sites that will tell you about inventions that were the results of mistakes.

I want to wrap up this mistake business with a final thought: life itself is the result of a series of mistakes. Evolution theory tells us that species become adapted to their environment in part because of genetic mistakes to organisms of that species. I don’t want to ruffle anyone’s religious feathers. I just want you to have a more understanding perspective of your musical mistakes.

Remember: Mistakes, errors, hitches and problems are a part of living, learning and making music. How you view them — especially what you call them and how you react to them — impacts your progress as a guitarist.

This was not your local music store selling merchandise and also offering lessons in order to enjoy a second revenue stream and the benefits of increased traffic. This was a music school run by conservatory trained musicians; conductors, violinists, pianists, etc.. Like the average person, perhaps even they knowingly or unknowingly subscribe to the belief that someone is capable of teaching effectively and creating real results, simply because they are able to DO something, simply because they have a natural talent for it.

My father had many natural talents. One of them, which he did enjoy showing off every once in a while, was wiggling his ears. God knows how he did it, but he could do “something” inside his mind, and access the right muscles, and make those little babies dance! Now, I seriously doubt he would have been able to teach me how to do it (although, to the best of my recollection, I never asked!).

Whatever the case may be, I myself proved quite satisfactorily that it is possible to be able to do something, and not at all be able to CAUSE someone else to be able to do it. Many people find something that, for some reason, they find very easy to develop skill with, and they may very well develop that skill, at a very, very fast rate. Some people are just going to take to that basketball, or that guitar, in a big way. They may also start to spend a whole lot of time doing that particular thing, and because of doing this, they may approach the professional level.

But I have this stinging memory of sitting in a lesson with a girl around my age, in one of my early “lessons”. I was teaching her classical guitar. She already played guitar, so she wasn’t a total beginner, but she was new to classical guitar. So, I naturally started giving her the same material that I had begun my classical study with, the Carcassi and Sor collection of studies quite common for classical students. I really didn’t have much trouble with them, so I naturally thought this was a good approach.

Well I have a memory of watching this poor girl really struggling, really being unable to meet the demands of this music. In fact, from my experience now, I see that I was probably witnessing the beginning stages of the kind of handicapping playing problems that can even result in serious physical injury. She just couldn’t put it together. Nowadays, I do anywhere from 2 to 5 years of preparation with a student before putting them into those pieces. There are bars, half bars, and other difficult left hand positions that must be held WHILE you are doing complex and fast right hand patterns. If you are spending an hour or more a day practicing this stuff, AND holding unknown and unfelt tensions in your body, you WILL hurt yourself. I hear the stories all the time; people forced to stop playing because of serious injury to muscles and joints, sometimes for years.

As I sat there, I remember a series of feelings. First, helplessness. Then, confusion, I didn’t know what to do, other than show her how I could play it (I’m sure that made her feel good!) Finally, I felt hopelessness. I started not enjoying teaching. I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing. I felt this way because I was right, I didn’t know what I was doing!

Well, I did know one thing I was doing. I was torturing people and taking money for it! I didn’t consciously realize it, but I must have felt intuitively what I was really doing to this poor student. I was requiring her to deal with music that I had absolutely not prepared her for.

I quit teaching for about two years. When I started again, privately, not at that school anymore, I tried to actually THINK about what I was doing, and how I was teaching people. I began to develop practice methods, teach them to my students, and be very focused on getting results. Even so, it was a long and gradual process of learning ALL the ins and outs of what playing the guitar is about, and why so many people have such a wide variety of difficulties with its many aspects. Over time, I guess all of this became my book, “The Principles of Correct Practice For Guitar”.

I realize now that I wasn’t just witnessing that girl’s ruination as a guitarist, I was allowing it, in fact, I was causing it! I was causing it because I was in the position of responsibility for whatever results occurred (assuming she was doing what I told her to do), and I didn’t know HOW to create good results. I don’t think we could expect that it was her job to figure out how to “get it”, or “put it together”. No, I was getting paid for that. This girl was not only NOT getting what she paid for, guitar playing ability, she was getting some possible medical conditions instead, not to mention a very probably a lifetime of saying to herself “gee, I really wanted to play the guitar when I was younger, especially classical guitar, but I just didn’t have the talent”.

Of course, the only person deficient in talent was me, as a teacher!

As the years went by, the only excuse I could give myself as some bit of solace was that maybe I was pretty terrible, but as guitar teachers go, I was “par for the course”. At that time, my teaching was the usual hit-or-miss approach. It was “sure, come on, take lessons with me. Maybe you’ll actually learn to play, and maybe not. One thing is for sure though, I WILL get paid. If you don’t learn to play, well, I guess you just don’t have what it takes”. I know that many of you players and students out there know this is a common scenario, I get your letters. There are a whole lot of guitar students sitting in lesson rooms around the world, feeling like they are not getting anywhere, or at least not anywhere past where they already are. And the other person in the room (as in “teacher”) is not able to do anything about it, except say “well, keep practicing”, and “oh by the way, do you have the check?, oh yeah and “see you next week”.

What Is Student Abuse?

I once read a very interesting definition of child abuse. It was ” to demand from a child behavior that is beyond their abilities, and developmentally inappropriate”. You don’t punish your two year old for not having the good sense of a five year old! You don’t expect a 7 year old to be able to exercise the kind of judgment that requires the experience of an adult, or even a 17 year old. IF you do so, you are harming them. That’s why they call it abuse.

No, it is a parents DUTY to KNOW what is developmentally appropriate. If they don’t know, they are supposed to find out! Don’t take the job if you don’t take the training!

Well, personally, I don’t see a difference. I don’t see a difference between parenting and ANY teaching situation. Any student is a child when they come to their teacher, no matter what the age of the student, or the age of the teacher. The “child” in the student is the entity that, hopefully, will develop into the accomplished practitioner of whatever is being learned. Perhaps they will become a parent themselves, and teach other people. And that is why, when I see so much evidence of absolutely ignorant teaching, so much “attitude” on the part of teachers themselves about even getting a clue about what they are doing, I can only call it “Student Abuse”.

I would like to illustrate some of the atrocities that I have seen. And I do so not simply for the sake of pointing the finger of blame, although I have no problem with doing that when it is simply the truth. But I do so for two reasons. First, like all victims of an abusive syndrome, the victim of the abuse rarely recognizes that they are being abused. No, quite the opposite. Like all good obedient abuse victims, they believe that whatever nasty things are happening to them is THEIR fault. And the person administering the abuse is always very happy to support that viewpoint. In fact, they will usually suggest and support it if the victim doesn’t think of it first. That’s where the “I guess I just don’t have the talent” part comes in. When no progress is made by the student, the unspoken assumption is that the student lacks ability to learn, not that the teacher lacks ability to teach.

My second motivation comes from the fact that I happen to know a truth that is supremely important: it is possible for any normally functioning person to play the guitar well enough to fulfill the goals of the average aspiring student. Further, it is possible for any normally functioning person to achieve the professional level of playing if they put the same amount of time and focus into it as one would for any highly sophisticated skill or profession, AND if the student receives competent instruction every step of the way.

However, guitar students should know that the people they go to for instruction, the “guitar teacher”, is often particularly opposed to using “methods” or “systems” in teaching. For a number of years, I taught guitar in a local music shop, along with many other teachers. I was developing many teaching “systems” for different styles and levels of students, and investigating many books on teaching guitar. I was the only guitar teacher who used “method books” in the store. When I would talk about the different books to other teachers, they would have disdain for the idea of using books in teaching! I think they felt it was an encroachment upon their divine status as possessors and purveyors of the magic power of playing the guitar, which I guess they would impart to the chosen few by a tap on the head or something. I thought they were stupid and lazy, and I still think so.

Guitar students must wake up to a number of truths concerning the goals they have, and the means by which they seek to achieve those goals. They must understand that this prideful attitude on the part of many so called guitar teachers stands like a guardian at the gates of guitaristic ability. They must understand that a professional guitarist, or those attempting to be one, often feel like part of their ability to actually survive and thrive in this very practical world, depends on ensuring that they themselves are viewed and venerated by the common person as possessed of a special, magical power, and so they often try to keep a certain distance and respect between those who can cause the magic to flow out of that wooden box (themselves) and those who will gather in groups and listen to them (everyone else in the world, audiences).

The psychology behind all this is buried very deeply inside all of us. We use the word “star” to denote famous people. We have “movie stars”, and “rock stars”. Well, what is a star? It is an extremely distant, luminous and awe-inspiring object, which we may gaze upon in awe and wonder, but know we can never touch. There are two kinds of people in the world, those who want to be “stars”, and those who want to worship them. I advise you to be neither. It is the very desire to worship a star that keeps a person from attaining the same position. Yes, talented people who have developed their talent are wonderful, but not when they put themselves in the position of “teachers” and still act like stars, subtly re-enforcing the inevitable distance between themselves and their students, as if their students were nothing but more audience members!

This explains the haughty attitude often met with in guitar player/teachers. I remember how I felt when I watched a video of Segovia teaching a master class. He had this poor woman, quite an advanced player, playing the Bach Chaconne. For about an hour, he tortured this player with facial expressions, gesticulations, and other direct and indirect methods of reducing someone to a state of utter despair. He mocked her for not being able to make a particular stretch for a chord, one that I doubt most people could make. He told her even his wife could do it! I can’t do it! Moreover, upon careful listening of a John Williams recording,of the Chaconne, one can hear him shift to a position where that chord is much easier (avoiding the stretch that Segovia’s wife can do), so John Williams doesn’t do it either. At the end of the “lesson”, after he has taken her apart, and neglected to put her back together, Segovia gives her a sheepish kind of grin, as if to say, “okay, you can get up now and leave, now that we both, as well as the audience, understand that you don’t quite “have it”.

After such a condemnation without anything constructive, I would have, especially in my fragile younger years, felt like killing myself . It was as if he needed to clearly re-enforce his own untouchable status as an artist. This is why John Williams has said of Segovia in interviews “he was a lousy model as a teacher”.

The fact that so many guitar teachers, as well as guitar students, are completely unconscious of this pervasive and pernicious attitude was underscored for me recently upon viewing a video made by the author of one of the most popular books on the market today for classical guitarists. As I was watching this video, the author tells a little story of how he was teaching someone “Recuredos de la Alhambra” ( a venerated piece for classical guitar that often eludes those passionately desiring to play it well for years or a lifetime). He talks about how this woman was completely unprepared and unable to actually attempt this piece. This of course means that expecting her to be able to deal with the piece would be setting her up for failure, and doing her great harm physically and mentally as well, what we have defined as “abuse” above.

But, he blithely divulges to the audience that he was “teaching” her Recuerdos anyway because “he needed the money”! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was hard to believe that this was how this person related to teaching the guitar, but it was even more incredible that he didn’t feel embarrassed about letting everyone know what he was capable of doing to them, and “for the money” no less! How is this different than someone going to a doctor because they have some dread disease, and the doctors says to himself “well, I know I can’t really do anything about their disease, but I need the money, so I’ll treat them for about a year”. Meanwhile, the patient gets worse.

I have met and taught many people who have endured this kind of abuse. I have met people who had to stop playing for years because of inflammed joints, tendonitis, and all the other maladies that will descend upon someone who is allowed to grapple with the technical demands of music they are not ready for. We can perhaps forgive the student. They don’t have the experience to know any better. But, the person who is supposed to be the “professional”, the one taking the money; he or she should certainly not allow this. He or she should know better, and act better.

None of us are perfect, and we are not supposed to be, or required to be. We are, however, supposed to be working toward perfection. That is a constant in the school of life, and it is a characteristic of every great artist. What we are supposed to be, and required to be, is honest. Honesty, the love of the truth, is the fuel that propels us toward our next level of growth. This is true in the practice room, and in the teaching studio. Honesty on the part of the teacher and student, and between the teacher and student, is the pre-condition for getting past every barrier to growth that arises. It would be great if this honesty is practiced equally by student and teacher, but it must be practiced by the teacher. The teacher must truthfully acknowledge the reality of whatever is or is not happening with the student, and find out what to do about it, or stop taking money for doing nothing.

More and more, I hear from students who are beginning to wake up. They are beginning to become aware of what is really going on with them as they interact with the profession that they must turn to in order to fulfill their dreams of becoming guitarists. I hear from people who are beginning to demand more from their teachers, and who are firing teachers who are found lacking. I say good; that is as it should be. How dare anyone treat so lightly and carelessly the sincere and often desperate desires of those willing to pay their money and their time to become guitarists. Let those teachers be put on notice, and held accountable for results.

I could go on and on with all the various manifestations of this “abuse syndrome” that I have seen, and the harm it has done. Sometimes it is done out of malicious intent, and sometimes out of plain old laziness and mediocrity. I hope that students will begin to learn what they SHOULD be getting from their teachers, and that teachers will realize the true seriousness of the job they do. Teaching music is in many cases providing nothing less than emotional salvation for many of the people of this world who are desperately driven to create music themselves, not to mention the other billions of people who need the spiritual nourishment that musicians provide with the music they create. To do anything that frustrates or prevents the fulfillment of that desire for musical development on the part of the sincere student is just plain sinful.

Education is God’s Presence in this world. If there is one truly spiritual activity that we perform in relation to our fellow beings it is enabling their growth by sharing our knowledge, and sharing it with love. When it is done as it should be done, the world becomes more of the Heaven we are always praying for and are truly responsible for creating. When it is not, we get more of the Hell we allow, and so deserve.

Often, it is not until our later years that we fully realize, and fully despair of, the inadequacy of the guidance we received when we were young. Will Durant, in his monumental “History of Civilization” tells us about one of the most famous letters in history, a letter from the Mogul Emporer Aurangzab (1658-1707), who was reflecting on how badly he was educated by his appointed teacher. The teacher was coming to him after many years to ask for a recommendation to another court. Aurangzab refused, and listed in great detail all the ways in which his teacher failed to prepare him properly for life, and instead of serving the needs of his student, merely served his own vanity and pompous position. He said:

“if you had instructed me as you should have done, nothing would be more just; for a child well educated is obliged as much to his teacher as his father”. I still remember how you amused me with your airy questions of things that afford no satisfaction to the mind, and are of no use in humane society. All I retained of it was a multitude of dark words, proper to bewilder, perplex and tire out the best wits, and only invented the better to cover the vanity and ignorance of men like yourself that would make us believe that they know all, and that under those obscure and ambiguous words are hid great mysteries which they alone are capable of understanding.”

So, there is nothing new under the sun. But, I am hoping that in the little corner of life called “playing the guitar” where I have chosen to reside, there will dawn a new, and brighter day.

Copyright Jamie Andreas, Guitar Principles.

Enough mystery already. What is this skill?

Objectives: the key to musical success

Setting goals

We’re going to switch terms here: we’re going to replace the term “goal” with the term “objective.” What’s the difference?

A goal is a desire or a wish. It may be strong, but it’s imprecise. An example of a goal is “I’d like to play like Joe Pass.”

An objective is a goal that’s channeled, focused and distilled into a precise target that you can see, hear or feel. Most importantly, an objective is measurable. Here’s a more refined goal that’s offered as another candidate for an objective:

To play every solo recorded by Joe Pass, and to do it within one year.

Is this a proper objective yet? How will we know when we’re precise enough? Some criteria for objectives are needed to answer these questions.

Criteria for objectives

• It must be precise, including being measurable
• It must be written, not simply spoken
• It must be stated in positive terms
• It must have tremendous value to you
• It must be beyond your present reach, yet realistic
• Let’s describe each of these, and apply them to our Joe Pass goal.

It must be measurable

Can you measure “playing every solo recorded by Joe Pass, and do it within one year”? How about “play every solo recorded by Joe Pass, at 80% or faster of the speeds he plays at, and do it within one year”? Are these measurable results? Let’s break them down: you can count the number of solos recorded by Joe. You can time whether or not you’ve learned to play each solo in one year.

Can you measure your ability to play these solos? This may be a grey area, but we can clarify it in many ways. Here are some:

• Get 10 Joe Pass fans together and play the solos for them. Don’t tell them what each song is before you play it. In fact, throw in a Whitney Houston or Beatles tune to throw your audience off track. When you play the Pass tunes, you can count the number of fans who can identify the specific Joe Pass solo you play for them.
• Play the solos for a guitar teacher you respect and trust. His judgement of your playing is the measuring tool.
• Simply play each solo with a metronome, and record yourself doing so; the recording will give you a greater sense of objectivity about your performance.

It must be written

This requirement confuses some musicians. Why do you have to write your objectives down if they are precise, especially an objective as clear and simple as the Joe Pass one?

There’s something about writing that focuses your idea; that commits you to that idea, and that creates solutions to make that idea a reality. The more certain you are that this requirement is unnecessary, the more I urge you to test it for yourself.

How do you test it? On paper, write down, in the form of a question, any particular problem you’re trying to solve, (e.g.: “How do I get my fingers to play the third phrase in that Chopin piece?”) Under the question, write down at least five solutions that come to mind, no matter how dumb they seem. Do this for a week, and then you can decide whether or not writing down something you want brings that thing closer to you. Back to our Joe Pass candidate. If this were my goal, and I’ve written it into a journal of my musical activities, or if I’ve written it on a piece of paper and stuck it to the refrigerator door, then it passes this test.

It must be in positive terms

How clear and compelling is “I don’t not want to play like Joe Pass”? People don’t speak that way, right? But what if we had said – excuse me, written, “My objective is to not make any mistakes in learning all of Joe Pass’s solos”? For one thing, it sucks the power right out of the would-be objective. And there’s a subtler force at work, when you use negative words. Psychology tells us that we steer ourselves in the direction of whatever we focus on, whether it’s good or bad, positive or negative. Applying that here, we’d open ourselves up to seeing only the mistakes we’ll make in learning the Pass solos, ignoring any sweet sounds that come out.

As written, “To play every solo recorded by Joe Pass, and to do it within one year” passes the “positive terms” test.

It must have tremendous value to you

This one sounds obvious, but let’s look at it. Does playing all of Joe Pass’s solos have value to you or to someone else, like your guitar teacher for example? Maybe you think playing like Joe Pass will bring you respect from fellow musicians. The point is that if you’re not enamored with and excited by simply listening to Joe Pass and his work, this objective will fail the “tremendous value” test; you’ll need to create a new objective.

Beyond your present reach

You sure wouldn’t create the Joe Pass objective if you could already play all of his solos; you can’t play them now, so they’re beyond your present skills. But you also don’t want to make this an objective for yourself if you’re just learning to play guitar. Joe Pass was a master musician, a superb soloist. It could take some time for you to learn all of his solos if you were just starting out. Why not choose something that you could achieve within the year, and that would help you fulfill the complete Joe Pass objective later on?

Working without goals or objectives is like driving without a map. You could have the fastest car on the road, but if you have no place to go, you’ll just spin your wheels. Worse, you’ll run out of gas (motivation), and stop moving (playing) completely.

Rather than let that happen, take some time every day or week to write down what you want to accomplish in music. Consider this time as just another part of your practice regimen.

Whether you are really serious about becoming an accomplished professional, or just want to play for fun … if acoustic guitar techniques are what you’re after, this site can bring you some information that you may not be able to find anywhere else. I say that because I play in a style all my own … and also, because my focus has been on acoustic instruments — and only acoustic instruments — for more than 3 decades. I don’t mean to brag … I personally don’t consider myself much of a “guitarist” or “musician” — though I’ve received high praise from some of the best … it’s just that I don’t think much about the mechanics behind guitar techniques, or about the music theory behind the glory of a particular riff … I just like to play.

Basically put, I’m not one for imitating others. No big deal … I’m not putting the idea down … I just happen to prefer interpretation over impersonation. The only time I ever wanted to play a song EXACTLY the way I heard it, involved a song by Leslie West (Mountain) … it was in an open tuning … it was an instrumental … it was 1970 … and it was one of the most complicated pieces I’d ever heard. I don’t remember the name of the song, but it wouldn’t be hard to find — it’s the only acoustic instrumental to be found on any of Mountain’s albums, as far as I know. I kind of wanted to prove to myself that I could pull off the “musician” thing and play, note for note, exactly as Leslie did. And I did. It took me about 3 days. Bravo, Alan…

How I Started …

I started playing when I was 12 or 13, using a standard tuning … E.A.D.G.B.E — and my first 8 hours of playing involved me writing my first song, too. It was rather on the involuntary side, and I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing! I just strummed the top 3 strings (…G.B.E) while I placed my index finger on the 1st string/3rd fret … strum a little … then, the 2nd string/1st fret … strum a little … etc., etc. It was really quite silly, but nonetheless, I had a great time! And, I wrote a beautiful song about Janet Kinlin … titled “Four O’Clock Blues” — mostly ’cause it was 4 a.m., and we had just broken up.

Next thing I did was buy some song books — Bob Dylan … Joni Mitchell … and some obscure old Blues stuff, with songs by guys with funny names like Muddy Waters and Lead Belly — where I learned some really cool techniques, like “hammering on” and “pulling off.” But the reason I bought them was the “pictures” of chord fingerings that were placed above the lyrics — right where the chord changes occurred. That made a lot of sense to me. You’re familiar with those “pictures” right? … the ones that look like this:

When The Student Is Ready, The Teacher Will Appear

It’s funny how you always wind up talking to another musician who has the answers to the questions you’ve most recently been carrying around with you. I met a guy at Rutgers University once, who played like a god! A true “musicians’ musician.” He played his guitar in a wheelchair … and he was missing TWO fingers on his LEFT hand! … think about THAT and then just TRY to complain about the five you’re sporting! I could write a book (as the saying goes) about the musicians who’ve captivated me in such significant ways. But, I guess my point is, there are no obstacles but yourself … and your next “lesson” is *usually* staring you right in the face.

I had teachers of another sort, too … from some really cool TV shows on “educational TV” … Channel 13 in New Jersey (“the 7th channel” — we’re talkin’ 1966, ‘67, ‘68) … Pete Seeger had a show — I remember seeing a very young Dylan on that show, talking about playing and writing. Andres Segovia had a show too, or made appearances on a show, that taught classical guitar — I watched that one religiously! And lastly, I remember a girl who taped a show out at KCET, in Los Angeles — I think her name was Laura Weber — she had a sort of mischievous smile … and taught folk, rock, and blues guitar techniques. Man, I learned a lot from her!

If the idea of formal, structured lessons turns you off … as it does me … you can conduct your own concentrated search for the “bearers of information” that God will surely send your way. Whether it’s through a website, a television show, an instructional video, or best of all, a player who is more advanced than you are … your next step up the ladder of learning shouldn’t be too hard to find.

I met a most wonderful artist years ago … Ronnie Ostrow. Ronnie was very actively teaching fingerstyle guitar and performing his original songs in the New York/New Jersey area, with a rather large following. We were good friends and spent a lot of quality time together. One day he picked up his guitar and played the most amazing song I had *ever* heard him play … I mean, I was slayed! I said, “WHEN did you write that, Ronnie?!!” And he replied, “Just now…” with that very special ex-Trapist-Monk grin of his. And then he went on to make a very interesting statement … he said, “Alan, how would you like it if I decided to teach you absolutely everything I know about being an artist?” I said, “Man … I would cherish it!” And he immediately replied, “Okay, I want you to be here every Thursday at exactly 2 p.m. … and if you are ever even one minute late the whole deal is off. … NOW, how do you feel about it?” I said, “Like crap!” He put his guitar down with that same grin and said, “Let’s go get us a cup of coffee.” He sure knew how to make a point!

I Took Guitar Lessons … Once.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had a strong distaste for anything that portends to be “written in stone” … i.e. schools … organized religion … clubs, fraternities, and cults … rules and regulations, and those (especially) who think they have the right to impose such on others. In my world, there is no set way of doing anything. All things are possible with God … and all things are *not* possible with Mr. Schoolhead, Ms. Diploma.equals.success, and certainly not with Cap’t. I. M. Heretobustyerass! So … I’d rather hang with God. To me, that means finding your very own path through these woods we call Life. And even though it’s most popular, looks safer, is all lighted up, and cuts right through the woods, that big well-traveled highway also keeps you from knowing the woods at all. Usually, I get just close enough to see what’s happenin’ there, and head straight back towards the thicket! Does that make any sense to you? If it does … well … good luck. :o)

Very understanding of my nature, my dad knew I liked to carve my own way through things, and made sure I at least made the attempt of giving lessons a try -”If you don’t like it, that’s okay …” he said, “… but at least give it a shot, eh?” And so I did. I told my teacher I wanted to learn to play rhythm guitar, and he started teaching me to play something that sounded like “Mary Had A Little Lamb” — on the high E-string! Hello? Anyway, I tried to push this guy’s envelope and it ripped, so I told dad to save his hard-earned cash. He was cool. He was always cool.

My desire was so strong that you couldn’t stop me from learning if you tried! What else is there but desire? Can anyone teach you without it? Well, I’m assuming since you’re here, you’re of the same cut … and are here, looking for ways of learning some stuff on your own.

I have nothing against accredited schools or instruction, mind you … but, I certainly think it can get more attention than it deserves. A lot of musicians have been discouraged from playing at all by taking that route, and many others are playing with all the technical skill anyone could ever want, while boring people to death for want of some heart.

Amateur or Pro?

From Day One, I was playing six to eight hours a day … maybe more. It was all I thought about! In a year’s time, I began teaching stuff to the older guys who originally taught me some of the ropes. And after two years, I won 2nd Prize at the local 4-H Fair — a handmade classical Garcia guitar with a hardshell case — (1st Prize went to a folk-trio; a phatter Garcia). And it wasn’t long after that, I was playing original songs at open mic nights at local clubs and coffee houses. If you are going to become a pro player, that’s how you’ll know — you won’t have time for anything else. Period.

If, on the other hand, you find yourself picking away at it for an hour here, and an hour there, my guess is you won’t be going pro with your efforts. But hey! What’s wrong with that? At least you know you won’t be starving to death most of your life … or experiencing the great, unbelievably painful and unbearable levels of frustration that God has reserved solely for his beloved “artists.” You can live a normal, happy life and have lots of fun being in the spotlight at all the parties … and instead of developing work-a-day-willie ulcers, you can avoid such anxieties through the wonderfully healing experience of self expression.

Either way, if you want to be good, you’ll have to be persistent about it.

Where Do I Begin?

Right here. By doing just what you are doing.

But, first of all, learn how to tune your guitar will ya? :o) Most of the guitars I pick up that belong to “beginners” are so far out of tune, I’m sure they’ve made no progress. You certainly can not enjoy playing chords that aren’t chords!

Learn to know when the pitch is sharp or flat … take some time to twist a tuning peg around and listen to a note move to the flat or sharp zone so you become familiar with which is which. Do this by fretting the D (4th) string at the 5th fret and playing a G note, while you twist the G (3rd) string above proper pitch … then down to match the exact pitch … then below it … and back up again. Do this a million times.

Also, join some discussion groups … ask questions — there’s no such thing as a stupid question — you’ll be surprised to learn how eager other players are to help you. My favorites are Fingerstyle-L@yahoogroups.com and Acoustic_Guitar@yahoogroups.com … check them out – you’ll see me there.

Purchasing A Guitar…

My advice is: Forget what you think you know, and what you think you don’t know; make a written list of every music store within a 30-mile radius of your home; don’t bring any money with you; visit each and every guitar retailer you found; play everything you see that represents the kind of axe you want (probably 2-5 guitars per shop); center yourself as you play each one; notice how you feel … physically; notice how you feel … emotionally; LISTEN to the instrument! Is it happy? Is it gutsy? Does it have the “voice” you thought it would? If it doesn’t, then move on. Use your head … and use your heart. When you have finished taking your inventory, there will be one guitar that you just can’t get out of your head. That’s the one! Problem now is, you also know how much it’s gonna cost you. Don’t be fooled though – the last time I did it, I found my Washburn … and it was literally half the price I would’ve willingly paid for it! Stuff like that always happens to me. I think if you go out there LOOKING for a hidden treasure, you’re likely to find one.

Okay? Okay. Here’s lesson number one — It’s a very crucial part of your kick … I know – you just want to fly off with big, beautiful wings and have your way with the sky! Man! What else is there?! And you feel that way because you KNOW that sky is yours! But the funny part is, before you can be so free, you’ve got to wear some chains … in order to understand something of the weight and the laws of gravity. Tame the flesh … free the Spirit.

It is through discipline itself, that freedom is born …

The early basics — like, “learning to tune your guitar” … or, it’s evil twin, “learning to play in time” (don’t worry about the “evil twin” right now; that comes after you begin switching chords and playing progressions) — can require what seems to be an overwhelming amount of discipline! These excercises can become monumentally boring in a very short span of time! So rather than beat yourself into the ground, creating a negative experience out of what should be an enjoyable one, I suggest you pace yourself.

Break your sessions up into three or four 45-minute workouts a day … broken up by 30-minute (minimum) respites … do something else, and do it in a different place; go out for an hour or two and come back refreshed, and you’ll more than double your learning curve! You should become a proficient guitar tuner in a few days … displaying an intermediate ability in a few months … and as good as you’ll ever be in a year or so.

One final note: Learn to play one song at a time. Pick a song that is very,very important to you, and play it over and over again – until you’ve ironed out every kink you can find. I’d much rather hear someone who can only play one song, but make me go, “Wo!! Way to go!!!” … than to hear someone who knows a kazillion songs, and it’s like, “er, well, kinda, but not really! … thanks for wasting my time.” You know what I mean.

Remember that bit (above) about “Flesh & Spirit”? Well, it’s the flesh that requires the discipline … mostly so that “it” will perform it’s task without further supervision … THEN the spirit may fly! For example, I write a new song and in the first 48 hours I’m entrenched with it. I play it and sing it probably sixty to a hundred times a day – the first day or two, anyway. I’m getting to know how it moves … from the first measure to the last … memorizing … familiarizing … falling in love with it’s movements … moving it into my being, until I’m not thinking OF it … but FROM it. Then — when I know that song so well that I don’t need to be conscious of it’s movements anymore, I am suddenly able to find it’s “perfect performance” … effortlessly!

Now, that having been said, let’s see you get to work! __ ; – P __ I’ll see ya later.

The reason this message is so important, is because a widespread understanding of it would lead to a radical change in the experience and development of the aspiring guitarist, and because it would lead to a radical change in the experience of how so many of us are “taught”. And if by some reason you disagree with me at the end of the discussion, and that is certainly your right, you won’t be able to invalidate my conviction that my own experience and development as a guitarist and musician would have benefited immensely from having these things understood and practiced by the many people who served as my teachers. And I want to make clear that some of these were understood and practiced by some of my teachers, and I was eternally grateful when they were, and damaged when they weren’t.

Empowerment

First, let’s talk about the True Goal of the Teacher. It is empowerment. Empowerment of the student. The True Teachers utmost desire is to aid, guide, and do whatever it takes to bring the student to their place of happiness and fulfillment as a musician and guitarist. The student may not have a clear idea of what this place is, and certainly not where it is. The teacher may not know either, but he knows more than the student, and he must help the student feel their way if necessary. The True Teacher knows that if this person is destined to be a musician, (which is another way of saying if they really want it bad enough), then their place of happiness and fulfillment does exist, and can be found. And the true teacher resolves to do whatever it takes to make that come about.

For the guitar student, empowerment means the Confidence and Certainty that you have the Understanding and Knowledge you need to fulfill any desires you may have now, or will have later, concerning playing the guitar. For me, it meant knowing that I can do anything I want on the guitar, and if I can’t, I find out how, and by Correct Practicing, learn to do whatever it was I wanted.

As I began to have this feeling of confidence and empowerment, it was a wonderful thing. And for so long, I didn’t have this feeling. And needing to play the Classical Guitar, it was particularly necessary to feel equal to the challenges. Classical guitar is one of the more difficult styles, you know.

The urgent need, the necessity to have the student become “powerful”, and “get it”, every step of the way, is the hallmark of the True Teacher. The need to see results, progress, happiness and fulfillment on the part of the student, makes this kind of teacher try one way, then another, then another, no matter how long it takes or how creative or unorthodox he or she must become.

Teaching the Way You Were Taught

I contend most teachers begin by teaching the way they were taught. They begin using some approach that perhaps worked for them. Often it only worked partially, and there are still a lot of gaps in the teachers own Understanding and Knowledge. (The True Teacher is also the Good Student, always learning and expanding, and being open). But guess what! Once you start teaching lots of people, that one approach is NOT going to work for a lot of your students.

When I was 17, I had been playing for three or four years, and studied Classical Guitar for only one year, but the place where I took lessons thought I was good enough to start teaching there. It was a little Community Music School that had a lot of fine teachers, and I was extremely grateful that I had found a “real” classical guitarist there, who corrected so many of the harmful things I had done trying to teach myself classical. (I had no choice, since it was very difficult to even find a classical teacher back then). He equipped me, that is empowered me as best he could, but we both knew when he had reached his limits, and when I would have only continued to make, what I called in my first essay, Horizontal Growth, not a true raising of my level as a guitarist and musician, or Vertical Growth.

So in this condition, I started to teach there. Believe me, in that little fish pond, everybody thought I was a pretty big fish. The average person thought I played pretty well, impressive in fact, because the average person is impressed if you can play anything that sounds “classical”. Thank God I knew better!

When I started teaching, forget it! I couldn’t get results from most people. Later on I would understand why. I would understand that I had a fair amount of what is called “natural talent”, and I also practiced all the time. So I learned real fast. I quickly learned how to make a decent showing with some rather complicated pieces in the classical repertoire, but many of my students were struggling with the simplest things, and I couldn’t get them to “get it”, to play at least somewhat like I could. I was also, in my ignorance often giving students pieces that were far beyond them, that would do them harm to try to play, because they would be acquiring many bad habits in trying to cope with the technical demands of these pieces. I would also see later on that this was and is a common occurrence.

It was so frustrating, I felt like a thief taking their money, so I quit my teaching gig. ( I don’t recommend this. I’d often wished later I didn’t, but I tend to be impulsive sometimes). When I went back to teaching a few years later, it was with a renewed sense of commitment to always searching for the answer for every student I encountered, to always figure out what it was this person wanted, and what they needed to get it. It is because of this constant orientation that I developed “The Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar”, those fundamentals of playing and practicing that are always true, no matter what style or what level of player you are. These are the things good players are doing, whether they know it or not. And most of these things are things they are doing when they practice, not when they play.

But I digress. I just thought it would be helpful to describe myself in the position of being The Bad Teacher, really The Ignorant Teacher. If I would have let it continue I would have become “The Lazy Teacher”. I have met some of those. They could also be called the “Hey I don’t care THAT much, after all, I can play, if you can’t it must be your fault, and anyway I’m getting paid either way, Teacher”.

I was once talking to a fellow teacher, and he said “God forbid I should be judged by my students”. I thought, “God forbid anyone who really wants to play and is willing to work should ever be your student”. I mean, how else SHOULD a teacher be judged? By how well THEY play? No, that’s how we should judge them as players. Teaching is a whole different thing.

Understand this. You can be a great player and a lousy teacher. Often, great players are lousy teachers. Segovia is an example. Just listen to John Williams or many other of his “students” describe his teaching. It was how Chopin taught. ” Do it like this, like I do”. If your were supremely talented, you could come up with something acceptable. If not, you got the boot! Guess which one happened most often. Great players often don’t know why they’re great. Always try to find one that does, or is interested in finding out, and communicating it to you. And then notice whether they ARE communicating it you. Are you making Vertical or Horizontal Growth?

I have a rule in teaching

If the student is not learning, it’s my fault. Assuming the student has desire, and is doing what I am telling them, if they are not making real progress, then I’m not telling them the right thing to do. Or I’m not telling them anything to do! So I need to pay attention, and keep trying new things, or put it in a different order, or whatever, until something WORKS for them. My last essay was on Aggressive Practicing, you could call this Aggressive Teaching. I guess that is why I’m writing this now, because if you are not being taught this way, you are being short changed in your training to DO Aggressive Practicing, and you should know this.

Also understand, no teacher is perfect. Being a True Teacher is not a state you attain, it is a PROCESS you engage in. A Good Student tries to help the teacher be true by always letting them know when they don’t “get” something. Always keep asking questions when you don’t understand something, unless your teacher wisely lets you know you cannot have full understanding of something, but you can have enough to use it, and allow your understanding to grow. It is often this way. But you must never feel like you are totally CONFUSED, that is, feel CLUELESS. You must feel like you have some kind of handle on something. Keep asking questions till you do.

Beware of teachers who get irritated when you don’t get something. That is a warning sign. You are making them feel inadequate. And they want to put the blame on you! (Unless you are not paying attention and trying your hardest, in which case, you should be blamed). They don’t want to examine their approach. Have you ever seen the situation where someone is trying to talk to someone else, and then discovers that that person doesn’t understand English, or whatever language they are speaking? The first thing they do, and it’s kind of natural, is start talking louder, even shouting at them. As if that would make them understand! How many times did I have a teacher who wasn’t paying enough attention to notice I had no idea what they were talking about! I used to have a voice teacher shout at me all the time “Space, give me space”. I was clueless. My head is on backwards when it comes to singing. I need it broken down to the molecular level. I think I made him mad. I’m sure it worked with lots of people. Not me.

The True Teacher is always concerned with what the student is hearing, not what they, the teacher, are saying. Often, for whatever reason, even though the student is listening, he or she isn’t “hearing” anything.

Let me close by saying this. True Teaching is Love. For guitarists, it is intense love of the guitar and intense desire to share that love with someone who desires it also. And what is Love? It’s simple, to love means to “be with”. That’s all. The True Teacher loves the student, and loves the desire in the student that is the same as his own desire. The True Teacher is always trying to be inside, or “with” the student, knowing what they are thinking, feeling, and how they are experiencing this process of “learning the guitar”.

I have to Teach, it’s the only way I can learn!

And for teachers, here is the most important and wonderful fact. When you engage the process of True Teaching, and are truly “with” the student, your own insight and growth will be accelerated! You will come to an awareness and understanding of your own areas of confusion, and you will be shown the light by your honest attempts to show it to someone else. And again, I have found this to be true as a teacher of guitar, and as a parent, which is another name for “Teacher”.

In the movie The Crow, (starring the son of the great Master Bruce Lee) the main character says something I have always remembered. He is talking to a drug addict mother who is abusing her child. He says “Mother is the name of God on the lips of children”. He is trying to make her see her real responsibility and position. To the child, the Parent IS God. The parent can, and will create a wonderful empowered being, or a partially or completely crippled person. I know this from personal experience as both a parent and a child.

I am also a student and a teacher. When it comes to music, “Teacher is the name of God on the lips of the student”. The teacher has the power, especially in the beginning. The True Teachers job is to strive to transfer and share that power with the student. The True Teachers fondest desire should be that the deserving student takes everything, uses it, and surpasses the Teacher. Let us all be the best we can be.

For more information, and to get answers to your questions, visit my site.

Copyright Jamie Andreas, Guitar Principles.

So don’t worry, you’re in safe hands here. In fact, there have been times in my teaching career that I have actually told a student not to take lessons anymore, or to go to another teacher. So I don’t make any blanket statements about taking guitar lessons. The way that lessons, or the process of educating yourself as a musician, fit into your life will be a decision you make based on your unique circumstances, and your unique goals.

One general statement I will make is that for beginners, lessons are ALWAYS a good idea. This doesn’t mean that you should make no efforts to perhaps teach yourself, using books, videos and the Internet. But along with all of that, especially in the beginning, and especially if you have no previous experience with music, you should seek out a teacher.

If you are teaching yourself, and coming along well, then lessons will increase your progress, usually greatly increase your progress. I started by teaching myself for about three months. I was learning and could play lots of songs, and was teaching myself to read notes from a method book. But when I started lessons, I really started to make progress, simply because of the guidance of someone who knew the route to take a lot better then I did. Also, and most importantly, a great number of misunderstandings and wrong steps were corrected by someone who had two things I didn’t have: knowledge and experience.

Re-Inventing the Wheel

Let’s get a few things straight right at the beginning. Let’s really look at this question “should I take guitar lessons”. I have to tell you, whenever I hear a beginning player ask that question it makes me laugh. It’s like a five-year-old saying they want to be a doctor or lawyer when they grow up, and asking if it would be a good idea if they went to elementary school! The mere asking of the question shows how much the person asking doesn’t have a clue about what they are getting into, and how best to get into it.

When I hear this question, I think “why on earth would it ever be a bad idea to learn a very complicated subject from someone who knows a whole lot more that you do, and has years of experience with the subject.” Why on earth would it ever be a bad idea, before beginning a journey to an unknown place, to ask for help from a guide, who has traveled the route many times? The very fact that someone is asking the question shows they don’t understand how the whole process of the development of talent works.

They don’t understand, for instance, that playing the guitar is a very sophisticated mental/physical process. Like many activities, such as various sports (tennis, golf, basketball) it has evolved over many years, and continues to evolve, becoming increasingly complex, and new standards of excellence being set all the time. Would anyone seriously ask the question “would it be a good idea for me to go to baseball camp”, or would it be a good idea to take tennis lessons with a tennis pro”, or “I’d like to improve my golf game, do you think I should take lessons with Tiger Woods”. We all know the answer would be “Duh!!?!!”

Yet, when it comes to learning the guitar, people somehow think that perhaps it might be a good idea if they shut themselves up in a room and spent their time re-inventing the wheel!

Why do so many people adopt this attitude as they begin guitar (and many people do, bear with me if you are not one of them)? Here are the reasons:

Ignorance: Plain ignorance about the entire subject of education, that is, of learning anything. They don’t understand that ALL resources, such as books, videos, watching players, talking to players, as well as sitting with players who make a regular habit of transferring their knowledge and abilities to others (teachers) should be used if at all possible, ESPECIALLY in the beginning.

Intimidation: They imagine they would be just plain embarrassed fumbling around with something new and looking and feeling like an idiot in front of a stranger.

Illusion: they look around and see people who just “pick it up” on their own (or at least say they do!). They don’t understand that some people have “natural talent”, which is the tendency to do the right thing, but that even those people would go much further with lessons, and may very possibly never get as far as someone with less talent who does take lessons. Sometimes people see other people who just “pick it up” and say “I should be able to do that”, and doggedly keep trying to learn on their own, even though nothing is happening, they aren’t learning! Just like men who won’t stop and ask for directions, it begins to become an ego thing, and leads to the in-ability to recognize that we need help, and to put ourselves in the vulnerable position of asking for it.

Ego: They want to feel like they HAVE re-invented the wheel. This one especially gets people who do have talent, and can get relatively far on their own. They really like the idea of being able to brag to people that they are “self-taught”. The psychology of this one is very similar to the syndrome I expounded in my essay Why Should I Learn to Read Music.

Money: Well, we can’t argue with this one! Sometimes people just don’t have the bucks for lessons. Personally, at one point in my life I worked 20 hours a week in a factory for minimum wage and spent it all on my lesson with a top teacher in New York City. I put off having a car and used to hitchhike to get around so I wouldn’t have to support a vehicle. We all decide the price we will pay for what we want.

So, if you are one of those people with a bad attitude about taking lessons, decide which of the above reasons applies to you, and whether you want to deal with it or not.

You, The Teacher

It is very important to realize that even if you are not taking lessons you already have a teacher. YOU! Understand that especially if you are not going to someone else for guidance that leaves YOU in charge of your own growth, and responsible for your progress. It leaves YOU as the ONLY teacher on the scene. And you better make sure this teacher is a good one! You better make sure this teacher is honestly working their best to make sure the student is learning how to play, and play well, and building the foundation for continuous growth.

The job of the teacher is two-fold: to present new material to the student and to make sure the student is actually learning it. If you are your own teacher, these jobs fall to you. Just like buying yourself a book to present yourself with new material, buying yourself some lessons is fulfilling the same teaching function.

And besides, if you are your own teacher, and doing a good job, sooner or later you will arrive at the conclusion that it would be a good idea to get some assistance from someone who has already given some, or many, years to playing the guitar and being a musician.

True, you never know if you are going to find a great, or even good teacher, at least right away. However, a teacher would have to be pretty lousy to not be of SOME benefit, at least for a while. You can always leave and look for another, and knowing WHEN to leave a teacher is an art in itself!

No One is Self Taught, Everyone is Self Taught!

The fact is, in one sense none of us are “self-taught”, and in another sense, we are all “self-taught”.

None of us are self-taught, really. We are all influenced by what we see and hear around us, whether we are aware of it or not. A baby learns to walk by watching others walk. It doesn’t take “walking lessons”, but without watching others it would never learn to walk, (or talk, for that matter). So, the baby doesn’t take lessons, but would they be justified in going around when they’re about 10, bragging to their friends “Yeah, walkin’, taught myself!”

I don’t think so.

Segovia went through his very long life telling people he was “self-taught”. It was great PR, and the press loves that kind of stuff. He liked to give the impression that he started the classical guitar from scratch. Of course, he did add immeasurably to the domain and reach of the classical guitar, but only by thoroughly learning what came before him. There is a great picture of him sitting at the knee of Miguel Llobet, (the main student of Francisco Tarrega, who was the greatest guitarist of the 19th century, right before Segovia began his career.) Segovia is watching intently as Llobet plays, and you better believe he is absorbing every detail of what and how it is being done. He is “taking a lesson”.

If you play electric guitar, or folk guitar, or any style for that matter, one of the best things you can do is watch (and listen to, of course) other players. If your inner teacher is functioning, you will pick up something every time. You may not know it, it might just appear, show itself in some way, the next time you play.

The great players are doing this all the time. They were doing it when they first picked up a guitar. They MADE everything be their teacher, whatever happened to come their way, other players, recordings, and teachers. This kind of aggressive attitude is essential, and this kind of aggressive attitude would never even ask the question “should I take lessons”. It knows the answer would be, “Yes, if you can”.

The real teacher is the “inner teacher” we all have inside of us. If that teacher is not on the job, no learning gets done, no matter who is standing in front of us playing the role of teacher. That is the sense in which, ultimately, we are all “self-taught”.

It is this “inner teacher” that recognizes and makes use of all the “outer teachers”: people, books, etc.. So, in the sense that we will, and must, be absorbing knowledge and influences from what is around us, none of us is “self-taught”.

Lessons at different times, and for different styles

I have said lessons are always a good idea in the beginning. As you move along, there may be times when it is best to stop lessons, at least for a while. Sometimes, we simply need to be alone with our playing and our development for a while in order to reach new ground, the place that is right for us to grow into.

Especially for players of improvised styles, where the activity of playing with others is so essential to the growth process, this can become an important consideration. And often the student doesn’t recognize this. There have been many times when I had a student who was happily spending all his time learning scales and doing exercises, but couldn’t jam a simple blues solo with another player! If someone like this tells me they have aspirations of being in a band, I will tell them “stop lessons and join a band! It is more important for your development to play with other people with what you already know, than it is to stay in lessons and learn more scales or exercises”!

And this leads to the understanding that the need for lessons is not only different at different stages of our growth, but it is also different depending on the style we wish to play. As time goes on, lessons are less important for the blues/rock player. Actual playing experience is more important. The same is true for the folk player. Only when Vertical Growth is desired are lessons necessary. A great blues player becomes great because they are steeped in the language of blues, and speak it all the time as they converse with other players. You cannot become a great blues or rock player by staying in your room or taking lessons for the rest of you life.

If you are going to pursue the classical guitar, you’d better get some lessons right away, and work hard to make sure it is with the best teacher possible. Also, you should expect to be in lessons for at least ten years, if not the rest of your life, depending on how professional and developed you desire to be.

Summing up, understand that even if you are not taking “formal” lessons, you still have a teacher, and that teacher is you, and you have the same responsibility that your teacher would have if you WERE going to formal lessons: you must make sure the student is learning, and if not, you must do something about it.

If you are taking “formal lessons” understand that even though there is someone sitting there who has the title “teacher”, YOU are really the teacher, you are really the one who decides whether anything is really going to be learned, and who actually does the learning. You are going to decide how effective the lessons really are by how well you apply yourself.

If you are in lessons and not learning, than your “inner teacher” must tell you it is time to leave, and time to begin the active search for another teacher. Many people don’t do this, and that is why they can be in lessons for a long time, and not be learning.

Teaching and learning are in reality two sides of the same coin. You cannot become a great teacher unless you have already been a great student. Realize that you must play both roles in the process of your own growth as a guitarist.

Copyright Jamie Andreas, Guitar Principles.