My New (Free) Melodic Minor Extraction Lesson Is Now Up On Guitar-Muse

Posted on October 23, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

Hello everybody!

The Power of Pentatonic Extraction

I’ve posted a few times about one of the new books that I’m working on, Pentatonic Extractions, and I’m really psyched about how its coming together so far. It’s going to cover a lot of material in an easy and accessible way and make a great addition to the series.

But you’ll get to see what I’m talking about yourself as the good people at Guitar-Muse.com have been kind enough to allow me to adapt some material from Pentatonic Extractions for a lesson on the site. There’s theory, audio and tab for some ideas that will probably get you shooed of the next open blues jam – but I really dig ’em and I hope you will too! You can check that out here.

More on that Muse of Guitar

All of the audio examples were recorded with the JamUp Pro app by Positive Grid which is just an incredibly useful app. I’ll have a full review for that coming up for Guitar-Muse, along with some other reviews, player profiles and interviews.

And For those of you who wish to guit a grip….

Guit-a-grip is going to be serializing chapters from my book, Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse, which chronicles the processes and observations I used to release the first four books of the GuitArchitecture series in 5 months. If you want to get a hold on a project (or a late new-years resolution), this series will definitely help motivate you and keep you on track. Look for a new podcast this week.

More soon! As always, thanks for reading!

Don’t Let Time Become An Excuse For Not Starting Something

Posted on October 20, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

Hi everybody!

I just wanted to add a post to go with the new series I’m running on my podcast. (if you like this post you might want to check it out if you haven’t already!)

Time and Fear

It can be scary to start a new project, take on a new initiative or choose a new direction. One fear-based response I hear from people consistently for why they don’t want to take on something new is some variation of this:

“Well…what if I put all of this time and energy into it and it doesn’t go anywhere?”

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The Tough Love Part Of The Post

Here is the reality check for this line of thinking:

Your time has no fixed economic value before you start something.

Let me clarify this. If you’re currently making six figures a year in your day job, you are sorely mistaken (or outright delusional) if you’re taking on something new at the ground level and assuming that your time in your new venture will initially have the same value as what you’re currently making.

If you open a hot dog stand and sell five hot dogs in your first hour, SOME portion of that wage (and given the cost of supplies will be a negative figure in this case) will be your new (hopefully temporary) hourly wage.

While it doesn’t mean that’s what you’re worth – it does mean that’s what you’re making at this moment. Five years from now your artisan dogs might support a dozen stands selling hundreds an hour and bringing in real money – but at this moment – in the simplest equation – your business is valued at the dollar value generated when expenses are subtracted from assets and revenue.

Later on, once your project has inertia, your time will have a definitive value and there will be numerous things fighting for your time. But initially, it’s like going to court in that just as you don’t get compensated for your time to appear in court – you don’t get back the time or energy in a project that went bust. It’s gone. Eat the loss and let it go.

Sometimes you take a step back to move forward.

When I realized that my fretting hand technique was holding back my playing I had to re-learn about 1/2 of what I “knew” how to play.

It was a drag, and initially it felt like a huge waste of time taking a step that far back and I resisted it for a year because I didn’t want to wast my time taking a step back when there was already a lot I could do on guitar.

But what I could already do wasn’t getting me any further ahead in the long run. The process of revamping my technique made me re-evaluate my relationship to the instrument and to music as a whole. I began to hear my playing differently and began to hear other people’s playing differently. Ultimately it got me the fluidity and clarity that I admired in so many other players playing that I was always wondering why it was missing from mine.

I sometimes wonder if people get frustrated when they talk about whatever they saw on the internet or TV (i.e. “if your time is so valuable how exactly are you spending it now?”) and then go on to ask the initial question:

“Well…what if I put all of this time and energy into it and it doesn’t go anywhere?”

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Here’s the answer:

The good news is that if the project is a bust (and if you haven’t invested EVERYTHING into it) you can quit and take what you’ve learned from this venture to move on to the next one.

I copped this from Seth Godin who once said that quitting is undervalued and that the problem with quitting is that most people quit something when it’s too late. The time to quit is in the early stages BEFORE you take the second mortgage, empty the bank account and realize that if this doesn’t work out that you and your family need to move back in with your folks.

And now the caveat!

If this website has a one word core idea, it’s “balance“.

Before I played guitar, I started off as a drummer in junior high school. If I didn’t quit drums in my first year and later switched to guitar I never would have stayed in music because by the time I had enough time in on drums in high school I wouldn’t have had the energy or interest to transition to learning guitar.

If I quit my pursuit to revamp my technique too early, I never would have made the progress in my playing that I did.

The balance is the hardest thing because the onus of understanding and maintaining that balance falls on you, the individual.

Balance will play a huge role in the posts and podcasts ahead!

Starting any new project will take inertia to keep it going. Once you get the project going you’ll have plenty of opportunities to evaluate your use of time and address it’s value in a real way, but don’t let that short circuit your plans for starting something.

More content coming soon. As always, thanks for reading!

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Guit-A-Grip Podcast #12 – New Book Excerpt #1

Posted on October 14, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

Hello everyone!

The New Book?

Yep! I have a few new books that I’m working on, and the non-guitar instructional book, Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse (Or a case study in how to plan projects and get things done). is all about several large scale projects that I got done (such as releasing 4 books of 1,200 + pages of writing in 5 months of 2011/2012).

You’re Podcasting this?

Yep! A large component of the book is accountability so there are several advantages to podcasting the bulk of the book.

It builds an audience for the book.
It gives me a framework (and deadlines) for editing the material.
Like I said in the podcast (re: pedagogy for pay and the flamenco dance teaching model) even if the ENTIRE book was put up online, there are people that will still want a book of the material.

Episode #12

Guit-A-Grip podcast episode #12 “Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse Introduction And Overview Excerpt” is out and available for download/streaming.

Subscription Notes:

You can subscribe through iTunes here:

You can use this link to subscribe with any other feed based service:

or you can right-click here to download it.

or you can stream this episode below.

Show Notes

The (other) Book

The writing book I reference in the podcast is Chris Baty’s, No Plot? No Problem! A low-stress, high-velocity guide to writing a novel in 30 days. There are a bajillion Kindle titles for outputting an ebook quickly, but Chris’ book is the granddaddy of them in my humble opinion.

The Harvard Study:

The study I cited in the podcast was from a source that quoted, What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School, by Mark McCormack. Funny story, this site contends that the data is largely fabricated and based on a non-existant 1953 Yale study! (It then goes on to cite another study that came to the same conclusion). So take that for what it’s worth because if the original study anecdote WAS fabricated – I can’t even fathom the number of people who must have cited the McCormack reference of it (or a reference to the reference) by now.

“There are only 12 notes and they take forever to learn.”

This is just a reminder. If the new habits you’re trying to acquire are outside your comfort zone, you’ll need to review your game plan often.

The Steps to follow:

WOW! It turns out that I was reading from an earlier draft of the book and missed a few steps! Here’s a case where it pays to check out the website as well as the podcast. ; ) I changed the below from first person to passive to make it more applicable to the reader.

How to manage a project in a few broad strokes

Have a clear vision of what you want to do (set quantifiable goals).
Align perception with reality and create priorities (in other words make an honest assessment of what needs to happen to reach those goals)
Set deadlines and benchmarks.
Be accountable.
Do daily focused work on those goals and limit distractions and obstacles in the way of achieving them.
Make periodic reviews to check your project’s status against the benchmarks and timeline.
Utilize available resources when possible/necessary.

That’s it for now!

See you soon and thanks again for listening/reading!

-SC

An Unusual Capo Variation And Milking A Vamp

Posted on October 13, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

Hey everyone!

I haven’t posted a lesson in a while here – so I though I’d post a really quick one for getting some mileage out of a single chord vamp. This is a little something I improvised on a tune for a live performance that’s now a loop based riff I build on live with a tentative title of, “remedial looping”.

That E Minor thing

First, let me take a BIG cue from my harmonic combinatorics book. When I look at an E minor chord – harmonically I see something like this:

So whether it’s an E minor/ Em7 / Em9 / Emin 11 (b13) – I know that playing any notes from the E natural minor/G major scale will get be SOME variation of the above chords.

As a start let’s look at an E minor 7 chord:

Interesting observation – if I look at the barred notes on the 5th fret:

The notes are all found in the parent scale. If I think of this voicing as a virtual capo and drop some of the notes on the 7th fret of the E minor chord to the 5th fret I get this really cool chordal cluster:

Going further – I could use open strings instead of the 5th fret and get a less clustered sound. Instead, I decided to flip my capo around and use it as a partial capo on the second fret so that the low E string would ring out unobstructed but the rest of the notes on the second string would be fretted by the capo.

Using the same idea as the previous example here’s the same modified Emin7 shape using notes on the 2nd fret instead of the 7th fret.

Make sure to play through those clusters individually as there are some good sounds there!

Put it together in a little string slaps for percussive effect and you have a little groove like this:

Note: I play the notes on the B and D strings with the 3rd and 4th finger while I move the capo. How I attack the D-E at the end of each measure will depend on fingering. Sometimes I’ll slide and some times I’ll hammer on.

This is a pretty simple idea, but there are a few challenges with executing it cleanly. Just remember to pay attention to the 3 T’s (Timing, Tone and (hand) Tension) and be aware of your finger position to make sure that the strings all ring out.

File under – a little theory can go a long ways! I’ve left a number of variations out of the lesson to have one simple thing for you to develop on your own.

Good luck!

-SC

PS for those of you who are interested – this was tracked on my iPhone with the JamUp Pro app and a Line 6 Sonic Port interface. A review of the Jam Up app will be up in the weeks ahead on Guitar-Muse.

Depth Of Experience (Or If You Weren’t There Then You Weren’t Really There)

Posted on October 13, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

You know it’s going to be dark when it starts with Videodrome
My brother from another mother, Frank Coleman, recently reminded me of a quote from Videodrome (a favorite film from one of my all time favorite directors, David Cronenberg):

“The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.”

That’s from 1983, but it seems to ring more true to me than ever (and Frank as well which is why I’m sure he posted it!)

Audition

Years ago, I had the chance to see a special sneak preview screening of Takashi Miike’s, Audition at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA. With a program description of, “Sleepless in Seattle meets Silence of the Lambs“, I knew I’d have to check it out.

The theatre was full and the midway point of the film was where the romantic comedy went, well…dark. (spolier alert if you’ve never seen the film).

There’s a scene towards the end of the film where the jilted female lead begins by poking the paralyzed protagonist with wires and culminates in amputating his leg with a piece of razor wire, while he’s fully conscious and aware of what’s going on. I should mention that she’s smiling and making DISTURBING child like noise while she’s doing this.

It’s a nine minute plus sequence. More than 1/2 the audience walked out of the film. I was cringing in my seat while this was happening and laughing a kind of nervous laugh because of the effect it was having on everyone (including myself).

Cut to a year later. I find a on-US DVD release of the video in an unmarked shop in Chinatown and grabbed it immediately. I got a bunch of friends of mine together and hyped up the the film and we put it in and….

it was boring.

It was boring because we were sitting around eating pizza and talking and not watching the film. We were pausing it when people went to the bathroom.

It was boring because we weren’t present in the moment. It was background noise that was waiting for a big scene to shock people.

It taught me a HUGE lesson

The reason it worked in a theatre was that the audience there was immersed in it.

It was a ritual. Watching a dvd in a living room with a Frathouse vibe killed the experience.

I realized that that was why people liked vinyl.

It wasn’t the sound. It was the ritual. It was the fact that you had to manually engage the stylus to get to another point of the song. Otherwise you were along for the ride when it was playing, If you were bouncing around, the needle would skip. It forced you to remain relatively still and experience the recording as a whole (or at least as a whole side).

Depth of experience

We live in a video generation now where being exposed to a video often gets equated to having that experience but it’s important to realize that watching someone get hit in the groin on You Tube is not the same as getting hit in the groin yourself. (Empathy is not experience).

Even though biologically I think we’re wired to count what’s seen and heard as experience, what’s missing is context. There are reasons why people say, “You had to be there.” There are reasons why some experiences are bigger than an actual event. It’s the performance and the vibe, and the energy of the crowd and being fully present and engaged.

That’s hard to do with a YouTube video. Trust me, you might see a video of someone killing it musically on You Tube but you’re only getting part of the story. Seeing someone play something doesn’t mean that you’ve assimilated it in any way, shape or form. I think it’s important to remember that seeing something doesn’t mean that you’ve experienced it. It goes back to that point I’ve reiterated here endlessly:

Thinking something does not always mean knowing something.

Seeing something doesn’t mean that you actually experienced it.

If you weren’t there when it happened, then your memory of it later is only a hologram.

“The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.”

But I’m not a nihilist. Reality doesn’t have to be less than television. The difference lies with you and I.

In some way, shape or form, I hope this helps.

As always, thanks for reading.

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Guit-A-Grip Episode #11 – “Deeper and Deeper”

Posted on October 3, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

Hello everyone!

The Return Of The Podcasts?!?

So I took some time off from podcasting to evaluate the podcasts and re-assess. The original idea of the podcasts was to bring people outside of what I normally do into my work, but it appears to just siphon traffic from guitarchitecture.org.

I’m re-thinking the purpose of the site with that in mind, and I’ve committed to podcasting here at least until the end of the year while I refine the focus of the podcasts and see what happens.

In the meantime…

Episode #11

Guit-A-Grip podcast episode #11 “Deeper and Deeper” is out and available for download/streaming.

Subscription Notes:

You can subscribe through iTunes here:

You can use this link to subscribe with any other feed based service:

or you can right-click here to download it.

or you can stream this episode below.

Show Notes

This is a short podcast, so I’ll just fill in a few points.

Deeper and Deeper:

This was the name of a track of a band called The FIXX that was hugely influential on me. When I got their Reach The Beach album, I played it so many times that the vinyl grew thin. While I was listening to it, I was listening deeply to how the guitar parts would drive some tunes and just lay back and sit in the pocket on other tunes. Jamie West-Oram, their guitarist, would become a really big influence on me as he made me realize the concept of playing a supporting role in a band. Knowing where where slide, keyboard line and vocal inflection was on the record came from deep listening and changed how I viewed my own roles in playing with other people.

I’ll talk about this more in a future podcast, but when people smile that nonsensical smug guru smile and say things like, “the answer lies within” it tells me that they only understand part of the equation.

Ultimately, only you can provide your own answers, but you’re never going to come up with intelligent answers if you’ve never investigated anyone else’s solutions but your own. People left to their own devices with no external input of any kind typically don’t become Buddha, they become dull and dim-witted and develop “facts” based on little more than observation. Babies don’t come out of the womb fully formed. They have to be exposed to language (i.e. copy language) to master it and ultimately come up with their own original ideas.

Going deep into something and loosing yourself into it, can be a way to go deeper into yourself if you learn lessons from the process or gain insights from what’s happening.

Repetition:

“There are only 12 notes and they take forever to learn.”

I think that a good philosophy has to have simple truths at it’s core in order to be actionable (and thus be a philosophy). My guitar system, GuitArchitecture, is based on a handful of modular approaches that can be adapted to a variety of formats. My philosophy is the same. It’s based on a handful of ideas that I’ll repeat here over and over.

And I do that because some of them will take forever to learn.

In this process, I’m always falling back into old habits – the difference is that I can now usually identify what’s happening and I just don’t stay in those places for as long as I used to.

Music is about the destination and the process. I wrote this blog, and podcast and teach because I’ve been fortunate enough to make a vast number of mistakes (large and small) and hopefully I can help other people not make the same mistakes I did.

More Next Time:

As always, thanks for visiting, reading and listening. I hope you get something out of the podcast, and if you like the series please drop a line sometime.

See you soon and thanks again!

-SC

PS – Here are some Fixx tracks to get you through the day!

(Just skip the ads):

Deeper and Deeper (Not much guitar in the mix but a great track)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIi79BHQ1ps

Saved By Zero (Check out all of the neat fills and variations Jamie throws in!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euBzxXFEuA4.

Beautiful Friction (Live) – Even with some issues – better than the studio version

What God (Live) – The Chorus on this is (makes kissing fingertips motion).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6UuLVxKJUk

It’s Not All Gold

Posted on September 24, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

As a professional – one important lesson to start internalizing is the need to balance being passionate about what you do and maintaining an emotional distance from it at the same time.

Hostile Terrain

Most of you have never heard of my first self published book, an unabashed DIY effort called Hostile Terrain. It featured poetry, some plays, essays and other works. Truth be told, about 30% still holds up as writing that I’d be willing to show to other people.

Hostile Terrain came out of a process of years of journaling. I wrote everything down as an outlet. I was depressed and desperate and it took a long time to realize that journaling just fed right into that.

I didn’t realize at the time that writing wasn’t getting bad things out of my system, but instead, it was just making me sicker. I was breathing in the same stagnant air and thinking that I found something invigorating and relavatory because I was equating output with discovery.

In the next stage of this process, I was living with a person in a completely isolated situation and had hit emotional rock bottom because I had to confront things that intellect alone couldn’t solve and that I simply didn’t have the emotional maturity to deal with.

In the middle of this terrible living situation, a freak accident happened where the room I was living in flooded. I lost 10 years of writing and journals.

I was devastated. It was thousands of hours of work down the drain (or so I thought).

So being emotionally crushed, I went back to what I knew. I went back to writing and eventually I wrote some more and then put out Hostile Terrain. I sent it out to friends and to a few publishing houses I was into, and while I got a few “attaboys” I got no interest from anyone for anything resembling publishing.

Bedtime Stories For Mutant Children

In the meantime, I decided to move away from poetry and into short stories. I was really influenced by Tomas Bernhardt’s The Voice Imitator and decided to write a series of short stories that focused on dark stories for adults told in a children’s storybook style. This was about 1996 or so. The Tim Burton book, The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy, came out mid project and even though I was jealous he beat me to the punch – my stories were much darker and I thought I might be able to get some publishing interest for a character I developed while on a grim tour of Germany (Kommandant Kumar) and for the overall book concept, Bedtime Stories For Mutant Children.

I had all the stories online so I could get feedback from my friends. I didn’t have a computer at the time so I was working on my friend’s work computer. I did this off and on for about a year.

Then something happened.

Within a 24-hour period the web server went out of business AND the hard drive that I had all of the files on seized.

I lost 30 short stories. Gone. Casper.

I hit my frustration limit and I stopped writing. I abandoned the screenplay I wrote. I stopped all of the other writing I was doing and I worked on other things.

Eventually, I started seeing things differently, and I came to a realization.

It’s Not All Gold

There is no scarcity of ideas.
Not every idea has value
Important ideas will return
Sometimes it’s the process and not the product

There is no scarcity of ideas.

This was the biggest obstacle that I had to overcome in my own thinking and it’s one I still wrestle with.

There’s a fine line between being attached to an idea and being chained to it.

The difference is whether the idea you’re working with serves your larger goals, or if it’s only serving its own completion.

You don’t have to hold onto every idea like it’s a precious nugget. There are more of them out there.

Not every idea has value equal to the amount of work needed to put it into action.

Again, it’s easy to get emotionally attached to the work put into an idea and equate work with value but that’s not always a direct relationship. If you ever watch an episode of Shark Tank, you’ll likely see businesses where people have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into a product that has generated no revenue after several years in place. This is what I’m talking about.

Cultivating the mindset to distance yourself emotionally from what you’re doing is a difficult process to develop and maintain but it’s an extremely valuable one.

Important ideas will return

I like documenting things because sometime I find things worth exploring but, in retrospect, every really good idea I couldn’t remember came back to me or presented itself in a different form.

Sometimes it’s the process and not the product

For me, this is the most important lesson in this piece.

Earlier, in regards to losing all of my writing, I said that:

“It was thousands of hours of work down the drain (or so I thought).”

That work wasn’t down the drain at all. The work I put into that sharpened my writing and really honed my ability to focus.

That emphasis made huge differences in my practicing and ultimately affected other areas of my life in a much more positive way than the actual writing ever did.

When I work on projects now, I assess the value of the outcome and the value of the experience and if either one makes sense for me to do, then I’ll take it on.

Don’t get hung up on old ideas at the expense of new ones. Implement, assess and then continue or abandon as need be.

I hope this helps and as always, thanks for reading!

-SC

On Press Releases Or Learning The Right Lesson Part Two

Posted on September 13, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

I’ve talked a great deal about prioritizing in relationship to goal setting on the guit-a-grip site but I thought I’d put up a tangentially related

A while back, I was dreading the prospect of writing a press release for my 12-tone book release announcement. For a long time, I had real trouble writing these types of things because I’m a very modest person by nature and the self congratulating accolades of a press release are an anathema to my presentation style.

But the simple reality is that at the end of the day, this is a business and you have to get people engaged in material before they buy it. So it’s a necessary discomfort that eased with time.

Previously, I had released a short pdf on fiverr which was positively received and found someone there who has done all of my book covers for an extremely generous rate.

So I thought I’d give the press release a try. “Let’s see what someone who’s doing 20-40 of these a day (at $5 a pop) is generating.” I was given a brief questionaire and told to answer the questions as specifically as possible. 5 days later I got the following Press Release: (Hint, you need to read it out load to someone near you to get the real effect of the writing).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Scott Collins

Company: Guitarchitecture.org

Address: Brooklyn, NY

Email: https://guitarchitecture.org/2013/01/31/the-guitarchitects-guide-to-symmetrical-twelve-tone-patterns-is-out-now/

Guitarchitecture’s Symmetrical Twelve-Tone A New Book Release

A new book was released in one of the mostly misunderstood area. This is a one of kind book wherein they are offering a free tutorial for those who want to learn how to play the guitar. It is all about academic matters for those who want to explore a new composition of sounds. This book has all the important files on how everyone can learn the basic sessions for guitar.

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The new book is about 100 pages and it all contains a lot of information regarding the keys, tones, examples and instructions of the guitar. This book helps the reader maximize their potential in doing their first love which is to play the guitar. Since it is newly released, there is an assurance that everyone can learn the guitar easier and faster. Scott Collins is a guitarist, clinician, educator and the author of this book.

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The Symmetrical Twelve-Tone helps the guitar trainees in mastering the keys and tones of the guitar. There are several patterns that everyone can follow so that they can deal with the different kinds of compositions and improvisation. A lot of people are now enjoying playing the guitars because this more fun and exciting to play than other musical instruments. This is also the reason why many people want to learn how to play the guitar. This book is offered at a very affordable price, so there is no need to worry about the budget because anyone can afford this book.

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The Guitarchitecture released their new book that can help everyone who wants to learn how to play the guitar. There is no need for everyone to enroll in some tutorial classes because the Symmetrical Twelve-Tone is now offering the best lessons that everyone can learn from. For those who want to explore new keys on the guitar, this book is perfect for everyone.

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Learning the guitar is very easy if everyone knows how to do it properly. With the help of the Guitarchitect’s Guide to Symmetrical Twelve-Tone, it would be easy for them to learn the basic skills needed. A lot of people are now enjoying guitar lessons using only the Symmetrical Twelve-Tone guidelines. This book has a lot of benefits that can help those who want to learn and master the guitar keys and notes.

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For more information, please visit https://guitarchitecture.org/2013/01/31/the-guitarchitects-guide-to-symmetrical-twelve-tone-patterns-is-out-now/.

Ouch! There are too many problems with this review to count!

At least it was an inexpensive lesson! Here are a few things it reinforced for me:

Be careful of what you farm out and who your farm it out to.
If you’re going to experiment, do it early when the stakes are low.
You can’t always trust sample writings or reviews (how many times have you walked out of a restaurant disappointed with the meal and said, “I don’t get it. The Yelp review was really positive….”
If you haven’t worked with the person before. prepared to put a lot of preliminary work in for setting it up or to put in a lot of editing work to finish it.
By and large you get what you pay for.

What follows is the press release I ended up writing. It took 60-90 minutes because I edited it endlessly, but the end result was something I could actually use. I did end up using another Fiver service to promote the book which worked fairly well.

News Release

February 1, 2013

For Immediate Release

New Twelve-Tone Patterns Book Provides New Sounds For Guitarists

The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Symmetrical Twelve-Tone Patterns is the latest release in the popular “GuitArchitect’s Guide To” series. In Symmetrical Twelve-Tone Patterns, guitarist, educator and author Scott Collins rigorously examines twelve-tone patterns and then breaks the method into a number of core approaches to use in melodic, harmonic, improvisational or compositional exploration. In a topic previously relegated to the halls of academe, Symmetrical Twelve-Tone Patterns investigates the material in an intuitive and accessible way for guitarists at different skill levels.

Among other accolades, guitarist and loop pioneer Andre LaFosse, has praised the method, saying, “Scott [Collins] has an unusual ability to deal with highly esoteric and technical concepts, while simultaneously managing to present them in a very approachable, intuitive, and musical fashion. The scope of his teaching touches on everything from mathematical theory to life philosophy. His writing represents an extremely original – and stunningly well-researched – perspective on the guitar.”

A complimentary digital bundle of musical examples is available to those who purchase either the print or digital edition of the book. In addition to MIDI files, PDFs and MP3s of all the examples in the book, the bundle also contains Guitar Pro files to help readers maximize their interaction with the material. Having the files in a Guitar Pro format means that the reader can use the Guitar Pro MIDI playback engine to hear the examples at whatever tempo they want thus using it as a phrase trainer to help get the examples to up to speed.

With an undergraduate degree in composition from Berklee College of Music and a graduate degree in guitar performance from CalArts, Scott Collins is an active performer, educator and visual accompanist. He is the author of The GuitArchitect’s Guide: series which includes guitar instructional and references books on topics such as melodic patterns, harmonic combinatorics, positional exploration and chord scales and has released several music business titles for the Kindle platform including, An Indie Musician’s Wake Up Call and Selling It Versus Selling Out.

“The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Symmetrical Twelve-Tone Patterns” is currently available in both print and PDF editions at Lulu.com http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/guitarchitecture. More information about the book (and links to sample lesson material) is available at https://guitarchitecture.org/books.

ENDS

And a review:

In a related note, my 12-tone book just got a pretty humbling review on Amazon that made a lot of the discomfort in creating it seem worthwhile. You can read the original review here.

This book is groundbreaking and vitally important for the modern guitarist, and I will concisely summarize why. The subject of twelve tone method applied to the guitar has never been anywhere near as well and accessibly explored as it has here, and it is a subject long overdue in the stale guitar world of today. This method, which the indisputably great composer Arnold Schoenberg introduced in the early part of the 20th century had massive repercussions throughout the music world, and ultimately swayed even the mighty Stravinsky. This example of one great composer converting another contemporary great is anomalous in history, only the Haydn-Mozart example is comparable in impact.

The material and examples are laid out in a very easy to grasp manner, and it is extremely helpful as well that the author has listed extensive permutations regarding the method, the latter is an invaluable resource in itself.

I will be expanding upon this review for my blog shortly, however I felt compelled to write this short due to the impression the book made on me.

This book makes all other guitar instruction books from the past fifteen years look completely obsolete, tired. Don’t miss out, the price you pay for this is simply a pittance compared to what you’ll get back.”

I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from my books but nothing like that!!

As always, if you’ve purchased a book – please drop a line at guitar.blueprint at gmail[dot]com. I’d love to hear what you liked or disliked about it and it might make the next book even better!

At any rate, that’s it for now. I’ll be putting up a music business / book publishing post soon that you might find interesting. In the meantime, keep playing and as always,

Thanks for reading!

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All Opinions Are Not Equal

Posted on September 12, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

Hey Everyone,

This is the last phoned in post for a while! Look for all new content next week. In the meantime, here’s a chestnut from the GuitArchitecture.org page.

A while back, I was reading a forum post and I was outright flabbergasted at the number of people who had VERY STRONG opinions about musicians and they money they make, even though they themselves weren’t musicians and had no experience trying to make money from one’s art. It served as a good reminder that,

For the record, all opinions are not equal.

The internet will give you the impression that they are, but they aren’t.

There are basically informed opinions, wrongly informed opinions and uninformed opinions and while everyone is entitled to their own opinion, they do not (and should not) equate in terms of validity.

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Informed vs Uninformed Opinions

Let’s say I’m hiking with my friends and we come across a snake. On of my friends, who knows nothing at all about snakes and is more than a little immature, says to me that it would make a great gag to pick up the harmless small snake and throw it at someone. Another one of my friends, who happens to be a zoologist, tells me that he recognizes the snake as a highly poisonous one and advises me to stay away from it.

Which opinion do you think I’m going to listen to about handling the snake?

Yes, both people are entitled to their opinions, but for me there is a more validity in the opinion of the person who knows what the Hell they’re talking about.

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Wrongly informed opinions

The internet is full of people who dispense data guised as wisdom.

People who have “informed” opinions because they read or heard something somewhere.

Forums are filled with these people. Jokers who fill up pages of forum space talking about the merits and detriments of various products only to find that they don’t own any of them, but are just speculating based on ad copy and product specifications.

Wrongly informed opinions are even more detrimental to making an informed decision, because, like most conspiracy theories, they have at least a grain of truth that their logical architecture is based on. That truth is what typically passes the smell test, “does it smell like bs to you?” and leads to the, “if a is to be and b is to c then a is to z” logic that often comes about from this.

Opinions aren’t facts and shouldn’t be treated the same way.

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The Lesson Story

I believe that I’ve related this story once before, but I relate it again as I didn’t find it right away and it’s relevant to this idea.

I once had a person respond in a really combative way to a teaching ad I put up on Craigslist.

(BTW – I know CL works like gang busters for some people, but it never worked out for me. I think this is largely because while my lessons are a bargain in terms of what a student can learn, they’re not cheap. And CL guitar lessons seem to be ALL about the cheap.)

Getting back to the story, he demanded to know how much of my time was spent teaching, and whether I was a real full-time musician. I responded to his e-mail as tactfully as I could, addressing my credentials and trying to determine what I wanted to learn. He responded with a lengthy e-mail that included demands for justifying my price because, “I only want to study with the best.” and he needed to figure out if I am “the best”.

Now the “best” anything, in terms of artistic expression, is a term that makes me uncomfortable. I do happen to be the best teacher in the Scott Collins teaching method and style. In that style and method of teaching, you wont find anyone who teaches better than me. Now, am I the best teacher for you? I don’t know. I have been for some students, but I can’t line up 30 people and say, “I’m better than all those people” because I am only the best at what I do and conveying information to people in my manner.

Despite being really put off by his approach, I pushed the topic a bit and asked about his current skill set and what he was trying to do. He explained that he was not a guitarist, but that he was planning on buying a guitar soon. While he didn’t play any other instruments, he was going to play guitar because he had really long fingers and knew that he could play it very well in a short period of time. Hence his need for the best teacher, because he needed someone who would help him unleash the awesome untapped divine talent that had been bestowed to him in his teens.

In other words, I spent 45 minutes writing thoughtful carefully worded responses intended to clarify, but ultimately justifying my skill set to a completely ignorant person who knew nothing about guitar and didn’t even play, but had a LOT of strong opinions about what I did.

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Save yourself some time and energy.

As musicians, it’s common to get worked up over people’s opinions about what we do.

I’m not saying that all listeners are uninformed. I’ve had people who happened to have listened to a lot of music deeply offer really insightful observations to me about what they liked or didn’t like about various things. They didn’t know jargon, but they knew what they were talking about in terms of conveying their aesthetic.

What I am saying is that if the opinion you’re listening to (or more likely reading) is uninformed, that engaging that opinion is generally a time-suck. You can try to inform the person expressing the opinion, which takes time (and the right person willing to listen to other opinions) or you can walk away.

It’s easy to get entangled into flamed threads or comment sections to contribute an opinion, but if you’re trying to explain to a non-musician why musicians should be compensated. You’re wasting time that’s better spent making a good piece of art to sell to them instead.

Thanks for reading!

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p.s. I’ve mentioned it before, but that Indie Musician Wake Up Call Kindle book is a cheap $1.99 insight into some of the issues covered here ; )

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The Five Words Or Less Challenge

Posted on August 19, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

(Hey everyone. Since I’m in the process of moving, the gone fishin’ sign is still up on the door and for this week’s post I’m rolling out some more excerpts and miscellaneous observations from my Selling It Versus Selling Out ebook that you may enjoy.

The podcast will come back in the weeks ahead after I’m settled. In the meantime, you can check out the latest one here.)

Five Words Or Less

Up until fairly recently, I had a habit that, in retrospect, is quite embarrassing.

I couldn’t describe what I did musically in five words or less to other people.

When asked what I did, I said I played guitar, and then went into a painfully earnest description that was supposed to be informational (but in reality probably sounded more like babbling).

No matter how sincere people are, most of them shut down with information overload and anything more than 5 words describing what you do initially (“initially” is an important qualifier here by the way) is information overload.

That might sound harsh but it’s not meant to be. It’s simply that even musicians (i.e. people who do this every day of their lives) tend to lose focus after 10 words or so. I might talk about how hearing koto playing worked its way into my comping and they might be looking at me smiling and wondering about the discolored tooth in the front of my mouth (it’s discolored because I got into an accident the day of my grandmother’s funeral and ate a face full of gravel killing the nerve in my front tooth. It’s also why I very rarely smile with a full open-faced smile. But I digress….).

To non-musicians it’s even more alien. They often really want to understand what you’re doing, but experience has shown me that the more descriptive you get, the more you’re going to lose them. People are busy. They have a lot on their mind and they’re often easily distracted, so don’t lose them if they’re interested in what you do!

The restroom pitch

Now I’ve clarified this with the word initially. For those of you familiar with the term, this is less of an elevator pitch and (in terms of length of time) more of a restroom pitch. Imagine you walk up to a sink in a restroom and someone is already using the neighboring sink. The person recognizes you and taps the soap dispenser and asks, “Hey don’t you play music – what kind of music do you play?” you’ve got about 5 words to get it across before he or she runs the tap water and can’t hear what you’re saying.

The goal of being able to do this isn’t to limit yourself in a bad way.

The point of it is to come up with just enough of a description to get someone’s interest and have them ask more about what it is that you do.

Interestingly enough, while the 5-word rule applies to a band bio (keep it short and to the point), it doesn’t necessarily apply to other text-based media. People who want to read about a band are often willing to read lengthy articles and will actually retain the information – but that’s after there interest is piqued, and the window for that is generally a short sentence or two.

In person – in an initial meeting – you’ve got about 5 words to bring them in.

If you’re interested in trying this for yourself here are some tips that may help.

Try to describe yourself musically in 5 words or less.

Make it descriptive enough that people get some sense of what you’re doing – but open enough to let their imagination fill in the other pieces. “Improvised rock guitar” isn’t a bad start, but people who hear that are going to think “jam band”. So if you play in a jam band it’s easier to just say “I play in a jam band”. If you don’t play in a jam band, you might need a better description.

If you’re comparing yourself to other bands – don’t use any more than two (“Black Sabbath meets Elton John” gets someone’s attention. “Take Yngwie Malmsten’s leads with Tony Levin’s pocket and hold it together with Zakir Hussain’s tabla” looses people. Shred guitar with tabla gets it back again. Will your bassist get pissed at that description? Probably – but again the idea is to distill it down to its essence – because the essence is where all the potency is.

While this process will help you describe your music to other people (and thus make it more accessible to them automatically), it has a second (and ultimately more significant) advantage. It clarifies in your own head exactly what it is you’re trying to do.

If it takes 30 seconds for someone to initially describe what they’re doing it’s generally because they’re a little muddled on the goal as well. Again, it’s something I was guilty of on my own and I now have short descriptions for everything I do. They’re not all 5 words or less (and they all need revision and improvement) but they’re distilled enough that people get the gist of what I’m doing.

For example, when people ask about performance I often tell them I play “ethnically influenced rock guitar”, “loop-based improvised guitar” or “improvised music for multi-media”.

When asked about my teaching style, I can explain that as a teacher my goal is to “help students hear the music within” or to “help students sound like themselves”. Both sentences are a little clunky – but that’s the simplest essence. That’s what I can boil it down to and if I understand it on the base level, I can always expand on it later. How I do these things is a much longer discussion. Even though none of them fully define what I do, they help open a door for that discussion to occur and opening doors is what music should do in general.

Give it a try! You may find out some interesting things about yourself!

As always, thanks for reading!

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PS – If you dig this post, you may like my ebooks (both available for Amazon Kindle or for the FREE Kindle App). Click on graphic for book link page.