#Motivation!

Well, I was hoping to be writing this month's entry basking in the glory if a fairytale victory for a much maligned England squad.. alas it was not to be. But this latest “oh so near” did get me thinking about motivation, and how it relates to our development as musicians.

Right now, the England squad have two ways to view their situation. They can either a) rue a potential victory lost, one that could have propelled them to being only the second England team in history to reach the world cup finals.. what if they'd stayed more on the offensive after the first goal, maybe been able to score a second or at least keep the Croatians too busy defending to equalise? Or b) reflect on the fact that a squad nobody expected much of, which had no “celebrities” of the likes of Beckham and Rooney, was able to pull off their best result in 28 years – longer than most of them have been alive.

How does this relate to us jobbing musicians? Well, a few years ago, I was having a conversation with a drummer friend of mine who was at least a sheet and a half to the wind and bemoaning his lack of commercial success.

“I've been doing this for twenty years and where's it got me?”

Now, this seemed to me to be missing the point somewhat.

“Don't you enjoy it any more?” I asked.

“Yeah, 'course I do, I love it.” he answered.

“So – isn't that the point?”

He shut up after that, I'm pleased to say.

So what connects these two situations? Well, neither the England team or my drummer mate had achieved everything they wanted – winning the World Cup/ fame, fortune, hot and cold running groupies – but both have still managed to accomplish something impressive, 4^th place in the World Cup and a pastime that has given twenty plus years of fulfilment, led to friendships and adventures with people you'd never otherwise have met, not to mention the simple satisfaction of getting good at something (don't tell him, but he is a spectacularly good drummer).

So next time your motivation drops and you wonder why you're bothering – remember, you're not playing music for fame, fortune and glory (and if you are, you're a moron) – you're doing it for yourself. We do what we do while other people sit in front of the TV.

Think about it this way – if you spend an hour practicing and you're 0.001% better at the end of that hour, that's still an improvement. If you spend an hour watching The Kardashians – well, you've spent an hour watching the Kardashians. Compare and contrast.

It's Just One Thing After Another

This month's post comes from a question I was asked after a Dave The Rock Band gig back in 2015 (yep, quick off the mark as always) – I got chatting with one of the security guys after the gig and he revealed that The Final Countdown had always been one of his favourite songs.

“So how long would it take me to learn the solo?” he asked.

Hmm.

You see, the thing is, there are a big list of things you need to know before you can start learning a solo like that. A BIG list.

The solo starts with a flurry of arpeggios tracing the chord sequence of Bm, C# dim (implying A7) and G before moving to a scalic idea around Bm and B blues scale, and a melody slid along the G string following the B natural minor scale. So in order to play this properly, you're going to need to..

Understand what an arpeggio is

Develop the dexterity to play one, and quickly – and the ability to morph the shape to cover major, minor, and diminished chords

Understand and learn both the B natural minor and B Blues scales. You'll also need to map the B natural minor long the G string and master sequencing and legato ideas to very high level for the faster bits

Develop robust and efficient string bending (including harmony bends) and legato techniques (ver fast and accurate hammer ons and pull offs, as well as vibrato and picking.

If you've got ALL THOSE THINGS – then actually, it won't take you that long. When I first learnt it in 2006, it took me about half an hour.

If you haven't got those things though, you're in for a world of pain. It probably is just about possible to learn it note for note from the tab, practicing nothing else, going slowly and building up step by step, but it's going to be an incredibly difficult and frustrating journey, and even if you make it to the end you've learned one guitar solo, with no understanding of the concepts used in it and no ability to connect them up in different ways to do anything else (like, for instance, play a different solo... or the non-solo parts of the song...)

A good teacher puts these pieces in order and lays them out before the student in the right way, so that each piece connects to the next in a logical, clear and understandable manner, so that the learning curve is as shallow as possible and the frustration level is minimised. And so that by the time you have cracked this solo, you understand completely what you're doing and have also learned a great many other songs as well as the skills to teach yourself many, many more.

In truth, there is very little original material I teach my students that isn't available in places like YouTube, Ultimate Guitar, magazines such as Guitar Techniques and so on. The problem the student has is working out how to interpret the information, apply it and figure out how you can use it.

Another example – a few years back, a students signed up for guitar lessons at school at the start of September, wanting to learn to play “Eruption” for the school talent show.

In two months.

With no previous experience.

Riiiiiiight.

In the end I was able to compromise with him – Van Halen has frequently named Eric Clapton as one of his biggest influences. Eric Clapto, in his turn, named BB King as one of his. Now, for all his stunning deftness of touch and phrasing, BB was not a technical player. With hard work and application of major and minor pentatonics, you can get close to a passable BB-style solo in a couple of months and gradually build your technique from there.

Moral of the story – with the right skillset, you can learn anything you want. But it takes time and guidance to get that skillset. I accomplished quite a lot in my first couple of years teaching myself, but it wasn't until I did my Access To Music course and met my guitar Yoda (Brian Thomson, hallowed be his name) that I really started to understand what I was doing. The fog receded, I wasn't groping blindly in the dark any more, and everything started to make sense. Suddenly, I was in control

Summer Song (Joe Satriani Guitar Cover)

In Deep With - The Diminished Scale (s)

So we're well into 2018 now and that means following my practice plan as laid out in my New Year's Resolution post back in January.. and that has led me to the diminished scale!

Now, there are two types of diminished scale, and for most of this blog post we'll be focusing on the half step/ whole step diminished – this is exacty as it sounds, a scale put together from a repeating pattern of semitone and tone intervals. Looking at it from the A root note, we wind up with this:

A – semitone – Bb – tone -C – semitone – Db – tone – Eb semitone – E – tone – F# - semitone – G – tone – A

Viewed from the traditional perspective of root, 2^nd, 3^rd etc., we get this:

R – b2 – b3 – b4 – b5 – 5 – 6 – b7.

Now, this actually makes for a very usable set of notes. For blues players, you have the b7, b5 and 5, as well as the b3, aaaand... the b4. Now the b4 is effectively the major 3^rd, so that gives the interplay between minor and major 3^rd which is so crucial for blues, jazz, rock, country etc. This makes it really a quite effective substitute for the blues scale (R-b3-4-b5-5-b7), and the minor pentatonic (R-b3-4-5-b7).

Not only that, but the presence of the 6^th and b7 gives you shades of the Dorian mode, the b2 and b3 gives you elements of the Phrygian, and the b5 can imply Locrian.

Moving to a chordal perspective, this scale yields up a hell of a lot of triads:

A C Eb – A diminished

A C E – A minor

Bb Db E – Bb diminished

C Eb Gb – C diminished

C Eb G – C minor

Db E G - Db diminished

Eb Gb A – Eb diminished

Eb Gb Bb – Eb minor

Eb G Bb – Eb

E G Bb – E diminished

F# A C – F# diminished

F# Bb Db – F#

G Bb Db - G diminished

And when we extend out to 7ths, the palette gets even bigger:

A C Eb Gb – A diminished 7

A C Eb G – Am7b5

A C E G – Am7

Bb Db E G – Bb diminished 7

C Eb Gb A – C diminished 7

C Eb Gb Bb – Cm7b5

C Eb G Bb – Cm7

Db E G Bb – Db diminished 7

Eb Gb A C – Eb diminished 7

Eb Gb A Db - Ebm7b5

Eb Gb Bb Db – Ebm7

Eb G Bb Db – Eb7

E G Bb Db – E diminished 7

F# A C Eb – F# diminished 7

F# A C E – F#m7b5

F# A C# E – F#m7

F# A# C# E – F#7

G Bb Db E – G diminished 7

In terms of modes, the symmetrical nature of the diminished scale means there are only two – the half/ whole and the whole/ half, and each contains the other – for example, Bb whole/ half is contained within A half/ whole. But this symmetry also means something else – A half/ whole also contains C, Eb and Gb half/ whole scales and Bb, Db, E and G whole/ half.

A half / whole: A Bb C Db Eb E Gb G

C half / whole: C Db Eb E Gb G A Bb

Eb half / whole: Eb E Gb G A Bb C Db

Gb half / whole: Gb G A Bb C Db Eb E

So A diminished can therefore be a good fit over C Blues, Eb Dorian and Gb minor pentatonic!

Obviously it's not as simple as slapping a diminished scale over the top and hoping for the best, so in the meantime here are some practice exercises to familiarise yourself with this scale and listen to Robben Ford, Allan Holdsworth and Larry Carlton (among others) to hear how these players get the best out of what at first seems a dauntingly complex scale. But remember, like everything in music – it's simpler than you think!

Dynamics - The Missing Piece

So you're watching your fingers fly all around the fretboard, hammering and pulling and trilling and bending like there's no tomorrow.. but something's missing. Something intangible, something hard to define. You know it's there but you can't quite put your finger on it...

Go back and read that first paragraph again. First, read it with a flat monotonous voice, like a text-to-speech machine. All the words are there but it's dreary as hell to listen to and a great deal of the meaning is lost, simply because it's much more difficult for the brain to process the information when every syllable of every word is given equal weight. It's harder to group sentences and phrases and therefore harder to establish meaning and empathy.

Now read it again, this time in the manner of Alan Rickman playing a villain:

“Something..... intangible... something – hard to define”

Which one has the most impact? Well, every listener is different, but for the vast majority.. well, put it this way, there's a reason Alan Rickman made it big.

Now, let's consider how we can apply this lesson to guitar playing. Any piece of music, a melody, a solo, a chord sequence – they all tell a story. That story should not be told in a monotone. Consider the story you're trying to tell – the ascending sequence pattern, should that build in volume, climaxing with a soaring bend picked hard and given all the vibrato you can give it? How about that delicate introductory phrase, shouldn't you try and pick lightly, give yourself somewhere to go?

A great example of this is the classic B.B. King track, “Need Your Love So Bad”. The famous versions of this are (ironically) covers by Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, and a cover 30 years later by the late great Gary Moore. Listen to both – although the notes are the same, Peter Green's delicate articulation expresses a vulnerability.. as if his notes have turned up to the party and said quietly “Does anyone mind if I sit here? I won't be any trouble..” . By contrast, Gary Moore's much more confident articulation strides up next to the prettiest girl in the room and says “Get yer coat love, you've pulled”.

The notes themselves are the same. On a tablature page, they would be displayed identically. And yet, the difference when you hear it is huge.

Standard music notation provides some hints, with phrases graded in f (forte – loud), p (piano – queiet), multiples thereof, and mp (mezzo piano – medium quiet) and mf (mezzo forte – medium loud), as well as indications for crescendo (get louder) and diminuendo (get quieter). Studying classical guitar gave me an unparalleled insight into these aspects if reading music, but the component that is absolutely essential is the ear – listening critically to what you're doing and asking yourself, does it match my intent?

So for this month, consider the difference that dynamics can makes and practice your phrases as a whisper, a shout, and everything in between – you'll be amazed the difference this can make!

Hide Away - Eric Clapton/ John Mayall's Bluesbreakers Guitar Cover

Your Friendly Local Music Store

Let's be honest, we're always looking for a bargain when we're out shopping. And this is especially true when we're put shopping for musical instruments. There seems to be some primal impulse preprogrammed into us that because music is fun, it should somehow be free...

Anyway, the cutthroat business of capitalism is nowhere more apparent than in the music retail business, with online stores, Ebay outlets, Amazon etc all getting in on the act. With all this, it can be hard for a local bricks and mortar outfit to compete – especially given that many smaller businesses tend to be run by people who are musicians first and businessmen a distant fifth.

They can be awkward to get too – especially given parking restrictions in towns and cities. They can rarely match the prices of the online only sellers (because business rates, running costs, employees salaries). They may not have the product you're looking for. They can and will (occasionally) mess stuff up.

And yet...

I've lost count of the number of times I've had students come to me with instruments bought unseen online with bent necks, appallingly unplayable actions, intonation out of whack past the fifth fret. I even made the mistake myself in my early days, buying a secondhand guitar from the Free Ads section of the papers (the 90s...) with a Floyd Rose tremolo system, which for those of you not au fait with this piece of design is a complicated and technical design 100% NOT for beginner guitarists like I was.

The problem is, with any specialist purchase, it's essential to know what questions to ask. If you don't know about guitars, why would you ask about “action”, “intonation” - you would just assume it works, the same as if you were buying a laptop. But guitars aren't like that. They are dynamic systems, working in balance, with a lot that can go wrong if they've been poorly made.

This is where your Friendly Local Music Shop steps in. These guys are musos through and through, experienced and well versed in what to look for. They don't stock crap, because all that generates is dissatisfied customers who know where to come if they have an axe to grind. So right away, that's one level of protection.

Secondly (and this is a big one), you try an instrument, you like it – you walk out of the shop with that same instrument. That is a BIG plus – not one like it, not one similar but in a different finish, you walk out with that very instrument. That is a big, big deal, even in these days of CNC computer controlled mass production.

Lastly – when you need that last minute pick/ battery/ set of strings/ reed/ replacement part... where are you going to go? Who you gonna call? The internet, where it takes three or four days to get something out to you, and even then it may be the wrong thing (because they made a mistake, or you made a mistake, didn't quite know the term for what you wanted...).. Without your support, these places will fold. And they won't be there when you need them. Something to thing about.

By the way, our FLMS is Just Music, located on 42 Leicester Road, telephone number 01509 234 881. You're welcome.