Ric Emmet - for the love of the guitar Book 4

DEDICATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ To my wife, Jeannette, and my family, who tolerate, sustain, support, humor, humor, inspire, counsel, and best of all, most amazingly  and wonderfully, love me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~

DEDICATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ To my wife, Jeannette, and my family, who tolerate, sustain, support, humor, humor, inspire, counsel, and best of all, most amazingly  and wonderfully, love me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~

FOR THE LO LOVE VE OF GUIT GUITAR AR by

Rik Emmett

 O n e  B o o k  O

 o o k   B  s    c c  i  s  a  T h e B  T  w o  B o o k  T  c  s i c  a  B  e  h  T  o o k   B  s  k   c    o o  B l  g  B    n n  i    d d    l l  i  u  B  T h r e e  o o k     B B  B o o k  T  g     n n  i  m  s t o r    n n  i  a  r  B  c  s i c  F o u r  T h e B a  o k   B o o k  F  o  B  s    c c  i  s  d B a  n  o  y  e  B  T h e

FOREWORD Three down, one to go.

Or perhaps you’re joining our program in progress - in which case, thanks for tuning in. The challenge of writing a monthly guitar magazine column called “Back to Basics” for 12 years or so often led to some, er, imaginative takes on the subject. Topics would suggest themselves, and I would often stretch, or shoehorn the concepts into the “basics” format - with varying degrees of  success. As I often wrote in the columns, THE LOVE OF GUITAR  is basically about music - the marriage of the physical, the intellectual, the spiritual, and the emotional. Aesthetics, psychology, philosophy: these kinds of things are fundamental to the artistic process, but at the same time they’re open-ended, infinite, metaphysical, often ineffable and practically intangible. Even under the rubric of “Basics,” it’s not too hard to come up against the paradoxes of all-too-human endeavors. I often took refuge in metaphor, or sought out the connections and representations suggested by collegiate-sized, multi-syllabic mega-words like Anthropomorphism and Onomatopoeia. In the end, I couldn’t be sure that I’d gotten the reader (or the author) any closer to the basic heart of the matter which, after all is said and done, continues to float through the air and work its own unique, indescribable magic. I remind myself here again (as I do on page 26) that it’s not so much about destinations as it is journeys. Here in Book Four, I’ve attempted to pull together the chapters that seemed to offer the most leading questions and pointed towards some of those open portals of the soul and the imagination. Whatever you’re searching for, I hope you find your way to it. Even if   you don’t, I’ll still wish you happy hunting. With Love,

I

THE BEYOND BASICS BOOK

BOOK FOUR 

CONTENTS Page Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .I Key to Notational Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .IV FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR: Attitude is the Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Harmonics and the Inherent Conflicting Nature of Music . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Anthropomorphism and the First Artistic Step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Basic Career Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR: The General Rule of Tongue . . . . .11 The Secret Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Preparation, Presentation, and Pacing (Mind Your P’s) . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 The Ineffable Aesthetic Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 The Marriage of Technique to Emotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 “What If?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 Connect the Dots: The Love Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 Getting There From Here - Sparks in the Darkness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Hands On: Of Ways, Means, and Happy Endings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 The 3H Infinities: Head, Hands and Heart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 On Telescopes and Microscopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Defining “IT” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 On Body Language, Image, and the Soundtrack of the Soul . . . . . .35 Distinguishing Characteristics and Onomatopoeia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Basic Instinct . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Basic Psychology 101: A Paradox in the Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Discriminating Taste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Musical Consideration (The Inside/Outside Dynamic) . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Prejudice, Pluralism and the Golden Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50

II

• • • • • • TABLE OF CONTENTS (Cont’d)

On Competition: Let the Music Do the Talkin’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 Medley Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 Basic Creative Process: Metaphors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 So You Wanna Be A Guitar God? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 The Six Point Hero List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 Mythology, Reality and Chemistry: Kudos to Ted Greene . . . . . . . . . . .62 FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR: As I Live and Breathe . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65 In Conclusion… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69

III

KEY TO NOTATIONAL SYMBOLS

T HE FOLLOWING SYMBOLS are used to indicate fingerings, techniques, and 

2

3

effects commonly used in the guitar music notation in this series of books.

1

4 4 T





ras

Left-hand fingering is designated by  small Arabic numerals near note heads (1 = 1st finger, 2 = 2nd finger, 3 = 3rd finger, 4 = pinky, T = thumb).

////

In some music examples, the fingerings appear in the space between the standard notation staff and the tablature staff. i 

m

5





 CV CV

3

Right-hand fingering is designated by letters (p = thumb, i = index, m = middle, a = ring, l = pinky).

a 

 p 

D

Pick upstroke.

1

R

(7) 5 H

5 7

2

1 2

3

3

The C indicates a first finger half-barre covering either the first three or four strings, depending on what is called for in the notation.

Chord Diagrams  In chord diagrams, vertical lines represent the strings, and horizontal lines represent the frets. The following symbols are used:

Left-hand finger vibrato. 5 (7)

2

D9

IV

The C indicates a full barre; the Roman numeral designates the proper fret.

Partial barre with the designated finger. B

E B T G A D B A E

The horizontal lines represent 0 the guitar’s strings, the top line represents the high E. The numbers designate the frets to be played. For instance, a 2 positioned on the first line would mean to play the 2nd fret on the first string (0 indicates an open string). Time values are indicated on the coinciding lines of standard notation seen directly above the tablature. Read the music from left to right in the conventional manner.

A circled number (1-6) indicates the string on which a particular note is to be played. Pick downstroke.

Indicates desired rhythm for chordal accompaniment (the choice of voicings is up to the player).

How Tablature Works  l 

 p 

Rasgueado.

Bend; play the first note and bend to the required pitch (bent note is in parentheses). See tab explanation.

Nut; indicates 1st position.

A reverse bend; strike an already bent note, then allow it to return to its unbent pitch (bent note is in parentheses).

x

Muted string or string not played.

o

Open string.

Hammer-on (lower note to higher).

Barre (partial or full).

P

7 5 T

Pull-off (higher note to lower).

•

Placement of left-hand fingers.

Indicates right-hand tapping technique.

V

Roman numerals indicate the fret at which a chord is located.

1

Arabic numerals indicate left-hand fingering (e.g., 1=index, etc.)

S

5 7

Slide; play first note and slide to the next pitch (in tab, an upward slide is indicated with an upwardly  slanting line, while a downward side is indicated with a downwardly slanting line).

Note: For more info on understanding chord symbols, check out  the chapter entitled “Outlining The Numbers Game” on page 29  of “For The Love of Guitar, Book One - The Basics Book”.

Strum (an arrowhead is often used to indicate direction). IV

FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR: ATTITUDE IS THE KEY One memorable summer, I caught a concert of the McLaughlin/ Di Meola/de Lucia/Morse tour, then had the pleasure of  seeing Eddie Van Halen, Pat Metheny, and Norbert Kraft performances, all in one week. Two weeks later, my hometown of Toronto was full of  players - Paco, Liona Boyd, and the performers I saw: Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis, Charlie Byrd, Ed Bickert, Joe Pass, and Marty Grosz, all together on one stage. I react to these performances the way I think  most other mortal guitarists might: enormously  entertained, pretty much blown away, mystified, inspired, and even a little depressed. How should one handle all of this ambivalence?  Don’t dwell on the depression; there’s nothing to be gained from it. These are masters of their art, and they’re all highly sophisticated, accomplished, and specialized, with great amounts of personality in their playing. Know that they have their moments of frustration, anxiety, and depression, too. Recognize that their technique and physical virtuosity have come from practice, persistence, and motivated dedication. Use the deflation of  ego to reaffirm a commitment to the basics, to get humble as well as hungry, and to get busy. Don’t be afraid of hard work, especially  because you’ve just witnessed its rewards. Try to recall and figure out the personal manifestations and stylistic maneuvers that made such an impression, and apply  them to your own music and style. Although intimidated by their talent, don’t be devastated. Remind yourself that they, too, are only  human, and remember that they all have their awesome heroes and intimidating role models. And  just because you sometimes feel like you can’t perform at such advanced levels, maintain hope, because the answers lie in the development of personal expression. The clear differences between all these great players is all the proof one needs to believe in their own potential. Continued • • • • • •  1

• • • • • • FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR: ATTITUDE IS THE KEY (Cont’d)

But getting back to basics, what  is the point of all this? Ah: 

N  o t h  i n  m o re     g i s  b as  i   c  t ha  n    t h  e  w a y     y o  u   f  e e l  .

You’re reading this, presumably, because you want to learn and to improve, and you’ve got to start with a real serious case of like for the instrument. If you aspire to the dizzy heights of the legendary, then  your prerequisite becomes full-blown, uninhibited, totally dedicated love. You’ve got to bring a work ethic to the practice room, and the less natural talent that  you’ve got (and you should be brutally honest with yourself  about your sense of relative pitch, imitative memory, and sense of time and rhythm), the more work you’ll need to do. The aforementioned masters love the guitar and the music it can make, and they make it look so easy. Maybe love makes the work come easy to them - but I’m willing to bet that’s not the way it is all the time. And that’s when perhaps the most important element of  their mastery kicks in: their focus, the application of willpower that allows them to persevere. We can’t all be masters, but we can all certainly emulate their approaches. You’ve got to learn (and then constantly remind yourself) to use every setback, obstacle, and moment of self-doubt or depression as the catalytic signal to becoming more artistically prolific.

Continued • • • • • • 

2

• • • • • • FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR: ATTITUDE IS THE KEY (Cont’d)

Don’t wallow in your own frustration and depression. Your attitude is the key, and the recognition of the seemingly huge gaps between what you can do and what you want to do must be the spur to  your ambition, not the anchor to your overwhelmed submission. When I talked backstage with Pat Metheny, he told me he was very intimidated by the seemingly infinite mystery of his new Synclavier guitar synthesizer system, but that he could hardly sleep at night knowing that all that potential was waiting for him in the other room. He had to get up, go to it, and play. Pat said (and I quote),“ That thing kicks my ass.” His eloquence spoke to me because that, my dear readers, is what I would call a Real Healthy Attitude.

3

HARMONICS AND THE INHERENT CONFLICTING NATURE OF MUSIC Fig. 1 Bridge 24th

19th

12th

7th

5th

Nut

1st Overtone: Half

2nd Overtone: Thirds 3rd Overtone: Fourths

Check out this graphic (Fig. 1). Most guitar

That’s not what struck me when I looked at the picture. It was the contrasting juxtaposition and the inherent, seemingly conflicting nature of music itself: taking that scientific, mathematical reality of physics, frequencies, wavelengths, beats-per-second, tones, harmonic intervals, and over-tones, and then processing it and transforming it into these gorgeous, ringing, bell-like tones, imbuing it with all this inexplicable, unfathomable, emotional, romantic, religious, mystical, very human laying on of hands (as well as heart, soul, and mind). Aha! Eureka!!! This is precisely where the beginner and the advancing master, where the performer and the audience will always meet - where the technical meets the spiritual. From this “compromise” opens the infinity of musical knowledge. It is, like life itself, an ambiguous scientific/spiritual paradox. Let’s examine some more variations.

players know about harmonics - they throw them into their playing all the time. But there’s a concept, a theory, perfectly embodied in the symmetry, the physics and the mathematics represented there in that drawing. Technically, of course, it shows the location of natural harmonics on the strings of a guitar. You can sound these by lightly touching the string directly  above the fret where a natural harmonic lies - thus subdividing the Fig. 2  string’s vibrating length by a specific mathematical fraction - and then cleanly  and lightly plucking the string to get the corresponding harmonic overtone (Fig. 2). Don’t push the string down to the fret,  just touch it.

Continued • • • • • • 

4

• • • • ••

HARMONICS AND THE INHERENT CONFLICTING NATURE OF MUSIC (Cont’d) Not content with just the natural harmonics that exist on the strings, many guitarists develop a facility with artificial harmonics. Essentially, you can get these artificial, or octave, harmonics by subdividing the vibrating length of a string 12 frets above the note you’re fretting, and lightly touching it (usually with the 1st finger of your picking hand), and then plucking behind the touch point with your thumb (Fig. 3), or another finger on your picking hand. Fig. 3 Another way of looking at it is that your left-hand fingering acts as the “nut,” and now you find the exact midway point of  the new vibrating length, cut it directly  in half with a light touch of your righthand index finger, and simultaneously  pluck behind that touch point, to sound out the first overtone of the original fretted note. Another method of sounding harmonics that has become almost as common is the “pinch” harmonic, also referred to as an “edge-of-the-pick” harmonic. The theory behind the pinch technique is basically the same as the artificial harmonic, but because the pick can slice the string with force as you pick a note, you can set the string vibrating and also cut it into an overtone at the same time - thus creating artificial harmonic overtones almost anywhere along the string. These overtone squeaks and squawks, now standard fare in every rock player’s bag of tricks, are really the perfect illustration to define and summarize my earlier observation of scientific structure meeting up with chaotic human application. I wonder if Mother Nature is aware that legions of  guitarists are using her sweet science to light blistering pyrotechnical fires, to decimate with decibels, and to tear the top of your toque off with perfectly placed potshots of pinch harmonics? If you don’t see something of a paradoxical  juxtaposition in all of this by now, then I don’t own a copy of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.

5

ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND THE FIRST ARTISTIC STEP The hills are alive with the sound of music -

Here is Klein’s color/music scale:

but what exactly are you hearing? How do you assimilate and interpret the music you listen to? How can you start developing your ear so that it becomes “user-friendly” with your brain, understanding and digesting things more fully, and gaining more insight and perspectives?

C = dark red D#= orange F# = green A = blue-violet

I  hear things in certain keys.

D = red-orange F = yellow-green G#= blue B = dark violet

Human nature is such that, in trying to understand something better, we tend to make analogies, or anthropomorphize (a five-syllable mega-word that means attributing human characteristics to animals or things). When we create personal parallels, or associations, we tie ourselves into things. It’s like putting a string around  your finger to remind yourself about something - say, taking out the garbage. The string on your finger has nothing at all to do with garbage, but somehow it’s the added creative step in your brain that enhances its memory capabilities, as if you’ve dedicated another “string” of neurons in your brain that connects to the memory.

Larry Carlton has said, “ 

C# = red E = yellow G = blue-green A# = violet

I find a color.

It may not sound as good as an Am7; as soon  as I make it an F#m7, it creates a different  emotional response in me.”  WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT?

What are we to make of a David L. Burge magazine ad for his “Perfect Pitch Ear-Training Course” that claims he stopped “intellectualizing” and started to “listen naturally,” and thus began to “notice colors within the tone”? “An F# sounded one way; a B  had a different color sound,” according to Burge. “It was as easy as seeing red and blue.”

John Duarte once wrote in Guitar Player magazine that “It’s easier to learn the character of  a sound first, and then to identify the interval.” (See Ex. 1 for consonant and dissonant intervals.) Ex. 1 Consonant Intervals 

Well, I don’t know the personal unconscious or conscious systems of interpretation that Larry and David use, but they aren’t the only ones who have made use of the sound/color metaphor as a connection. Since light and sound both exist and move in waves, a fellow named A. B. Klein put together a color/music scale in the 1930’s that matched the ratios of color to sound wavelengths. (Sir Issac Newton had developed a very similar, though somewhat simpler, color scale as far back as the 1660’s).

Perfect Perfect Perfect Major Octave 4th 5th 3rd

Minor 3rd

Major 6th

Minor 6th

Dissonant Intervals  Major 2nd

6

Minor 2nd

Major 7th

Minor Augmented Diminished 7th 4th 5th

• • • • • • ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND

THE FIRST ARTISTIC STEP (Cont’d) Of course, the fundamental key here is not necessarily  accepting blindly the interpretation that Mr. Duarte, or anyone else, has ascribed to the intervals, but more importantly that one makes their own personal conscious connection to help identify them. For example, the major seventh interval never really struck  me as uncomfortable or aggressive, as it has Duarte. It sounds more like it’s poignant and sweet, in a sort of sad, desperate way. That may strike you as an overly complicated interpretation, but it’s just a simple feeling I react with and recognize.

the more straight-ahead major or minor, as it makes the harmonic texture a little “thicker,” more colorful, and more interesting: not necessarily complexity, but certainly complexion, which would seem to be consistent with the influences of modern living. (See Ex. 3 for various chord forms.) Ex. 3 Cmaj7 11 III

C F 1

2 4

C Major F Major

1

1 2 2

Another more personal interpretive aid is thinking in terms of texture. Suspend your disbelief, if you will, and go with me on this - put your tongue a little into your cheek, if you must. You could think of  the sound of a perfect fifth as being something like a chain link fence, or chain-mail armor - strong yet flexible, full of air and space, but solid and hard. Add a third, and suddenly you have a chord transformed into a soft, simple fabric - say, cotton or linen. With a dominant 7th, or a 9th chord, the extra notes give you more texture, more character, something a little more complex - say, a polyester. Chords with major thirds are brighter, stronger colors, while minor thirds are softer and darker. By the time we’re extending up to things like a minor eleventh, it may be getting a little woolly (although an augmented ninth is perhaps more like burlap).

Ex. 2   polychord 

C

3

3 4

C7

Cm III

1

1 2 3

2 4

3

4

C9

Cm9 1

1 2

By now you’ve surely  grasped the concept, and besides, this texture thing is, shall we say, wearing a bit thin. In any case, there is no question that in more developed forms of music (classical, jazz and some modern popular styles such as “new age”), composers and arrangers are more apt, as an example, to use a polychord (a chord played at the same time over another chord, as in Ex. 2) or an add9, or a sus2, in place of 

2

3

Cm11

3

4

C 9

VI

1 1 3 4

2

2

3 4

Cadd9

Cadd9 III

1

2 3

7

4

3

4

• • • • • • ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND

THE FIRST ARTISTIC STEP (Cont’d) As the ear matures and becomes more sophisticated, it can begin to hear chord alterations, substitutions, and different inversions and voicings. But the basic, fundamental first step towards those mysteries lies in making those personal, interpretive connections with what you hear. Benjamin Verdery once offered this excellent advice:

“Practice exercises musically, adding your own  dynamics. Remember, a technical exercise is only as  mundane as you make it. Do not ever be afraid to be  musical: in fact, I absolutely insist!”  When you pick up your guitar and learn how to physically play something anything - you’re just another guitar player.

But when you play that same something and consciously  develop a personal,

creative, interpretive connection with it, you are taking that awesome first 

ARTISTIC STEP.

8

BASIC CAREER CHOICES Most of you reading this are either professional

In this music business there are no hard-and-fast rules, no secret formulas. Every success story starts with some crazy mix of commercial/social appeal and artistic integrity, and then takes off on its own unique blend of every noun and adjective in the preceding recipe. Even the most veteran music-biz dudes will tell you that they’re usually just tossing the proverbial waste material at the wall to see if it’ll stick. While Teen Idols wail up to #1 and get a reasonable shot at a lifetime of financial security, some amazing guitarists with awesome technique and tremendously advanced musical sensibilities are just scratching by. Does this strike you as unjust?

guitarists of some description, or hopeful and aspiring. As “artists” in a show-business world, one of  the most basic personal and political debates you’ll probably struggle with on a continuing basis is commercial exploitation versus artistic integrity. Does it have to be either/or? Can you somehow  make the two parties coexist in a workable relationship, or does that strike you as the unholiest of  marriages? When and where does one choose to compromise, and when, where, and how does one decide to make a personal aesthetic statement? A lot of times this issue rears its ugly, thorny head in times of fundamental career choice. Example: should one take the unfulfilling, dead-end, four-billsa-week gig playing 2 and 4 “chicks” in the Shmenges’ Happy Wanderers Polka Band, or should one follow  their artistic heart and soul into the gigless, pennilessbut-meaningful oblivion of your old high school buddy’s John Coltrane-meets-Jimi Hendrix basement rehearsal group?

Do you prowl the halls of  academia bemoaning the state of  the charts while pursuing the state of the arts and cursing the fact that the twain hardly ever seem to meet? The half-full glass of an optimist’s compromise is the half-empty cynics’ sell-out, but some aspects of  commerciality require other kinds of  self-discipline and professionalism that do not come so easily to an aesthetic nature.

To aid you in this regard, from within the tiny  orbit of my limited experience, here’s an entirely  hypothetical little formula, as Rod Serling might say, submitted for your consideration:

Continued • • • • • • 

Talent + luck + hard work + grassroots marketing, promotion and publicity = A shot at a brass ring Timing + talent + luck + a death grip on that wee bit o’ brass = Fame Fame + hard work = Money Money = Power Power = Control Control = Opportunity for self-indulgence (aesthetic or otherwise)

9

• • • • • • BASIC CAREER CHOICES (Cont’d)

Flash-in-the-pan “genius” (universally recognized or self-proclaimed) does not adequately substitute for the rewards of perseverance and dedication over the long haul. Neither will integrity, profundity, and technical virtuosity guarantee you a steady paycheck, much less a ride in Bon Jovi’s private tour jet. There are serious lessons of application to learn from some enormously commercially successful people like producers Quincy Jones or David Foster.

Clothes,” it’s a great deal for the vendor, but a cold, empty, invisible con job on the purchaser. We live in a media age where hype can easily supplant talent, and the cold hard reality is that style will almost always prevail over substance. Of course, nowadays the lines that get fed to us by the media have become so blurred that one is practically unrecognizable from the other. Then again, long before Joseph Haydn set note to paper, dressed in the servant’s livery of patron Prince Esterhazy, the politics of image were just as important as one’s chops (if not more so) in obtaining and maintaining a gig.

How badly people want you and your music, and how many people want it, will determine what it’s worth in the marketplace. Sure, your personal art may  have an intrinsic value that today’s marketplace doesn’t appreciate or recognize, and if   you’re quietly content with your personal achievements, that’s fine all around. But if you’re walking around griping about your poverty and the cruel, sorry pop music world, then I’d say   you’ve got a bad attitude, the kind that eats up valuable time and energy for more positive things. And if you’d rather have semantical discussions advocating the value of trees thundering to the ground in forests where no one’s around to hear them fall, then we’re just wasting each others’ time.

 12

The high profile successes, whether you perceive them as cartoon show biz pop candy   # fluff, or substantial, artistic heavyweights, are part of a huge industry machine that trickles down to the steady lounge gig at your local Holiday  Inn. On the other hand, there are only a handful of  people on the whole planet who can earn a decent living off the small amount of available royalties constantly playing hide-and-seek in the dark and dangerous recesses of the underground where the cutting edge of the art dwells. Are you prepared to go head to head with the likes of the current pollwinning virtuosi for the limited audience share that exists? This should not be cause for weeping and gnashing of teeth; this is just the reality of the numbers game. If you want to remain a player in this game, you must always remember the odds and occasionally try to have some of  them working in your favor.

 3

4

 6

5 

 7 8   9

T O P  10 

If, however, you make music because you want to reach out and touch other people with your work (and the more the merrier), then you’re a player, my friend, and you’ve got to get into the game. The only way to skip some of the steps in the preceding formula is if  someone who already has money, power and influence comes along and sees a profit or personal gain for themselves in the exploitation of your “product” (like it or not, that’s what you and your talent are: product). At this point you’ll have to decide on a price for a piece of your integrity (percentage of the gross) and how long it will take before you can buy bits of   yourself back (reversion clause).

If you want to be the next John McLaughlin or Al DiMeola or Allan Holdsworth or Stanley Jordan, but you can’t even come up with last month’s rent,  you better figure out your bottom line, your priorities, and the price you’ll pay in order to live to fight another day. It’s of very little use to cop a total attitude of cynicism and rejection, and much more healthy to cooperate and compromise with your eyes wide open, maintaining common sense, manageable levels of skepticism, ambition, a sense of humor, greed, tolerance, short-term and long-range purpose.

Integrity is a lofty, admirable trait. It can also be a self-serving cop-out of a rationalization. Sometimes, like in the story “The Emperor’s New 

10

• • • • • • BASIC CAREER CHOICES (Cont’d)

For The Love Of Guitar 

THE GENERAL RULE OF TONGUE For every time you stick your tongue  out at something, you should be  biting it twice, and sticking it firmly  in your cheek at least three times.

Ground Rules For The Resistance  For what it’s worth, here’s an observation based on my  experience to help you make basic, fundamental career choices. Learn the ground rules of the game; play by them. Once you’re established as a player, then try rewriting a few  little rules here and there to better suit your style. It’s easier to initiate some changes from within the system than from out in the cold. Only a very tiny few are extraordinary  enough to be Revolutionaries right off the bat.

Perspective  The reality of choices is that they’re seldom ever really  black and white, not even shades of grey - more like a rainbow, a spectrum. Try to keep things in perspective, people. You are guitarists, but that is only a smaller portion of your greater roles as musicians, entertainers, performers, artistic/intellectual/technical/academic aesthetes, composers, arrangers, producers, engineers, etc. And that is only a portion of your role as (hopefully) a complete human being. Careers built to last seem to maintain a balance, an equilibrium, where the whole remains greater than the sum of the parts.

11

THE SECRET RULE Most of the chapters in these books have been

Back in Book One, in the chapter called Philosophy And Fundamentals of Good Technique , I wrote, “Keep your left-hand thumb low, centered in the middle-back of the neck.” Some readers probably  said, “Hey, what gives? I see all kinds of players with their thumbs hanging over the top of the board.” And they’re right; this technique facilitates string-bends, and in some situations, it’s downright essential.

full of rules. Well, this one’s going to be different. We’re going to pretend that we’re all adults who can handle reality, and I’m going to tell you the scary, honest truth about making music.

The most basic and important

Ex. 1 shows the chords of the sort Pete Townshend plays on the intro to “Pinball Wizard.” Notice how the thumb wraps around up and over the neck to fret the tonic bass note and mute the A string. This ain’t textbook technique, but it’s the best way to get the voicing Townshend wanted, and in the end, that’s all that matters.

RULE OF THE GAME is also the W O R S T- K E P T S E C R E T :

Rules were made to be broken!! 

Ex. 1 B

Bsus4 1 VII T

VII T

Yikes! Anarchy in the streets? Revolution in the classrooms? Naw, I doubt it. But art is supposed to be an intense personal statement, and successful art (that which fulfills the intentions of its creator and achieves that elusive, cursed, yet much sought-after commercial fortune) usually has unique qualities. A wise promotion guy once told me that every hit record is, in some respect, a “novelty” record.

1 2

3 4

3

Ex. 2  Fadd9

B add9 1

1

2 3

2 4

3 4

This is not a blanket endorsement of every  personal weirdo technical habit. Rest assured that there is always a very good reason for standard practice. For instance, check out the chords in Ex. 2. These add9 voicings are common decorative substitutions for straight major chords. If you have hands the size of  André The Giant, maybe you can play them with your thumb over the top of the neck. Mere mortals, however, must toe the line of standard technique.

Shouldn’t

“daring to be different” be a part of our

TECHNIQUE? 12

• • • • •• Ex. 3

C6 9

THE SECRET RULE (Cont’d) Dm11

Dm7

III

C6

1

1

1

2

1 3

2

2

3 4

2

3

3

But hey, this chapter we’re throwing caution to the wind and breakin’ the rules! All those lessons, where they told you to fret the strings with a classic straight-down, tip-of-thefinger technique… “Hah!” we say. Instead, let’s look at some of those strange Ted Greene/ Lenny Breau chords (Ex. 3). Place your finger in between two adjacent strings, using the outside edges of your fingertip to fret both strings. (Ted calls this technique the “double-stop.”) Ex. 4  Gmaj7

A13sus4 1

1

1

2

1 2

3 4 3

4

Fig. 1 1st finger Proximal phalange 1st Metacarpal

Em7 5add11 V

Finally, let’s take a look at the outrageous technique that George Van Eps calls the “5thfinger principle.” Use the side of the proximal phalange (third joint) of the 1st finger to fret the notes in Ex. 4 (see Fig. 1). Ha ha! We’re wild and crazy guys and gals!

1 * 

We all know that education and 1 2 enlightenment 3 4 require patience and dedication. Even Billy * Fret the A note with the  Sheehan said you have to inside metacarpal part know the rules before you of the hand (below the  can break them. knuckle of the 1st finger). But in your dark moments, when you’re overwhelmed by the labyrinth of theory and technique, remember the secret rule. It will restore faith in our human nature, and we can go on pickin’ and grinnin’.

13

PREPARATION, PRESENTATION AND PACING (MIND YOUR P’S. . .) So far, my career has offered ample opportunity 

He had prepared in advance, and knew exactly how  many half-twists of his tuning pegs it would take to move the strings very near to their appropriate pitches. As soon as he finished the preceding piece, he was cranking the pegs, smiling acknowledgement during the audience’s applause. After the crowd settled, he had only to fine-tune. It made for great pacing. The crowd never got restless and the performer never got uptight. It was a small detail, but it’s a perfect example of the subtle differences between a pro and a novice.

for navel-gazing and other endeavors, including (but not limited to) conducting seminars and clinics, attending other people’s concerts, and sitting in  judgement at guitar competitions. This myriad of  guitar-related activity has given me some insights into the little things that in and of themselves seem insignificant, but differentiate the professional from the amateur.

On another, very different night, I was judging the Canadian finals of the Guitar Wars competition. None of those who finished behind the deserving victor, Eddie Patterson, could be faulted for a lack of technique or fretboard knowledge. But there was much youthful inexperience in evidence: pregnant pauses, lumpy segues, poor audience communication; awkward gropings for switches, knobs, and stomp boxes.

Here’s a modest appraisal of 

What A Professional Presentation Should Be: 1. appropriate to the circumstance; 2. respectful to the audience, the venue, and the  material being presented; and 3. carefully premeditated by the performer from as many points of view and with attention to  as many details as humanly possible.

Almost everybody did the prerequisite two-hand tap dance all over the fretboard, but not many  9 8  7         0 had mastered basic volume and tone-knob V OL  U M E  or pickup-selector moves.  5      1

6        

         1

    2    3    4

For instance, I attended a solo recital by John Williams in April of 1989 in Toronto. It was one of  the most completely professional, accomplished, and masterful guitar performances that I have ever seen or heard. Technically, aesthetically, and artistically, there were some profound and amazing things going on, but never mind all that. Let me relate a tiny detail that illustrates how this was a presentation by a master at the top of his game.

 9 8  7    

    0

      1

TONE   9       0

           1

8

7   6     

  T O N E

      1

        1

    2    3

 5   

    2    3

6       

 5  

  4

  4

The next time you see Steve Morse play, notice how he uses the clarity of the bridge pickup for low  positions on the wound strings, but switches to the neck pickup for smooth sustain as he ascends to higher positions on the upper strings. He doesn’t miss a beat. It’s a smooth, premeditated, practiced technique that adds to the presentation of an experienced professional.

Several pieces on the program required special tunings, but Mr. Williams didn’t make the crowd sit around, coughing and whispering in uneasy silence, while he cranked around on his machine heads.

14

PREPARATION, PRESENTATION AND PACING (MIND YOUR P’S. . .) (Cont’d)

• • • • ••

Clinics, seminars, and audition-type semiinformal jam sessions for prospective band members have reminded me of some common things that players should be watching out for. (They’re offered with the greatest humility - I confess that I have been, and continue to be, guilty of manifold sins, which I constantly struggle to cope with.)

have a theory: you’re literally choking up; your blood pressure is affecting the natural, relaxed state of your ear canal, all that stuff in your middle ear, and the inner ear heading down into that throat (which seems to have your heart in it). Like a nervous, overanxious hitter, out in front of a pitch, your perception of the musical pitch is out of whack - you’re too high!!! That’s just a theory, of course, without the tiniest shred of medical knowledge or research. Then, your nerves cause your diaphragm and vocal cords to tighten up on you and so you sing flat go figure. (But, see, it’s ’cause you’re hearing flat notes as if they were in tune!…) But the most universal rookie mistake pertains to pacing. I’m talking about a sense of drama, an awareness of the audience, how to read them, hold them, set them up, and bring the house down. This is central to the art of entertainment. Artists as diverse as Ornette Coleman, Allan Holdsworth, Madonna, and Tiny Tim are all in show business, and they all bring their senses of pacing to bear on their presentations to their audiences.

One of the most common ones is nervousness. A little nervous energy is a positive physical state that you can take advantage of. But if you’re unaware, and can’t get relaxed and in control, nervous adrenaline can wreak havoc on your meter. Speeding up is by far the most common guitarist’s ailment. It causes you to overplay, and makes your finger vibrato - perhaps the most distinctive, personal aspect of a player’s technique go haywire. (The details of finger vibrato were covered back in Book Three; for now, the point is that good players employ a controlled, purposeful vibrato, while nervous or inexperienced players shake like rusted-out fenders on the Bluesmobile.)

There’s no substitute for experience, but you can also learn from observing the mistakes and successes of others, which brings us back to Guitar Wars. One contestant fires up his retro rockets and lays down a killer groove. The crowd gets into it, and starts clapping along. But he accelerates to higher tempos, moving onto other modal and scalar gymnastic planes, leaving a disappointed audience eating his dust and losing his momentum. Another contestant coaxes a clap-along from the assemblage, but proceeds to bury himself so deeply in the groove that he loses sight of the people around him feeding him the beat. He plays on and on, repeating himself  with no variations on the theme. The crowd climbs off his headed-for-nowhere train of thought, but he blindly soldiers on, brandishing a big stick and whacking away on a dead beat that no one cares about any longer.

Nerves can also cause you to play out of tune. Bent notes sometimes don’t make it up to pitch (you’re freezing up a little!) but more often go sharp, as do fretted notes, especially on scalloped fretboards with jumbo frets (you’re too pumped up!!). The low  E, when struck too hard, can sound sharp, even when it’s tuned properly. Floating tremolos can ride sharp if the side of  the picking hand rests too heavily on the bridge. And I’m not sure why, but nervous people tend to tune their B and G strings sharp. Naturally, I do

Continued • • • • • •  15

PREPARATION, PRESENTATION AND PACING (MIND YOUR P’S. . .) (Cont’d)

• • • • ••

Then enters Eddie Patterson. He lays down a groove with some seductive backbeat and syncopation. He’s locked in, but it’s a big groove, and there’s lots of room for everybody. He explores the nooks and crannies for tasty little frills with blue notes that reach out and grab you by the left ventricle, then squeeze and twist. Slowly but surely, he’s building up to something, and everybody is getting ready for him to bring the hammer down. And just when he’s got the whole room in his hands, full of anticipation, the maestro kicks into the big riff. It’s basically the same 4/4 we’ve heard all night, but now  it’s been set up real friendly, and it sports a new melody you can sink your teeth into. Magically, spontaneously, the crowd is clapping along and eating out of those hands. Eddie Patterson is smiling and rockin’ steady, ’cause he’s been mindful of his P’s, and that makes him the night’s big winner.

16

THE INEFFABLE AESTHETIC CHALLENGE Trying to write in prose about music presents

path to enlightenment is a unique, individual journey, and must offer knowledge and guidance with that in mind. All that any good teacher can do is to provide the personally customized, appropriate mental and physical challenges, as well as an attempt at an objective point of view on the student’s quest. It is an intimate trust at the heart of which must lie a mutual recognition of the ineffability of music.

a challenge - come up with words and phrases describing musical sounds and the techniques to achieve those sounds. It’s always tough (especially  considering the intellectual capacity at the source), but sometimes it gets to feeling downright impossible, because I must try to communicate with you not just about the craft, but even more importantly about the art of music, as well. However, my only tools are the language of a different craft. The art of music is something that can only be heard, moving through the air, to be understood fully.

I cannot teach it to you: I cannot find words that I can write to make you under stand it. You must hear it, experience it, feel it, know it, become a part of it, and learn it for  yourself. Just as each human being is a unique entity, so too, is their relationship with music. Notes on a staff is notation, not music. The words on this page are prose , not music.

However, if you are to truly understand and appreciate the aesthetics of music, then one of the most basic things that you must realize and know  about the art form is - here comes the controversial premise - it cannot be “taught.” Oh, a teacher can show you, illustrate for you, guide you, counsel you, encourage you, but ultimately, the grasping or absorbing of something is done for and by yourself.

Francis Sparshott, in an essay entitled “Aesthetics Of Music - Limits And Grounds” (from a book  compiled by Philip Alperson called “What Is Music? An Introduction To The Philosophy Of Music” from Haven Publishing), concluded that “it is more nearly  true of music than it is of anything else that it offers us an alternative way of being.”

“ I  used to try and motivate  students …and I eventually  decided it was a waste of energy  …I found out that people learn  in their own way.” 

Music is a wonderfully abstract, metaphysical thing that happens inside and between people. But “Music” isn’t just the composer’s mental concept, or the finished score, or any given interpretive performance of the piece, or even the critically  acclaimed “definitive” recording of that piece. Nor is it exactly the same thing for any two of the people attending a concert or listening to a recording. It is the most fluid, “interactive”, and uniquely personal art form that exists at all stages - creation, execution, and audience perception. Indeed, could you honestly  say that even your single most favorite recording produces exactly the same aesthetic reaction every  time you hear it?

Mick Goodrick (instructor at Berklee College, writer)

In a very real sense, you end up educating  yourself in your own way. This is not to say that most readers are capable of total self-education - far from it. Anyone and everyone can benefit from good teaching, but they’ve got to be ready for it, open to it, wanting it. And the teachers must be aware that each student’s

Continued • • • • • •  17

• • • • • • THE INEFFABLE AESTHETIC CHALLENGE (Cont’d)

Music lives in a dimension of  its own creation that encompasses all legitimate definitions and interpretations, without any single one being definitive. It could be argued that all works of art - paintings or dance performances, for example - possess this interpretive quality. But a painting or sculpture exists in dimensions of space and time; the dancer’s body becomes the instrument and the work of art in progress. Music remains unique in that it does not share these kinds of  physical realities: it moves intangibly  through the air, all audible sensation. You can’t see it, but it can conjure up mental visions. You can’t taste it, but it can be all about flavor, hunger, texture, or, for that matter, gluttony. Alperson writes, “There is, then, not only a plurality  of musical tastes, but a plurality of musical functions.”

This may sound incredibly heavy-duty, but think  of it as… fun. Simple recreation. Of course, recreating yourself can also be a hefty concept to ponder, so one doesn’t often bother to stop and analyze it - that defeats the exercise. You just go for it, and usually the process takes care of itself.

For artists, the fundamental quality of the artistic experience is that they lose their selfconsciousness, and are transported into another reality, that of the work. How many times have  you heard artists talking about getting “inside” the tune? The discipline necessary  to subordinate oneself  and surrender to an instinctive flow, to offer up for sacrifice one’s own identify and personality for the greater good of the music, is what the higher aesthetics are all about. Attempting  to categorically define that feeling in words is as unsatisfactory as, say, trying to describe the physical Paul Robinson comments upon his own music sensations caused by the emotions of love or hate. criticism in his book “Opera And Ideas: From Mozart We all know the feelings; we can all go to a dictionary  To Strauss”- Harper and Row): and define the emotions by listing the causes, the effects, the circumstances, etc. But describing “I occasionally make the music say more than it  successfully, with precision and exactitude and no really wants to, that I have extracted unearned  possibility for misinterpretation, the feeling itself is intellectual capital from a phrase, a passage, or a  the stuff of poetry, lyrics, modulation whose true significance remains  analogy, semiotics, and ineffable-i.e., purely musical.”  frustration. Inevitably, for                                                  author and reader alike, maestro or beginner, poll There’s our operative word again: ineffable. winner or weekend hacker, you Incapable of being expressed in words, indescribable. gotta do like Frank Zappa says:

“    J  u s t  s  u  p  a  h u t   p l  a  y  n d   e r   g u i t a y   r .”  

18

THE MARRIAGE OF TECHNIQUE TO EMOTION People often say they can’t put their feelings into

Let’s test the one-note theory. Assume, for our purposes, that the most commonly exploited note in the entire modern B history of the guitar is the bend of the 4th to the 5th T 7 (9) A (shown in the key of A B minor in Ex. 1). How do  you feel about this note, how does it strike your psyche, as you play it over each of the chords in Ex. 2? What if the note occurred over any one of the suggested chords, but Ex. 2  the piece of music Am A7 itself was set in the V 1 V 1 key of C (no sharps 2 or flats) or A (three 3 4 3 4 sharps) or D (two sharps) or E minor optional (one sharp)? What if  the tempo was faster, Fmaj7 D9 or slower, or your IV 1 1 amp was sounding 2 2 3 particularly good or 4 3 bad? What about finger vibrato? An infinite number of variables can affect the way you feel, and your ability to get outside yourself and inside the music. We can’t get much more basic than one note. But the nature of the human spirit bespeaks the infinite complexity that can exist inside that one note. Ex. 1

words, that they can’t express their emotions. Perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing aspect of music as a form of expression is that it too, can be ripe with meaningful feeling without literal definition.

“Music may even express a state of meaning   for which there exists no adequate word in any language.”  Aaron Copeland

“Words seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so  easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine  music, which fills the soul with a thousand  things better than words.”  Felix Mendelssohn So if words are inadequate to describe the phenomenon of “genuine music,” how can I communicate it to other basic pickers and grinners so they  can start to marry their emotions to their guitar techniques? How about if we start with one note?

“With one note you can shatter a thousand  notes, especially if you know how to get inside the note. A lot of players don’t know how to get inside the note, so they’re always playing over it.”  “I had a half-hour set aside out of the 10 hours a day that I’d be practicing, being as sensitive as possible, and having the one note speak to me.” 

“So many people don’t know the value of  one note. So many kids don’t have any idea, or don’t concentrate on attack. But the  loudness, the softness, the intonation, the  vibrato you put on it are all extremely  important things. And you can get a great  amount of beauty out of one note.” 

Steve Vai

Mike Bloomfield

Carlos Santana

19

• • • • ••

THE MARRIAGE OF TECHNIQUE TO EMOTION (Cont’d)

Look at the list of modes in Ex. 3. Each mode has a characteristic flavor because of its unique pattern of  intervals. Our bent 4th-to-5th note works over Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, and Aeolian. In each context, wouldn’t that single note “taste” different to you, even though its theoretical function is practically the same in each case?

“Any music created by technique and brains  alone is not worth the paper it is written on. A composer should feel intensely what he is composing.” 

Ex. 3

Maurice Ravel SCALE

MODE

SCALE FORMULA

DEGREE

1

(W=Whole Step, H=Half Step)

Ionian

W

W H W W W H 2 3 4 5 6 7 R  

W

H W W W H W 2  3 4 5 6  7 R 

R 2

Dorian R

3

4

Phrygian

H W W W H W W R  2  3 4 5  6  7 R 

Lydian

W R

5

Mixolydian

W H W W H W 2 3 4 5 6  7 R 

W

H W W H W W 2  3 4 5  6  7 R 

R 6

Aeolian R

7

Locrian

“To be naked and show… innermost  emotions… is what real music is about.” 

W W H W W H 2 3 #4 5 6 7 R  

W

It all starts in that twilight zone between your head and your heart, as you interpret what you’re hearing. The next step is your personal, physical translation to your instrument - not necessarily the notes you choose, but your emotional investment:  your commitment, your openness, and the humble yet courageous surrender of your spirit to the music.

Carlos Santana This courage to show emotions may be even more critical than the emotion itself. Emotions can be mixed, but a clear artistic revelation can turn them into powerful valid works. By the same token, chops may be narrow and limited, but the light of a sincere spirit can shine through.

H W W H W W W R   2  3 4  5  6  7 R 

This is, of course, a ridiculously simple example of an exceedingly complex phenomenon. It could be something that you felt instinctively, never really  bothering to dissect it and attach labels to it. That’s cool, because only the feeling itself has artistic validity. The intellectual definition gives it a dimension for academic purposes - valid in its own right - but that’s a different thing. When it comes to education versus experience, I’ll side with experience every time. I’m not an academic; I’m a guitar player.

“You can use the A    melodic minor scale for  the D   9 chord, which is the  5 substitution for  the G7. This is also referred to as the D    Lydian  7 mode, since it contains the same  notes. But even if you master all these  concepts, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be a good jazz musician.”  Sal Salvador

“I am not a learned composer, but I am a very experienced one.”  Giuseppe Verdi

Continued • • • • • •  20

• • • • ••

THE MARRIAGE OF TECHNIQUE TO EMOTION (Cont’d)

A comprehensive knowledge of theory won’t make you more emotionally honest or artistically sensitive. The study of  theory can give you more labels, more vocabulary, and more tools, which will help you become a much better craftsman on  your instrument. Theory can definitely speed up the process of digesting information and translating it to the fretboard. But whether it makes you a better artist making better choices is entirely up to you. The marriage of emotion to technique is not so much a guitar/music skill as a spiritual process, a character/personality skill. And the exploitation of technical skills must always be consistent with an artistic vision.

“Music opens the avenues, places you’ve never been. That can happen in your imagination, but when it  occurs in music it’s wonderful, because it happens not  only inside, but outside at the same moment.”  John McLaughlin

“You just have to find something within  yourself and develop that.”  Allan Holdsworth I wish there were a tidy, simple way to sum this topic up, but, as with most affairs of the human spirit, it defies anything quite so straightforward. In closing, let’s try these two quotes on for size:

“Music is to me the perfect expression of the soul.”  Robert Schumann

“The artist speaks to our capacity for delight and  wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives, to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain.”  Joseph Conrad

21

“WHAT IF?” Ex. 1 G

C/G

D/A

1

2 4

3

Em

Am

Dm/A

1

1 2

A/E

E

3 4

2

1 1 2 3

2 3

1

2 3

2 3

2

3

3

The pursuit of music constantly offers us an opportunity to play the game of What If?  In improvisation, for instance, we can pick and choose what notes to play and what spaces to fill. We can ask ourselves, “what if I try this or that?” Of course, the game of What If? isn’t limited Ex. 2  to improvisation. It can be a valuable tool for Major barre  Major barre  exploration and creativity in any field, and certainly in your guitar education. 1

For example, when most of us in the baby-boom generation began playing guitar, we used big, first-position open chords (Ex.1 ), letting those open strings ring out. We strummed folk songs and (as we added basic barre chords, like Ex.2 to our vocabulary) simplified pop tunes, still letting five or six  strings sound out. Everything we played and wrote fell into one of the sharp keys, like the chords in Ex. 1.

1

2 3 4

root

2 3 4

root

Minor barre 

Minor barre  1

1 2

root

3 4

3 4

root

But what if we had been born in the ’30s or ’40s when horn players and big bands ruled the day - an era when economy, muted strings, and ensemble playing prevailed over open strings and fully voiced chords? What if the first progression you learned to play was more like Ex. 3? Ex. 3 B 6

Bdim7

Cm7

C dim7

Dm7

Gm7 D 7

Cm7

B7

4 4 Fingerings

T A B

4 1 2

4 1 2

3 1 2

3 1 2

3 3 2

3 3 2

3 1 2

3 1 2

3 3 2

3 3 2

3 1 2

3 2 1

3 3 2

3 3 2

3 2 1

3 2 1

7 5

7 5

7 6

7 6

8 8

8 8

9 8

9 8

10 10

10 10

10 9

8 8

8 8

8 7

8 7

6

6

7

7

8

8

9

9

10

10

10 8 10

9

8

8

7

7

Continued • • • • • •  22

• • • • ••

“WHAT IF?” (Cont’d)

Ex. 4A  Em7

A13

Dm9

G13

4 4

Ex. 4B  Em7 B 13 A13 E m9

Dm9 A 7 5 G13

Ed’s handling of the chords was a revelation to me, and a good example of  applying What If?  to a musical situation. My 6-string, root-note, sharp-key  mentality had kept me from exploring the many possible voicings and colors each chord contained. Playing What If? can help you get back to the basics - not only of your own playing, but of music itself.

4 4 Fingerings

T A B

4 3 1 2

4 3 2 1

4 3 2 1

4 3 1 2

4 3 1 2

4 3 2 1

4 3 2 1

4 3 2 1

8 7 5 7

8 7 6

7 6 5

5 4 3

5 4 3

5

5 5 3 5

5 5 4

6

6 6 4 6

4

3

3

Once, for a recording session, I had written a progression for jazz guitar master Ed Bickert to solo over, two bars of which are excerpted in Ex. 4A. On my demo, I chunked away  four to the bar, swinging fiercely, adding every altered note I could grab, as in Ex. 4B.

True, a key signature with flats still makes me swear someone’s been moving my fretboard dots around. But now I ask  myself, “What if I was a self-taught Delta blues slide player working with open tunings? What if I was jamming on one-finger barre chords like Bo Diddley? What if I could tap the spirits of Django and Jimi and Wes, and Hank  Garland and Lenny Breau and…”

But when Ed recorded his own comping, he played little stabs, using just two notes to suggest the tritone, as in Ex. 5. He let the walking bass suggest the harmony, leaving himself plenty of space for his understated  yet elegant solo. Ex. 5  Em7

A13

Dm9

G13

4 4

What if… we move on now to the next chapter?  T A B

7 5

6 5

5 3

4 3

23

CONNECT THE DOTS: THE LOVE CONNECTION Little dots on the staff paper, in fretboard

Traditionally, music educators help students by  having them play exercises and studies, little pieces featuring a particular aspect of music in a context that’s supposedly designed to tweak your brain (“ah, that’s kind of interesting…”) and maybe even  your heart (“man, I LOVE that…”).

diagrams, between the frets on your guitar - they’re everywhere! And the trick is to connect the dots from pictorial representations into intellectual and emotional responses, and once again into physical technique. It’s a formidable process, but a basic one, and yet so many players experience frustration because they forget to make the connections. Here’s the flow line:  ES

  T  N O

BRAIN

H E  A

R T   A

N D S OUL

 D S

 N  H A

So we go back to Ex. 1, and realize that it’s just an orderly little group of dots, and that no matter how  hard and fast, or soft and slow you play it, it’s not MUSIC. How would you begin to try and turn it into something personal and real? Let’s play that fabulous game of invention, What If? 

Ex. 1 What If  you ‘shuffled the deck,’ (Ex. 2), so that the order of notes began to suggest melodies? What If   you tried a little ‘red light, green light,’ (Ex. 3), where rhythmic variations make it more interesting and involving?

4 4

T A B 5 8

5 7

5 7

5 7

5 8

5 8 5

Ex. 2  4 4

Let’s begin at the beginning. A guitar player has memorized, and can roar up and down the basic A blues scale of  Ex. 1 relatively easily. But now this person is beginning to feel frustrated and wonders why - maybe even decides to seek help inside some guitar book! Could it be that they have Ex. 3 overlooked level three, the importance of the second 4 connection in the process? The 4 dots in Ex.1 can be converted into physical technique, but if   you have not made the vital connection to your own intellect T and emotion, you have failed to A B turn little dots into MUSIC.

T A B 5 8

1 and 2 and

8 5

5

5

5

and

8

24

and

7

7

7

5 7

5

and 2 and 3 e and 4 e and

5 7

5 75

7

75

8

7 5

1

5

8 5

8

5 8

5

• • • • • • CONNECT THE DOTS: THE LOVE CONNECTION (Cont’d)

Ex. 4  4 4

H

H

T A B 5 8

H

5 7

5 7

H

H

5 7

5 8

H

P

5 8 8 5

P

8 5

P

P

7 5

7 5

P

H

7 5

P

5 8

5

Ex. 5 

What if  you tried to play the scale as in Ex. 4, where instead of picking every note, you employed hammer-ons ascending, and pull-offs descending? Now, …what if  you started to make up your own little exercises combining all three elements?

etc. P

8 5 T A B

You can spice up the process by adding the occasional “lick.” (Apparently this term derives from ‘cow lick’, a short little phrase intended to make your hair stand up!) Two classic A blues licks from high school garage band days are copped from Terry Kath’s “25 or 6 to 4” solo, (Ex. 5), and the last rung on Jimmy Page’s “Stairway” solo (Ex.6 ).

t e s 

B r a i n

P

8 5

8 5

P

8 5

Ex. 6  8va 

3

There are all sorts of ways to get from dot to dot. Just don’t forget to try and put your brain and your heart and soul in between the notes and your hands. Think of it as The Love Connection.

N  o 

P

3

etc. P

P

B

20 17

20 17

20 22

T A B

H e a r t  and  S o u l 

25

17

17

H a n d s

GETTING THERE FROM HERE SPARKS IN THE DARKNESS Ex. 1 II

1 2

1

2

3 3

V

1

1 1

1 1 1 1 1

1 VII 1

1 1

3 3 4

1

1 1

1 1 1

3 3

3

1 1

3

3 3 3 3 3 4 4 3 3

IX

1 1 1

4 4

3 4 4

3 3 4

3 4

Remember the scenario where the gas station

Two of the guitar’s highly idiomatic traits are slides and bends. Little glissandos can take stiff little lifeless dots and give them character. Check out Ex. 2. The little slides in and out of notes are there to try  and give the phrase a sexy, liquid feel. This kind of  an approach, by the way, works extremely well on heavy gauge strings, and so lends itself well to acoustic and jazz.

attendant explains to the lost driver asking for directions that “you can’t get there from here?”  Sometimes that’s how it seems on the guitar. But problem solving takes imagination, and courage, and willpower. (A good road map and a full tank of gas couldn’t hurt, either.) There’s also truth in that old adage about life’s fun not being about arriving at destinations so much as enjoying the rides.

In Ex. 3, you can see one of the most basic, useful ways to slide and travel between blues or pentatonic scale positions. This example could be used in an A blues, or a C major pentatonic context.

So here’s the basic problem. You’ve pretty much got a handle on, say, the blues scale, in the different positions in Ex. 1. But now you feel trapped in these dull and lifeless boxes of dots: they seem like small clichés that can’t be joined into coherent musical sentences.

If you are more of a light-gauge strung rock  guitarist, you’re probably into bending, a physical workout that often celebrates the journey as much as the destination. To continue the road trip analogy, think of a bend as a turn, a change in direction as you release a bent string, you can slide your hand down, and into a new phrase in a new position of   your choosing (Ex. 4). Or, you can release from a bend and combine it with a sliding glissando up and into a new position (Ex. 5).

Introducing basic problem solver #2: (B.P.S.#1, by  the way, “When in doubt, lay out,” may be familiar to faithful readers, as it has also seen duty as Law #6 from the Tone, Taste and Feel chapter in Book Three.)

B.P.S. #2 is simply,

“ S L I D E , K E L LY, S L I D E .” Ex. 2  1

1

4

3 1

4 4

4 3

S

T A B

4

1

1

S

5

5

8

8 7

S

5

7

5

3

1

3

1

S

4

7

26

4

6 5

S

3

5

3

5

GETTING THERE FROM HERE SPARKS IN THE DARKNESS (Cont’d)

• • • • ••

Ex. 3 1 1

3

3

3

3

1

3

1

3

4 4 1

3 S

T A B 3 5

1

3

1

3 1 3

3 S

S

5

5 7

3 5 7

S

8 10

7 9

P

8 10 12

S

P

12 10 8

P

10 8

S

9 7 5

P

7 5

1 P

3 S

7 5 3

5

Ex. 4  1

4 4 3

1

3

1

3

B

7

5

Here’s a Dan Hill quote on songwriting:

 is l i k e g    n  i   t  i  ng  w r  nc t i ve  i  “…so  n i ns t c io us a ,  x e s s  u nco n  n no t  t s o   m ca a l  w h ic h eas t s s e c  l  p ro  h t, a t g   u a  t  be a l l y .”  m  r o  f   no t

2

2

S

T A B

3

7

5

7

S

S

1

7 (9)

2

2

Ex. 5  A 3

2

4 4

B

T A B

S

S

13

7 (9)

14

14

Every time I sit down to create, whether it’s guitar playing (or chapter writing) or composing, I wrestle with the truth in that statement.

what I’m on about with all this journeys and destinations stuff, check out the “Where Were You” cut on the “Guitar Shop” recording (Epic EK44313). Jeff  Beck travels light years, and somehow arrives without ever having left, all at the same time, with his lights burning so bright they’ll bring tears to your eyes. (I don’t think it’s any accident that the cover artwork  portrays the metaphor of guitar as a vehicle, either.)

Remember that these suggestions are only wellintentioned sparks in the darkness; you have to build  your own fire and go exploring with its light. Or, to return to this chapter’s running analogy: the thoughts presented here are only road maps and gas tanks the journeys and destinations are your choices.

I know I’m getting obscure and poetic and mixing metaphors, but it’s not about words, and it’s not about dots, is it? It’s just about getting there from here.

All this talk about bends and slides and cars makes me think of Jeff Beck. If you’re wondering 27

HANDS ON: OF WAYS AND MEANS AND HAPPY ENDINGS At a clinic, a student asked why I kept anchoring my 3rd or 4th finger of  Fig. A 

my right fingerpicking hand (sometimes both!), against the face of the guitar whilst I was executing banjo-esque  p (thumb) m (middle) i (index) patterns (Fig. A). Why was I doing this, especially  in light of the fact that this seemed contrary to the free floating, poised position ( Fig. B) that his teacher (that fellow temporarily and amusedly observing from the back  of the room) insisted upon as correct basic technique? Fig. B  In my experience, there’s a difference between academic ideals and practical realities. Many times, as a performer/entertainer/musician/artist out there in the real world, I will resort to whatever it takes to get the job done, and I will surrender (with twinges of guilt) the ideals of  technique or theory. Admittedly, it becomes a case of  an end justifying the means. But just for a second, try to disregard all the vainglorious hype that surrounds “self-taught” heroics. In the case of an academic teacher/student relationship, both parties must be aware of the necessity for exploring fundamental basics that offer the greatest amount of flexibility: call it servicing an ideal of  potential. The basics of an educational process are all about means: hopefully, there are no ends in sight, except perhaps for this comprehensive examination of ways and means. It is inevitable human nature that a person’s physical technique will have idiosyncrasies, tendencies, preferences, shortcomings and weaknesses. It is also more than likely that a student will eventually, by  necessity or through a maturing sense of ends , choose to part ways with a teacher’s pedagogy. But a student has a responsibility to cover the prescribed curriculum, not just the stuff that comes naturally and comfortably. And the teacher has a duty to present fundamental means that can accommodate the greatest ends imaginable. So, I looked that student square in the eye, and without a twinge of  guilt, said, “Do as he says - not as I do!” 

Continued • • • • • • 

28

HANDS ON: OF WAYS AND MEANS AND HAPPY ENDINGS (Cont’d)

• • • • ••

Ex. 1 G

D/F

F

6

C/E

D7

D/F

6

6

6

G

6

6

6

4 4

 p m i p m i 3 T A B

5

3

3 4

p m i p m i 2

3 4

Ex. 2 

3

2 2

etc.

1

3

1

3

1 2

0

1 2

1

0 0

2

1

1

0

Bsus4

2 2

2

1 4

3

2 2

3

3 5

3

3 4

3 5

B

4 4

 p a m i p a m i 7 7 7 T A B

9

7 7 7 9

etc.

7

7 7 7

7 7 7 9

7 7 7 8

7

7 7 7

7 7 7 8

7 7 7 9

Case in point: Ex.1 can be played quite easily, perhaps even facilitated, with the hand position of Fig.A , but it’s impossible to play the tremolo passage of  Ex. 2 with it. For that, you’ll need something closer to the freer floating technique of  Fig. B. In fact, you can play both examples with B. So, if time constraints forced you to pick only one, which technique would be preferred in a basic curriculum? A is an effective, but limiting technique. B is more open-ended. Advanced players can indulge their preferences: professionals must eliminate, or simply avoid, their weaknesses, as they take shortcuts to achieve end results. Students should be constructing, deconstructing, and reforming, in order to try and build themselves a better musical mousetrap. So, great technique is not an end in itself, but simply a means to an end. There is no single right way of doing anything: but there is such a thing as common sense. Some techniques are more appropriate than others in a given circumstance. Some are preferable because they are more open-ended, and flexible. Some are just downright necessary.

Continued • • • • • •  29

• • • • ••

HANDS ON: OF WAYS AND MEANS AND HAPPY ENDINGS (Cont’d)

Left hand positions make a good, shall we say, illustrative case in point. Lots of guitar players tend to favor the left hand position shown in Fig. C most of the time, sort of a baseball bat, handshake kind of wraparound grip. It is Ex. 3 perfect for strength maneuvers, bending strings, Chuck Berry-isms, and for a G major chord like Ex. 3. But go ahead and try to play the run in Ex. 4 with this hand position, and by the time you’re getting over to the 5th and 6th III T strings, it’s practically impossible. As soon as you try  2 it with the hand positioning of  Fig. D, (front and 3 4 back), you’ll find it gets a lot easier. The arrow in the front illustration of  Fig. D shows the adaptability of  this hand position; to facilitate fingerings down on the 1st and 2nd strings, your wrist can flex up. And as you finger more towards the 5th and 6th strings, your wrist can gravitate down to accommodate the reach.

Fig. C 

Ex. 4  4 4

1

2

3 4 T A B

4

6

1

2

3

4

1

2

4 6 3 4

3

5

1

3

2

3

4 5

4

6

2

4

3

4

5 6

Fig. D 

30

1

3

3 5

4

6

1

3

3

4

1

3

5 6 3 5

4

6

1

3

2

4

1

4 6 3

1

• • • • ••

There is no single left hand position that is all-purpose. Different fingerings will require different approaches, as illustrated in Figures E, F, and G. In Fig. E, notice how the thumb has slid along the back of the neck, past the fingering position, and the wrist has rotated down and out a little, to accommodate the ‘1st-finger-high, 4th-finger-low’ positioning. The palm, and the crook between the thumb and 1st finger, aren’t making contact with the neck at all.

A13 V

1

HANDS ON: OF WAYS AND MEANS AND HAPPY ENDINGS (Cont’d)

2 3 4

Fig. F is practically the opposite scenario, and very

Fig. E 

Fig. F 

similar to Fig. C. The thumb comes up over the top, for the very practical purpose of  fretting down (or muting) the 6th string. The wrist has flexed up and in so that the palm and the thumb/1st crook are hugging up against the back of the neck. Figure G is a very radical version of  Fig. D. To facilitate the six fret stretch of the pinky, the thumb

slides down past the midway point of  the back of the neck, and inside the first finger barre over on the string side, while the wrist action flexes away down and out. Critics of technique point to its mechanical contortions as hollow gymnastic exercises. This can be very true, if you allow the means to obscure the end goal. If, however, there is a valid artistic and musical reason for a technique, then you really must try  and go for it. Exploration and experiment come more naturally to some than others: still, in the end, we’re all trying to let our spirits be our guides, aren’t we? These kinds of means lead to happy endings.

B m11 VI

1 2

4

31

THE 3H INFINITIES: HEAD, HANDS AND HEART It’s interesting to see how many guitarists (myself  included) feel compelled to buy a new axe, or a new  amp, or the latest rack mountable whatsit or floor stompable gadget, to get a different sound. If it’s not the multi-patch editing appeal of digital midi, it’s the sonic lure of 60’s amps and vintage off-the-wall guitars.

I’ve gotta go find this certain guitar and that rare old  distortion pedal somewhere so I can get that creative  kind of vibe. Procrastination is a path of lesser resistance. And shopping can get very addictive. Here’s a contentious one to chew on: it’s almost always easier on the 3 H to wangle a deal on a different guitar than it will ever be to learn, say, a Bach transcription. David Lee Roth once told Toronto Star  journalist Greg Quill that “In the long run, differences in music amount to haircuts and shoes.” I don’t entirely agree with the statement (perhaps if he’d qualified the music as pop …) but I think I can see where he’s coming from. Doesn’t it seem like an inordinate amount of time and energy gets spent (by musicians!!!) chasing the notion that differences in music amount to the gear that’s employed? Remember the adage about a poor worker blaming his tools?

All well and good; a place for everything, everything in its place, and all that. But if we’re really  going to go retro, let’s go all the way, and let’s not lose sight of a few home truths. The trappings of style will always come and go, in and out of fashion. Today’s retro “classic” was yesterday’s scorned has-been, and will be tomorrow’s discarded play toy, until, perhaps a decade or two hence, somebody somewhere smells a trendy profit in exploiting nostalgia (again). At the same time, the absolute latest most amazing musthave gizmo is bound to be supplanted by the next gizmo, or rendered obsolete by the new improved mach two. In any case, don’t you start to feel a little like a hampster running on someone else’s financial treadwheel? Don’t you find yourself resenting all the time and energy that has to go into gear research and development, knob twiddling and patch pre-setting, time and energy that might be better spent on practicing, writing, playing and performing music?

Oh, a Rickenbacker and Vox is undeniably  different than a Les Paul and Marshall, which is worlds apart from a Telly and a Princeton, etc. Hey, I’m the guy that said (back in the chapter on The Selection and Purchase of a Guitar in Book One) that my basic short list would include (gulp) 13 guitars! But still, it is possible to find an infinity of tonal variations and interpretive subtleties right in your hands, ladies and gentlemen! The following are just a very few elementary examples.

Then again, maybe not. Once you’ve become aware of how much dedicated persistence it takes to do the 3 H stuff, (Head, Hands and Heart), you may  indeed fall prey to another one of those little foibles of  human nature: procrastination. You know, it’s time to  get down to it, but, oh, I should make a cup of tea first. Ah, forgot to go through the morning mail. Front lawn  needs cutting: gotta get to the bank today. Gosh, I really  ought to get a new set of strings and put them on. And so on and so forth until, a little further down the line, maybe it becomes, oh, I can’t practice or write today,

An exaggerated “free” stroke, (Fig. A), has a bright, thin sound. Indeed, taken to its more aggressive limits, it assumes the same charac teristics of  snapping and popping that bass

32

Fig. A 

• • • • ••

THE 3H INFINITIES: HEAD, HANDS AND HEART (Cont’d)

players employ to get notes to jump, loudly and brightly, out of the mix. Sometimes I’ll literally pinch the string between my thumb and 1st finger, or hook a finger underneath a string and snap it up like a rubber band.

And, speaking of picking location, a very  common device, called “pinch,” or pick harmonics, is to take your thumb nail, or the edge of your pick, and literally slice the string that you’re picking in a place that divides the string into a proportional resonant length, which gives a harmonic partial of whichever note you’re playing. Depending on your craftiness, and a measure of serendipity, you can vary the ratio of original note to harmonic overtone, from a subtle “colorization” to a full squawking harmonic that really cuts through.

Fig. B 

Think of all the different sizes, types and materials used to make picks. I’ve always used different picks for different sounds. (Check out the chapter entitled, “Take Your Pick” - Book One) Naturally, a light, flexible pick would give you a completely  different tone production than, say, the metallic grinding of a coin, like Billy Gibbons, Brian May  or George Lynch popularized.

An exaggerated “rest” stroke (Fig. B), especially  when played with a deliberate smoothness, gives a full roundness and warmth to the note. Even on unplugged solidbody electrics, you can feel the difference of these two strokes in terms of translation of vibration from the string to the body. Because of the nature of the vibrating string length, and the location of pickups, you can get a very  bright and hard tone by picking or strumming back  by the bridge, contrasted by the softer warmth and depth you get closer to the fretboard ( Fig. C). Picking up the neck, say, above the 17th fret or so, or hammering notes on the fretboard itself, has its own unique, thinner tone.

The subtleties of right hand tone production in classical and fingerstyle playing are infinite: in a basic nutshell, you’ve got

Bright, Harder

S K I N, A N D N AI L , ANGLES OF ATTACK AND INTENSITY.

Warm, Deep, Softer

In varying combinations, they all

AFFECT YOUR TONE.

Fig. C 

“Kato” Tone

33

Continued • • • • • • 

• • • • ••

THE 3H INFINITIES: HEAD, HANDS AND HEART (Cont’d)

On Telescopes and Microscopes  What may appear to be subtle little choices in music-making can have a huge impact on your sound. There are telescopes, which make big, distant things accessible, and there are microscopes, which make little things big. You can smash a chord with a windmill attack (the grand gesture: a telescopic thing), or you might choose sometime to drag the pick slowly across the strings in a harp-like fashion (attention to detail: microscopic). You can choose to employ an upstroke on a chord instead of a downstroke. Wang Chung!! Obviously, because of the chord sounding out high to low as opposed to the more common low to high strum, it has a very different sound effect. This might seem a trivial, microscopic alteration, but, if employed in the right place at the right time, it can make a world of difference. You can tune your guitar strings down from concert pitch, and get a totally  different character than when they’re at standard tension, or capoed, or even Nashville high-strung - that’s when the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th are replaced with skinny gauges and you tune ’em each up an octave from the original E, A, D, and G. You can use your palm to dampen the bass strings as you chug those rhythmic eighth notes, or let them ring out and oscillate freely, so that you get that interesting little crunchy sound on the front end of every attack each time your pick strikes against an already vibrating string.

These are just a few simple suggestions and ideas, and we haven’t even touched a knob, or changed an amp setting, or rewritten a patch pre-set, or kicked in an effect (yet…). And we haven’t even entered the parallel universes of your Head and Heart. My point is not to try and invalidate the equipment and tools of  the trade, but merely to remind you that there is an infinity of creative options available to you before you even get to the output jack of your axe. Perhaps, next time you’re searching, you’d like to start from your hands, and go backwards , moving in an inward direction. Now that’s some kinda retro, for ya.

34

DEFINING “IT”

On Body Language, Image, and the Soundtrack of the Soul  mysterious, menacing-and-intense-like. But every  now and then, the crowd gets a kick out of seeing the guitar player getting all caught up in the rockin’ and rollin’ spirit of the moment, with all those flashy  gyrations, complete with hair-tossing and sweat dripping, while he makes those uninhibited beastwith-the-two-backs kinds of faces and pulls those amazing notes from the axe.

“ It ”is   what Laurence Olivier said he didn’t 

have anymore when Dustin Hoffman  encouraged him to perform the Bard in public  again. Hoffman said, ‘It, it - I keep hearing  about this it, what is this it?’ Larry leaned in  real close and whispered, like it was a mantra, ‘Look-at-me, look-at-me, look-at-me!’ ”  from an article by Donald Chase in the Toronto Globe and Mail

Guitarists have copped more than a few stage moves from the choreographed body language of  runway models and exotic dancers. Valuable lessons about physical shtick, timing, pacing, reading and working a room can also be learned from watching comedians. No matter what your personal sensitivities might be, a live musical performance is a physical and dramatic act. Those that would deny any pretense in their presentation, any “act”-ing, would do well to remember the lyric of  Neil Peart of Rush “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

After being included in a concert on a slate of  many different, well-known and respected guitarists from different walks of life, marvelling at each participants’ unique style, and especially the varied stage presences that each brought to their performance, I started thinking about “it.” We live in an instant access, instant gratification age. Television, film and videos have done a great deal to influence the music consuming public, even more than ever before, into “hearing” with their eyes. Certainly, for me, as a rock guitarist who was coming into the business just after the era of Hendrix, The Beatles, and Elvis the Pelvis, the guitar was as much a dramatic stage prop as it was an instrument for aesthetic, artistic expression. My performance education led me to respect a tradition of stage presence and body language that extended back to T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and the classic duck-walkin’ Chuck Berry, to highlight just a famous few. In bands, the show biz entertainment factor of  gymnastic histrionics is often left to the singer out front: you know, Mick does the hyperactive rabblerousing cock-a-doodle doodling while Keith smokes a cigarette and hangs cool, maybe even a little

35

• • • • ••

FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR: DEFINING “IT” (Cont’d)

So ask yourself: am I acting in a manner that’s appropriate to the music that I’m making? What kinds of images am I creating to accompany my performance? Am I helping, or hindering, in bringing it to life for my  audience?

Playing guitar is a physical, dramatic act, certainly. Sometimes, like an actor, or a dancer, or a comedian, “it” seems to be saying, “lookat-me, look-at-me, look-at-me.” But more often, and certainly more profoundly, the guitarist’s “it” is always asking, “Hear-mysoul? Hear-my-soul? HEAR-MY-SOUL?” As guitarists, it’s not so much that we visually “show” our emotions, but that we let everyone HEAR our feelings.

Lyle Lovett once told Jay Leno that he’d gotten a different, new and shorter haircut because he was starting to suspect that his hair was having a better career than he was. I know that I’ve received some reviews in the past where the faces I made, or the clothes I wore, got as much or more ink as the music that I played.

Sure, it’s still got a lot to do with ego. However, it’s not so much that the music should service your “show business” ego, but that your ego should sublimate and appropriately  compliment the music. Show biz is all about OUTSIDE surfaces and appearances, 3-d pictures and images, a business of SHOWing. Great music, on the other hand, is all about turning yourself  INSIDE OUT, to be heard, not seen.

I’m not a kid anymore: at least, not chronologically. There are vast tracts of my psyche that will always be child-like - others are forever 17, a raging hormone confused teenager. But now there are parts of me old enough to smile with knowing nostalgia when some Seattle band does a Who-ish equipment trash, or some achy-breaky heart-throb slides the guitar around behind him in order to give everyone better sight lines for the pelvic thrusts, or some guitar player does a play-with-the-teeth, behind-the-back, hump-it-then-set-it-on-fire routine. One should never say they’ve seen it all before, but should be able to recognize a variation on a theme, intentional tongue-in-cheek parody or not. It’s cool: it’s trad : it’s all in good showbiz fun.

Theatre and opera director Peter Sellars has said, “The burden of the world is unspeakable, which is why we have to approach it through music.”  Where words fail us, where our bodies betray us, beyond the confines of the physical, beyond the politics and the mechanics of this world, the music can still go. “It” can be transportation and  destination. So the next time you’re practicing your split  jump, the 360 strap spin-o-rama, or the Chili Pepper sock hop; the next time you’re cultivating image, whether it’s a haircut, tattoo, or a new suit, remember that the value of dramatic moves will eventually be  judged on how well they reflect the quality of the transmissions of the soundtrack of your soul. So go ahead. Laugh, cry, rave, thrash, keep trying to make the spiritual into something physical. Pick and jump, pick and spin, pick and hop, and, occasionally, if   you’ve a mind to, pick and grin at  “it” all.

But coming back to what Sir Larry said to Dustin, I ponder… what’s “it”  for guitarists? Playing back the highlight reel in my head of that concert night and thinking about Ry Cooder and Frank Gambale and Steve Morse and Adrian Legg, etc., I’m thinking, well, they’ve all definitely got “it”. But it’s not really that same “it” that Sir Larry’s talking about, not that “Hollywood” something that turns the camera into such an ally, is it?

36

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS AND ONOMATOPOEIA Moles.

Birthmarks. Wrinkles, laugh lines. Fingerprints. Tattoos, pierced nostrils, Mohawk  hairdos. Some distinguishing characteristics just come natural, and some are self-appointed (inflicted?).

Same thing, opposite way? Okay, another classic: The Eagles, “Hotel California,” guitar solo, bar 10 (at 4:50 on the digital CD counter), Joe Walsh responds to Don Felder’s tasty opening 8 bars with a 2 bar lick that ends on a note that takes a quick little “whip” gliss up the neck (something like Ex.2 ). The term gliss is short for glissando: “the drawing of a finger up or down a series of adjacent notes. Passing … through … pitches … infinite in number.”  (Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music)

In guitar music, I tend to think of the little sounds that aren’t really notes, as the idiosyncratic personality characteristics that help to distinguish a player. Like an accent or a mannerism in a speaking voice, these little detailed effects and affectations complete the message with undeniable clues as to its origin. Some happen as unconscious by-products: some are intentionally premeditated.

Ex. 2  4 4

For instance: when Leslie West played the classic “Mississippi Queen,” a lot of his phrases ended with these very cool, very deliberate slide-offs (Ex. 1). Ex. 1

T A B

D5 E5

S

7 7 5

9 9 7

9 9 7

9 9 7

S

9 (11)

(11)

Notice that it has no real notational value, no fixed destination; indeed, it’s portrayed on the staff as a strange little line that just sort of heads up into the vague unknown. But it sounds great, punctuates the phrase succinctly, and has always struck me as a tiny, perfect little moment in a song filled with amazing moments.

4 4

T A B

B

You’ll notice that I described Joe’s glissando as a “whip” up the neck. That’s ’cause it just sounds like that to me.

9 9 7

I say deliberate because they really did help to define the personality of the music: they were “ heavy” sounding, like the left hand wasn’t in any hurry to let go of the notes, and they usually took a good half beat to slide down the neck. They really added to the phrasing, and struck me almost as if they were a sound effect, an exhalation of breath after a strenuous exertion.

This kind of stuff is called

ONOMATOPOEIA: the formation of words in imitation of natural  sounds: the naming of a thing or action by a  reproduction of the sound associated with it.

Continued • • • • • •  37

• • • • • • DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS

AND ONOMATOPOEIA (Cont’d) I suppose I could have just as easily used the word, “zip,” or “vit,” or “shwing,” to describe Joe’s gliss, and you would have got the idea. Obviously, even though the phenomenon of this word play is universal, these word forms are purely subjective. This is what makes them such an interesting and valuable interpretive tool. Aspects of onomatopoeia permeate this whole concept of distinguishing characteristics. For example, if I was to say, “Man, I love the way that Billy Gibbons goes “chooka-CHOW!!!” in “Legs,” you’d know exactly  which guitar lick I was talkin’ about (wouldn’t you?). Those kind of string crush hits and slides, pick slides and rhythmic sound effects defy precise notation but function as perfect punctuation.

Think about different styles of scat singing: Bobby McFerrin, Ella Fitzgerald, George Benson, the vocalists that Pat Metheny uses on his recordings, heck, even a little Sinatra (“shoobie doobie doo”). Apply this whole language, talking thing to the guitar, and it becomes very interesting. When you’ve got it cranked up and wailing, think of long sustaining notes as vowel sounds (after all, that’s what vocalists hold: there’s no sustain in a consonant). Are you after the differing tones of a long A, an AH, an E, an AYE, an O, or an oooh? Is your axe singing, or crying, or laughing? If I asked you to “mouth” a classic guitar riff, say, the opening of Jimmy Page’s “Stairway to Heaven” solo, would you go,“Bwaah, dag-a-dooga-dugga beega-dooga-doommm,…” or does the phrase suggest different consonants and vowels to you? The first two chords in “Rocky Mountain Way” “Bah dupp”: the opening riff of “Whole Lotta Love” “boo-dow, boo-dow, bup.” I’m not suggesting this is any form of standard accepted “technique”; just that it could serve as an aid to familiarize yourself with a passage, or to help unlock an interpretation of a phrase, to give it some of your very own distinguishing characteristics.

Tuck Andress says he uses at least 4 different ways to get percussive clicks on the “miraculous backbeat.” Is a “click” subtly different than a “chick,” or a “chuck”? What if it’s more of a “chunk,” or a “thunk”? Humor me, now, and seriously consider: if you wanted a sound that went “click,” wouldn’t you go about getting it in a different way than you would if   you were trying to get a sound that went “thump”? I’ve often sent other musicians (usually  drummers) into fits of laughter by “mouthing” onomatopoeic rhythmic figures at them - “buh -guhdah, buh -guh-dah, buh -guh-dah, buh -guh-dah, chick ita-pash, chick ita-pash, brah-bop-boo doo-bahboom-BISH-bah-doo-brah-da-doo-PISH!!!” (Ex. 3)

Continued • • • • • • 

Ex. 3 hi-hat

crash 3

cymbals hi-hat tom snare tom tom kick

3

3

3

hi-hat

crash 3

crash 3

3

3

3

3

crash

4 4 buh-guh-dah

buh-guh-dah

buh-guh-dah

buh-guh-dah

chickita-pash

* brah bop boo doo bah boom chickita-pash

pish

bish bah doo brah da doo

* brah is pronounced with a s lightly rolled, Scottish “r”.

38

• • • • • • DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS

AND ONOMATOPOEIA (Cont’d) Ex. 4  E5

B

C m

A

3 3

4 4

4 3

1 2 4 3

2 4 3

1 1

1

1

1 (Chick)

T A B

5 4 2 2 0

X X X X X X

S

4 4 4 2

6

H

P

4 6 4

(Chick-ah)

X X X X X X

X X X X X X

(Chick)

5 6 6 4

0

X X X X X X

S

5 6 7 7 5

Think of translating the rhythms and nuances of spoken language into your music. Little rhythmic accents are like short, consonant sounds, and provide articulation: a “chip” has a softer front end, and a tighter, duller finish than the hard consonant beginning and end of a “crack.” When you phrase a question, doesn’t your voice rise at the end? Well, is  your musical phrase pitched in the form of a question? When  you’re angry, or excited, doesn’t the pitch of your voice rise, the consonants becoming more frequent, and harder hitting, the pace of the syllables and phrases quickening, the volume growing? And when you’re relaxed, you’d tend to use longer vowels, softer consonants and diphthongs, smoother, rounder tones, and less volume. Finally, I’ll leave you with the simple progression of  Ex. 4, with an interpretation that hopefully helps to bring it to life by featuring some of the distinguishing characteristics we’ve discussed. And in closing, all I have to say is,

“chickita-bah-da, chooka-chucka, dweedle-boddle-dwanggggggg…shwing!!!” 

39

9

H

P

7 9 7

S

9

BASIC INSTINCT The phrase “Back to Basics” means

“IMAGINATION is more 

different things to different folks at different times. In education, people have tended to think of it as a rallying cry to return to fundamental, traditional educational methods and values, like the rote memorization concepts of  “The Three R’s” (readin’, ‘ritin’, and ‘rithmetic).

IMPORTANT than 

KNOWLEDGE.” Albert Einstein I can show you some basic vocabulary (Ex. 1’s whole tone scale). You can memorize that scale, and learn to play it forwards, backwards and inside out at lightning speed. Ultimately, this is of little interest or use to anyone.

There are others who feel that it is far more important to teach people how to think independently, how to go about learning. They feel that the avalanche of choices, pressures, and available information in our times requires the development and nurturing of a basic, creative, problem-solving instinct,“the ability to analyze and form original opinions and ideas.” (Scott Nesbitt) This is not a new idea.

I can also show you the same basic vocabulary of  Ex. 1 and then place it into a musical context ( Ex. 2), urging you to use your own imagination and creativity  to develop a few of your very own applications. In this way, the element of basic vocabulary has changed

Ex. 1 Whole-tone scale 

T A B 0

2

2

1

4

2

1

4

3

2

5

4

2

1

4

4

3

6

5

7

5

7

9

 

Ex. 2  3 3

4 4

3

3

3 3

3

3

3

0 T A B 0

4

3

5 1

2

3

3 5 7

4 6 8 6 4

7 5 3 7

40

5

7

4

4

6

8

10

• • • • • • BASIC INSTINCT (Cont’d) Ex. 3 1

1 2

1 2

3

1 2

1 2

3

3

3

4

4

4

Ex. 4  3

4 4

3

3

3 3

3

S

2

4

3

2

S

6 8

5

4

1

3

1

1 1

1

1

4 2

2

2

2

2

T A B

3

3

3

Ex. 5 

3

3

3

3

III

7

6

IV

1

9

8

1

10

6

5 5

VI

2 4

2

7

4

3

1 2

3

3 4

Eadd9

A7  13

Gm7

Bmaj13

6 8

emphasis, becoming a tool towards something else, instead of an end in itself. Think of the nursery  school alphabet song: kids learn this interesting and memorable little tune, and, along the way, have picked up much more than just the alphabet.

For example, as I fiddle and play with the whole tone scale, I am struck by the physical, mathematical logic of it. How it lies on the fretboard suggests the shapes of  Ex. 3, which leads to the fun and games of  Ex.4 , sliding around in two fret, whole tone steps.

“The student must set understanding as his goal, not self-expression: the latter will arise naturally from the former.” 

Take a simple, standard melody, say, Row Row  Row Your Boat. Play it using a whole tone scale variation. Ooh, sounds like a horror-movie, outside, off-balance, weird kind of thing, doesn’t it? And yet, harmonized as in Ex. 5, there is an awesome, mysterious beauty to the scale. I recall watching a flower blossom in time lapse photography during a TV documentary, very effectively accompanied by a whole tone musical segment.

Edward Hill, from The Language of Drawing, 1966. What is your perception of the nature of the whole tone scale? If you have developed an understanding of a basic tool, then you will be able to apply it and use it in a very real and natural way. This would demonstrate an instinct for the material. This would allow for self-expression. You will have built something, and not taken us on a guided tour of  the tool box.

As life becomes more complex, and human activity constantly changes, so too do the things that constitute “Basics.”

41

BASIC PSYCHOLOGY 101: A PARADOX IN THE MATRIX  What do you think it means, to get Back to

The public love this. Buddy Holly’s story on film and in the stage play, stresses his sense of an individual spirit. Frank Sinatra did it His Way . Show   business, this business of showing, appeals to a basic human voyeur instinct, and the more private, lurid, titillating, controversial, the better. Show us your dreams. Spill your guts. Strip naked. Show us your heart and soul.

Basics? Basically, what is it that compels you to become, and remain a guitarist? How can I dig down deep and define, and illustrate, some of the basic psychology at work? Little Johnny picks up his first guitar. “I wanna play like Hendrix” (or Robert Smith, or Johnny Smith, or Slash, or maybe Segovia). And one of the interesting paradoxes of human nature, and the activities it generates, has begun.

An audience loves to get a sense of the “Don Quixote” syndrome from a performer: that they are bearing witness to someone who has the guts to dream the impossible dream. They also love the “Wallenda” high wire trapeze stuff: this is dangerous, will he fall? (Also The Man-on-the-Bridge selfdestruct gambit: will he jump?) Let’s not forget the magician sleight-of-hand. I recall Chet Atkins talking about this, how the trick is to make the hard stuff look  really easy, and the easy stuff look really hard.

We want to belong somewhere; to a family, to a team, to a society, to the “in” crowd, or maybe to the renegade Breakfast Club (where out is in). In our case, it’s the guitar player family. Basic human instinct: we crave acceptance, and security. There are initiation rituals that must be observed: techniques, equipment, all of the different kinds of things that have filled the pages of these FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR books. But at the same time, we want to be known for our individual uniqueness: our egos desire recognition of our self-expression. The Arts is a great place for us to try and deal with this paradox (and others), and a guitar is every bit as good as a paint brush or a camera or a word processor.

All of this is also very compelling to most of us here in the guitar player family. We’ve got our basic human instincts, too, not to mention our even more basic garage/basement dreams of fame and fortune. The majority of us struggle within the boundaries of certain finite practical resources; the same vocabulary of notes, the same length of fretboards and amplifiers and equipment, the formats of  magazines, of popular radio and television, the conventions of marketing and promotion. How then do we realize our individuality, and get our uniqueness recognized?

Hendrix is an obvious inspirational role model for Johnny to start out with, a guitarist deified for his flaming hot style , cool and hip personality, psychedelic popularity, a flamboyant, controversial rock star show  biz image. But as Johnny gets a more mature sense of  what good music’s all about, under the surface, he’ll realize that the ability of Hendrix to stick and stay is because people almost universally relate to the pioneer spirit, the explorer, the committed “eccentric” temperamental artist, defining, realizing, and then publicly and commercially exploiting unique and personal visions.

If I give 100 guitar players Ex.1 and ask them to play it, as sure as you can say basic human nature, I’ll get 100 different versions, ranging from microscopic differences to wholesale stylistic approaches. (Ex. 2 illustrates some variations.)

Continued • • • • • •  42

• • • • ••

BASIC PSYCHOLOGY 101: A PARADOX IN THE MATRIX (Cont’d) Ex. 1 D

C

G

1 1

2

2

2

3

3

D

4

3

C

G

4 4

Ex. 2  Variation 1 - à la Chuck Berry  D

C

G

4 4

T A B

7 5

7 5

9 5

7 5

5 3

5 3

7 3

5 3

5 3

5 3

7 3

5 3

8 3

5 3

7 3

5 3

Variation 2 - à la Mick Jones or Tom Scholz  D5

C5

G5

C/G

G

4 4

(Chick-ah)

T A B

X X X X

7 7 5

X X 5 X 5 X 3

(Chick)

5 5 3

X X X X

5 5 3

1 0 2

1 0 2

0 0 0

3

2

3

Variation 3 D

Cadd9

G

0

3 3 0 0

4 4

2 T A B

0

2

3

0 3

3

3

43

H

0 2

0

2

0

3

BASIC PSYCHOLOGY 101: A PARADOX IN THE MATRIX (Cont’d)

• • • • •• Variation 4  D

C

G

4 4

S

H P

S

7 7 5 7 7 7 7 7 5 7 7 7 7 9 7 7 7 5 5 57 9 3 9

T A B

H P

S

5 5 5 5 5 7 5 5 5 5 7 7 5 7

S

4 5 5 3

H P

S

4 57 5 5 5 5 79 5 5 5 7 5 5 3 5 7 7

H P

8 88 7 77 9 7

Anybody that has ever tried to exactly, literally double a guitar part on a recording, knows that fractions of metre, intonation, dynamics, attack, and phrasing can become glaring inconsistencies. Anyone that’s ever had to perform the same song night after night, knows that it’s very difficult to be consistently inspired and exact. Most performers will say that they don’t even try for an exact replication: they try to treat each performance as a unique event. Think of it as the crystallization of drops of water vapor into unique snowflakes. Getting down to the diamond (carbon crystal), dancer Marie Chouinard calls it. So the first thing to try is just to be natural, and relaxed, to allow your self-expression to be somewhat instinctive and intuitive. In the heat of an A Aeolian solo (Ex. 3), I might go for an ascending run up, across a couple of  octaves on the neck. For some reason, this repeating figure of Ex.3 comes very  naturally to me, almost instinctively. Because of this, I don’t worry about hitting the notes as much as concentrating on phrasing it dynamically, starting quietly and “flurrying” up the run, then really exploding into the last note. You might find this particular run more difficult, or less satisfying, than another configuration of the notes with another type of phrasing that might come more naturally to you. Fine. Psychologically, you should have confidence in your own natural instincts, not self-loathing because you can’t necessarily get comfortable with mine. Ex. 3 6 6

4 4 6 6

2

T A B

1

3 2

4

5

1

2

4

2 3 5

etc.

3 2

B

5

2 3 5

5 4

7

4 5 7

44

6 5

7

5 6 8

8 10

H P

7 9

8 8 7 77 7 9 7

• • • • ••

BASIC PSYCHOLOGY 101: A PARADOX IN THE MATRIX (Cont’d)

Now ask yourself, generally…

Do you play because you love to play? Is that love generally and readily accessible in your music?

If not, what is your playing about? Is there a consistency between what you mean in the things that you play, and the things that you feel,  your technical and physical skills in bringing these personal emotions out of your guitar, the material that surrounds and embodies your playing, and the things that an audience finally gets out of it?

What can they get from  you that th ey ca n’t ge t anywhere else? 

Once you have recognized and defined your individuality,  you must try to develop it, and make it the obvious focus for  your audience. If the aspects of your individuality are subtle, (say, as delicate and tiny as the crystalline form of a snowflake) then your performance will have to provide your audience with a microscope, and eliminate any other distractions. If you can eventually build some of your individuality into larger-than-life forms, say, an amazing Red House, then you will indeed attract attention, and win the security of acceptance through the recognition of your unique spirit. By the time Little Johnny has turned into Big Old John, the paradox in the matrix will be fully realized. John still wants to play “like” Hendrix, but now it’s because he wants to have the same level of spiritual freedom of expression, the same command and authority in voicing his own inner soul: and, no doubt, the same kind of public recognition and acceptance for these very things. Yeah, well, welcome to the club, John, welcome to the club.

45

DISCRIMINATING TASTE (Cont’d)

• • • • •• Ex. 2 

III 1

1 III

1

III

1 III

1

1 2 2

3 4

2

3

3

2

3 4

2

3

3

4 4

Esus2

Esus2/G#

Fadd9/A

F6 9 /A

Fmaj9/A

4 4 V

1 V

1 V

1 V

1

VII

1 XI

VII

1

G7sus4

1

2 2

2

3

2

3 4

2

3

2

3

3

4

Gadd9/B

2

3

3

4

Gmaj9/B

G6 9 /B

A7sus4

4

Aadd9/C#

B7

B/D#

is a melody from Fernando Sor’s study no. 5 in B minor. Imagine Jeff Beck or Neil Young playing it. Classical purists might not appreciate the poetic, lyrical power of the melody stylized in this manner, simply because they do not speak the language. Is it poor taste to do this to Sor’s study? Ah, the conundrum. When the electric cranks up to a singing overdrive, the melody is delicious, and the nuance of  the poetry speaks in ways that Sor and classical purists never imagined.

right of anybody to say just about anything they damn well like. Certainly, to define your personal sense of  taste by deciding what is not to your taste, is necessary, and good. To show the discrimination of   your taste, the subjectivity of your aesthetic, within the confines of your work, is at once one of the most basic and one of the highest artistic goals. However, as a musician in a public forum, to broadcast opinions of private intolerance is unnecessary, and shows poor taste. Subjectivity requires diplomacy.

Generalizations and stereotyping possess their own kind of ignorance, too. Developing your own sense of discriminating taste should not be about cultivating prejudice. I acknowledge the democratic

Of course, that’s just my opinion. (Ha! Caught in the Contradictory Conundrum: Pinned in the Paradox!!!)

Ex. 3

Ex. 3A  Bm

F 7

Bm

F 7

Bm

Em

C 7

F 7

3 4 Ex. 3B 

3 4 pinch harm.

w/bar B

T A B

X

7 X

7

B

B

9(11)

9(11)

R

B

9 X

7 (9) X

R

7

7

47

R -1/2

-1/2

(6)

(6)

dump bar

7

S

dump bar

7

9

5

7

B

6 8 (10)

R S

B

7 9 (11)

MUSICAL CONSIDERATION (THE INSIDE/OUTSIDE DYNAMIC) Ex. 1

The infinitely complex, creative personal emotional universe that a player seeks in one note (Ex. 3) isn’t any more or less legitimate than the goals that a player like Frank Gambale or Shawn Lane might pursue with a more technical modal-scale awareness, outlined in Ex. 4.

4 4 etc. P

H

5

T A B

0

P

5

H

0

P

5

H

0

P H P H P H

50505050

Discriminating taste is about attitude, education, and a sympathetic or unsympathetic point of view. Ex.5 is a little knock-off of Neil Young’s famous “Cinnamon Girl” one-note solo. There are some who might say that this solo doesn’t qualify as something very “creative” because it’s just one note, the same thing, over and over. Neil once spoke of his appreciation for “technical” players, and their genius of musical expression, despite his own inability to relate to their work. This is a crucial distinction to be able to make, the critical difference between revealing  your own poor, or good taste. It’s so fundamental, it’s Constitutional. Live and let live. The Golden Rule.

One can’t appreciate the poetic nuance of a language that they don’t speak or understand. Binary  code is just a lot of inanimate, repetitive ones and zeroes, over and over, to some (see the metaphor of  Ex. 1’s trill). However, given a sympathetic environment, a context, and a correct translation, it can communicate a wealth of diverse information to others, allowing for some mighty profound creativity. (Try it over the chord progressions with the dynamics of  Ex. 2.)

Ex. 2  V 2 3

2

Em

Cmaj7/G

Am9



VII

1

1

2 3

4

VIII

2 3 4

IX

2

2

2 3

3

F#m7 5add11 B7sus4

E

Aadd9



XI

2

3 4

V

2 3

VII

2

3 4

3 4

D 6 /E 9

Aadd9/B Badd11/F# Cmaj7/E



VI

2 3



VI

F#m11

2

3

4 4

3 4

1 3

3 4

2

IX

2



48

Am9



Bm11

MUSICAL CONSIDERATION (THE INSIDE/OUTSIDE DYNAMIC) (Cont’d)

• • • • ••

Ex. 3 VIII

X

1

X

1

X

1

VII

1

1

2 3

4

2

3

2

3

4 4

C/D

B  maj9/D

Dm7

G9/D

Gm9

8va 

4 4 even B

13

T A B

Ex. 4 

C C/D Think C Mixolydian D Aeolian

even R B

R

(15)

(15)13 (15)13

Dm Dm7 Think D Pentatonic Minor/*Blues D Dorian

B

(15)

even R

B

15(18)

B B maj7sus2/D Think B Lydian D Aeolian

R

13 (15) 13

15

G7 G9/D Think D Pentatonic Minor/Blues D Dorian G Mixolydian

even B

B

(15)

13

Gm Gm9 G Dorian D Aeolian

C C/D C Mixolydian D Aeolian

* = Pentatonic minor blues includes 5 (A ) as a scale tone.

Criticisms of general, basic characteristics like “musicality” and “creativity” imply superiority of the critic, and inferiority of the target. Public negativity is definitely an outside kind of thing, a polarizing act of  aggression, likely to provoke a defensive reaction. This kind of stuff isn’t about making music: it sounds like puerile arguing about whose Dad can take who in a scrap. How we think about music, how we talk about it, and how much our behaviour shows the consideration for others that we would hope to enjoy  ourselves, is pretty basic stuff, wouldn’t you say?

As for the creative limitations of a one-note solo, Neil said:

O ne note is enough…Oh yeah - two strings,

“ 

though. The same note on two strings. The wang bar made every one sound different. I listen to it and every one sounds different to  me. It sounds like it’s all different in that one   place. As you’re going in (emphasis mine)  farther, you’re hearing all the differences but if you get back, it’s all one.” 

Inside and Outside .

If you can get in to something musical, whether it’s through an intellectual effort, or through a natural, easy affinity, you will obtain a perspective on it that will give  you an appreciation, and an understanding. If you can’t, won’t, or don’t get in to it, whose fault is that?

Ex. 5 

4 4 S

T A B

0 3 5

0 5

49

0 5

0 5

0 5

0 5

0 5

0 5

0 5

0 5

0 5

0 5

0 5

0 5

PREJUDICE, PLURALISM AND THE GOLDEN RULE Ex. 1 3

A

G

Dadd11 A7sus4 C5 D5

D9

Em7 5

Em7

F9

4 4

P

T A B

2 2 0

2 2

3 4

2 2 2 4

3 0 5

3 3 3 3 0 0 0 0 4 4 2 0

G9

S

5 7 3 5

A7

5 5 5

G7 F 7

5 5 7 7 7 9 9 9

C7 B7

8 7 10 7

7 7 7 10 9 9 7

8 8 10 8

10

F7 E7

A

5

T A B

8 8 8 10 10 10 12 10 12 12

10 10 12 10

10 10 10 12 12 12 12 14 10 14 14

12 11 12

X 10 9 X 9 8 X 10 9

Everyone’s a critic, entitled to their point of 

X 8 7 X 7 6 X 8 7

X 8 7 X 7 6 X 8 7

0 3

2 2 0

one’s own tastes and opinions must find a balance with a Golden Rule consideration of others. You must develop a conscious awareness of your own Taste Scale: it is fundamental to your musicianship and artistry. Criticisms of other artists’ creativity, musicality and technicality seem to be negative, trashing exercises, cheap controversy for the purposes of the great popularity contest, the “heat” generation of commercial competition. This strikes me as artistically destructive, the furthering of alienation towards unsympathetic positions of relative ignorance. This ain’t about the spirit of music.

view, and their freedom of expression. You might consider an opinion defensible on the grounds of it being qualified in a personal, subjective way, and not intended as a general, objective public standard. Furthermore, show biz loves to dress up gossip with whatever validity it can muster because it has that Tabloid tingle: controversy! undeleted expletives! unmitigated honesty! But while you’re considering, consider this: where is the value in this talk? Does it help make us more musical, more considerate, more informed (Enquiring minds…), or just smaller minded?

Negative public opinions suggest arrogance, elitism, and assumptions of superiority. They may  only be humble, insignificant personal opinions, but if you find someone else’s taste lacking in areas of 

Where do you draw the line on what constitutes Good or Poor Taste? It is indeed a question of  choices, and a matter of tastes. But surely the right to 50

• • • • ••

PREJUDICE, PLURALISM AND THE GOLDEN RULE (Cont’d)

musicality, creativity, originality, or maturity, are you not implying that you judge yourself superior in these areas? Pardon me if my pluralism is showing, but what would make anybody’s music aesthetics superior to, as opposed to just different than, anybody else’s? The distinction is basic, yet critical.

seem to be a particularly attractive artistic qualification to be proudly broadcasting. I find it particularly ironic that, in some segments of the Pop music business, this kind of attitude seems to be a desirable prerequisite.

Traditional styles, different standard commercial genre preferences, education, and technique may be anathema to the Discriminating Taste of some, but what about the discrimination and prejudice that the promotion of ignorance and misunderstanding breeds? Prioritizing aesthetics over technique is a perfectly  legitimate exercise of discriminating good taste. Generalized negativity about technique, however, reveals limitations of the source. I’m not saying every  technician is a profound genius, any more than every  hedonist is an intellectual wasteland. But surely the world is wide enough to have room for all kinds, including those who seek balance. Education offers very valuable technical tools for anybody  Ex. 2  in any walk of life, and the opportunity  E Phrygian  to build upon creativity and inspiration, strength upon strength. Aesthetics and 4 technique: more often than not, the 4 two go hand in hand, pun intended.

Discriminating Taste isn’t about superiority and inferiority. It’s not about a sense of power born from inaccessibility, whether that stems from sophistication, or from an asceticism. Ignorance is not always bliss. Neither is elitism. Both can just as easily breed fear and prejudice. It’s not a Survival-of-the-MostCompetitive thing, either, where negative energy, being Anti-Something-Different-Than-You wins you more successful space for yourself. Good taste strives for a sense of balance, of fairness, of completeness. Good and bad taste just depends upon your point of view, therefore a moral, perhaps even spiritual “Golden Rule” sense should always underlie the exercise of discriminating taste.

9 9

9

If a player brings a conscientious attitude and a genuine emotion to Ex.1 (based on a standard old Blues line), there’s every chance that something interesting and fresh could happen in the performance, if the listener cares to find it. Likewise, Ex.’s 2 and 3 offer basic contrasting modal scale licks that I’m sure any music school grad could read, interpret, and handle appreciatively, then go on to offer several personal stylistic variations, all accessible to a discerning ear. The deafened ears of a closed mind wouldn’t

Fingerings

1 2 4 2 1 4 2 1 4 H H P P

5 6 8 6 5

T A B

P P H

7 5 4

7

1 2 4 2 1 4 2 1 4 H H P P

P P H

4 5 7 5 4

7 5 3

7

1 2 4 2 1 4 2 1 2 4 H H P P

3 5 7 5 3

Ex. 3 G7 Mixolydian cadenza  4 4 rit. S

T A B 3 5

51

2 3 7 5

S

3 2 7 5

H

4 7

S

6

5

8 12

13 14

P P H

7 5 3 5 7

ON COMPETITION: LET THE MUSIC DO THE TALKIN’ People will talk. Everyone, after all, is only 

My favorite, I think, lies in the clever little paradox of these words of the late, greatly respected guitarist, Howard Roberts;

human. And in a democracy, good taste can’t be legislated. If you carry that kind of logic through to its inevitable conclusion, you get the Nazis, banning Mendelsohn and Hindemith out of what they  perceived to be social necessity, or the Ayatollah’s fatwa bounty on Rushdie. The only thing that seems certain is that good taste will remain democratically  open to personal interpretation, as Howard Stern raises a Bronx cheer, gets another big raise, and cheerfully pays another fine; Church and State will keep on trying to draw some kinds of lines; and some artists, conscientious and legitimate, or just plain vexatious and publicity/money hungry, will never be able to resist a double dare, or simply keep their stupid traps shut (author included).

“It should be remembered that in music there  are no ultimate rules, except: (A) that which sounds good is, and  (B) that which sounds bad is not.”  Now, my wife thinks he was agreeing with Les Paul, that something that sounds bad to you is not good. But I prefer to interpret the remark to mean that just because it sounds bad to you, that doesn’t make it universally bad - “bad” is for each person to decide for themselves. Establishing your own sense of taste is not about trying to foist your judgement on others. Put it into your work: let the music do the talking.

Anyway, the point of this exercise was to try and give you some kind of basic starting point to outline  your own interpretation of what constitutes “good” taste. Attempts to define it often refer to its personal subjective communication of emotion, feelings, ideas, truth, honesty, and an integrity of the spirit:

The overwhelming competitive aspects of the media/show biz machine in our culture today teaches categorization, classification, specialization, market fragmentation and, inevitably, a destructive side of  discrimination. We are sledge-hammered with the realities of contests, award-reward promotion, Pulitzers, Oscars, Grammies, and the annual Reader’s Poll. Prime-time programming, demographic targeting, common denominator market research, and accountant profit logic dominate a free enterprise cultural system with a big green dollar sign growing on its heart. The highly competitive nature of our modern technological society’s arts, entertainment, and media, all vie for ratings and short-term profits from our shrinking attention spans (and recessionary  wallets), promoting an atmosphere filled with sound

“the end of all good music is to affect the soul”  (Monteverdi)

Les Paul has been quoted as saying:

“There’s only two kinds of music. Good and bad.” 

52

• • • • ••

ON COMPETITION: LET THE MUSIC DO THE TALKIN’ (Cont’d) bites of sensational controversy, cartoon celebrities of little substance, and exploitation of disputation, whether real, imagined, or manufactured purely for marketing purposes. Dealing in bad-mouth trash talk sound bites isn’t just in poor taste; it plays like a pawn into these power games of  discrimination. Artists who would use the reach of new-found commercial success to promote expressions of ignorance and discrimination only perpetuate a destructive competitive environment.

“  oday’s generation do not stamp a unique  T    sensibility on society so much as mirror its  disarray… The shared taste for cultural  alternatives similarly tends toward   fragmentation, as Lollapalooza demonstrates. Appreciators of World Beat and Industrial Noise  don’t necessarily have much in common, and  one man’s sub-culture is another man’s sellout… Irony may be a universal device, but it is also a  divisive and unstable one: …this generation’s  true cultural legacy is to have been disunited by  the very experiences it has had in common.”  Alexander Star, “The Twentysomething Myth,” The New Republic.

I’d like to believe that an open-minded artistic community  spirit held a potential for wider social implications, perhaps eventually transferring over to a general public catching the drift and becoming less concerned with shallow, unartistic games of labels, fashion and image, and consequently more receptive to conscientious quality work regardless of style or category. I’d like to believe it: I’d like to think I’m workin’ on it… but it’s gettin’ harder to find any evidence. Oh well: here’s hoping. I’ll leave this topic (sighs of relief all ‘round) with a little exercise that sort of medley-izes some of the example ideas that cropped up in the last four chapters. Bon appetit , pickers and grinners all.

53

“Medley Study” E5

3

A

B9

4 4

T A B

5 4 2

5 4 2 0

5 4 2

5 4 2 4

2

4

C9

5 2 2

0

5 2

2

4

2 2 2

5 2 4

2 2 2

2

4

6

6

D9 3

H P

T A B

T A B

5 3

0 5 9

3 3 3

5 7

0 5 9

V

3 3 3

0 5 9

3 3 5 7

0 5 9

X X X

0 5 9

7 5

0 5 9

V

1

5 5 5

0 5 9

5 5 5

7 9

0 5 7

0 5 7

0 5 7

0 5 7

2

0 5 7

0 5 7

VIII

1

0 5 7

3

Em7

For Soloing Think:

E Dorian E Blues

3

A9/E

A Mixolydian (E Dorian)

9

3

3 4

Am9

0 0 0 0 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6

IX 2

2 2

7 9 7 9

S

2

4

3

P

42

0 2

0

2

0

0

V

1

9 797 9 797

X X X

5 5 7 7

H

1

2 3

0 0 0 5 5 5 6 6 6

VII

0 0 0 0 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

1 2

3 4

Cmaj7 F#m7 5add11 B7add11 E5

A Dorian G Lydian (E Aeolian)

F# Locrian B Phrygian Dominant (mode 5 of E harmonic minor)

0 0 9 9 7 0

T A B

54

0 0 0 7 7 7 7 7 7

E Aeolian cadenza

4 4 9 9 9

H

H

P

P

P

7 8 10 8 7 T A B

P

10 8 7

H

H

9

H

P

P

P

7 8 10 8 7

Am11

P

9 7 5

Em11 Am11

H

H

9

H

P

P

P

5 7 9 7 5

P

9 7 5

Bm11

Am9

5 5 7 7 5 7

7 5 5 5 0

H

9

H

H

P

P

P

5 7 9 7 5

P

9 7 5

Cmaj9

7

Am

F 7

B7

10 9 10 0

11 9 11 9

7 7 8 7 9 7

E/G

Gdim7

Slowly, freely

3 4 harm let ring

T A B

7

7

D13

10 12 12 10

C 7

5 7 7 5

A/C

3 3 5 5 3 5

Cdim7

G/B

7 8 7 7 7 8

8

B dim7

8

F/A

A dim7

7

2 4 rit.

T A B

12 11 10 X 10

11

F m7

10 9 7 X 9

12

10 9 X 9

9

8 7 X 8

8 7 5 X 7

10

7

8

6 5 X 6

6 4 3 X 4

5 4 2 X 4

Emaj13 loco

harm let ring

5 2 2 4 2

5

Am/B 8va 

T A B

6 5 3 X 5

2

5 5 7 X 7

 7

5 4

12

7

55

7

4 4 4 4 0

4

3 2 X 3

5

BASIC CREATIVE PROCESS: METAPHORS Words on the page, notes on the staff:

these are but symbols, representations of ideas, realities that exist in entirely different mediums. In trying to communicate about music, I often rely on metaphors, much as I do as a lyricist when I’m songwriting. It’s kind of like a poetic shorthand. (See? I’m doing it again.) If a picture is worth a thousand words, then maybe with just a few words I can conjure up an image, a picture in your mind that’s accessible, appropriate, and memorable, perhaps saving myself an encyclopedia volume’s worth of dry, technical explanation. Here’s an old metaphorical, philosophical paradox. Ahem: There are the odd occasions WHAT CAME FIRST, where one can point clearly to The CHICKEN or the EGG? one thing taking precedence over the other, but basically and The MUSIC or the LYRICS? generally speaking, these kinds The TECHNIQUE or the INSPIRATION? of things co-exist symbiotically. Overcoming a complicated FORM, FUNCTION, FUN, FANDANGOS reluctance, I’ll expose one of my  or FUNDAMENTAL FINGERINGS? own recent personal creative processes, which led to the writing and recording of a song called, “Talk It Over.” Ex. 1 A

82

E

B

C m

I began with the chord progression in Ex.1 , and married it to the groove of  Ex. 2. So far, no big deal, a re-invention of a tricycle wheel.

4 4

T A B

6 7 7 5

9 9 9 7 0

8 9 9 7

9 11 11 9

Ex. 2  hi-hat snare kick

4 4

56

• • • • • • BASIC CREATIVE PROCESS: METAPHORS  (Cont’d) Ex. 3

A

E

B

C m

3 3 3

3

4 4

H

12 12 14

T A B

H P

H

12 1214 12 12 14 1113

0

H P

H

12 12 1113 11 11 13 14

0

14

H

H P

H

11 11 13

11 111311

9 9 9 11

14

S

11

But then I started fiddling with Hendrix-isms, and eventually refined them into Ex. 3. Bah, humbug, said the residual critic in the left hemisphere of the brain: derivative, unoriginal. But the Creative Right Side said hang on, hang in, something’s happening over here. You know that lack of communication/ relationship problem your friend was talking to you about on the phone the other day? Try some of these lyrics over those chords: sing about empty kisses, silent distances, and secrets… Hmmm, even old curmudgeonly left side started thinking that we may be on to something here. Suddenly (dare I call it inspiration? The breath of the Gods?) a little gust came in from left field, or maybe even from a sub-conscious plagiarist’s memory banks deep in the left hemisphere (My Sweet Lord!), carrying another chording idea (Ex. 4), kind of  Rundgren-esque, maybe even Christopher Cross-y, but what the hell, it’s jingling and jangling and I dug it and was on a bit of a roll (sorta like this stream-ofconsciousness run-on sentence here). Ex. 4  VIII

1 2

IX

2

3 4

VIII

3

2

IX

1

3 3

BaddE/C#

E/C#

BaddE/A

Aadd9

4 4

You ain’t gotta pop song unless you’ve got lots of hooks, especially a big giant one somewhere to hang your hat on (the Big Image chapeau from your fat swelled artistic ego head). Fiddling about with the chords of   Ex. 4, I employed a little self-taught songwriting technique - namely, don’t be afraid to pilfer interesting elements from elsewhere in the tune and develop them, kind of like a lietmotiv , or a theme and variations approach, or a comedian’s running gag. It helps to give the piece style and continuity - plus, the reiterative pounding strengthens the accessibility/familiarity factor.

57

H P

9 9 9 9 11 9 11 9

S

11 0

• • • • • • BASIC CREATIVE PROCESS: METAPHORS  (Cont’d)

Ex. 5  VII

VII

1

VIII

1

2 3

B/E

1 2

IX

2

3 4

VI

2

VI

2

3

3

3

3 4

E5

BaddE/C#

E/C#

A

B/A

4 4

Thus the hook of   Ex. 5 was born, and soon married to the common conversational phrase, “let’s talk it over.” The lyric grew out of humming and mouthing nonsense vowel sounds and consonants, and the random placement of a long “oh” on the first chord led to the word “o-ver,” which in turn led me to try and make some lyrical sense of it, and it kept going from there.

Well, if you’re not keen on trees, here’s another image that I like a lot: the House of Cards. All these little musical and lyrical elements, leaning up against each other, totally co-dependent, combining to build up a free-standing structure. But pull the wrong one out, the wrong way, and the whole thing collapses. Oh, and builders, beware the visitors (Left Side Curmudgeons) with their own agenda who will huff, and puff, and…

Have I got a good song? Beats me: I’m not even close to a first draft, yet. I know I like where it started from, and I like the work process that has brought me to this point. From here I’ll fiddle and tinker and rewrite and demo it up again and again, trying to distill it and refine it. But whether or not it’s “good” enough “product,” enough to get some record company to believe in it, and whether or not it can pass the further crap shoot of public acceptance and commercial success - is completely beyond me. What’s this all got to do with the aforementioned metaphors?

Still no go? Okay, here’s my last one: the Diamond. For us, supposedly the most highly evolved carbon based life forms in the food chain here on this planet - our most valued treasure is the most compressed, hardest carbon material we can find. Sometimes we literally have to move mountains in order to unearth a tiny gem, but such a find is of great significance, because these little tiny bits are generally  considered to be the epitome of a distillation and refining process.

One that I sort of like is the old Acorn into an  Oak Tree. The seed, the starting point here, was that insignificant little tricycle wheel of a progression. Add water, lots of sunshine, some nutritious soil, and, voila, roots take hold - a shoot sprouts, and over time, can become a complicated, living entity, a trunk, branches, twigs, leaves - eventually, seeds of its own, which its evolutionary imperative strives to spread. Some people look at a tree, and they see a complex  eco-system. Others see firewood. Some people can’t see trees for forests, forests for trees, or the point of  this metaphor.

What are the inspirational diamonds in “Talk it Over”? For me, the emotion involved in trying to cross the communication breakdown - the funky joy  in playing the chord style hybrid, and the marriage between it and the phrasing of the melody and lyric. This is the challenge of the art and craft of a guitarist/singer/songwriter. And it never stops - kinda like a wheel… no, more like a cycle, yeah, like a Life Cycle: like, which comes first, the Chicken or the Egg, the Acorn or the Oak Tree?…

58

SO YOU WANNA BE A GUITAR GOD? Ron Hoff, a guru of presentations and public speaking, wrote in the book, “I Can See You Naked” (Andrews and McMeel, Universal Press, 1988) that audiences just love lists. “It must be a carryover from high school. Or some kind of deep-rooted association of lists with  matters of substance.”  Yeah - like the Ten Commandments, or The Rules of  the Pool. But I know what he’s on about. Lists are… tidy, memorable, succinct. Ron says, “You’ll find that in making a  list you’ll compress your information and it will indeed become  more substantive.”  At the beginning of Book Three I unveiled Eight Basic Secrets of Great Guitar Playing, which I will now revise to reflect an evolving sense of graded priorities:

1 2~ ~

3

~

4 5~ 6~ 7~ 8~ ~

EMOTION, soul, feeling,

personality, interpretation. Attitude, desire, intellectual hunger, persistence,dedication A PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY. Mental approach: the 3 P’s Preparation, Presentation and Pacing. Practical organizational capabilities A PERSONAL STRATEGY. Tone, sound, discovering YOUR OWN unique VOICE. “Feel”: timing, groove. Melodic sense. Harmonic sense. Physical technique.

Continued • • • • • •  59

• • • • ••

SO YOU WANNA BE A GUITAR GOD?

(Cont’d)

Let me reiterate that I consider this a list of basic essentials, and that these eight elements are symbiotic, given to a great deal of cross-fertilization. If you like lists, here’s another one for you. My own limited research and humble analysis of Guitar Heroes has led me to this distillation: the Six Basic Essentials of a Guitar God.

THE SIX POINT HERO LIST

1

~

2

~

3

~

4

~

5

~

6

~

TECHNIQUE -

Physical, innovative, attentiongetting skills. CREATIVITY -

the Talents that extend beyond Technique. EXPERIMENTAL NATURE:

the IMAGE of revolutionary, cutting edginess. DRAMATIC THEATRICAL:

show biz entertainer performer, projecting an image that embodies 1 through 4 from the “Eight Basics” list above. AWARENESS OF TRADITIONS:

respect for, and exploitation of  classic, historical, time-honouredand-tested values. TIMING -

Right thing in the right place at the right time.

60

• • • • ••

SO YOU WANNA BE A GUITAR GOD?

Technique? What, are you kidding, in the days of post-punk-grunge-retro whateverness? Well, the ebb and flow of fashion comes and goes, but someone once said that the song remains the same. The constant thing about Gods is that they have an ability  to project an image (this is a critical element - notice how it crops up in Essentials 3 and 4: more on this in a bit) of omnipotence, all commanding, all powerful. They can, but don’t do everything - only what they  choose to do. Establishing a beach head on Olympus requires that one be unique and extraordinary, in order to capture the public’s imagination. This quality  does not necessarily have to be some physically  gymnastic, athletically virtuosic display of chops. But true Gifts, Gifts from the Gods, are indeed rare and wonderful things, and even though they may lay in other areas beyond physical technique, they very often force their way into this venue as burgeoning Gods seek to bring their gifts to fruition.

The public respect the traditional, they feel safe and warm and fuzzy with the familiar conventions, but they also want to think that they’re getting the newest, the freshest, the latest, the hippest, the hottest, the coolest. Gods understand human nature: somehow  they’ve got it covered: they can go to extremes.

1~

2

(Cont’d)

is really at the center of what it’s all about. Let’s say that Hendrix defines the “hot” guitar hero of  flash theatrics, and Clapton is the “cool” end of the spectrum, the laid back gentleman. Think of their defining moments, the body of their work: isn’t it amazing how consistent the respective Image reinforcement is? Even the stylistic aberrations, career potholes, and human inconsistencies become mere scars of wisdom on the Hero’s Legend. In the end, Emotion, Philosophy, and Strategy combine to help develop a unique, consistent Voice. If and when you shop for a record deal, the first thing they’re looking for is an instant commercial hit song: the second, is the long, strong career legs of an IMAGE that is marketable and promotable.

~ You can’t just Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar 

anymore, as Frank Zappa well knew. You have to write, arrange and record songs that make the whole world sing, and project image in videos, and make deals with agents and managers and record retail suits and lawyers and accountants. For example, who has risen to Hero status lately without the benefit of long term promotional endorsement deals with the advertisers that buy full page glossies in industry mags? The nature of the deal is The Donald’s Art of The Deal:  if your talents and creativity are not comprehensive, but narrowly focused and specialized, then, as a fledgling deity, you must try to surround yourself  with the personnel that can help you accomplish all the peripherals.

4

~

6

~ gotta be good to get yourself into a position to

You’ve gotta be lucky to be good: and you’ve

take advantage of good fortune. How many of us are confident that, if and when opportunity comes knockin’, we’re prepared to seize the moment and make the most of it? (How many more clichés can I cut and paste together?) If you love lists, then here’s  just one more you might want to consider - it’s an ancient list of -

3 &5 ~

SEVEN VIRTUES

are related, and go hand in hand, as it were: they define the outside boundaries of the Pantheon. In retrospect, Pioneer Guitar Gods like Segovia, Atkins, Christian, Reinhardt, T-Bone, Berry, etc., actually were like watershed points, where tradition and revolution synthesized to set off in new  directions. The Second Wave of the ’60’s, including players from The Yardbirds alumni, Jimi, and later, Van Halen and Stevie Ray, were all able to accomplish a fusion of 3 and 5, to varying degrees, finding a personal answer to the question, what does the public want?

1. Faith 2. Hope 3. Love 4. Wisdom 5. Justice 6. Strength 7. Common Sense  So, how much faith do you have in yourself? When does the right amount of self-confidence and ambition become an overdose of ego? You are always, quite literally, hanging in the balance. Are you interested in tomorrow, and the opportunities it may  provide? Feelin’ lucky? How’d you like to try and go for something… immortal? Better get out yer checklist.. 61

MYTHOLOGY, REALITY AND CHEMISTRY: KUDOS TO TED GREENE When it comes to our own roots, our national-

and coming Bobby Edwards: and of course, all of the unreality that swirled around a local Lenny Breau gig. I bring this up, not to bore you with my sense of local pride, but to emphasize how it is a part of me and my  process, how it forms and influences. Dear readers, I’m quite sure every local scene had its own unique culture and mythology. Do you feel…well-connected?

ities, our ancestries, our mythologies, naturally we are completely biased, and incapable of any objectivity, as we have no frame of reference. Still, here’s my two cents’ worth of opinion. Coming of age as a guitarist through the 60’s and 70’s in Toronto, Canada offered a unique wealth of diverse opportunities and influences. We had a strong, established tradition of folk and country singer/songwriters; I grew up in an urban, multicultural melting pot, where European influences and British heritage (with later Invasions) somehow  came together with the giant global juggernaut machine of American show business. Motown from Detroit, and the blues of Chicago weren’t any further away than the legacy of Hank Snow, the ballads of  Gordon Lightfoot, or the work of Robbie Robertson.

Out of all of this, there were some things that were very real. In particular, I remember how  respected Mickey Baker’s jazz guitar book was (wellthumbed, dog-eared copies making the rounds in high school), and especially, Ted Greene’s Chord Chemistry  book. (The initial copyright was in ’71, but in ’81 it was assigned to Belwin-Mills, Melville N.Y.11747)

In the trenches (or the primordial soup, or whatever metaphor suits your fancy) of the local neighborhood Mom and Pop music stores and schools, there was gossip, things of  legend, apocryphal stories told, “classic” stuff to be revered: Dominic Troiano’s Telly, supposedly baked in his mom’s oven with coats of floor wax, played through razor-slashed speakers and gargantuan Traynor heads, just to get THAT SOUND: heavy monsters privy to the secrets being taught in the Eli Kassner Classical Guitar Academy downtown, or in private lessons with the legendary  Hank Monis, Tony Braden, or the up

62

• • • • ••

MYTHOLOGY, REALITY AND CHEMISTRY: KUDOS TO TED GREENE (Cont’d)

The thing that made the book such an awesome, instant classic around here was its thoroughly detailed handling of the subject. Yet there was more: something else that sub-consciously evoked a reverential response in us at the time. In retrospect, now, I think I can consciously identify, appreciate and articulate that dynamic:

Why so many?  Because that’s just about how  many useful ones there really are on the fingerboard, that’s why. Why so awkward? Because Ted’s systematic idea was to illustrate every possible INVERSION and VOICING (the structure, the order, the arrangement of the notes that form the chord) of  a particular chord, moving up the neck chord tone by  chord tone, on the same string. This approach isn’t necessarily or fundamentally “guitar”-friendly, but it’s quite natural and logical as far as music is concerned. A keyboard player, for example, would approach the voicing of chords in different inversions throughout a progression quite matter-of-factly, whereas, confronted with the “standard” guitar voicings of  Ex.1 and 2, and locked in to the common voicings of first position chord forms, a keyboardist might find them a tad idiosyncratic, and very limiting, what with this root/fifth thing going on at the bottom all the time, and the amount of doubled notes, and so forth.

THIS BOOK ISN’T ABOUT G U I T A R P L AY I N G ! ! ! Okay, I admit, that’s just a cheap tabloid headline attention-getting device, intentionally controversial and misleading. (Guess it just shows to go ya that I can and will indeed stoop to conquer.) What this book IS about is finding and making  music on the guitar, and there’s a basic difference in this approach. Allow me to illustrate. Ask a beginner to play an E chord, and you’ll probably get Ex. 1. A little more knowledge and practice hopefully gets you Ex.2 as well. These are “guitar” chords, their sound universally known and loved, their fingerboard locations and shapes standard. But when Ted shows us an E chord, there are over 60 of ’em! Why so many?  And why  are some of them such awkward stretches and unrecognizable shapes? Why aren’t fingerings provided? (Have a look at just a few of the ones that I love in Ex. 3.)

Ex. 1 E

1 2 3

Ex. 2  E

II

1 4

Why aren’t fingerings provided?  Guitarist, teach thyself!!! That might have something to do with it. As you attempt to make these unusual voicings, you must inevitably develop your own fingering logic. Besides, the central point here is that this isn’t about technique  (i.e. the placing of fingers) as much as it is music (i.e. the arrangement of the notes themselves). Mr. Greene himself admits that the sheer “number of chords on the  guitar is pretty ridiculous” and cautions that the memorized knowledge of voicings is symbiotically  linked to practical and appropriate application. What do your ears tell you? What is there to be learned from working through Ted Greene’s Chemistry? 

Ex. 3 E

E

VI

E

E

IV

3 R

5

E

VI

3 R

5

3 5

R

3

R 5 R 3

E

VI

3

3 5 R

5 R 3 R 3

Continued • • • • • •  63

MYTHOLOGY, REALITY AND CHEMISTRY: KUDOS TO TED GREENE (Cont’d)

• • • • ••

For me, it opened up a new world, hinting at using chords, not just as great slabs of harmonic backing fill, but for voice leading. Progressions could be like maps - they could be adjusted to compliment the musical point, to provide the appropriate landscape. The possibility of cadences began showing up on my fretboard. A few examples of basic discoveries can be found below. E/B (no root)

D/A (no root)

II

A/C

IV

1

1

1 2

3 4

3 4

A

II

D/A

IV

1

E/A

VI

1

1

4

4

4

E

II

E7/G

IV

1

Am

1

V

C

G/B

1

V

V

1

C/E

V

1

F

VII

1

1 2

2 3

3 4

2

2

4

2

3 4

4 4

Any artist worth his salt will tell you that their work  becomes deeper, more profoundly personal, and feels more valid when its invention evokes a strong sense of its own mythology. When something really seems to work, for artist or audience, it becomes greater than the sum of its parts. This is something wonderful, magical; at once metaphysical and chemical. Kudos to Ted Greene for giving so many  guitarists a window of opportunity, a chance to be the sorcerer’s apprentice, an invitation into this strange and beautiful alchemy we call music.

64

4

FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR: AS I LIVE AND BREATHE I’ve always felt that some kind of holistic approach to music-making was fundamentally important. The ability to lose yourself in the music, to achieve a sense of abandon , or perhaps even better, commitment , is a total mind/body/soul trinity kind of thing. It seems enigmatic that the beginnings of this state of total commitment and sublimation can be enhanced by the conscious and conscientious self-awareness of  an educational process. In other words, you can teach yourself  to transcend teaching, to go to the heart of the music, where there are no words, no lessons, no self-consciousness. A bowl of New Age Fruit Loops, you say? Well,  you know what they say (who are they, anyway?)…  you are what you eat. This certainly implies a holistic, all-encompassing point of view. I think, therefore I am. You are what you think. What you feel. What you believe. Over 65% of you is hydrogen and oxygen, the water you drink, the air that you breathe. This is as basic and essential as it gets. Your music is an artistic expression of who and what you are, a sum total of this mind/body/soul trinity. So, as in many of  the Eastern philosophies and religions, perhaps we should begin to teach ourselves transcendence by  focusing in on BREATHING.

Continued • • • • • • 

65

• • • • ••

Ex. 1

II

AS I LIVE AND BREATHE (Cont’d) III

2

1 2

3

3

1 2

4

4

3

V

VIII

4

XI

VI

IX

1

6 8

a  m  p  T A B

3 2 3

i 

4

a  m

sim.

3 2

6 5

6 5

7

6

II

9 8

10

9

1

9 8

12 11

13

12

2 0

12 11

2 0

2

1

5 3

5

4

5 3

8 6 7

8

8 6

11 9 10

11

11 9

2 3

4

V

V II I

XI

5

T A B

3 2 2

3

3 2

6 5 5

6

6 5

9 8 8

9

9 8

12 11 11

Much Much of the theory behind fundamental fundamental music music harmony concerns concerns itself with tension and release. drawn-out illustration of the Ex. Ex. 1 is an intentionally drawn-out tension of a diminished sound finally being being resolved. resolved. As a listener, totally involved involved in the dramatic sense of  the music, one might be inclined to hold one’s one’s breath, to become suspended in anticipation, finally breathing upon resoluti resolution. on. But as a player player and and performer performer,, it is impractical to deny deny working musculature musculature of oxygen for exten extended ded period periodss of time. time. If your your body langu language age starts to translate the emotion and drama of the music too much, much, then the even even rhythmic rhythmic flow flow of the passage passage will become become affected. affected. This is like like strangling strangling the messenger, just as the message is being delivered. delivered.

12

12 11

10 7 7 7

FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR: Always try to keep the nervous tension, emotional contortions, and mental mental distortions distortions out of the signal path path of the musical musical message: message: Breathe…relax…focus. A little adrenaline adrenaline can be a good good thing, providing a little competit competitive ive edge. edge. Emotion Emotion is certainly certainly one of  the highest valued qualities that listeners seek in a performance performance.. But let’ let’ss be clear clear on the dynamic dynamicss of this relationshi relationship: p: the emotion emotion is supposed supposed to be at the the service of the music, music, not vice vice versa. versa. It is the the fuel fuel that that drives the engine, the current that makes the river river flow.

Continued • • • • • • 

66

• • • • ••

AS I LIVE AND BREATHE (Cont’d)

Ex. 2  1

4

2

4

2

1

2

1

3

1

3

1

6

7

8 10

T A B

3

1

4

4 4 6

10 8 7

4

3

1

9 7

1

3

6

7 9 7

10

1

4

3

6

7 8 7

9

1

10 9 7 9 10

7

7 9

Ex. 3 V 4

VII 3

4

4 4

8 7

8

T A B

5

2

1

4

2

1

3

1

8 6 5 8

5

4

8 7

2

1

4

4

8 7

8

10 9

2

1

10

10 8 7 7 7

2

4

3

4

3

1

4

1

4

3

1

10 8 10 8

10 9 10 9 7

10

7

4

2

10

1

3

7

10 8 7 8 10

3

1

10 9 7

So we can see, that despite our preamble about a totally selfless abandon and commitment, commitment, there seems to be a fundamental self-consciousness, self-consciousness, a selfdiscipline, a self-awareness that’s that’s a necessary priority  in order to achieve a transcendent musical performance. performance. Try playing the familiar familiar scale melodies melodies of Exampl Examples es 2 and 3 (“Silhouettes,” (“Silhouettes,” and the old sailor’s hornpipe jig) and consciously experiment with your breathing patterns - slowly and evenly in through the nose, out through through the mouth. mouth. Try them without breathing, breathing, then see if your performanc performancee improves improves if   you take a few deep cleansing breaths before you

3

1

4

2

1

V 4

4

T A B

4

4

1

1

4 4

2

4

4

3

4

3

4

4

7 9 10

7 9 10

8

8 7 9

10 10

begin, and then breath breath regula regularly rly throughou throughout. t. Anyone Anyone with a passing awareness awareness of the LaMaze natural natural childbirth routine knows that focused breathing is a mental exercise that can get you through even the most, er, er, laborious laborious task. task. Two little little tricks tricks to to watch watch out Ex. 3: the for in Ex. the 7th 7th and and 8th 8th note notess of bar bar 1, a C followed by a G, are achieved with a flat little little minibarre of of both the the B and E strings with the the pad of the 4th fing finger er,, not the the fingert fingertip ip.. Also, Also, take take note of the positi position on shifts shifts;; one just just befor beforee the end end of bar 1, 1, and another just before the the repeat at the end of bar 4.

Continued • • • • • •  67

• • • • ••

AS I LIVE AND BREATHE (Cont’d)

Ex. 4  6 8

5

T A B

5

5

8

5

8

5

8

5

7

5

7

5

7

5

7

5

7

5

8

5

3

5

3

Ex. 5  6 8

S

grad. B 1/4

T A B

5

5

5

8

5

8 8 10

For vocalists, vocalists, brass or woodwind players, breathing and phrasing are by-products born of  necessity necessity.. Part of of their craft craft is the placem placement ent of  breaths, to enhance and not detract from the natural flow, flow, allowing for smooth, lyrical interpreta interpretations. tions. Guitarist Guitarists, s, on the other hand, are notorious for run-on phrasing. phrasing. Many Many great guitari guitarists sts (Stern, (Stern, Beck, Carlton and Ford Ford pop to mind) avoid this trap by emulating sax lines and vocal phrasing in order to capture this musicality musicality.. It wouldn’ wouldn’tt surprise me at all to learn that they “sing” along (I have have heard recordings of classical artists Glenn Gould and Christopher Parkening where their humming is quite audible) and don’t actually play any notes when they’re taking a breath. Examples 4 and 5 are intended to illustrate the contrast between a boring, phraseless phraseless line, and a more interesti interesting, ng, lyrical interpretation.

S

8

9

9 7

H

5

7 5 7

S

7 5

3

 n g,  a t h i n  e  r  b  t  u  n  g a b o  g  b e g i n    n n  i  t  k   h    n n   g  i  i  s  t h  m  f i i t t n e s  a r t e d  p a t h, y o u  s i c  l  t  a  s   c  e    v v  ’  c  h y  s t i c  s m a l l l  a t y o u  t h i s  h o l i i s  o u r p  h  d  y  t   s ,  n  t  a  w    e e  i  N o  r d  d r e n  n d  o n g  p a l o  :  y o u  u n g c h i l l d  s  e  t  t , a  s  e  c  t  a  r r s  e r f a  o z o n e  h t  d s y o  h  r  e  t  t h e f i i  d  a  h  o  t  r  w ,  g  d  n s i d e  t t i t t u d e s t o  i r r d W o r l d  a l l l n i g  p  u  t o c o  h  y  a  T  a  r  e  s t  s, y o u  f o  w h o  s t s, t h  i a  s  e  r  c  e v e l s   o   a  l e  n    n n  s, r a i  n s o m  s  D o g…  c i n  c  m a l s  i  a  x   s    e e  i  a n i m  l  s  y  l l l y  c d y  s t i c  r e r e a  e  h  t  a g n o  i n    f f  i  e r n g  w o n d

68

IN CONCLUSION…

W ell, well.

It seems like we’ve come to the end. But of course, if you’re in it

FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR, every ending is just another beginning, and almost every idea   presented in these four books remains open to interpretation, or  evolution, recycling, or renovation. I’d like to think they also remain  worthy of revisiting. As you worked your way through this stuff, I hope every now and then you got the impression that this was a  labor of love, and I hope that feeling might have carried over, even just a little, into your own efforts. I sincerely thank the reader  (and especially the book purchaser) for the time and trouble it took to make it to here. From now until forever, I wish you Love, Luck, Laughter, Health and  Happiness. And whatever you do, keep on pickin’ and grinnin’.

69

YOU CAN CONTACT:

at P.O. Box 97522 Highland Creek, Ontario M1C 4Z1 Canada www. rikemmett.com

Book One

The Basics Book  Book Two

The Basic Building Blocks Book  Book Three

The Basic Brainstorming Book  Book Four

The Beyond Basics Book 

Design:

Jeanine Leech & Mr. E.

Editorial Assistance:

Nancy Wood

Technical Assistance:

Lee Olsen

Cartoons and Illustrations:

Rik Emmett

Figures and Illustrations:

Jeanine Leech

Music Examples written by:

Rik Emmett

Photography:

Jeannette Emmett Jeanine Leech

OHB-FTLOGB4 Copyright ©1998 Open House Books Rockit Sounds Publishing [SOCAN]. A Division of Rockit Sounds, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.