Blog Temporarily Closed

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).

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?

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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)

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

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

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

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)

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)

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:

1. 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.

2. 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:

1. 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.

2. 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").

3. 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.

4. 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)

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)

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)

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).