A great tip for Rockabilly players, most Blues, Country Rockabilly players know Maj and min Pentatonic scales but don’t know how to tie them together. A very fun exercise, try it!
The Alchemical Guitarist is by far, the best Method I’ve come across. He explains everything logically, using simple math and patterns.
1- Learn scales, chords(arpeggios) on one string.Learn the distances between the notes(numbered Intervals) as well as the notes themselves. Use the Nashville Numbering System. No matter what style of music you play, you must understand the basic’s of Chording, Melody and Harmony. Being able to visualize an octave and the relationship of notes, laid out in a straight line (like on a piano) will help you make sense of the different positions.
2- Learn scales and chords in as many positions as possible,(at least 3). Learn how to build them.What are the similarities, differences? How does the G-B hump effect them? Look at the Gootar color system.
3- Don’t try to play new material at full speed. Break riffs into smaller pieces and cycle them. When counting slowly, subdivide; 1 (+ 2 and), 2 (+ 2 and), 3 (+ 2 and), 4 (+2 and). Always tap your foot, do it without thinking. This internalizes the beat.
4- Practice in your head without your Guitar. Being able to visualize a chord or riff, is the first step to executing it consistently or altering it. Humming scales and melodies is a great way to internalize the intervals.
5- If you are having trouble learning new material or techniques, sleep on it. The 1/2 hour before you fall asleep at night, is the best time to practice visualizing the fingerboard, chords, scales and patterns. Don’t count sheep, count frets!
6- Pay attention to how different chords, phrasings, intervals and tonal colors make you feel, (Maj-rising, min-falling).Even non-musicians understand Tonal Gravity.
7- Learn the cycle of Fourths and Fifths. They are called “Perfect” for a reason. You should always know where the IV and V are, in relation to the Root note. J Hendrix’s mastery of Fourths and Fifths is obvious (“Hey Joe” chord progression is a good eg) Interactive circle of IVths and Vths
8- Teach yourself, even if you are studying with a teacher. Try to solve problems with math, logic and just plain screwing around(Abstract Reasoning). Learning what you shouldn’t do, is part of learning what you should. Don’t be afraid to “Noodle” because you might hit an off note. Everybody learns differently. You have to develop your own sense of what works and what doesn’t. Link;http://gorehound1313.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/the-importance-of-being-a-self-taught-musician/
9- When you accomplish something, give yourself credit for it. Building confidence in your playing is important. Having someone tell you that you are good is nice, believing it yourself, is crucial.
10- Practice pressing down on the string with just enough pressure to get a clear note, no buzz or trail offs. Avoid squeezing the neck, it slows you down and makes it hard to move to the next position.
As human beings it’s almost impossible to have absolute perfect timing. If we did, we would play like robots. The lag between musicians timing is part of what makes every band sound different. For example, most bands follow the drummer, the Stones drummer Charlie Watts, says he actually follows the Rhythm Guitar. This makes the Stones Rhythm section sound unique.
If you are starting out playing with bands, don’t depend on the drummer for time. Be responsible for keeping yourself steady. When you are playing Rhythm Guitar it’s fairly easy to lock in with the Bass and drums. But playing lead forces you to slip back and forth between following the beat and accenting your melody. Most “lead”players don’t exclusively play single notes, you revert to playing Rhythm when not playing lead. So there’s a tricky transition point, when you switch from Rhythm to lead, my favorite example is Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode. There is a seamless switch from playing the Boogie Rhythm pattern on the low strings, to the solo on the hi strings, then back again. No drop out.
This means you have to have both patterns straight in your head. First you must be able to play the Rhythm pattern in your sleep. Next Play the Rhythm part and hum the lead melody you want to play over it. Then do the opposite, play your lead part, while humming the rhythm changes. If you have to concentrate on one, you lose the other, so keep it simple to start.
Guitarist’s by nature(esp. self-taught), tend to concentrate on Notes (pitch) over Tempo. it takes a while to realize that pitch and tempo are equally important. A Rhythmically aware player can turn simple melodies/Chord progressions into interesting/tasteful pieces. Most of my favorite Guitarists are excellent Rhythm players. Kieth Richards, Scotty Moore, Steve Cropper, Pete Townsend. Playing Rhythm doesn’t just mean playing chords, it means playing rhythmically! Try approaching you strumming, as if you were playing a drum.
So if you’re not locking in, with the Bass and Drums,(or the Bass/Drums aren’t getting together), it’s time to communicate and solve a few problems together. Newbies tend to blast through songs, as if the whole point is getting to the end. Don’t be afraid to stop and say ” something feels wrong, let’s figure it out”. Also, it’s important to stop right when you hear a problem, not 7 or 8 bars later. Quiet or acoustic practices are best for doing this. If you don’t use charts, you should still be prepared to chart out problem sections, counting beats and bars, and where the chord changes occur.
I’m posting this on Reddit , I’d like to hear from any Drummers out there on; aside from overall steadiness,
what rudiments do Guitarist need to work on?
What are the basic beats we should all know?
What are the basic rhythm terms we need to know? We end up using terms like “train beat” , ”Jungle drums” or “Scooby Doo, falling down stairs”
Are there any books/resources (for short attention spans) available?
Any assistance in this matter are greatly appreciated, Cheers!
Update- I posted the questions on Drum Reddit. You can check out the answers I got here; http://www.reddit.com/r/drums/comments/a1gw9/drummers_what_constructive_advice_do_you_have_for/
Thanks to everyone that took the time to respond.
Update- Deadcats Drummer, Kermit Von Munster’s Drum blog cover’s covers many of these points
and I found a good article here at the Guitar Alliance http://guitaralliance.com/index.php/guitar-theory/155-advanced-rhythm/986-video-lesson-of-time-signatures
The King lays down a beat
This vid is from D’Addarios “the Stage” Musicians hub. Some good points about getting started improvising
Heres a few good articles from 300 Guitars, A Natural Cure, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, ART
Repetitive, over-use injuries are very common esp among professional players. I’ve heard figures of up to 1/4 of all symphony players, suffer from some form of Tendinitis or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Players tend to avoid admitting that anything is wrong, as it effects their employability. I had Tendinitis for about 1 year. It started in my left hand, and eventually effected both hands. I went to Physio, and a Chiropractor but after 6 months with no improvement, I started looking into Acupressure and Reflexology. Knowing your pressure points is important. Also realizing that the problem could be in your back or shoulders but results in wrist or hand pain.
If you find yourself experiencing any pain or discomfort, while playing, stop and ask yourself; a) did I warm-up before playing? Do I normally stretch AFTER playing as well?
b) how long have I been playing(hrs)?
c) Is the pain localized in the hand, or does it start with shoulders/back?
d) Is my instrument set-up properly (action, string gauge, straight neck) don’t force yourself to play a flat-top with Heavy strings and high action if you DON’T have to.
If you massage your hand/ fore-arm to relieve tension, remember NEVER pull a tendon lengthwise! You can make the condition worse! Alway rub the tendon side-to-side. This is a little fact my doctor, Chiropractor and Physiotherapist neglected to inform me of.
The best approach is to always warm-up and down and begin strengthening your upper body, before you notice a problem. Drink plenty of water too! Poor nutrition and sleep habits will also effect the condition.
Most of all, don’t panic. You make music with your brain, not so much, your hands.
Everyone has seen the guy with no arms, playing guitar with his feet. Some folks claim Django Rienhart played so fast because he only had 2 usable fingers! He never had to think about which fingers to use.
Tendinitis description http://orthopedics.about.com/cs/sportsmedicine/a/tendonitis.htm
Some more good links here http://www.intimateaudio.com/hand_job.html
As hard as I try, to avoid writing about Music theory, I need to find an easy way to help my students understand the fingerboard as quickly as possible. A Piano keyboard is simple. It goes low-hi, left to right. Notes are never duplicated, sharps and flats are color coded black, there’s no micro-tones (in between notes from bending) and you don’t need to learn how to tune a piano before you can play.
The two most important points I want to make are; Think of the fingerboard like a piano, 12 frets in a line. When you learn a scale, melody, chord or progression on one string, it’s easy to visualize how the notes relate to each other. Of coarse this only works for Open strings, so learning this one pattern will give you five different scales;E,A,D,G and B.
Secondly, forget about naming notes with letters. Yes you should learn what ALL the notes on the fingerboard are so you can always find your Root note. When you are playing scales or songs, Numbers are much easier to remember AND visualize. Europeans often learn the Do Re Mi scale instead of notes but neither of these methods work as well as Numbers
Unless you are one of the approximately 10% of N Americans with perfect pitch, you need help visualizing and internalizing the distances between notes. This generally takes weeks or months to understand, so don’t panic and think “oh my god, he’s making me learn more math”. If you can keep the 12 months in a calender straight and remember a 7 digit phone number, you should have no problem.
So here it is without further delay, the Da Vinci code of Western Musical Theory in all it’s advanced mathematical glory; 2 2 1 2 2 2 1.
Add em up, it’s 12. One for each fret. That number again 221 2221, Use the fret markers to help line up their positions on the fingerboard. Once you can clearly visualize a 12 fret section of the fingerboard(again Don’t worry about what all the notes are) and how the 8 notes in an octave are spaced out, you are halfway to understanding the scales, modes and chords in every key. They are ALL based in this same simple formula.
That’s it, 2212221 Wholetone, Wholetone, Semitone, Wholetone, Wholetone, Wholetone, Semitone.
Once you learn the formula, you can build a Major scale in ANY key. Every Octave is exactly the same so you only have to visualize ONE octave, don’t forget the note’s on either end are the same (Root note, Tonic)
Learning to do this on one string is the key to figuring out the grid pattern of 6 courses(strings)
All 6 of the strings are spaces evenly in Fourths (5 fret space) except the space between the 2nd and 3rd string is shorter, a Maj Third interval(4 frets)
Getting to know all the intervals will help you understand how all the notes relate to each other and why Major keys sound very different from minor.
I learned Music theory as a youth (11-16) so it was mostly a matter of memorizing everything I could whether I understood it or not, it was in the memory banks. I wish someone had showed me the importance of learning (and visualizing) intervals as well as notes. It’s important to just visualize the ONE Octave. When you think of the Octaves above and below the one you are using, this triples the amount of info you need to keep straight. Aside from being at a higher or lower pitch/frequency, an A is always an A, a Fifth interval is always a Fifth. Avoid taxing your brain with duplicate notes.
Rhythm works the same way, the spaces are as important as the accents. It’s natural for Guitarists to use letter notes, but it will limit you. When you learn a song by the Chords eg a C, F, Dm, G progression. You can only play it in C. If you learned it as a 1, 4, 2, 5 progression (in C), you’ve already done the math. You can transpose easily and you can SEE how the notes relate to each other.
Please comment if you have an easy way to demonstrate or visualize the Major scale.
One of the hardest things about teaching is putting yourself in the position of trying to learn a subject all over again. So please let me know if you find this reasonably easy to follow.
Take time to visualize the fingerboard, without having it in front of you. Can’t sleep? Don’t count sheep. The half hour before you fall asleep is the Best time to learn (and retain) new info. Count frets, visualize the fingerboard and how the different scales chords and progressions would look on one string. Try it, it works great. Don’t think about that new Guitar you can’t afford or how many cool sounds you could make with a phase oscillating wank o tron 2000 pedal with 3 preset modulating “spasm” modes. All that fancy stuff is not going to make you a better Guitar player.
Just one more time 2212221 call today, be a better Guitar player tomorrow. I can’t promise that this will make sense overnight. Take some time and internalize how the Major scale sounds. There are literally thousands of songs built around the Maj scale. Some of my favorite examples are;
the Andy Griffith Show theme, (oops, there’s a min 3 in there too) that’s why it sounds kinda bluesy
Sailors Hornpipe,
Brown Eyed Girl,
Home on the Range,
Candle in the Wind,
Walk on the Wild Side,
Rebel Rouser,
Dixie/Yankee Doodle,
Dueling Banjos
Please send me any suggestions I could add to this list.
Picking is a subject that everybody has their own ideas about. I think teachers tend to glaze over right hand info, so they can concentrate on what the left hand is doing.
One of the best exercises for flat or fingerpicking is to think of a random string number from 1-6 and play it without looking.
The number 1 thing I see students, beginners and pros alike do wrong, is letting all their picking motion come from their wrist. I know people like to anchor their hand and it seems like you have more control with the wrist but all of my picking speed comes from my elbow. I learned this from watching Jazz cats. You don’t have to completely lock your wrist, just try to get more of the up and down motion coming from the elbow.
Another thing is letting too much of the pointy end of the pick, stick out past your index finger. Don’t grip the pick any tighter than necessary. Just like with Barre Chords, you don’t need a deathgrip. Keep things loose, yes you will drop your pick occasionally. I stick an extra in my pickguard, some people use double-sided tape.
I learned recently, that Guitarists that use flat picks are more susceptible to tendinitis. This make sense as fingerpicking doesn’t require as much of a pinching type pressure on the pick.
Next variation we have is Hybrid picking. This means using another finger, generally the ring finger combined with the flat pick. I’ve seen Guitarists use a fingerpick with a flatpick, very strange but whatever works for you.
Next, Palming the pick. Setzer is a master of this technique. It’s not too hard to do, you just hold the pick in your palm with the 3rd and 4rth fingers. You can cheat and put the pick in your mouth during a fingerpicking break.
Thumb picks. Dobro, Banjo and Steel players wouldn’t get very far without them. Some players use them by themselves or combined with 1-3 fingerpicks. The first complaint I hear is; ” it feels like my fingers grew an inch”. They may take a while to feel comfortable, be sure it’s not too tight. You can modify a plastic or nylon thumb pick by cutting and or sanding it down.
Fingerpicks. Some players like to have quite a bit of space between their fingertip and the pick. I think these players generally only play upstrokes. I prefer the fingerpick very close to the tip of my finger so it’s easier to get downstrokes also.
No pick. Some players just use a thumb or fingers(Wes Montgomery, Thumbs Carlisle). You can get an acrylic coating put over the fingernail to give you a built in pick. I’ve tried it a few times. I’ve heard Jeff Beck does this, mainly classical players do it. Anyplace that does manicures should be able to help you. It costs about $20-30 and lasts about a month and a half, but you have to be careful maintaining and sanding it. Of course the whole nail grows longer so you have to file it every week or so. This method doesn’t let your nail breath so it’s not a good idea to use it continuously for years on end.
So try some different techniques and see what works best for you. The more options available to you, the better. This will help you develop your own sound.
Remember Rhythm is just as important as the notes you play. Use accents, try breaking up patterns and leaving spaces. When you find you are getting comfortable forming chords and playing melodies, try concentrating on the right hand.
One of my new students told me his previous teacher had told Never to keep time by tapping his foot. Bad advice, I say unless you are playing along with a metronome, always tap your foot, especially if you are playing with another Guitarist.
A reader asked me to post some home recording tips so here it goes. I’ve been recording with bands for quite a while. I’ve actually played on records(as in vinyl), so that kinda dates me. I bought the first 4 track fostex that came out in the 80’s, I studied first year recording arts and I’ve had the pleasure of working with some great producers (Stephen Drake, Marc L’Esperance, Stephan Sigersen, Brian Gobles, Bill Haye). The most important thing I have to say is keep it simple.
Recording/engineering is an art in itself. Due to the prices of digital recording gear, there are plenty of studio owners ready to cut you a deal just to stay busy. As far as home recording goes, I mostly just do live demos with my Zoom H-4 stereo field recorder.
Anything more involved than getting levels and pressing record distracts you from performing. Assuming you are starting with solid material, I would much rather hear a so-so live recording of a great performance, than a pristine studio production of a lackluster performance. Using software like Garage Band is so simple almost anyone can produce a CD at home these days. Unfortunately this produces many good recordings of players with no business being anywhere near a studio.
I was in one of the bigger local studios here in Vancouver recently with a 4 piece band. We layed down 5-6 bed tracks, Drums, Upright Bass, 2 Guitars and Vocal scratch track in about 3 hours. One of the engineers, a guy in his early 20’s said; “Wow, I’ve never seen a band in here, that can record all the beds live”. I found this somewhat alarming. Putting music together one piece at a time makes it sound sterile.
To me, I think the ideal home studio situation would be: a) equip your studio.
b) hire an experienced engineer/producer and pay him with free studio time. You’ve already paid for it so it’s not costing you anything.
This way you can learn slowly from a pro while concentrating on what you do best.
Performance and material-wise, the recording medium doesn’t make that much of a difference. If your big hit song doesn’t sound any good on a live 2-track recording, what difference will multitracking make? If you have to “fix it in the mix”, there’s something wrong from the get-go.
My advice would be; don’t spend a ton of money and assume that you will learn how to use all the pro gear. I compare it to someone buying a big fast motorbike when they’ve never ridden before. I’ve seen a lot of new recording gear sit unused because they thought having the equipment around would inspire them. It doesn’t, it can actually hinder creativity.
Make sure you are confidant enough in your playing ability, that learning a new discipline wont be a distraction. Or the the best you can hope for is a really good recording of some mediocre playing!
Here’s a link to an article in Guitar Player about recording Rockabilly
Do you wish there was an easy way to write out Guitar parts when you don’t have 6 line TAB paper handy? I found this article on Visualinear Tab and it’s very useful in that it gives more information about timing than regular TAB. It’s well worth checking out, it’ll save you time and give you more accurate TABs. Thanks to 12 Month Music.
