New Year's Resolutions 2015

Happy New Year everyone! 2015 is upon us – as everyone who grewup with the “Back To The Future” franchise knows, this is the year we were promised flying cars and a hoverboard in every home. Instead we just have this rubbishy thing called the Internet, where we can read articles composed entirely of light that whine about how we don't have hoverboards and flying cars yet. And smartphones which allow us to access basically all of the combined knowledge of two thousand-odd years of human history in the palm of our hand, as well as letting us share really cute pictures of cats...

Anyway, new year means a chance to regroup and refocus on your musical goals for the year. Most people stumble and slow their progress because they get distracted and try and move in too many different, disparate directions at once. Result – they get nowhere, and they get frustrated. And with the frustration comes a decrease in motivation, and then we're into the vicious cycle of decreasing returns leading to decreasing effort.

So, let's take the opportunity afforded us by the new year to define three musical goals – no more, no less - to have fulfilled by the end of this year. For some of you, that will be grades – Rockschool's excellent syllabus has pivotal points at grades 3, 5 and 8, and preparing for these exams will improve your core skills no end.

For some, it could be mastering a new technique – slide guitar, hybrid picking, or those faithful shred standbys tapping and sweep picking. Perhaps your interests may lie more in the theoretical or compositional fields – understanding “jazz” extended chords, learning to read music, learning to work in odd time signatures. Frankly, after the exceptional level of compositional talent that everyone involved with the Winterwonderland2014 (www.facebook.com/winterwonderlandcharityalbum) demonstrated, I'd like to see some of you writing your own solo albums this year!

One thing that I think everyone should include in this year's resolution list, though, is to simply sound better. To this end, try focusing in on the details of exactly how you play your regular chords, licks and phrases – fret and pick hand pressure, angles of grip (making sure you're not inadvertantly bending strings while playing chords, for example), muting from both hands to minimise string noise and of course focusing on an even, rhythmic and controlled vibrato. I've covered all of these aspects before in various blog posts, but these are the minutiae that often get overlooked in the quest for more speed, flashier licks and so on. Mastering these details – stripping your technique back to basics and really focusing on the fundamentals – can make you sound far smoother, cleaner and more fluid without having to spend anything at all!

To this end, let me give you an example of how I approach this in my own practice routine. Once a week I set an afternoon aside for band material, setting iTunes on Shuffle and seeing what comes up. I then make a point of playing the solo, or any “spotlight” guitar part, as slowly as possible. This challenges me to control each note for as long as possible, ekeing the maximum emotion and drama from each note and projecting it with as much passion as possible. It's a great way of getting back in touch with the musicality of the solo, rather than simply stringing together a bunch of licks and finger motions. Try it, you might surprise yourself!

Good luck, and happy 2015 to each one of you :-)

Winter Wonderland 2014 - Review

Well, we did it. Eighteen tracks, spanning pretty much every genre of music from blues to orchestral to BanjoCore Operatic Metal ™ (yes, that is a real thing – well, it is now, anyway), topped off with a storming show at The Shed on Friday 12^th featuring a mightily impressive range of young talent.

First things first, I'd like to thank and congratulate everyone involved – the standard this year really has been phenomenal, and we've had contributions from some fantastic guest artists:

Dave The Rock Band (www.thedave.co.uk) – Because Of You (Matt Chubb/ James Martin)

Oisin George – Robot Love Story

Richard Clift & Matt Chubb – Get The Better Of You

The Bench That Rocked (www.facebook.com/TheBenchThatRocked) – Not For You (Billy

Chamberlain/ Luke “Harold” Billingham)

Ben Hooper & Wayne Cooper – Christmas For Everyone

Boo & Abi Littlewood – Christmas Song

Mr Meaner (www.facebook.com/mrmeaneruk) – All For You

Ghostshift featuring Blaze Bayley (https://www.facebook.com/Ghostshift) – Short Days Ago

Molly Lee & Charlotte Bond – Run Away With Me

A Short Dark Stranger (https://www.ashortdarkstranger.co.uk ) - I'm A Fool (For Fancying You)

Jonezy feat. Alexandru (https://www.facebook.com/jonezymusicuk) – Journey Together

Matt Humphries – Watch Me Burn

Ollie Blount & Leah Govier – Blue Christmas

Aled Horler – Guiding Star

Tracks & Field – Done

Ellie Marlow & Charlotte Bond – Straight From Your Heart

Tom Matthews – Flawless

Billy Edwards & Amanda Williams – Crazy Lies

Artwork donated by Annemarie Hughes – http://www.annmariehughes.net/


The album is now available to buy on Bandcamp: http://leicestershiremusiccollective.bandcamp.com/album/winter-wonderland-2014

On top of that, I'd also like to extend special thanks to Elisabeth Barker-Carley for organising the show and securing us a venue, and to the vocal legend (and tireless behind-the-scenes-promoter) that is Matt Chubb, without whom this would absolutely not have been possible.

Already we've managed to raise over £130 for UNICEF which is a terrific start for this project – so everyone who's been involved with this project should be feeling extremely proud of themselves.

As for the show itself, The Bench That Rocked dropped many a jaw in the audience – the boys have come a long, long way since the days of “Smoke On The Water” along one string and it was great to see them having matured into terrific musicians. Jonezy provided a typically energetic set, getting the crowd to their feet – it takes a hell of a lot of guts to do what he does. Matt Humphries was sensational and inspirational in equal doses – one voice, one guitar, one loop pedal and a huge dose of talent.

Dave The Rock Band then took our place as house band, and first up was Wayne Cooper singer “Christmas for Everyone” - the music for this was written at the end of last year, just missing the cut for 2013's “Songs For Syria” project, but Ben Hooper had knocked together a great song with some superb playing and Wayne provided excellent melody line, lyrics and vocal performance. Next up, Tom Matthews (12) who had written both music and lyrics for his song “Flawless” with Matt putting in a superb vocal. Ellie Marlow (14) followed with her sultry blues tune “Straight From Your Heart, well and truly conquering her nerves to pull off a gutsy and assured performance on keyboards. Finally, Billy Edwards (12) did a storming job with his rock number “Crazy Lies”, laying down his guitar solo like an absolute pro – fantastic!

All that remained was to see the evening out with Dave The Rock Band laying down the grooves to take us through til the end of a very successful evening.

So what can we take away from this? Well, I've already stated my goal – 1000 copies, £5000 for UNICEF. Maybe we'll hit it, maybe we won't – we've all done everything we can to produce something genuinely good and to promote it too. But what we can say without doubt is that the next generation of real, raw talent is not to be found on X-Factor or The Voice. It's right here, at the end of your street or playing in your local pub. Go out and find it, and get inspired.

Oh, and happy Christmas everyone – here's to 2015!

UNICEF - Winter Wonderland 2014

Those of you who follow this blog (Hi Dave, hi Keith) might remember that this time last year I was busily engaged in putting together an EP of original music with the idea of raising money for Syrian refugees – http://jmguitartuition.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-big-xmas-idea-2013-songs-for-syria.html.

Well, we managed it, and once again many thanks to all those involved. Didn't manage to knock Simon Cowell's latest chew toy off the Number 1 spot, but we still finished the job and got everyone's tracks released on iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/songs-for-syria-ep/id786780236

So, this year, it's bigger and better. Everyone has either written a song or contributed to some one else's – we've got everything from guitar pop to blues, orchestral metal to a synthesiser based Robot Love Opera along with the most badass fusion of metal, banjo and opera that you ever did hear (no, I'm not exaggerating).

I've also chosen a bigger and better-known charity – UNICEF, who are recognised worldwide as the leading organisation for children in over 190 countries. So there's a nice symmetry- kids as young as 11 or 12 writing songs to help kids of a similar age in war-torn Syria or Ebola-hit Sierra Leone, and in the process gaining skills, experience and confidence.

We've also got more established local musicians (myself included) donating tracks, a very good artist fiend of mine has donated us a cover – all on a budget of literally £0. So with no overheads, all the money goes straight to UNICEF.

Now, of course all the good intentions in the world will count for nothing unless we can get this stuff out there. Mainstream local media outlets have so far ignored this story, so we're going to have to do it ourselves. You don't need to send money, you don't need to do anything apart from tell people. We've got a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/lmcxmas, so go “like” us and share with absolutely everyone you can – we also have a Twitter hashtag #winterwonderland2014.

The album will be around about the £5 mark when it comes out and really does showcase a huge range of local talent, so if you were going to shell out for whatever X-factor winner releases, do yourself a favour and buy this too (or instead...).

The goal we've set is to sell a thousand copies – a thousand copies at £5 each means £5000 for UNICEF. That's an awful lot of Ebola treatments. That's an awful lot of clean water treatments. That's lives saved. AND you get a pretty damn good album for your trouble. Check out the link for a free track from Dave The Rock Band: https://soundcloud.com/jm-guitar-tuition/because-of-you

So I implore absolutely everybody who reads this – spread the word. We can make a difference.

Short But Sweet - Pitstop Practicing

OK, so last time I waxed lyrical about the importance of committing oneself to a regular and structured practice session – and make no mistake, that is the best way to ensure progress on the instrument (any instrument). But we live in a hectic, chaotic 24/7 world where there's always something competing for our attention, and that can mean that a structured practice routine is simply impossible to adhere to. That in turn becomes a demotivational force, as the student feels himself slipping further and further behind schedule. Inevitably the temptation grows to simply jack the whole the thing in.

So, what's the alternative? Well, I always stress the idea of little and often in practice sessions. 10-15 minutes each day will prove a whole lot more valuable than trying to crank in a three-hour marathon at the weekend.

A lot of players get intimidated by the idea of having to get the guitar out, tune it, set up the amp and practice rig- when you're pushed for time, all this seems like something of a mountain to climb. So the answer is to have the guitar always there, always ready, always to hand. Don't pakc it away in it's case, keep it out on a stand in the living room, in the dining room. Don't worry about setting up a practice rig, just play acoustically (a neat trick is to press the headstock against a large piece of wooden furniture like a coffee table or book case – the extra mass of wood serves as a makeshift amplifier). Use the metronome in your head, or any of the excellent guitar apps available for your phone. Don't make playing the guitar an occasion you have to get ready for, make it something you do naturally.

What to practice? Well, you can make progress in just two or three minutes if you focus on the trouble spots. Rhythm and timing is always something that any guitar player can work on – a great (and simple) exercise is to simply play muted strings to pick up the rhythm and improve your sense of pulse. This translates to a much more solid foundation for anything else you want to play.

Let's also not forget simple mechanics – usually the co-ordination between fingers 3 and 4 is the weakest, so a simple finger pair exercise is a useful thing to warm up and practice a weak spot. Learning a song? Struggling with a specific chord change? Focus on just that change. Set yourself a stopwatch and hammer that one chord change until your fingers accept it and it's no longer a problem. Brief, focused bursts on problem areas can bring real results quickly.

Want to keep motivated? Go back and try old material that you used to struggle with. It's a great feeling tackling a song that's proved out of reach in the past and being able to grab it by the scruff of the neck.

So, even if you can't commit to a regular and scheduled practice routine, if trying to commit is causing you stress and sapping your enjoyment... then this is the alternative. Dive in, grab a couple of minutes of focused, “burst” practice when you can over the day, and you will find you make improvement. Don't let the guitar become another chore – let's face it, life throws us all plenty of them. Guitar is what we reward ourselves with when they're all done.

If You're Going To Do It, Do It Right

September is upon us, and with it a new school year. This is the time of year when a new clutch of fresh-faced students show up at my teaching room door, all eager and full of vim and vigour. And these first few weeks of the academic year are when a seasoned teacher can usually see who's going to make it, who's going to be a real stand-out player, and sadly, who's going to fall by the wayside.

See, playing guitar is not a skill that only a select elite few can attain. Anyone, and I genuinely do mean anyone, can do it, as long as they've got roughly the right number of ears and limbs (I speak as someone with unilateral Grade 3 microtia, a condition which means I only have one fully functioning ear). The late great blues legend Jeff Healey was blind but overcame his handicap by playing the guitar flat on his lap.

Thing is though, it's not easy. Especially in the early stages. There's a lot of frustration involved in trying to force your fingers into all manner of unnatural contortions, and chord shapes that just refuse to find their way into your fingers. So it can be a hard road, and you can often feel like you're not making progress. But be patient. Be disciplined. A Jedi's strength flows from the Force.

Sorry, got carried away there.

So what does this actually mean in practice? Well, my first blog mentioned the importance of focus when practicing - http://jmguitartuition.blogspot.co.uk/2013_07_01_archive.html – but commitment to a regular practice routine is also a must. For the early days 15 minutes is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to set aside for one or even two sessions per day (for more information on structured practice sessions, check out my book Zero Point Guitar), but it's essential to make the commitment to practice every day. Twenty-one days in and it'll be a habit that's hard to break, and that's when you'll find yourself making real progress.

Anyone can do it. But not everyone will do it. If you're just starting out this year, make the commitment to be one of the ones who will. It's worth it, I promise.

Wannabees - and why we need them!

We've all done it. Looked at the big names up on stage and thought of how it must feel to have the satisfaction of playing your songs to thousands of adoring fans. Meanwhile friends and relatives tell you to give it up, get a real job, get your head out of the clouds (or variations on that theme), and frankly – it's not hard to see why. The truth is that there are tens of thousands of original bands – some dire, some decent, some absolutely brilliant – and nearly all of them you will never hear from again. Despite all the time they spend on social media advertising and plugging gigs, despite sending out demos to local radio, these guys will trek for hours to gigs to play to... well, usually the dozen or so people they brought with them. And the rest of the population sits plugged into “X-Factor” and bemoaning how there's no decent music these days.

I've been off the original circuit for years now but I remember it well as a hard road, and the only thing that keeps you going in the face of total apathy is a passion for the music you create (and a lot of caffeine, especially when you're gigging a hundred miles away on a week night). This weekend I was dropped back into it again as Dave The Rock Band played a couple of cover sets as a favour to our friendly neighbourhood venue owner to open for a some new punk and metal bands (Versus Ursus, Kid Klumsy and Death To Indie if you're interested). Being a hundred million years old now, punk and nu-metal isn't really my thing anymore, but the guys were very pleasant, very professional – no tantrums, everyone co-operated sharing amps and bits of drumkit, everyone ran to time wothout any problems – and when it came to showtme they absolutely gave it their all, even to an audience that barely scraped double figures.

Frankly, it would have been very easy for them to simply go through the motions, treating the whole thing as a rehearsal before hitting the bar. It would have been just as easy for them to write the evening off and just get blitzed before even taking the stage, because who cares if you do a good show and there's no one there to see it? Especially for Death To Indie, who had traveled three and a half hours to get to the gig only to find that the only new faces belong to the bar staff and the other bands. Clearly, each of those guys took the decision that we've come all this way, we may as well put on the absolute best show we can – and proceeded to hurl themselves around the venue as if it was Wembley Arena.

The moral of this story? Nearly every original band will fail to make the big time. That's the sad truth. But there are a great many phenomenal bands out there who are easily the equal of the big names, and they do it not to fulfil record contracts but because they believe in what they do so passionately that each week they schlep from one end of the country to another in ancient Transit vans for poorly paid (usually unpaid), often poorly attended gigs simply for the privelige of playing their music. So turn off X-Factor, get out there and give these guys the support they deserve because without people like this creating original music there will be no original music.

Parting note – two of the best musical experiences I've ever had have been pub gigs with original bands. The first in a dingy pub in a Leeds backstreet watching a band called Four Day Hombre who were just incredible – the songs, the sound, the harmonies, they had everything absolutely perfect. I'd rate that as one of, if not the best gigs I've ever been to, famous names included. The second came in another backstreet pub in Leeds, playing with my own band – having got set up and soundchecked in the function room upstairs, we realised that literally no one had shown up to see us. Still, we figured – we're here, let's just go for it and see what happens. After all, set up and pack down is the hard bit, it's the playing that's the fun part. So off we went. Midway through the first song, a girl appeared in the doorway, nodding away, and told us to “stay there”.

Well, that was pretty much what we had in mind anyway.

Over the course of the next half hour, she ferried pretty much the entire population of the pub upstairs to come and watch us, and a disaster turned into an epic, voice-wrecking evening where we wore ourselves out playing everything we knew at least twice, eventually falling off stage exhausted and bathed in sweat to a room full of applause. So sometimes it comes good.

So, do yourself a favour. Go and see at least one band this month that you haven't already heard of and don't personally know the members. Just go and see what's out there. These guys put so much into what they do, all they want in return is a chance to be heard. Give them that chance and get inspired.

Just Say Yes!

 The afternoon sun beat down on me as I squinted at the set list of soul, pop and Motown standards and I frantically tried to connect the title to any sort of tune to remember how the next song actually started. Before I knew it, the drummer was giving his count-in, and off we went. Wonderful thing, memory, it seems to kick in almost automatically in the nick of time to save you from certain doom.

Such is the life of a humble depping guitarist – flying by the seat of your pants, last minute cram sessions, tweaking your rhythm parts as you go to fit the band's arrangements (which they may or may not have remembered to tell you about) – it's tense, it's challenging... but it's also a hell of a lot of fun, and something I would recommend to any musician.

Why? Surely it's a waste of time, learning all those songs for just one gig?

Woah. Back up there, pilgrim. We're musicians. It's never a waste of time learning a song. Besides which, anyone with a half decent ear and a grasp of the Nashville Number System (see Zero Point Guitar link for more on this) can pick out most of the pop/soul/Motown standards which form the bedrock of many corporate/ wedding cover band repertoires without too much trouble. I, IV, V, vi and the occasional splodge of bIII and bVII – and if you really can't find a particular change, just lay out. Most of these songs aren't particularly guitar-centric anyway, so a couple of bars of muted strings letting the bass, keyboards and/or brass section carry the load isn't going to spoil things.

Your rhythm chops will thank you as well – making a rhythm part work in a situation like this is a long way removed from strumming big barre chords in a steady quaver rhythm. Being able to fit your parts into the whole of the music requires a sensitivity to what's going on around you – where the keyboards are, what the brass is up to, the register of the bass line and vocal melody. A good rhythm player chooses their voicings to complement the whole. A solid knowledge of triads and inversions is utterly invaluable here – even if it's not the kind of skill that will wow an audience with a fleet-fingered rendition of “Eruption”, playing rhythm well is an art form in itself, albeit an underrated and overlooked one for many guitar players (dep story – one of the hardest gigs I ever did was filling in for a local rock 'n' roll band, as basically every song was a 12 bar in A. To play two sets of that stuff and keep each song sounding different really stretches your imagination!)

And let's not forget the value of actual gigging experience itself. Any working musician will tell you that it's only when you get to the gig that the real problems start – how do you deal with an amp that worked fine at home or in rehearsal but now is buzzing, squawking and farting like a cockerel after a vindaloo? How do you arrange your gear so your lead doesn't get wound round a mic stand or trapped under your wah pedal? How do you tune your ear into a band's sound that may have been beautifully balanced in a purpose built rehearsal room but now in the confines of the Dog & Duck is just a featureless wall of noise? Experience, that's how.

So how do we overcome the perennial Catch-22 situation – how do you get experience when no one will take you on because you don't already have experience?

Well, you can always just lie. Sometimes it works (according to various musician's autobiographies). In the real world, though, it doesn't work, and serves to blacken your reputation for the future (“Oh, you don't want so-and-so. He's full of sh*t, can't play.”). One great way to break in and get yourself known, however is the open mic night. These have been gaining in popularity in the last few years since the economic downturn as pubs try and entice audiences in without having to pay for a band. True, you're mostly playing to other (frequently drunk) musicians, but it can be a valuable low-pressure introduction to the world of live performance. For myself, I've played with the “house band” for a couple of local open mic/jam nights for the last few years, and found it very rewarding – thinking on your feet, adjusting chord voicings, key, rhythm etc to what the singer is doing, responding to the arrangements that frequently exist in the singer's head and nowhere else, “reading” your fellow musicians – all this contributes to that “sixth sense” that many experienced players seem to have.

It can also be a path to new and unusual challenges that push your playing in different ways. One of my most terrifying but also rewarding dep experiences happened years ago when working at the local music shop. The head of the local amateur dramatic society came in looking for a guitarist and banjo player to cover for their regular guy performing George Gershwin's “Anything Goes”, and me being me I jumped at the chance, thinking “How hard can it be?”

Very, as it turned out. I was presented with a CD and a score of music vast in size and terrifying in complexity, told band rehearsal would be in two weeks, dress rehearsal with the cast the day after that, and then we'd be performing straight through the week. I spent the first night with the score struggling to keep my bowels in check before starting to realise that a great many of the insane chord changes that peppered Gershwin's music contained a great many similar notes – for example, D7 contains D-F#-A-C (R-3-5-b7), F#dim7 contains F#-A-C-D (R-b3-b5-bb7). Therefore, no need to play anything different as the bass player will be looking after the root note (D and F#) anyway – Eureka! My sanity was saved, and I made it through the gig without suffering a nervous breakdown or being lynched by my fellow orchestra members. And I've never lost the deeper understanding of harmony that making those connections between chords gave me.

So, to sum up – the great things about open mics and dep gigs are experience, exposure, confidence, practical application of theory and licks learnt in the practice room, a few quid in your pocket at the end of the night (sometimes) and more than anything a hell of a lot of fun to be had. So the next time you're asked to an impromptu jam or to cover last minute for a friend – just say yes. You'd be surprised what it can lead to.