Don’t be a Guitar Center doodle-wanker! A short tasty phrase is worth 10,000 notes.Did you ever think maybe you loved soloing too much? Sure it’s great to be able to whip out some impressive lead chops, but if this comes at the expense of the rest of your playing, you might want to reevaluate your practice regimen.

There are many more elements to great guitar playing than just shear speed; for any doubters: take a listen to some David Gilmour-era Pink Floyd; if you don’t get it now, I give up.

Rhythm is a key element to expressive soloing; so, practice rhythmic playing. This goes beyond just figuring out tricky syncopations and sequences for scales and arpeggios. Any kind of rhythm playing -especially studying songs in genres you are unfamiliar with - will enhance your lead skills.

Think you got chops? Can you play a Bossa? Swing like Bird?

The more music you explore, the better your playing will be. I encourage all my students to study one book: The Berklee Modern Guitar Method. This book forces you to understand music, and how to “see” it on your fretboard. It isn’t easy. Neither is getting good at guitar.

Phrasing is another oft neglected element. This is what people often call “soul”. There are infinite ways to play a note, explore them. Practice your vibrato: short and fast, deep and slow… A bend is where one note is pushed into another; don’t settle for out of tune bends!

To practice bends:

• Play the note you are going to bend, play the note you are going to bend to, bend the note, and then check it again against the fretted note. They need to match, perfectly!
• Repeat until you can accurately bend to your target note every time.
• Practice bending to different intervals: half-step up, whole-step, one and a half steps…
• Practice sliding into and out of notes; Steve Vai is a master of this.
• Practice bending notes with your tremolo; use the same method as with bends to make sure you are in tune.

Don’t be a Guitar Center doodle-wanker! A short tasty phrase is worth 10,000 notes.

There is one thing I always tell my students: you can’t think about playing guitar and play well at the same time. Thinking about playing is the same as analyzing it, a function of the left side of your brain.

Doing creative things is controlled by the right side of your brain. When you start using too much of the left side of your brain it prevents your right-brain from generating the “images” necessary for a good performance. In order to play music properly you must “hear” the music as you play it.

In one of his instructional videos, Jimmy Bruno mentions seeing pictures on the fretboard. Whether you are hearing or seeing, what you are not doing is thinking in terms of descriptive sequences: “first finger, third fret, fifth string…” These analytical (left-brain) processes are useful when learning something musical (a scale, a chord shape, etc.) but you must move beyond this in order to think of a scale or chord as a picture or a sound. (Right brain) How do you get to this point? As usual: practice, practice, practice…

The two sides of your brain

If you watch sports, I’m sure you have heard the announcer refer to an athlete as playing “unconscious”. Whether it’s hitting four three-pointers in a row or running off a series of birdies, what is being exhibited is a zen-like state where the athlete is not thinking about their actions, where they are instead focusing on the task at hand, as opposed to the thousands of people watching them, the money they could win or lose, the championship trophy…

Something I hear all the time while teaching lessons is: “I was able to play it perfectly at home, I don’t why I can’t do it now”. The problem is that the student is distracted by the fact that I am watching: they are thinking about not making mistakes (the kiss of death!) vs. focusing on what the scale should sound like/look like. This ability to focus on the task at hand is very difficult, and the reason why Tiger Woods is a very wealthy man.

The good news is that focus can be attained by anyone willing to work hard enough at it; if you do something enough times you will be able to learn to execute if perfectly. What it really comes down to is if you love what you are doing enough to be willing to do it over and over and over again until it becomes a physical reaction, instead of a mental procedure.

Imagine your best gigs. Didn’t your playing seem to flow effortlessly, even though you hardly thought about your playing? This was because you could “hear” yourself, you were focused on the sound of your instrument, the flow of your songs.  Now think about a bad gig. You couldn’t remember the changes, you forgot the arrangements, your solos felt stale… Pretty soon this is all you can think about, which inevitably leads to more mistakes, which bums you out, which is a distraction… You get the point.

Dimebag Darrell had no recollection of recording his solo for “Cowboys from Hell”, because he was blackout drunk. Eric Clapton doesn’t remember five years of his life (heroin), even though they coincide with his tenure in Cream, which many feel was his greatest playing! I’m not advocating drug/alcohol abuse here.

My point is that they were able to do this because even while “unconscious” their brains knew how to execute ideas they had rehearsed countless times. Use your practice time to learn something to the point where you no longer have to think about it: learn it, and then forget it!

Related Posts:

Sing! – Using Vocalization to Master the Guitar
Lifting Weights – Structuring Your Guitar Practice Regimine
The Mental Game: Preparing Yourself to be a First-Rate Guitarist

For some reason many guitarists look upon reading music as a bad thing. I’m sure most of you have met/known a guitarist who has said, “I don’t want to learn how to read, it will @#% up my playing”. Maybe you yourself have said this? This is like saying, “Yes, I am an ignoramus, and I embrace it!”

That may sound harsh, but it’s the truth. It is one thing to not learn to read, but to bash others for doing so is extremely narrow-minded. The other school of thought on this is: “Jimi Hendrix didn’t know how to read”. Ok, are you a genius? If not, learning to read will help you.

Trust me: Hendrix had his music theory mastered, even if he couldn’t put scientific labels on what he was doing. For us mortals, we should use all the tools we can get our hands on!

I worked in a music store for a year. One of the teachers took me under his wing, so to speak. First, he advised me that I would never make any money with music. Well, I certainly haven’t gotten rich, but I understand his point: if you are interested in making money, music is a lousy way to go about doing it. When I told him that I had studied with Joe Satriani he asked:

“Did he teach you how to read?”

“No”, I replied.

“He did you a disservice”.

A disservice?  This was the first time I had ever heard anyone say anything even remotely disparaging about my having studied with the great Satriani. Frankly, I was indignant. But you know what? He was right: since I have learned to read, my musicianship has excelled, and the better I read the better I play.

Victor Wooten, bass virtuoso

Just to hammer this idea home, I’ll share another story. I was a teacher at the Reikes Center (Redwood City, CA) for a couple of years. Victor Wooten was a friend of the Center and would do clinics about every six months or so. (In case you don’t know who Victor Wooten is, he is one of the best bassists in the world) So, while checking out his clinic I tossed Victor a softball question (since many of my guitar students were in attendance):

“Would you recommend that musicians learn to read music?”

I don’t remember his verbatem response, but to paraphrase it: “Duh”.

Learning to read on guitar is very difficult: the same notes appear on different strings and in different positions. How are you supposed to know which position to play while reading? Well, it takes a lot of work.

I began to seriously study reading (on the guitar) when I was 24. Fifteen years later I’m still working on it. In the meantime I have learned to play Classical and Jazz, which has made me a much better Rock player. Reading forces you to learn where your notes are on your neck, and imparts an understanding of rhythm, the musical element most neglected by guitarists.

There are two methods I would recommend. If you want to learn to read from a Classical standpoint, I would try Aaron Shearer’s “Classical Guitar Technique” series. If you want to learn from a Jazz standpoint, I would use William Leavitt’s “A Modern Method for Guitar” series (Berklee). If you want to pick your own method, go for it! No matter what, if you learn to read you will become a better player, I guarantee it!

Related Posts:

Sing! – Using Vocalization to Master the Guitar
Lifting Weights – Structuring Your Guitar Practice Regimine
The Mental Game: Preparing Yourself to be a First-Rate Guitarist

I can never stress enough the need to approach the guitar as a musician, not just as a guitar player. Sure, you need to learn many techniques to get the most out of your instrument; however, once you begin to master these techniques you should concentrate on developing your own unique voice.

Guitar mastery means being able to present your ideas without strain, to effortlessly be able to transfer the sounds in your head to your fingers, and then into the realm of audible music; in essence, to sing through your instrument. Singers do this unconsciously. Singers don’t think about how to constrict their vocal cords in order to hit a note. It happens naturally. You should strive to attain this fluency on your instrument.

Here are some exercises to help you move forward in this direction -

Sing a phrase and then try to play it.

George Benson, famous for doubling his guitar lines with his voice

If you “can’t” sing then you better start practicing; every musician should be able to sing, to some degree. Sing an idea that pops in your head and try to play it. If you can’t think of something original try thinking of a melody from a commercial, a song, etc.Now play this on your guitar.

First thing you will need to do is to find your starting note. Sing your phrase and find that first note on your fret-board. Now, figure out the rest of the phrase. As you study music you will learn to recognize scales and arpeggios, and especially intervals. If this is not easy for you, then consider this an area that you should improve on.

Mimic vocal melodies on the guitar.

This is a great exercise for improving your phrasing: how you actually play a note. If a singer bends a note try to match his bend. If he uses vibrato try to match it: does he immediately use vibrato or does he sustain the note and then apply vibrato? Is it a fast or slow vibrato, shallow or deep?

You might be surprised how much you can learn from this exercise.  Furthermore, these are the same techniques you will use when you try to figure out a song or solo by ear. Axiom: if you cannot “hear” something you cannot actually play it. This doesn’t mean that you cannot finger the chords and pluck them, but if you can’t hear in your head how you want your guitar to sound you will never be able to achieve a very satisfying tone.

Play and sing notes simultaneously.

(Think George Benson) This is a cool technique and a lot of fun. I saw Mike Keneally open up for Steve Vai awhile back and he was harmonizing in seconds with his guitar. That’s taking all this to the uber-extreme, but hey, I was impressed. Good luck!

Related Posts:

To Read or Not To Read, That is the Question – Why Guitarists Should Learn to Read Music
Lifting Weights – Structuring Your Pracitce Regimine
The Mental Game: Preparing Yourself to be a First-Rate Guitarist

It seems like whenever people decide to get more serious about their guitar playing “The Modes” inevitably come up. There are countless books and videos on the subject and yet I rarely have students come to me really understanding them, either how to accurately define them or recognize them. Understanding the Modes from a theoretical point of view is essential to anyone who wants to use them in their playing, but that will be covered somewhere else. What I want to share here is how I teach my students to hear and recognize the modes.

I do this by giving examples of songs that use them. By having an audio example to dwell on it is very easy to hear what a mode sounds like, what its essence is. So without further ado, here is a list of some songs you are hopefully familiar with, and their corresponding modes.

• Major (Ionian): “La Bamba”, Ritchie Valens; “Walking on Sunshine”, Katrina and the Waves; “Always with Me, Always with You”, Joe Satriani.
• Dorian: “Oye Como Va”, Carlos Santana (no, he didn’t write it but you know his version best); “Fire Woman”, The Cult.
• Phrygian: “Sober”, Tool; “Meeting of the Spirits”, Mahavishnu Orchestra; “Symphony of Destruction”, Megadeth
• Lydian: “Flying in a Blue Dream”, Satriani (intro: C Lydian); “Come Original”, 311 (intro: D Lydian); “The Riddle”, Steve Vai
• Mixolydian: “Summer Song”, Satriani; “Down”, 311
• Natural Minor (Aeolian): “The Thrill is Gone”, B.B. King; “Nothing Else Matters”, Metallica
• Locrian: “Theme from South Park”, Primus
• Harmonic Minor: “Still Got the Blues”, Gary Moore; anything by Yngwie Malmsteen
• Phrygian Dominant: “Hordes of Locusts”, Satriani; “Come out and Play”, The Offspring (that Arabian sounding hook that got caught in your head; you know it did!); anything else by Yngwie
• Melodic Minor: “Summertime”, George Gershwin
• Aeolian Dominant: “Sleepwalk”, the Farina siblings (my fav version is Danny Gatton’s)

Some notes on the above:

There are a lot of tunes listed from Joe Satriani and that’s because his music is usually modal in nature, and thus a good example of a specific mode. Even though I make jokes about Yngwie it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate him as a player. I do, but everyone makes jokes about Yngwie, don’t they? Harmonic Minor and Phrygian Dominant are more or less the same thing, as are Melodic Minor and Aeolian Dominant. This is a slippery slope, as there are people who would say the same about the modes of the Major scale. Let’s not worry about this. This article is not supposed to be overly technical.

Take a listen to the above tunes and see if you can hear the characteristic sounds of their modes. Better yet, learn how to play them!

Related Posts:

What to Expect From  Guitar Lessons
10,000 Hours – How to be a Great Guitarist

As you may have noticed, I like to use sports analogies. When trying to motivate students to practice (as opposed to just noodling and playing their favorite songs) I often ask them this: would you go out on the football field without hitting the weight room?

Now I figure some of you (being “true” musicians) are probably vehemently opposed to sports, but work with me on a metaphoric level here. The point is this: if you try to play football without being in excellent shape you will get killed, or at least broken.

You should approach your guitar practice in the same way. You know you want to go out there and kill, so why not do everything you can to be in the best shape possible?

There  are many possible “work-outs”, the point being that you should do something besides riffing and playing songs, something to exercise your mind as well as your hands. I have two favorite routines.

Method One is working on Ed Leavitt’s Modern Method for Guitar, playing my steel-string acoustic. Bigger strings are like lifting weights. After working on these studies my brain is tuned up and my hands feel powerful; now when I jump on “Eruption” (or some other shred-fest) those little dinky electric strings feel like wet noodles!

"Pumping Nylon", Scott Tenant

Method Two: Scott Tenant’s Pumping Nylon. Not surprisingly, I play these exercises on my classical guitar. In fact, working on classical music is a great way to improve your Rock chops, just look at Randy Rhoads.

Speaking of Randy Rhoads… Over New Year’s I picked up a gig with an Ozzy tribute band. I had one week to learn a set’s worth of Rhoads-era Ozzy (plus “Bark at the Moon”). People were impressed that I was able to do this in such a short period of time. First of all, I was very familiar (from a listening perspective) with the material. More importantly, I was able to quickly memorize the various themes and figures of the solos because I have an in-depth knowledge of scales and arpeggios.

When you have studied music extensively you can easily get inside a player’s head. Every guitarist has pet licks, ways they like to approach theory and licks. The more you study music, the quicker you can see where they are coming from.

Ok, back to the sports theme. The main point is this: you have to exercise your brain and hands in challenging ways. There is nothing wrong with learning other people’s songs; in fact, I encourage it. However, if you don’t want to just end up sounding like a clone, you should take some time to study outside your comfort zone.

Now for some more work-out pointers:

• Victor Wooten warms up for his clinics by shooting hoops, not by playing scales
• Zakk Wylde’s tip for playing better: lift weights and eat steak.

What is your work-out going to be?

I love this time of year: the NBA playoffs! I love watching high-caliber sports, so when it comes to playoff-time I spend some time in front of the old boob-tube. I often think of analogies between music and sports because I think great musicians and great athletes share a lot in common; no, not just that they are big-headed dicks. Both athletes and musicians must devote much of their lives to preparation.

As John Wooden (coach of many championship UCLA basketball teams) once said, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail”.   This is a golden axiom which can easily be applied to just about anything. As a musician you must be systematically devoted to preparation, and the quest for constant improvement. If ever you succumb to the belief that you are really good, you have become complacent, which is the kiss of death!

Andres Segovia

For example, I know that after years of diligent practice and hard work that I am a good guitarist.  Compared to your average axe-slinger I might even kick some ass. But then there is Steve Vai, Joe Pass, Andres Segovia… These are the guys that make me want to practice every day, the reasons that I will never be content with my playing.

Which brings me back to sports: last night Kobe Bryant missed almost half his free-throws. He still scored 36 points, LA still won the game, but at half-time he was so disgusted with himself he could barely answer an interviewer’s questions. This is the greatest player in the game today. Do you think he puts his feet up and just waits for the next game? Joe Satriani still practices eight hours a day.

Let me repeat that: JOE SATRIANI STILL PRACTICES EIGHT HOURS A DAY!

This is your competition, except unlike team sports you can still score style-points. You probably won’t smoke Satch in a head-cutting duel but if you work hard on developing yourself as a player and an individual you can still carve a niche for yourself in the guitar world.

Learn to read!

One thing that I still constantly work at is sight-reading. I learned to read on guitar using Aaron Shearer’s “Classic Guitar Technique” method books, which also taught me how to finger-pick.  Currently, I am still trying to make it through the three William Leavitt books: “A Modern Method for Guitar”.

Making it doesn’t mean playing through the book and saying, “Ok, I played every exercise”. It means that you can open any page and read/play it in a competent fashion, as well as actually absorbing the knowledge there so that you can employ it in your own music.

There are many other books I have used as well, they are included in the bibliography of my new instruction manual. I have stressed this in other blogs but I can’t stress it enough: learn how to read! This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn tunes, figure things out by ear, etc. But you need to develop yourself as a musician, not just as a guitarist.

Another great resource I have discovered is: www.good-ear.com. This a free website dedicated to helping  you develop recognition of intervals and chords. I began every day for a whole year in college with ear-training on the piano; without that training I wouldn’t be where I am today. Developing your ear is just as important as learning to read, and here’s a free resource. Use it!

One last sports analogy: “If you are going to play football you can’t just run out and hit the field, you have to hit the weight-room first”. Ok. One, two, three: break!

Related Posts:

To Read or Not To Read, That is the Question – Why Guitarist Should Learn to Read Music
Lifting Weights – Structuring Your Guitar Practice Regimine