Testing Your Vocabulary Or Practicing Part VI

Posted on August 26, 2010 by GuitArchitecture

In the last post on practicing, I focused a great deal on the importance of listening in general and I’d like to focus and frame that importance a little more this time.

Before I move on, you may want to read my previous posts on practicing. If you have missed those posts, you can find them here: part 1 , part 2 , part 3 , part 4 and part 5.

It’s important to realize that scales, arpeggios or any other kind of melodic or harmonic device is only a tool in the service of making music – and is not music in and of itself.

One way to get to making music with these devices is to learn other people’s music and phrasing, either by transcribing or learning by ear.

As a guitar teacher, I occasionally to run into students who are resistant to this idea as they only want to learn “their music”.

Learning other people’s music is learning your music because it’s part of a process in developing your voice.

The point of music is to communicate and to communicate with people you must have something to say. This is done not only with vocabulary, but with a familiarity of language that comes from constant exposure and interaction.

When you learn other people’s music, or licks or chord progressions you learn vocabulary. You learn phrases that work their way into your being and begin to form your aesthetic. When you talk about “your writing style” for something you’re writing – do you make up all of the words you are going to use? In reality, you use words that you’ve used before. You use phrases that you’ve seen other people use that have now become part of “your writing style”.

If you’ve ever been around a child that’s learning to verbalize their thoughts – you’ve heard a lot of sounds coming out that are not recognizable as words (much less sentences). It can be a real struggle to determine what it is that the child is attempting to do (or perhaps wants). If you were to isolate that child at a certain point of development and refuse to interact verbally, the child would eventually develop his or her own language – but it would be completely inaccessible to you. You would be unable to communicate verbally with the child and have to do things visually to convey ideas.

I’ve heard some singer/songwriter music that was done with this mindset. The lyrics represent things that are so personal that it is impossible to gain any meaning from them without an intimate knowledge of the person. Harmonically (because the performers use sounds that “are theirs” and nothing more), the approach is severely limited and the chord progressions tend to all sound the same. If you’ve ever had this experience you may find that you tend to tune out after a song or two as I do.

Learning vocabulary

When learning vocabulary, there are several steps (this is a profoundly oversimplified list):

Exposure (or more likely multiple exposures) to a word (usually in a context)
Use of the word
Integration of the word into conversation/writing etc.

This means that there is a lot of word use to get to the point of integration. In musical terms, you may have to shed a lick or phrase a lot not only from a technical standpoint (use of the phrase), but also to have it be “available” when you’re improvising (integration). And this is a real test of your vocabulary.

You might think you have something down – but no matter how much you shed something,

if you can’t access it when you’re improvising – it’s not fully integrated into your playing.

It’s important to realize that integrating vocabulary is a conscious decision. It isn’t passive at all. Just because I hear a sound – doesn’t mean I know what it is or how to react to it. This is the real difference between hearing and listening.

Hearing is biological, listening is mental.

You can get a lot from working with transcription software (like transcribe) and using it as a phrase trainer (i.e. taking an advanced technical or shred lick and slowing it down to such a slow speed that it becomes playable).

Don’t be afraid of working on complex solos or phrases!

All you have to do is:

slow it down and

break it into small components that you can play and

try to increase the speed a little every day.

In this way you’re actually getting more complex patterns under your fingers and gaining some refined ideas to draw upon. By working in this manner, you can develop phrases so that you have something that you can use at a variety of tempos. Having ideas that work in a number of contexts makes it easier to integrate into your playing..

If this is an area of interest, you may also want to read this post on music as language. You can also find some posts that may help with practice/motivation stating with one on focus here, a thought on music theory in performance here, or the importance of deadlines here.

I hope this helps! Thanks for dropping by!

-SC

If you like this post you may also like:

PRACTICE MAKES BETTER AKA PRACTICING PART I

PROPER POSTURE IS REQUIRED FOR PROPER PERFORMANCE – PRACTICING PART II

TENSION AND THE SODA CAN OR PRACTICING PART III

DEFINITIONS AND DOCUMENTS OR PRACTICING PART IV

.

PRACTICE WHAT YOU PLAY OR PRACTICING PART V

TESTING YOUR VOCABULARY OR PRACTICING PART VI

POSSESSION IS 9/10S OF THE LAW BUT PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING OR PRACTICING PART VII

Some Useful Online Practice Tools

.

FINDING THE DEEPER LESSON

MELVILLE, MADNESS AND PRACTICING – OR FINDING THE DEEPER LESSON PART 2

INSPIRATION VS. INTIMIDATION

What’s wrong with playing “Flight of the Bumblebee” for a world speed record?

Practice what you play or Practicing Part V

Posted on August 2, 2010 by GuitArchitecture

I realize that I’ve been talking a lot about how to practice and have only touched upon what to practice in a very limited sense. If you have missed my other posts on practicing you can find them here: part 1 , part 2 , part 3 and part 4.

What to practice

Without being too obvious, you should practice what you’re going to play.

If I was a shred metal player – I’d learn a ton of shred metal tunes. I’d work on scales and arpeggios a lot and investigate all sorts of lead techniques (tapping, pinch harmonics etc.). I’d work on learning the solos to those tunes and then start trying to work on my own solos. I might watch a bunch of instructional videos to try to get ideas as well.

If I was into Jazz, I’d be practicing specific standards. I’d work on coming up with a bunch of ways to comp chords and practice soloing over the changes. I’d listen to other renditions of the tunes and borrow (read: steal) any ideas I liked.

If your goal is to play exactly like Stevie Ray Vaughan – learning your melodic minor modes won’t help you directly with your goal, and being motivated to work on them will be difficult if you can’t tie it into your goals.

The #1 thing you should be practicing

Now, I’m going to advise you on the #1 thing you should be integrating into your practice regimen that you probably aren’t actively doing now – more than scales, chords or anything else I can think of for the moment. And it’s a commonality with all of the examples above.

You should practice listening.

Not just hearing – really listening.

You should practice listening with the purpose of ultimately working on developing your musical vocabulary.

Listening, interacting and speaking are three pillars of any conversation and they should be important for you to consider in your playing as well. If you can’t hear what’s going on – you’re not going to be able to say anything that’s poignant.

Without going into religion, I believe fundamentally that silence is a sacred thing. I believe that if you are interrupting silence with sound – you’d better have something to say.

So how do you practice listening?

Transcribe – or learn things aurally

There are a lot of internet sites that break down transcription methods better than I can do in the context of this post – but it’s important to note initially that you will probably not be that accurate. Don’t worry about perfection. Spend your energy learning phrases and understanding the context that they exist in (i.e. what chords to play them over).

When I first started playing guitar in bands and I had to learn songs for the bands I was playing in, the first thing I learned was the bass line – as it was easy for me to hear and gave me an idea of which “power chords” I’d have to play as well. If you find a tune you like you should try to learn all the parts on guitar. The bass lines, the vocal lines, the keyboard or other instrumental parts… You’ll start coming up with things that you might now have ever stumbled across on your own. If you want to try to notate it – you will get even more out of it – but the important thing is to see how it all works together.

Sing it if you want to own it

Sing what you play. Play a phrase and sing it back.

Play what you sing. Sing a phrase and play it back.

When you sing something you internalize it. Internalized things become a part of you. When you play a melody try to sing it as well. Listen to other people sing it and try to match the inflections.

(ah if only I thought of the above 2 myself – but they were taken from W.A. Mathieu’s excellent, The Listening Book. If you don’t know this book – I highly recommend it!)

Play with musicians that are better than you.

If you play with really good musicians – they’re listening. We tend to copy other people’s behavior. So if a room full of people are listening, we might be more inclined to listen as well.

Really listen to the world around you.

Try this for a moment. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. When you’re done exhaling – focus for a couple of seconds on what you hear. Doing this now I just heard – My refrigerator running. The cat lightly snoring. Cars passing in the distance. Several neighbors mumbling down the hall. The bathroom sink dripping. The ac unit for the building turn off. My heartbeat. A car pulling into the garage. When I imagine my heart beat as a bass drum being hit I can fall into a groove. The fridge acts as a drone. Now I hear a bird -it sounds like horn stabs. The cars rumble like bass pitches. My typing accelerates to accompany the sounds going on. For an instant it’s a cool piece. Then it vanishes as my perception goes back to what I’m doing. Before I thought about it – all I was aware of was the fridge. Once I really listened I could hear a number of cool things going on.

When you really listen as a musician – you can start to get past the point of focusing on, “wait is that an A major or an A minor chord?” – and get into how what everyone is doing fits together. You can start to get past the technique of performance and work towards making music.

Making music is a noble goal and it’s a goal that’s rooted in listening. If you’re really listening all of those other things (scales, chords, etc) are going to come into play anyway and as you develop your vocabulary – you develop your voice.

If you are known as someone who listens well and has something to say – there will always be people who seek you out. In music. In life.

Practice deeply.

Until next time.

-SC

If you like this post you may also like:

PRACTICE MAKES BETTER AKA PRACTICING PART I

PROPER POSTURE IS REQUIRED FOR PROPER PERFORMANCE – PRACTICING PART II

TENSION AND THE SODA CAN OR PRACTICING PART III

DEFINITIONS AND DOCUMENTS OR PRACTICING PART IV

.

PRACTICE WHAT YOU PLAY OR PRACTICING PART V

TESTING YOUR VOCABULARY OR PRACTICING PART VI

POSSESSION IS 9/10S OF THE LAW BUT PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING OR PRACTICING PART VII

Some Useful Online Practice Tools

.

FINDING THE DEEPER LESSON

MELVILLE, MADNESS AND PRACTICING – OR FINDING THE DEEPER LESSON PART 2

INSPIRATION VS. INTIMIDATION

What’s wrong with playing “Flight of the Bumblebee” for a world speed record?

Definitions and Documents Or Practicing Part IV

Posted on June 8, 2010 by GuitArchitecture

I was originally planning on updating this post with pictures of hand postures and address left and right hand muting techniques – but given that I have sunburned skin peeling off of 20% of my body – I’m going to hold off on photos for now.

Instead, I’d like to take a moment and actually address defining practicing as a means of understanding what is being addressed by practicing and then examine how documenting the process can assist with it.

For those of you who are just coming to this post you may want to also read the previous posts on practicing. Here’s a link to part 1, part 2 and part 3.

Definition

By defining practicing it’s easier to understand what practicing is supposed to do. Here is a partial definition from Meriam Webster.

“Main Entry: ¹prac·tice

Variant(s): also prac·tise \ˈprak-təs\

Function: verb

Inflected Form(s): prac·ticed also prac·tised; prac·tic·ing also prac·tis·ing

Etymology: Middle English practisen, from Middle French practiser, from Medieval Latin practizare,alteration of practicare, from practica practice, noun, from Late Latin practice, from Greek praktikē, from feminine of praktikos

Date: 14th century

transitive verb1 a : carry out, apply <practice what you preach> b : to do or perform often, customarily, or habitually<practice politeness> c : to be professionally engaged in <practice medicine >
2 a : to perform or work at repeatedly so as to become proficient <practice the act> b : to train by repeated exercises <practice pupils in penmanship>”

The definitions presented in the 2nd part of this definition help – but don’t really explain how to train or what practicing is supposed to achieve. So I’m going to supply one of my own.

Practice: The proper focused repetition of an idea through an incrementally difficult environment for the purpose of achieving a musical goal.

By tearing apart this definition some elements of practicing can be exposed that you might not have thought about before.

proper: meaning the right way; consistently

focused: Practice requires concentration because it requires attention to detail.

repetition: repetition leads to familiarity (and familiarity breeds contempt so be careful here!)

incrementally difficult environment: To practice something means that you are pushing your abilities to do something. In music, one implication of this is to practice with a time keeping device (metronome, drum machine, drummer, recording, etc.) – but this could be any kind of parameter that actually pushes you.

for the purpose of achieving a musical goal: Practice is goal oriented. If you are not trying to achieve anything then you are not practicing.

With a clearer understanding of what is meant by practicing – we can go on to how to maximize the use of your practicing time.

1. Set clear, well-defined goals (short AND long-term) and work towards those goals.

2. Since practice requires concentration, put yourself in an environment that facilitates concentration such as a relatively quiet, well lit and well ventilated room as free of distraction as possible.

3. While concentration is required for repetition, excessive repetition undermines concentration. Many people use set periods of time to practice something. This can be a good policy if it is done in moderation. Bill Leavitt (the founder of the guitar department at Berklee) suggested that students should practice reading for 15 minutes of every hour of practice – because 4 sessions of 15 concentrated minutes of practice get you a lot further than one hour of unfocused practice. A timer (like an oven timer) can be a great assistance here.

For some people, concentration will be a learned activity. If you are not used to focusing on something with intensity, then even trying to work 10 minutes on something may be problematic.

If you are having problems with this area – try starting with smaller intervals of time like 5 minutes with one short phrase and then move on to the next item on your agenda. Practicing in this manner will help you develop your capacity for focus as well.

There are several different thoughts about achieving goals, for me personally – it’s important to get many ideas into muscle memory slowly and develop them all at the same time rather than developing only one idea fully after another. You, however, should plan on experimenting and find what approaches work for you.

By setting a timer and not worrying about how long you are practicing, (in whatever methodology you use) you can spend more energy on the actual performance.

Documentation

One approach to consider is seen in how athletes train. After all, playing guitar is a physical process that requires performance of well-trained activity. This is very similar to a swimmer who has to be able to perform at a high level at a signal (like a whistle blowing). One thing athletes do is WRITE IT DOWN. Runners for example often keep a journal of performance times to see if they’re improving. Writing things down in a journal doesn’t have to be complex or difficult. I used to keep a notepad in my guitar case, and then write things down. But now it’s easier to customize a practice log or journal and utilize that either in print or electronically.

I have linked two sample documents below. Please feel free to download and use or edit at will.

PRACTICE LOG (PDF)

Weekly Practice Log (Word)

What needs to be written down:

Here’s a sample entry:

Week of	What is being Practiced?	Time	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun	Notes
6/8/10	A Major Pentatonic sweep (sextuplets)	10 mins	100bpm							Watch Pinky tension!!

The goal is to write just enough to keep track of what you’re doing. Feel free to add or drop items.

If you’re going to start really putting the hours into practicing, I would recommend that you give yourself enough material to do no more than an hour or two at one sitting.

Do multiple sittings a day if you want. (Personally – I can’t really focus very well after an hour or so consistently. So if I can I do an hour in the afternoon and then another hour later).

It also depends on what I need to practice. If it’s a difficult piece I need to pull together – I might have to do 4-5 sessions like this a day. The point is to find what works for you and stick with it.

I’m calling it a practice log or a journal – but really it’s a type of map –

by keeping a journal you can see where you’ve been, where you are and where you’re going.

It’s a good idea to periodically go through some old journals to just kind of get a fix for where you’re at.

Keeping a practice journal can be a drag and a chore if you want to view it that way, but it can be hugely beneficial in seeing what it is you are actually getting done. If you make it a part of the practice ritual it will just be something you do.

For example, the first thing an experienced player will do before they play anything on a guitar is to see if it’s in tune. If you get used to just picking up the journal when you pick up a guitar to practice – it will become 2^nd nature.

Now that you’re writing it down – here are some things to address while you’re practicing:

Practice accurately.

You have to play slowly and accurately before you can play quickly and accurately.

Pay attention!

Can you make out all of the notes? Are you really nailing the rhythm? Are there any open strings ringing or unwanted notes? Are you practicing the same way that you’re going to play? Is the guitar in the same position when you practice as when you play in front of an audience?

[*Special Note: Paying attention requires concentration which is why you can’t really practice while you’re watching TV. You can play or warm up in front of a TV – you just can’t focus on the TV and the guitar at the same time. If you can’t pay attention to something try moving on. If you can’t move on, then stop and come back to it. You will get much more done this way that by just mindlessly running fingering patterns*]

Always use a metronome, recording or time keeping device when practicing.

Isolate problem areas.

If you are learning a piece, there are often several areas that need more attention that the rest of the piece. Isolate those areas (however small they may be) and develop them. When you have gotten more comfortable with the problematic areas – begin to practice sections before and after the area. Treat the problem area as a center and keep moving out from the center as necessary.

Do it right the first time.

Paying attention allows you to make sure that you’re practicing correctly. Practice correctly – play correctly. Inherent in this idea is that you’re practicing at a tempo you’re comfortable enough that you can tell if you’re playing it correctly.

Don’t go overboard.

Some people go from not practicing at all to trying to practice the entire day. Music is built off of experience, growth and endurance – none of which comes quickly. Moderation is a good thing. Occasionally think of the long term, and use the marathoner’s strategy of pacing yourself.

Persevere.

Establish a regimen and stick as close to it as you can. If you make practicing enjoyable – you’ll eventually start to look forward to it. It’s okay to stop and take breaks from practicing as a regimen, just don’t forget to start up again.

Don’t forget to play.

The whole point of practicing is to gain elements to utilize in playing music. Play whenever possible, desired and/or required. After all this is supposed to be enjoyable.

All of this advice works off of the idea that you have specific goals in mind when practicing. My suggestions for what to practice will be the subject of a later post.

I hope this helps!

-SC

If you like this post you may also like:

PRACTICE MAKES BETTER AKA PRACTICING PART I

PROPER POSTURE IS REQUIRED FOR PROPER PERFORMANCE – PRACTICING PART II

TENSION AND THE SODA CAN OR PRACTICING PART III

DEFINITIONS AND DOCUMENTS OR PRACTICING PART IV

.

PRACTICE WHAT YOU PLAY OR PRACTICING PART V

TESTING YOUR VOCABULARY OR PRACTICING PART VI

POSSESSION IS 9/10S OF THE LAW BUT PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING OR PRACTICING PART VII

Some Useful Online Practice Tools

.

FINDING THE DEEPER LESSON

MELVILLE, MADNESS AND PRACTICING – OR FINDING THE DEEPER LESSON PART 2

INSPIRATION VS. INTIMIDATION

What’s wrong with playing “Flight of the Bumblebee” for a world speed record?.

“The limits of my language are the limits of my world”

Posted on May 22, 2010 by GuitArchitecture

If you want to be a great guitarist you should try to develop and nurture passion for other art or music that has nothing to do with guitar and adapt or assimilate those things in your playing.

Story Time

Please allow me to share a story with you. This is a true story, but the names have been removed to protect the guilty.

Once upon a time, there was a doe-eyed child trapped in a 17 year old body who left his small town of 2,000 people and went to a big city to study guitar. The institution of learning he went to study guitar at was a very big place with several thousand musicians. At the absolute minimum it was completely overwhelming for him as an experience. He went to the school knowing his ass was going to get kicked – but not knowing that saying his ass would get kicked would be more like telling the parachuter mid jump when his/her chute wouldn’t open he/she might break a bone from the fall when they “bounced” (yes “bounced” is the technical term for this occurrence and yes, it happens often enough that a term needed to be developed).

It kind of broke him.

In addition to the culture shock of being in a city, rather than a place he described as “Deliverence with snow”, he found the school had a real focus on Jazz and anything non-Jazz was looked upon with complete derision. He was bombarded with fellow students and faculty telling him the music he liked – the music that was a part of his soul – was trash and he was wasting his time with it because Jazz was the only music that mattered. So he did what anyone from a small working class town would do, he became a walking middle finger to anything Jazz because he thought that it was the only way he could defend his identity. The moment that door was shut was the moment his undergrad experience was doomed.

Now to be fair, the blame for this was 50-50. He had no understanding of Jazz as a style.

Where he grew up in upstate NY, Classic Rock radio and top 40 was the staple and those were his primary means of musical exploration. But the problem was the curriculum was based around an academic buy-in for Jazz pedagogy, so if you knew nothing about it stylistically – there was no easy way in. It was just simply rammed down your throat and you either swallowed or spat it out.

In his lesson – a weekly 1/2 hour slot – he and his teacher went over a series of proficiency requirements that were necessary to pass the final exam. The student asked questions about why he needed this material and how he could utilize the material in the rock and metal music he was playing – but he was just told these were tools he needed to play Jazz. And given what we’ve said about his (now visceral) reaction to Jazz you can imagine how well this was received.

His second semester he found another teacher and this teacher was more understanding about what he was trying to do and who shared a lot of his interests. The two of them started delving into Japanese modes and other concepts and he actually got excited about what he was doing. The student asked his new teacher if they could just keep going in this direction instead of focusing on rote memorizations of reharmonized chord-solo renditions of tunes that he didn’t need solo renditions. The teacher said to talk with the chair of the department and get his approval.

The chair of the department was newly appointed, had a lot of work to do and was not happy with the prospect of meeting with this student. The student explained he had a very specific direction that he wanted to go in his playing, that this direction didn’t coincide with the narrow parameters of the proficiencies and then asked the chair if there was any way that he could be accommodated. The chair informed him that wasn’t what they did at the school. The purpose of the school (according to the chair) was to have students master that particular school’s style and then when the student got out he or she would have the rest of their carer to develop their own style.

The student said that while he realized he was only a student – the logic of the argument evaded him. Actually, in the interest of honest reporting and to exclude any pretense of articulation what he said was,

“Look I know I don’t know anything – but that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. There’s only 12 notes – that’s the substance. Everything else is style. What is the point of having 800 people all walking out of here and all sounding exactly the same? Isn’t my style the only thing that’s going to make me different from every other guitarist out there?”

The student was then told that was the way it was and he could either take it or leave it.

The student thanked the chair for his time, walked over to another office and submitted a change of major form.

Music is a language. If you learn it as a language – immersing yourself in it, learning vocabulary, speaking it to others as often as possible – you will gain fluidity in it.

I want to discus vocabulary for a moment and then discuss the issue of style. One way to think of licks is as musical vocabulary. As a musician, you learn a bunch of licks so you can communicate with other musicians. It’s similar to going on any trip or travel. You might not speak a foreign language – but you should at least learn how to say a few words or phrases to try to get you by.

If you only learn licks from one source –

it will be difficult to not sound like that source.

If I go to a show and see a guitar player I can tell you usually in a song or two who he’s listened to. If it’s only guitar players I probably won’t make it to song #3. Going back to the language analogy, if you grow up in New Jersey and everyone you know and speak with is from New Jersey – you’re going to have to work hard to get a Texas accent sounding authentic, much less an Irish or Spanish one. Do you have to learn other accents? No. No one is forcing you to do so but it’s important to realize that…

all of your experiences influence how you communicate with other people.

Hence the Wittgenstein quote in the article. For those of you who remember Orwell’s “1984” – there was the idea of newspeak, the language that kept getting smaller each year for the purposes of eradicating thoughtcrime. The less you experience in the world, the less you are able to express. This is why 13 year old children writing love songs do not have the lyrical content to truly plumb the depths of the soul, even though they are often supremely confident that they do.

If your experiences influence how you speak with other people then it stands to reason they can effect how you play with other people. If, for example, four guys in a room have only listed to, played and learned “Smoke on the water” – they’re not going to write “Giant Steps” on their own any time soon. They’re going to play “Smoke on the water” and if they do write something new, it will probably have a lot of similarities to “Smoke on the water”. (Traveler’s advisory – do not party with these guys.)

Adaptation and the hidden agenda

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t learn other people’s licks. It’s vital that you do – because you have to develop vocabulary, but I highly recommend you vary your sources. If you play guitar, try learning music played on other stringed instruments like violin, or from non-string performances like vocal lines. My rhythm playing is rhythmically informed by things like drum rudiments, flamenco foot work and rhythmic phonetics. My single line playing is rooted in rock, but there’s various Hindustani, Balkan, Arabic and Koto references that are specific to things I do.

Almost every gig I’ve ever played I got because I put energy into learning things that weren’t guitaristic and adapting them. You’ll never confuse my guitar with a Kayagum – but if I play a note with a sharp bend and crazy vibrato it doesn’t sound like a guitar lick either. It crosses a boundary and becomes something new. And here is the hidden agenda.

When it becomes new, it becomes yours and things that are yours have extra value.

In addition to this, try cultivating artistic influences from things that are not guitar related.

The painter Francis Bacon probably influenced me at least as much as Hendrix and his works are a model for me in expressing motion and fluidity through art. I’m passionate about books and films and I try to adapt anything worthwhile in those experiences into my playing.

Acquiring tastes

A funny thing happened to that student after he got out of school. He started playing with a lot of other players who had opened their minds instead of closing them and those people hipped him to a lot of music – including Ornette Coleman and Ornette was making some of the most wonderful music he had ever heard. The student found that when it wasn’t being force fed to him as the only viable form of musical expression that there were a lot of great artists and great music being made in the genre and years later (with a little maturity and perspective behind him) he became a fan and started adopting a number of ideas and approaches from the style into his playing.

The important thing is to find things that you are passionate about and explore, adapt and/or assimilate them to the fullest level you can.

The limits of your musical language are the limits of your style.

As always thanks for reading!

-SC

Deadlines are your best friend

Posted on May 16, 2010 by GuitArchitecture

WOAH!

This post moved. You can read here at guitagrip.com

Tension And The Soda Can Or Practicing Part III

Posted on April 27, 2010 by GuitArchitecture

Practicing Part III

In order to practice properly, attention needs to be paid to a number of different areas. Today’s post addresses some issues regarding fretting hand tension as a precursor to proper form in practicing.

Fretting Hand Positioning and Tension

Many guitarists begin playing guitar without being aware of how much tension they are exerting on their fretting hand. While the title refers to fretting hand fingers, hand tension is actually a complex coordination of muscles working in the hand and forearm. The concept here is to talk about hand tension as it relates to your ability to move your fingers freely.

Here is an example that may help explain how much of a performance issue this can be.

For the purposes of this example, let’s imagine that you have taken a break from the rigors of guitar practice and have gone to spend the day at muscle beach with your friend Charles Atlas. After arriving there and seeing miles and miles of Herculean figures – you have decided to show off to your friends and crush the can of soda you have been drinking.

Okay – hold your fretting hand out in front of you – like you were holding a soda can you were drinking from.

Really visualize the can. Try to feel the ice cold metal against the palm of your hand.

Okay, now try to crush it. But imagine that the can has been replaced with some infinitely strong material that can’t be crushed. You don’t want to crush the imaginary can – but truly struggle against it. If you’re doing the exercise properly, your arm is probably shaking from the exertion.

Okay – now try to move your fingers while you crush the can. You may be able to move them a little but it’s going to be very difficult. You should feel (or even see) a lot of tension in your forearm.

Now stop trying to crush the can. Wiggle your fingers. This should be much easier.

If you grip the guitar neck with too much tension, it’s the same as trying to crush the soda can. If you are carrying tension it will be very difficult to move your fingers freely.

What follows is an exercise that can help with proper hand tension.

Proper Fretting Hand Tension Exercise

Sit in a comfortable chair (preferably without armrests) with your guitar around your neck as if you were going to play (you are wearing a strap aren’t you? If not you may want to read the last post.)

Relax your fretting hand by letting your arm hang fully extended by your side. Wiggle your fingers a bit and try to relax as much as possible.

Take a deep breath. While inhaling on that breath, make a fist. As you exhale – fully release the fist. Just let your hand naturally relax into a position. Look down at your hand.

Note – this is your hand in a relaxed position.

Now, keeping your hand in position, bend your elbow and bring your hand up to the neck of the guitar as if you were going to play. Your fingers should be bent slightly at each knuckle (i.e. the fingers should be curved similar to the relaxed position).

Proper Fretting Hand Thumb Tension

Reverting back to the soda can example, it’s important that the thumb remain in the back of the neck as relaxed as possible as to not tense the rest of the hand. This is something that I never thought about until I had studied with Jack Sanders. So I need to thank him for bringing this to my attention in my own playing.

It’s also important to note that your hand position will change if you are doing a lot of string bending. While it is possible to bend strings with your fretting hand thumb in the middle of the neck, most people will be used to moving the thumb so that it is more on the bass string side of the fretboard to facilitate bending. Since this isn’t the majority of what most people play on guitar – I view bending hand position as the exception rather than the rule.

The thumb acts as a balance to pressure from the fingers; so the location of the thumb is very important. Ideally the thumb should be in the middle of the guitar neck and typically in line with the middle finger or between the middle and ring finger. What you are trying to do is put the thumb in an area of minimal tension.

Proper Fretting Hand Tension Exercise

Try playing a scale on the guitar. If you think that your thumb is squeezing the back of the neck hard, try removing the thumb from the back of the fingerboard while you are playing. Now gently and gradually, move the thumb back to the neck so that it is very lightly touching it. Repeat as necessary.

Obviously a huge component in hand tension is how the fingers are actually connecting with the strings and that will be the subject of the next post on practicing.

I hope this helps!

-SC

Proper Posture Is Required For Proper Performance – Practicing Part II

Posted on April 23, 2010 by GuitArchitecture

In the last post, I talked about some of the pre-requisites for setting up to practice. While I want to discuss specific issues with proper picking and fretting hand techniques, it’s important to address how the actual guitar is positioned when playing.

When practicing, it is imperative to practice the same way consistently so that performance is consistent.

A key component of this is posture.

First, a brief anecdote. When I started playing guitar, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to how I was practicing or how I was holding the guitar. I just paid attention to whether or not I was getting the notes out (more on what’s wrong with this in future posts). I started noticing my live playing was really inconsistent. Sometimes the solos I practiced came out fine and sometimes they were really sloppy. I initially attributed it to nerves or adrenaline, but after reading a number of books on performance I was introduced to the concept of “muscle memory”, and realized the root of my problem.

For those of you who have never heard of this term, when performing repetitive tasks synapses actually rewire themselves in your brain to short cut the mental processing behind the activity. This is known as “muscle memory”. Muscle memory is different from your dad’s memory of where he might have set his car keys down, and more like words carved in stone. On the plus side – if you’re doing things correctly – you don’t have to worry about it – but on the minus side if you have to fix something that’s ingrained in muscle memory – it takes a lot of effort to erase them.

Here’s an example that illustrates this idea.

If I am walking and need to tie my shoe lace – “tie my shoe” is a short cut for the following steps (or some variation):

Notice my shoe is untied
Stop walking
Bend down
Grab one lace per hand
Cross laces to opposite sides of shoe in an x shape
Tuck one lace under another
Pull laces taught
Move laces in opposite direction
Make a loop with the first lace (i.e. “bunny ears.”)
Cross one “ear” over the other, in the opposite order of your overhand knot.
Bend one loop over the other
Pass the tip of the bent ear through the hole
Pull the loops tight
Double knot if need be

Once you’ve mastered this skill, you probably don’t have to put any thought into it at all. You could easily have a conversation and do it at the same time. A complex list of processes have been broken down into a single mental shortcut in this case called “tie my shoe”.

In music, muscle memory works the same way. If you play a lick over and over again the same way your brain actually rewires itself so that the numerous physical events that go into playing “lick #7” in your brain just becomes a mental shortcut “lick #7”.

In my first person anecdote above, because my playing position varied between sitting, standing, squatting and lying down – I wasn’t developing proper muscle memory. Instead of learning one lick – my brain was trying to learn how to play that idea in a variety of contexts. This sounds small – but if you’ve ever been in a situation where you weren’t able to nail a part you normally can – you know what I’m referring to here.

The Solution?

My solution came in the form of a guitar strap.

Some people do not use guitar straps. In playing steel string guitar, I believe that a guitar strap is every bit as important as a guitar string. Again, if your hands are not in the same position when you practice as when you perform you will not have proper muscle memory and the chances of flubbing notes goes up dramatically.

The key to using a guitar strap is to make sure that the guitar sits on your frame the same way when you stand as when you sit.

Note:

You may be asking. Well – what about nylon string guitars? While it’s pretty rare to see nylon string guitarists use a strap, if you see a number of players you’ll notice that the majority of the good ones have very consistent posture. Posture is a big part of the classical pedagogical tradition and while flamenco guitar posture may be unorthodox with regards to the classical tradition, it is most definitely a consistent posture.

This is not to say that muscle memory isn’t flexible. You don’t have to have your hands in exactly the same position or expect total failure. If you’re playing live and you move around – your body will typically adapt to what’s going on and accommodate you. If you like to practice sitting(and many people do unless they’re practicing with a band) having a consistent instrument position will help you perform more consistently when you stand – which is likely how you are going to perform unless you’re used to performing when sitting down.

Give it a try. When practicing try adjusting your strap differently when you sit or when you stand and see if makes a difference over a couple of weeks. You might be surprised.

In the next post I’ll start the long process of addressing left and right hand placement, tension and the thumb (i.e. some common sense “secrets” that evade a lot of teachers and students).

Thanks for reading.

-SC

Practice Makes Better aka Practicing Part I

Posted on April 21, 2010 by GuitArchitecture

Probably the most commonly asked question of guitar teachers is some variant of, “How do I get better at (insert topic here)?” – which invariably leads to an answer of “practice”.

If you’re a rock guitarist like me, you probably won’t get much (if any) further clarification on this point as many instructors I’ve come in contact with don’t have an understanding of practicing other than repetition. Since practicing is such an absolutely vital step in gaining instrumental proficiency, it seems odd that proper practicing methods for guitar are misunderstood by so many.

There are a number of reasons for this. Speaking from personal experience, I do not come from a classical background. This is important to note because when you play an unamplified instrument in a concert hall (like a classical guitar) you need to make sure that you know how to project the sound, and that requires a specific focus on areas like proper technique, tone production and repertoire. So typically from the get-go there’s a concise emphasis on technique and repertoire and typically some level of addressing what and how to practice.

As someone who learned a lot by trial and error – with the emphasis on error – it’s really only within the last four years of teaching that made me go deep into practicing methodology. What follows is a series of observations on optimising the practice experience.

There are really two broad issues here – how and what to practice. So the first series of postings will deal with the “how” of practicing – optimal performance issues and methodologies and then delve into the “what” to practice.

**Note:

some of this may seem excessively rudimentary, but greatness is in the details. And if you’re striving for greatness it’s best to address some details early.

The First Prerequisite: The Guitar

Before examining any of the methodology of the text it is important to note all of the material presented here is dependent on a useable instrument in optimal playing condition.

If you’ve never had your guitar set up, or if you are not familiar with how to set up a guitar, I recommend taking your guitar to a qualified guitar repair person and having the instrument professionally adjusted.

For people who play primarily 6-string electric guitar, I recommend playing everything you practice on an acoustic as well.

There are several reasons for this:

1. In playing acoustic, there are no effects to mask performance flaws. If your playing is sloppy, it is something that you will become immediately aware of, particularly if you are recording. Listening to a recording of an acoustic will reveal every unintentional open string, choked note, finger squeak and any other unintentional noise.

2. Acoustic strings are typically heavier than electric strings. Playing acoustic guitar with proper technique will build strength and endurance that makes playing electric guitar much easier.

3. For the most part, any technique that you develop for electric guitar should be something that can be performed on acoustic guitar. It can be a humbling experience at best (and an ego shattering one at worst) to shed a hot lick on electric, think you have it down and then crash and burn when you try to play it on acoustic. I’ve seen this happen numerous times on unplugged shows and it’s always grim.

The Second Prerequisite: Practice Materials

There are several things I recommend to have with you when practicing.

1. A metronome or time keeping device. It’s VERY important to practice with a time keeping device. If a metronome doesn’t work for you, use a drum loop or have someone record percussion for you. If you practice out of time, you will play out of time.

2. A tuner. Ultimately it’s a good goal to be able to fine tune accurately by ear or by pitch, but since this skill can take a while to acquire, it’s a good idea to start with a tuner.

3. A note-book, notepad or (if using a computer) word processing application. This will be covered more in-depth later, but it’s important to be able to write everything down.

4. A recorder. Try to get in the habit of recording parts of your practice session. It doesn’t need to be a brilliant hi fidelity recording. You could use your cell phone as a recording device and probably record some video as well. The recording quality just needs to be something audible that you can review. In addition to being able to hear your performance. It can help you get used to the sound of your playing. If you get more into recording later, it will be less stressful, as you will have already had a lot of experience.

5. A guitar strap. Properly adjusted. (This step assumes you are playing a steel string guitar – nylon string classical guitar style has its own set of rules for proper guitar body placement when playing and performing. The point of this step is to have the guitar sit consistently on your body when practicing and performing. More on this later).

6. A comfortable chair (if you’re sitting).

7. A timer. Like an egg timer or a kitchen timer.

8. Goals. More on this later as well, but it’s important to have a very clear goal of what you’re trying to achieve. There are some goal oriented links and observations here.

Most of this can fit in a guitar case and set up in about a minute. The key is to not make any part of this an ordeal. If something is difficult, you’re probably much less likely to do it.

The next practice post will address posture, muscle memory and some other interesting ideas.

In the meantime, if you haven’t been doing so already make sure to warm your hands up with light stretching before strenuous play. There’s some basic overview information here, but it’s also worthwhile to mention that not everything on the internet is accurate or useful. So if you research something online and try to apply it and it hurts – STOP IMMEDIATELY.

This will be a good reminder for me to go over warm up routines in a future post.

I hope this helps!

-SC