Eventually you will do all of this automatically. Practicing with a metronome my seem rigid and stifling but it is the best way to become consistent, and you can see when you are improving. You will be able to play pieces at increasingly faster tempos.

Playing fast, isn’t the point of music but I find being able to play faster, than required is a good way to practice scales and chord changes.

2- Visualize! Did you ever wonder why so many good musicians started out as artists? Being able to SEE music gives you an advantage. Less than 1% of the population has “Perfect Pitch”, so don’t depend on your ears, exclusively. Being able to see the difference between a Major and minor scale or triad, is the first step to hearing and controlling them.

3- Play Blind. Do the notes on your Guitar re arrange themselves when you look away? They will always be in the same place, whether you can see them, or not. The only time you should look down (at the top fret-markers, not the fingerboard) is to change positions.

If you can’t see the note’s in your head, there is no point to looking for them on the fingerboard. Watch a few different Guitarists and see what a difference it makes. If you are focused on the FB, you are introverted. It looks like the player is not confident where they are going.

4- Leave Space. I like to tell my students to stop playing when they inhale(air). This the easiest way to start leaving space. Use the call and response, or question-answer technique and leave a space for the answer. Make your spaces sound deliberate. In the case of 2 players with equal technical abilities, the one that can leave deliberate rests, will sound much more tasteful AND confident. What you DON’T play is as important as what you DO!

5- Don’t let your approach limit you. Don’t let words and technical terms limit you. Lead and Rhythm Guitar are terms that will effect your playing. It implies a very limited understanding of the instrument. Hybrid styles of music such as Rockabilly or Psychobilly would have never happened, if players were limiting themselves to being “Country” or “Jazz” players.

Also try to understand the Bassist and Drummer’s approach to Rhythm and Harmony. The rhythm section is not just there to accompany you and keep time. You will have to be able to communicate with them and know what they expect from you!

Bonus Point- Don’t learn FROM a teacher, learn WITH them. Make sure they deconstruct and simplify. Memorizing is useless, if you don’t apply it to solving problems. If you are learning to play by imitation, try to take chords, riffs and progressions apart. Most of the info on Music Theory a teacher gives you is available free on the web. Motivation, Visualization, Problem solving and Critical analysis are probably the most important things a teacher can help you with. These are things you can’t memorize or imitate.

Of coarse everyone starts off imitating someone. Eventually you will want to know why things sound the way they do and how do I control it? You will never sound like “you” until you can be specific about what you are doing. You don’t have to read Piano music to understand the simple math behind the Major scale! 2 +2+1+2+2+2+1 add up to 12.

25 things I Wish My Music Teacher Told Me on Day One

1)  In order to master an musical concept, you must understand not only what it sounds like, but what it looks like and what it feels like.

2)  If your fellow musicians can’t describe in a concrete way what you just played, then your idea either killed or flopped. Which of the two will be obvious.

3)  Learning music from a book is okay, learning music from a recording is good, and learning music from a video is great, and learning music from the artist himself is optimal!

4)  Harmony can be understood in two distinct ways, as color ie. hearing harmony as a thing in and of itself, or as multiple melodic lines ie. hearing each individual voice as distinct melodies.  Each method has it’s own strengths, but the latter choice is more difficult to achieve and is ultimate the more powerful.

5)  The piano is the single best instrument for the comprehension of music:  It covers an enormous range, it is polyphonic, and has become the instrument of choice for the computer age in the form of MIDI.

6)  One of the most under-practice skills in music is coordination.  Coordination is musical multi-tasking; it is your ability to hear multiple freely-moving ideas all at once.  Bach could improvise six-voice fugues with complex musical phrases interloping in perfect counterpoint.   You should start with two simple ideas: a bassline and a melody.

7)  It is better to be told to turn up than to be told to turn down.

8)  Drum Machines are your friend.  They don’t complain, they don’t get tired, they work for a one-time fee, and they sure beat the heck out of a metronome.

9)  The most power force in music is Entrainment. Check out Barry Green’s The Mastery of Music: Ten Pathways to True Artistry to see what I mean

10) Practice habits should be just that: habits.  Reinforce them with other healthy habits.  Try writing out your practice plans beforehand, giving yourself a treat before or after practicing, and/or practicing at the same time everyday.

11)  Make sure that you don’t practice with your sound source parallel to the walls.  I very nearly quit music forever before I realized that the weird, out-of-tune noise sound that I was hearing from my trumpet bell was a strange harmonic ringing in my bedroom!

12)  Most guitar and bass amplifiers have very low quality speakers factory installed.  Hook your iPod to the input of your amp and sample just how poor it sounds.  Some recent high-end amplifiers such as the Markbass CMD 103H Bass Combo Amps and theWarwick Hellborg Amps have good quality speakers, but they are in the minority.

13)  Knowing how to get your bass to sound like a p-bass is just as important to you as learning how to sing in a falsetto is to a professional singer.

14)  Whether you like it or not, playing the upright will make you a better electric bass player.

15)  If you want to sound like Marcus Miller, study Louis Johnson and Larry Graham.

16) If you want to sound like Christian McBribe, study Ron Carter and Ray Brown.

17) If you want to sound like John Patitucci, listen to Anthony Jackson, Michael Brecker, and Brazilian rhythms.

18) If you are going to college for music, make sure to take advantage of other opportunities there, even if they lie outside your major.  I guarantee you’ll use the information you learned in those Accounting, Marketing, and Web Development classes way more than the information you got in Atonal Harmony.

17)  You should have both a mirror and a portable recorder in your practice area.

18)  When practice difficult time signatures, try to feel a 2-count as short and a 3-count as long.  For example, Dave Brubeck’s Take Five should be felt as long, long, short, short.

19)  Putting a little compression (not too much) on your bass can do wonders for your tone.  Exceptions include many single coil pickups, as the hum will be compressed along with your tone, amplifying it.  But, then again, this hasn’t stopped me from pushing a Danelectro bass with single-coil Lipstick pickups pushed through my Boss CS-3.

20)  You may hear of people boiling their strings to make them last longer, but don’t expect a miracle.  This only works on flatwounds and it only works for maybe one show’s worth of playing before your strings are deader than ever.

21)  Learn to sing harmony.  Your value as a bass player has just tripled.

22)  Genres of music that will never make you rich: Blues, Metal Ministry, Death-core, Big Band Swing (my heart cries for this one), Progressive Rock, anything not in 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, or 6/8…

23)  Genres of music that might make you rich:  Jazz (in the form of an education), Country, 3-Chord Rock, Motown, Pop-rock, Disco, anything with a really hot lead singer…

24)  If you want to find a deal on an instrument, check out pawn shops.  They often have used instruments with fixable damage, ie. a broken tuner, snap-crackle-pop jack, missing knobs, etc.  These instruments can be taken for a song (sorry…)

25)  Tapping licks are cool, but unless you’re playing Thunderstruck in a unison line with the guitar play in front of a frat house, you’ll probably never get to use those licks on stage.  I personally recommend getting that alternating plucking technique and western harmony up to 1940 mastered before you even attempt to tap.

reprinted with permission

http://chadmundt.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/25-things-i-wish-my-music-teachers-had-told-me-on-day-one/

#2- Controlling Consonance and Dissonance in your Solos, Progressions and Chord phrasings.  Knowing which notes don’t fit, is as important as the notes that do fit.  Learning which notes fit in each key.

#3- How many Sharps and Flats in each key.

#4- Which keys share Key Signatures,  eg. C and Am. Also understanding “Relative minors”

#5- Understanding Chord progressions and the relationship of Chords.  The Circle is very helpful to songwriters.

Circle of Fifths for Guitar

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=129991559218

From Captain Beefhearts Radar Station

http://www.beefheart.com/datharp/10com.htm

“Though they bear numbers, they are not arranged heirarchically — each Commandment has equal import.”

Here’s a comparison of 2 different models; the CLASSIC tele bridge  and the CBS tele bridge.  I’ve had the CBS tele bridge on my Sparrow Twangmaster for about a year.  It’s a great sounding pickup with none of the harsh bite that many stock tele bridge pickups exhibit.  I recorded this with a solid state Roland blues cube(they sound even better with a tube amp). The CBS is a bit brighter than the CLASSIC but they both react very well with distortion/overdrive.

I was amazed at how much better  handwound pickups sound. It’s hard to appreciate the difference until you try one yourself.  Compared to a dimarzio or seymour duncan, these are much better.  Dave also makes strat pickups and loaded pickguards.  There’s also a humbucker in the works.

Handwound CBS and CLASSIC Tele bridge pickups by Dave Leddin,  www.leddinpickups.com

Featuring a veritable who’s who of the Vancouver underground scene including Chopper/Deadcats, Tony Bardach/Pointed Sticks, BertMan/Motorama, Dusty Doug Smith/Cadaver Dogs and Cal Thompson from the Muscle Bitches.

Update: rumor is that a reality show is in the works for the LGA.  Stay tuned. http://www.straight.com/article-358674/vancouver/guitar-army-aims-own-show

http://www.myspace.com/littleguitararmy

vanc sun

shedoesthecity

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=66029935066

http://www.straight.com/article-269641/mikmi

The word “System” right off the bat, scares most people.   CAGED is a simple way to cover the 5 basic Chord/Scale shapes (It applies to scales too).  If you look at chords and scales, they are the same basic information.  A triad Chord, is just 3 notes(I,III and V) in the Scale.   Thinking of them as separate, will DOUBLE the amount of memorization you must do, so try to think of Chords and scales as being the same thing.   Most self-taught or non-reading musicians will use chord shapes as their visual reference for song progressions.

To start with, learning the 5 Chord shapes starting with C, shows how the shapes fit together but is not very useful for building chord progressions.  You want to visualize them according to the “Order of Open strings”, so that you associate the chord shape with the string that the root note is on.   So we start with our lowest string, E.

First Chord shape to learn is;

the Open E shape; 0,2,2,1,0,0.

A Shape;X,0,2,2,2,0,

the D Shape; X,X,0,2,3,2,

G Shape;3,2,0,0,0,3,

Our next Open string is B. Since G to B is not a “Fourth” like the other strings, we are going to play a C Shape next(G to C, is a Fourth).

So that is our 5 Basic Major Chord Shapes; E,A,D,G,and C.

From here, we learn the Shapes as Barre Chords on the first fret.

E becomes F;1,3,3,2,1,1,

A becomes A#/Bb; X,1,3,3,3,1,

D becomes D#/Eb; X,X,1,3,4,3,

G becomes G#/Ab; 4,3,1,1,1,3(this chord is almost unplayable),

C becomes C# or Db;X,4,3,1,2,1. It is not as important to be able to play all of these shapes, as it is to recognize the shapes.

Part of learning the chords as just letter names(A,B,C Maj) and not as shapes, means we are looking at the chord as one complete unit, that must be played as a whole(all 4,5 or 6 strings) and not as a moveable shape.   You do not have to play all of the string, any 3 adjacent strings will make a triad chord(which can be moved anywhere)

The majority of Western Music employs the 3 perfect chords; I,IV and V. Using this system allows us to find a Root Chord, I eg D, in the key of D, and move ahead to the next chord (G), which is the Fourth, or back one step to the Fifth (A).  This is incredibly useful for Blues/Rock/Folk playing.

The trick to learning the CAGED system is to cycle the chords.   Start with EADGC shapes, then move up to the first fret to F,Bb,Eb,Ab,Db, then another fret(2nd) to F#, B, E, A, and D. Keep moving up the fingerboard, 1 step/fret at a time.  When it starts to make sense try doing it backwards.  When you cycle the chords backwards, you are moving in Fifths.

To see how the chords/scales are connect to each other remember ED CAG.  When we start with the E shape, it has a Root on the D string, that it shares with the D shape (You will note that the shapes are connected in a descending pattern, the letters go; G,E,D,C,A).   The D shares a Root on the second string with the C shape.  The C shares a Root on the 5th string with the A shape.   The A shares a Root on the 3rd string with the G shape.