If that scenario sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Artists of every sort contend with avoidant behaviors. Why do we sidestep doing what we love? The answer often stems from the nature of creativity.

When we practice, write, or otherwise innovate, we stretch our limits. We strive.

But striving takes us into the unknown, and that brings uncertainty: a band member might wonder whether he’ll get a solo polished in time for a show; a budding songwriter might question whether she’ll have a lyric ready ahead of a workshop.

If the uncertainty of creating unsettles us, then, to escape the discomfort, we might seek refuge in a mindless task: “This really needs doing,” we’ll congratulate ourselves as we reach for the mop.

Fortunately, there’s an antidote to avoidance.

First we have to notice an avoidant thought before we fall under its spell. Next we must act to do what we intend.

For instance, not long ago I was heading home to practice a demanding piece, and as I neared my front door I spotted some overgrown bushes: “I should put on my boots and cut those back,” I reasoned. (By the way, I loathe yard work.)

A moment later, as one part of me was sizing up the shrubbery, I caught myself. I recognized the avoidant thought for what it was. I then renewed my passion for the music I was tackling and dashed to my studio and tuned up my guitar. Avoidance avoided.

As I see it, we’re all going to have avoidant thoughts, especially when we’re under pressure or working on challenging material. So we need to keep countermoves handy.

Here’s my anti-avoidance formula. I hope that it will help you stick to your practice schedule and achieve your creative goals.

Counter Avoidance
1. Notice an avoidant thought.
2. Dispute it. (Laugh at yourself or just say “no.”)
3. Replace it with an affirmation: “Music feeds my soul.”
4. Act with full intention.

© 2010 Gerald Klickstein

For more creativity-boosting strategies, check out the following sections in my book The Musician’s Way (Oxford, 2009): “Fueling Motivation” (p. 105-109), “Committing to the Creative Process (p. 109-113), “Boosting Creativity,” (p. 309-314). Related content propagates at the book’s free companion website, blog, and newsletter.

Gerald Klickstein is Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and an active guitarist, author, and arts advocate.

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

Why we all learn to play guitar the wrong way

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

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

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

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

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

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

First beat, first priority

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

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

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

G | Em | C | D7 :||

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That may seem like a strange thing to say, but there are many places along one’s journey of learning the guitar where one eyes can actually make learning more difficult. Actually, it’s not really the eyes as much as it is the perceived (and pre-conceived) need to see.

“But,” you say, “what about if you’re a visual learner?” That is something that teachers hear over and over again these days. And while is it true that some people do learn quicker through a visual medium (and it’s exceedingly strange how reading, which is totally visual, seems to have fallen through the cracks and is no longer considered a “visual medium”), most people brains are, fortunately, quite adaptable and can switch gears quicker than one realizes. More on this later as it’s very important.

More to the point, though, is that music is not a visual medium, now matter what kind of spin you try to put on it. Music is heard or even felt as vibrations, but unless you go to concerts carrying a lot of sophisticated scientific equipment with you, you don’t see it. You can see all the peripherals of the show – the set, the lights, the costumes, the seemingly endless visual effects – but that is not the music. It’s the show and it’s important to remember that the two are separate.

When you play your guitar you also do not see the music. You see yourself playing the instrument. And, despite what I initially said, very important to beginners. Playing the guitar requires a bit of coordination. You need to correctly fret a note, which means that you have to be fretting the correct string in a “sweet spot.” You also have to pick the right string, too! Imagine doing that without looking!

But as one learns the guitar, this need to look at what the hands are doing can have some adverse effects. First off, in order to see your fingers on the frets, you have to tilt the neck of the guitar at an angle toward you. This creates two problems: First, with your guitar at that much of an angle, you’ve placed it in such a way that you cannot get the tips of your fingers in an optimal position to fret the notes. The angle dictates that the fingers are more flattened than “on point,” which increases the likelihood that you’re going to blunt some of the adjacent strings even if you do manage to fret the note you want.

Having the guitar tilted so that you can see the neck also places your wrist in a very awkward place. Ideally, you want your wrist to be relatively straight when you’re playing. There’s no way you can get it close to straight when tipping the neck to favor your eyes.

As a beginner, you have a fine line to walk here. Initially you are going to have to see what you’re doing. But you want to develop confidence in your fingers as soon as possible so that you don’t have to rely on your eyes to know they are sitting on the right place on the fretboard. This is why so many teachers first walk students through the many variations of the “one finger one fret” exercises when starting out. It helps to build that confidence and also makes you realize that you don’t have to see where your fingers go all the time.

Just as important, these simple exercises work to start developing your ear as well as your sense of touch. With very little concentrated practice, it’s amazing how quickly one can both hear and feel when a note is wrong. And this becomes more important as you get more serious about your playing.

So if you’re just starting out, make it a habit to try to set your guitar straight, parallel to your upper body, just as soon as you can. Read any of Jamie Andreas’ articles and you’ll understand the importance of proper posture and position. Look at your fingers first and then set your guitar right and try to go by feel. Some people practice sitting in front of a mirror to help with being able to see. That’s okay, too, but again the point is to try to play without looking. After all, if you perform live you’re not going to be playing in front of a mirror! Yes, playing without looking will certainly be difficult at first, make no mistake about it.

But in the long run it will also make your learning easier. Whenever you run into a chord that you’re having difficulty fingering, merely setting yourself in good position, getting the fingers where they can optimally fret the strings can usually make a huge difference in playing a chord well. Not to mention cleanly!

Changing chords is another area where our eyes can slow us down. Not that they mean to do so, but when one watches ones fingers change chords the natural tendency is to slow things down and to have each finger work individually in order to better follow it with the eyes. It’s almost as if the fingers and eyes have a contract between them to make the signal to the brain better – “…first remove index finger and stretch it to the first fret and put in place, then remove ring finger…”

Ultimately, you want your fingers to work together as a unit to change chords (see Tom Hess’ excellent article Teaching Chords to Beginning Guitar Students for some tips on doing so) and not relying on your eyes to supervise your chord changes will make you quicker and also more confident about your abilities. Not to belabor the point again, but you are far more likely to develop both your ear and your sense of touch more quickly once you push yourself to the point of not watching your every move.

And developing both your ear and your confidence in your fingers are two important by-products of getting past using your eyes. Read any interview by any guitarist whose ability and skills you admire. When he or she talks about learning it’s inevitably about how he or she would listen to his or her own idols and then try to play what was heard. The interviews rarely delve into just how much work that involved, it’s almost as if the interviewer has no idea how much time was spent getting things wrong! That’s important to think about, because ear training takes work, and if you never set aside time to practice using your ears, you won’t get a sense of phrasing or rhythm that are essential to being a great lead guitarist.

Speaking of rhythm, how many guitarists do you know who describe beats in terms of “ups and downs?” And how many do you know who count out the beats? Generally speaking, which ones have you found to have a better sense of rhythm? Chances are likely it’s those who count. When you count out rhythms you internalize them. You feel them. You cannot feel “up and down,” you can only copy a motion you’re seeing. It may be that watching someone gets you started, but until you develop the ability to internalize a rhythm you’re always going to need someone to get you started.

Please understand, none of this is to say that I don’t think using your eyes isn’t important or that being a “visual learner” means you’ve no chance of becoming a musician. All that I’m trying to teach you is to not let a convenient label keep you from making real progress on the instrument you love making music that means the world to you.

Our brains are incredibly wonderful and yet intensely dangerous things. They are wonderful in that we ultimately learn about the world using all our senses. And we truly need to use all our brain whenever possible. Most of us can smell something burning long before we see it, just to use an everyday example.

The brain is dangerous when we talk ourselves into a handicap that we don’t necessarily have. Saying “I am a visual learner” or “I need to see my fingers to play” takes all the pressure off, so I don’t have to worry or work harder when I stumble. More importantly, if I say it enough my brain will believe it and I’ll never be able to prove it otherwise, even if I manage to get good in spite of myself. If I say instead, “I prefer to learn visually but this is a musical instrument so I’m going to have to work on being able to use my fingers and my ears as well as my eyes, maybe even instead of my eyes” then I am letting my brain know that I need its help to coordinate all my abilities so that I can make music.

Way too many guitarists end up giving up playing because they don’t use all the abilities their brains have access to. It doesn’t take a genius to see that.

Speaking of seeing, here’s a final thought – as you get more serious about playing and start performing either solo or as part of a group, or even if you simply just jam with some friends, you’re going to need your eyes both to communicate and to catch communications with your band mates and audience. You’ll totally miss out on that if you have to constantly keep watch on your hands.

Until our next Guitar Column…

Peace

Hi Jamie,

I have a question about picking and building up to higher speeds.

I read somewhere that the late, great Shawn Lane once said, “Generally speaking, when practicing fast licks, it is supposed to be better to practice at a slow tempo and build up to speed. But my idea is ‘play as fast as you can even if you make mistakes.’ In the beginning, you may lack precision but you can get over that. First gain speed and gradually get clearer. It’s a better way – at least I think so.”

This runs counter to what you and most other instructors teach. Obviously it worked for Shawn so it can’t be completely flawed, but is there anything of value in this statement for normal humans?

In a similar vein, Michael Angelo recommends picking as fast as you can first, then using that motion as your basic template for picking technique and practicing slow from there on, the idea being that the first picking-hand position you go with is the most natural and comfortable for you (I’m assuming this isn’t directed at complete beginners). Where do you stand on that idea?

Thanks for any comments and keep up the good work,

Bill

Hi Bill,

Those are very interesting questions, and even though the contentions made are almost diametrically opposed to what I and many other teachers would advise, I think they deserve examination, and I even believe there is value to be discovered. In any case, as you say, when a great player says something, I always listen closely. They may not understand completely all the implications or related factors of what they are saying, but there is most likely something valid in their perceptions.

First of all, yes, I think we can safely assume that these procedures worked for these people, at least some of the time, and at least at some period in their development. However, we have no way of knowing if they could solve all their problems this way, and if they at times needed to employ other methods. We have no way of knowing if there were things they wanted to do and never were able to do, because these methods were not sufficient. And, we have no way of knowing if these methods only became effective after a certain period of technical development had taken place.

I think we should keep these uncertainties in mind when examining this issue.

And as long as we are talking about things that we can and cannot be certain of, I will tell you this without a doubt: for the vast majority of people attempting to learn guitar, these methods will bring exactly what they do bring for the thousands of guitar students I have met in my life: these methods of practice and problem solving will bring almost insurmountably disastrous results! I am talking about technique that is so flawed, so limited, and so ingrained into the players muscle memory that most people, without the benefit of the remedial techniques GuitarPrinciples offers, will simply never overcome them.

So, what is going on here?

I really think that when Shawn Lane says “in learning a new lick, just keep playing it over and over. The mistakes will gradually get worked out and it will get cleaner,” he is talking about learning a lick that is already well within the level of your ability. It is on the same plane as your horizontal growth at the present time. It does not contain movements that are beyond you at the moment, things you cannot do comfortably or smoothly at any speed.

There are many things I can play perfectly at sight, having never seen the music before. That is because (aside from knowing the neck well), there is nothing there I have not seen a million times before, and nothing there I cannot execute with almost no conscious thought. Then, there are things I can play pretty well, perhaps not up to tempo, and perhaps with some mistakes. I will have to work on them a bit, because they are simply more complex, and perhaps contain movements I am not so familiar with, or are completely new. Perhaps I need actual physical development of some muscle or nerve connection to play it well.

Then, there are really difficult things I have never played before (remember, I play mostly classical). The best players have to take months to perhaps a year to do the kind of analysis and practice necessary for extremely difficult music (and bring it to “performance level”). It is very important to keep in mind that many styles, especially improvised styles, use a relatively small number of discretely different movement patterns. If you are a rock or blues player, most likely, you are doing essentially the same movements, perhaps in different contexts and with different inflections, throughout your whole playing life. Even new licks are not too different than the ones you know. Of course, every player is going to fall somewhere on this spectrum in terms of variability of movement patterns, and that will influence the practice methods you find effective.

Auto Correct

I actually have a name for this idea of “doing something over and over until it starts coming out right.” I call it “auto-correct.” I use it myself, and I use it with students. However, it is important to know how to use it, when to use it, and especially, when not to use it.

I may have a student sitting in front of me, playing something we have worked on awhile. He or she may mess up a passage, and I will say “okay, take that part again.” But, I will add these extremely important words “increase your attention and intention before and during this next attempt.” In other words, some mistakes will occur simply because we are not paying enough attention to what we are doing, or, even more likely, are not thinking ahead to our next series of movements, including hearing the music in our heads as we play. So, my first line of attack with mistakes where music has already been practiced is “auto-correct.” It very well may happen that by simply going over the passage a few times with strong mental focus (and it is always a big help to play it mentally before each new attempt), it starts to improve. But, if the mistake does not yield to this approach, it is a good indication that something else is going on, that the problem is not in the mind, so to speak, but in the fingers.

It could be bad fingering, unclear fingering, erratic fingering, physical tension in any part of the body; a million different things. At that point, a diagnostic process of analysis must be conducted, and there is only one way to do it. If you doggedly stick with “auto-correct,” the methods you have asked me about, you are going to be a seriously frustrated guitarist, because when the problem is of this nature, it does not fix itself!

Another point to appreciate is this: in my book “The Deeper I Go,” I define intelligence as “responsive awareness.” I also make the point that there are many domains of intelligence, and physical intelligence is one of them. Some people’s bodies are more naturally “responsively aware” than others. For these people, auto-correct is going to work at an earlier date in their development, and more strongly. However, all of us can teach our bodies to be responsively aware, to be “intelligent,” that is what proper training is all about. The more sophisticated our technique becomes through training, the more “auto-correct” will work for us, and in increasingly complex situations.

But, much more important than all of this is to know what to do when auto-correct is not solving our problem, which is 99% of the time! What must be done is, essentially, the Basic Practice Approach (the fundamental practice methodology taught in The Principles). I will say to the student having trouble with something, “play the passage for me no tempo; show me the bottom of your practice.” That will tell me all I need to know. I will see the discomfort the student is truly experiencing (without knowing it), and I will see what they are doing to create or exacerbate that discomfort. I see what is wrong, why it is wrong, and what to do about it, and then we get to work.

Expanding Upon A Basic “Template”

Now let’s talk about this other idea of learning a skill by simply having a go at it as fast as you can, observing the action, and assuming that the details of that action are the best possible ones for you to use, and so should be developed.

Well, my first reaction is “try it, see how it works.” I imagine it may be a good idea, and bring good and maybe the best results for some very few people, but again, all of my decades of teaching experience have shown me otherwise. In fact, my basic attitude is, all things being equal, the untrained fingers are incredibly stupid, and can almost always be depended upon to do things in the worst way possible. In fact, it would usually be better to watch what your fingers do, and then train them to do just the opposite!

Now, please remember I am not laying down hard and fast “this is the way it is for everybody all the time” type of rules, because there are none. There are so many variables involved in this whole subject that no rules could ever hold true always. My philosophy is to listen to everybody, think about everything, try everything you have a mind to, and then assess and analyze results. We just really need to be careful in this whole endeavor. I would not be surprised that someone who based their picking technique on the first available action template that presented itself would never know whether they were, by doing so, making many other skills inaccessible to themselves down the road. We frequently hear of long time players who wish they could change this or that about their technique, having discovered superior approaches later in life.

So, those are my thoughts concerning the provocative statements made by these great players. If I were to summarize my reaction to the substance of your questions concerning the statements of these players of great natural talent who, as great players often will, have temporarily taken on the role of teachers, I would say this: it is a perfect illustration of why so often great players are lousy teachers, unless they are teaching already great players!

Copyright © 2005-2010 Jamie Andreas. All rights reserved.

Response from internationally recognized guitarist and music educator, Troy Stetina:

Jamie,

Wonderful insights. When I read these things you write, I always find myself thinking, “yeah, very true.” You always seem to be articulating things that I am aware of, but had not refined into such clearly stated truths. So it’s always very cool to see you hitting the nail on the head.

This was a particularly interesting one… Right on target here with how many great players practice methods work, but only under certain circumstances. When people ask me about my own practice now, I must always qualify my answer, saying that when I was developing technique my practice was quite different. What I do these days for “practice” is only a matter of “dusting off” skills already previously developed. That is a completely different animal from “inputting” the unconscious routines in the first place.

Thanks for all your efforts and insights,

Troy Stetina

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Please be aware that the advice in this article is meant, primarily, for those for have solid state amplifiers (the author himself has a Crate GLX 120).

With tube amplifiers, the situation changes. The speaker (generically, a “load”) should not be disconnected from a tube amplifier without the substitution of a nearly equivalent — but silent! — resistive load. All the power that would have gone into the speaker ends up being absorbed in the power (output) amp transformer (part of tube amp design) and fries either the transformer or something else. It is entirely possible that someone HAS managed to do this with a tube amp and not damage it, as disconnecting a serial EFX loop as shown also removes signal from the power amp stage. That would save the tube amp. But even so, destruction is still possible if: EFX loop is a parallel loop (v. unusual) or the person forgets to reattach the speaker before playing through the amp normally.

Most solid state amps do not have this issue due to fundamental differences in principles of design and operational. In other words, never operate a tube amplifier or any large wattage tube or solid-state amplifier without a proper output load: e.g., properly rated speaker, resistive load or power soak device. Only use this method on a smaller wattage, solid state amplifier.

And always consult the amplifier’s user manual to confirm that no load (no speaker, no resistor, no power soak) operation will not damage the amplifier.

Back in 1975 when I first took up the electric guitar, my family lived in a two-family duplex. Our apartment was situated over a retired couple. She was very ill most of the time and needed her sleep. He was a classical music aficionado. There was neither insulation nor soundproofing between the floors. So imagine their joy when the gangly teen upstairs comes home with a new guitar and amp in one hand, and KISS’ “Alive!” in the other.

Really, they were pretty good sports about the whole thing. I only had to keep my amp and stereo down to levels so low, I swear my hearing actually became more acute. It may be the only instance where someone’s hearing improved from rock music.

Years later when I began playing electric guitar seriously again, I found myself disturbing people once again! I was distracting my sons from the mayhem splattered on Playstation, and my wife had problems focusing on Kiefer Sutherland. Fortunately, and thanks to my friend Kenny, technology has advanced enough to allow me to irreversibly damage my hearing without disturbing anyone in the next room.

Below is a very simplified diagram of how I am able to quietly practice along with sound or video files using a minimum of out of pocket expense. Your only prerequisite is an effects loop channel on your amplifier.

The first step is to disconnect one of the connections on the amplifier’s speaker. Mine uses a simple spade connector which slides on and off without any metal fatigue.

Next is to run a patch from the SEND jack on the effects loop and run that to the LINE IN connection on my Windows PC. This did require a trip to Radio Shack for the patch cord with a ¼” plug. Plus I needed an adapter to reduce the plug to a 1/8″ to connect to the PC’s soundcard.

The external speaker connects to the LINE OUT jack on the soundcard. PC speakers with their own power supply are the preferred method as I will outline in a second.

Now, plug your headset into the respective jack on your external PC speakers. You may have to tweak your audio properties from the system tray to allow the signal from the LINE IN to be heard. Speakers with their own power supply usually come with their own headset jack as well as volume and tone controls. The headset jack on the front of most PCs has no external volume or tone controls, and adjusting them via audio properties is clumsy while holding your instrument. USB powered speakers may have volume control, but not a headphone jack. Myself I have a set of Hewlett Packards that I picked up at Walmart for less than $20.

Now you can play along with CDs, sound files, or even YouTube instructional videos without driving someone else up the wall.

Although you can run this as loud as you want, since you’re using headphones, it doesn’t take much to seriously damage your hearing. So be sensible and keep the volume at a point where you can clearly hear what’s going on. If you can hear someone in the same room you’re in talk to you (without yelling), you’re fine. If your headset is at the distortion point, or your neighbors can hear what you’re doing, turn it down. Also, driving your amp’s signal into the PC at too high a level may also run a damaging amount of voltage into the system bus. Again, use sensible levels. If you want to practice at a Ted Nugent-sized volume, maybe you should look into renting a place.

There are amps on the market now which not only have a place for plugging in your headset, but also an input jack for additional audio sources. However, if you don’t have one of those, this makes for a very adequate alternative.

When trying to increase your guitar speed, the most important thing to remember is that you must be able to use your faster speed in songs (otherwise, what is the point of learning how to increase your speed in the first place?). Few things about guitar playing are more frustrating for people than having worked so hard to acquire good technique and speed on the guitar but then not being able to use it in real life playing situations, yet most players struggle with this to some extent.

I believe we all know that the usual reaction to this situation is a negative one; frustration perhaps mixed with anger, and a little despair thrown in for good measure! When we can’t get something to sound the way we hear someone else play it, even after lots of practice and lots of time, it is a very frustrating, annoying situation. At the very least, we want to hear ourselves making that wonderful music we admire and, more than that, we want to feel like we are getting somewhere as guitarists for the effort we put in, that we have the ability to make continuous progress.

So, when we keep giving ourselves negative feedback, in the form of repeated failed attempts to be able to do something, it starts to take the wind out of our sails, and we begin to lose confidence in ourselves. Diminished desire for practicing usually follows rather quickly.

So, what do we do about this unavoidable situation?

The answer lies in understanding the point I made in my essay “The Inner Master”. We must understand what “Mastery” is, and why it is possible to be, in essence, a Master right from the beginning of our relationship to music and the guitar. And that is because Mastery is an inner attitude and disposition. It is the inner position in which there is no obstruction from the outside to the inside, and no obstruction from the inside to the outside.

Sure, even “Masters” hit plateaus, but they have learned not to react in ways that will prevent eventual transcendence of the limitations of that level of ability. They have learned that all negative reactions will prevent moving beyond the plateau. The only possible exception to this is the person who has learned the wonderful art of turning his anger into an ally, using frustration as a fuel for determination. But even in this case, the anger is handled with mastery, and not allowed to become an obstacle (but that is a topic for another essay!).

The Master has realized the wisdom expressed so eloquently in the New Testament, “resist not evil”. The meaning of this is simply this: the way to overcome that which we do not like is not to resist and resent it, because that only strengthens it, and weakens us. It is to “remain in place” inwardly, to study it, to understand it, and then to act. Then, we achieve power, which is the ability to create change.

And so, knowing this, what does the Master do when they find themselves on a plateau? Why, they build a château on the plateau, and take up residence there! They say, “Hmmm, something is going on here that I don’t understand, so I am going to stay here and study the landscape. I will focus my attention so strongly on what I can see that I will begin to see more.” The Master knows the reason for being stuck is because there is something sitting there, at that level, that needs to be known. So the Master sits, and studies, and if there is one thing a Master has, it’s patience!

For someone who has not discovered the inner position of Mastery, the reaction to being “stuck on a plateau” is quite different. For such a person, there are obstructions from the inside to the outside, and the outside to the inside, and the obstructions arise quickly– anger, resentment, and feelings of inadequacy appear and intensify. If these feelings were examined, the road to Mastery would begin to become visible. If these feelings were examined, we would find that it is not really the natural frustration of not getting what we want that is the biggest problem, but rather, it is the fact that we are, underneath that, feeling inferior and inadequate.

Like children watching their parents divorce, we conclude immediately “there must be something wrong with me; that is why this bad thing is happening”. In both these cases, this conclusion may appear to be justified, given our level of understanding, but it is not the truth. The Master may feel these feelings too, but unlike the novice, the Master does not run from these feelings, they simply become part of the scenery to be surveyed.

The novice feels such emotional pain from these feelings that they are helpless to do anything but try to avoid them. The novice shuts his eyes, and covers his feelings. In fact, the novice wishes to leave the plateau more out of a desire to avoid feelings of inferiority than by the desire to really enjoy a higher level of ability.

Unlike the novice, the Master does not identity with these feelings; they may arise, but the Master does not give these feelings the power to define who he or she is, or can become.

Just because I feel like I am inferior, or unable, is no reason to assume I actually am; that would be a very dangerous belief to adopt on such dubious evidence. And so, the Master sets aside these feelings, and sits, and studies. The Master becomes so involved in the process of communing with the conditions of the plateau that the desire to leave it becomes secondary to the interest and adventure of learning all of what is there. And so, problems become more interesting than frustrating.

Because of this, over time the depth of understanding of the Master increases, and the rising to a new level of ability appears automatically.

To be a Master from the beginning, to have the power to transcend your plateaus, is not about knowing how to go somewhere else. It is a matter of knowing how to look and see where you are right now. Insight into where we are now involves two things: understanding how we got here, and more importantly, knowing what is keeping us here. Often, the two answers are the same. In any case, it is the second answer that is most useful to us. Therein lies our power.

As I said, negative emotional reactions, the habit they become, and sometimes even the need for them, painful though they be, prevent us from leaving our plateaus. But there is a little more to the story. Underneath every reactive feeling there is a belief. If you want true insight into yourself you must uncover the unconscious beliefs that underlie your feelings. And I will tell you this most truly: if the above described feelings are a chronic obstruction to you during practice, then you have the most toxic belief a guitar player can have: you really believe you will never be able to do it, you believe you just don’t have it, and worse, you can’t get it. Your frustration draws its power from your deep down belief that you are innately inadequate. And so all your negative feelings actually resolve down to despair, and despair is living death.

The opposite of despair is hope. And guess what! There is good news: help and hope are here! They are here for those who really want it and are willing to act like they do. That hope is a complete conversion of your practice according to The Principles. Anyone who does this realizes that their belief in their innate inadequacy was simply wrong. They simply were not going about things in the right way, and no one ever told them.

Mastery is not about where you are, but how you look at where you are. The Principles will give you the framework within which you can look at where you are with understanding, not despair. What most people think of as “Mastery” is simply the accumulated power and abilities from much time spent in the position of Mastery. They look at the result of mastery, and think it is the thing itself.

All of what you see in The Principles is the result of my time spent, often many years, on my own plateaus. Or, it is from the study of the plateaus upon which my students have found themselves. Essentially, I have done the work for you, or at least all of the work except the work only you can do for yourself. I have figured out every detail of why people have trouble learning guitar and why they get stuck at some level of ability beyond which they cannot move. I have never seen a plateau from which I or my students could not eventually rise, but only if we sit upon the plateau as a Master.

Sitting upon the plateau as a Master, with dedication, understanding, and patience, we do not allow frustration and despair to obstruct the flow from the inside to the outside. Everything is seen, known, and understood, and we are led to relate in the best and most appropriate way to the level of awareness called “the plateau”. The “plateau” becomes the teacher, and instructs the Master/Student in the wisdom that is necessary to rise higher.

And so it goes, and so it goes.

Copyright © 2004 Jamie Andreas. All rights reserved.
www.guitarprinciples.com

1. Your individual playing

The most important thing you can do (individually) to prepare for your gigs is to focus on playing your songs ‘consistently well’. To improve this, practice your songs in a wider variety of environments and situations. Play your songs standing, walking, in the dark, under a strobe light (if you have one), while talking, without looking at your guitar, while friends are listening, etc. The key point is to practice playing consistently well in all those different scenarios. This will help your individual performances on the stage.

2. Your band’s performance

When your band rehearses you should not be focused on playing the songs correctly. If your band mates cannot play the songs flawlessly before the band rehearses, send him/her home to learn the songs. Once he/she has truly done that, bring that person back to band rehearsals. Band practice is not about holding people’s hand through the process of learning the songs which should have been learned at home. If you have a band mate who needs your help learning the songs, you can do this by meeting alone with that person to help. However, if this is a consistent problem, then you may need to replace that band member for someone who is better (or less lazy if that is the case).

Band rehearsals should be about the band playing the songs tight rhythmically, matching dynamic levels in various parts of the songs and developing great stage presence (more on this later).

Because it can be very difficult to really know how good your band is in any of these areas as you are practicing, I strongly suggest you record your band rehearsals in two ways:

• Video record your rehearsals. When you watch the video, turn the volume off and simply pay attention to how the band looks visually. This will help you to really focus on the stage presence and visual impact your band may (or may not) have on your next audience.
• Audio record your rehearsals. Do this with computer based recording software and make sure each instrument is recorded onto its own track (multi track record). Do not listen to the audio from the video recording! The first thing to do is look at the recording on the computer screen. You want to notice patterns of rhythmic flaws. Is your bass player always playing slightly before the beat? Is your guitar player playing slightly behind (late) the beat? For many people it is much easier to ’see it on the screen’ than it is to hear it. Once you see it, then you will be able to hear it afterwards much more easily. Doing this exercise will really help your band to play much tighter rhythmically (which is absolutely critical for any band). Also listen to how the dynamic levels of the band are changing? Does everyone get louder and softer at the same time? Or is everyone doing their own thing randomly? It almost always sounds best when the band does this together.

3. Your stage presence

When you play live, your music is only 50% of what most people in your audience care about. The other 50% is what they see. Remember, they came to ’see and hear’ your gig. Great ’sounding’ bands often lack bigger success because their live shows suffer from lame stage presence. If you want more people to consistently come out to your gigs, you must develop great stage presence.

As mentioned above band rehearsals aren’t about ‘learning to play the songs’. Schedule at least 50% of your band’s rehearsal time to analyze your stage presence skills (watch the video as described above and take notes on what you notice), then begin to implement improvements to this part of your live playing. You can make a lot of improvement on your own simply by some self analysis. If you want more help, check out my free stage presence tips.

4. Eliminate (or at least reduce) stage fright

If you have cool music, a cool band and have prepared well to give your audience an awesome show, that can all be quickly destroyed if stage fright gets in your way. Many musicians simply don’t perform well on stage due to anxiety. Don’t let this happen to you and your band. You have worked too hard to let fear cripple you. Your audience deserves better, and more importantly, you deserve better! You are on stage to have fun, not to be nervous every moment of the gig. To eliminate (or at least to significantly reduce) performance anxiety, check out this stage fright article.

5. Performance logistics

In addition to stage fright, there are other things that may happen during your gig that can hurt it. The main two issues are not being able to hear and not being able to see. If you’ve already played gigs, then you know that every gig sounds different on the stage. One night you can’t hear the bass, the next night you can’t hear yourself, etc. When you are the opening band, you typically don’t get a sound check before you play, so you have no idea what you will be able to hear (or not hear) on stage until you start playing the first song. While there are many different ways to deal with this problem, I’m going to focus only on one of them here. One of the best ways to prepare for not being able to hear all the instruments is to practice your songs with you and only ONE other instrument. So for example, practice playing only with the bass player. Next, practice the song only with the drummer. This will prepare you for live situations when you can only hear the bass or only hear the drums etc.

The next common logistical problem is not being able to see. Often live stages are dark in some moments and then extremely bright in other moments, making it very hard to see your instrument. My eyes are very sensitive to light, so I always play with dark sunglasses on (since the bright lights often blind me on stage without them). For dark situations you can add white out (or even glow in the dark markers) on the side of your fingerboard, so even in very low light you can clearly see your fingerboard. Of course practice playing the entire song without ever looking at your guitar is also a great way to prepare for unexpected lighting problems on the stage.

To get more help developing your music career check out my fifteen free music career tips.

About the author: Tom Hess is a professional guitarist and mentors musicians to start a career in music.

©Tom Hess Music Corporation.
All Rights reserved.

Here are three ways that any musician can practice performing and thereby become masterful on stage. All of these concepts are expanded on in my new book, The Musician’s Way.

1. Assemble a performance-development group

The skills required to perform soulfully in public have to be practiced. All of us, therefore, need opportunities to try out our material, learn how to manage our nerves, and hone our stage presence. I’ve found that the ideal setting for doing so is in a performance-development group.

To form such a group, you need two or more soloists or bands of comparable ability and a defined space such as a living room, rec room, or church meeting hall. Next, each musician must embrace a mutually supportive attitude because your group should provide a nonjudgmental setting where you can experiment freely as a performer and grow from your experiences.

For instance, what if a rising guitarist wants to build his confidence on stage, test his memory, and explore ways to counter jitters? How does he do so without risking his reputation in a public setting? A performance-development group supplies him with what he needs: he can play fearlessly in front of his fellow musicians, and they’ll cheer him on in his quest for excellence.

To make your practice performances optimally concert-like, enlist concert protocol: enter to applause, perform complete compositions, and have listeners applaud afterward. In addition, use a recorder so that you can review your work later (information about personal recorders is posted on my blog).

I also recommend that participants comment on each other’s performances, but within strict boundaries:

• Keep your comments brief.
• Use courteous “I” statements.
• Offer at least three positive remarks for every criticism.

Here’s an example of how one guitarist might comment on another’s performance:
“I really liked your choice of material and your stage presence. I also thought that your timing and memory were right on. Toward the beginning, though, I wondered how it would have sounded if you had stayed with a quieter volume for a while longer.”

2. Schedule private run-throughs

In a private run-through, you perform without an audience, other than your recorder and maybe the cat.

Commit to doing run-throughs at set times, and implement your standard pre-concert routines – arrange your meals and other preparations exactly as you would for a public event because pre-concert routines need practice, too.

When you perform a run-through, visualize an audience, and play your heart out. At the same time, rehearse specific skills: if you tend to stiffen on stage, for instance, practice releasing tension and transmitting warmth; to polish your stage presence, employ a video recorder and try out various gestures.

The benefit you derive from any practice performance will hinge on how honestly you evaluate your playing and the ways in which you practice in response. During your self-assessments, be objective and detached: treat glitches as helpful information and never as personal shortcomings.

For example, after you run a solo piece, you might go over your recording, jot down notes, and rehearse improvements. A few days later, following additional targeted practice and another run-through, you might opt to perform the music for your performance-development group.

3. Line up low-stress public shows

The above sorts of practice performances are invaluable, but public shows are going to be more intense, and we want them to be, but in positive ways.

Low-stress public shows give us the chance to present our music in actual performance situations, but where the stakes are low. So, although we take such performances seriously, we give ourselves permission to have fun on stage and not worry. As a result, we increase our confidence and artistic prowess. We’re then primed to excel at high-stakes concerts.

Representative sites for such performances include coffee shops and house parties as well as church or synagogue meeting halls, where we might invite congregants to hear us and donate to a charity. Such performances enable us to build an audience, serve our communities, and lift our playing and self-assurance to new heights.

When we integrate these three types of practice performances into our creative process, we can erase any disconnection between the practice studio and the stage. Of course, it takes time and effort for us to refine our craft, but let’s remember that performance, at its heart, is an act of beauty and generosity. In the words of singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg, “I always try to give my songs as gifts.”

© 2009 Gerald Klickstein
All rights reserved

Gerald Klickstein is Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and an active guitarist, author, and arts advocate. His book, The Musician’s Way was published this fall by Oxford University Press and is available at booksellers and in libraries worldwide.

Of course, I wanted to take my guitar with me and continue practicing. As it is the first such experience, it took me a lot of thinking and preparation. I’ve got some very useful advice from people on the Guitar Noise Forum, but I didn’t find any articles on the topic, so I decided to write one myself and make life for people like me a bit easier.

To Take or Not To Take?

That was the first question to decide. Yes, I do want to take the guitar, but there’s also an opinion that it’s better to take some rest from an instrument so when I come back to it after vacation, I could feel inspired and actually make better progress. It makes sense, but I have not yet reached the point where such tactics are required, so I decided to take the guitar. If you think that to leave a guitar at home is a good idea (which is okay), I wish you good rest and safe travel. If you’re like me, keep reading.

Equipment.

I’ve prepared a list of things I need to take. Here it is, with some comments on each item:

• Guitar.

I keep the instrument in a soft bag. I want to take it with me onboard and put a separate bag with all supplementary stuff into a suitcase. I don’t like an idea of checking an instrument in as luggage (or baggage if you prefer) because it can be broken. You all have heard of United. I asked a question on the forums, and people say there’s usually no problem with taking it inside the plane. Policies do vary from airline to airline and sometimes simply on how crowded a flight may be, so it’s a good idea to check with the airline first. Most people’s experiences are that if you are polite about it, the airline personnel will let you take your instrument on board.

• Amp.

Oh yes, it’s so big and heavy, even my Roland Micro Cube which supposed to be portable! So I thought I would travel without an amp at all and will practice quietly. This is a bad idea! Let me explain. Generally, that’s OK to strum chords without an amp. The problem is that I’m learning to play [hard] rock, a kind of music which requires distortion and tends to be fast. I have tried to play without an amp to keep quiet when I was even too lazy to wear headphones. What a mistake! I struggled to learn a good position for the right hand for a month or two, before I realized that without distortion my guitar will not sound if I place the right hand correctly, and so I instinctively, without even noticing it, placed the hand in different position to pick strings louder. After I realized that, I’ve learned a better position and became able to move further in my learning. So, what to do?

Thanks to the Forum, I’ve found out that there is a whole class of devices called ‘headphone amps’. The most affordable is a VOX amPlug, which comes in different versions, each suitable for a different musical style be it rock, or heavy metal, or whatever.

The most powerful device for a reasonable price is Line 6 Pocket POD. This device can emulate tons of amps, cabs, and effects. It has more affordable version called Pocket POD Express, which is much simpler, emulates only five amps and six effects.

So, which one to buy? Here’s my advice: consider not the price of a unit, but its purpose. If you play in one particular style, buy an amPlug and be happy with a good sound quality, small power consumption, and low price. However, I learn different techniques and exercises, and want to be able to produce a wider range of sounds, from clean, closer to acoustic, to heavy metal. For this reason a POD suits me better. By a lucky chance, a good friend of mine had bought a Pocket POD so I could take it for a couple of days. Well, it sounds pretty cool! But I realized that if I want to switch from clean to heavy, with an Express version I could just turn a knob, whereas with regular Pocket POD I need to press a button – ten to twenty times! It really takes some time and attention. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a professional computer engineer, and so I know how to deal with buttons, create presets, etc. I even love to do that. But I do not want to spend a minute switching and loosing concentration when I practice guitar. One minute a day constitutes a bonus week for a year of practicing!

So, again, when buying a device, consider its purpose. If you need as much versatility as possible for a buck, if you love experimenting with sounds and looking for a cool effect combinations, get yourself a Pocked POD. But if you need a decent device which will allow you to practice virtually any style of music and will not require much attention, consider POD Express. Whatever you choose, don’t play without an amp!

• Headphones.

Once you have a headphone amp, you need headphones, right? Take you favorite ones, with a cord long enough to reach an amp, but not too long. Usually, the bigger phones are better, but they are also heavier, so it’s up on you to decide whether you need a perfect sound or mobility.

• Tuner.

POD has a built-in tuner, but I have a chromatic one with microphone, so it’s on my list. If you want to spare a couple of cubic inches in your suitcase, you may choose a built-in tuner, which works fine. VOX amPlug doesn’t have a built-in tuner, so in this case a separate tuner is a must.

• Batteries.

Electronics requires power. But I don’t want to spend any time looking around for new batteries. I wouldn’t care much about a tuner, but an amp does require a lot of power. You can be happy with a fresh batteries installed into your new shiny (or old good) amPlug right before departure, but POD is power-hungry, so I install one pack and take two spare packs (4 batteries each) additionally. By the way, Line 6 doesn’t recommend using rechargeable batteries with a Pocket POD (either regular or Express). I believe that’s because rechargeable batteries have lower voltage, and so will not serve you long enough. From experience I know that rechargeable batteries work for about 2 hours, whether alkaline ones serve 3 times longer. At home I don’t use batteries at all, a MicroCube’s AC adapter works perfectly with POD.

• Pocket PC.

I’m fortunate to have a pocket computer which serves me in different ways. It’s a metronome, mp3 player for songs and backtracks, movie player for video lessons… It’s a pocket navigator and touristic guide (but that’s a different story). If you have a Pocket PC, or iPod Touch, or a smartphone – find any software you may require. If not, take your mp3 player and mp3 files to jam with. But it’s not essential, you may use your leg or a hand watches to keep rhythm – at least for that week or two when you’re on vacation.

• Strings.

I always have a pack of spare strings. It is unlikely to brake a string during vacation, but the pack doesn’t require much space so I will take it – just for a case.

• Cables.

I have two of them, one with 1/4″ jacks to plug the guitar, and another one with 1/8″ jacks to plug mp3 player into an amp. I’m taking both.

• Picks.

Will take three of them – they are easy to loose and difficult to find on a beach!

Tutorials and Other Information.

This is tough to choose. There’s so much stuff around! I’d like to take some prints with easy songs, backing tracks, etc. But I couldn’t use it all anyway, so I take a couple of video lessons on playing technique and another couple on how to play my favorite songs (with backing tracks and originals). If you don’t have a portable video-player bring along some papers, but print them a week before leaving on vacation. As always, there’s so much to do right before travel, and you don’t want to have another thing in the list.

How was it?

Here comes the interesting part: My vacation took eleven days, including arrival and departure. In both directions the women at the airport check-in counters were surprised by the fact that I wanted to take my instrument onboard, but had no objection. There were absolutely no problems with security, flight attendants, or anyone else. By the way, I wasn’t the only one with a guitar in the plane. There’s plenty of space in a boxes over passenger seats, or behind a back row, or near a door. So, I don’t see any reason to put an instrument in a luggage.

I practiced every evening. First, I found that I wanted to sleep more than usual. But I practiced anyway, one day for thirty minutes only, another day for one hour and half. But I was too lazy to watch for video lessons, and used my computer only as a metronome. I played my usual exercises (scales, strumming, legato) and that was enough. A couple of times I tried to play songs which were heard from the disco in another part of the hotel. I used (and continue using) a chromatic tuner to train my ear, which is possible thanks to built-in microphone.

I didn’t loose a single pick, and spare strings were of no use. My Pocket POD Express served me well – I changed the batteries only once. I still use the device when I need to play or practice quietly and I’m happy with it.

The only thing I regret is that I didn’t buy a book on music theory before vacation. I had some time which I could use for reading, but had to spend doing nothing.

Overall, I’m glad I took the guitar with me. Pocket POD is a great piece of equipment so I recommend it to anyone for practicing away of a real amp. All other stuff I took with me was also more or less useful, and I was prepared good for the travel. Next time I will take the guitar with me again, and will use this article myself as a checklist. If you have any question or suggestion, feel free to e-mail me at dkiryukhin@gmail.com

Happy vacation!

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

You Are the Teacher to Yourself

Look back over all of the teachers you have had in your life. Think about the good ones, and then think about the not-so-good ones. Good teachers share some characteristics; a daily goal, unit goals, and long term goals. Good teachers know the material they are teaching, and have mapped out a plan for teaching it. They offer clear explanations and concise tips for student improvement. On a daily basis a good teacher is aware of what material relies upon previous knowledge and what is new to the student. By building steadily upon known information the student learns to adapt new information quickly. Patience, guided practice, and high standards are tools a good teacher brings to the classroom practice session.

Not-so-good teachers care but have not prepared themselves or their students for knowledge expansion. Mere discipline becomes the daily plan as students become bored and restless. The students fall into “default” behaviors. These behaviors include poor attitude, bad posture, low interest in the subject, and little attention to detail. Students allow themselves to just get by. The teacher grows irritated, then frustrated, and finally settles on simply getting through the day unscathed. No real learning occurs in such an atmosphere.

Tap yourself on the forehead because your brain must be the teacher. Will your brain set short and long term goals? Will it be patient while expecting better results? In short, will your brain share the characteristics of a good or bad teacher?

Now hold your hands up and look at your fingers because they are the students of your brain. They have prior knowledge of guitar, but they can do better. Plan to gradually increase the knowledge and power of both hands. A teacher must have no fear of learning, for that spirit is alloyed into the student. Worthy learning is always difficult, so count on struggling. In the long term it will be prove valuable.

Assess Yourself Honestly

Write down your strengths as a musician. Are you up to speed on chords? Do you prefer soloing? Is your sense of time accurate? Are you a good reader? Bet I got you on that one, so let’s use it as our example. A wise student will expand specific knowledge into broader learning.

Analyze reading for a moment by answering some questions. What came first, music or writing down music? Obviously music came first. As a child, did you talk or read first? You talked first and then used that prior knowledge to begin reading. You knew what “food” was before you decoded the word on printed page. From an auditory and verbal base you expanded your knowledge to a visual platform. Trust yourself; you have all of the aural skills needed to expand your musical platform to the visual. You know what a dotted rhythm sounds like, so go out there and practice what it looks like.

You should ask yourself, “Why have I ignored this aspect of my playing?” We ignore, by nature, out of fear and because of bad previous teaching. Go through a method book. Do you remember playing Ode to Joy and coming to the end of the first phrase? A five year old knows the cadence ends with a dotted rhythm, yet most often a method book will write it as two quarter notes followed by a half. I understand the method is trying to teach one thing at a time, but the effect is to disarm the student’s ears. Rather like saying, “Here, play this music but don’t use your ears lest you ask any questions like, “What does that dot mean?” Music is all about sound, so never allow your ears a lie. Remember, just because it is in print does not mean it is the truth.

And fear? Get over that. If you play any instrument you will make as many mistakes as McDonald’s makes hamburgers. No player is even good until they have racked up one million mistakes. To replace a bad fingering with a good one will take patience and confidence in the eventual outcome. Music is great because, unlike driving, if you make a mistake no one gets hurt. Musicians rely on the do over. Eventually you’ll get it right every time.

Select Good Materials

If your goal is to introduce reading into your practice don’t start with a Bach Prelude. Pick a method that explains well and contains many pieces you know from childhood. In this way your ears can relax while you focus on reading and fingering. Select a few pieces from outside the method so your practice “desk” has at least three items on it. Remember, none of this has to be learned today, you are merely trying to familiarize yourself with the material. One of the three pieces should be something you have never heard. Keep all of the materials fairly short. Your desk should eventually look like this:

• Working on
• Nearly done
• Brand new

By establishing this left to right sequence you will always know what work needs to be looked at during a practice. This sequence should begin moving in three or four days. Every item must go to the heart of an area you think needs improvement, be it reading, chord work, timing, or dexterity and accuracy.

Task Analyze

Now your brain must go to work. Don’t just stare at the materials, go after them mentally. If you are stumbling over a rhythm take out a pencil and read it over and over. If you make a mistake three times in one measure then take that measure and read it correctly over and over. This technique is called looping. If there are four beats in a measure you begin at Beat 1 and read it through. At the end of Beat 4 you “loop” back to Beat 1 and start it again. When you think you have mastered it, place the measure in context with its surrounding measures and loop them together. A loop can be as small or large as the teacher (your brain) thinks will most benefit the students (your hands). Notice you have yet to play a note. The teacher is now studying the material to be covered. If the teacher doesn’t know it the students will never grasp it on their own.

You will know when your brain is ready to teach. Take just one measure, establish a slow and steady beat, and allow your hands to move through it. Now the teacher must be more aware than ever. If a particular motion feels awkward that singular motion should be looped until it is comfortable. Now you are really “practicing”.

By establishing these small building blocks a player constructs a whole piece. You are not concerned with finishing anything yet because you wouldn’t purchase a house that was built in one day.

Practice this way for fifteen minutes and then ask yourself, “Do I want to continue?” Most of us will say “Yes”.

Move on to your second piece; never hammer one thing for a whole session. The same process should be applied. The brain analyzes and when ready patiently introduces the material to the hands. Moderate success is all that is required because the next phase will cement your building blocks in place.

Repetition

Before you end your first organized practice take a moment to review everything covered during the session. At this point your brain should be planning the next practice.

You already play. You are already excellent at the construct called repetition. Can you imagine how many free throws a pro basketball player attempts in a practice? I’ve heard of one who never showers without 600 shots from the line.

All succeeding practices are about three things:

• Repetition
• New material
• Review

Review all of the mental and physical processes from previous practices. At first this seems daunting, but soon you will notice that information flows much faster if it is worked on often. What seems foggy on Day 1 will be crystal clear by Day 4 if you have looked at it multiple times. To stay on the sight reading example, if you look at, analyze, and play a second line G twenty times it will become natural and you will begin to play it without concern. To succeed you must allow yourself the twenty times.

Repeat and loop measures, phrases, and whole pieces. Each piece is unique and has its own arc. Your fingers, hands, and whole body must measure and learn the overall arc of each piece. If you are having a difficult time jumping from first to seventh position in a piece, stay there and allow your arm to practice and measure that leap. If the motion dictates your fourth (pinky) finger landing on D in seventh position, practice that motion for a few minutes every day. Your left hand is smart; it will memorize that exact distance if given enough repetition. This practice is not piece specific, I assure you it will crop up many times in your musical life.

Finally

Always prepare new material. Keep a constant flow across your desk. You don’t have to love every piece you come across, not everything must be arduous. I knew a man, otherwise smart, who went to a classical guitar teacher and said, “Teach me the most difficult piece for guitar.” He worked on it for years and never came close to succeeding. He also never learned how to play anything on the guitar. There are no shortcuts; the journey itself is of prime importance.

Borrow a technique from pianists; they also play an instrument that is vertical. Allow your right hand to practice without the complication of left hand. Your right hand will develop the focus it needs to later succeed with the left hand. If you want to work on your left hand only, drop right hand fingerings and just strum through the left hand motions. This is called blocking, like a director does early in rehearsals for a play. Both hands cannot work together until each hand knows its individual assignment. Go back to this technique over several days and see that it works every time.

Don’t limit yourself to what others have composed. Create arrangements of your own design, Compose short little pieces and develop your ideas. Creativity is a source of pride for musicians. Let your pride stem from real accomplishment.

A teacher of mine, a good one, once told me that more bad music was created using MIDI than any other tool. He was wrong, most bad music has been created under the guise of impromptu creativity. Sloshing through the familiar territory of a blues scale loses enchantment to both the player and listener. Keep yourself fresh by inputting many musical ideas. Your output will soar.

Become a better teacher and you will become a better guitarist. It’s that simple.

About the Author

Tom Mariotti is a composer, music teacher, and writer living in Michigan. Tom initiated a guitar program for the school district he taught in, authored a curriculum and textbook for school guitar programs, and piloted a Music Technology course for his students. Tom was a clinician for the Arizona Music Educators Association Conference in 2005, 2006, and 2007. He also served on the Authors Committee, Arizona State Standards for Music Education in 2001, and has worked with Music Curriculum writing teams since 1996. A graduate of Eastern Michigan University’s Music Education College, Tom is a long-time performer and educator. Contact Tom at Guitarusa100@Yahoo.com or visit his soon-to-be-up-website, GuitarUSA.net.

We close our eyes and picture the caveman dancing around the fire, beating a drum, and howling. If we’re really imaginative, we can then picture cavemen wearing berets and howling off key really really fast, and we have the precursor of bebop.

But the point is – at least for this article – is we take the idea of two original instruments. (And by the way, I’m a huge jazz fan, so don’t think I’m bopping bebop)

Fast forward to the present day, and electric guitars.

There’s a curious deviation from the two original instruments that the electric guitar takes.

It doesn’t have to come up for air, as the voice does.

We can shred at 302 beats per minute – all day! We guitarists literally never have to stop playing. Compared to, say, a saxophone, guitarists can play runs on their instrument that others can only imagine. This is because, again, the only thing limiting our expression is carpal tunnel syndrome, not lung capacity.

At first, we think “Cool! I can jam all day, and that ol’ saxophone will never keep up.” However, don’t we usually strive to make our guitars sing? And howl? And scream? What sings, howls, and screams, and clutters up the airwaves on American Idol? Singers!

Yes, yes, I hear you muttering something about the honor, of not howling like a monkey, and actually bringing an instrument to the gig, but read on…You’ll surely play better after applying these principles. And if you’ve always liked the breathtaking tone of a saxophone or vocalist, you’ll find some ideas to use.

Singer Stats

Singers, generally speaking, do not:

• Try to play things as fast as possible
• Try to play things extra complicated (unless we’re talking about Mary Poppins singing Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious, the vocal version of sweep picking.) But do you want to be like Julie Andrews?
• Try to cram in as many words as possible.
• Try to use the biggest word possible. (“A fuchsia nebulousness appears to be in my cranium…no! It’s “Purple haze, all in my brain!” )

Singers, generally speaking, DO:

• emphasize melody
• emphasize tone
• use dynamics (sing loud and soft.)

Keep in mind, I am not suggesting that you throw your chops out the window. Heck no! I’m saying that you try to sing with your guitar. Literally. In order to apply the principles outlined above, the best way I’ve found is to actually sing along with your guitar lines. Do your best to match the pitch, but you don’t have to be spot on. Since you’ll run out of air (unless you’re my grandmother,) stop playing when you do, breathe in, and play again. And if you hyperventilate, use some more space in your music, dude!

Fear not, non-singers! Even if you’re totally botching the notes, you’ll notice a dramatic difference in the melody and spacing of your lines. And, if you want to get really creative, try singing a line first, and then play it. Since your voice doesn’t know the patterns that trap your hand into the same stale licks, you’ll have access to an incredible array of new sounds. And best of all, they’ll be melodic!

Of course, you can play fast, you can play complicated voicings, and you can play a lot. But now, with a bit o’ luck, it will sound good! It will have purpose. And it won’t sound like random doodling!

A musician that stands out in my mind for taking this idea to an art form is the guitarist and singer, George Benson. (Now, now, metal heads, sit down and quit whining. You can use his ideas in your camp, too. Turn crooning into shrieking.)

Original Instrument #2 – The Drum

Since guitars can span the gap between melody and rhythm, we can incorporate both of the original instruments into our playing to great effect.

Playing in a funk/dance band really made me appreciate the rhythmic role of the guitar in certain settings. Muted strings, wah wah pedals, and picking dynamics can all contribute to the percussive aspect of our instrument.

Practicing with a drum machine, or at the very least, a metronome, is vital. However, thinking like a drummer is even better. For a crazy project, get a book with drum exercises or rudiments, and try to apply them to your guitar. Building a riff by assigning certain notes to the kick drum, others to the snare, and the final ones to the hi hat is another valuable technique for riff building.

The main point to remember is that guitarists can often have sub-standard senses of good timing. So from this moment on, refuse to accept that in your playing. Make a point of getting your time right. It will get you better gigs, and other musicians, namely bassists and drummers, will appreciate a good sense of rhythm. (And if they’re the ones hiring you for the gig, it’s good to impress them.)

Specific Exercises:

1. Vocals: Sing a line, and then play it. As simple as it sounds, it will dramatically help refresh your lines. Try it in the privacy of your practice room, and be silly! Sing crazy stuff, and then play it. Chances are, you’ll find something cool.
2. Drums: Play “air guitar” to a song that you find difficult rhythmically. Mute out the strings with your left hand, and strum with your right. Try this with a funk, Latin, or ethnic beat. Not only will you be thinking like a drummer, but you’ll improve right hand chops as well. It seems silly, but it has been one of the biggest helps to me. And for some of the musical situations I’ve been in, a muted, percussive sound was THE guitar part for the song. Believe it or not. This is especially helpful if you’re having a tough time getting the feel of a beat that swings, or is outside of your playing experience.

Have fun singing and grooving!

Special thanks to my colleague and teacher, Mr. Mike Stacey for the conversation leading to this article.

For further craziness, be sure to check out my blog.

One of the prime skills to develop as a musician is in playing tightly to a metronome. Unfortunately, too many players don’t fully grasp the use and purpose of the metronome. Not only are many individuals uncertain of how to use it, but many people are unaware of why is so important to become very well acquainted with one of the most valuable tools in your arsenal! Plenty of information about how to use the metronome has already been written, so I don’t intend to rehash popular exercises here, but I would like to expand on what the metronome means to us as modern musicians and suggest some tips on how to maximize your efforts in developing tightness.

A metronome is a device that helps musicians play at a steady tempo, that is to say, at the speed that was intended by the composer.

Have a look any “official” music score and you should see it at the very beginning of the piece.

The “Heavy Rock” part is a description of what kind of feel the composer is looking for. This is fairly subjective but it helps steer the player in the right direction. Following that is the tempo indication. It states that one quarter note, or one beat, occurs exactly 156 times in one minute. Hence, we would say that this piece is played at 156 Beats Per Minute (BPM). That is great to know, but it would be very difficult to estimate with any precision how fast this actually is. This is where the metronome comes in. Its raison d’être is to provide a audio or visual cue as to how often each beat occurs. Visual cues are usually some kind of blinking light, whereas audio ones could be a beeping or clicking sound. In fact, many modern digital metronomes include both.

Two styles of Metronomes

A Windup Metronome

A Digital Metronome

Modern Applications

There is a lot more to using the metronome than simply sampling a few bars to get the tempo of a song. In fact, the metronome is quite essential to all musical activities these days. You can thank artist/guitarist extraordinaire/inventor Les Paul for elevating the status of the metronome from a mere device for providing tempos to the indispensable live and studio tool that it is today. You may have heard that he is the creator of multitracking, which is the process of recording one track at a time and then mixing them together afterwards. Before the advent of multitracking, bands would all get in a soundproof room, place a microphone in the center of them, and record a few good takes to choose from. Multitracking allowed each instrument to be recorded separately for the first time. This approach had a number of advantages, but it also meant that there had to be a steady pulse for everyone to follow. The multitracking process is used to produce the vast majority of CDs today.

Multitracking necessitates being able to play with a far greater accuracy than was required in the early days of recording.

The typical modern procedure for recording a song goes like this: The band will spend some time playing the song to a metronome to determine its tempo. Once a consensus has been reached, a metronome track will be recorded for guidance. This is what’s referred to as the click track. In digital recording, there is no need to record anything because the click can be set and played during recording and even during playback. When viewed on the screen, each track will be stacked from top to bottom and will extend from left to right. Time intervals can be denoted in time or in bars and beats. These divisions are what’s known as “the grid”.

Screenshot of a Digital Recording Program

Usually, instruments are recorded in order from the most rhythm-centric to most melodic – E.G.: drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, vocals. However, because of the grid, it is possible to record in pretty much any order. That’s one of the reasons that recording is done this way today. If you have a famous session drummer flying in to do tracking in two weeks, why hold up production? As long as the bass and guitars are in time, they will sync up. For this purpose, a scratch drum track can be recorded using a drum program or machine. This would be replaced later by the real drums. You can see why it would be beneficial to be able to play very tightly to a click!

As I mentioned in my last article (How The Pros Practice), amateur musicians tend to shy away from using click tracks because they falsely believe that it will take away the feel. This assumption is based on inexperienced players’ tendency to try to chase the individual clicks rather than feeling the groove of the pulses. Having recorded guitar tracks myself over drums that were not recorded to a click, I’m not sure why anyone would put themselves through the hell of trying to sync up a riff with uneven drums! The truth is that recordings done this way will almost always sound sloppy and will take three times longer to record. The exception is highly skilled players who record everything at once to capture more interaction between the instruments. Unless you’ve done at least ten CDs using a click track, I don’t recommend that you even think about experimenting with recording without one! The fact is that, even bands who do record everything at once or that use an analog system to get that old school warmth, still need to be extremely tight because it is standard practice to have a professional digital editor go over everything to clean up the tracks. When the difference between tight and sloppy tracks can cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, you can bet that no record company would let you put down anything less than near perfect parts.

For the reasons stated above,

no matter what instrument or style of music you play, it is crucial that you can play very tightly to a click.

In a live setting, you can get away with playing without a metronome, but you may not have considered all the circumstances that would necessitate playing to a click live. The most common is the dreaded live “speed up” phenomenon which can affect even the most seasoned musicians. A cheering crowd and adrenaline rush can make for a more energetic performance than you were prepared for! The solution is to have the drummer wear an earpiece with a click. The rest of the band don’t need to wear one, since they can follow the drummer. Oddly enough, I haven’t met many drummers, or even whole bands for that matter, who want to do this. They say that it takes too much effort to follow the metronome and it takes away from the enjoyment of the live experience. This is a very interesting response because it highlights the difference between playing for fun and playing professionally. It does take some getting used to, but the difference is a loosey-goosey “bar” band sound versus a tight pro sound.

The other common scenarios for using a click live are when sequencing is involved such as time sensitive lighting or sound effects and live recording. If you release CDs, there comes a time when you will want to release a live CD and/or DVD. Just check out most any professional live recordings and I think you’ll find that the playing is surprisingly solid. That’s because the drummer is almost certainly playing to a click! If not, he or she undoubtedly practices to one regularly.

More on Practicing for Tightness

I have discovered something interesting about tight players. They all spend a lot of time recording! In my early days as a musician, I practiced to a metronome when I was getting ready to record and the odd time that the mood struck me, which wasn’t all that often! This did very little to help my timing at all. It seems that playing along to a metronome will not do wonders for you by itself. At best, it will make your live performances more solid. It was not until I put together a home studio and began to use it every day that I started to see some real progress. Having read interviews and spoken to some of the best players, I have come to realize that the habitual recording to a click is what separates the really tight players from the so-so ones. It acts as a mirror to your playing that does not lie. All too often, players will only hear what they want to hear when playing a part!

Recording a part forces you to listen to the sounds that your hands are actually producing as opposed to what you’re hearing in your head.

Here is the process that many pros follow when perfecting and recording a part:

The first step is to play along to the metronome or drum machine for about fifteen minutes or until you feel that the part sounds as noise free and tight as you can play it. After you’ve recorded a few satisfactory takes, listen back to them. If you’re like me, you’ll be amazed by all the ways which the part could sound a lot better than you thought it did! Once you have ascertained what needs to be improved upon, repeat the whole process again and listen a second time. The kinds of changes that I personally would make (as a guitar player) will usually consists of tightening, picking more clearly, eliminating string and position shifting noises, as well as making minor changes to the part to make it sound clearer. This iterative process can continue up to a half-dozen times. Sometimes I come back to a part a few days later as well. Even a pretty good sounding part will improve with a couple more sessions. In other words, you can always play tighter and better!

Tightness is not just about following a click track to a very exacting degree, but it is also about clearly enunciating each note and making what’s in your head come across on “tape”. The tightest players happen to be the ones who spend a lot of time working on this very skill. Whether you’re a hobbyist or a full-time pro, you can’t go wrong by recording yourself over a click track – often. Until next time, happy practicing!

References:

Online Metronome:
http://www.metronomeonline.com/
http://www.answers.com/topic/metronome
http://www.answers.com/topic/les-paul

Sadly, there’s only one way – practice, but there are exercises that will help you. This is an exercise that came to me whilst I was trying to master a particular chord change. I still use it regularly, both to work on a new chord and as a general chord changing exercise.

Firstly, it is important to realize that this is not meant to be musical – you’re learning how to change from one chord to another, not invent chord progressions. You can strum one chord as often as you like (it doesn’t matter if you strum it five times or five hundred – it’s not important) and you can use whatever strum pattern you prefer. One word of advice, though, don’t make it complicated, you have other things to think about.

The key to making this work is being able to imprint an image of the next chord change, in your mind, before you actually carry it out. Let’s call the chord that you’re trying to master, the “target” chord.

Start off by fingering the target chord and begin strumming. You can strum at any speed and use any pattern that is comfortable for you. To start with, I’d strongly recommend a simple down-strum at about 60 beats-per-minute. Continue to strum, whilst, at the same time, creating an image in your mind of an “A” chord – see where each finger is placed on the fretboard. Concentrate on that image and “see”, in your mind’s eye, the movement of your fingers, from the target chord to the “A” chord – and, all the time, continuing to strum the target chord. Once you have that little “film” firmly imprinted into your mind, make the change on the fretboard, to the A chord – don’t stop strumming and don’t worry if you fluff the change (if the images are strong enough, you probably won’t, though).

I find that, if I burst the bubble and look at the fretboard, it doesn’t work. As long as the image is there, in my mind, I can make the change, without actually having to watch myself physically do it.

Now that you’re strumming an A chord, it’s time to think of going back to the target chord. So, create the image of your fingers on the fretboard, in the shape of the target chord – really burn the image into your mind. See yourself, mentally, changing from the A to the target chord – the stronger the image, the better the chance that you’ll get it right. When you’re ready, make the change.

At about this point, you begin to start appreciating a slow, simple strum pattern (I did say you’d have other things to think about, didn’t I?)!

OK, we’re back at the target chord, now it’s time to go somewhere else – this time, we’ll go to a “B” chord. An open B is not the easiest chord to fret, so I usually use a B7. Go through the same routine as before – image thoroughly burnt into your mind, mentally see the fingers moving from the target to the B(7). When you’re really confident, that you’ve got it fixed in your mind, do it on the fretboard, for real. After that, we’ll use the same routine to go back, from the B(7), to the target chord.

Go throught the same procedure with the C, D, E, F and G chords.

No matter what the target chord, that you’re wanting to get to grips with is, the sequence is the same:

• Target to A and back
• Target to B(7) and back
• Target to C and back
• Target to D and back
• Target to E and back
• Target to F and back
• Target to G and back
• Target to A and back and so on…

Obviously, there’s no point in including the target itself in the sequence. If, for example, the target is D, then going from D to the target (D) and back to D is not going to do anything for you.

If you want to use other chords, such as sevenths and minor chords, that’s fine. You could change it to:

“Target, A7, target, B7, target, C7, target, D7, target, E7, target, F7, target, G7, target, etc….. ”

or

“Target, Am, target, Bm, target, Cm, target, Dm, target, Em, target, Fm, target, Gm, target, etc……”.

You can (and should) also use barre chords (if you’ve progressed to playing them) as part of your routine. Ultimately you’ll want to include every chord you know into your routine. And to continually add the new ones in as you master them.

Just to recap, the key to this routine is the strength of the image that you create, in your mind. The stronger the image, the better the chord change. You can even use this in learning/playing songs. Once you have the technique of creating the chord images, you’ll find a general improvement in your chord changes. There will come a time, though, when the image and the chord change are both simultaneous and automatic. At this point, you really only need to do the exercise to refresh your muscle memory.

Maybe this can help you as much as it has helped me – this was how I tackled with my demons, the C and the F chords.

There are a number of differences between professional and amateur musicians but if I had to single out one above all others, it would be that the pros play with a much higher level of consistency. When you watch live performances, you’ll notice that the players seldom make mistakes and they play all their parts very solidly, no matter how technically difficult the part. I used to think that there was such a thing as “good enough”, especially when dealing with difficult passages. Not so in the pro world. In the big leagues:

No matter how easy or hard a part is to play, you must be able to play it perfectly.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s whole note chords or 32nd note arpeggios. Also keep in mind that any recording project has a fixed budget, which means that you have a set amount of time in which to put down your tracks. If you’re struggling with playing your parts, in order to keep the project on budget, a producer will likely bring in a session player. Let me repeat that with more emphasis, in case it didn’t quite sink in the first time:

If you cannot record your parts withing a reasonable amount of time, the producer will likely bring in a session player!

In my amateur naiveté, I used to joke to my bandmates that I’d like to see them try to find someone who could lay down my rhythm parts in any reasonable amount of time! After talking to Jeff, I am convinced that they could and would replace me if I were to give them a reason to. That’s when it really hit me that:

As a professional musician, you must be able to play consistently well under pressure.

Playing music is a lot more fun than working in an office, but let there be no misunderstanding, with potentially large sums of money at stake, you are expected to do a job and do it well. Now I don’t mean to imply that you have to be some kind of virtuoso. Far from it. To be successful in the studio, a musician simply requires a strong sense for what a song needs and be able to capture those ideas on “tape” in a timely fashion. Live, consistency is one of the key components for giving each audience a good show for their hard earned money.

Practice Principles

As you might have guessed, to attain this level of proficiency, it takes a very specific approach to practicing – one that is surprisingly quite foreign to most players!

Everyone knows that practice makes perfect, but few people realize how much impact the quality of their practice sessions will have on their career. Most people focus too much on unimportant things and way too little on the really important stuff! For example, one of the biggest mistakes that amateurs make, myself included, is to equate chops with skill. Most amateurs try to hide their lack of solidity by throwing in a lot of licks and embellishments in their playing. Once in the studio, they quickly discover that music industry professionals are not fooled for one second by frivolous flashy parts. To them, sloppily executed licks just look ridiculous and merely detract from the song that they want to capture. Get in the habit of practicing to achieve solidity and consistency in every recording you do and leave the licks for when you can play your parts in your sleep.

Pros practice exercises and techniques as much as songs

I used to spend the vast majority of my time going over songs. Now, most of my practice time is allocated towards playing scales, chord progressions, and a variety of exercises aimed at improving my picking, fingering, fluidity, consistency, and timing. The idea behind this is that the better your technique is, the easier it is to put down songs solidly. At a recent drum clinic, drummer extraordinaire Mike Mangini remarked, “Music is not just art, but a skill as well. There are many talented musicians, but only a few skilled ones.” He went on to say that one of the key traits that separate him from most musicians is the discipline to practice mundane and basic techniques over and over again until they are perfect.

Practice everything to a metronome

Some people, including many, many drummers, feel that they can somehow avoid metronomes believing that they instinctively possess pretty good timing already. One of two things tends to happen to these people if their band is lucky enough to get signed. They either get replaced before the deal goes through or, if they are integral to the band because of creative input or image, they are relegated to watching the recording from the sidelines. The producer will know who practices to a click and who doesn’t, and he or she will very likely bring in someone else, because it’s too late to catch up at that point. This is especially true for drummers, since it’s extremely difficult to punch in drums.

General Tips for Practicing and Working with the Metronome

I asked my band’s vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, John Devadasan Perinbam, for his thoughts on this subject. Here’s what he had to say:

1. I’d advise people to start with the metronome on SLOW! Every book I have read on drums and piano mentions this! That will help work the muscles that need it…and yield much better control.

2. George L. Stone recommends in his acclaimed book Stick Control to repeat each pattern twenty times without stopping before moving onto the next pattern. This forces the player to be conscious of counting the pattern, not just ripping through each pattern.

3. In my opinion the purpose of practice is to fine tune the muscle memory so that the muscles obey the brain with a minimum of conscious intervention – whether the practice is for music, sports, whatever…

4. WATCH FOR TENSION when you practice. Vocalists should practice in front of a mirror and observe posture, use one hand to feel the muscles under the jaw while practicing. If something feels like it is tensing, you’re probably not doing it right.

5. I’ve heard many people say that they don’t want to use a click track because they won’t “feel” the music the same way. That’s usually because they are not used to working with the click and they are “chasing” it rather than feeling the groove of the beat.

6. By the time you’re ready for the studio, you should be able to play the parts in your sleep. There should be nothing that challenges the limits of your playing ability. If there is, then the parts are too difficult.

6b. By the same token, when it comes to recording, a simple part, played solidly and consistently, is infinitely preferable to a challenging part that is “hit-or-miss”.

7. A point regarding discipline: always set goals that are attainable. The person that suddenly decides to allocate three hours a day for personal practice after twenty years of not practicing at all is likely the same person who is no longer practicing regularly after three or four months!

8. Learn another instrument, at least at a beginner level. At the very least, you’ll get a different perspective of the music, and you’ll be more understanding of your bandmate who regularly plays that instrument. Additionally as you become more proficient you’ll likely develop your muscles more evenly than if all your attention is focussed on one instrument.

9. Allow time for new techniques to sink in. It takes time for information to filter through the conscious mind and stored in “muscle-memory”. Patience.

Practicing everything to a metronome is a great habit to get into, and will put you leagues above most players, but there is more that you can do to make the most efficient use of your practice time. Most pros have very busy schedules. What with public appearances, business meetings, traveling, they have a lot less time for practicing than you might think! But that’s OK, because:

Pros know how to make the most of limited practice time.

Each time a professional musician sits down to practice, he/she knows what he/she is going to go over and for how long. Here is a sample practice session:

• 15 minutes of hand stretches and strengthening exercises.
• 1/2 hour of picking/timing exercises
• 15 minutes of scales played at different tempos
• 1 hour of rehearsing songs for evening’s band practice

Depending on what needs more work and what kind of guitar player you are (IE: rhythm or lead guitar), your practice agenda could differ substantially from the one above. I strongly recommend that you have a look at John Petrucci’s Rock Discipline instructional video for some useful guidelines. Just keep in mind that he represents the extreme far right of the pro player spectrum and is by no means “typical” in his degree of perfectionism. If you take it as the benchmark for what it takes to play at the highest level of technical proficiency, you can scale it back from there to determine how much is enough for you. For example, if you play rhythm guitar in a rock & roll style band, you would put most of your emphasis on strumming chords along with a click track and a lot less on pentatonic licks. What you would NOT do is reason that you want a loose feel, so you avoid using a click track! That’s what an amateur would say and it won’t serve you well in the studio.

Practicing for Tightness

Even playing along to a metronome every day is not enough to ensure that you are ready for recording. In case you haven’t yet enjoyed the thrill of recording, you’ll find that it is a lot different than playing in your living room. And the best way to prepare to do recording is to do some recording! I strongly recommend that you purchase a small portable digital studio for this purpose. You can snag one for a couple of hundred bucks and it could pay huge dividends for your career. Here’s how to use it. When ever you make up a part, put it down. Not only will that help you remember it, but it will also provide you with practical rehearsal for the real thing. Once you’re satisfied with the performance, go ahead and double it, and then even triple it! I like to record a part ten times and then pan individual parts hard left and right so that I can hear how closely they match up. Ideally, you should be able to do this with any of the ten takes and they should all sound good. In reality, you will probably find that several of the parts that you thought were bang on are in fact less than rock solid! Once you can play the part and double it virtually every time, you’re ready for the real recording. I can remember too many occasions going over a part a zillion times to capture that one magic take. Lucky for me, I was recording in a home studio. I could never have gotten away with that in a real one. At the very least, I would have received a strong tongue lashing from the engineer. In a big budget scenario, the producer would have probably banished me from the recording and replaced me until I was ready to get down to business. The lesson here is that:

Pros record all their parts several times before attempting the “real” recording.

There are exceptions to all the rules I’ve outlined above, but you will find that the best and most sought after players do follow all these practices. Don’t let yourself become one of those artists who refuse to regiment their practicing because that they fear it will homogenize their playing, because, rest assured, these fears are simply unfounded. It can only help your cause to become proficient at your chosen instrument. So give these practices a try, and get yourself on the right path before you’re told to! Until next time, happy practicing!

The reality, however, relies on two separate things: the amount of free time you truly have and the physical condition of your hands. Let’s tackle the second one first.

If you’re a pure beginner at the guitar, at some point your hands are going to start to hurt. It doesn’t matter what type of guitar you have, electric, acoustic or classical. Everyone who picks up this instrument has to go through this. If you’re practicing the guitar and your fingers start to truly hurt, then stop. Take a half hour off and then go beck to it. See if you can go another ten minutes before they start hurting again. Your first few months of practice may consist of grabbing ten minutes whenever you can.

Now I’m also assuming that whomever is reading this for advice also has a bit of a brain and can tell the difference between when one’s fingers are merely sore and when they are, indeed, in pain. To put it bluntly, don’t be stupid when it comes to knowing what hurts and what doesn’t. Learning the guitar is not a race unless you make one of it. Most of us already know that, regardless of how quickly or slowly we started out, we have the rest of our lives ahead in which to continue learning. I have yet to meet a guitarist (or any musician, for that matter) who believes that he or she has learned everything there is to know about his or her instrument.

The thing is, for most of us anyway, the only time we get to do anything even remotely like playing the guitar is when we play the guitar. So while taking five or ten minutes here and there may not seem like much, there is indeed a “cumulative” effect that will happen. If there’s a wait of five to ten minutes until supper is ready (and if there’s nothing you can do to help out…), then spending that time switching between the C and the G chord or do a few dozen runs of the major scale.

And this takes us back to the first part of the question – how much free time do we truly have? It’s important to link this question with another: what do I mean by “practice?” This is an important question, one that is essential to understanding how we improve as players. When we’re first starting out, everything can be thought of as practice. But as we look for more and more out of our playing, it is important for us to have focus. Goals are what Darrin Koltow calls it in his great article, A Musician’s Most Important Skill. A goal can be anything from “changing from the G to D chord without missing a beat” to “being able to play all of Classical Gas.”

I think it’s safe to say that most of us simply want to get better. Our imagined audiences consist of ourselves and friends and family, not a stadium full of frenzied fans. If this is the case, then more than likely you have to find your practice time in the busy-ness of everyday life. But it is there. Many people I chat with find the best time to practice at either the beginning of the day or at the end. It’s not that hard to get in a half-hour to an hour if you’re willing to do so.

But making the time for practicing, setting aside a part of the day for yourself, also has its own rewards. It becomes an appointment that you look forward to, a time when you can unwind and get away from the hectic pace of life.

When you know you’re going to have a block of time, as opposed to five or ten minutes snatched from somewhere, then it indeed becomes important to have a goal or a schedule, a plan for your practice. On the Guitar Noise page devoted to practice tips, you’ll find all sorts of articles devoted to this subject. I don’t even mind recommending one of my own, A Question of Balance.

Understand, too, that your practicing is going to be very fluid, meaning that what you need to practice will change as you grow as a guitarist. The chord changes you work diligently on as a beginner will yield to scales and bass runs and all sorts of interesting things. It’s important that you have an honest and realistic approach to what you hope to accomplish. Keeping a journal of your practices, again making certain it is an honest account of them, can help immensely. And it will also give you some satisfaction during one of the many moments of “plateau malaise” that you’ll encounter to see that you indeed have been making improvement.

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

I speak about the metronome with such reverence because it is such an indispensable tool in the quest for complete mastery of our instruments vast array of techniques. Many get frustrated with it because they do not know how to use it properly. The aim of this article is to help you learn how to use it and grow to love it.

The first exercise does not even involve the guitar, so put it away. We, I believe, are not rhythmic creatures – yes, we breathe rhythmically and walk rhythmically, and our hearts beat rhythmically. But we are not rhythmic beings. The beating of our hearts, and our walking and breathing are done on a sub-conscious level. We do not think about it. Since we do not think about it, it is not a natural part of our thought process and this is why beginners and even some advanced players have a hard time with rhythm.

So, for the first exercise, turn the metronome on and set the tempo to 65 BPM (beats per minute). Now count aloud and move your body back and forth with the pulse. This helps to internalize the pulse on a conscious level. There are several things going on here:

1. We are feeling the pulse because we are moving our bodies to it.
2. We are hearing the pulse because we are counting it aloud and that pulse is being reinforced by us hearing the metronome.
3. We are forcing our bodies to move to it and we are counting it so we are forced to “think” about it.

All this helps to internalize the beat. When 65 is mastered move up in increments of 10 BPM, if 10 proves to be too much too soon then try 5. The important thing is not how fast you go but how much you can correctly “feel” a pulse.

Another exercise you can do is to play a piece you are working on and vary the rhythm. Let’s take the opening bars to the Bach Prelude in D Minor:

It’s a steady flow of 16 th notes. Steady 16 th notes can be a very difficult thing to play evenly; the brain understands it but the hands sometimes do not.

One thing to do is vary the rhythm. The first alternate rhythm involves a dotted 8 th note followed by a 16 th .

The next rhythm involves a 16 th note followed by a dotted 8 th .

If you notice, the benefit to studying the opening measures to the prelude is that it’s one measure of material, followed by a measure of literal repetition, and then a measure with new material with the following measure a literal repetition of the one before it. This presents us with a great opportunity to practice it as a speed burst exercise:

The key to this exercise is to set the metronome pulse as slowly as you need to in order to play it correctly, even if you have to set the metronome at 65 and each click represents a 16 th note. Whatever it takes to train the hand the right way.

Another thing to do is to play what is written but vary the accent from finger to finger. For example the first time through the thumb will be accented, the second time through “i,” or index finger will be accented, etc…Again set the metronome as slowly as you need to in order to play everything smoothly.

This is by no means exhaustive of metronome techniques and I will do a future article on metronome techniques. This article was meant just to get your feet wet and to get your brain thinking. The thing to remember is that the key to playing fast is playing slow, but playing slow correctly . And the key to playing slow correctly is using a metronome.

This article came about for two important reasons: A) I want to be a better musician and B) You want to be a better musician. Both reasons should be important enough for me to draft this, and also important enough for you to read it. I hope that we’ll find both statements true. So lets begin with what this practice approach is, and more importantly what it isn’t.

It IS a very sound, informed, and non-contradictory approach to learning, what I feel, are the most important aspects of guitar study.

It IS NOT a perfect approach to guitar practice. Or by any means the “proven” most effective method.

Since I began playing, I could never find a step-by-step approach to a good practice session schedule or even what elements made up a good practice schedule, in other words, what I should be practicing and how. Now notice I didn’t say “perfect” practice schedule. There can’t be a perfect method since everyone is at very different technical levels and abilities.

This method I’m going to outline has worked for me and is an informed approach, using lessons gleaned from my private teacher of seven years and many of the following books:

“The Guitar Cook Book” Jesse Gress
“The Guitar Grimoire Series” Adam Kadmon
“The Hal Leonard Series”
Many of the Berklee Press issues, especially:
“Guitar Voice Leading” John Thomas
“Jazz Improvisation and Technique” Dale Harbour

And lots of others that I dont have with me.

I have filled volumes of fretboard paper, chord grids, and tab sheets for hundreds of hours. There are notebooks, everywhere in my home that have never seen review and never heard an accompanying metronome. I have revised and changed this, and have broken down all the information in to the most easily remembered sequence I could find. I have mapped out the intervals for all scales and modes using both dot and note sequences and ended up with an OVERWHELMING amount of information, which would have taken months to properly unravel.

I have had those months.

Now, to make sure you at least know I’m not just some confused young adult with too much time and too little knowledge. I have been playing for almost 8 years, with weekly live performances around my town to my credit. I am, however, by no means better then most of you at playing the guitar or performing, and would never claim to be. This being said I have learned a ton about theory in my free time and I hope some of this would be of use to you. Any feedback would be appreciated along with input to how I could make the procedure better.

So let’s begin with the fundamentals of what, in my opinion, we should be practicing on a daily basis. You may revise as you see necessary.

Overview of the essentials

1. Scale study
2. Arpeggio study (would include triads)
3. Chords and voicings
4. Sight reading
5. Vocal and song construction (depending on your personal goals)

Now before you start to ask about some things you may not see here, or something which you believe doesn’t belong, let me say that you may include or remove things as you see fit. I’m just laying down what I practice daily and it’s up to you to add (or delete) that which seems most applicable to your own practice. Obviously, I’ll be doing the same as I describe my approach to each of these five sections.

Section One: Scale Study

Now we all have the books. I know we do. Buying them is one of the things we do because every book we purchase is another step to being the best, isn’t it? No it’s not. And we should know it by now. But somewhere between denial and acceptance lies the truth of buying learning materials. I own forty-seven books, mostly in the music theory and guitar technique categories. Most of them cost between 15.00-50.00. So let’s say on average around 30.00. That’s 47 x 30.00 = $1410.00, which is more then I’ve made at every gig I’ve played since the age of fifteen! In other words, too much money!

So you too have seen the charts, displaying endless strings of black dots. They say put your finger here because this is how it goes and that’s it. Maybe this works for you, it didnt for me. This is what I think you should do.

Note: Since it would take an extremely long time to approach all the exotic scales in addition to the extra harmonic scales, I will exclude charts for the melodic minor, harmonic minor, whole tone, half tone, diminished scales, and additional exotics. This isn’t because they are unnecessary, but because we want to concentrate on applying my methods. I will place printable blank sheets at the bottom of this article so you may draft your own versions of these scales for your own approach.

The major scale and remaining six modes are my concern for the time being.

1. IONIAN
2. DORIAN
3. PHRYGIAN
4. LYDIAN
5. MIXOLYDIAN
6. AEOLIAN
7. LOCRIAN

Seven modes, seven notes. Easy. I’m making the assumption that we all know what modes are, even if we don’t know all the fingerings and relationships.

To abbreviate each mode is a corresponding interval of the primary major scale or Ionian mode. Each number next to the mode designates its relationship note wise to the original major scale. In the key of C it looks like this:

C MAJOR SCALE

MODES. . .

C-IONIAN
D-DORIAN
E-PHRYGIAN
F-LYDIAN
G-MIXOLYDIAN
A-AEOLIAN
B-LOCRIAN

So why would we learn the modes and not just the major scale?

Because if you’re like me, obsessively compulsively enriched and a creature of habit, you will have a very hard time taking your C major scale and starting and ending on any note besides C. And I guarantee that any solo you want to play is not going to be interesting if you run up and down the C major scale in perfect sequence around a relative chord progression.

Long story short: To learn the major scale you need to learn every note within it and thus the modes. . . the whole story so to speak. So let’s ditch the theory stuff for a quick sec (or a long sec) and see what it is we actually should be practicing.

Many people will tell you that the CAGED format is a good method for memorizing scale patterns. I don’t use it. Why? This is why:

CAGED is an approach to learning the major scale and modes based on taking the open position chords and applying fingerings to them. Most of you will eventually practice scales using caged format. Good idea? Yes. Great idea? No.

Why is caged format not the best approach? Well, let me show you. First of all, caged format is a lot of unnecessary repetition. It states that there are five fingering patterns for the major scale. This is true only because of the interval change between the second and third strings. There are in fact less fingerings.

This is how I do it:

KIDO’s THREE FINGERING POSSIBILITIES:

1ST FINGER
2ND FINGER
4TH FINGER.

These are the fingers you start each scale with. CAGED format says there are five fingerings because it compensates the different positioning when you adjust to the second and third strings. But why not just use three fingerings and adjust those ANYWHERE on the fretboard? No reason why we can’t. And we will.

Download or print each of the following sheets I have created for you.

TETRACHORDS:

A tetrachord is a concept I found in the, “Guitar Cookbook” by Jesse Gress. On a side note, let’s be sure that I’m not claiming the rights to any of the concepts contained here in, only my organization of the concepts. Not like I’m getting paid for this anyway.

So anyway. . .

A tetrachord is a four note division of any eight note scale/mode. For example:

The major scale/ Ionian mode is a composite of two four-tone tetrachords combined a whole step apart. This makes breaking down my three fingering options very easy… because as you can see below there are three fingering possibilities for each of the four tetrachords, and yes, that’s correct, one beginning on each of the three fingers: 1st, 2nd and 4th.

Major scale intervals: W, W, H (W) W,W,H

Looks like two major tetrachords a whole step apart to me. . .

Each of the remaining modes is a combination of the 4 tetrachords below separated by either a whole or half step. Practicing tetrachords is a great way to begin practicing and learning your modes, because it breaks down the required memorization to half the amount.

Once you have mastered the three fingerings of each of the four tetrachord types you can take on the three fingerings for each of the seven modes. There are a few different ways to memorize the formations quickly. You can memorize the “I” Ionian major mode first, and then take on the corresponding modes and compare how they differ. If you count out scale degrees while you play, 1,2,3,4… you’ll be able to see how each of the modes differs from one another in a single key based on the individual intervals. This being, flat thirds and sevenths etc.

Or you can take on one mode at a time and memorize the 3 fingerings for that specific one.

So, since there are three fingerings and seven modes, that’ a total of twenty-one total scales you can memorize. With the CAGED format it would be significantly more, not to mention very difficult to discover the notes outside of the major scale box.

For example, the “D” fingering runs across one octave and is in the center register of the fretboard, leaving lots of notes on the outside. If you remember the three fingerings for each mode you can then work on finding out which notes are in a certain key and what their position is in reference to the mode. For example in the key of “C”, D would be the Dorian mode therefore you can play any of the three fingering from any D on the fretboard and also be picking out notes from the C major scale.

There’s little doubt that a thorough understanding of music theory would go a long way to help you understand the relationships better, but I’m assuming most of you reading this have either similar methods as mine or those which use the CAGED format. I think this is better.

I’m also sure a lot of you who use the CAGED format notice a couple of different fingerings here, such as the 7th note of the 4th fingering of the Ionian scale. Normally it would be a first finger stretch and not a fourth finger.

My explanation for this is as follows.

A.) If you combine all the fingerings together onto one fretboard grid you get a very tidy 8 fret connection of all notes in the corresponding scale, rather then having that one 7th note poking into the top 9th fret.

B.) If you are to follow my system and always make sure that a mode is a combination of two tetrachords you must make a few finger adjustments so that the system is never contradictory.

“”MY SYSTEM IS NEVER CONTRADICTORY”"
Don’t quote me on that though

C.) The fingerings for a few of the modes would need to be adjusted to compensate for the adjusted Ionian, which is unnecessary, and a lot of extra work.

So, in summary of the scale section of this practice regimen, begin by saving the pictures on this page and printing them out so you don’t need to be at your computer to use them and begin by practicing the tetrachords in any manner you see fit.

Generally I like to dedicate myself every day to one finger for tetrachords, scales and modes, arpeggios and triads. This works well because the arpeggio and chord part of this section will be derived from the sheets posted above, and I think you will have a great understanding of how the chords are derived from the fingering patterns.

Continue on to the scales in any manner you see fit. There isn’t a lot of bookwork needed, but a lot to absorb. The best thing about my approach is the few pages needed in front of you to learn all the modes and several fingerings for each. I suggest beginning on the sixth fret and going through your circle of fifths for one fingering and then repeating the process on the remaining strings until you reach your highest note possible on the high E string. Then repeating the process descending.

You will quickly learn the fretboard and make mode relationship connections using this process.

Sections 2 and 3: Arpeggio Study & Chord and Voicings

Here is where my system starts to get fun, because once you have all those sheets (the work I’ve done for you) printed, it makes the rest of the work really easy.

When I practice arpeggios, I like to add the sevenths in there. Why? Mainly because you’re still practicing major and minor arpeggios (and diminished) even if you add the 7th. So when your playing them you should constantly be counting 1, 3, 5, 7… and back down while you play. This will ensure you can tell the difference between the different types, Major 7th, minor 7th etc…. and also how they sound.

Playing arpeggios using the same fingerings I’ve given you, on top of using the tetrachords provided, gives you a very grounded understanding of the intervals for each mode.

Once you have your twenty-one fingering patterns for your modes, you can map out the arpeggios taking only chord tones from the scales. Thus for the modes you will receive the following:

I – Major 7th arpeggio
II – Minor 7th arpeggio
III – Minor 7th arpeggio
IV – Major 7th arpeggio
V – Dominant 7th arpeggio (b7)
VI – Minor 7th arpeggio
VII – Diminished minor 7th arpeggio (b5,b7)

So even though there are seven scales and twenty-one fingerings, you only have to memorize four arpeggio types for each fingering, so a total of sixteen different arpeggio fingerings.

Here’s a chart based on what we have. You can also do this yourself so you have a better understanding of what I’ve done.

To get your arpeggios, all you do is take the charts you already have and use only the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th of the scale. Or simply remove the 2nd, 4th and 6th 6TH positions (notes).

The neat thing about this is that since only minor adjustments are made to each mode, you can easily see how a chord is derived from each mode. This makes songwriting a lot easier in terms of developing chord progressions.

I’ve chosen to use chord grids for this but you could use other types of fretboard charts if you so desire.

You can acquire your triads by using the twenty-one fingering patterns and choosing only the notes you need:

MAJOR triads are built upon the root, third and fifth. Any major scale will have major triads on the first, fourth and fifth position. For example, in the C major scale you can build major triads on the C (C, E, G), F (F, A, C) and G (G, B, D) notes.

MINOR triads are built the root, third and fifth. Any major scale will have major triads on the second, third and sixth position. Again, using the C major scale as an example, you will find minor triads on the D (D, F, A), E (E, B, B) and A (A, C, E) notes.

And you can do the same for diminished and augmented triads. If you’re interested in more information on chord construction using triads, check out the Guitar Noise article, The Power Of Three.

SECTION 4 – Sight reading

You all know what to do for sight reading. I recommend jazz fake books, even if you don’t really like jazz, because they can vary from being very simple to very technical. They also use some really nice chord shapes. Excerpts from classical guitar books also make excellent sight reading exercises.

SECTION 5 – Vocal exercises and song production

Vocal exercises and song production are your own deal. I will be drafting an approach for practicing vocal technique and a very in-depth look at music theory in the near future.

Although theory-wise this article was not exhaustive, I do believe that it will get you well on your way to developing a sound technique and, hopefully, a practice regimen of your own, which is every guitarists ultimate goal.

Just for kicks, here is a copy of my practice schedule:

1. WARM UP: 15 MINUTES

CHROMATIC SCALE THROUGH CIRCLE OF FIFTHS. 60 BPM.
1234, 2345, 3456, 4567…
1X EXCLAIMING NOTE NAMES
1X EXCLAIMING SCALE DEGREES
ASCENDING THEN DESCENDING

2. SCALES: 30 MINUTES

MAJOR SCALE, MODES AND PENTATONICS. 125 BPM.
PLAY EACH SCALE USING CIRCLE OF FIFTHS
USE EACH POSITION (1ST FINGER, 2ND, 4TH) EACH STRING. 6TH-3RD
5X ASCENDING
5X DESCENDING
5X 4 NOTE CYCLES 1,2,3,4 2,3,4,5 ETC (ASCENDING)
5X 4 NOTE CYCLES 1,2,3,4 2,3,4,5 ETC (DESCENDING)
5X 3 NOTE REPETITIONS 1,2,3 1,2,3 1,2,3 1,2,3 2,3,4 . . .
(ASCENDING + DESCENDING)
REPEAT THE ABOVE FOR EACH CORRESPONDING MODE + PENTATONICS

2(A). TETRACHORDS: 15 MINUTES

5X TETRACHORDS (3 FINGERINGS) IN EACH KEY THROUGH CYCLE OF FIFTHS
MAJOR – W, W, H
DORIAN – W, H, W
PHRIGIAN – H, W, W
LYDIAN – W, W, W

3. ARPEGGIOS : 15 MINUTES

MAJOR, MINOR, AUGMENTED, DIMINISHED, 7TH AND MINOR 7TH. 100BPM.
PLAY EACH ARPEGGIO BEGINNING ON 6TH STRING USING CIRCLE OF 5THS.
5X ASCENDING + DESCENDING 1,3,5 5,3,1 *7
5X 1ST INVERSION 3,5,1 1,5,3 *7
5X 2ND INVERSION 5,1,3 3,1,5 *7
5X 3RD INVERSION (7THS ONLY)

4. CHORDS AND VOICINGS : 15 MINUTES

GUITAR GRIMOIRE EXERCISE PROGRESSIONS
BEGINNING ON PAGE 191 COMPLETE EXERCISES BEGINNING ON # 314. MAKE NOTE OF COMPLETED EXERCISE NUMBER AT END.
100 BPM HALF NOTES.
FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS FOR KEY PROGRESSION.

5. SIGHT READING: 15 MINUTES

USING HAL LEONARD BOOK 2 BEGIN ON PAGE 1 AND MARK WHEN
FINISHED AT END OF SESSION. USE SLOW SPEED TO START 60BPM.

6. VOCAL EXERCISES: 15 MINUTES

BEGINNING AT MIDDLE C PLAY LOWERED PITCHES CHROMATICALLY UNTIL
MY LOWEST PITCH IS ACHIEVED COMFORTABLY THEN CHROMATICALLY RISE
TO MY HIGHEST NOTE.
5X FROM LOWEST PITCH BEGIN SINGING SCALES USING CIRCLE OF FIFTHS
5X SING ARPEGGIOS AND INVERSIONS IN ALL KEYS (CO5)

7. DEDICATED SONG CREATION: 15 MINUTES

WRITE LYRICS, ALTER PROGRESSION OR CREATE MELODY OF NEW OR
PREVIOUS MATERIAL.

8. NEW SONG MATERIAL: 15 MINUTES

TAKE PRINTED TAB AND WORK ON IT AT A SLOW PACE.

9. OPEN PRACTICE: 15 MINUTES

SPEND ALLOTED TIME MESSING AROUND

TOTAL TIME: 2 HOURS, 45 MIN

Maybe this will get you on your own way!

If anyone has questions, don’t hesitate to email me. I’ve got the time, tons of it in fact! In closing, I know that when I began playing what I really desired was for someone to tell me…” This is what you need to do and how you need to do it.” I am here to tell you how if you need the same treatment.

Stay in touch and keep playing. Beat your best, not anyone else’s. And remember that it doesn’t matter how good others think you are, you don’t have time to worry about that anyway. You’re only as good as you’ve developed since yesterday.

About the Author

Jon Doucette (who goes by his nickname “Kido” on the Forum pages) is soon to be a student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He’s twenty years old and has been playing guitar for seven years and performing live in New England for the last two years. You can learn more about him and hear some of his songs at his website: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/4/jondoucettemusic.htm

The first thing you should work with is a metronome. Most guitarists hate them but trust me, they help. This is your constant drummer that never makes mistakes. If you want to get the most out of playing something, play it extremely slow with a metronome. You will find that if you play something slow it is actually harder than speeding through it. Get it perfect to where it sounds excellent slow. The speed will come on it’s own. If you do it this way, when you do get speed behind it, you will have note seperation and tone that you never had before. You also learn it quicker and more thoroughly.

If you are learning a particular piece and you have trouble with a particular part instead of playing the whole piece over and over again, pick out the problem area and play that part slowly until you get it down. What you are doing is seperating this part which allows you to learn the whole piece in equal time. This way you are not mastering everything in that song but the problem spot. That sounds horrible , you get out of time and all choked up and it just does not fit like it should. When it comes to practice you need to break everything down into time frames. The human brain can only give you an attention span that lasts between two and five minutes max. Use a timer and set it to fifteen minute per each subject of study. Don’t quit playing until the timer goes off. At that point stop playing and take a three minute break. This allows you to collect your thoughts and give your fingers and brain a little break.

Always take a day off from guitar every week. This will help freshen you up. Always remember to breathe when practicing or playing. A lot of people hold their breath when playing something difficult. When practicing try getting a visual image of what you will be playing. This is one of the most important tools of learning music. It is reffered to as visualization. When you are done practicing, always play something that you enjoy playing. This will keep your interest in doing the same thing the next day. Use the metronome and crosspick everything. You know that you are using the metronome correctly when you can’t hear the beeps. This does not mean to turn up louder than the metronome, that would be useless.

Here is a good practice schedule that will get you were you want to be quicker than anything else. Time is of the essence, so jump on it.

This schedule will get you further than you have ever been before. It is very similar to practice schedules given out by many colleges. For Scales I would highly recommend checking out a book called the Guitar Grimoire Scales and Modes by Adam Kadmon. This is by far the best book on scales I have seen. It is thorough and contains most of the scales that you will use. A really good chord book you should check out is Chord Chemistry by one of the masters of guitar Ted Greene (please release more music and books Ted). Be careful and make sure you get the one written by Ted Greene because it seems to me some moron stole that title and released a book not anywhere near as good as Ted’s. (He has also written a couple books on jazz soloing.) You should have all material for the schedule written and planned out before you start practicing so that you can go straight through without stopping until you switch subjects. This is a sample schedule you can break the subjects and times down to your liking, I have found this schedule to be thorough.

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…

One of the most destructive mindsets we can have is a hurried and worried attitude about our daily work, our daily practice. We are conditioned in our schooling, and later in our life in the working world, to a fearful attitude which tells us we need to perform to a certain standard, or else! We need to get those high marks, or else we fail our class. We need to finish that project, finish that report, or else the ax will fall!

This is why we have the word “deadline”. It means “if you do not finish this required work on time, you’re dead!”

Some people become so used to this feeling that they begin to believe they “work best under pressure”. They need to feel they have a gun pointed at their head, so they believe, to even get any work done!

Well, I want to tell you that if you wish to develop as an artist, you must get very far away from this belief system. You must discover a whole new way of motivating yourself to perform that does not depend on the fear of some terrible thing happening to you. You must find a way to give yourself completely to your daily work, your daily practice, that is motivated only by the pleasure you are getting from every moment of every day’s practice.

I have often had a student tell me that the reason why they did so poorly on the 4 different things I gave them to practice was because they were worried about ” getting everything done perfectly in time for the lesson”, so they rushed through the material, hurried and worried. Of course, rushing through the material meant they missed just about everything that was important, like the fingering, and whether or not they were actually able to play to a steady beat, or even whether or not they were playing the correct notes! And as far as being aware of all body tensions, forget it!

So, I have to break the news to them that their entire week of practice was worthless, and must be done over. I also have to explain that the very attempt to “get it perfect” is what lead them to “get it very imperfect”.

Understand this: there is no such thing as perfect. “Perfect” by itself, is not a goal that your mind can grab hold of and set itself to accomplish. The word “perfect” must be used in connection with a given, knowable, and obtainable goal in order to do us any good. Otherwise, “perfect” is a big fat scary word that can only be used to intimidate and rattle you so much that you will probably accomplish very little.

We must learn to think in terms of goalines, not deadlines, when we practice. Week by week, you or your teacher must set out the proper “next goal” for you to accomplish with any given piece of music you are working on. For instance, if I am working on a scale with a student, I will say something like “next week, I want to hear this scale at 60 to the quarter note, with your fingers working exactly the way I have shown you. I want you to work it up every day using the Basic Practice Approach, to that speed throughout the course of the week. Don’t worry about any faster speeds, just get it as perfect as you can at that speed”.

If it is a song, or a solo that needs to go at 120 bpm, I might set out the goals this way:

1st week: get the notes and the fingers right. Start to walk through the notes no tempo, and discover the most challenging parts, and start to analyze why they are difficult, and what you are going to do about it.

2nd week: test yourself by playing small sections of the music at 60bpms, taking 4 clicks for each note. Make sure all the movements can be done smoothly at this speed. If they can’t, there is no chance of being able to do it any faster. Then, start to work those sections up in speed using the Basic Practice Approach.

3rd week: begin to play to the actual rhythm of the music, giving all the notes their true rhythmic value, not all equal time as before. Discover where the problems are now. Start to work on them, and find what tempo you can play everything at with no mistakes, section by section.

4th week: here, I will begin to assign specific tempo goals for different sections, as I see the student is ready to accomplish those goals.

All along the way, I am giving out other goals as appropriate. “Your pick is going too far out from the string on your up-pick on that scale. Fix it this week with correct practice.” The next week, when that student walks in, I look at the notebook to see what goals I have given, and I’d better see at least some movement toward that goal. (The worst thing a student can do is not look at their notebook, not look at the goals I have set forth.)

This constant process of setting the next appropriate goal, and setting it out clearly along with making sure the means to accomplish it are understood, is what brings constant progress in our study of the guitar. The lack of doing so is why there is so little progress for so many people.

People often go for a very inappropriate goal. If they are working on a fast solo or piece, they try to play it almost right away just like the guy on the record, who probably spent ten years practicing it before recording it! By reaching for this very advanced goal right away, we usually guarantee failure and frustration. Progress as a guitarist, as Segovia said, is a step by step process, and no step can be missed. If I am standing on the ground looking at a staircase going up, and I try to jump up to the 10th step instead of walking up the first nine, what do you think will happen? I will fall flat on my face or fanny, and may be too black and blue to make another attempt.

And yet, that is what many people do when practicing guitar. They do it because of two reasons, the same two reasons responsible for most of what is wrong with the world: ego and ignorance. Don’t be this way. As far as ego, remember this: be humble, don’t stumble. Don’t try to play that solo at 120bpm right away. Spend a month getting it perfect at 60. That way, the path to getting it at 80 is simple. Then 100 and 120 will follow, and be solid, not shaky.

As far as ignorance, I often tell students “the only reason you are practicing badly is because you actually think, deep inside, that you WILL learn this music successfully doing it your way, and skipping so many steps. You are wrong, you won’t. And your faulty playing, when put to the test, is the proof. When you become wise enough (and honest enough) to see the truth of this, you will practice correctly.”

When attempting to set the next best goal for yourself in any situation, ask yourself this question: “if I apply everything I know, up to this moment, about guitar and how to practice, and I apply it to this music I am working on, AND I give it my very best effort, what level of improvement can I reasonably expect?” Ask yourself this question, and pick short term goals, ones that can be obtained in a week to a month.

If you are practicing your lesson material during the week and you start to feel pressured to “get it right” in time for the lesson, don’t start hurrying through things and getting sloppy just to cover everything. Adjust your goals. Forget that scale for this week, and just work on those chord changes. Re-focus your goals and re-focus your efforts. That way, at least you will accomplish something instead of nothing. Better to juggle 3 balls in the air successfully than to drop 5!

Remember, the achievement of each goal IS the way to reach your final goal, just as taking each step up the stairs is the way to the top. Have fun, and don’t make yourself crazy. Even if you do progress correctly, as you should, people move at different speeds. I tend to work hard and move fast, but I like to sit on the steps every once in a while, and just play my guitar while I look around!

Copyright Jamie Andreas, Guitar Principles.

You know how to plan your work, and you know how to work your plan. You know which steps to take, and you know how to take them. For whatever amount of time you have decided to sit down and work, you know you will accomplish something, and what’s more, you have the wonderful certainty that what you do accomplish will be there the next day, or whenever you pick up the work again.

The work is enjoyable and you look forward to it. And, like a chef who gets to eat the meal after creating it, or a carpenter who gets to sit in the room he has built, you get (earn) the pleasure of sitting (or standing) with your instrument and playing the music, and having it be something special and something enjoyable for you and anyone else who may be around.

How different this is then what most guitar students experience! How different this is from what many of you reading this actually go through in your attempts to learn to play. I know, because I was there, in the pit of despair, and because I have spent all my adult life pulling people out of that pit. And it’s pretty crowded down there!

Down there, it’s more like this: every day you pick up your guitar and get in the ring with that new piece, or song, or something your teacher gave you in the lesson. You try to put on your best attitude, and you grab that piece with both your guitar playing hands, and you wrestle! You give it all you got, it’s like wrestlemania, but that big bad dude won’t budge, he won’t go down. Or, you get him down, but he won’t stay down. You think you got him, but as soon as you turn your back, he’s up and he’s on your back! A lot of you will find yourselves losing your enthusiasm for getting back in the ring.

Before I knew how to do correct practice, I used to feel like a kid who was building a sand castle. Every day I’d go back to build it higher, but it had gotten washed away overnight. Or I felt like a person who kept putting money in the bank, and the bank kept going bankrupt and I lost everything I put in. When I learned how to practice, I felt like I was building something day by day, and nobody and nothing was messing with it overnight. The structure was there waiting for me the next day, and I could invest more time and effort into it, feeling secure that it would in fact be there the next day.

This was a really good thing for me, because I am not a person who deals well with frustration. I get mad real easy, so I’m sure that everyone else in my world is also a lot better off thanks to the fact that I learned how to practice.

Once you understand the mechanics of correct practice, including the mental, emotional and physical aspects of the process, the most powerful tool you can use when you sit down to practice is what I call the Glue Of Repetition, and this glue is applied with another tool, one that every student I have ever taught is required to get, and learn how to use properly: a metronome.

People who understand correct practice know that repetition by itself can just as easily harm you as help you. Because of muscle memory, you can practice mistakes over and over and learn them just as well as the notes you are supposed to be playing. But we will assume that you realize this already, and are well on your way to being able to practice correctly. So let me make some points that will bring you even closer.

Before you can apply the glue of repetition, there is something you must achieve first with the music you are playing. And achieving this often takes fully half of the entire time and energy needed to master the music. And that thing you must achieve is this: one correct playing of the notes being practiced.

I have often sat with someone working on one measure of music for twenty minutes while they made attempt after attempt to get just one correct run-through of a complex lick from a rock solo, or a passage from a classical piece. They made attempt after attempt, and also mistake after mistake! This is what happens for most people, even me. Depending on the complexity of the music, it can take quite an effort to nail the notes square on the head as they should be, as they must be. And realize that this means every note, every pick stroke, every finger, all of this correct, as well as the proper form and relaxation being maintained. If all of this is not exact, the results will be flawed. And when you try to build on those flawed results, you will get more flawed results.

During the process of achieving that one correct run through, every mistake must be pounced on. Our awareness, our attention must be so powerful that we are aware of everything we do and everything we don’t do, but should. And then we must fortify our Intention so that the next run through comes out differently, either getting us what we want, or bringing us closer to it until we get it, that one correct playing of the notes. After this magnificent achievement, it is time to apply the glue of repetition.

Usually, that first correct playing of the music will, and should be done, no tempo. Then, there should be many repetitions done also no tempo. This is the beginning of applying the glue of repetition. To make the glue set and become strong, we take out our metronomes.

The Basic Practice Approach, which we find at the end of The Principles, (and ties everything together into an actual program of action when practicing) tells us to begin by stripping away the rhythm from the notes. This means making all notes into equal time values. This is done so that all the movements associated with making those notes can be done consciously, and examined and experienced consciously. Having to observe the actual time values of the music, where some moves must be faster to create shorter notes, is often the thing that prevents us from becoming as aware as we need to be of certain movements, especially the ones we are having trouble with.

In addition, the metronome, by being used so that four clicks at 60 represents one note (our starting point in going from no tempo to slow tempo when using the Basic Practice Approach) forces us to play much slower than most people ever would bother to do. Doing so leads to incredible discoveries by whoever does bother to.

From there, the glue of repetition is applied until it sets into the muscle memory, and we can ask our body and mind to perform the movements at a slightly higher speed. Again, the metronome allows us to do so by a much smaller increment of speed than we would otherwise use if left to ourselves. By putting the metronome on 80 and taking 4 clicks per note, the increased demand on our playing mechanism is very slight, and usually easily handled. From there, it is a matter of simply working it up, maintaining full awareness and “quality control” as we go along.

When we reach a speed that taxes us, that makes us feel like we are just about making it hang together, that is called our “working speed”. That is the speed to stay at for awhile, and apply the glue of repetition until the music is strong enough to bear the greater strain of a faster speed. It may take minutes, days, or months, depending on the demands of the music, and our level of development.

This “working speed” is our limit (our temporary limit). One very important thing to realize is that this limit, once achieved, must be worked up to everyday. (see Measuring Your Progress).

Another important (and pleasant) thing to realize is that the speed we work for hours or years to attain with a particular piece or technique after awhile becomes very easy for us. When it does, I call this my “falling out of bed” speed, the speed at which I can play something even if I have just fallen out of bed! (yes, I sleep with my guitar). There are a number of things I worked for years to bring to a very high professional level, that I honestly didn’t know if I ever would reach, that I can now play immediately (or give me a few seconds at the most), after falling out of bed. For those of you who don’t sleep with your guitar, this means that you will be able to play it at that speed even before being warmed up.

When the music begins to be “in our fingers”, when muscle memory, and the other forms of memory discussed in On Memorizing, ear and eye memory, are strong, it is time to let the plane leave the ground. It is time to begin to use the metronome as most people do, and set it to the basic beat of the music, and observe the rhythm, although still at a very slow speed, one that requires our fastest movement to be equivalent to a speed we already reached when using the Basic Practice Approach. It is also time to begin playing from memory, and developing the fullest emotional relationship to the music (as we would if we had memorized our lines for a play, and were ready for a dress rehearsal to bring the character fully to life.)

Everything I have said is a description of what is commonly referred to as “woodshedding”, meaning going out to the woodshed for hours at a time to practice. However, what we are talking about is a very intelligent type of woodshedding, one where the woodshed is well stocked with a copy of “The Principles” and a metronome!

Copyright Jamie Andreas, Guitar Principles.

Rehearsing

As I’ve told the kids on my soccer teams for many years, the way you practice is the way you play. So let’s review some ways to improve your rehearsals.

Before you even start, you should have a pretty clear idea of what you need to work on at this rehearsal. It is a waste of everyone’s time if no one knows what songs you are going to learn. You don’t need a long list; if you can learn two songs, and put time into three more that you already know, that’s a pretty good practice session. As discussed below, it can take some time to work through a new song, so don’t try to do too much in one session.

Occasionally, just before a gig, you may want to do a “dress rehearsal”, where you have the set-list, and you play through it without stopping. There should be a minimum of discussion between songs (“that works”, “let’s do it a bit slower next time”), but don’t play anything twice.

Depending on the personality of your band, someone may have to be “the boss”. Other groups can get by with a consensus decision at the start of practice. Sometimes it works well to discuss the plan for the next rehearsal at the end of this one. Figure out what works best for you and try to stick with it. This is the “work” part of playing in a band.

The next important item is to remember that you are “rehearsing” the song. This means that you don’t have it down perfect yet, and you need to make adjustments. You should decide how you want to play each song. Do you want to sound “just like the album”, or perhaps change the style a little (or a lot)? Does the album have parts that are hard to replicate live? After you have made these stylistic choices, you need to focus on three things: structure, harmonies, and dynamics.

A note about volume: you should never rehearse at volume levels that make your ears ring. You should always be able to hear the vocalists clearly, and they shouldn’t have to strain to be heard. If the lead guitar or drummer (or whomever) want to play loud, wait until after rehearsal is over. Loud wastes time and patience.

Setting Up to Practice

First, everyone should be able to hear each other pretty well. Most of us have limited space to practice in, so you have to use all the tricks you can to keep it sane. Everyone should be in a circle facing in toward each other. Remember to get the guitar amps off the floor (except the bass). They should be at least waist high, and shoulder height is best. Put them on a chair, or on top of the bass amp.

If possible, group all of the singers together on one half of your circle, and put your monitor speakers on the opposite side, with non-singers standing near the monitors. Again, the monitors should be shoulder high.

In this picture, the drummer is in the upper right, and I have assumed that she sings. In the upper left is the bass amp (green) with one of the guitar amps (orange) on top. The other guitar amp is along the left wall, and the keyboard amp is along the bottom wall. The blue diamonds are the monitor speakers. The crosses are the musicians, and I have assumed that the 3 on the right side sing (mikes in yellow). One of these will also play guitar, but it’s better to have his amp on the left wall with the others. Obviously, you need to rearrange this to suit your own personnel, but the idea is that the singers all go on one side, and the amps and monitors go on the other side.

Structure

There are 3 important places to focus on for structure: the intro, the outro, and the breaks. The verses and chorus will usually take care of themselves because the words and melodies tend to hold everything together.

For the intro, it is often easiest for one musician to start each song, with the others joining in at the appropriate time. It is harder, but more impressive, if you can begin a song from a cold start.

For the outro, is the ending sharp or sustained? Remember that you can’t (well, it’s difficult) do a “fade out”. If the ending is sustained, who keys the punch-out? It’s important that you all end together.

For the breaks and solos, you should work carefully on the transitions. How do you get from the last chorus into the solos? Is the solo of fixed length, or can it be extended? In one of my bands, we had a very “self-aware” lead guitarist. We had several songs that could have extended solos, and so we agreed that Mikey could play as long as he wanted, but he had to tell us when he wanted to get out. It took some practice, but eventually we were able to wait for Mikey to nod his head, and then the band would work the transition from the solo-verse into the chorus, and Mikey had prepared a flourish to complete his solo as we exited – it sounded like we knew what we were doing, but in reality we were ad-libbing.

You should always do your structure work at low volume, because you are not looking for tone, you are building the song’s foundation.

Harmonies

One of the things that helps turn a good band into a memorable band is the ability to harmonize. And harmonies require practice. Unfortunately, practicing harmonies can be boring for the non-singers, so many bands never do it. It may be a good idea to give some of the non-singers the afternoon off. As always, this type of work should be done at low volume so you can think and hear. Usually, the song can be driven by just a rhythm guitar, while everyone sings their parts. There are some songs where harmonies are not on the original, but your vocalists can find a place for them. (Laura throws in a one-line harmony in James Brown’s I Got You – “and I Fee-eee-eeelll”, right behind the male vocalist, it sounds great!).

After you’ve worked out the harmonies for a few songs, bring the rest of the band back together and practice with everyone. This is your opportunity to take the harmonies to the next level, by having the instruments work with the harmonies. If you have a keyboardist, he can choose voicings that are complimentary to the vocals. The bass player can often adjust the transitions to match the vocals as well (see Playing Along, and the guitars can add their bit as well. It is possible that this can get too busy, but it can be really exciting too.

One important part of working with harmonies is that once you’ve found your part, you have to stick to it, as everyone else is depending on you to do what you did last time. Be careful about ad-libbing during group harmonies.

Dynamics

One classic sign of a newly formed band is that they haven’t worked out any dynamics. Dynamics are the variation in volume and enthusiasm in different parts of a song. The simplest method is to play softly during the verse and loud during the chorus – many songs are done that way. But there are more subtle ways to do this as well. For example, the drummer can add a rapid hi-hat riff during the final verse, which can change the energy of the song without changing the volume at all. Or the lead guitar can run a series of scales behind the vocals which could add some interest to a boring passage.

The goal of adding dynamics is to keep the audience interested in what you are playing, without changing the song enough to annoy them. It is a subtle way to show off your talents without being obnoxious.

Dynamics should be practiced at or near full stage volume – which doesn’t mean loud enough to fill a stadium, but loud enough that the drummer can play normally.

And, of course, adding dynamics to any song requires practice.

Gigs as Practice

In the old days, our band had to know 60 songs of what is now called “classic rock”. We played 4 sets of 15 3-minute songs from 10pm to 2am. Other than mixing up the ballads and up-tempo songs, we also worked on some songs that were not quite ready to go. Usually we would open each set with 2 or 3 strong songs, and then we’d sneak in one that still needed work. By forcing ourselves to play before we were ready, it made us focus harder on the song; this was no time to be lazy. Many times, we would play the song better than ever. Occasionally we would bomb, and someone would make a self-deprecating comment to the audience. But most often, the added energy you get when playing live brings out the best in everyone’s abilities.

So don’t over practice a song. Work out the structure, harmony, and dynamics, and then put it on your set list and go play it.

Follow-up

After your gig, it’s a good idea to get together and review the good and not-so-good points. As a bass player, I’ve been known to say “I really liked your lead guitar in that song, can you keep it that way so I can write a counter-point to it?” You should try to remember other key points from your gig, and then make them the first item of business for the next rehearsal.

I hope this helps you use your rehearsal time more efficiently, so you can get out there and play in the bars and clubs – we want to hear you!

The cornerstone of his philosophy was embodied in one word. This word was hanging on every wall in the IBM office, and, along with boxes of punchcards, this word was in my house all the time, because it was the title of the official IBM magazine that came to our house.

The word is THINK. Thomas Watson realized that “most of the trouble people get into begins with the phrase “I didn’t think before I acted”. It is a major step forward in our growth when we realize this truth. The next major step is when we become aware of how little thinking we actually do, especially at the times we need it most, which is when we have “problems”, a word which Principled Players immediately translate into “challenges”.

I got a real insight into this one time when I couldn’t find my wallet, (an almost daily occurrence, because I’m usually “thinking” about something else!). I caught myself mindlessly roaming around the room, looking in all the same places I had already looked, over and over as if it were going to magically materialize! It gave me the feeling of “doing something”, and allowed me to avoid the hard work of sitting down and thinking where I might have left it. But it didn’t give me my wallet! In the same way, guitar players will mindlessly repeat the same ineffective actions over and over again, as if the notes are going to somehow magically appear! We will do anything but put that guitar down a second and really think about what we are doing, and why it isn’t working, and what we can do about it.

I have experienced, literally, struggling with some passage of music for years, and one day solving it because I put the guitar down, started thinking about everything I was doing (fingerings, arm./hand/finger positions, etc), and began to “think of”, or “create”, new possibilities to experiment with. And because of doing that “thinking process”, I would often “solve” those problems on the spot, or get pointed in the right direction.

If we are really honest and insightful, we may realize that, in fact, we NEVER think! We just mindlessly adopt the ideas and attitudes of what is around us, and we never actually examine, inspect, juggle, calculate these ideas and attitudes with our minds, or, just as important, “feel” these ideas and attitudes with our emotions (intuition), If we are equally honest, observant and insightful about ourselves as guitar players, we will likewise see that when confronted with problems, with things we are having trouble doing on the guitar, we don’t actually THINK. Instead we mindlessly DO what we have already been doing, even though it is producing no result. We keep doing the same fingering or picking, we keep approaching it with the same hand position. We don’t stop, re-examine, observe, draw conclusions, plan a new approach, and then observe and draw conclusions again.

To be a guitar player who considers continual growth to be the cornerstone of their day to day activities, practicing and playing, is to be a person who is going to be constantly confronted by one thing: PROBLEMS! Practicing is nothing but the confrontation of problems, one after another. If you are one of the gazillions of players who are NOT experiencing improvement in your playing, then please realize that you do not know how to solve problems. Don’t be depressed! Be like me. I love finding out what a jerk I am, because then I can start getting better!

For more insight into how “thinking” dramatically improves the rate of our growth as guitarists, read these essays:

• Aggressive Practicing
• Practice Organization

When it comes to my growth as a player, I have always been more interested in how a great player practices, than in how they play. When I watch them play, I am seeing the result of their practice. But I want to know how they GOT that result. So I want to know how they PRACTICE.

And when I want to understand how they practice, I look for one thing: how do they THINK about what they are doing? How do they think about this thing called “playing the guitar”? Whenever I discover something about how a great player THINKS, I immediately start experimenting with thinking that way, and understanding where that way of thinking is coming from. I recommend it to all of you.

I can remember various times when I would hear or read a comment from a great player, and that comment would give me great insight into how that person THINKS, the ATTITUDES that he or she uses to look at the world through. I would then follow that thought process, I would adopt that “view point”, and look at things in the same way. That would lead to new discoveries. I would “see” things they had seen, because I was using the same thought process, looking out from the same “point of view”.

Some examples: I read of Pepe Romero advising a student who was having trouble with shifts to “focus mentally on the muscles that make the shift”. Now, this said worlds about how a great player, known for his great technique, thinks about the technical aspect of playing the guitar. I immediately began to study anatomy, and think along the same lines. The results were incredible.

I read of Carlos Santana talking about how when he plays, it’s only good if it makes him cry. This said so much about the state of emotional intensity and involvement that a great player experiences internally while playing. It means there is no room for mediocrity in the emotional content of our music, and our relationship. It means that WE must be moved by our own playing, or composing, or no one else will!

Julian Bream has talked about getting the correct “flow” and “feeling” into his arpeggios. This told me that this great player works very much from a kinesthetic sense of the connection between how his body feels while playing, and the sound that he hears. It also said that he achieves his musical goal while playing by an intense focus on the desired outcome.

So, I recommend to you that you become very interested in how great players THINK (and feel) about what they do. What and how a great player thinks about what they do determines what they do. And what they do, day by day, determines what they become. That is true for all of us. For non-players, simply enjoying a great players playing is enough. But for us players, we need to dig deeper than that.

Many, and I may even say most, guitar students do not really, truly, and constantly THINK when they practice. They are more like a fighter in the ring who keeps swinging blindly, with his head down, so he doesn’t even see what is going on around him. He’s blindly hoping he will be effective and successful, but most of the time, he’s in for a bruising! How do we get to be “thinking guitar students”?

Thinking is a “turning of the wheels” mentally. However, you must make sure the wheels have some “grist” to churn while they are turning! In other words, a large part of the thinking process is the taking in of new information, so that it can be processed, combined and re-configured with existing knowledge, and thereby lead to new insights and discoveries. There are two ways of taking in new information: the people we meet, and the books we read. Make sure you make full use of these resources as they are available to you. Not all of us get to hang around great players, but all of us have access to books written by and about great musicians, and great people in general. You should ALWAYS be taking in new information, processing it, and using it. Understand that READING and THINKING are intimately connected. The person who wants to grow to their full potential READS, and also makes sure they find and recognize who and what is most worth reading!

In my teaching, I have one central overarching goal: teach the student how to teach themselves, and that means teaching them how to think. That is why my book deals with the “Principles” of practice. A “principle” is an “avenue of thought”. When we have a problem to solve, we need to look at that problem from the viewpoint of the appropriate Principle, and let our thinking process be guided by that principle, and see where it leads. This is walking down the “avenue of thought”.

One of the Principles of Practice says “if a mistake is being made in playing, it is always because the finger needed to play the note is not relaxed and ready in the right position BEFORE it is required to move to the note”. This is an “avenue of thought” I often walk down when I have a problem. By contemplating this principle, I am led to discover the answer to my problem, or at least a part of the answer.

The “answer” to our problem is contained within the problem itself. Thinking is the process by which we truly define, and then penetrate the problem, and bring it into focus, so that the answer, which often appears as a new direction to move in, begins to materialize. The Principles we use to guide our actions will determine where we travel, and how well and how far.

Copyright Jamie Andreas, Guitar Principles.

You must understand that your ability to effectively change bad habits is going to depend completely upon how deeply and truly you understand the fundamental mechanics of the process of playing the guitar, and the process of “practicing” the guitar, meaning the actual process of how we teach the mind and body new things. If you do not have a sufficiently deep understanding of these things, you will not be able to change bad habits.

I hope you realize the importance of what I just said! I suggest you read it over a few times, and think about it. I suggest you take some serious time right now, and in the next days and weeks to size yourself up, and answer this question “Do I feel like I have a sufficient understanding of the mechanics of playing the guitar so that I know how to practice in a way that will “change bad habits”, which means “solve problems” which really means “fix bad things about my playing”.

And the reason I am saying this is because so many people write to me and ask me the simple, basic question “how do I change this bad habit of mine”? Or, they may be asking the question in reverse. They may ask a question like “how can I play faster”, which is really saying “how can I get rid of the elements of my present playing technique (a bad habit) that are preventing me from playing as fast as other people play”, so it is really the same question.

So my point is this: if you do not have sufficient understanding of how things work, of what really happens when you sit down to practice, then you will not be able to change bad habits. So if this is the case, there is no answer to such a question. The answer to this question, for a person without the sufficient understanding is “you can’t change that bad habit”.

Then, of course, the real answer, the necessary next step, is to go and GET that understanding, and learn how to do the kind of practice that is based on that understanding. THEN, we can talk.

So, the real answer to the question is ” the way you get to be able to change bad habits is by understanding how you got them in the first place”. If you can understand that Muscle Memory put that bad habit there, while you were busy spending hours practicing with your shoulder tense, or your wrist and hand tensed up, then you will see that Muscle Memory will also change, or rather, allow you to REPLACE the bad habit with a new, and better one. If, that is, you know how to summon the mental focus necessary to make that happen, if you know how to become aware of, and stay aware of, what you were not aware of before.

Now understand this. It is often extremely difficult for me to get results from a person sitting in front of me, to get them to REALLY have this mental intensity, pay that much attention, and keep doing that in their daily practice at home. It can be extremely difficult to get someone to REALLY be aware of what they are actually doing when they play, even what they actually sound like! And I have no hope of getting results with someone if I cannot move them to that level of intensity.

That is why I am always so happy when someone writes and tells me of progress they are making using my methods. It proves to me that people CAN be moved to that intensity long-distance, as it were.

But I am going through all this to really drive a point home to all the people with one of the “how can I change bad habits” type questions. You can’t, unless the level of your understanding of all aspects of the process is sufficiently deep! So make sure it is, and continue to deepen it. The way to do that is to educate yourself, by reading my writings, and any other sources you discover that are out there, and also to constantly THINK for yourself, experiment, observe, draw conclusions, and re-experiment in your practice.

It just happens ( the devil made me do it) !!!

There is a statement that students will often exclaim, and it is a big tip-off that they DO NOT HAVE the sufficiently deep understanding that I am referring to. That statement is, when referring to some bad behavior a finger may be exhibiting, “I can’t help it, it just happens by itself”.

This statement shows that the person is the unfortunate victim of the dynamics of the practice process, such as Muscle Memory, instead of being the master of those dynamics, so that Muscle Memory is put to work for us, instead of against us. The person who has the necessary understanding MAKES the right thing happen because they can do two things: they can summon the strong Intention and Attention (mental focus) necessary to make the correct thing happen, and they can have the stillness of mind and body required to do real No Tempo Practice and Posing, which will erase old muscle memory and replace it with new, improved muscle memory.

A strong mental focus, and the stillness of mind and body I am talking about, make your practice sufficiently deep, sufficiently powerful to change bad habits, or in fact, acquire good ones. I call this “the bottom of your practice”. If the bottom of your practice is not deep enough, your practice will have no effect. Essentially, most of what I do with students is simply to deepen the bottom of their practice for them, and try to get them to be able to keep it that deep for themselves.

So, if you have that “it just happens” feeling, well, now you know what it really means, and what to do about it.

Take Things In The Proper Order

Once you have begun to get this deep understanding, you will be able to take certain aspects of playing the guitar in their proper order. You are not going to address the issue of how your hands and fingers function until you have addressed the issue of something more fundamental, like how you sit with the instrument, and how aware you are of your body in general while playing. If you don’t know that the way you are sitting and positioning your arms is forcing you to tense muscles needed to play, you will always be working with a handicap that limits your progress. Unfortunately, I have found this to be the case MOST of the time with players.

The remedy here is to CONSTANTLY EXAMINE the fundamentals of your playing. Your sitting, hand positions, finger action, pick action, etc. Observe, think, analyze, experiment, repeat the process in every practice session. DO NOT TAKE THE FUNDAMENTALS FOR GRANTED.

Once your understanding of the mechanics of playing and practicing are sufficiently deep to allow you to see things in the right order of importance, and you have addressed the necessary fundamentals, begin to get specific about the other elements of playing technique. Whatever level of player you are, begin to get a clear focus on your weak areas, and BE SPECIFIC!

Always Set The Proper Next Goal

Once you are able to get this specific, see into the heart of some flaw in your technique, and are able to approach it in a fundamental and effective manner, it is now just a matter of continuing that process, and setting one goal after another.

When you work on a fundamental, such as the one described above, you make it a project that may last anywhere from a month, to several months, or even a year. You hammer at that aspect of your technique relentlessly. You do whatever exercises you know that will help, if properly practiced. You make up exercises that will help, if properly practiced. You use the actual passage that gave rise to the whole “investigation”. You take note of and measure your progress and results.

Once you see that bad habit begin to weaken, and new habits come through in your playing, you ask yourself, “ok, what is the next worst thing about my playing, what is the next fundamental aspect of playing that is underlying various trouble spots in my repertoire”. Find it, and go after it.

Get and Keep the Correct Attitude

The final point I want to make in considering the subject of changing bad habits, which is another way of saying creating Vertical Growth as players, is the adoption and full acceptance of the CORRECT ATTITUDE of someone desiring to achieve their full potential. And that is the attitude of ABSOLUTE OPENNESS about yourself, about you as a guitar player, and about the endless possibilities of things you have yet to learn. Here are the attributes of someone who has this correct attitude:

They don’t get upset when they discover some major flaw in their playing, they become curious and interested.

They don’t feel sorry for themselves when they begin to clearly see the source of some problem in playing, and realize that it could have been avoided if someone pointed it out, or they had noticed it themselves (that tensed up shoulder they have been playing with for years). They are thankful that they finally see it, and resolve to set about integrating the new awareness into all their playing, right away. They are in fact, happy, every time they begin to become aware of how wrong they have been about some aspect of their playing and practicing approach.

Whenever I have one of my “wow, what an idiot I’ve been” moments, I am always very happy. Now I know I am on the verge of becoming an even better player than I am now. How could that upset me.

And this is something all of you can say at such times. Make sure you do. Make sure you keep the feeling of excitement and gratitude if you read something, by me or someone else, and it makes you realize that you have been missing something in your understanding and approach to the guitar. Do not get whinny and negative because something has come along to upset the nice opinion you have managed to create and maintain about yourself as a guitarist!

And make sure you maintain that attitude of excitement, discovery and gratitude every day on your path of development as a guitarist, musician and artist. It is an endless journey, and those who have gone farthest know that best.

Copyright Jamie Andreas, Guitar Principles. Don’t miss the article Changing Bad Habits (Part 1).

They start to feel like that song by Al Yankovich, Everything You Know Is Wrong. They realize that even though they may have been playing for 25 years, there are certain really fundamental things they have never known, and if they did know them from the beginning, everything would have gone differently for them in their growth as guitarists.

Well, that IS the truth. That is the message I am always trying to get across. I am always trying to convey to people that if you have tried to learn the guitar and failed, it is not you, it is the approach to it all that is at fault. If you are stuck at a certain level of development, it is not you, it is your approach that is keeping you there. Change the approach, and you will create different results. I know this is a fact, because I do it every day, for myself, and for others.

Knowing the fact that the approach you use to learn the guitar is THE key-determining factor in your success or failure to actually learn, these three conclusions follow:

1. Playing the guitar well is NOT reserved for just some special people. It is available and possible for everyone.
2. You are never too old to learn to play the guitar well. 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, you are still young in guitar playing years. In fact, as soon as you touch the guitar in the right spirit, you will begin to become younger.
3. You can undo bad habits you have learned along the way. You can begin the process of undoing bad habits right away, when you begin to acquire the correct understandings, and use the approaches based on them.

So, even though it is a shock to find out that you have had a bad or insufficient approach for years, you must get over that shock right away. In fact, get used to it, it’s only the beginning! Get used to feeling like an idiot, get used to feeling like a beginner. Staying with that feeling positions you in the best possible way for being able to see what YOUR obstacles to growth really are. As soon as you think you are “complete” in some way as a guitarist, you will be unable to see your own weak spots.

Now that we have the proper attitude in focus, let’s talk about how to go about “managing” the process of changing bad playing habits. How do we actually conduct ourselves, and our practicing and playing? As I have said, some people become paralyzed, afraid to play, afraid of undoing work done in practice sessions by what they do when they play. And for those who play professionally, it is of course, absolutely necessary that they continue to play, even if they are doing “remedial” work on their technique.

People ask, “should I stop playing everything I am used to playing, until I get rid of all my bad habits”? Well, if you have a lot more discipline than I have, go ahead and do that! If you can stand not making music for months, go ahead, but I don’t recommend it.

An extreme example of this would be to entirely stop playing any of our usual music, where all the bad habits show themselves, and buckle down to things like the Foundation Exercises in my book, or the ones I have written about in my essays. You could work on those for months and months until you felt you had overcome your bad habits, and then go back to playing music. I’d have to love self-punishment a whole lot more than I do (which is not at all!) to take that route. I need fun and enjoyment in my life on a daily basis, so I can’t go with that one!

Take the Middle Path

I prefer to be wise like the Buddha, and take the Middle Path. This is the one I have chosen, and I will describe it for you.

First, if you are using my book, begin to do all the Foundation Exercises, because they will start to undo the foundation of ALL your bad habits. Do them every day for perhaps ten minutes. If you are not using my book, get all you can from my essays, and apply those approaches, experiment with them, and elaborate upon them, and adapt them to new situations.

Second, after coming to an awareness of the existence of a “bad habit”, develop an understanding of HOW it got there. What WEREN’T you doing that allowed that situation to develop. Of course, it always reduces down to something you weren’t aware of that you should have been paying attention to, been more INTENSE about during your practice.

Third, absolutely spend a good amount of time in practicing REVERSING that habit. Practice in a new way, where you make sure you DO what you weren’t doing before. Analyze the essence of that bad habit, extract it from it’s musical context, and perhaps make up “auxiliary exercises” based on the essence of it. Use all the practice techniques that I teach to effectively begin this process of reversal.

Fourth, make sure the reversal of the habit is actually beginning to take place. This means we make sure that our practice is effective. If it’s not, go back to steps One and Two and Three!

Fifth, take up one of your usual pieces of music where that habit has been showing itself by producing UNWANTED RESULTS, and we begin to practice IT in the same careful way that you did the exercises you were using to change the essence of the bad habit.

As weeks and months go by, your old “bad habit” will begin to weaken, it will change. It will be replaced by the new finger action you are training into the fingers. The important point to realize is that the new habit WILL take over, if you are doing the proper proportion of CORRECT PRACTICE on the bad habit. Merely playing the music where the bad habit displays itself will not disturb the changes you are building into the fingers by your powerful, correct practice. As time goes by, the new habit will begin to show itself IN your playing, and become stronger and stronger.

For instance, the process may go like this:

I notice I have trouble with a fast scale passage in a piece I am playing.

I notice a particular note starts disappearing when I reach a certain speed. The note is being missed.

I notice the finger responsible for playing that note is the third finger. It is not getting to the note because it is going up in the air in reaction to the second finger being used right before it in that particular scale passage. In other words, it is tensing in reaction to the movement of it’s neighboring finger, and I have not been paying attention to it. I realize this is a bad habit that pervades my playing, a third finger that tenses up in reaction to the use of the second finger.

Now I know I have to work on something very fundamental. I have to work on the behavior of my third finger, and change the way it reacts to it’s neighbor being used, the second finger. If I can get down to the matter with that degree of specificity, that degree of clarity and focus, I am in a position to cause major Vertical Growth. If I can change the way that finger is behaving in that situation, I will see many playing problems I am having in other pieces of music begin to “melt”, and eventually disappear.

I must find a way of practicing that movement that DOES NOT ALLOW the bad action to occur. Principled Players know that means using Posing, No Tempo Practice, and the Basic Practice Approach, all done with the proper intense focus.

Here is a simpler scenario for beginning players. Perhaps you suffer from the common complaint of not being able to change chords smoothly so you can sing that old favorite of yours without feeling like a new driver learning to drive a stick shift (go, stall, go, stall, etc.)

Well, that is very simple. You are simply suffering from shoulder tension while making the moves (also, tension in the muscles of the upper back and chest, they all move the arm). Because of this, you must address the fundamental aspects mentioned before. You cannot control your fingers, or even train them, because control is being choked off higher up, in the larger muscles.

Now, the challenge will be to be able to use the practice approaches that CAN actually change something like that. Users of The Principles know that this means Posing, and No Tempo practice, and the use of The Basic Practice Approach. Again, unfortunately, too often I meet readers of my book who are NOT really using these practice approaches. They bought the tool, but they don’t use it! Those that do, see the results.

Copyright Jamie Andreas, Guitar Principles. Don’t miss the article Changing Bad Habits (Part 2).

Believe it or not, we aren’t going to get involved in this debate (at least not today). Instead, let’s talk about another area where our “need for speed” invariably causes us no end of trouble. And that is the area of self-evaluation. Most people tend to be their own worst critics. Not to mention that very few people are truly able to give an honest and fair analysis of their abilities. We’re never as good (smart, wealthy, talented, whatever) as we want to be.

We compound this problem when we examine ourselves as guitarists (or songwriters or musicians, for that matter) by trying to make comparisons, which are, to be frank, insane. “You know, David, I’ve been playing for a little over a year now and I still don’t sound like (Clapton, Vai, Vaughn, Page, Hackett (ours or theirs), Bream, DiMeola). I don’t even sound as good as my (teacher, friend, neighbor, arch rival) who’s only been playing (several) years longer than I have! I’m soooooooooooo frustrated. Should I chuck it all?”

Developing Perspective

Even if you’ve been playing the guitar for less than a month, your brain and body are already working together on a plot that makes any conspiracy (real or imagined) pale in comparison. Try to see if you can remember what it was like to not know anything about the guitar. Holding the thing was tentative enough, let alone trying to play a chord or even a single note.

But the chances are very likely that you cannot recall that you ever felt this way, anymore than you can remember what it was like to not be able to walk or feed yourself. But in your brain, you know that this must be the case. After all, you weren’t born playing a loud resounding E minor chord. So think about this logically – somehow you have in a reasonably short space of time acquired (some of) the skills to play guitar. Skills, which for all you know, did not even exist all that long ago.

Now I don’t know about each and every person’s life, but I’m willing to wager heavily that most of you do not have the “luxury” of being able to just sit around and play your guitar for the better part of the day. Or any given day. This goes without saying, right? Yet you’re more than willing to compare your abilities to those of people who have spent years of their lives doing just that. How on earth can you ever hope to measure up to your personal guitar god or goddess?

Again, logically, you can’t. Think about it. For every hour of practice that you can somehow manage to squeeze into your (already) crazy schedule, Carlos Santana gets to play two or three (or four or five or six) a night. And he (already) is what, thirty to forty years of experience up on you? No wonder it’s so easy to get discouraged. Might as well quit now if you can’t be the best.

And it’s not only beginners who suffer from this lack of perspective. I’ve found that the longer you’ve been playing the guitar the easier it is to feel that you’re getting nowhere fast. This is really not unexpected. As you get better it actually becomes harder to notice how you’re getting better. Once you’ve got the chords and strumming down, a lot of guitar playing is in the subtle things – things that are gained through the experience of playing more often than through any lesson or drill.

One good way for an intermediate or advanced guitarist to take stock of things is to try to learn something fairly different from his or her usual style of playing. The electric guitarist takes a shot finger picking an acoustic (and in open D tuning, if you prefer more of a challenge). The folk guitarist might try to see just how difficult it can be to play something when you’ve got to worry about how the sustain of your distortion affects which chord voicings you decide to use. Or work along with Logan Gabriel’s columns just to see how much tone variation you can get with simply your fingers.

For Better For Worse

Why did you take up the guitar in the first place? And again, be honest with yourself. Chances are likely it was for one of the usual reasons – love of music, wanting to emulate someone, wanting to “become” someone, a way to meet other people, a way to express yourself. Whatever the cause, you make a pact with your guitar. You would try to learn whatever secrets it would teach you and it, in turn, would magically change your life (hopefully) for the better.

Ah, the best laid plans, eh? On whatever terms your relationship with your guitar might have started, somewhere along the way things began to change. It might have been subtle at first, maybe not. You began to put in more time (or less time) and getting less (more) satisfaction.

But why are we surprised? Since we are living beings, we are constantly changing. Some philosophers will even argue that all things (living and non) change from moment to moment. The relationships we have with our friends, family, loved ones, coworkers, acquaintances and strangers are always in flux, whether we will admit to it or not. Why should it not be the same with our musical lives?

Growth, like relationships (and time itself), can be close to impossible to measure from a personal perspective. It’s only when we stop to take a moment for reflection that we give ourselves the chance to marvel at things. As Robbie Robertson wrote, “We grow up so slowly and grow old so fast…”

I’ve mentioned before that growth tends to happen in “spurts.” But given the chance to think about this, I’m not sure that I believe that anymore. I think that it might simple be our self-perspective that makes it look that way. We are not capable of seeing the minute changes that occur day to day and moment to moment, so we instead are surprised when faced with an obvious truth. “My, how tall you’ve grown!” “Yes, an hour ago I was four foot three and now I’m five foot two!” Similarly a guitar run that I have spent days, weeks, months practicing now plays (almost) effortlessly and I marvel at how I seemed to learn it virtually overnight.

This ability to see yourself and your playing in a detached, almost clinical, fashion is not easy to develop. Like anything, it requires practice, but a type of practice with which most of us are unfamiliar.

Breaking Up For The Right Reasons

I enjoy puzzles, particularly British-style crosswords, with all the puns and anagrams and all. This is probably because I almost never finish one. It’s the challenge. Sometimes (but it’s rare, as I said) I will get all the clues and sometimes I will get one or two. On any given day I have no idea how many answers I will be able to nail down.

But one thing almost always helps. When I find myself at an impasse, I set the puzzle down and go and do something, anything, else. I put it completely out of my life for a while and I really have no notion as to how long a while that might turn out to be. And when I come back to that puzzle later (minutes, hours or days later), I inevitably am able to get many more answers. It’s simply allowing my brain to recharge itself.

This works in quite a few aspects of our lives. I suspect that it is why vacations came into being. And it is no different when it comes to playing, practicing or writing. Taking a break from it all is (or should be) an integral part of your plans.

As important as music and guitar playing undoubtedly is to you, don’t forget that there are other areas of life that are worthy of your time and consideration. Just as in my first column (Breaking Out Of The Box?) I urged you to broaden your musical horizons, please don’t forget to experience as much of the world as you can. Whether you mean to or not, you really can’t help but carry your music around with you and because of that your relationship with music will continue to grow in new and interesting ways.

I tell you this for one specific reason: God knows why any of you took up the guitar, but there are only two reasons for you to keep playing. The first is because it is how you make your living (or how you hope to one day). Now, as much as this might be a goal for many of you, most of us are stuck with reason number two: we have found ourselves in this wonderful relationship and we every intention of finding out where it is going to take us next.

No one wants to admit it, but all relationships (again whether they be friends, family, etc.) involve work and commitment. But in return for that effort we derive an incredible, almost obscene, amount of enjoyment. Even on my worst days when I can’t make a simple run on the C major scale without sounding like I’ve lost what little talent I might have ever had, I know how much more pleasure I have in my life with my guitar than without it. Music allows me to share my life with the rest of the world on a level that I hadn’t the slightest suspicion of when I picked up a guitar for the first time. I shudder to think of how empty my life would be without it.

So to those of you who can’t learn things fast enough, take it easy. Take a breath. If you find that playing is not enjoyable, then stop and take a break. If you’re truly not learning anything then you have to stop and assess things. More likely than not, you’re simply holding yourself up to impossibly high goals and will continue to frustrate yourself no end until you set some realistic goals.

I’ve said this before too, but it really bears repeating. Everybody has it within themselves to bring something unique to the table. And, speaking for myself, I would much rather hear John Doe’s version of anyone’s song than to hear a carbon copy. Yes, learn all that you can, but don’t forget to be yourself. And if that means slowing down once in a while to get your bearings, more power to you.

Because if you ever find yourself not enjoying playing anymore, stop. For however long it takes to work it out, even if it means never playing again.

As always, please feel free to write with your questions, comments, concerns and whatever. Either email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com or leave a note at the newly formatted Guitar Forums. Beginning next month, we’ll be re-examining the basics of chord theory in order to see how it leads us to our scales which in turn lead us to lead lines. It’s going to be in very “easy to digest” pieces and should (hopefully) prove invaluable to you whether your interest lies in playing or writing (or both). One reason for making things a bit smaller is that it will free up some time for me to help Paul with the launch of some great new additions to Guitar Noise. Just in time for the fall semester!

Until next week…

Peace.

First, we must define practice, it is a word that teachers throw around quite a bit but do not often elaborate. Now let’s put an end to popular myths surrounding practice.

MYTH: Practice makes perfect.

FACT: Practice makes permanent. In the words Al Woods (Tiger’s Dad), “Practice makes permanent, PERFECT PRACTICE makes perfect.” The fact of the matter is that if you let mistakes work their into your playing you practice the mistakes not the proper material. You are now probably saying, “Well of course i’m going to make mistakes that’s why I’ve got to practice!” Yes, you are going to make mistakes but they can be minimized. The way to minimize is to play slowly.

MYTH: In order to play fast I have to practice fast.

FACT: You need to be able to think while you play. Aaron Shearer, a famous classical guitar pedagogue was an advocate of “aim directed movement”, which is having a clear understanding of where the fingers need to go before you move them there. Aim directed movement can only be accomplished by slow practice.

One very important part of practice that a lot of players overlook is that of visualization. Some of the most constructive practice can be achieved without even touching a guitar! The best thing about visualization is that it can be done almost anywhere.

Try this:

1. Sit down and close your eyes.
2. Picture yourself playing a guitar from your normal point of view. In other words do not picture yourself as though you were watching in the audience, but that you are looking down at your hands as the actual player.
3. In your mind “feel” yourself playing just open strings. “feel” i and m prepare and follow through as you play the open high e string.

After a while of doing just the open high e string try moving through the rest of the strings, paying close attention to detail. After you have gotten the hang of the open strings try playing a simple first position scale like C major. this is a little harder because now you have to visualize the right and the left hand. This is a little tricky but no more trickier than syncronizing the two hands, in actuality, it will happen it just takes time.

I believe it was Elliot Gould who was infamous for memorizing works of music while in transit to his next concert and then being able to play those pieces in concert from memory.

MYTH: I don’t need to warm up.

FACT: Would a football player ever dream of taking the field without first stretching, same for a gymnast, he or she would never dream of it. The question is, why do so many guitarist and instrumentalists in general perform or practice without first warming up? My teacher Ben Verdery told me that his doctor who specializes in “musical injuries” said that out of all musicians the guitar has the most. What can you do? The first thing you can do is to do things like touch your toes, stretch out your arms, do some shoulder rolls, do some wrist rolls, anything to get the blood flowing to all the individual body parts.

Musically you must warm up as well. You should have an arsenal of easy etudes and preludes to play through before you tackle your major repertoire. Maybe some Carcassi etudes or Sor studies, Tarrega, Giuliani, Coste, Aguado, Carulli, all these composers wrote some very effective and useful etudes and easy pieces that are great for getting the fingers moving. Also, do not neglect the importance of DAILY scale and arpeggio study. The study of scales and arpeggios does not have to be in the form of monotonous position scales and Giuliani’s 120 studies for the right hand. They can take the form of etudes. Carcassi 1 from 25 melodious etudes by Matteo Carcassi edited by Emilio Pujol, contains tons of C major scale runs, while etude 1 by Heitor Villa-Lobos is great for arpeggios. There is an incredible amount of works to be found on practicing scales and arpeggios so explore what’s out there.

MYTH: I don’t need to practice reading music.

FACT: You better believe you do! The way to practice sight reading is to have various collections of easy pieces at your disposal (pieces that are well below your technical abilities) and just sight read them. As your sight reading gets better you will be able to read harder pieces and at an increasingly swifter pace. Remember that reading music and becoming proficient at it is difficult, there is no magic pill or formula and no esoteric teaching that will make you become a great sight reader overnight. The only thing that will make you become a great reader is to just DO IT! Also use visualization as a tool for sight reading. Get a piece of music and read it as though it were a newspaper or book and picture yourself playing the piece as you read it.

One of the most overlooked things pertaining to practice is that you must have a game plan. Don’t think that you need to practice for 10 hours a day in order to have a successful session. The truth of the matter is that you can have a very successful session in about 20 minutes. Remember you do not have to practice everything at once. when you sit for practice have a clear vision of what it is that you want to improve. For instance, If you want to work on a certain position switch in a certain scale then take that time (after warm up of course) and work on just that problem area. JUST THAT PROBLEM AREA, is the key. Stay focused, don’t let your mind wander, there is a difference between practice and doodling. Don’t get me wrong doodling has it’s place, I’ve stumbled across some of my favorite themes that way, but there is a time and place for everything. Beethoven said it best, “a musician must have the heart of a Gypsy and the discipline of a Soldier.”

No matter what your questions or plans, whether you’re going into summer or not in your particular corner of the earth, it’s a pretty good bet that guitar practice is not one of your top priorities. And I’m not trying to hit you up with a guilt trip, okay?

Okay, well, not that big of a guilt trip.

Truth be told, I would not even have brought this subject up if it hadn’t been for all the times it’s been mentioned in the email I’ve gotten since mid-March. I find that practice is an individual matter, different things work for different guitarists. And any of you who have read Jimmy Hudson’s column, Getting The Most Out Of Your Practice, already have some great ideas that hopefully (pun intended) you have put into practice.

Practice and Play

Everyone has his or her own idea as to what constitutes “practice.” But if there’s one thing on which we can all agree it’s that there is a difference between “practice” and “play.” Jimmy puts it very well in his column:

There is a big difference between practicing and playing. Practicing is learning new material and refining stuff you have already learned. Playing is doing what you always do because it sounds good and you do want to be able to impress yourself.

But, like all things, this really isn’t a black-and-white issue. If the reason we practice is to get better, then the way we practice should be designed with this in mind. And if the reason we’re striving to get better is to be able to play (whether solo or with others), then we have to know how to “play,” don’t we? Let’s take a look at why and how we practice and see what we can do.

For the new guitarist, life can be a case of sensory overload. There’s so much to learn and so many different aspects of music and the guitar to explore that you just don’t know what to do first. Chords, theory, rhythm, fretboard, reading music – the possibilities are staggering.

This is why it’s a good idea to have a teacher, if for no other reason than to have a guide who is making the initial decisions for you and laying a foundation on which you can build your developing skills. Of course, different teachers have different philosophies and whether you realize it or not, when you sign on with a teacher you are really getting a philosophy as much as you are getting guitar lessons. When you’re looking for a teacher, try to take the time to talk with him or her first. Find out how closely the teacher’s ideas about playing mirror your own. If it’s possible, also talk with one or two of your prospective tutor’s pupils and get their take on things. When it comes down to it, getting a guitar teacher is a fairly sizable investment and you should research it accordingly.

And remember (as any good teacher will point out to you), your teacher is not the be all and end all of learning. Supplement your lessons with reading and experimenting and fun. I cannot tell you how gratifying it is to have a pupil come into a lesson with questions about something that he or she has gone out of his or her way to learn on his or her own. It may be my job to be a guide on my student’s musical journey but I find it more effective and rewarding for both of us when we both are able to point out various sites of interest along the way.

A Sense Of Purpose

Concerning practicing in and of itself, it’s fairly well known that people are more likely to practice and play music that they enjoy. It’s always more fun to play a song than a scale. Accordingly the first thing a very beginning student should be concerned with is learning chords and getting a few simple songs down pat. You wouldn’t believe how many two, three and four chord songs there are out there. Trust me, there’s got to be at least one that you know and like.

Once you have the basics of a song covered, you can either move on to another song (again just nailing down the bare essentials – chords and structure) or you can work on “refining” the song you’ve already learned. This “refinement” can consist of many things – changing the strumming pattern, adding fills, bass or lead lines, using different chord voicings, even playing it in another key or using a capo. With my students, I try to have a number of songs, at different levels, going on at the same time. This way there can be multiple lessons going on at once. And while this is okay for lessons, it doesn’t necessarily lead to productive practices.

Which is why have a hard time advocating practice policies involving “do this for so long and then do that for the same length of time and then…” Ideally practice time should be flexible. But flexibility requires two things from the guitarist – honesty and discipline. You have to be able to objectively gauge what needs work (and what needs lots of work) and then practice accordingly.

You see, it’s incredibly easy to get frustrated because there is so much to learn and so much you want to do now and seemingly little time in which to accomplish your goals. You have to first accept the fact that some things might have to be put on hold, that Stevie Ray Vaughn solo might have to wait until you learn the scales on which it’s based. The important thing right here and right now is to set a simple goal and direct your practice in that direction.

When it comes to guitar, I am self-taught. But that in and of itself is an incredibly misleading statement. I had had music lessons (trumpet) between the ages of eight and twelve. It was part of the school band program, not private lessons. But this is how I learned to read music and tell rhythms. At twelve I took some private piano lessons which gave me the opportunity to learn the bass clef and to see how a song’s chords and melody worked together. And even though no one taught me formally, I learned what notes made up which chords.

But more important than either of these two things was the fact that I had a constant exposure to all kinds of music. My dad played saxophone in a wedding band and various local productions. I listened to the radio constantly (I didn’t buy my first album until I was sixteen!). I also, as noted, was in the school band. So you can see that there has always been music in my life. But I did more than just listen to it – I could tell you when the chords changed, what time signature it was in, what the song structure was. I could pick out the different instruments, what they were doing, what rhythms were involved.

When I picked up the guitar at seventeen, I had a lot of the “basics” down. So I knew that if I wanted to play with other people as fast as possible there were two things that had to take priority – learning how to play as many chords as I could and learn the chords of as many songs as I could. It didn’t matter to me what songs they were; any song was fair game. Virtually my first three months as a guitarist was devoted to this.

Once I had the chords down and could switch with a modicum of ease and once I had some songs memorized I got started on “refining” what I knew. In some cases this was simply learning a descending bass line or using part of a scale as a fill. My practice now consisted of two levels – learning and refining.

At about the same time I started learning theory in school and I started applying that knowledge to my guitar playing. It also inadvertently led to my understanding song structure a lot better. This added a third level to my practice – the study of why things worked the way they do. One thing that most guitarists don’t like to realize is that there is a lot of “practicing” that he or she can do without even touching a guitar. Most theory is paper and pencil work. You can do that almost anytime you want to. Just because a guitar isn’t in your hands doesn’t mean that it’s not in your head. Give yourself a test – transpose a song on the way home from work or class one day. If you find you can actually do this in your head without a guitar just think of how much faster you’ll be able to do it once you get your hands on it again.

Nowadays, I am incredibly lucky in that I am able to live in such a matter that a guitar is usually always in my line of sight. So even if I come home and sit on my couch in front of the television, I am still much more liable to pick up my classical guitar and attempt an exercise that’s still sitting on the coffee table. That’s why I leave them there! So before I switch on the idiot box I may have to go through several D minor (“the saddest of all keys…”) scales or a piece by Fernando Sor. But again, when I pick up that guitar I have a singular goal in mind. And my “practice” cannot end until I feel I have achieved that goal. So I may give myself five or six different practice sessions of anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes in length on a given night.

I find that a diversity of practice subjects keeps me incredibly involved. For example, if I know I’m going to be playing a show, then I’m much more likely to gear most of my practice time towards pure rehearsals. I’ll do a complete set each night. But during the set I might have an idea of how to improve a song or a transition between songs, so after I’ve done my practice (and after a bit of a break) I will go back and work on that one specific area. Once I’m satisfied that I’ve got that covered, then it’s time for another break and then I’ll work on something totally unrelated to the upcoming show.

So say you’ve just learned a song. Just for laughs, let’s say it’s Knocking On Heaven’s Door. Okay, that was pretty easy. So what are you going to do tonight? Well, for starters you might try some of the fills or leads that we learned last month. You might slap a capo on your guitar (seventh fret) and try playing it in C. If you pick that up quickly, then try some C scale based fills tomorrow night. But after you’ve done that, take it easy and pick up another song from scratch. Then take a break and practice your C major scales so that when you try your fills tomorrow you’ll have a good idea of what you want to do.

And a brief word to you would-be writers – while I agree with A-J about the best writing being spontaneous and heartfelt, I also think that many people don’t become good writers because they don’t know how to sit and write. This takes discipline, too. If you’re serious about writing and haven’t had much experience doing it, then I would highly advise you to “practice” this as well. You don’t have to make a big deal about it but set aside thirty minutes to an hour every now and then to just write. Music, lyrics or both. Chances are very likely that you’re not going to come up with anything stellar but you will developing some discipline that will help you when you need to finish something that inspiration has started.

The Big Picture

I’m sure I’ve told you this before: I hate scales. I really, really do. But I will admit that they are important to know and will ultimately make you a much better guitarist. I will also admit that I am not very proficient in them and this is why I practice them.

Here’ s yet another paradox to throw at you – if there is indeed a trick to good productive practice, it is one’s ability to focus on one single small aspect of one’s playing coupled with the ability to see “the big picture.” As I’ve said, you shouldn’t practice without a purpose. You’ve got to have a plan. And in order to come up with a plan you have to know where you fit in the big picture.

So, for all intents and purposes, let’s come up with a simple practice plan. Let’s use generic guitarist “Johnny” as an example. Johnny has been playing guitar for, oh let’s say a little over a year. He knows the basic open chords (although some still give him trouble), a few barre chords, some riffs (but only if they are direct parts of songs he’s learned) and even though he knows about seventy songs, he’s only comfortable with half of them.

The first thing Johnny has to do is to look honestly at the big picture. What does he want? To be the best guitarist the wold has ever heard. Well, that’s all fine and dandy but perhaps taking the big picture a bit too far. Okay, how ’bout just being better than he is now? Commendable, but again awfully vague. How can he get “better?” Well, he needs to take an honest assessment of his skills at this point in his guitar life as well as examine what goals he realistically would like to accomplish.

Now, if I were Johnny (or his teacher), I would write things out. Take out a sheet of paper and list his goals. And to refine those goals – replace every generalization with a specific do-able task. So, for instance, if my first list of goals looked like this:

Goals

• learn some leads
• learn some more songs
• get better at switching chords
• learn some barre chords

I might rewrite that into something that is somewhat more measurable, like this:

Goals

• learn the lead to Something and Let It Be (Beatles)
• learn some Counting Crows and Santana songs
• get better at switching chords, especially F to G at fast tempos
• incorporate some barre chords into three songs I already know

Now, you can go and replace my “specific” examples with things that are more to your own taste, but I think that you get the drift of things. Replace any vague or general goal with something specific. Personally, I’d replace “some” in Goal #2 with a specific number of songs, but for the time being it’s a good start. Now, on a separate piece of paper, I’m going to have Johnny do a brief evaluation. It’ll look something like this:

Good At

• rhythm patterns
• open chords (except F)
• keeping a steady tempo
• learning basics of songs

Needs Work

• switching chords at fast speeds
• memorizing songs
• general chord theory
• confidence playing with others

Needs Lots of Work

• barre chords
• lead playing
• sight reading
• confidence playing in front of an audience

Now this list can be as specific or as vague as Johnny wishes. The important thing is that is has to be honest. With both the goal list and evaluation in hand, we can work on an appropriate timetable. Any effective practice schedule has to take time into account. Look at it logically – I, for instance, have a huge list of “needs work” and “needs lots of work” items. I want to be able to play classical music well. I want to continue to learn at least one new song a week. I want to keep my song repertoire “in shape” for performances. I want to keep my “ad-libbing” skills at their peak so that when I’m playing with others I’m not limited to playing “off the record.” I want to play my bouzouki more like a bouzouki and less like a guitar. And that’s not a fraction of what’s on my list. There is no way I can design a single practice session that will take in all of these needs. It is impossible.

This is why it is smarter to make a practice plan for the course of a week. Depending upon your own needs and abilities, it can even be longer. Again, let’s look at Johnny’s case. Since he wants to learn some new songs and since he is good at learning the basics of a song, he will not have to spend a lot of time with this. However, since he admittedly needs work on memorizing songs, it makes sense to take the learning the new song routine an extra step and this will involve more time and effort. If we were to try to develop a good practice plan for Johnny, incorporating as many of his needs as possible, we might come up with something like this:

Monday

• learn Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby basics – words and chords
• practice C major/A minor scales (both Beatles songs are in C)
• play old Eagles song using A minor barre chord instead of open A minor
• review Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby

Tuesday

• play Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby twice with cheat sheet
• brief run through of C major scales
• learn solo to Something (already tabbed out)
• play Only the Good Die Young or another song with lots of F to G changes
• Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby once with cheat sheet – once without

Wednesday

• Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby once with cheat sheet – once without
• brief run through of C major scale
• Something solo
• learn Let It Be solo (already tabbed out)
• replay both Eagles song from Monday and Billy Joel song from Tuesday
• Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby no cheat sheet

Thursday

• Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby no cheat sheet
• learn Put Your Light On (Santana/Everlast) basics – words and chords
• C major scales
• Something solo
• Let It Be solo
• work up ad-lib solo in C major using riffs from both Beatles songs
• Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby no cheat sheet
• review Put Your Light On

Friday

• Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby no cheat sheet
• review Put Your Light On with cheat sheet
• C major scales
• Beatles’ solos
• refine ad-lib solo
• replay both Eagles song from Monday and Billy Joel song from Tuesday
• Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby no cheat sheet
• Put Your Light On once with cheat sheet once without

You can see this lesson plan is not overly taxing and yet it covers a lot of ground. But perhaps the most important thing is that it can be flexible. Suppose Johnny feels that by Wednesday he’s really got Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby down cold. He can then play it only once on Thursday and then work on something new.

And also notice that early on in the week we spend more time in the learning (hence fewer topics). As we progress, there will be more reviewing. More topics but less overall time devoted to each subject. Don’t overtax yourself. And please remember that this particular example is for our fictitious guitarist. Your needs are what should dictate your practice plan. Again, break up topics into smaller pieces that you yourself can deal with. Suppose Johnny wanted to learn the first guitar solo from Dire Straits’ Sultans of Swing. It would probably be best for him to learn the whole thing over the course of the week – a couple of measures or phrases each day.

Remember that this is not a competition. It’s simply learning and everyone has to go at his or her own speed. At the end of any given week or month you should take some time and re-evaluate things. Set up some new goals or make plans to devote more time to the stuff in your “needs a lot of work” column.

I can’t tell you that you’re going to love and enjoy every aspect of practicing, though there are some people that do. What you will find is that, when you least expect it, you’ll find it paying off in your playing. I think what drives most people crazy about practicing is that they want results now. But it never works that way. Learning is funny because it almost always seems to happen in spurts. One day we just suddenly realize, “Hey, look at all I know!” The reality, of course, is that all this learning has been a cumulative process. But we rarely perceive it as such.

As always, please feel free to email me with your questions, comments and such – either directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com or by dropping a note on the Guitar Forums. Until next week…

Peace.