Eugene's Trick Bag (Steve Vai Guitar Cover)

This Was #TUNEICEF 2019!

It's done! All tracks mixed and uploaded, the launch party a roaring success (more on that in a bit) and you find me mopping the sweat from my brow and contemplating all the glorious collaborations that 2020 may have to offer our little community... but first, a run down of the album (available at https://tuneicef.bandcamp.com/album/tuneicef-2019 )

“Litter” - The Ladykillers. One of mine that has (more or less) stood the test of time since the late 90s, given a rejig and a lick of paint as I'm planning to revisit and finish up these songs next year, finally do a version I can be happy with!

“Winds Of Change” - Phil Matthews aka The Village (https://www.thevillage.me.uk/ ) - our stalwart contributor, Phil has been lending his classic guitar pop material to this project since 2015, and his stuff is always a joy to hear.

“Misfortune” - The Formidable Ale Society. One of my old mates from the mid-2000s who overcame an astonishing lack of instrumental ability to churn out a clutch of classic songs, which I put a bit of spit and polish on to make a presentable version of!

“Hindenburg (Manoeuvring In The Dark Mix) – A Short Dark Stranger (https://ashortdarkstranger.bandcamp.com/ ) Hailing from Leeds, another old mate of mine from music college waaaaay back when, with a unique (and utterly demented) brand of electro-pop! If you happen to get the chance to see him perform.... take it!

“Who We Are” - Jonezy (http://jonezyuk.co.uk/ ) - the one, the only! If you haven't seen or heard this man yet, go out and find him! Jonezy is a bona fide local legend, an absolutely explosive live performer full of energy, with a great pop sensibility. Full on hip hop with huge singable choruses, and I really do hope we can collaborate on something in 2020.

“Third Sea” - Beth Hartshorne (https://www.facebook.com/Beth.Hartshorne/ ) - another regular contributor, Beth is a superbly talented singer songwriter with a folk edge and a fantastic voice. Again, another artist I hope I can work with in the coming year!

“Stairway To Euphoria” - Rory McKeating. The first student track! This instrumental is Rory's first go at writing a song influenced by Led Zeppelin and Polyphia.

“These Days” - James Martin. What, you thought I was going to make my students do a song and not do one myself?

“Day By Day” - Graham Waller. Another student track, Graham did the guitars and bass and wrote the lyrics, none too shabby!

“The Freeway” - Wolfie Wickes. Aged just 10, Wolfie has managed to craft a really catchy pop song, and partial credit to mum Lucy for helping out with lyrics!

So that's the album – onto the gig!

With our regular venue under refurbishment, I was lucky enough to find a replacement in Loughborough's Cask Bah, which is a fantastic little venue right in the town centre. Craig the owner is a die hard live music fan, and he's really thought about what bands need and how to cater for them – the result being that we had PA, half a drumkit and amplification lined up ready and waiting!

I kicked things off with a couple of acoustic tunes and a little explanation of exactly what was going on, and then handed the reins over to Jonezy, who proceeded to blow the roof off with an absolutely storming set, an energy level more suited to Wembley than a little pub on a wet Sunday evening! Once again proving he is absolutely one of the best live performers round the area, the guy is a legend.

Wolfie and I took to the stage to perform Freeway next, and following Jonezy was daunting enough for me, let alone Wolfie on his first ever gig, but he handled himself well and very much enjoyed the chance to crank his guitar through Craig's beautiful 1979 Marshal valve amp!

Next up, Dan Porter and Sam Gascgoine laying down a few blues tunes with me on bass – the boys soared through “Parisienne Walkways”, “Hideaway”, “I Saw Her Standing There”, “Walking By Myself” and a medley of “Johnny B Goode”, “Blue Suede Shoes”, and “Great Balls Of Fire”, and despite a wardrobe malfunction and an impromptu guitar switch, they were absolutely on fire! A good few jaws dropped watching them, and these two are only fourteen! After repeated calls for an encore, I led them through “Mustang Sally”, and despite never having played it before, the pair of them nailed it – the future of the blues is very definitely in safe hands.

Beth Hartshorne followed that with a stunning acoustic set – brilliant songs, fantastic vocals and as a former teacher I'm pleased to see Beth had been clearly been practicing as she was laying down some very nifty fingerstyle patterns. Keep an eye out for her, she's got real talent.

Seeing as Dan's grandparents had just shown up, we threw together an impromptu performance if “Sweet Home Alabama” with Dan on lead, Sam on drums, Tom (our dep for the night) on bass, me on vocals and rhythm guitar with Beth helping out on backing vocals. It was at this point I started to notice that the cough and cold I've been carrying for the past few weeks was not going to leave me alone.. kudos to the band though, they were rocking!

Then it was time for Dave The Rock Band – or rather, half of it, featuring former student and Superhero Dep Tom Hetzel filling in on bass for us, who'd managed to learn pretty much all our set in the space of two days! We blew through Van Halen, Killers, Kings Of Leon, Kaiser Chiefs to a rioutous reception and made it all the way to the Dave signature song, “The One And Only” by Chesney Hawkes (come on, you KNOW it's a truly great song) before my voice gave out completely..

..at which point all that remained, with the one remaining note left in my vocal range, to thank everyone who had helped out, to thank everyone who had showed up, to thank Craig for his brilliant little venue and for having us, and to wish one and all a very happy Christmas!

And with that, I'll sign off the blog the exact same way. Thanks everyone, and a very happy Christmas and New Year – see you in 2020!

Composition For Dummies Pt. 4 – The Recording (2nd Part)

Let's begin this month's post with a quick recap. Your guide is down, drums and bass are recorded and now your next job is building the track up with guitars and keyboards.

First thing to be aware of – the vocal melody. EVERYTHING you do is in support of this. You need to be aware of the notes, the rhythmic placement, the frequencies and the placing in the stereo spectrum and reverb levels. So you really need to ensure that you're working with a guide track.

Consider chord voicings that “frame” the melody rather than encroach on it's space – for example, classic rock tunes tend to have higher pitched vocals, so chugging power chords will sit nicely underneath them, but the Smith's King Of Jangle Johnny Marr has often talked about capoing his guitar parts to sit above Morrissey's distinctive lower pitched vocals.

Consider dynamics – how to build a rhythm part for a verse that develops. A good trick is to keep the first half of the verse sparse and gently weave in another layer behind the vocals in the second half. A great example of this is in the classic “Sweet Child O' Mine” - whilst Izzy strums the D, Cadd9 and G chords, during the first half Slash hits a higher chord voicing at the 10^th, 8^th and 3^rd frets, holding it for a bar before doubling Izzy's open chord voicings but picking through them as arpeggios.

Consider tones and texture – do you want an “in your face” hard distorted sound for something like grunge, punk or thrash metal? Or are you looking for something gentler, perhaps blending acoustic sounds highlighted by clean (or clean-ish) electric single notes and chord fragments, as exemplified by bands like the Rolling Stones?

Once you've made your choices and worked up the guitar parts, it's time to track them. Every studio I've ever recorded at has always doubled the basic electric rhythm track, one hard left, one hard right. This gives a nice fat sound that leaves plenty of room for the vocals in the centre. Additional texture parts can be brought in towards the centre slightly, but always ensure that the centre is for the vocal line. Just as the singer always gets centre stage, the vocals always get the centre of the stereo spectrum.

EQ is a powerful tool here, and one of the key reasons for having a guide track – although most audio software has EQ plugins for “Male Rock Vocals”, “Female R&B Vocals” etc, the simple fact is that every voice is unique and you're going to need to tailor the EQ to your singer. Solo the vocal track (ie mute all the other stuff) and boost a frequency. Change that frequency until you find a sweet spot that boosts the vocal in the way you like and start cutting stuff that is too tinny and too boomy. Then, make sure you're cutting that frequency (not necessarily completely, but at least slightly) from any guitar parts that are playing alongside the vocals. You might lose something from the guitar sound, but the overall mix will be better – sometimes a really good, full, rich guitar sound actually works against you in a mix by covering frequencies needed by the vocals. Don't worry. When the guitar solo comes in, you won't have to share those frequencies.

Speaking of solos (assuming you have one) I tend to put them in the centre where the vocals would be, with ambience levels (reverb, delay) to taste. If you have a particular song in mind as a model for production values, this is a good place to reference it – something like AC/DC will have solos very upfront with little reverb and no delay, whereas a Pink Floyd solo will often have a hefty chunk of reverb and delay synchronised to the song's tempo.

Turning our attention to keyboards.... oh boy. You see, the problem here is that keyboards can mean damn near anything. Splodgy synths, piano, strings, brass... each one of these presents a different problem. So we'll limit our focus to what are probably the two most common sounds – piano and strings.

Now, far and away the easiest and most flexible way to go is not to record the sound of the keyboard at all, but to use the MIDI output to trigger the samples stored in your computer's audio software (if that doesn't make sense, then Google “MIDI” as this is a topic far too big to be addressed in a single blog post.. I'll get to it in time!). If you have the capability on your audio software (I use Cubase, but popular packages include Logic, Ableton and Pro Tools which all have this function), designate your track as “stereo”

For most piano-led songs, I find that emphasising the low end, the no-man's land between guitar and bass, works a treat in filling out a song's production without stepping on the toes of the guitar and vocals, and the now familiar EQ approach can be applied too – find which frequencies are emphasised in the vocals and cut them from the piano. If it's a guitar-based song with piano, cut the emphasised guitar frequencies too – if it's piano led, cut the frequencies from the guitar.

For strings and pads it's the same approach, although for actual melodic string parts I find that placing them above the vocals in terms of pitch works very well to help a chorus ring out, and a healthy dump of reverb can provide that Phil Spector-style ambience. A trick I use when I want a pad to be present but barely noticeable – felt, rather than heard, so to speak – is to set the reverb level to 100%, meaning that only the reveberated signal is heard, none of the “dry” signal. This provides a ghostly background wash of sound which can be very effective.

So ends this month's info dump! I hope this is of use to some of you out there – remember, TUNEICEF 2019 is alive and kicking and any contributed tracks will be welcome, and we'll be rocking the Cask Bah on Sunday December 15^th to launch this year's album!

Prince - 1999 (Solo Acoustic Guitar Cover)

Composition For Dummies Pt. 3 – The Recording (First Part - Guide Track, Drums and Bass)

So the time has finally come to “do the demo”! You've got music, lyrics, you're really feeling like you've got something a bit special and you're desperate to go about committing it to tape (well, hard drive).

Thing is – how do you actually go about it? Quite often, you actually find that your ideas aren't 100% fully formed, and nor can they be – you need to hear them to work out what needs editing, tweaking, moving, shortening, lengthening etc. Many times, you'll find that what worked in your head doesn't quite work when you hear it played back.

This is where the guide track comes in. This is going to be just you with a simple rhythm guitar (or piano, or whatever you've written the song on) along with ideally a rough vocal. The vocal doesn't need to have finished lyrics, or indeed any lyrics – what you're doing is find where the melody is going to be, as all your other parts need to be arranged with the idea of supporting that melody.

Now, if you're recording using a computer based set up running software like Logic, Pro Tools or (my personal choice) Cubase, you can actually see the waveform of the track, and this lets you sort out the structure. You can make virtual cuts to delineate verse, chorus, bridge etc. and “paint” those sections different colours, which makes rearranging things far easier. You can experiment with (for example) maybe cutting the length of the second verse and lengthening the chorus. Maybe a bar's break before coming in with the guitar solo for a bit of extra impact.. these are all ideas that you can experiment with before settling on the perfect song structure.

Once you've got your structure, I like to re-record the guide to make everything a little more organic and even sounding, and then it's time to get recording in earnest.

First up, drums. I'm fortunate enough to have a small electric kit which allows me to send MIDI pulses straight to Cubase to activate the drum samples, and for any project studio I would really recommend one. Don't worry about it's built in sounds, you're using it to trigger samples so as long as you've got MIDI out you're in business. Certainly, I've found learning the basics of playing drums a damn sight easier than programming drum machines!

Once the drums are done, I go in and tidy them up (there's a reason I'm not a drum teacher...) quantising and clearing up any mistakes, adjusting dynamics etc. Another good trick is to duplicate the drum track twice – the first one I wipe everything but the kick drum, set the EQs and compression (most audio software has good presets to help with this), the second track is just snare with EQ, compression and usually a decent chunk of reverb. Reverb is something that's nice on a snare but you really don't want on a kick, and the original track I treat as an “overhead”. Now you've got dedicated kick, snare and overhead – professional engineers will often mic each drum individually and treat them as such along with an overhead, but I don't tend to have the patience for that.. one day!

With drums down, alongside your rerecorded guide track, the next step is bass. When working out a bassline I like to make sure I've got the kick drum heavily boosted in my headphones as root note + kick drum is really the basis for any bassline, and quite often it can be all you need – less is very often more in this regard. Lay back and try and play as behind the beat you dare, because most of us have a tendency to speed up as we play and this can often impart a “nervous” feel to the track. You really want your timing to be rock solid here to build a solid foundation along with the drums.

With the bassline recorded, compression is a good idea to ensure a tight punchy sound. Check your EQ to make sure it's not boosting the same frequencies as the kick drum – you want your boost close but not overlapping as otherwise you'll have a messy low end as both instruments compete for the same frequencies. Panning is not really something that works down in these low registers, and neither is reverb, so make sure you've got your EQ together to ensure the bottom end, the foundation of your track, is nice and clear.

Right, with a solid foundation for your track, next month we'll take along at building up textures with the guitars and keyboards! See you then, and don't forget TUNEICEF LIVE! Sunday December 15^th at the Cask Bah in Loughborough.

Composition For Dummies Pt. 2 -Lyrics

I must admit, I've been trying to didge this one for a while, for one simple reason – I SUCK at writing lyrics.

But then it occurred to me – if I was naturally a Morrissey, a Paul Weller or Jarvis Cocker, and lyrics just somehow came to me out of the ether.. well, how would I help any of my students who were less fortunate?

So maybe me sucking at writing lyrics is a blessing in disguise, because in order to get anything half decent I really have to work at it.

Now, there are as many ways to write lyrics as there are people to write them, but here's the way I like to try and go about things...

I tend to like to describe a situation, to tell a story with my lyrics and for that to work, I need a few things.

Subject – who is this about? Is it me? Is it about anyone specific close to me? Or is it an imagined character in a situation I've dreamed up, as a sort of “straw man” to try and make some sort of point? (side note – I never do politics in songs, apart from the very frst one I wrote, which was an anti-Vietnam War song... written in 1995.... yeah..) Where is the character, is he/she at home, out, running from or to something?

Context – why is the character in the situation they're in? Are they leaving home for the first time? Leaving or beng forced out of a shared/ family hime?

Second order context – this is less easy to explain, so let me give you an example – you've extablished that the character is leaving home.. so why? Thrown out for having an affair? A relationship just run its course? Do you include both sides perspective in the story?

Another useful method is what I call the “keyword/brainstorm” method: pick a subject – let's say cars, for the sake of argument. Next, try and think of any and every interesting theme associated with the subject – so in our example we would be thinking of terms like power, speed, racing etc. Then set yourself the task of coming up with a first line, no more than that – keep the goals small and manageable – before long you've got somethig like “pedal to the metal in a gasoline dream”.

Yes, it's not exactly Shakespeare, but it would suit Bon Jovi down to the ground.

So with this in mind, go forth and brainstorm! See you next month.

A Dublin Day

Niccolo Pagannini Caprice No. 24 (Guitar Cover)

Composition For Dummies – Just How DO You Write A Song? (Pt. 1)

TUNEICEF is well and truly upon us, students and myself are beavering away on our songs for this year (and if anyone fancies getting in on this, just drop me a line), and as usual one of the biggest questions I face from students who have never tried their hand at writing is “Where do you start?”. This is a fair point – most songs you hear on the radio are pretty heavily produced, layered vocals, drum loops etc – and when you hear the finished product you do wonder just how the hell this thing came to be.

So the trick is to start small. Find a couple of songs that you like, and start to listen critically to figure out what you like abut them. Doing this with my students, I divide things up into four areas:

Melody – the tune itself. Are there any noticeable leaps or changes that catch the ear? Do you hear high held notes in the chorus as opposed to busier, more syncopated rhythms in the verse? Even subtle things such as the verse being phrased on an offbeat whereas the chorus comes in on a downbeat can make a real difference. Those with a more experienced ear might try an identify the interval that the melody comes in on - frequently not the root of the underlying chord (as you might expect) but it's 3^{rd. Understanding little tricks like this can kickstart your writing.}

Rhythm – anything from the tempo, the time signature to any noticeable rhythmic patterns that can become a songs' hallmark. A good example of this would be the Rolling Stones' classic “Sympathy For The Devil” - the immediately recognisable syncopated 16ths drive the song and act as a “hook”.

Harmony – the chords behind the tune. Are they diatonic (all within a key) or do they contain notes from outside the home key? Do they follow a recognisable pattern such as I, V, vi, IV? Do they contain any interesting extensions such as 7ths, 9ths etc.? A good example of this would be the Smith's “Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now” which revolves around the wistful yet melancholic sound of the major 7^th.

Texture – this concerns the production values of the recording. What instruments dominate? Guitar? If so, acoustic, clean electric, distorted, mildly overdriven? Or perhaps the song revolves around the piano? Or a synth pad?

Once you've got these factors pinned down, start mixing and matching – for example, one of my students picked “Friday I'm In Love” by the Cure – noticeable for it's chord sequence and arpeggios in the backing - and “Bohemian Like You” by the Dandy Warhols with it's major/sus4 riff. So we mixed up the ingredients – sus4 riff with “Friday I'm In Love” chord sequence.

Now, as a song, it was not yet massively impressive, but it got him started!

Next month, we'll tackle lyrics....

In Deep With.. 7b5

For the last couple of months, as per my 2019 practice plan, I've been mucking around with 7b5 chord voicings and arpeggio patterns. Now, at first I must admit I really didn't expect to find anything much of use with them other than as a slightly skronky jazz passing chord, but I have to say they've grown on me and I'm starting to like the quirky majo-but-dissonant sound they produce, particularly from the arpeggio ideas.

So, first up, a little bit of theory, and then it's on to some cool practice ideas.

The 7b5 belongs to the dominant family of chords – you can tell because there's nothing denoting major or minor and dominant is the “default” status of extended chords. For those of you whose eyes are already starting to glaze over, any chord with a 7, 9, 11 or 13 after it is an extended chord. If it doesn't say major or minor, that means it's dominant, as that's the most common kind of extended chord, and ain't nobody got time to go around writing “dominant” after each chord.

A chord is made dominant by the presence of both major 3^rd and b7 intervals, so a regular 7 is made up of R 3 5 7, our 7b5 takes this composition and alters it slightly – R 3 b5 b7.

Now this creates a quirky, unresolved sound, and the reason for this is quite simple:

R – 4 semitones – 3 – 2 semitones – b5 – 4 semitones – b7 – 2 semitones – R

So as you can see, a symmetrical pattern of intervals. Now, pretty much all my students have heard my rants about symmetry (and I will be posting something along those lines in the next few weeks) , but suffice it to say that humanity has evolved to see perfect symmetry as unnatural and to react accordingly – and we react to sound the same way.

More on this another time.

This also means that a chord starting on the b5 interval actually works out to be the same as the original chord: C7b5 is built from C (root), E (3rd), Gb (b5), Bb (b7), and Gb7b5 consists of Gb (root), Bb (3^rd), C (b5) and E (b7).

Let's look at some arpeggio patterns:

Mapped across 3 octaves:

Notice the two shapes even though there are four notes in the chord – this harks back to the symmetry mentioned earlier.

Sequencing these shapes gives some interesting and fun results:

Looking at chord voicings, we can see the same thing

All of these shapes are relatively accessible, and make for excellent passing chords or substitutions in any kind of jazzy blues track - for example, in a 12 bar, using it as walk from the I to the IV introduces a cool chromatic twist (C 7 – C E G Bb, C7b5 - C E Gb Bb - F7 F A C Eb Note the C note remains common, but the other notes shift chromatically – Gb to F, Bb to A, E to Eb). Sequencing the arpeggios makes for a great fun quirky alternative to blues scale and minor pentatonic runs too.

So experiment with these shapes and see what you can come up with – back next month with a TUNEICEF update and a look at the composition process itself!

Ditch The Tabs!

Okay, question – how many of you, when you're practicing or trying to learn a song, default to Google “xxxxx guitar pro” as your starting point? Or “xxxxxx power tab”? Or for those of us of a certain age, delve through the multitude of guitar magazines and music books acquired over the years?

How many of you sit down and start picking out the chord sequence and solo purely by ear? Or do you tend to shy away thinking that it's going to be too tedious, too time consuming when practice time can be at a premium anyway?

To be fair, if you've never done it before, it is a bit intimidating. You're trying to separate notes out purely on sound, with nothing to guide you – it could take forever to find the first note, and then thta's just one note, what about the rest of the song? Are you going to spend an entire practice session just to find one note? How does that give you value for time spent as opposed to working through a transcription?

Well, as with all things, it all depends on where you start. You don't, unless you're incredibly gifted or incredibly stupid, start with something like Eruption, or anything hyper technical – Dragonforce, Animals As Leaders, Allan Holdsworth etc. Start simple.

Now, as we know, pretty much all electric guitar technique can trace it's way back to the blues. The first wave of players like Freddie, Albert and B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Chuck Berry, T-Bone Walker – these are the guys who paved the way for subsequent generations to build on. This is where you want to start.

The nice thing about a blues is, as soon as you've found the key, you straight away know where it's going. Yes, there can be variations (quick change to the IV in the second bar, long V or long I in the turnaround) but you've basically got the chord sequence down.

Not only that, but you're going to be using straightforward minor and major pentatonic, maybe a touch of blues scale. And with the early guys, they would stick pretty close to a basic “position 1” pentatonic fingering, for the simple reason that with no one to teach them, they were going to stick pretty close to their comfort zones, so these notes are going to be easy to find. If your 12 bar is in D, for example, expect pretty much all the solo licks to be around D minor pentatonic at the 10^th fret.

Now you're finding the notes, you can start to focus on the phrasing and articulation, and this is where transcribing really comes into it's own as a way of learning. Once you've sussed out that Freddie King is bending the C note at the 13^th fret B string (for example), you can start to focus on how he's bending, how he's using vibrato, the rhythms and timing that he's using... a whole slew of tiny, intangible things that really mount up that you skip if you're just following the tab. And these intangibles do work their way into your playing, making your phrasing more mature, more confident – you're learning to speak the language, as opposed to reading from the phrase book.

There's also the fact that you often find there is a lot less going on than you think – the old guys (often using thicker strings, no amp distortion) were not cramming notes into every corner of the song, they were working within technical limitations and creating the most exciting, evocative, expressive sounds they could with a very limited toolbox. You- all of us – can learn a great deal from this. To draw an analogy, you don't learn to drive in a Ferrari. You learn in something cheap and simple and low power, learn how to control it, and gradually work your way up.

Finally, there is a wonderful sense of satisfaction to realise you're not just playing “or something like that”, you're playing the exact licks that Freddie or Albert or B.B. Played, getting into the same zone that they were in, with no one dictating to you what to play. Before long you will notice your own improvisation become smoother and more confident as you get away from playing “by the numbers”.

Certainly, it's something I wish I had got into sooner in my own development, rather than chasing technique and speed goals. Still, it's never too late – for any of us! So go and chase up “The Best Of B. B. King” or whoever your favourite is, ditch the tab for a month and see what you can pick out for yourself.

The Parable Of My Mate Phil

This is a true story. The names may or may not have been changed to protect the innocent, and the definitely guilty.

I'd like to begin this with a confession. I, James Martin, professional guitar teacher, Licentiate of the London College of Music, guitarist of almost 25 years standing – am a complete and utter pedant. A pedagogical fascist.

And I make no apologies for that. The reason – Phil. Old mate of mine, lovely chap, but when it came to guitar playing he had the gift of setting your teeth on edge. You see, although Phil had several years experience on me, he clearly hadn't been paying particularly close attention to what he was doing. For example, his grip when doing barre chords was skewed to the point where every single string was being bent about a quarter tone out of tune, resulting in a major chord being morphed into the kind of sound used in North Korean concentration camps to break the spirits of their inmates.

Now, this is a big deal. As a musician, you are only as good as how you sound. For us guitar players, whos technique foundations are built on shapes, this is an extra specially big deal, as you can have the shape but not the sound ifyou're not careful about your technique. And if you don't have the sound, you don't have anything.

A wise man (named Justin Sandercoe, but that's for another day) proclaimed the truth that “practice doesn't make perfect – it makes permanent”. And he was dead right. So for 35 years , Phil has been practicing himself steadily worse. Day by day by day.

So, what can we do to avoid the Phate of Phil? LISTEN. Listen to your chords, play them as arpeggios. Listen to your bends, make sure they're in tune. Listen to your drum machine or metronome. Ifi it doesn't sound good, then STOP doing it, look at what you're doing and chnge it

“Everything, All The Time” - Or, Bad Practice Habits and How To Get Out Of Them.

Time. Contrary to the Rolling Stones' classic song, in the real world it's never on your side. Or certainly never seems to be- there's always something demanding your attention. Certainly, it's a rare lesson that doesn't begin with a student apologising because they've not had much time to practoce – pressures of work, education, family etc. all combine to make it difficult to find half an hour a day to put in to playing guitar at all, let alone practicing and concentrating on new stuff.

I have actually done a video and article on “pitstop practicing”  - short but intense bursts where you focus in n just one thing, whether that's a new lick, a chord change that's been giving you trouble or whatever – but this month I want to focus on something that more experienced players often fall foul of.

As your skills improve, and you're able to do more things, that of course means you have more stuff you need to practice to simply maintain those skills, let alone learn any new ones. So a practice session can seem like a mountain to climb, working through all the stuff you know before you can start on something new- a perfect example of this was a student of mine a few years ago, who was struggling to combine his Grade 5 with the demands of a regularly gigging band. Although he was diligently setting a couple of hours a day aside for practice, he would play through the band's entire set before trying anything new. Every time, This meant that over ¾ of his practice session was running over the same things, keeping them fresh – or so his thinking was. To be fair, I can completely understand where he was coming from, as when I joined my first semi pro band back in (gasp) the 90s, I thought and did exactly the same thing.

Problem is, by the time you come to try anything new, your concentration is shot, and if you've been playing for over an hour you probably want a bit of a break – cup of tea, check your emails – and that further eats into the tiny bit of time you've left yourself for learning anything new. So this way, things very quickly become stale. Add to this the pressure of an exam and it's quite natural to start thinking “Sod it, I'm going to play something I want to play, not something I'm supposed to play”. Of course, the problem for me as a teacher is I'm trying to get this student through their Grade 5, as that's what they've told me their goal for the year is. It doesn't take a genius to see how this can potentially lead to friction, despite the student in question being talented, diligent and hard working. And of course at that point, the whole thing is going to nose dive.

However, as I have made virtually every mistake it is possible to make on my journey learning the guitar- although I'm sure there's a few out there I'm yet to discover – I recognised where he was coming from, and we sat down to talk about practice habits and came up with a plan. If you have an hour a day, five days a week (because you're off gigging at weekends) as an example, and you're trying to balance a set and a grade exam, try this approach:

5 minutes – technical exercises from grade book. 1-2 scales, 1-2 arpeggios, 1-2 chords, style study. Rotate the scales/ arpeggios/ chords – eg Monday, major scale & major pentatonic, Tuesday natural minor scale and minor pentatonic.

5 minutes – sight reading/ improv & interpretation/ melodic recall/ harmonic recall/ general musicianship. Pick a different one each day.

20 minutes – grade repertoire. MAXIMUM two tracks – play through, look for mistakes. Spend a minute on each mistake, then play through the track again. Rotate so that every track is played over the week.

Remaining 30 minutes – band repertoire. A good trick here is to put all the songs into an iTunes (or equivalent – I've now switched to Music Bee) playlist, hit shuffle, and see what it throws at you. But, here's a twist – if the song has a solo, or a particularly noticeable guitar part (for instance, the Sweet Child O'Mine intro), before you play along with the whole song, play that part on your own as slowly as you possibly can. Yes, you read that right – the challenge is to really control the notes, the string noise, the vibrato. Take everything out of the instinctive 90% of your brain and back into the conscious 10% so you can look for bad habits and work your way out of them.

Result? You're spending less time but achieving a great deal more progress than simply being stuck in a rut and thinking that you've got to practice everything you know every time you pick up the guitar for a practice session. Practice therefore becomes much less of a slog and much more enjoyable – with the result that you do more of it and engage with it a lot more, leading to more progress!

So that's this month's thought, hope it helps some of you out there who feel a little overwhelmed or frustrated. Drop a comment to let me know your thoughts, and happy practicing!

A Little Knowledge....

..Can be a MASSIVE time saver.

This month's post originated in a dep gig some time back in 2014, when I was asked to stand in with my old friends in https://www.facebook.com/covernote.liveband/ - but you know me, I like to mull things over.

One of the songs I'd been asked to learn was the Will.I.Am track “Happy”, and I've got to admit, I struggled a bit at first – I found the first chord, Cm, without an issue, but just couldn't find what followed it. Certainly, none of the diatonic chords I tried fitted the bill and I found myself at a loss – so I did what I normally do in these circumstances, and ditch the guitar in favour of the keyboard.

HERESY!

Well, actually, here me out. Now, as guitar players, we tend to be quite lazy with chords. Talk to most guitarists about triads and inversions, even quite experienced ones, and you're most likely to be met with a blank stare and a “huh”? Whereas keyboard players will learn these things in the first couple of months. This is for a couple of reasons: on guitar, we think in terms of shapes- “play a D shape on these frets here”- and this largely boils down to the fact that it's a lot trickier to see which note is which on a fretboard as opposed to a keyboard. There's also the slightly embarrassing “90/10” issue – for most guitarists (and yes, I am equally guilty of this), we will spend 90% of our playing time playing rhythm and 10% playing lead... however when it comes to practicing, we spend 90% of our time on lead ideas, and 10% practicing rhythm. Chords and inversions simply aren't as fun and satisfying to practice as blitzing sweep arpeggio runs, tapping, or wailing blues solos.

But **** me, they aren't half useful.

Five minutes later, I had the chord sequence – Cm, G, Bb F. G – the missing chord was a G. Not a change you'd gravitate to on guitar, but an easy one to make sense of on the keyboard. All you have to do is look at the connecting notes between the chords:

Cm – C, Eb, G. Invert it so that the C is at the top: Eb, G , C

G – G, B, D. Invert so that the B is at the top: D, G, B. Notice that the top note (the melody note) has dropped by a semitone. Also note that both chords share a common note – G.

Bb – Bb, D, F. Invert so that Bb is at the top: D, F, Bb. Notice that the top note (the melody note) has dropped by a semitone again. Also note that both chords share a common note – D

F – F, A, C. Invert so that Bb is at the top: D, F, Bb. Notice that the top note (the melody note) has dropped by a semitone again. Also note that both chords share a common note – F

When you see this on a keyboard, it's easy to figure out how this sequence came together. And when you know the sequence, it's easy to figure out a part based on triad voicings and feeling out what everyone else in the band – bass, keyboards, second guitar, brass section is doing.

Moral of the story – different instruments inspire different approaches to composition. This is a positive – you couldn't write “Bohemian Rhapsody” on guitar, but equally you couldn't realistically write “Tie Your Mother Down” on keyboard. So next time you're struggling to break out of a compositional rut, or trying to fathom the chord sequence from hell, step back and try a different approach. A decent keyboard can be had on eBay for £50 or so, and it's well worth the investment. And it's the same 12 notes, whether you're picking, strumming, blowing or pressing them....

SRV

Sdrawkcab!

No, it's ok, I haven't had a stroke. This month I thought I'd share a handy little tip which is brilliantly simple for getting you out of a rut, particularly if you're hitting that plateau (which we all hit at some point or another) where you just find yourself playing the same thing every time you solo.

Let's say you're primarily a blues rock pentatonic based player. Alot of people's first instinct is to go and learn some exotic sounding scales, and while this is never exactly bad for you, the simple fact is there really isn't much call for the Phrygian Dominant over the rock & roll 12 bars most of us bang out at the local open mic night. So while learning exotic scales can be fun, it can also be very tricky to integrate them into your “everyday” pentatonic playing (I'll be doing some more posts on this over the next few months, so stay tuned).

Maybe some new techniques? Tapping is often something that I get asked about, and again, it's a fun, cool-sounding technique, looks flash, but the same problem applies – just how are you going to take that jaw droppng tapped septuplet Steve Vai lick you've been working on for the last two months and apply it to “Route 66”? Again, I'll come back to ways to integrate different techniques too over the next few months, but the simple fact is it's going to sound weird in that context. Like taking a cheese sandwich and adding blackcurrent jam – neither is bad in it's own right, but they don't exactly gel together.

So it can be diffiicult to know where to go to get off this plateau. Typically though, as musicians we strive for the most difficult, demanding solution to a problem and completely ignore the one that has been right under our noses the whole time.

Retrograde.

From Wikipedia:

“A musical line which is the reverse of a previously or simultaneously stated line is said to be its retrograde or cancrizans ("walking backward", medieval Latin, from cancer, crab). An exact retrograde includes both the pitches and rhythms in reverse. An even more exact retrograde reverses the physical contour of the notes themselves, though this is possible only in electronic music. Some composers choose to subject just the pitches of a musical line to retrograde, or just the rhythms. In twelve-tone music, reversal of the pitch classesalone—regardless of the melodic contour created by their registral placement—is regarded as a retrograde. “

So basically, taking something you already know and playing it backwards (yeah, title making more sense now?)

This has been used as a compositional aid for composers working in classical music for centuries, and will have been used many times by songwriters in the pop/rock field, but somehow we never seem to use it when improvising. Here's an example – a stock E minor pentatonic blues/ rock lick we've all used a billion times:

We all know that, we all know how to make it fit – so what happens when we flip it around?

Ooh.

Now try practicing it in context – 2 bars on/ 2 bars off is perfect for this.

NB - for those unfamiliar with this exercise, it's incredibly useful and because I nicked the idea from a drum teacher friend of mine, incredibly simple too:

1 – tap foot to beat, using metronome or drum machine if available

2 – play 2 bars of appropriate chord backing – so for this lick, 2 bars of chugging E5 power chord, or funking things up with an E7#9.. your choice

3 – this is the clever bit: without breaking rhythm, keep tapping your foot and improvise for 2 bars. In this instance you're aiming to develop ideas based off our new backwards blues lick, but you can adapt this exercise to anything.

All of a sudden – brand new lick. Except that you already intuitively understand it, as it's the same scale, and has the same rhythmic properties, so it will very quickly start working it's way into your vocabulary. Try it with every lick you can, you will be amazed by the results, and all of a sudden you'll feel yourself improving again.

Till next time, happy jamming and nuf evah!

New Year's Resolutions 2019

Feels like I've only just got the hang of putting “18” at the end of dates, and here we are again – new year, new practice plan! Why? Well, because I want to keep getting better of course – why else?

This is also a pretty significant year for me – come November, I'll have been playing guitar 25 years (seriously, I am that old) and I wanted to mark that anniversary with a challenge for myself. As I mentioned, my big challenge for last year was the Bach Toccata & Fugue in D minor, and I'm happy to admit that drove me to the edge of my technical and cognitive abilities.. but I did it! Eventually, anyway...

So I'm marking this year by taking up a piece that was transcribed in the first guitar magazine I ever got, Guitar For The Practicing Musician March 1995 – featuring transcriptions of (among others) Nirvana's version of “The Man Who Sold The World” from their Unplugged album (my reason for buying it) alongside tab for a song called “Bad Horsie” by a chap called Steve Vai.

Now, it's important to realise quite how stupid I was at that age, and I had yet to comprehend the concept that one song could be more difficult than another one, let alone comprehend the quantum leap in technique and understanding needed to tackle that track – I sat down with the tab and was woefully confused.... two years later, convinced of my own abilities, I decided to have another crack and was once again massively out of my depth. So I reckon it's about time I ticked this box and got this one in the can. I did “For The Love Of God” - I can do this... I hope..

Meanwhile, there's a schedule to keep to! So my plan, as always balancing, diatonic and pentatonic scales, arpeggios and chords along with new pieces to learn – here's 2019 mapped out:

January – Major scale and modes. 3 octaves, played in 3rds, sequenced in 3s and 4s. Pieces – Eric Johnson “SRV”, Paganini Caprice #24

February – Arpeggios (triads). 3 octaves, played in 3rds, sequenced etc.

March – Chords (triads and inversions, closed and open voicings). Piece – TBC

April – Minor Pentatonic & Modes. Piece TBC

May – Byzanine Scale R b2 3 4 5 b6 7

June – Arpeggios – 7b5s. Piece TBC

July – Chords (7b5s and inversions, closed and open voicings). Piece TBC

August – Pentatonics (Lydian R 3 #4 5 7). Piece TBC

September – Oriental Scale R b2 3 4 b5 6 b7. Piece TBC

October – Arpeggios – 7#5s. Piece TBC

November - Chords (7#5s and inversions, closed and open voicings). Piece TBC

December – Pentatonics (Mixolydian R 2 3 5 b7). Piece TBC.