Gui-target practice

Blog Temporarily Closed

2011-06-22T18:47:00.003+01:00

Due to the amount of time it's taking to undertake the full update of the CGPW course, this blog is not going to be updated for a short period of time, but it will be back soon.

Nik

The balance between assimilation and reinforcement (the 2 key components of practice).

2011-04-06T06:59:00.005+01:00

I find that a lot of the blog entries I make here are born of the things I frequently find myself saying to my students on a number of topics. When they speak of their aspirations (which sometimes begin quite positive and optimistic, but often have limits imposed on them), I often find myself asking, “Why don’t you want to take the instrument past where you’ve found it?”

These are not students who are taking lessons to guide their first steps on the instrument; they are serious guitar students who have been playing for many years. At this point I often try to explore the honest balance between assimilation/development of new ideas, and reinforcement that has occurred within their practice over a long period of time.

If you’ve been playing for 10 years, it’s worth considering how many of those years were you developing ideas and concepts on the instrument and for how many years you were reinforcing them? Remaining conscious of a healthy balance between assimilation/ development and reinforcement within practice can be immensely beneficial here, although an initial exploration of what has really happened to some peoples guitar playing over a period of 10 years (or more) can be quite alarming. In some cases it can be a matter of 3 years development, followed by 7 years of reinforcement! Effectively, these students are playing the same things that they could play after they had been playing the guitar for only 3 years! They had actually just reinforced those ideas over the next 7 years! While reinforcement had a value in as much as it served very well to prevent the first 3 years of development being lost, without stopping to actually analyze this situation properly, they could easily find themselves doing exactly the same things for the next 7 years too!

I’m of the strong opinion that in 10 years playing, a healthy balance of development and reinforcement is (and needs to remain) at the core of progress with guitar playing skills and knowledge. Without it, it’s very easy to learn a little, and then reinforce a little in a totally disproportionate timescale to the way in which you would actually approach the instrument if you were more aware of the roles that assimilation and reinforcement actually play in the evolution of your knowledge and playing skills. In the end, success is born of the level on which you think, not the level on which you work, so how we look upon and consider these topics has a significant bearing on progress and development as a musician.

What’s the first thing you play when you pick a guitar up?

2011-03-18T07:08:00.002Z

Is it different every time, or do you always pick a guitar up and play the same thing on it?

Either way, the very first thing you will play when you pick up a guitar is a good reflection of how you feel about your guitar playing, and you'll probably find that you picked up a guitar and the first thing you played on it was very different at different times.

Is this helping you to develop as a player and take you in the direction you want to go?

I would suggest that it most probably is, because if we are conscious of this, we have greater control over it. Whatever you would normally do as a "first thing" you play when you pick up a guitar, experiment and try different things and see where they take your playing.

Studio Noodling

2011-02-16T08:42:00.008Z

This is a short bit of fun noodling on a Stormshadow DBS guitar which I played recently during the sessions for the latest 'This Devastated Fan' album "Plot and Debauchery". It's not as good as I could have played it, but it's good sometimes to just play and have fun. If we don't just play and have fun with the guitar, we're missing the point!:

Stuck in a Rut (part 2)

2011-02-02T22:03:00.006Z

This exercise for breaking out of a rut uses a the principle of "restriction as the basis of development". It's particularly useful because it uses (arguably) the most commonly used scale by rock, jazz, and blues guitarists. The trusted and time-tested pentatonic scale.

The notes which make up this scale appear across the fingerboard to provide five, easy to learn patterns which utilize comfortable 2 note per string patterns within comfortable reach. Despite how easy each of the five patterns are to learn and play with, frequently only one or two of these patterns are used, and moving these patterns into other positions is the most common means by which many players change key.

The following exercise serves to address this by expanding the familiar patterns and approaching pentatonic scales from a horizontal point of view rather than a position based (or vertical) point of view. This approach forces exploration which wouldn't normally be undertaken by sticking to familiar patterns.

I use this as a good 2 hour pentatonic exercise:

Part 1 (1^st hour)

Spilt up an hour into 6 parts of 10 minutes. Pick a pentatonic scale (what a pentatonic scale is, and what notes constitute each pentatonic scale in any key can be found in a number of places). Play just on one string, on each string for 10 minutes, exploring all the notes available on that string in your chosen scale.

Part 2 (2^nd hour)

Split an hour into 12 parts of 5 minutes. For 5 minutes each, play on each of the five pairs of adjacent strings (1&2, 2&3, 3&4, 4&5, 5&6). Then play for 5 minutes on each of the four groups of 3 adjacent strings, (1-2-3, 2-3-4, 3-4-5, 4-5-6). For the remaining 15 minutes, play on all six strings.

Getting some form of backing track like a 12 bar blues, or a simple chord progression is also helpful because this will give a tempo reference for exploring phrasing.

New Standards

2011-01-15T16:03:00.015Z

A lot of the time, guitarists seem to have curious targets. They define quality playing and aspirations as “I want to be as good as player X”, “I want to be able to play solo X”, “I want to be able to play jazz” etc…

While these aspirations are in no way bad things, and could serve guitarists well as short-term goals, they could often be taken much further. Why can’t you have the desire to be better than any player you’ve heard? Sound impossible? It isn’t impossible for a number of reasons. Here are only some of them:

Natural Ability on Guitar? (April 2009):

“I frequently hear people speak of some guitarists as being ‘naturals’. Where guitar playing is a skill, the guitar itself (in it's current form) is an instrument which has had its basic shape and form invented, and then it has gone through a process of evolution. A guitar is not a natural instrument like the voice. As such, how can you attribute anything regarding the skills people need to play a guitar to be in any way natural?

The nature of a skill is that it is learned. Where there are people who have an aptitude for learning certain things at different speeds from others, that isn’t the acquisition of the skill itself, that’s the speed at which the skill is acquired. The skills required to play the guitar are obtainable by anyone (of ‘normal’ physical and mental capability) because of the nature of what a skill is.

If anyone has concerns about whether or not it’s possible to obtain the skill of guitar playing, they are unfounded. If anyone has concerns about how fast these skills may be developed, this is simply a question of how much effort you need to make. After that it’s just a matter of discipline, determination and perseverance. How much of each of these three things that you will need is relative to how good you want to be.”

Taking all this into consideration, it shouldn’t be too difficult to conclude that pretty much anything that can be done, can be done by you. This is something I find myself saying to my students all the time. Furthermore, a direction that the guitar can be taken in the future can come from you.

Raising standards is important to guitar playing because without higher standards and more challenging targets, the guitar doesn’t get to move forwards. If guitar playing fails to move forwards, it’s at risk of becoming stagnant and tiresome. At it’s very worst, if any serious and committed guitarist doesn’t aspiring to take the guitar further than they found it, their aspirations “to be as good as” rather than “better” could actually be considered a contribution to the instruments stagnation! This brings me to what I’m going to be focusing on this year: Taking the guitar past the point at which we found it, raising standards and as we move into the future. As we are growing, changing, evolving, and improving our lives, so we need to ensure that we don’t leave the guitar behind, and take care to bring the guitar with us.

New Updates

2011-01-13T16:49:00.003Z

Hello!

In response to the feedback I've had about this blog, I'm now going to be updating it in a more structured way.

Posts will now be on the first and third Sunday of each month (starting February 6th 2011).

The Enemy of Text

2011-01-10T11:58:00.006Z

I’ve spoken to a number of people (with opinions and ideas that I value) and canvassed opinion within online music forums about the CGPW project and one of the issues which frequently came up was the quantity of text that I seem to use. It seemed to matter far more that people actually had less! The quantity of it seemed far more of an issue than the quality or what was to my mind, the ‘value’ which I could offer within the core CGPW manual!

I’ve started a new paragraph here, and started using different fonts and other such formatting changes in direct response to some of the suggestions that have been made about this. I'm not going to get this right first time, but if I experiment, I'll find something that works...

I have always written a lot, and within the core manual for the CGPW I wanted to offer a lot. I didn’t want to short-change anyone and offer as much as I could possibly get out with the latest revision of the project. It has been ongoing for so long and I’ve become so close to it that I’ve gone through phases of wanting it to be the greatest guitar publication ever, and yet I’ve learned that with every new revision that’s an impossible task.

I guess sizes and colours matter…

Content is one thing. Presentation is quite another, and for a long time, I've disproportionately looked at only one of these things thinking (naively) that the content can carry it... Not true.

In a broader sense, and in directly relating this experience to the ideas and suggestions within the CGPW project, I’ve taken all of this on board and looked at radically changing everything I’m presenting to the world!

I’m looking at style, fonts, formatting, colours, the lot, because ultimately, if more than one person is telling me the same thing, then there is an issue to be addressed. Ironically wordy as this blog post may be, this brings me to my key point, which is the flexibility and willingness to adapt and evolve. It follows the principle that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. There are only actually ‘results’ of our actions. Failure and success are labels which we place on our results afterwards but ultimately they are ‘results’.

If the results I’m getting is actually “less people are going to read what I’m trying to get across purely because of the way in which it’s presented”, then I can’t help feeling that a measure of ‘failure’ has to be attributed to my results.

Is this a bad thing? I would have once thought so, but not any more. Now I look upon it as a new starting point and an opportunity to improve, evolve, adapt, update, progress, and ultimately succeed.

Ironically wordy as this post may be! Expect some more colours, diagrams, pictures and videos from now on rather than my usual pages of words!

New Year, New Horizons

2011-01-08T21:37:00.013Z

Back in January 2010, my first post of last year was entitled “New Year, New Ideas” and it introduced a module on phrasing. The following posts (interspersed with some more general posts on guitar playing) remained focused on this one topic for the next few months. This year, I’m going to looking at broader perspective, and look at long-term goal setting and the value that it has. While it’s sometimes important to focus on one topic and immerse your playing into a program for developing that one aspect of your playing to a high standard, it’s also important not to lose focus on longer term goals and to this end, I’m going to be making some posts on more general aspects of guitar playing in terms of long term goals and target setting (along with some other thoughts and ideas) for the foreseeable months ahead.

New Year: Old Wisdom (part 2)

2010-12-28T14:37:00.005Z

As the end of another year draws closer once more, I've found myself in a somewhat familiar annual position of organisation, planning, and making all my usual lists of goals for the year to come, reflecting on what I've learned, and continually returning to time tested wisdom which I tend to look to often when it comes to making plans. I mention this because it's only really time tested wisdom (together with experience) that can authoritatively guide the decision making process. Time tested wisdom is such a valuable resource when it comes to making plans that I don't make any plans without carefully considering it. I might set all my eccentric and fearless goals with uninhibited ambition, but the strategies and planning that I devise in order that I may reach these goals are always guided by a more reliable and dependable resource of wisdom.

I've tried to accumulate quite a bit of what I've learned into the following, but as it stands I would wish it to be considered unfinished. This is because I strongly believe that everything can be improved, and that while this is my own (current) thoughts, I believe that they ought to be considered from an individuals point of view, and then modified to include and incorporate thoughts and feelings from their own experience. This makes time tested wisdom more personal and relevant which is at the core of the Contemporary Guitar Performance Workshop philosophy:

Time and money are two things that we only get to spend once. With an unlimited supply of each, we could achieve anything with sufficient, focussed work. Without an unlimited supply of each, we must work smarter rather than harder, and remember that success is born of the level on which we think, not the level on which we work. We must act, and then we must watch and listen, thinking carefully about what we see and hear. We must continually assess the outcome of our actions and react and adapt to the results of our continual assessment. From here we empower ourselves to succeed. From here we are no longer guessing what may work. By ensuring that our decisions are guided by our experiences, we may remain focussed on targets, reassured that with each guided decision that we make, we are drawing closer to our desired outcome, aware of where we have been before, never to be condemned to repeat the same mistakes, for there is only one "true" mistake, and this is to fail to learn from a mistake.

Workload and Awareness

2010-11-08T15:55:00.010Z

As ever, there are times when workload can have an impact on guitar playing and guitar practice, and the last few weeks have been a good example of that for me. Rehearsals and recording sessions have been the priority recently and at the end of these kind of days, the last thing anyone wants to do is sit down and actually 'practice'. It can also feel like it isn't necessary when playing a lot, but the actual impact that rehearsals have on playing is almost always 'reinforcement' of what you can already do. It is only on rare occasions that skills will be developed in these circumstances, and new ideas and concepts introduced to playing when undertaking heavy rehearsal and recording workloads.

What this brings me to is the importance of awareness as to how your playing is developing, or rather, how your playing is being shaped by your actions. There is actually nothing wrong with spending a period of time rehearsing and recording and it's often a necessary part of being a professional musician but to remain aware of where your playing is at, and where is it is going is imperative if you don't want to lose the skills you've worked hard to develop. For example, if you are aware that you have a lot of playing to do which will be using one technique exclusively for a period of time, it may well be worth developing a short, concise, but highly focused practice routine which exclusively explores other techniques and commits a period of time to reinforcing those, just so that you don't end up losing them to the commitment of time to only one thing. Similarly, if you are going to be playing a lot of single note soloing, devising a similar routine to explore rhythm playing techniques and chordal work would help balance out your playing. Reading notation is another skill area which can suffer if rehearsals and recordings are for a bands original material (where it will be rehearsed and recorded without the aid of notation), so it may be worth devising a practice routine to reinforce those, especially since this skill can be one of the most difficult to develop because in the practice of reading skills there is little in the way of immediate rewarding guitar sound!

In conclusion, remaining aware of how you are working with the guitar is affecting your skills and ability to play it is imperative if you are to guide your playing in the direction you want to take it. Look at what you are actually doing with the guitar and ask yourself how much that is affecting your playing and how much it is reinforcing certain skill areas, and more importantly, try to identify where you could improve this situation by devising short, concise, and focussed little practice routines to directly address this.

New Academic Year: Old Wisdom (part 1)

2010-09-06T13:27:00.003+01:00

As we start the new academic year, a lot of people are having to re-acclimatize to a new head state. No more mornings of waking up at 10am, and back to work, and the old "routine".

Routine is very healthy for progress, and while it can take a while to get used to after a long break, it's absolutely one of the best things for practice. It needs to be guided by sound principles though, because the wrong kind of routine can actually be counter-productive. The way to ensure that the routine you're returning to is going to give you the results you want and the benefits of your work, it's good to have some kind of simple points of focus to maintain your work on the right course towards your objectives.

This is one of the sentences which I use a lot in the thinking skills project that I've been teaching in workshops, and one of the best ways in which routine should be guided:

"You live, the way you think"

Simple and straightforward, but then all the very best ideas often are. Think of this as you plan your routine, and you won't go far wrong.

Left Hand Dexterity and Control

2010-08-18T11:41:00.016+01:00

This is the tab which accompanies the youtube video lessons called "Left Hand Dexterity and Control" in 2 parts. The 'Real' version (rather than this hand written one which was scanned into the computer) is going to be available soon with the new project update/revision.

Left Hand Dexterity and Control (Part 1)

Left Hand Dexterity and Control (Part 2)

This is also available on the CGPW facebook page.

Contemporary Guitar Performance Workshop Facebook Group

2010-08-16T19:36:00.008+01:00

Since the whole of the internet seems to be in a slow process of being taken over a day at a time by facebook, I felt it only sensible to have the CGPW project represented there. I can hardly complain, since I'm on that site quite a bit. The CGPW facebook group can be found here:

CGPW Facebook Group

Please join, and invite friends who you feel may be interested!

Free Bass Workshop

2010-08-12T10:11:00.005+01:00

On 20th August I'm going to be doing a FREE bass guitar workshop/seminar.

Where I'm probably better known as a guitar player, I play (and teach) piano and bass/double bass in equal measure and after the guitar workshops that I've been doing I was recently asked if I would do this for bass guitar.

Anyone wanting any more details/directions etc it's in the Fuzzbox rehearsal studios building (Wigan) 01942 230888

Edit:

Extracts from "An Evening with a Bass Guitar":

Seeking the Truth (part 2)

2010-08-02T00:20:00.005+01:00

Yet again the debates on the music radar forum have given me sufficient cause to assemble my thoughts on another topic very much important to making progress when studying the guitar.

When it comes to making real and valuable progress when studying an instrument, an open mind is essential. I've been playing and teaching a long time but I didn't realise until relatively recently how much some people are very protective of their knowledge, and close-minded in both their playing, and their approach to learning. Where it may seem strange to some people, I actually make a point of taking lessons with pretty much anyone who I feel I can learn from and I've made enquiries with some people from the music radar forum (Sir Axeman, who declined, and fantastic blues/slide guitarist Lewy), and in time I'm hoping that at some point I will get around to taking a lesson with Clarky, Lewy, and Thing (other music radar forum contributors and great players in their own right) because these people do things and play the guitar from a different musical and cultural background from myself.

Where nothing more than my own blinkered view of the world is informing my playing, my potential to grow and develop as a player will forever be unnecessarily limited unless I explore the guitar with an open mind. My own playing is very much informed by what I've learned from others which is directly related to taking a very open-minded attitude to playing and learning. My approach to teaching is very similar, and if I have any students who take an interest in a style of playing or particular technique which I know some very good other local teachers specialize in, I'm sufficiently well networked with them to always have a referral option if people want to study with a through and through "purist", (similarly these teachers refer their own students to me if they feel that they want to explore the kind of things I do).

While I'm of the strong opinion that there is more about music that we don't know than we will ever learn, I'll find it difficult to accept that any one teacher will ever be able to offer anything more than what they have learned (which by it's very nature will be limited), and let's face it, who want's to limit themselves when it comes to learning how to play the guitar?

Reading Music Notation for Guitar (part 1)

2010-07-06T19:21:00.004+01:00

Standard notation is the shared language of music for all instruments. Where it can sometimes appear complicated, the process of learning notation is not as difficult as some people assume. The principles of time signatures, key signatures, pulse, tempo, rhythm, and pitch are not at all difficult to understand if they are properly and clearly explained. Musical notation is a language, and like all languages it will take time to learn, understand, read, and write fluently. This is a commonly overlooked aspect of notation which people don’t always understand. In "the west", quick results and understanding are a measure of success. Notation cannot be learned in an afternoon. Time will need to be committed to its study in order that you may benefit from a strong understanding of it.

There are two factors, which make the process of learning to read music for the guitar a little more difficult than some other instruments, but again this should not present too many problems if this is properly and clearly explained:

The guitar has an unusual range. This range doesn’t sit comfortably in any standard musical clef. The lowest note on the guitar would usually be written in the bass clef on a ledger line below the stave! The highest note (which is different for different instruments) can reach up to five octaves higher (usually about 4 ½ octaves higher). Taking this into consideration, music for the guitar is read exclusively in the treble clef and transposed 1 octave higher. This means that the notes that are played from notation, would actually sound one octave lower than they are written.

Most of the notes on the fingerboard of a guitar can be found in 4, or even 5 different places because of the nature of stringed instruments. This makes learning to read notation, taking a holistic view of the instrument, as a point of departure particularly awkward because of the options available to you. Eventually this can become an advantage, and offer many interesting ideas concerning "phrasing" when interpreting notated music, or arranging music for a guitar which has been written for another instrument.

Learning to Read Notation

There are different schools of thought as to how music notation is best learned for the guitar. They have evolved through different pedagogical ideas, but have a tendency to be style-specific. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. The culture of "classical" guitar (within which a strong reading ability is considered favourable) offers a range of successful methods of developing this skill (for this style) although I don’t consider practice at reading certain rhythms or phrasing (which are alien to the classical guitar style) to always be adequately covered using these programmes. Some styles of playing require the student of "guitar reading" to offer particular attention to a broader range of ideas than to just follow any one reading method or course. Here are four examples of different approaches to the study of the same subject:

Single string method. This is a good, effective method of learning to read notes. It is based on the idea that you learn how to read the notes in the same way that the guitar has evolved over the years. Once there was an early incarnation of the guitar with only one string, so why not learn to play and read notation in the same way that the guitar has developed over the centuries? Disadvantages include the time it takes to reach the point where you can play chords. Chords make up a lot of guitar playing across a range of styles.

Classical positional method. A tried and tested method within which all the notes on one position are learned before moving into the next. This works very well in covering the subject of note duplication but only really offers advantages to players who wish to remain "thoroughbred" classical guitarists. Using standard classical repertoire, more contemporary rhythms and phrases are not always offered sufficient practice without diversifying reading study. There is another school of thought which is very similar although the starting point here is the 5th position. This method is based on the principle that the fifth position contains notes covering the broadest readable range within the actual range of the instrument. There are only 5 notated notes below this position and (practically) only about another 10 above it. It is also the position closest to where many guitarists remain when sight reading (see "sight reading").

Learning between 6 and 8 notes as they appear within different positions method. This is an attempt at a "happy medium" between the single string and classical positional method. Simple repertoire is played in different positions using only a small number of notes at a time before learning more. This method works well but again suffers from the time it takes to learn chords.

Scale Position learning. Frequently, the wider applications of learning scales are lost when guitar players practice. Fingerboard familiarity when it comes to scale knowledge is very useful when it comes to reading, as it simplifies key signatures (using many sharps and flats). This is because the notation may be played "off the scale form" rather than for each note to be considered on its own merits (which many players do when first learning to read in different keys). I would however, suggest that too much reliance on shapes and patterns is not good, especially when reading because "accidentals" need to be accommodated as quickly as the piece is moving!

By far the best way to learn would be to combine the best, most effective and useful aspects of all of the methods you can find. There are no rules governing learning to read and no method requires that you stick to it for any given length of time for it to be successful. Any disadvantages of any given method can be quickly remedied by changing what you are doing. A well-balanced approach will offer the best results. You can always start with chords, since chords are the basis of a large amount of the playing within many different styles. Learning chords first using the simple letter notation for chord types would make sense before moving on to notation. Depending on the style, chords are usually the only aspect of notation which appear differently, either in standard notation or as letters and numbers. To some extent, learning to use chords will offer you an insight into some aspects of notation like pulse and rhythm before you learn the notes. Whatever you try, if it doesn’t seem to be working, change it. There are lots of options.

Guitar Tablature

Tablature is a musical notation language that is almost exclusively for the guitar (although it can be used to notate music for other fretted string instruments). Advantages that tablature offers include the clear presentation of where something is to be played on the fingerboard of the guitar. There are many options available as to where something may be played through note duplication and tablature can help to clarify some difficult or unusual chord shapes. Tablature can also assist with clarity where musical passages which are idiomatic for the guitar are notated, especially where the use of open strings or the use of multiple positions for playing the same note are concerned. While it is important to be aware of tablature and understand how to read it there are many reasons why it is significantly inferior to standard notation. Historically, there has been no instrument-specific language of music which has ever survived. In fairness, there are always exceptions to rules and tablature for guitar has enjoyed more success than any other instrument specific language recently. This is largely due to its adoption by contemporary guitar magazine culture as the musical language that is used extensively, although using tablature, there is often inadequate presentation of note values and rhythms. No other musicians (other than guitarists) can write it because no one else has any reason to learn it. Absolutely anyone can read it, but often they won’t be able to play anything that they don’t already know because of the frequent lack of accurate rhythmic information which is an essential part of notated music! Where in the initial stages of learning pieces of music or learning where notes can be found on the fingerboard of a guitar, tablature can be a useful learning tool; in the longer term I would suggest that the use of standard notation is significantly superior.

"Sight-Reading"

Dependent on how good you want to become at it, "Sight-Reading" is worth defining first. If you want to be able to play "any" music fluently from notation, then you need familiarity with the notes and note values as they appear in standard notation (together with key signatures and dynamic markings), and a thorough knowledge of the fingerboard on a guitar. Guitarists are actually notorious for being bad sight readers (even classical guitarists who have read notation from the outset of their playing). This is because the real core of "sight reading skills" as people understand them to be are developed in ensemble situations. The classical guitar isn’t in ensembles in the same way that orchestral instruments are, and bands which have guitars in them don’t often read notation, even in rehearsal situations.

There are numerous books which deal exclusively with sight reading but if you want to become a seriously proficient sight reader, (after learning the basics of notation, and familiarising yourself with the notes on the fingerboard of the guitar) in my experience the best method is to actually simulate this ensemble situation. You will need a metronome, quite a bit of patience and discipline, and some music. Take a piece (or a book), set the metronome going at a realistic speed (which, aside from keeping an accurate pulse, is actually serving to simulate the rest of an ensemble), start at the beginning and do not stop until you get to the end of the piece. Remember that you are simulating an ensemble situation. If you make a mistake in an orchestral rehearsal, you keep going no matter what, the conductor will not wait for you, and neither will the other orchestra members. If you engage in regular, disciplined and considered practice in this way (with a clearly defined objective) for just 10 to 15 minutes a day, in a short time your reading skills will have developed considerably.

Nik Harrison

Emphasis as a Basis for Phrasing (part 2)

2010-06-22T13:08:00.005+01:00

Some people have been asking for examples of this so I thought I would share one of my own pieces here which uses this very technique:

Silently Stealing Sleighbells

This piece is mostly triplet quavers (triplet eighth notes at 132bpm) which are played as a consistent rhythmic figure throughout two of the three sections which are the component parts of the arrangement for this piece.

Because each note has a different emphasis and in this performance particular attention was payed to the way each note relates to the one next to it, the piece has a melody which is shaped by emphasis rather than by rhythmic variation.

Seeking the Truth (part 1)

2010-05-26T09:53:00.006+01:00

Before I even start, I'll contextualize this as 'my opinion only' to avoid too much of a backlash. I'm claiming no 'authority' here and only sharing my view on a topic which I've found myself discussing over the last few weeks.

One fundamental factor which determines how we formulate our ideas and gain strength in our convictions and beliefs is our perception of the concept of 'perceived authority'. This can sometimes have a dark and questionable role to play in the formation of opinions, and consequently 'recorded and referenced music theory'. I'm mentioning this because across a wealth of well respected textbooks on the subject of music theory, there are multiple contradictions. Which one is right? Which publication can claim 'authority'? Guitar magazines do this all the time, but how much is this appropriate?

I contribute quite a bit to Paul Clark's forum where I set up a good natured and well intentioned "Theory Challenge" thread which turned into a healthy ground for discussion and good natured debate on certain concepts and ideas. The 'tetrachord concept' was one such idea where 'misconception central' caused a whole load of problems. Most of the following blog entry is taken directly from my contribution to this debate, although since it was pertained to some ideas I had been working on for this blog, I thought it appropriate to share it here.

There are multiple interpretations of "tetrachords" which all have a measure of value (within a permanently evolving system of music theory), although I'm not convinced by some of them, and I think the dissection and subsequent re-labeling of a lot of theoretical concepts sometimes serve the purpose of doing no more than justifying certain 'contemporary' pieces by certain composers who, incidentally, were also influential and instrumental in the editing and devising of some contemporary music theory textbooks. This has led to some very shallow and tentative ideas which have been recorded, studied by some, then held up to be 'the truth' and widely referenced a little too often, where in actual 'truth' they have often been artificially devised to attempt to explain a musical idea which is a long way removed from the comfortable and well established tonal system.

Where do we get our 'truth' from? It's always the case that 'trusted sources' are often the best place to look for such a truth but unfortunately there is a lot of misplaced self-importance, ego, and thoroughly deplorable arrogance amongst some academics (especially those who consider themselves to be in a position to write textbooks on music theory) which has offered a wealth of contradictory suggestions, advice, labeling, and concepts which I would consider all to be highly questionable. Whilst I might be (in a sense) an academic (and to this end, making my own claims with no more or less 'authority' than others) I always try to teach (especially at a high level) that the truth comes from the careful, intelligent, and multiple referencing of as many publications as the student may lay their hands on to as exhaustive a conclusion as possible. Speak to as many learned people as possible for the benefit of their experience and view, and you will formulate an opinion of much greater value than to blindly trust and one source.

Emphasis as a Basis for Phrasing (part 1)

2010-03-29T12:39:00.004+01:00

This is another blog which takes a step backwards from a previous idea rather than forwards. It’s another simple exercise (as with all the best exercises), which is very useful for developing better control over the way you sound. Control is one of the most under-used words when it comes to practice but it’s absolutely the most desirable thing to be able to do with your playing. Using a scale (or mode) over two octaves, try the following emphasis exercises:

Emphasis exercise 1:

Using a scale (or mode), play each note in sequence using equal note values. Use either all crotchets (quarter notes), or quavers (eighth notes) but play an accented note on every 3rd note in the scale as you ascend and descend over 2 octaves.

Emphasis exercise 2:

Using a scale (or mode), play each note in sequence using equal note values, play an accented note on every 4th note in the scale as you ascend and descend over 2 octaves.

Emphasis exercise 3:

In a 2-octave diatonic scale (inclusive of the tonic at both ends) there are 15 different notes.

Chose 3 random numbers between 1 and 15. Now using a scale (or mode), play each note in sequence using equal note values, play an accented note on each orf the 3 tones which correspond with the 3 numbers you have chosen. Accent the same 3 tones when descending.

These simple exercises develop a lot of control which is often missing from guitar players technical facility, especially where a lot of electric guitarists use compression (which limits the amount of dynamic control over your playing by design!). if you use a compressor pedal, make sure it’s switched off for this exercise (as with all other effects).

Phrasing with Scales and Modes (part 1)

2010-02-17T12:17:00.015Z

I've had no end of requests about modes since I first started the phrasing module.

Am I going to be covering modes/phrasing with modes?

While I've had some really good, supportive feedback about the first 2 videos, I probably didn't make it clear enough in the post "New Year, New Ideas" that the first 2 videos are supposed to serve as an example of what can be done with a scale. It happened to be a Bb major scale that I used in the example, but in truth it could have been any scale, any mode. Pentatonic, blues scales, even arpeggios can be practiced using this principle of breaking up the rhythm, and experimenting with different note values and rests between them but remaining within the restricted framework of completing the scale (or arpeggio) over however many octaves as you wish. It was meant to serve as an example of a principle rather than just as a major scale exercise.

If building familiarity with different scales and modes is necessary, then I would suggest that is done before attempting to explore different rhythms while playing them in their ascending and descending forms. Scale diagrams and information about what (and where) all the modes are can be found all over the internet. A quick google search will offer you all the information you will ever need, and some clear scale diagrams are well presented on a lot of good education websites.

Getting back to the phrasing module, there are two directions that I can go in from those first videos. The first is to explore different scales, modes, arpeggios, pentatonic and blues scale choices etc... and thoroughly go through a lot of different sounds and effects that these tonalities can bring. The other direction I could go in is to explore the dynamics of movement within a scale more thoroughly. Maybe changing direction once or twice over a 2 octave scale instead of always needing to complete it over 2 octaves before either ascending or descending once more. Maybe explore intervals? The list of options here is immense.

What I had planned to do next was to explore more 'melodic movement choices' rather than tonalities, although since I've been asked about this a lot, I'm probably going to explore both of these things.

Asking Better Questions (part 1)

2010-02-08T12:31:00.015Z

I vividly rememeber a time at music college when the question "What is art?" set off the first academic year with the intention of generating some healthy discussion about it. Maybe it was also to challenge preconceived ideas or to expand thoughts that people may already have on the subject, but my recollection of this day was of a very defensive position that one lecturer took when I suggested that the question "What is art?" was actually quite limited, and that perhaps the topic may be better addressed by asking "Where is art?" "When is art?" "How is art?" and even "Why is art?". Judging by the reaction I got, I don't think these questions fit into that particular lecturers 'plan', and as I learned quickly, you can't go against 'the plan' in an established academic setting. To challenge 'the plan' is to challenge the institution itself, and they don't like that very much. For anyone else, outside an institutionalised educational setting who may wish to explore an idea and develop a deeper understanding of a topic beyond some elses 'plan', asking better questions is a very good way to achieve that.

What this brings me to is an important set of questions which can be asked of anything, and for the current focus on phrasing, "What is phrasing?" can generate some interesting answers, but how about "Where is phrasing?" "When is phrasing?" "How is phrasing?" or even "Why is phrasing?". Proper grammar might sometimes be difficult to fit with these questions, but what they pertain to is there, and exploring the answers to these 'better questions' can lead to some useful insights that in turn, can better inform what it is you're trying to do.

Phrasing Videos

2010-02-02T16:26:00.004Z

I've had a couple of messages letting me know that the videos I embedded into the "New Year, New Ideas" post don't always seem to work.

I don't know how to fix this problem beyond posting the links to these videos on youtube which are here:

Phrasing video 1

Phrasing video 2

Impossibility?

2010-01-17T22:12:00.005Z

The next blog I was going to post on here was going to be the next installment of the phrasing module that I've been working on and teaching this month although I've been working on the Contemporary Guitar Performance Workshop main course over this week, and I've been working through the closing section which contains some ideas which are very much consistent with what I've found myself sharing with my students when they've tried some of the exercises for developing their skills with phrasing.

From the closing section:

"Take each new piece of information, each new idea, each concept, and each person’s perspective, and use it as a starting point for your own exhaustive experimentation and explorations. If you take onboard other peoples ideas and consider them to be ends unto themselves then that's what you will confine them to be through perspective. Avoid putting things into this 'perspective prison', and try to recognise where other people do this. Some people protect their ideas, opinions, work, and attitudes by presenting it to the world in such a way that you can easily get the impression that there is no other way some things can be done (it’s a favourite amongst politicians). This is sometimes true when it comes to cold, hard facts, but not always. Keep your mind open, and what seems impossible can sometimes be exposed as just a good challenge, and not clear cut 'impossibility'."

New Year, New Ideas...

2010-01-02T12:41:00.000Z

Hello, and happy new year!

This year, I'm going to be focussing on quite a lot of phrasing in the modules that I'm teaching. There is so much information on scales, chords, picking etc with loads of exercises everywhere, that I thought that to focus on phrasing, and really look at it in depth would be offering some "value", rather than to re-print pages of scales and picking patterns so that people can develop the skills required to play super fast scale and arpeggio runs.

While I've called this blog entry "New Year, new ideas", I'm actually going to start with some old ideas from my youtube channel:

"Phrasing part 1"

"Phrasing part 2"

These video lessons, while in essence very simple, actually get to the very root of what "phrasing" really is and offer a good starting point. As a very general rule, (and as always there are exceptions), phrasing is a question of stepping outside the patterns which people seem to practice, but not in terms of notes, in terms of note values and rests. Patterns generate a measure of predictability, but breaking patterns generate a measure of interest. Music actually requires a measure of both of these things. If you think in terms of sentences and paragraphs, and never fear rests and leaving space, you will be "speaking with your instrument" rather than just rambling off a scale you may have learned. Spaces contextualise your note choices and give them a position in time which is essentially what phrasing is all about. "Note choices in context".

In the words of Buddy Guy: "Notes are just a way of getting from one silence to another."

More of my video lessons can be found online here

One Note At A Time (part 2)

2009-12-08T12:58:00.001Z

This exercise is another very simple procedure, but with far reaching implications and a great depth from which some very good things can happen to your guitar playing.

Rather than for me to explain it at length here, the exercise is well explained, with some really good, honest opinion on it on the following linked blog entry. I'm fortunate enough to have had someone take this lesson and comment on it first hand, so rather than to have me speak of this exercise's virtue, on this occassion I can actually post a link to another blog which not only explains exactly what to do, but also offers some critical feedback on it:

From Sam M's Blog:

"I recently took a guitar lesson where the first exercise was to play 10 individual notes, and after playing each one, to rate it from 1-10. It took me a good 10 minutes to grasp what I was being asked to do - play 10 notes, one at a time, anyway you like; loud, soft, dull, bright, muted, with vibrato, maybe bend it, the list goes on... What this exercise pertains to is the translation of what you intend to play, and how close this is to the actual sounds you make when you do play. I found this to be enlightening and scary in equal measure - my average was 8/10. This doesn't sound too bad until you consider we're talking about single notes played one at a time. What this means is that the average note I play on the guitar is only 80% as good as it could be. Scary.

This might seem like a very pedantic and overly-analytical way to look at playing an instrument, but think about it a bit more and it makes sense. Everything else - double stops, chords, flashy solo runs - are made up of single notes. If each note isn't as good as it could be, it stands to reason that neither are any of the above - neither is the rest of your playing, in fact."

Expanded upon here:

http://playitagainandagainsam.blogspot.com/2009/04/active-learning-self-awareness.html

Perseverance or Reassessment? (part 1)

2009-11-12T23:48:00.000Z

Within the lessons that I teach, I frequently observe the same kinds of things that students seem to do a lot when they’re trying out new licks or ideas. A lot of the time they will attempt the idea, get stuck at a particular part of it, and then try again only to repeat exactly the same mistake. Perseverance once more and determination will drive them to make another attempt, but yet again, the passage grinds to a halt at the same place. I still have similar experiences myself when I try out certain new things, although I take a very different approach to these situations now than I once did. At the point where a student has made the same mistake (or just ground to a halt) 3 or 4 times, I ask them to stop.

It is at this point that an awareness of one of the key components of practice needs to be recognized and responded to. Practice is essentially made of two key components. These are assimilation and reinforcement. Assimilation is the process of learning new ideas. Reinforcement is the process of maintaining and strengthening those ideas.

Taking this into consideration, at the point where a new lick has ground to a halt more than 3 or 4 times, the assimilation process has actually become a reinforcement process, and worse still, it’s actually become a practice of getting something wrong! The assimilation process had not sufficiently been completed before subsequent reinforcement should even be attempted.

At the point where an attempt is made to perform a lick and it’s ground to a halt (or a mistake has been made in the same place) 3 or 4 times in a row, stop. Stop playing and reassess. Reassess by thinking about why the idea is grinding to a halt or why the mistake is being made? Is it too fast? Is it too difficult for the time being and needs to be re-categorized as a longer-term goal? Is it too slow and actually boring to practice? Any of these (and plenty more) reasons could be influencing what is happening, but even if you stop and don’t pick up the guitar again until the next day, to persevere practicing getting something wrong could actually be worse in the long term.

One Note At A Time (part 1)

2009-11-04T11:22:00.000Z

One of the most misunderstood, but simultaneously one of the most long term beneficial exercises that I give to my students is a series of perspectives on playing only one note, and then stopping to think about it. These perspectives are most often misunderstood because the process of engaging in a exercise which has very little in the way of immediate "rewarding guitar noise" can seem a long way removed from the kind of guitar playing that they would often like to be able to perform. The exercises can be boring, frustrating, irritating, and at worst, actually discouraging from practice. I would argue, however, that they are absolutely worthy of every serious guitar student's attention.

Based on the principle that essentially all guitar playing (in any style and to any standard) is born of perseverance, the first "perspective" is a very simple question to ask oneself before practice, and then once again after a note (or a few notes) have been played. Where we can chose and direct what we persevere with, it's worth offering considerable conscious effort to carefully identify what may be worthy of our perseverance rather than to "sub-contract" that responsibility out to teachers, books and magazine articles. In the interests of making the best, most effective and economical use of practice time, asking the very simple (but far reaching and highly potent question): "How do I really want to sound?" may seem simplicity itself, but how far can an answer to this question go? To what extent is the potential answer "I want to sound like player X/Y/Z etc..." appropriate or in any way helpful? Why ask it? "What are the benefits of such extensive consideration?"

I would suggest that the more detail you can go into in answering this question, the better. The more players as reference points or influences you can list, the more resources you may draw upon to structure a method by which you can achieve your goals. The more descriptive the sounds and the more you can be as specific as possible in every aspect of "how you really want to sound", the better chance you have of sounding as close as it may be possible to that sound you have in your head. Answering this question as fully, and as accurate as possible will guide almost every decision you will make that will offer a considerable contribution to your playing. Choice of exercises, teachers, instrument, amp, pedals and other equipment (where appropriate), in fact almost every part of the activities you engage in, in order to become the guitar player that you want to become is influenced and guided by the answer (in all it's comprehensive detail) to this one simple question.

Stuck in a Rut? (part 1)

2009-09-11T10:01:00.000+01:00

This month, it's back into the academic year, and a frequent complaint from some of my students has been that while they've done a lot of playing and practicing over the summer, they felt that they've been playing a lot of the same things, over and over. Not just with technical "reinforcement" exercises, but with improvisations and melodic ideas, with fingers always seeming to fall into the same places. Just over the last week, the exercise I've given these students to combat this problem/challenge has been very effective. As with all the most effective exercises, it's very simple:

Divide and hour up into 4 parts of 15 minutes each. For the first 15 minutes, improvise (preferably exploring some musical and creative phrasing, and using a variety of scales, arpeggio, and intervalic ideas) without using your 4th finger of the left hand (or right hand for left handed people). For the following 15 minutes, do not use your 3rd finger at all, just fingers 1,2 and 4. For the next 15 minutes, just use fingers 1,3, and 4, and for the final 15 minutes, just use fingers 2,3 and 4.

This is a variation on the "restriction as the basis for development" principle which I outlined in an earlier blog, where only the inner 4 strings are used to perform exercises. This time the exercise is designed to break up the patterns that fingers get so used to when practicing scales and other technical exercises across the fingerboard. It can be frustrating, but it's worthwhile because once this exercise has been completed, returning to all 4 fingers on the fingerboard opens up a wealth of potential!

Guitar Teaching (part 5) “What qualifies someone to teach?”

2009-08-15T18:57:00.000+01:00

The topic of “What qualifies someone to teach?” permeates many conversations amongst guitar players and goes around in circles, particularly players who reach a certain standard and consider themselves to be in a new position where they are capable of offering ‘guitar lessons’.

I’m of the strong opinion that what qualifies someone to teach is not on paper, it is in their knowledge, and attitude to the job. Experience helps but at one time, everyone who has ever taught was inexperienced so I wouldn't suggest that this is always essential (contentious as this may sound). However, I will go so far as to suggest that there is no such thing as ‘amateur’ teaching. Where students are paying for lessons, whoever is giving those lessons should know their stuff, and be 100% committed for the duration of their lesson to giving them their best. If it's guitar, where the notes are on the fingerboard is part of a basic, fundamental body of knowledge that I strongly believe anyone who wants to teach guitar needs to know, as is a strong sense that they are taking on a role of a ‘teacher’ in order that they may assist in the development of a students playing. Paper qualifications are not completely irrelevant, and have a value, (although speaking of paperwork, I would suggest that if people are teaching young children, an enhanced CRB check, and sufficient public liability insurance are essential). If you're not ‘qualified’ (on paper), don’t think in terms of ‘teaching’. In my honest opinion, I don’t believe that to be the best approach unless you really know what you're doing. I would consider that taking an approach of ‘sharing’ what you know would be a better suggestion. ‘Sharing’ means that you will only ever be passing on the knowledge you have, and be able to relate it to the experience you had learning it yourself. If you're student asks you a question and you don't know the answer, "I don't know" will earn you more respect than anything you could make up on the spot to maintain the ‘teacher’ role (and it’s alarming how many people who offer guitar lessons seem to think that misdirecting a question or making something up as an answer is a good idea!) If you go into the situation confident that you are ‘sharing’ what you know, (remembering that can't share anything you don't know!) you will always be qualified to do what you do when it comes to ‘teaching’.

Guitar Teaching (part 4) "The Role of a Guitar Teacher"

2009-08-04T11:29:00.000+01:00

Originally posted on http://vapourstation.blogware.com/ 19 Jan 2009

Again, my experiences and questions I've been asked recently have led me to assemble a generic answer, to which I can point people in the direction of, if I'm asked this in the future. What is the role of a guitar teacher?

Before moving onto the "role", firstly I would like to express what I feel a guitar teacher (who has adopted this title and role) is actually responsible for:

A guitar teacher is responsible for the quality of a students 'teaching'. Not the quality and rate of the students 'progress'.

Regarding the 'role' of a guitar teacher:

Essentially, a (guitar) teacher’s role is to offer information, guidance and encouragement. This is done by establishing where you already are with your playing, together with where you want your playing to be through assessment, and using that as a basis for structuring a logically progressive path towards where you want to go. This can be done in a number of different ways, both formally and informally, sometimes even consciously or subconsciously, but it's what most teachers do unless they are teaching you what they think you should know. This is a bit more like school or the more formal classical training that you can have on a musical instrument. Both approaches are valid and suit different people according to their outlook/ personality/ needs etc although I think it is a safe enough assumption that most electric guitar players are not likely to wish to surrender all decision making as to what material they cover and how their progress is structured to a classical style, formal training system. Irrespective of this, nobody ever gets any better in a lesson, or because they have lessons. People only get better when they practice but there can sometimes be a large void here in that many people don't actually know how to practice, what it is, how it works, and what it's for in extension of the very vague and general "to get better", or "to improve".

All the information you ever need about playing is on the internet. All the guidance and encouragement anyone may want isn't always necessary if people are sufficiently self-motivated. A lot of the time, if you are considering taking guitar lessons, you have to ask yourself what it is you actually want from a teacher. If you take guitar lessons but are concerned that your teacher isn't giving you what you want, it's worth properly establishing what it is that you wanted from them in the first place. Clearly establish what it is you wanted from them in your mind, and discuss it with them. It's the reason I ask the first questions (of all new students) so that this is formally established before we get on with the learning:

"What do you want to be able to do with the guitar that you can't do now?"
"How do you consider that I may be able to best help you to get there?"

The responses I get to these questions are predictably vague almost every time. It's always "to get better" or similar, so we move onto what "getting better" means to them and establish examples of "better playing" which is simultaneously establishing short, medium, and long term goals for the students (dependant on how complicated the "better" playing examples are). If you don't know where you want to go, how are you going to get there? No matter who is helping you (teaching you), it's just not going to happen.

Guitar Teaching (part 3) "Guitar Theory"

2009-07-06T22:47:00.000+01:00

Originally posted on http://vapourstation.blogware.com/ Mon 12 Jan 2009

Frequently the Music Radar forum gives me plenty to think about when people ask music related questions, and a lot of the time, I’m asked similar things in lessons. One thing which surfaced recently was the idea of “Guitar theory”. I find this a bizarre subject to talk about because there really is no such thing. I often end up saying things like “try to avoid the whole idea that there is guitar theory”. There is the guitar, and there is theory. There is no “guitar theory”.

The guitar is an instrument you play music on. Theory is a system which serves to label, organise and explain notes, how they fit together and make sounds which are 'popular', how they look on the page when notated, and how they relate to each other with fancy names. A lot of the time these 2 things cross over because when you play notes on the guitar, theory has a name for them. The same is for scales and chords but ultimately, on the guitar they are noises and sounds. Theory is just a system of labelling.

If you want to know how this labelling system relates to the guitar, in contradiction to popular opinion, it doesn't. The guitar is an instrument which you use to create notes (either on their own or in combination) which you either like the sound of, or don't. Theory is a system of labels for these noises.

If you want to learn theory, it’s worth establishing a purpose first. Why? This way it's easier to find what resources you may draw upon to ensure that you learn exactly what it is you want to know, thus avoiding having to trawl through a whole load of theory which you're not actually interested in.

Guitar Teaching (part 2.2) “The ‘ownership’ of guitar related study material”

2009-06-03T12:29:00.000+01:00

In extension of the idea that guitarists are very protective of what they know and what they can do, I thought it may be worth mentioning that a lot of the time guitar teachers forget that they don't actually 'own' a lot of the material that they teach. For a long time, I’ve believed that all the ideas I've got are just things that I've noticed and discovered on my own journey. They were always there and I can't really claim ownership of them.

The only thing that I could possible claim was really 'mine' is the way in which it's taught and the way in which it's presented, but even that is something that has always been there! I may have had the ideas and refined them over time but with music teaching, everything (in terms of information) is online and I think that's where it all belongs! It should be in the public domain! The more people are made aware of, the more everyone who claims to be any kind of 'teacher' is forced to raise their game and come up with new ideas and move music and the education of it into the future.

Guitar Resources (part 1)

2009-05-14T08:36:00.000+01:00

I'm often asked about this. Within the mass of printed matter on the subject of guitar playing, which are the best books? This list is subject to change because new books are being produced all the time, but for now, this is my current list of suggestions for the best all-round guitar/ theory/ general musicianship books (or series):

Elementary Training for Musicians - Paul Hindemith
Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns - Nicolas Slonimski
The Advancing Guitarist - Mick Goodrick
For Guitar Players Only - Tommy Tedesco
Modern Method for Guitar (parts 1,2&3) - William Leavett
Music Reading for Guitar (The Complete Method) - David Oakes
Musicianship and Sight Reading for Guitarists - Oliver Hunt
Creative Guitar (parts 1&2) - Guthrie Govan
Modern Reading Text in 44 - Louis Bellson
Chord Chemistry - Ted Greene
Modern Chord Progressions - Ted Greene

Restriction as the basis of development

2009-05-08T21:55:00.001+01:00

I was recently asked to be “task master” for the guitarist collective forum. http://www.guitarcollective.org.uk/forum/ This is a great forum where each month a contributor nominates a taskmaster to give each of the forum regulars a challenge in the form of a composition which must be completed within the parameters of a given framework. This could be anything from using a slide, a strange time signature, only one position on a guitar fingerboard etc… something to make a guitar player think about what they are doing, and really ‘craft’ a piece instead of getting stuck in ruts by relying on familiar shapes and patterns. These monthly tasks are very useful challenges because they force people to think and react creatively and find new ideas on the guitar which they may not have had without thinking beyond their own ideas.

The task I proposed for May 2009 is based on an exercise I give my students all the time:

“Compose a piece for solo guitar, in any style (but so that it stands on it's own without any backing track or other instruments filling out sonic space) which uses only the inner 4 strings. Strings 2,3,4, and 5 are the boundaries, no notes to be played on either string 6, or string 1.”

When I give my students this exercise, it’s not just for composing. I use this exercise for improvising, technical exercises, everything! Because every technique you would use is ‘gated in’ with a string either side of the one you are playing on, it can't help but to develop your playing. Spending long periods of practice time working on the outer strings (1st and 6th) can actually develop a lot of bad habits because of the technical laziness which it is possible to get away with playing on these strings. For example, there is all the room anyone would possibly need to execute a picked down-stroke on the first string, and similarly, there is all the room anyone would possibly need to execute a picked up-stroke on the sixth string. These techniques require a new level of refinement when played on any of the other strings so to my mind, it makes sense that the inner four strings (2,3,4, and 5) are the strings on which technical skills should be practiced for the most productive and refined results. In my experience, when you move back to using all six strings after doing this kind of practice for any length of time, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities for your guitar playing.

Guitar Teaching (part 2.1) “Knowledge Is Power?”

2009-05-04T09:41:00.000+01:00

Originally posted on http://vapourstation.blogware.com/ 03 Nov 2008

There is a bizarre culture amongst guitarists to be very protective of what they know, and can do. When I first started posting ideas in the online forums, there was certainly a culture of resistance to what I said, and a sense of ‘Who is this guy to tell me how to practice?’, and ‘What right does this person have to post links in here to his ideas and online blogs on guitar playing?’ I never understood this because whenever I’ve seen anyone answer questions online, or post ideas about practicing, I’ve always thought that was generous of them to share their thoughts and ideas, and I and read what they’ve had to say with sincere interest. I asked myself recently where this culture actually comes from and what purpose this may serve. Whenever I play at any of the trade shows and someone expresses an interest in what I’m doing, I’ll break everything that I’m playing down into smaller fragments, play slowly, and score (or tab) what I’m doing out for anyone. It seems to me that in a situation where everything anyone would ever need to know (in terms of resources) is available online, why would anyone be at all protective of what they know? I guess knowledge is still 'power', but it's certainly worth being aware that this is only the case for people who don’t actually know very much.

Maybe my attitude is based on the fact that I actually wanted to teach, and I didn’t start taking on students out of necessity to survive or as a bittersweet compromise because I didn’t ‘make it’ as a player (as some guitar players do). From the very early days of my own teaching I was actually approached, and asked to teach by the co-ordinator of the local music service. My first teaching job wasn’t a job I applied for; it was one I was offered while I was still at 6th form college. Since that time, I’ve been fortunate enough to have been asked to do every teaching job I have ever done, and I’ve now had over 300 students pass exams at every level on guitar, piano, and double bass (using different exam boards including ABRSM and ‘Rockschool’ (where students have wanted to do that).

All this leads me to strongly believe that if you’re looking for someone to teach you how to play the guitar, it would be a good idea to look for someone who actually wants to do the job. You’ll get more out of a teacher who wants to share their skills and knowledge with you than anyone who is doing the job because they haven’t had the breaks they wanted with their playing career. There are loads of guitar players offering lessons, but I seriously doubt that they all actually want to do it.

Natural Ability on Guitar?

2009-04-19T16:52:00.000+01:00

I frequently hear people speak of some guitarists as being ‘naturals’. Where guitar playing is a skill, the guitar itself (in it's current form) is an instrument which has had its basic shape and form invented, and then it has gone through a process of evolution. A guitar is not a natural instrument like the voice. As such, how can you attribute anything regarding the skills people need to play a guitar to be in any way natural?

The nature of a skill is that it is learned. Where there are people who have an aptitude for learning certain things at different speeds from others, that isn’t the acquisition of the skill itself, that’s the speed at which the skill is acquired. The skills required to play the guitar are obtainable by anyone (of ‘normal’ physical and mental capability) because of the nature of what a skill is.

If anyone has concerns about whether or not it’s possible to obtain the skill of guitar playing, they are unfounded. If anyone has concerns about how fast these skills may be developed, this is simply a question of how much effort you need to make. After that it’s just a matter of discipline, determination and perseverance. How much of each of these three things that you will need is relative to how good you want to be.

Guitar Teaching (part 1) “The Question”

2009-04-16T11:23:00.000+01:00

Originally posted on http://vapourstation.blogware.com/ 01 May 2008

I’ve been criticised quite a lot over the years for various opinions and ideas that I’ve expressed about music. This applies to other things too, but there’s been a lot of “music controversy” that I’ve generated. In hindsight, some of the ideas that I’ve shared have actually faced some very cruel and disproportionate ridicule. I don’t usually talk about a lot of these things anymore to avoid a similar experience but in a conversation yesterday, I engaged in a discussion about one of these frequently criticised “crazy ideas”. This was an old favourite, referred to by a friend as simply “The Question”. This was a question that I used to ask guitar tutors as a method by which I could immediately assess what kind of level they were working on. The question itself is a very simple “What note is behind the eighth fret of the second string?” The responses I got to this question in general were disturbing. The number of people who I’ve met over the years who don’t know this, had to work it out slowly, or dismissed the question as irrelevant (who were actually offering guitar lessons) has been incredible! I’ve heard every excuse possible why you “don’t need to know this” to teach but my response to all of them has always been, “What if one of your students asked you this question?”, “Would you tell your students that they don’t need to know where a note is on the fingerboard of the guitar?”, “How would you explain to a parent of a pupil that this information isn’t necessary?”, and “What kind of message is that sending the next generation of players?”.

I’ve considered this question again and offered it much thought based around asking myself: “Is this excessively harsh?” I’ll admit that where knowing every note on the fingerboard isn’t knowledge which some of these guitar tutors have had, their students will have undoubtedly learned some things, and be empowered with an ability to play to a certain degree, and achieved a certain level of understanding about the guitar and theoretical concepts. However, with this “question” I can’t help feeling that the quality of the knowledge and understanding that the tutor has is an essential element within the ability to effectively teach. Where I’ve thought about this a lot, I can’t avoid returning to an old maxim that effective teaching is ultimately reliant of the quality of knowledge that a teacher has. Taking this into consideration, if anyone wants to teach guitar I would suggest that they adequately prepare themselves to be able to answer this kind of question.

"Finishing" the study of the guitar?

2009-04-11T11:34:00.001+01:00

Back in 1990, I read an interview in a magazine with Frank Gambale. Where his playing isn’t always to my taste, I find some of the things I’ve heard him play to be absolutely stunning, and I admire what he has done for the guitar, producing a lot of informative videos and books. Where the approach to the guitar that he discussed in the interview was very good, making a lot of logical sense, Gambale introduced the idea that there was an ‘end’ to the study of the guitar. This was something I struggled to grasp at the time, and while I’ve recently been working on the latest revision of the Contemporary Guitar Performance Workshop course and handbook (for which this blog was set up), I was drawn to the exploration of this “end of study” concept once more.

Since 1990 I’ve explored many ideas with the guitar which have all led me to believe that the concept of an “end” to the study of the guitar is actually quite ridiculous. I kept the magazine article because where I found the interview with Gambale to be interesting and informative; I also found it to be quite dictatorial and limited. It made me think a lot about the topics which he had discussed and it’s not often that magazine interviews and articles hold my attention or make me think as much as this one did.

The implication that Gambale himself had “completed” his study of the guitar in accordance with his own system was not something I felt at all comfortable with, and nearly 20 years later it seems that my initial problems with grasping the conceptual “end” of the study of the guitar were not without merit. This is because while I’ve been revising and updating my own book over the last 10 years, the notes that I’ve taken and ideas that I’ve jotted down have been reflective of a permanent state of evolution that my work has been in. I’ve always been looking for better ways in which I could explain or present ideas and concepts to the point where this has been a seemingly endless task. For a long time, I’ve thought that the point at which the very top players have reached the full technical potential of a musical instrument is the point at which that instrument would enter its next phase of evolution. Where the resources for learning how to play the guitar will naturally always be behind the cutting edge of guitar playing there will always be room to adapt, develop, and evolve the approach to learning the instrument. The ‘end’ is not a reachable goal, it is an ideological target which nobody will ever hit although on this (rare) occasion, the priority isn’t hitting the target, the priority here is about the quality of the journey towards it, and what we may actually find on our way there.

"Progression" from electric to acoustic guitar

2009-04-07T21:53:00.000+01:00

I’ve lost count of how many ‘creative’ acoustic guitar players are out there these days, slapping their instruments while hitting harmonics in open tunings and then telling a tired tale of how they have evolved from metal guitarists into somehow “superior” acoustic players. I play guitar. Sometimes it’s acoustic, sometimes classical (nylon string), sometimes electric. To me, none of them are superior or inferior to the others. I’ve never understood the idea that one may ‘progress’ from one type of guitar to another? How can an entire type of guitar be ‘better’ than another?

Speaking of the differences between acoustic and electric guitars (because it comes up in conversation all the time between players), I frequently draw comparisons to the differences between black & white, and colour photographs. Do professional photographers “only take black & white photos”? Or “only colour”? Of course they don’t. A fine black & white photograph has a timeless and truly stunning quality. A colour photograph has qualities of its own. Is one of these types of photograph in any way superior or inferior to the other? Aside from recognising that colour photographs are an evolutionary step from black & white, they are different things and cannot be compared.

While ideology pertaining to terminal equality between the electric and acoustic guitar may be well argued, there are some hard and inescapable facts which need to be recognised:

If you play electric guitar and can bash out a few, well played chords in a decent band, you can fill a large arena. The ‘creative’ acoustic guitar players will only have limited success because what they do has limited appeal. What they do has limited appeal because the nature of the style is limited. The well respected pioneers of creative acoustic guitar playing (Michael Hedges, Preston Reed, and a couple of potentially contentious and debatable others) played, and in Preston Reed and Tommy Emmanuel’s case, still play small venues. Yes, it is possible to make a living, but nobody is ever going to fill more than a small venue with an audience for it.

So what is better, a gallery of black & white, or colour photographs? Or is that a question which even applies when there is room for both? Looking at the cold, hard facts again, (using this analogy and extending this further), how many new digital cameras could you sell if they only took black & white photographs next to a camera that could do it all?

The Ultimate Guitar Lesson (part 2)

2009-04-05T07:19:00.001+01:00

Where there are blogs all over the internet which present very little beyond being an outlet for some people to have a bit of winge, with my own blog I wanted to avoid having it perceived in this way and instead tried to reflect my thoughts and ideas in a more positive, informative, and useful way. Upon reading the “Ultimate Guitar Lesson” article (originally posted on http://vapourstation.blogware.com/ but re-published here) I noticed that this article was drifting alarmingly close towards the type of “winge blogs” that I’ve been seeking to avoid. Also since posting the original “Ultimate Guitar Lesson” article, I’ve thought about it a lot and concluded that I had only truly reflected half of what I was really thinking with the original post.

Before I bought the magazine advertising “The Ultimate Guitar Lesson” on the front cover, it did occur to me (albeit briefly) that there may well be the ultimate guitar lesson inside. Where I may have had serious doubts which were later confirmed, nobody knows it all, and it was perfectly feasible that there really was some great insight about learning how to play the guitar within the pages that I had never seen before. Where this wasn’t the case, in order that I may offer some substance to the articles I post online, I gave quite a lot of thought to what an “Ultimate Guitar lesson” would actually look like, and asked myself the following questions:

“What could I have found inside which would have impressed me?”

“What would the real ‘Ultimate Guitar Lesson’ look like?

“What would it absolutely need to contain in order that its immense promise would be fulfilled?”

By asking these questions, I started to carefully devise and formulate what I would have wanted to see. Anyone who has been teaching for any length of time would like to think that they are good at it, so devising my own “Ultimate Guitar Lesson” seemed like a good idea (however futile, naïve, or ludicrous this may appear, especially after I had all but written off the idea as an impossibility). What I would learn about the guitar, teaching, and myself by trying to do this would be worthwhile whatever the outcome.

What would my own “Ultimate Guitar Lesson” contain?

That it would contain aspects of guitar playing which I consider (subjectively) to be important (as an unavoidable inevitability) had already rendered it less than adequate, so that principle became my starting point which led me to ask some more, and better quality questions. Would techniques, repertoire, scales, modes, chords, arpeggios and how they all fit together actually be included within an “Ultimate Guitar Lesson”? These things are component parts of playing, but not necessarily the components parts of the ‘ultimate’ means by which a guitarist would learn them together with how they may most effectively use them, so why would they be within the lesson? What would actually be needed is the highest quality of learning tools, and an ultimate ‘approach’ to learning the guitar. That led me to consider this:

Where I had previously considered that music and theory had been “done” within all the books, videos, online lessons and tutorials that are available now, and that no more explanations in extension of the explanations already available are actually needed, with my own guitar publication (the Contemporary Guitar Performance Workshop) it’s been in a seemingly permanent state of evolution for a long time. It’s up to it’s third full-scale revision, and I’ve been returning to old ideas and re-working the formats and graphics in order that they may have the highest standard of clarity, and be most effectively presented for over 10 years! I’ve always been looking for better ways to express concepts and ideas, but lost all objectivity and failed to notice that this very fact was proof positive that new books, videos, and teaching resources will always be needed, and always be welcome as music itself evolves.

Maybe the ultimate guitar lesson is to realise that the approach to the instrument, the repertoire and the techniques, together with the means by which all these things may be learned and brought together, is in a permanent state of healthy evolution. Through exploring this, and upon asking myself these questions, I concluded that the “Ultimate Guitar Lesson” (for me), is not in techniques or musical vocabulary and ideas as to how these things may be brought together. The “Ultimate Guitar Lesson” would be an open-minded approach to the instrument which allows all theory and musical vocabulary to be most efficiently learned, and influences to be absorbed, filtered, processed, and then accumulated and amalgamated into your playing.

So how is this done? The best I can offer as an answer to this question at this time is that it is achieved by playing, and then focussing all your attention to listening and assessing the outcome of your playing. Is the outcome consistent with what you want to hear? If not, why not and how may you improve it? What resources may you draw upon to assist you as you do this? The “Ultimate Guitar Lesson” would need to be the ultimate approach to learning how to play the guitar. On one level, it’s different for everyone because of the vast and diverse aspirations that students of the guitar have, and the different ways in which people most effectively learn. On another level, the principles which underpin the approach (by playing, properly listening and assessing your playing, and then acting in accordance with the results of your assessment, knowing what resources you may draw upon to help you do that) have stood the test of time, are reliable, dependable, and consequently they have an immeasurable valuable. With room for improvement as a matter of inescapable inevitability, for now that is what I would offer as my closest description of what the “Ultimate Guitar Lesson” may be.

The Ultimate Guitar Lesson (part 1)

2009-04-05T07:18:00.001+01:00

This blog entry was originally posted on my http://vapourstation.blogware.com/ page. I’m re-producing it again here because this blog was set up to be more focussed on the topic of the guitar. Since I’ve written a post which follows on directly from this one, I felt that it would make sense to re-produce it here so that the second part follows on logically:

Because I undertake quite a lot of teaching work, I read a lot of the guitar magazines. This is in order to keep in touch with recent developments in terms of new bands, new music, and new players, as well as keeping up to date with new innovations and equipment. All of these magazines contain some form of technique section where transcriptions of songs are published, chords, scales, modes and their use is explained and demonstrated, or a particular guitarist’s playing style may be examined and explored.

Not too long ago I encountered the cover of a guitar magazine which advertised “The Ultimate Guitar Lesson”.

I usually buy this particular magazine, but this time I struggled to get beyond my immediate reaction to the fact that this magazine had actually gone so far as to have the arrogance and temerity to advertise “The Ultimate Guitar Lesson” across the front cover! I bought, and carefully read the magazine so that I may comment fairly on this matter, but what I found was that what was contained within the magazine fell a long way short of the claim which was made on the front cover. I question my own judgement all the time, and reassess my thoughts and opinions regularly, so naturally I questioned my reaction and wondered whether or not I was being excessively judgemental, but in this case I sincerely don’t think I overreacted. This is because to be offered “The Ultimate Guitar Lesson” demonstrates a deep and manipulative use of the position a magazine is assumed to have as far as the casual magazine buying guitar player is concerned. Guitar magazines actually set themselves up as their own, unregulated authority on the subject of guitar playing which in itself is fair enough so long as the contents of the magazine are quantified as opinion where necessary and appropriate, and what is offered is accurate, balanced and fair. In this case, a blatant lie was spread across the front cover in order to sell it!

If there were such a thing as an ultimate guitar lesson, it would successfully render every other guitar lesson obsolete. Within a guitar magazine, what the “ultimate guitar lesson” would offer you, if it were true, is a one-step solution to every technical and musical difficulty you may ever have in every style, on every kind of guitar! You would never need to take another lesson, or buy another magazine again. Every technique article in every previous edition of the magazine would be rendered obsolete. Every technique article ever to be published in the future would be rendered obsolete.

What’s the bottom line on all this?

Where guitar magazines are concerned, question what you are being told. What you are being told, is what you are being sold. Buy a magazine with your common sense and judgement and don’t always believe what is spread across the front cover. The cover of a magazine is always a well-constructed sales pitch for the magazines contents (which is fair enough if the contents can live up to the hype), never where the contents cannot back up what the sales pitch claims.

What scales work over which chords?

2009-04-04T19:22:00.000+01:00

When I'm teaching improvisation, one of the most commonly asked questions is “Which scales work over what chords?” I frequently answer this question by pointing out that it depends entirely on what you consider the 'working' to mean?

What is a scale ‘working’ over a chord anyway?

Where this may appear not to answer the question at all and be a thoroughly unhelpful digression into the philosophical implications of perception, it’s actually worth thinking about because the whole idea that certain ‘prescribed’ scales work over certain chords, chord types, or chord sequences is actually rendering music and improvisation a sterile by-product of a prescribed approach, and a institutionalised ‘system’.

Using jazz as an example, there are some people who hate this style of music for whom the whole idea of a scale “working” over a chord or chord sequence (as a player improvises) is as far removed from a good idea as can be! Some may consider a scale ‘working’ over a chord progression to be dull, boring, and most probably the least inspirational music they may be exposed to. While rightfully entitled to their opinion, to what extent is this scale ‘working’ for them? It isn’t, so does the scale ‘work’ with the chord or chord sequence? It depends who is listening, and in the space between the extremes in musical taste (someone who hates jazz, and a jazz lover) the question of whether or not, and if so the extent to which a scale may ‘work’ over a chord, has many, many manifestations of answer, none right nor wrong, none more or less accurate than the previous or last, and the reason the question “Which scales work over what chords?” is ultimately vague, subjective, and with no real definitive answer.

Clearly it’s a good thing to learn which scales work over certain chords in a conventional sense. This starting point is invaluable for the serious and committed student of improvisation, but as I frequently say to my students, the scales, modes, and arpeggios which are most commonly ‘prescribed’ to work over certain chords and sequences don’t actually serve to help you to sound good. They serve to help you avoid sounding bad (which is not the same thing). Who wants to sound good anyway? Doesn’t the aspiring guitarist want to sound ‘great’? Don’t they want to play with their own voice, unrestricted by any technical or musical constraints that may stand in the way of them truly expressing what they really mean? The idea that someone wants to sound ‘good’ seems like one step too close to mediocrity when compared with the actual level that a player may aspire to!

Still want to know which scales work over which chords? You can find all that information on the internet.

Wouldn’t you rather know how to be a great guitarist? To find that out, the only way is to think about what scales ‘working’ over chords means to you, and then asking some better, and more personal questions about it regarding how you really want to sound.

Guitar adventures

2009-03-22T21:15:00.000Z

Guitar:

It's simple, seemingly the easiest instrument to begin to learn but one of the hardest to truly master. There is no other instrument which can boast so much many magazine publications, discussion, divided opinion on design, wood choices for construction, construction methods, performance, teaching, and appreciation. It's a six string monster that has ended many a potentially fine relationship, started and ended many heated debates, caused as much misery and disillusionment as it has generated and inspired hope, but never been surrendered by anyone who has been captivated by it.

Beyond it's simplicity, it's an immeasurably powerful musical instrument which is capable of far more than any one player has ever discovered. Whatever any player has ever achieved in terms of technical and musical accomplishment, the guitar has always had seemingly inexhaustable potential in reserve to inspire the next generation of explorers.

It's our six stringed common ground that I've set this blog up to discuss, and share my thoughts on. I also set this blog up to be the "official" online blog directly related to the 'Contemporary Guitar Performance Workshop' project, course, and handbook.