As a musical instrument, the ukulele has a lot to offer and a lot of advantages. It’s easily portable. If fact, if you’re looking for a travel guitar, something to take along with you on airplane trips, you might want to seriously think about getting a ukulele instead. You can readily store it in either the overhead compartment on under your seat. It’s definitely a lot easier to cart around than a guitar and also offers you a chance to do most of the same practicing routines that you’d work on with your six-string.

That’s not to say you should think of the ukulele and guitar as interchangeable instruments. Far from it! The uke has a unique voice and is definitely worthy of your time and study and practice all on its own.

However, just as with other instruments, if you’re serious about picking up the ukulele as a musical instrument, you have to take care to get yourself an instrument that can be played like a musical instrument. Over its history, the ukulele has had to overcome many serious musicians regarding it as little more than a toy or a novelty. Just like the guitar, there are more than a number of uke manufacturers who put out product that is, shall we say, more appropriate for a child’s playroom than for the stage.

Using your guitar instincts can be very helpful when buying your first ukulele. You certainly may not want to purchase a top of the line model right off, especially before you’ve determined whether or not you’re likely to seriously play the instrument. But you certainly do want to get an instrument that provides you with ease of playing and encourages you to play and practice as often as possible.

In case you’re totally new to ukuleles, the first thing that you want to think about is which size ukulele you want to purchase. Ukes come in four standard sizes – soprano, concert, tenor and baritone – shown from left to right here:

The soprano ukulele in this photo is 21 inches long, measured from the end of its headstock to its bottom. The concert ukulele (second from left) is just a little over 23 inches long while the tenor ukulele (second from the right) measures about 26 ¼ inches. The baritone ukulele at the far right comes in just shy of 30 ½ inches.

You might find comparing the spacing of the frets of each sized ukulele helpful to your choosing as well. Like the guitar and other fretted instruments, the spacing between the frets of all ukuleles gets smaller as you go up the neck. Since most beginners do their playing within the first five frets of the instrument (the five frets closest to the headstock), it’s good to check out those measurements. In the instruments in this photo, the spacing at the first five frets of the soprano is approximately ¾ inch, the concert is about 7/8 inch and the tenor is just about a full inch. The baritone comes in close to 1 1/8 inches.

By the way (in case you didn’t know), despite their differences in the size of the instrument, the strings of the soprano, concert and tenor ukuleles are all tuned to the same notes. From the string closest to you to the one closest to the floor they go g (the same note as the third fret of the guitar’s high E string), C (the same note as the first fret of the guitar’s B string), E (the same note as the guitar’s open high E string) and A (the same note as the fifth fret of the guitar’s high E string). The baritone ukulele’s strings are tuned to the same notes as the guitar’s four thinnest strings – D, G, B, and E.

Just as with finding a guitar, your first concern should be how comfortable the ukulele feels. Can you hold it easily? Do you find it easy to strum and to fingerpick the strings? Can you manage getting your fingers onto the frets to create notes along the fretboard? Be on the lookout for sharp edges of the frets along either side of the neck.

Likewise, check out the physical construction of the instrument. Are there any cracks in the wood or in the finish? Are the seams glued well? Are the nut and saddle in good condition?

Far and away, the biggest potential problem area with most ukuleles is the tuners. To put it bluntly, cheap ukuleles usually come with cheap tuners, ones that hardly keep the strings in tune for an entire song! Be sure to make sure the tuners of the ukulele you’re thinking about getting hold the strings of the instrument in tune fairly consistently. The last thing you need is to get what you think is a great instrument only to find that you can’t play it for any appreciable length of time because it’s continually going out of tune.

A good rule of thumb is that if you’re in the market for a ukulele and that you intend to play music on it, then you should try to buy one in a music store rather than in a gift shop, souvenir stand or some kind of megastore where they sell everything from diapers to high definition television sets. Likewise, if you’re buying one online, take the time to research the manufacturer and find reviews.  And be absolutely certainly that you know everything there is to know about the seller’s return policies!

Even though the ukulele is smaller than the guitar and has fewer strings, you want to spend as much time and energy choosing the best one for you as you would with a guitar. It’s the quality of the instrument, rather than the size, that truly matters.

Peace

Ukuleles – Separating Instruments from Ornaments and Toys was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

In Part 2, we used that information to take the next step forward: constructing major scales and understanding keys.

Here in Part 3, we’ll take the final step and use our knowledge of major scales to harmonize them with chords.

This is where music theory really starts to come alive because it gives the musician insight into why certain chords work together to form complementary sounds. You can use this knowledge to empower you to learn songs by ear or to write your own songs. You can also use this knowledge for transposing to other keys, which is essential when applying capo strategies. Rock and roll!

Happy Together

Understanding major scale construction is critical to your understanding of all music theory, but by itself, it’s not very exciting. However, harmonizing the major scale – otherwise known as, “building chords” – is much more exciting, because it clues us into what chords are in what keys, and why they sound good in certain combinations.

This is a major hurdle to get over for anyone who wants to write their own songs! It’s also incredibly helpful when learning any music by ear (be sure to check out my post, The Lost Art of Learning By Ear, as well as any of the Guitar Noise series on Ear Training, beginning with Happy New Ear, for more on this awesome topic), and that could mean learning a song from your iPod or just hanging with other musicians in an informal jam session.

Here’s the scenario: You love your classic rock and so you’re learning the Bob Dylan song, “Like a Rolling Stone.” You see from your trusty music book that it seems to have no sharps or flats, which would indicate to you that we’re playing in the key of C. But how do the chords of the song – C, Dm, Em, F, G, etc. – relate to this? Why these chords and not some others? How did our boy Bob know what chords would sound good together?

Never fear, Grasshopper. Learning to harmonize the scale will reveal the answers!

Stacking Thirds

Take another look at our C scale: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C.

Now let’s follow a process called “stacking thirds” to build a three-note chord, or triad, from each note of the scale.

To “stack thirds”, we’ll just pick a starting note, leap-frog over the next note to land on our next target note, and again leap-frog over the next note to land on our final target note. This gives us the three notes of our triad, and we “stack” these note, figuratively-speaking, on top of each other.

C…leap-frog over D to land on E…leap-frog over F to land on G.

Our C chord, then, is comprised of the starting note plus the two targets: C-E-G.

Quick Music Lingo Note: “Stacking thirds” refers to two different concepts. We “stack” them, by figuratively sitting the higher notes of the scale on top of the lower notes. So in our C chord, C would be the lowest note, E would sit on top of it, and G would be the highest note.

“Thirds” refers to the span of three notes. Counting from C (as “1″) to E (as “3″) encompasses three notes: C, D and E. Likewise, E (“3″) to G (as “5″) also encompasses three notes: E, F and G. Taken together, every triad is regarded as having a root note (“1″), a 3rd and a 5th.

If you want even more information on this, check out Guitar Noise’s article, The Power of Three.

Using the leap-frog method of “stacking thirds”, we can finish harmonizing the C scale by building triads on each of the scale tones:

D yields…D-F-A
E yields…E-G-B
F yields…F-A-C
G yields…G-B-D
A yields…A-C-E
B yields…B-D-F

Done. Now what does it all mean?

Let’s Get Diatonic

Without going into why the following information is true (we can save that for a future theory lesson), suffice it to say that the triads you just built from the major scale yield the following chord names (items in the list are shown as SCALE DEGREE = ROOT NOTE = TRIAD NAME):

1 = C = C major
2 = D = D minor
3 = E = E minor
4 = F = F major
5 = G = G major
6 = A = A minor
7 = B = B diminished

These chords are the diatonic harmony in the key of C, meaning they are the triads that naturally occur in the key, using just the notes of the major scale to build them. Because these chords are all constructed from the same family of notes – the pitches of the major scale – they will sound complementary to one another in just about any context.

So if you’re wondering why Bob Dylan chose C, Dm, Em, F and G for “Like a Rolling Stone,” it’s because he knew – either technically or instinctively – that those chords are all from the same family of notes and sound good together (and he’d do the same sort of thing with “I Shall Be Released,” although in a different key!).

This is powerful information for the developing musician/songwriter, because it gives you a guideline to follow for learning or writing songs. For instance, if you were trying to learn a song by ear, rather than use the trial-and-error method, where you just take a stab at whatever random chords you know in hopes of hitting a good one, use the chords that are diatonic to the key as your first choices. Only when you can rule them out, should you look to non-diatonic chords for your answers. This is a much more efficient way to go about your musical business, and ultimately much more professional. It also takes away some of the mystery of song construction and makes you feel more empowered as a musician!

Primary Chords

Now that you know how to harmonize one major scale, guess what? You know how to harmonize all of them!

Because all scales are constructed from the same major scale formula, they all have the same relationships and the same do-re-mi sound. Because they have the same relationships, the chords that we build by “stacking thirds” are always the same type at the same scale degrees! Check it out:

Major scales will always yield MAJOR CHORDS at the 1, 4 and 5 degrees of the scale. These are referred to as the primary major chords in a key. In our above example in the key of C, we get C (1), F (4) and G (5) chords.

Major scales will also always yield MINOR CHORDS at the 2, 3 and 6 positions – which are referred to as the primary minor chords in a key – as well as a lone DIMINISHED CHORD at the 7 spot. In the key of C, we get Dm (2), Em (3) and Am (6), as well as B diminished (7).

Understanding these concepts and committing them to memory takes practice. Since you have already gone through the process of writing out some of the more common major scales in Part 2 of this theory lesson (you have, haven’t you?), you should take it a step further now and harmonize those scales with chords. Go ahead and stack the thirds, and then write out the name of the triad that each scale tone yields. You may be interested to see that the combinations of chords you’ve been playing in your songs are there for a reason!

I’ve prepared a handy-dandy worksheet to help you out:

Harmonizing the Major Scale

Changing Keys

Knowing what chords fall at what scale degrees in a key is the secret to transposing songs from one key to another. It’s as simple as using the scale degrees to help you substitute one chord for another.

For example, you know that every major key has major chords at the 1, 4 and 5 positions in the scale. If the song you’re playing is in the key of C and it consists of the C (1), F (4) and G (5) chords, you can transpose this to any other key by just using the 1, 4 and 5 chords of the new key in the same spots in the song. Simple substitution!

This is not only an important idea to understand in general about music; it’s a critical concept to understand if you want to use a capo effectively, since capoing and transposition usually go hand in hand. Check out The Definitive Lesson: Essential Capo Strategies as well as the Guitar Noise lessons Turning Notes into Stone – A Basic Guide to Transposing and The Underappreciated Art of Using a Capo for a ton of useful information on this topic!

Jim Bowley spent 20+ years as a performing and recording guitarist, vocalist and songwriter. He currently spreads the guitar gospel via his website, jimbowley.com, and his Bel Air, Maryland-based private studio. You can also find Jim on Facebook discussing all things six-string.

More from this series

• The Only Theory Lesson You’ll Ever Need – Part 1
• The Only Theory Lesson You’ll Ever Need – Part 2

The Only Theory Lesson You’ll Ever Need – Part 3 was written by Jim Bowley for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Okay…for those of you who are still reading, I will be showing you what you need to know in order to develop a long and successful career in the music business that will give you the ability to make a good living. It is common for most musicians to be skeptical of making a lot of money in the music industry. Often, these musicians have a strong fear that pursuing a music career means not having enough money to support themselves. As a result, they end up working in jobs outside of music that they loathe going to each day; unaware of their true potential to achieve success by working in the music business. After mentoring many musicians to improve their music careers, I can tell you that this skepticism, and the resulting misdirection of talent and effort, is overwhelmingly common.

In reality, making a lot of money in the music business is not as hard as it might seem (and is not something reserved for rock stars only), however, if you want to achieve this for yourself you will need to think with an alternate mindset than most musicians.

Not only must you consider yourself as a musician, but you must also think with an entrepreneurial mindset and take consistent action to further your career. Basically, your music career must be treated in a business-like manner where your “service” is all the things you can offer to music companies, record labels, promoters, fans, and other people in the music industry.

Most musicians do not know how to treat their music career in a professional, business-like manner. This is why so many of these people struggle to make a lot of money in the music business.

To quickly test out your current understanding of what it takes to become successful in the music business, take this short survey on pursuing a career in music before reading the rest of this article.

On top of not approaching their music careers with an understanding of the business side of things, the majority of musicians do not earn a lot of money in the music industry due to making the following mistakes:

Not Establishing Multiple Sources Of Music Related Income

Almost all musicians enter into the music business with the same mindset they have used while looking for a regular job. This means they only expect to make a single source of income from touring or releasing music albums.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with this approach to making money. However, relying “only” on these avenues is very limiting and makes it difficult to continually make a comfortable living as a musician. Fortunately, it is quite simple to create many different sources of income for yourself that add up to give you a very stable and sustainable career in the music business. No matter what your main goal is in the music industry, whether it be touring in a band, selling albums, producing records, etc…you will need to have various sources that are bringing in money for you in both passive and active ways. By having multiple sources of income, you will gain a lot of security and won’t need to rely on a single income stream to make a living.

Not Consistently Providing Additional Value To Other People In The Music Industry

To gain a solid understanding of what “value” means when it applies to the idea of making a living in the music business, you must pay close attention to the next sentence. Regardless of what you do in the music industry, whether it be touring in a band, creating music in the studio, giving music instruction or working as a record producer, the people in the music industry (including bands you play for, record labels, music students, etc.) must decide on working together with you versus thousands of musicians competing for the same opportunity. If you don’t want to blend in with the crowd and go unnoticed, you will need to gain the upper hand on your music competition by creating value that far exceeds that of what most musicians are able to offer. This does not simply mean working on developing your music skills! Developing truly high value in your music career deals with many different aspects of your personal mindset, emotional stability under stress, and ability to work very hard on a consistent basis.

If you want to make a lot of money in your music career, you will need to make it 110% clear that you are the number one choice when someone in the music industry must choose between you and your competitors. In fact, this must be totally clear before anyone has even listened to one second of your music!

This may seem like a simple concept as you are reading it right now. However, as simple as it may be, almost all musicians do not build their music careers by acting on this basic principle. To find out how much you apply this concept in your own music career, take this short survey for creating music business value.

By increasing your potential to create value (for all people involved) during any music related activity, you will be able to quickly earn a lot of money in the music business. This is one of the main ideas I focus on while training musicians to build highly successful music careers.

Not Properly Identifying Who You Are Marketing To

After you understand the value you are ready to offer in the music business, you must know to whom you are going to give it. For instance, if you are ready to put out your new album, or create a new instructional service or product on your website, who are the people that are going to purchase it? Do you have a way to get in touch with these people? If not, what steps are you taking now to build a database of your fans/customers? If your goal is to work as a session musician, have you already spent time to write down all the musicians, studios, and bands that might be looking for someone to work with? What are you going to do today to get the attention of your potential customers?

If you are at all like the majority of musicians, you likely have not invested much time into determining who your market is. As a result, here is what is likely to happen: you spend a lot of time and energy to create music or instructional products, but don’t make much money from your musical efforts since you don’t already have a database of customers who are willing to buy what you have to offer.

Since this is such a major factor for success in music business careers, I spend a great deal of time showing musicians in my music business mentoring program how to build a database and use it to make a good living in music.

You might believe that being signed with a music company means that you do not need to work to promote yourself, build a list of fans, or find ways to earn money. However, in reality these companies are not responsible for your music career, and will not do this for you. The key to achieving success and earning a lot of money in the music industry is for you to take action and build your database. This way all your customers/fans are controlled by you.

Not Having Solid Goals And Ways To Reach Them

To earn a good living in the music industry, you must develop a specific plan for how you will reach your goals. If you merely fantasize about making a lot of money, this is not enough to make this goal a reality. Rather than fantasizing, start working toward what you want to achieve by asking yourself the following questions:

1. What is your desired yearly income from your music career?
2. What are the sources of musical income that will make the amount in Question 1 possible?
3. What are the steps you must take to set up these sources of income? (Read this article about music business planning to learn more about this)
4. How many ways can you add value to your interactions with people in the music business? (Think of every possibility!)
5. How many ways can you eliminate risk for other people in the music business?

After you have figured out your answers for each question above, you must focus on making every action you take in your music career go toward achieving the exact goals you have made for yourself.

Most musicians looking to become successful in the music business are not sure what they must do to reach their desired goals. If you are experiencing this as well, the best solution to this problem is to seek out training from a professional who has shown other musicians how to earn a lot of money in their careers. This way, you can avoid making mistakes that will cost you significant time and effort to fix.

Thinking That Popularity = Making A Lot Of Money In The Music Industry

Fact is, the majority of musicians who are “making it” in the music industry are not rock stars. Being part of a popular band does not mean that you will be earning a great living. The truth is that some musicians (who are very popular) still work side jobs just to get by. By understanding this, you will be able to push “fame” aside in order to focus on the most effective ways to work toward your goal of making a good living in music. Of course it is possible to both be famous and make a lot of money in the music industry, however it is most important at this point to focus your efforts on the appropriate aspects of your goal.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of musicians who think that making good money from their musical talents is “wrong” or “deceptive” in some way. These people think that it is only important to continue improving their musical skills. Although improving as a musician is clearly important, if you’d like to have the freedom to make music for a living, you will also need to invest your time into improving upon the business side of your music career. This way you won’t need to work a dead end day job just to make ends meet.

There is no precise method for predicting every decision you will need to make in your music career to make more money. However, by simply avoiding the mistakes discussed in this article, you will be well on your way to making a great living in the music business. Once you have gained more time due to the financial freedom you will obtain, you will be able to focus more intensely on creating the music you love.

If you have not yet completed the surveys mentioned in this article on music business value, and pursuing a career in music I encourage you to do this now.

About The Author:

Tom Hess is an electric guitar teacher online and a music career mentor. He plays guitar and tours with the band Rhapsody Of Fire. Tom also trains musicians on how to break into the music business. On his website tomhess.net you can read many more articles about building a music career.

How To Make A Lot Of Money In The Music Business was written by Tom Hess for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

But sometimes it’s also a matter of preference. I can remember ordering the sheet music for today’s lesson, Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle,” from the music store by my high school shortly after Thanksgiving in 1974. Having just taken up the guitar less than five months before, I was a little dismayed to see that  (a) it was in the key of F and (b) had a lot of chords I wasn’t ready to deal with quite yet, such as Ab and Eb.

I was also taking music theory that year in high school, so it wasn’t all that long before I had transposed this song into the key of E, using a capo on the first fret so I could play along with it whenever I put on the album. My arrangement was awkward, but I was pretty happy with the fact that I’d managed to come up with one.

Liner Notes: Harry Chapin

Cat’s In The Cradle is a 1974 folk-rock song by Harry Chapin. Based on a poem by his wife Sandy about a father son relationship, this is Harry Chapin’s most famous song and a staple of 1970s folk-rock music.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

Flash forward a few years and I found myself sitting second row at a Harry Chapin solo performance and watching while he played his “big hit.” I made note of the fact that he placed his capo a lot higher up on the neck and, the next morning, tried working out a new arrangement with the capo on the eighth fret and playing in the key of A. This definitely sounded better.

But it still wasn’t right to my ears. And the more I listened to the recording (and to Chapin’s live recording of the song as well, since he’d recently released his Greatest Stories Live album) the more I realized I didn’t like what I was hearing in either of his versions either.

Flash forward a few more years to a day when, just by chance, I strummed the A chord (now technically an F, since I was capoed up on eight) and missed the B and high A strings,  getting an A5 chord instead. And I finally heard what my ears wanted to hear. In this case, playing just the root and fifth of the chord and not playing  the third was all that it took for me to say, “Now this sounds right.”  Having the modally-neutral A5 chord sounded better to me than either using an A major or an A minor. And that’s what led to the arrangement you’re about to learn.

Suffice it to say, this version of “Cat’s in the Cradle” may not be to everyone’s liking, but I think it definitely works and it certainly sounds close enough to the original than no one should give you any grief. And if you want it to sound more like what you think the original recording sounded like, just replace any A5 chords you see with regular old A and you should be fine.

Anyway, thanks for letting me go on like that. Now let’s get going on playing this song.

Structurally speaking, “Cat’s in the Cradle” consists of an introduction (which is also played before each of the first three verses and additionally serves as the outro for the song), four verses (the third one slightly shorter than the first two and the last one slightly longer from the first three), a chorus that is played after each verse (with some minor lyric changes), and a short instrumental bridge that is played between the third and final verse instead of the “introduction.” How about we tackle each section one at a time?

But first, a couple of more quick notes: this song (or at least this arrangement of it) is more suited for finger style guitar as it switches fairly regularly between picking and strumming. But it’s not particularly hard, despite how you may initially feel upon looking at it! Virtually all the finger patterns are either based on basic open chord shapes, specifically these chords:

Most of the finger picking is done with basic Travis style picking (for more on this topic, check out the latest guitar column Let Your Fingers Do the Talking), or are simple arpeggios (also, sneakily enough, based on chord shapes). You might be tempted to go with just using a pick, as there are a number of places where we’ll be strumming, but there will also be many sections (starting with the Introduction) where you’ll find yourself performing “pinches” – using the thumb on the bass note while simultaneously picking a treble note with your finger. You can read all about those in the second part of our Guitar Noise tutorial on basic Travis style picking.

The other thing I’d like to mention is capo placement. I’m using a capo on the eighth fret for the MP3 examples in order to be in the same key as the original recording. But I know that not everyone is comfortable using their fingers up that high, especially on an acoustic or a classical guitar. Also, some guitars are difficult to play when one is at that end of the fingerboard. So feel free to move down to the seventh, sixth or fifth fret if that’s more comfortable for you. Just remember that you’re not going to sound the same as in the MP3 files.

The Introduction

Alright then, onward! Let’s start with the first two measures of the Introduction:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This, by the bye, is almost note-for-note perfect from the original recording. And it’s also the reason why I think my ears got so determined to hear this as a song without a distinct major or minor tonality. It sounds a bit like a snippet of Celtic music. Fpr the most part, the melody of the Introduction deliberately avoids any use of the third, whether major (which, for our A chord, capo or no, would be the note at the second fret of the B string) or minor (first fret of the B string).

While there are all sorts of ways to finger this A5 chord, I’d like to suggest going with your index finger on the D string and your middle finger on the G string. This frees up your ring finger for performing the pull-off on the second fret of the high E (first) string at the start of the second measure. You can them choose between using either your ring finger or your pinky to get the D note (third fret of the D string) later that measure.

As with all our Guitar Noise song arrangements, this one is meant to simply be a starting place for your own ideas. So you might, for instance, want to pair the E note located at the second fret of the D string to go along with the fist play of the open high E (first) string. That will definitely add a little bit of body to the melody of the Introduction.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Using the fingering I mentioned will also make the transition from Measure Two to Measure Three (the first measure in the above “Example 2″)  quite easy. Again, your ring finger is free to get the C note at the third fret of the A string. This measure is a textbook use of Travis finger picking style.

But don’t get too settled into a groove because there’s a change of time signature in the very next measure. Here in Measure Four, you can either take your fingers in the A5 shape and simply move them to the next lower strings, or you can make a little jump and fret your Em the way most people tend to do, with their middle finger on the A string and the ring finger on the D string.

This brief side trip into 2 /4 timing lasts only a single measure. Measure Five finds us back in 4 /4 timing, and we’ll be here until we again come across the Introduction section when it is played between the first chorus and the second verse. Here we give ourselves a few resounding strums of the A5 chord.

Most transcriptions of this song are content to finish the Introduction with several measures of the A chord (A major, that is) being played until the verse starts up. I’ve opted to add a little “turnaround” (even though, technically, it’s not so much a “turnaround” as a “riff to play while we’re waiting for the beginning of the verse and we’re stuck on the same chord for a while”) that is patterned after the cello part in the original recording. Here we use an Am chord to give us our shape to play the riff. First we get the Am chord set up and then we pinch the open A string while picking the B string (where our index finger is on the first fret) at the same time. After the pinch, pull-off your index finger in order to sound the open B string and then pick the G and D strings to complete the arpeggio.

Having an Am chord may seem a little strange, especially after making such a big deal about the tonality of this song, but I prefer to think of it as foreshadowing for the C chord that’s coming up as a short, condensed reprise of the chords from Measures Three and Four. Indeed, many versions of Cat’s in the Cradle use the open A string for the bass note in those two measures. But if you listen to the original recording, you can hear the bassist playing the C and B notes that we’re playing on the A string. And even though we’re playing without a bass player, that doesn’t mean we should sound like we don’t care about the bass.

The strumming / plucking I chose here at the end of the Introduction is, needless to say, one of one hundred thousand and twenty-eight possible patterns. No, not literally! Well, maybe…

The point is that there are all sorts of ways to strum this, as there will be later on in the chorus and, especially, in the bridge. In the final MP3 (which I’ve not even recorded as I write this part of the lesson) you’ll probably hear numerous variations on the basic strumming patterns I write out. Why? Because I’m not worried about “the” strumming pattern. What I am worried about is not sounding stiff and lifeless. So patterns will definitely vary somewhat throughout a song. That’s what strumming is supposed to be about. And, if you’ve read any of my previous lessons, you know that this is the “obligatory tell the world that you should worry more about keeping a steady rhythm than about copying one particular strumming pattern” speech that I have to have (at least) one of in each lesson.

The Verses

Since the melody of the verses is derived from the Introduction, it only makes sense to use that melody as a guide for putting together a rhythm/picking pattern for this section of the song. So here a pattern that will work with the first four measures of the verse, which will then be repeated in the next four measures:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You should be able to hear (as well as to see from the notation / tablature) that the first three measures are the same pattern. We obviously changed some of the notes when we changed chords from A5 to C. And we also obviously changed the string of the bass note when we got to the D chord.

In the fourth measure, I change the string of the initial pinch, using the open high E (first) string in order to shadow the melody of this part of the verse. I also drop an eighth note at the end of the pattern in order to give this verse section a little more of a natural breathing space.

As mentioned, we play this “first section” of the verse twice through. Then we move to the “second section, which is just a simple walking bass line / arpeggio combination that you’ve seen in lessons like Friend of the Devil or may have heard in the Guitar Noise Podcast #6 over at the Guitar Noise Blog. In fact, except for this song not being in 3 / 4 timing, the first four measures of the second section of Cat’s in the Cradle is a lot like the first half of that podcast:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

The idea here is fairly straightforward. Pick the bass note with your thumb and then play an arpeggio on the D, G and B strings. We’ll make an exception for the last half of the second measure (where we’re playing the Em/D chord – probably the guitarist’s all time favorite chord of all, by the way!) where the bass note is the open D string, so we alter the pattern slightly.

Sometimes, in the heat of playing the song, I may find myself substituting the fifth measure of this section for the third. Does it make that much of a difference? Not in the least!

This is also a good place to make the following important notes concerning the third and fourth verses of our song:

In the third verse, the last line of lyric is dropped, which means that we need to go from Measure Three of this section directly to the last two measures. You can, if you’d rather, go straight from the second measure to the fifth.

In the last verse, the entire second section of the verse is played twice in a row. The second time starts with the line “…and as I hung up the phone…” To add a little variation at this point, you might want to try going with less accompaniment during the repeat, switching from eighth note arpeggios to deliberately pinched half notes, like this:

You could also throw in these half notes for  the second section of the verse at your leisure as you’re playing. After all, you’ve got four verses to play! You’ll be able to hear some variations in all the patterns in this lesson’s final MP3 file.

The Chorus and The Bridge

The majority of the chorus is strummed, with the chord progression going from A5 to G to C and to D, and then repeating the A5 to G measures before finishing up just like the second section of the verse:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

As mentioned earlier, there’s no end to the ways you could strum this. The main thing is to try to keep to the lower strings. This is the section where many people want to play A major instead of A5. Please feel free to do so. To my ears, as I mentioned at the start of the lesson, the A major chord simply doesn’t sit well and I find I even prefer Aadd9 (x02200) to A major. In the MP3, you’ll hear I try to stick to strumming on the lowest strings to keep things simple.

In the fourth measure, where you play the D chord, and for who knows whatever reason, I got into the habit of throwing that single C note as a way to bring out the bass for a moment, giving it a bit of a edge by bending it around ever so slightly. A little rock ‘n’ roll throwback, perhaps. You’re more than welcome to totally ignore this note and simply keep to the D chord. Or, better still, make up your own little fill to play there.

After the third verse, there is a short instrumental bridge that gets played instead of the Introduction. It’s just four chords played in an over-the-top-can’t-you-tell-the-song’s-coming-to-the-big-hush-before-the-final-chorus manner. When I saw Chapin in concert, he played this part gleefully, laughingly telling the audience he stole it from the movie, Exodus:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You can get away with playing Fmaj7 instead of F here. In fact, using the high E (first) string as a drone (which means playing G6 – 320000 – instead of G) sounds very nice.

Alright, then, here’s our final product:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

As always, I hope that you’ve had fun with this lesson and that you’ve picked up some ideas about arrangement that you can use in other songs in your ever-growing repertoire.

Remember the whole point of all these lessons is to discover techniques and tips that will help you with all of your playing. The songs are kind of like candy-coating to make learning taste a little less like learning and more like fun.

So, until our next lesson…

Peace

Cat’s In The Cradle – Harry Chapin was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

• Bad rhythm
• Can’t sight read
• Over-reliance on power chords and the pentatonic minor scale

True? Not in every case, but in more cases than you might think. Regardless of how true as the above accusations might be, however, they all pale in comparison to the gaping hole in the harmonic knowledge of many rock and metal guitarists: voice leading. I myself never knew what voice leading was until I studied classical guitar in college and grad school, but now that I know what it is and the incredible power that it can have in making a piece of music sound like… well… music, I can’t imagine that I ever lived without it.

So what is voice leading? Voice leading is the horizontal component of harmony. The notes stacked up within each chord are the vertical component, but each note within each chord is a “voice” and in traditional classical harmony, each voice is supposed to go somewhere. In other words, while the vertical component of harmony moves from one chord to the next in a given progression, the horizontal component creates a set of simultaneously occurring melodic lines. If you’d like more information on this (including some diagrams that may help), check out the old Guitar Noise article Five to One.

Breaking Away From Barre Chords

Let’s take a look at a basic chord progression done in two different styles: one with block barre chords moving around, and the other one with attention paid to voice leading.

This first chord progression, as shown in the above “Example 1,” is a typical A Mixolydian rock progression using only E-shaped barre chords, “E” being the most basic six-string barre chord shape. It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s somewhat boring. It’s boring because we’re taking a single chord shape and moving it around, which means we have only parallel motion of voices from chord to chord. In other words, all the notes move up or down from one chord to the next and every note of every string stays at the same intervallic distance from one another.

Figure two has is the exact same chord progression, except this time we’re using a bit of voice leading to make things more interesting:

In the first measure we now have oblique motion, where one or more voices stay the same while other voices move:

• Both A notes (open 5^th string and 2^nd fret, 3^rd string) remain in place
• C# (2^nd fret, 2^nd string) moves to D (3^rd fret, 2^nd string) and back
• E (2^nd fret, 4^th string) moves to F# (4^th fret, 4^th string) and back

In the second measure things get even more interesting because we’re introducing contrary motion, where two voices move in opposite directions, in addition to oblique motion. For the first chord change from D to G:

• Both D notes (open 4^th string and 3^rd fret, 2^nd string) remain in place
• F# (2^nd fret, 6^th string) moves up to G (3^rd fret, 6^th string)
• A (2^nd fret, 3^rd string) moves down to G (open 3^rd string)

Then in the next chord change from G to A we have more contrary motion:

• D (3^rd fret, 2^nd string) moves down to C# (2^nd fret, 2^nd string)
• G (open 3^rd string) moves up to A (2^nd fret, 3^rd string)
• D (open 4^th string) moves up to E (2^nd fret, 4^th string)
• G (3^rd fret, 6^th string) moves up to A (open 5^th string)

Hair Metal With Voice Leading? Vito Bratta says “Yes!”

Here’s another example in the style of one of my favorite players, Vito Bratta. Vito brought fantastic musicianship to what was in most other ways a very average band in White Lion. This passage is in the style of the verse section of one of White Lion’s hits, “Wait:”

At first glance this is just a series of double stops with some chugging on the open A string. But look again and you’ll see (and hear) some really cool harmony and voice leading.

• Measure 1: We start with an A major and via parallel motion move down to a G major over the open A, which creates an open, suspended kind of sound.
• Measure 2: Here we move the B (3^rd string, 4^th fret) up to C# (3^rd string, 6^th fret) to quickly create A7 and then immediately resolve to D major, where the contrary motion of C# (3^rd string, 6^th fret) up to D (3^rd string, 7^th fret) and G (4^th string, 5^th fret) down to F# (4^th string, 4^th fret) sounds especially cool.
• Measure 3: A fun harmony trick… we drop the major 3^rd of D (F# – 4^th string, 4^th fret) down to a minor 3^rd (F natural – 4^th string, 3^rd fret) to create a minor iv chord, which produces a melancholy sound in a major key.
• Measure 4: Resolving back to A major to start the riff over again.

This riff is a perfect example of how double stops and a palm muted accompaniment can be used to define a chord progression. If you’re just playing root/fifth power chords your voice leading options are extremely limited, but if you start using thirds (and even sevenths) when you create your riffs you can do some really cool things with voice leading. It can be a challenge to start thinking both horizontally and vertically, but it will open up an incredible array of harmonic possibilities for you.

Further Study

Want to listen and learn more? Look no further than these two great composers:

• Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina – A composer of sacred music during the Renaissance, Palestrina’s music is helpful for the study of voice leading because there are actual human voices involved, which makes it easier to pick out a single line and listen to it. I’m particularly fond of Palestrina’s masses. Any one of the 105 masses composed by Palestrina will be both educational and enjoyable, especially for anyone not familiar with choral music.
• Johann Sebastian Bach – Quite possibly the pinnacle of Western music, Johann Sebastian Bach was a master (some would say THE master) of both voice leading and its musical sibling, counterpoint. Check out the Brandenburg Concertos and the Well-Tempered Clavier for a taste of voice leading and counterpoint nirvana. For music accessible on the guitar, consider Bach’s suites and sonatas for lute, violin and lute.

Dan Vuksanovich received his Master of Music degree in classical guitar performance from the Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University in 1999. He currently teaches and blogs about how to get better at guitar via his website, www.whyisuckatguitar.com.

Voice Leading for Guitarists – An Introduction was written by Special to Guitar Noise for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Think back to how you learnt to read and write – the first step was probably learning your letters a b c d e f g….  You learnt to write the symbols and say the sounds that went with them.

Next you probably moved on to simple words … C  A  T  = Cat   B O Y = Boy

Then you progressed to sentences … T H E   B O Y   S A T   O N   T H E   C A T ….

And before you knew it you were reading paragraphs, chapters … stories   … whole books or, in my case, comics!

The process of learning to read music follows a similar path. First you learn to read individual notes (the videos below will help you do that).Then you get used to reading phrases. Then you find yourself stringing together whole lines of music. Finally you gain the confidence to read whole tunes straight off the page.

There are two distinctively different levels of skill to aim for as regards reading music: The first level is simply to understand it and be able to interpret what the various symbols mean. Also, of course, you need to be able to find the notes on the fretboard. This stage is all that is necessary to reach for most guitar playing needs.

A much more demanding level of ability is the ability to sight-read music on the guitar. This means the ability to play a piece of music, previously unseen and unheard, at first go, straight off the page.

The difference between these two levels is at least 100 hours of practice! There are some tips available about how to sight read, but there are no real short cuts. To continue with my comparison with the process of learning your letters, you can’t expect to get from The Boy Sat on the Cat to  War and Peace without a lot of hours of reading books in between! And, ideally, each of those books will gradually improve your reading skills as you enjoy reading them.

It will make the process of learning to read standard notation a whole lot easier if you first learn a few movable scale patterns. The two most valuable patterns to learn are the Major Scale and the Natural Minor Scale patterns.

When I teach sight-reading I start by going over the basics. Here are three short videos to explain these:

How to Read Music Part 1:

How to Read Music Part 2:

How to Read Music Part 3:

Next, according to the particular musical tastes of the student I get them to find a source of written music. One of the best sources is  The Complete Works of the Beatles, but, if preferred, the songs of Simon and Garfunkel or even Jon Bon Jovi would work just as well. What you are looking for is music with strong melody lines. The kind of tunes that once heard, you find yourself whistling or humming along to days later!

Start with songs in simple keys like C major, G major or F major or A minor, E minor or D minor. For each song start by following this list of actions:

1. Scan through the song to find the highest note and the lowest note.

2. Based on this, decide on which position of the major (or minor) scale is going to work best on the guitar. Note that the song may well cover more than one octave. Pick the position with the easiest fingering.

3. Practice the scale a few times up and down in the chosen position.

4. As you play the scale, try calling out loud the names of the notes as you play them. First in ascending order, then descending order. Be sure to take account of the key signature (the number of sharps or flats, which is shown at the far left of the staff on each line).

5. Next, test yourself by writing out a list of the notes in the scale in a random order and then trying to go straight to each note on the list. This helps you get the note names into muscle-memory.

6. Now forget the guitar a minute and read through the music calling the names of each note out loud as you go. Again, be sure to account for the key signature.

7. Now play the song through on the guitar, concentrating on getting the pitch of each note correct. Don’t be too concerned with timing at this stage.

8. Repeat this process until you begin to get a feel for the melody and have ironed out any tricky bits (awkward fingerings etc..)

9. Now play through again paying attention to timing. Make sure you give each note and rest its full time value. Accentuate slightly the first beat of each bar, preferably in time to your foot tapping or to a metronome.

10. Once this is all sounding musical, add the finishing touches. Take account of any dynamic markings (softer or louder), tempo instructions (slower or faster) or other detailed instructions that appear on the written music.

11. Finally, check to make sure you are progressing through the sequence correctly – taking account of repeat marks, codas and dc. or ds. Markings.

12. After all that, you can start adding feel, style, flair and all that other stuff that polishes your performance into a beautifully played piece of music!

Work through as many tunes as you can like this, gradually taking on harder and more complex tunes as you gain confidence.

Soon the checklist above will become automatic and, after many hours, redundant. By that time you will be sight-reading music on the guitar.

I hope you found this little series of articles interesting. Not everyone will agree with my approach to teaching guitar and the integration of standard notation into that process and I hasten to recommend exploring the views of other experienced teachers and professional musicians on this subject as well.

Happy Playing!

Nick Minnion

Lots more lessons, articles and videos by Nick available at his main websites:

For guitar players: www.secretguitarteacher.com

For guitar teachers (or aspiring guitar teachers: www.teachguitar.com

More from The Tyranny of Tablature

• To Read or Not to Read? Part 1 – The Tyranny of Tablature
• To Read or Not to Read? Part 2 – Making Musical Milestones

To Read or Not to Read? Part 3 – Some Practical Pointers was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

To become an excellent 7-string guitar player, you will need to fully understand how to overcome any challenges that arise with your new instrument. It is also necessary for you to become aware of all the new guitar playing possibilities that will help you express yourself better in your music. Let’s explore some of the many new ideas that can help you express yourself creatively in your 7-string guitar playing.

Learn To Use The Entire Range Of The Instrument

In most cases, guitarists are introduced to 7-string guitar through heavy metal riffs played by their favorite bands. This influences them to purchase a 7-string guitar for themselves. As soon as they pick up this instrument, they focus all their energy into creating heavy riffs or rhythms on the low B string. This is certainly one of the most unique features that a 7-string guitar has to offer, however if you spend too much time on the same string, your music will quickly become stale and uninteresting.

For instance, let’s say that you are going to create a song. In this song, you have a wide variety of instruments to choose from such as guitar, piano, bass, keyboard, drums, etc. However, while writing this composition, you decide to create the music by only using the lowest pitch ranges that can be played on each instrument…for the entire duration of the song! I’m willing to bet that your listeners will become bored after the first thirty seconds. After this amount of time, your audience would likely be listening to the music while asking themselves, “Are you going to ever play some higher notes?”

This is exactly what happens when many people play 7-string guitar. By spending all your time on the low B string, your guitar playing will lack variety. In order to fix this, focus on incorporating the other strings into your rhythm guitar playing. This will balance things out, and keep your music more interesting.

If you would like to be more creative on 7-string guitar, it is essential that you understand and apply this concept. When I show my own guitar students how to compose songs, I train them how to master this idea of balance in their music. To find out more about balancing pitch range on 7-string guitar, check out this 7 string guitar lesson.

Integrate The Low B String Into Your Lead Guitar Playing

Since a 7-string guitar essentially adds a bass string onto the guitar, many guitarists consider the instrument to be primarily used for rhythm. However, this is only a single piece of the puzzle. In fact, 7-string guitar is unique because it gives you a great opportunity to extend your lead guitar playing into the lower range as well and the high range of notes the standard guitar uses. To get the most from this instrument, extend the scale and arpeggio patterns you know from 6-string guitar onto the low B string. This will help you to expand the pitch range of your lead guitar phrases to make it more similar to piano. If you don’t know how to do this yourself, find a guitar teacher who knows how to effectively teach these 7-string guitar playing concepts.

Use The Low Range To Add Depth To Your Chord Progressions

The 7-string guitar offers many new options when it comes to creating interesting sounding guitar chords. By taking advantage of the low range that comes with the extra seventh string, you can combine standard guitar chords with the sound of a bass guitar. This allows you the versatility to play guitar in many different musical situations. Even though many guitar players consider 7-string guitar to be a “metal only” instrument, the truth is you can use it to play in various different genres from mainstream pop to jazz.

The low B string on 7-string guitar will give your chords a new depth and unique sound that you simply can’t get from a standard guitar. In order to hear this clearly for yourself, I recommend turning off any high gain/distortion settings on your amp. By using a clean setting, you will be able to hear the subtleties as you combine the bass string with the other strings of the guitar.

Here is an idea to help you start combining the chords you already know with the low B string: Think of several of your favorite chords that begin on the A string. Now, use the low B string together with these chords to see how they sound. Start by playing the open string, then experiment by using fretted notes. See how it sounds if you use only the low B string together with the A, D, and G strings in your chords. Then see how it sounds if you only play the low B string with the G, high B, and high E strings. Notice that whenever you play notes that are closer together it will feel different than when you play notes that are farther apart. After playing through this short exercise, think about which of the string combinations sound best to you. Once you have decided on this, you can use this in your music next time you go to improvise or write something new.

Clean Up Your Guitar Playing By Cutting Out Unwanted Noises

One of the biggest problems for 7-string guitar players is eliminating unwanted string noise. This problem can occur for many reasons including: difficulty adjusting to the wider guitar neck, trouble with muting the extra bass string, or undeveloped string muting skills in general.

Since the 7-string guitar feels very different than a standard guitar, it often takes guitarists many practice sessions before they can play cleanly. This can be a very slow and frustrating process. Fortunately, it does not have to be this way. To clean up your 7-string guitar playing, you will need to dedicate yourself to overcoming this challenge.

Start by playing your 7-string guitar using your normal routine of guitar techniques, patterns, scales, etc. Take note of when the most noise occurs. By listening carefully as you play, you can pinpoint the exact areas in your guitar playing that require the most work to clean up. If you don’t know how to do this, read this article on how to eliminate unwanted string noise on guitar.

Combine Rhythm Guitar Chords With Lead Guitar Melodies

One of the signs that you are becoming a truly great 7-string guitar player is when you are able to cleanly and accurately shift between rhythm and lead guitar parts while still playing in time. When playing 7-string guitar, this skill becomes more challenging due to the wider guitar neck that makes it harder to jump from lower range notes to higher range notes.

To get better at combining rhythm and lead guitar together, you will need to not only be able to play both parts flawlessly on their own, but you also must practice the specific moment of transition from one part to the next. To make quick improvement in this area of your guitar playing, focus on playing each part without mistakes (and with good timing), then slowly integrate the two. For additional help, record yourself playing these parts together. By recording yourself, you will be able to hear any mistakes you make with much more clarity.

Final Thoughts…

Most likely you have not found the ideas in this article to be too difficult to understand. Unfortunately, most 7-string guitar players do not take action and implement these ideas in order to improve their guitar playing. As a result, their progress is very slow. By simply focusing on mastering the ideas described above, you will be able to get much more from playing a 7-string guitar as well as greatly enhance your musical creativity in a shorter period of time.

Learn more ways to play 7 string guitar creatively in this 7 string guitar lesson.

Find out how to play guitar more cleanly in this article about how to eliminate unwanted string noise.

About The Author:

Tom Hess is a touring musician, composer and the guitar player for the metal band Rhapsody Of Fire. He teaches electric guitar online lessons to guitarists around the world.  On his website tomhess.net, you can find guitar playing tips, free guitar resources and more guitar articles.

How To Make The Transition From 6-String Guitar To 7-String Guitar was written by Tom Hess for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

In Part 2, we’ll use that information to take the next step forward: constructing major scales and understanding keys.

Major scale construction is one of the most important things you could ever learn in music theory, since everything else is built upon this foundational concept. And gaining insight into scales and keys teaches us how notes are related within a musical “family”, and what notes tend to complement each other in melodies, riffs and solos. Let’s get it on!

Building the Big Kahuna

The major scale is the single most important element of music theory. It’s the granddaddy of all musical concepts, the Big Kahuna. Call it what you will – all other musical concepts flow from the major scale, so it’s critical that we learn to construct it correctly.

A major scale is a sequence of seven notes (plus the octave note) that sounds like the familiar do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do. It can be built from any starting pitch, and that pitch gives the scale its name. For example, if we build the scale from the starting pitch C, we would get a C major scale. Makes sense, huh?

Constructing the scale correctly is simply a matter of picking a starting note (which is called the “Root”) and then applying the major scale formula of whole steps and half steps, as shown here:

ROOT – WHOLE – WHOLE – half – WHOLE – WHOLE – WHOLE – half

You might also remember it as, “two wholes and a half, three wholes and a half”.

It’s because all major scales follow the same formula of whole steps and half steps that we can achieve the same do-re-mi sound off of any starting pitch. As long as we follow the formula accurately, we’re able to maintain consistent relationships between the notes, which ensures that all of our major scales – no matter the starting pitch – sound like do-re-mi.

Following the Formula

Let’s build a major scale from scratch. Using our previous example of C as our starting pitch, we’ll apply the major scale formula as follows:

Starting pitch (“root”) = C
C + whole step = D
D + whole step = E
E + half step = F
F + whole step = G
G + whole step = A
A + whole step = B
B + half step = C

The C major scale, then, consists of the notes C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C, and, when played, it sounds like do-re-mi. You may also note that the C scale is constructed from natural notes only, as it needs no accidentals (sharps or flats) to fulfill the formula. Since all major scales are unique, the C scale is the only one with no accidentals; every other scale has its own number of sharps or flats.

Once you’ve learned how to construct a scale, it’s good practice to also think of the notes in terms of their number, or scale degree. For instance, in the C major scale, C is the “1″ (or root note), D is the “2″, E is the “3″, etc. This will come in handy later, when learning to build chords and transpose to other keys.

Using Sharps

Before we move on, there are two special rules to follow regarding major scale construction:

1 – All letters must be represented once and only once.
2 – We use either sharps or flats to complete the formula, never both.

Keeping this in mind, let’s try another scale from a different root, or starting pitch: G.

Starting pitch (“root”) = G
G + whole step = A
A + whole step = B
B + half step = C
C + whole step = D
D + whole step = E
E + whole step = F#
F# + half step = G

The G major scale, then, consists of the notes G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G.

Why F#? Remember that E/F are natural half steps. However, in order to fulfill the formula, we need a whole step above E, so we would travel a half step to F and another half step to F#.

Picking the note F# rather than Gb, its enharmonic equivalent, is important because it follows the “each letter is represented once” rule. It also creates the concluding half step to G – perfect!

Using Flats

For a final example, let’s construct the major scale starting from F so we can see accidentals from a different perspective.

Starting pitch (“root”) = F
F + whole step = G
G + whole step = A
A + half step = Bb
Bb + whole step = C
C + whole step = D
D + whole step = E
E + half step = F

The F major scale, then, consists of the notes F-G-A-Bb-C-D-E-F.

Why Bb? Remember that A and B are a whole step apart. In order to fulfill the formula, though, we need a half step above A. Since we’ve already used the note A, we would not call the target note A#, but rather by its enharmonic equivalent, Bb. The pitch Bb is a whole step from C, so it fulfills the formula moving forward as well.

I would recommend that you practice writing out som

The Only Theory Lesson You’ll Ever Need – Part 2 was written by Jim Bowley for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

What kind of guitarist do you want to be? 

There are many valid ways one might choose to measure the ability level of guitar players, but for the purposes of this discussion lets look at the following three milestones:

• Level 1: Able to play music that others have written. 
• Level 2: Able to improvise rhythm or lead parts along to music others have written
• Level 3: Able to write original music.

Now, putting aside the specific question of reading music for a moment, let’s just look at the way each of these milestones can more easily be attained by having at least some understanding of music theory, as it relates to the guitar.

Level 1 can easily be attained with virtually no real comprehension of music theory whatsoever. By the use of grid diagrams for chords, rhythm charts for changes, and tab for lead parts. It is possible to learn song after song, solo after solo with little danger of running out of new material (don’t know if anyone has made a serious attempt to count how many songs there exist guitar tabs and rhythm charts for, but it must be in the tens of thousands at least!).

It should be noted that there are plenty of guitar players who steer round the need even for chord charts and tabs, These guys pick up how to play other people’s songs just by a combination of careful listening and trial and error. This can also be achieved with no great depth of understanding music theory. Although, as an interesting aside, this method of learning does, in my experience, help develop quite a strong intuitive understanding of music theory – you may not know the names given to various musical relationships, but you are aware of the patterns behind these relationships.

Even at this first level of guitar playing ability, it can be observed that any understanding a player happens to have of music theory, will greatly speed up the learning process, and make it a lot easier to learn accurately.

Level 2 – improvising ability -  is much harder to achieve without at least some knowledge of how scales and chords work together, but I have met plenty of guitarists who can jam along happily to most tunes without any knowledge of music theory to speak of.

However, I often find that these players have a sense of being up against an invisible barrier in their development as musicians. They sense there is more to the subject and are often frustrated because they don’t exactly know what’s missing. What’s missing is simply understanding music theory as it relates to guitar playing. Given a dozen intensive lessons on theory and these guys really take off.

Level 3 – writing original music – again, can be achieved by trial and error and developing a good ear, but songwriters who try and develop their craft with no understanding of theory are inevitably going to find their style very closely defined by this factor. That is to say, they will tend to use a relatively narrow range of musical options when writing their songs, simply because they are unaware of the alternatives.

What knowledge of theory brings to the songwriter, is much broader choice. One could argue that this enriches their style of songwriting.

So to summarise: each level of guitar playing ability can be attained more easily, with less effort or frustration, and with a more accurate outcome, given at least some education in the basics of guitar music theory. It’s not essential – but it does ultimately make the process a whole lot easier.

Now back to the main topic. How does reading music relate to understanding guitar music theory?

Again, I have to say that it is quite possible to make good progress learning theory without actually dealing with standard notation. But, beyond a certain level, I have found as a teacher, it becomes increasingly more of a struggle to avoid using standard notation than it does to bite the bullet and teach my students to learn to read it – at least in its most basic form.

Quite specifically, I find that standard notation is best taught before trying to cover the whole subject of keys and key signatures.

I have developed a sort of map, in the form of a pyramid to help understand the hierarchical nature of music theory. It’s available to download free here:

http://www.secretguitarteacher.com/images/printables/56_A4P_Pyramid.jpg

If this looks interesting to you, you may like to watch the video that goes with it.

So, really, I would like to reinforce two basic ideas:

At each main stage of development, some understanding of music theory is going to help you learn quicker, more easily and more accurately.

At, and beyond the stage of learning music theory that specifically deals with key signatures (a subject that usually also introduces the theory concerning circles of fifths and fourths), it becomes increasingly difficult to work with the subject without, at least a basic, understanding of standard notation.

So that’s one argument for learning standard notation – to make studying guitar music theory easier. This itself will make the processes of learning to copy guitar parts, improvising solo and rhythm parts and writing songs easier and more accurate.

It should also be stated at this point that there are several direct spin-offs that come from being able to read standard notation.

For me, as someone who struggles with the vocals side of musical performance, I find it useful to be able to pick out the exact notes of a melody from a music book, to help sing the lead vocal more accurately. I also find it helpful to scrawl down ideas for backing vocal lines using standard notation.

If you don’t know a tune at all and have no access to a recording of it, then being able to read the melody from a music book is a practical skill worth having.

Sometimes I am working with musicians on other instruments who bring along written music with no guitar chords written above the melody line. It’s usually quite easy to work out an appropriate chord sequence by ear, but occasionally I find it quicker to work out the chords from the notes in the tune as shown on the manuscript.

When you work as a musician in any professional capacity (e.g. as a session musician, producer, arranger or as a guitar teacher) and someone is paying good money for your time, then possessing a skill that can speed up these processes is, I believe quite essential.

So hopefully I have convinced you that the learning of standard notation should form part of your guitar-learning journey at least at some point along the way!

Assuming you do want to take the plunge and get to grips with the subject leads us to the next question:

• How is it best to go about learning to read standard notation? 

In the Third and final Part of this mini-series we’ll provide some practical answers to just that.

Happy Playing!

Nick Minnion

Lots more lessons, articles and videos by Nick available at his main websites:

For guitar players: www.secretguitarteacher.com

For guitar teachers (or aspiring guitar teachers: www.teachguitar.com

More from The Tyranny of Tablature

• To Read or Not to Read? Part 1 – The Tyranny of Tablature
• To Read or Not to Read? Part 3 – Some Practical Pointers

To Read or Not to Read? Part 2 – Making Musical Milestones was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Liner Notes: Jimmy Buffett

Margaritaville is from Jimmy Buffett’s 1977 album “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Atitudes.” Named after a cocktail, the song reflects on the laid-back lifestyle of living in a tropical climate. Buffett wrote the song while living in Key West, Florida and it has gone on to become his signature song.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

Today we’re going to learn Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffet. In and of itself, this will not take very long. We will only need three chords. Okay, four, but one – A7 – is just a simple variation of another:

And then, of course, we will need to know when to change the chords. Here is how the first verse and chorus goes:

Okay we’ve got the chords and the lyrics, how about an easy rhythm pattern? Since this is a fairly happy-go-lucky, tropical song, at a relatively moderate tempo, a nice, light, airy strumming pattern seems to be just the thing to play. Let’s try accenting the first and third beats while playing eighth notes in a simple down-and-up stroke on the second and fourth beats, like this:

If you use this strumming template through the song, and if you can make the chord changes in a timely manner, then you’ve already got this song down cold. Ah, but that would not be much of a lesson then, would it?

As mentioned at the start of this lesson, if you begin to think of your guitar as “more than just a single guitar,” then you can begin to reach a new and exciting level of playing. As beginners, guitarists tend to worry about one aspect of playing at a time and that is probably a good thing. But there comes a point where you have to branch out a bit and today we’re going to take a step in that direction.

The easiest thing to do, as a beginner, is to learn to develop a bassline as part of a strumming pattern. We did this in our very first Easy Songs For Beginners piece, Horse With No Name. Take a second and look that over if you’ve forgotten.

Adding a bassline (more accurately in the case, a single bass note on specific beats) to our strumming pattern. The most common thing to do is to play the bass note on the first beat of every measure. Since we have a lot of space, though, let’s use it on the third beat as well. Here, then, is our “bass enhanced” pattern. I have replaced the downstrokes on the first and third beats with the letter “B” which means that we’ll play a bass note instead of a full chord on the downstroke. Our bass note in this instance is simply the root note of what- ever chord we are playing. For a D chord, it will be the open D string. On the A (or A7) chord, the open A string. The G note on the third fret of our low E string will serve as bass note for the G chord. Go on and give them a try:

Once you’ve got this down, the next step is to give your bass line a bit more spice. The simplest (and yet very cool sounding) way for a guitarist to do this is to develop what is called an “alternating bassline.” This means exactly what you’d think it might. You alternate the root note with a different note in the bass. Traditionally, the fifth is the note that alternates with the root. In the strumming pattern that we’re using on Margaritaville, it is easy to play the root on the first beat (followed by the chord on the second) and the fifth on the third beat (again followed by the chord on the fourth). Here’s what it would look like (R = “root” and F= “fifth”):

Okay, what do “root” and “fifth” translate to in terms of specific notes? To answer that, we think about how chords are created (and you can easily do that in our lesson The Power of Three) and then take a look at each of our chords, paying particular attention to their roots and fifths:

Playing the D and A chords should be fairly easy, since both the roots and fifths are simply open strings. Even better, the fifth is the open string below the root (you’d almost think that someone planned the guitar that way, wouldn’t you?). The simplest way to go about playing these two chords would be to first hit the root note (the open D string for the D chord and the open A string for the A chord) on the first beat, then striking the rest of the strings of the chord in an down-and-up pair of eighth notes on the second beat. Then you’d pick the fifth of the chord (the open A string for the D chord and the open low E string for the A chord) on the third beat and finally repeat the down-and-up eighth notes of the chord on the fourth beat. It will look and sound like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

The G chord is also easy, although it might seem a bit confusing at first. Whenever possible, it’s a good idea for the root note to be the lowest tone (of that particular chord) that you can attain on your guitar. If your fifth happens to be lower than that, as it was on both the D and A, then great. On the G, our root is the third fret on the low E string, no problem. But our nearest fifth, D,  is above the root. Unless you decide to play this song in ”Drop D” tuning (and that’s a whole other lesson!) you’re going to use the open D string for the fifth when you play this alternating bass strum.

But let’s consider something else – since the G only appears in the chorus and it is always followed by the A, why not play those A chords of the chorus in the same style as you’re playing the G, that is, with the higher fifth. It should make for an interesting contrast to the strumming of the verses, not to mention keep you from being bored from playing the same strum template over and over. Here’s our TAB for the G as well as the “chorus” A chords. Keep in mind that in the chorus both the G and A chords each receive one measure (four beats):

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Since you’re already tinkering around with arranging the chorus, here are two more suggestions: First off, on the penultimate line in the chorus (“…some people claim…”) simply strum each of the last three chords, just as they do on the recording. That’s a two-beat hold on the D and A chords followed by a four-beat hold on the G. Now you don’t have to worry about a bassline at all in this section!

And since you have a spot where you’re arrangement is “bassline free,” you can make up for that lack of bass by using a short “walking” bassline between the D and G chords in the chorus, like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This also offers a bit of variety and keeps the bass part from being too static. The trick of any walking bassline  (and you can read up on simple walking basslines in our four Connecting the Dots lessons) is to make certain that you arrive at the proper note at the proper time. No problem here. Since the G is on the first beat, simply play F# (second fret on the low E) the previous (fourth) beat and play the open E string the beat before that. Piece of cake.

So you see, with a minimum of effort, we’ve taken a song that, in all likelihood, we would have simply strummed and given it some added depth and color.

Okay, this covers about everything. Oh, wait a minute – as a bonus let’s add the “signature riff” that is played as the intro. You can also use this to end the song if you want to sound like the recording. Just tack it on to the end off the last chorus. This is a very simple thing to do, using the ideas from the Moving On Up lesson on movable chord shapes up and down  the neck. 

Also, let’s add a walking bass line using notes on the A string to connect between the signature riff to the start of the verse and we should be ready to do the whole song:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in future columns. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Margaritaville – Jimmy Buffett was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Liner Notes: Van Morrison

Although it originally appeared on the album of the same name in 1970, Moondance wasn’t released as a single until seven and a half years later. It’s one of Van Morrison’s most popular songs which he’s performed live more than a thousand times.

Learn how to play Moondance on guitar in our easy song lesson.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

I first started playing “Moondance” back in the 80s when I was just a novice bass player (since then, I’ve had the pleasure of playing this with a full horn section, including flute). I knew the chords from my guitar friends, but not the various bass riffs and patterns on the original recording. So I went out and bought the sheet music. As I’ve noted in other bass lessons, published piano music is an excellent source for bass guitar parts. The “left hand” music is usually accurately transcribed, with fewer short-cuts. “Right-hand” piano music is not always as helpful for guitarists. Over the years, I’ve added phrases and alternate fingerings to the fundamental bass part, but at the core, it’s a simple song, and the steady beat makes it easy to build on.

Let’s get started.  Here is the basic riff for most of the verse, the chord progression of which alternates between Am and Bm. This should be played as a straight beat – four quarter notes per measure – with no anticipation.  The bass provides the foundation for the guitarist and singer, and maintains the jazzy roots of the song.

If you play a jazz-style bass, the warm tone can be achieved by turning up the bridge pick-up, turning down the neck pick-up, and setting the tone control about half-way. If you play a P-style bass, set the tone control mid-way and consider plucking closer to the bridge. This tone is also helped by playing at the fifth fret or higher, which is where I play it.

As David explains, there is an alternate voicing for every other Am in the verse. For the bass, we can simply use the C (minor 3^rd of Am) to support that, as shown here:

You can alternate these lines, or add in your own variations. If you are comfortable with walking jazz bass lines, you can have a lot of fun with this chord pattern, but that will mean that other members of your group will have to hold the “center” of the song. While I appreciate the wandering bass line in the recorded version, I don’t wander far from the basic riffs myself.

At the end of the verse, there is a transition to the chorus.  In the original recording, this is only carried by the vocal, while the band continues in straight-4.  However, once you try playing the riff along with the rest of the group (unison timing), I think you’ll find the added energy is addicting.  As you can see, the bass line continues to ascend through the Am/Bm changes: A – B – C – D – E and then descends in two quarter-note triplets.  Listen to the vocal line to get the timing (or re-read David’s notes on this topic).

The first two lines of the chorus are more rock’n’roll.  The Dm to Am sequence is pretty straight forward.  I like using the G in transition, but it’s not required.  The second sequence has a little riff, usually played by the sax.  If you don’t have a sax or flute, then you can add this fill yourself.  It’s shown in the 3^rd and 4^th measures.  If you don’t like this, just repeat the first two measures.

I’ve shown this section played at the 5^th fret (above), but if you play the D as an open string, as shown in the following example, you’ll get more growl from it.  You will have to move your hand a bit, but you should have time.

The second line of the pre-chorus has the signature stops followed by three staccato quarter notes.  After the first three, which are D notes, you should try playing the E higher (second fret of the D string or seventh fret of the A string) and lower (open E string) in order to hear which you like better in terms of fitting the mood of the song.  Hint: I like lower.

The second half of the chorus is a quick box riff.  I don’t stop halfway through, just keep playing the riff until the final A.

The outro is simply as David explains: A G F E D – - A

In conclusion, this is a great song to strengthen your abilities.  You can play it simply, or you can add more sophistication.  The three sections of the song have different energy levels, which allows for dynamics.  At the same time, the song depends on the bass to provide the foundation throughout.

I hope you enjoy my version of this song.  I look forward to your comments.

Adding the Bass – “Moondance” was written by Dan Lasley for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Unfortunately, most guitarists don’t begin to consider the importance of developing their studio recording abilities until they feel the pressure of recording in such an environment for the first time. No matter how well you can play music for yourself (or even on stage), walking into the studio to record your first album will make you aware of the hidden flaws in your guitar playing that you never knew you had. This happens because the skills needed to record guitar well in the studio are unique to the experience of recording in a studio and require you to pay attention to fine details that many musicians never consider. One of the most frustrating experiences for musicians is having good musical (and guitar playing) skills but struggling greatly to record even very basic guitar parts “perfectly.” This situation is very common for many guitarists who are new to recording.

Why is it necessary to learn how to record music in the studio?

If you, or you and your band, desire to make an album in a professional recording studio, the costs of recording can run anywhere from $50 per hour to hundreds of dollars per hour. The longer it takes you and your band members to record the parts for your songs, the more money has to be paid out in studio costs. On top of that, if after spending several hundred hours in the studio the music is still not recorded at the needed level of quality, you can expect to pay a whole lot more money for the studio engineer to edit the parts that contain flaws due to sloppy recording. All of this wasted time and money could have been avoided if you and your band were better prepared to record in the studio.

Most bands (particularly those on a smaller level) that have a limited recording budget, end up either having to “accept” a mediocre sound on their album recording in order to meet their budget, or end up hiring studio musicians (who are not members of the band) to record the music in less time, with greater accuracy and for less overall cost. Record companies do this a lot more frequently than you might think, even though people outside the band and record company rarely find out about this.

The good news is that it is possible to prevent situations such as the ones described above by learning to record your own guitar parts reliably and consistently in the studio. This ability is something you can develop with practice, just like you develop your other guitar skills. The challenge here is that the skill of recording music in the studio must be practiced in a unique, special way. This is one of the reasons why even very advanced guitarists have a very challenging time recording even the most simple parts perfectly in the studio.

Spending more time “recording” will help you to improve somewhat, but until and unless you are aware of the most common mistakes that guitarists make in the recording studio you will find it difficult to track your progress in this area. To learn more about the biggest mistakes guitarists make while recording, check out this free guide on how to record guitar parts in the studio.

The most difficult aspect of recording an album in the studio is creating totally perfect and tight rhythm guitar tracks. Most guitarists are already aware of the need to make rhythm guitar parts “in time” when recording. Even though “playing in time” is definitely critical, this is only one element (out of many) that must be thought about when recording guitar in the studio. Below is a sample of what is required to record a flawless rhythm guitar track:

• Recording the guitars tight (in perfect time) with the drums and bass parts.
• Cleaning up (preventing) extra noise on the strings (that is picked up either from sliding your fretting hand up and down the neck of the guitar or from touching the strings that you are not playing).
• Tuning and intonating the rhythm guitars perfectly with the other instruments, especially orchestral instruments. TIP: Tuning your guitar in the same way that you do for “regular” guitar playing will make it very difficult for you to do this! In my free guide on how to record guitar parts in the studio I talk about the best way to avoid this problem.
• Managing the amount of pick articulation and the quality of sound (tone) that comes from the pick attack.
• Keeping the palm muting sound perfectly consistent on every one of the guitar tracks.
• Keeping all of the recorded chords sound perfectly “stable.”

You probably noticed that the above listed elements are not all that hard to pay attention to and refine in isolation. However, the challenge of recording perfectly in the studio lies in the following three steps:

1. Getting all of the points listed above (not just one or two of them) to come out flawlessly on all of your recorded tracks.
2. Doing the Step 1 (the previous step) as quickly as possible to save yourself and your band a lot of money.
3. Doing Steps 1 and 2 at least two times to double track or four times to quad-track the rhythm section.

To help you with achieving the goals described above here several steps you should take right now:

1. Be patient and persevere! Learning to record guitar well in the studio is a skill that can be refined like any other. Even though it may feel frustrating to realize that you must start from the beginning in this area of your musicianship, know that the vast majority of guitar players have gone through the same learning process that you are going through. Stay determined, continue to practice, and results will not be long in coming. As with all musical skills, you will have a much easier time mastering this area of your guitar playing under the guidance of a highly effective guitar teacher.
2. Find out how much you truly know about recording guitar in the studio. Get my free guide on how to record guitar parts in the studio to become aware of any mistakes you may be making when recording your music.
3. After you uncover your specific strengths and weaknesses for recording guitar in the studio, start taking the needed action steps to improve your skills in this area of your musicianship.

Practicing to improve your recording skills in the studio will give you a huge advantage over most wannabe professional musicians and will make the process of achieving your music career ambitions a lot easier.

About The Author:

Tom Hess is an electric guitar teacher online and a music career mentor.  He plays guitar and tours with the band Rhapsody Of Fire.  Tom also trains musicians on how to break into the music business.  On his website tomhess.net you can read many more articles about building a music career.

How To Record Guitar Parts in the Studio was written by Tom Hess for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Just saying the words can make a guitar student’s eyes glaze over, like we’re about to launch into a trigonometry class or something.

Honestly, it’s not all that difficult to understand, if you put a little mental energy into it.  And theory is very logical, so the elements tend to build on one another in a clear, sequential manner.

But some folks have such a lack of confidence in their ability to comprehend complexities, that the idea of music theory immediately deflates them. Never fear!  JB is here to simplify and demystify! Follow along as I take you through the only theory lesson most guitarists will ever need – and I’ll make it fun and easy to understand as a bonus!

That’s a bold statement to be sure, but most guitarists don’t need to know tons of theory to be successful.  Learning about modes, improvisational concepts, advanced rhythms and chord formulas is great stuff, if you want it and need it.  Theory geeks like me thrive on it.  And if you aspire to be a professional player, you’ll clearly benefit from it.

But for the everyday player who just wants to get a handle on the “whys” and the “hows” of music, this is the stuff you need.  This one lesson (written in three easy-to-digest parts!) will:

• Teach you to analyze a song and understand why the chords sound good together;
• Give you a guide to what chords are most likely to be found in your favorite songs;
• Show you how you can use that knowledge to learn songs by ear or write your own songs;
• Make you a generally more awesome and empowered musician!

Now, who wouldn’t want that?  In the immortal words of Marvin Gaye, “Let’s get it on!”

Building our House, in Theory

Since the elements and concepts of music theory build on each other, we’ll begin with the very basics to ensure that our foundation is strong and there are no gaps in our knowledge.  Please be patient and read through the stuff that you think you already know – you may be surprised to find that some things aren’t as clear as you originally thought.  And put your thinking cap on ‘cause theory ain’t for sissies.

The Musical Alphabet

Musical notes, or pitches, are assigned letter names using the first seven letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F and G.  These notes are also referred to as the natural notes. The musical alphabet is a “looped” sequence, with no real beginning or ending.  After G we continue again with A, B, C, etc., just like we would continue with 0 after 9 in our numbering system (0123456789, 0123…).

An octave is the span of eight letter names.  For example, if we count through the musical alphabet starting at C and we end up on the next C higher – C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C – we’ve just counted through an octave.  A musician would say that the last C is an octave higher than the first (or vice versa, the first C is an octave lower than the last).

A suggestion: practice saying the musical alphabet backwards.  Why?  Because in the real world of music performance, notes travel both forwards and backwards – and also make random jumps – so it makes sense to learn to visualize notes moving in both directions.  This is not the most intuitive thing for non-musicians, and sometimes even my best guitar students have a brain cramp trying to do it, but it’s extremely helpful!

As an example, start on F and recite the letters up a full octave to the next F higher.  Then recite the letters backward to the low F again.  Rinse and repeat with another letter.  I told you to put on that thinking cap!

Half Steps and Whole Steps

We determine the relationships between pitches by the distance between them, and that distance is measured in half steps and whole steps. The half step is the smallest distance you can measure and is represented on the guitar by one fret (or one key on the piano).  A whole step is equal to two half steps and is represented on the guitar by two frets (or two keys on the piano).

In the musical alphabet, the pitch combinations of E/F and B/C are natural half steps.  The guitar fingerboard will confirm that E and F are only one fret apart, as are B and C.  An example would be E on string 5/fret 7 followed by F on string 5/fret 8.

All of the other pitch combinations – A/B, C/D, D/E, F/G and G/A – are a whole step apart.  Looking to the guitar for confirmation, A and B are two frets apart on string 1 (frets 5 and 7, respectively), as just one example.

Check out this graphic and note where the natural half steps and whole steps fall:

Critical Point Alert!  It is very important that we remember the natural half steps of E/F and B/C going forward, since we will be called upon time and time again to apply that knowledge in building scales and chords.  If this critical piece of foundational info is forgotten, then any scales or chords built on that foundation will be ultimately flawed.

Accidentals

Although there are seven natural notes in the musical alphabet, there are actually twelve notes total in the chromatic scale (a fancy-sounding term for “all the notes”).

The other five notes fill in the whole-step gaps between some of our natural notes.  Those “in-between” notes are known as accidentals. “Accidentals” is the umbrella category into which sharps and flats fall.  A sharp (#) symbol, when attached to a natural note, raises that note by a half step.  For example, F is found on string 6/fret 1, while F# is a half step higher at fret 2.

By contrast, a flat (b) symbol, when attached to a natural note, lowers that note by a half step.  For example, B is found on string 6/fret 7, while Bb is a half step lower at fret 6.

To summarize, if we add together all of the natural notes and all of the “in-betweens” (the accidentals), we wind up with the twelve notes of the chromatic scale:

As you can see on the diagram, the accidentals present an interesting situation, because each one of them – being in between two natural notes – can actually be called by two different names.  This concept is called enharmonic equivalents, and although it’s a technical-sounding term, it’s common, everyday stuff for musicians.

As an example, locate the F on string 6/fret 1 and the G on string 6/fret 3.  The note in between, on fret 2, can be called either F# (it’s a half step higher than F) or Gb (it’s a half step lower than G).

How do we know which name to use?  Good question, and one that will be answered later in this lesson when we learn how to build major scales.  Until then, just make sure that you can quickly name any accidental by its sharp and flat names.

A Special Case

Remember that E/F and B/C are natural half steps that are already found side by side on the fretboard.  Therefore no accidentals are placed between them.  For example, there is no E#, since that note would, in fact, be F.  And vice versa, there is no Fb, since that note would be E.  Same principle applies for B and C.

Now, at the risk of throwing you for a musical loop – and to get in a preemptive strike on any theory nerds that may want to call me out on this – I will confess that, as a technicality, there are situations where you might call the F note “E#” or the B note “Cb“.  However, that is well beyond the scope of this particular lesson and, truth be told, in most of the music you are likely to encounter as a guitarist, regardless of what genre or style you play, the likelihood of running into an E# or an Fb is one (or less) out of every 100 songs you play!  For me, that percentage is low enough that I teach my students to safely disregard the enharmonic equivalents for E/F and B/C. If you aspire to play jazz or classical guitar, then at some point you will have to learn how and when to apply accidentals to the natural half steps.  Until then, no worries!

Rock On

Now that we’ve laid the foundation, we can get into building scales and harmonizing them with chords, which is where the language of music really comes alive!  Those musical goodies will be covered in Part 2 of this series.

Jim Bowley spent 20+ years as a performing and recording guitarist, vocalist and songwriter.  He currently spreads the guitar gospel via his website, jimbowley.com, and his Bel Air, Maryland-based private studio.  You can also find Jim on Facebook discussing all things six-string.

More from this series

• The Only Theory Lesson You’ll Ever Need – Part 2
• The Only Theory Lesson You’ll Ever Need – Part 3

The Only Theory Lesson You’ll Ever Need – Part 1 was written by Jim Bowley for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

What if I was to ask you instead, “What good is knowledge?”

It can really come down to that sometimes. A lot of people write me to ask, “What’s the next step?” and, quite often, the “next step” is nothing more than relearning things you already know.

Liner Notes: Van Morrison

Although it originally appeared on the album of the same name in 1970, Moondance wasn’t released as a single until seven and a half years later. It’s one of Van Morrison’s most popular songs which he’s performed live more than a thousand times.

Bass players will want to check out the Bass for Beginners Lesson for this song.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

To illustrate this, let’s look at the song Moondance by Van Morrison. It’s an intriguing piece in that while it is very easy to play (chord-wise), it does take a little thought to make it sound good. By the way, if you haven’t already done so, you might to read (or reread) Riders On The Storm. This lesson essentially involves a lot of the same ideas, although we’re going to being putting even more thinking into our arrangement.

Let’s tackle this song in two parts – first we’ll look at the verses and then the choruses. Not only will we come up with several different ways to play both sections, but we’ll also try to throw an some interesting fill or two. Oh yes, before I forget, there’s an outro as well…

The Verses

If I look up the chords to Moondance on the TAB search engines, this is what we’re likely to find:

For now, we’ll concentrate our efforts on the verses. Let’s agree that we’re going to play this in the key of A minor. This means that Am will be our root and that, at least in theory, we are also in the key of C major (since A minor is the relative minor of C major). But we’re already in for a rude awakening, since the second chord is a Bm, which has an F# in it (B, D, F#). We also know that the key of C major has no flats or sharps so we have to wonder just what is going on.

The key (no pun intended) to finding out lies in music theory. The verses contain a chord that has one sharp, which is F#. We also know, from reading The Musical Genome Project or part one of A Guide To Reading Music Notation, that one sharp means we are in the key of G. It can’t be a key with two sharps in it because the second sharp would have to be C# (key of D) and if we had a C# then we’d have an A major chord and not an A minor chord. So the verses are, technically, in the key of G major, while the choruses (we are thinking ahead here) are in the key of A minor still. And yes, we’ll argue this further on.

This is an important discovery because if we wanted to play a lead over the verses (or if we were bass players) we would now know that we could use the A Dorian scale (A, B, C, D, E, F#, G, A) and it would work nicely.

Back to the song. Some TABs will say Am7 and Bm7, instead of Am and Bm, for the verse progressions:

And some may even be more ambitious, pointing out things like keeping the A note as a pedal point in the bass and using even more chords:

It’s interesting to note that this second progression that uses C/A and D/A chords reinforces our earlier discussion about the verses being in the G major. Also notice that this last example maintains the A note as it’s bass. We’ll be looking at that in just a minute.

So, what to do? And why so many choices, anyway? Well, for starters, Moondance is a fairly jazzy sounding piece. The chords flow seamlessly one into the next. Part of the reason for this is that this chord progression is built upon a blues riff just like the one we used in the lesson Riders On The Storm. Check it out:

You see once again we have a typical blues shuffle pattern; during the Am passage the lead notes move from the fifth (E) to the sixth (F#) and then to the seventh (G) and back. If we look at the notes that make up this shuffle, then it is pretty easy to see where these TAB variations come from:

Just like in our lesson on Riders, we are creating chords to follow our shuffle pattern. Here, though, there are many possibilities from which to choose. And while some of you may be thinking, “Which chords should I use?” I doubt that my answer is going to surprise many of you: All of them! The first line shows what would be considered the “standard blues” chords – the root, 6th and 7th. This is easy enough, we are merely taking our Am chord (A, C, E) and then adding the F# or G to it. In line #2, I build the triads backwards from the E, F# and G and get Am, Bm and C chords. Line #3 tries to show you some of the relationships between these chords. Since Am is the relative minor to C (as Bm is to D), you can see that it is no big stretch to create 7ths by simply stacking an additional note to either end of the Am or Bm triad.

Let’s also discuss the rhythm of this song and the use of pedal points. Since we have chord voicings flying everywhere all up and down the neck, it’s a good idea to anchor them down in some way. We give them a sense of tonality so that the song has a center. One cool way to play Moondance is strike the open A string in nice even quarter notes, like this:

Keeping a constant note and rhythm in the bass provides a nice contrast for the ever-shifting chords playing above it. You get even more of a dynamic contrast by throwing in an anticipation (playing a half beat before the beat) right before the third beat of the measure:

{This is a great exercise, by the way, to develop coordination if you want to get into alternating basslines or Travis picking or anything of that nature. It is also an easy step to go from this type of playing to Texas blues style.}

So let’s throw this pedal point in with some progressions and see what we have, shall we? On all of the above progressions, use your thumb on the open bass string while plucking the other strings with your index, middle and ring fingers.

You might want to use the first progression as the introduction and also between the verses, especially if there is a brief instrumental going on. The higher voicing of notes on the first string rings out when there is no vocal to cover it up.

Progression two is the “bread and butter,” if you will, of this group. You could play the whole song with this and it would be perfectly fine. By the time you play it for several lines, though, you may find yourself a bit antsy and decide to change things up a bit. Try using progression three followed by progression two to start the fifth line.

In the final line of the verse (the sixth line), begin with progression three and then switch to a little riff that is actually based on progression one:

The tricky part here is not the riff itself but rather the timing. What we are trying to do is to follow the vocal line – spacing six notes evenly among four beats. These are called quarter note triplets. For a good tutorial on these, check out the text and audio of our lesson on “Seven Nation Army.” Don’t worry about there being no notation or tablature. If you read the text and listen along to the first MP3 file, you should be able to get it.

Here’s a step by step guide for playing this: First, as mentioned in “Seven Nation Army,” thinking of it in terms of two slow triplets helps a lot. For the first triplet, use your index finger to barre the first four strings at the fifth fret. Your pinky frets the eighth fret on the first (high E) and your ring finger does the honors for the B note on the seventh fret. Then, starting the second triplet, slide the index finger up to the seventh fret while changing your barre to the cover the first three strings (you’re doing this in order to change the bass note to the open D string for the duration of this triplet). Then  slide down to the fifth fret, then down to the third, where you’ll also add your ring finger to the fourth fret of the B string, before finishing off by sliding back up to the fifth fret again on the first beat of the next measure. Then  switch back to your regular bass thumping on the A string and a first position Am chord. You can also use the old trick of taking all your fingers off the guitar to give yourself a brief respite and then stick them back on again. This sets up your fingers for what’s coming up in the chorus, as you’ll see in a minute.

You’ll note in the following transcription that I did not mark this measure of two triplets with chords. This particular triplet would be Bm/D, Am/D, G/D. If you’re interested in that sort of thing…

Anyway, let’s stick this all together and wrap up the “verse” portion of the lesson:

Remember that this is just an arrangement of this song. It is not the arrangement off the original recording – mostly because I have played it so many different ways that I do not have a “set” way of doing it. As always, you should use this as a guideline to give yourself an idea of what you want to do. Mix and match the various progressions, stick with just one, or come up with your own. The choices should be yours.

The Choruses

A quick word about song structure: Technically speaking, we should say that the chorus of Moondance consists of only the last two lines:

Can I just have one more moondance with you my love
Can I just make some more romance with you my love

The two lines that immediately proceed it (taken here from the first verse):

And all the night’s magic seems to whisper and hush
And all the soft moonlight seems to shine in your blush

Could just as easily be considered part of the first verse or even a “pre-chorus,” if you will. For the sake of this lesson, however, it makes perfect sense for us to use this verse/chorus division – it’s just a very natural way to break up the song into two easy-to-study sections.

As we noted earlier, the chorus section is back in a normal state of Am, mostly switching from Am to Dm with the occasional E (or E7, if you will) tossed in to provide the tonality. Since this is the case, we’re going to do things a little backwards here. Let’s look at my transcription first and then work through any question marks:

You may, or may not, have noticed that I ended the “verse” with a first position Am chord. My reason for doing that was to be able to shove the whole chord shape up five frets in order to get the Dm that kicks off the chorus section. With the open E on the first string, it’s really a Dmadd9. I also open up the D string for the bass note, but I find, more often than not, I tend to hit the open A as well. So be it.

I make a point to change the rhythm and my chord voicings in this section to follow and enhance the vocal line. Think of simply swinging along with the song – chord, pause, chord, some notes, (and believe it or not, I’m singing this to the melody! I know that sounds silly but it helps me…), chord and more notes…

I nail the first and third beats with a hard sweeping downstroke followed by a percussive stroke (which could be either a palm mute or a slap depending on how into things I’ve gotten) on the second beat. I also add single notes that follow the melody up and down along its merry way. This is another good reason for using this particular Dm voicing – it allows me to get the G note via a hammer-on without losing any of the accompanying chord because I’m moving my fingers around. Likewise, you will see that the other single notes in the first six measures (including the long fill at the end of measure four), are also simply a matter of hammer-ons or pull-offs.

I’d like to point out two other things about that fill. First, it makes use of an old classical guitar technique where you play an open string (in this case it’s the last note of the measure, the open E) in order to give yourself time to change positions on the fretboard. It may not seem like a lot of time to get your hand back up to the Dmadd9 which starts the next measure, but it truly is.

Secondly, if you think about this in terms of hammering-on and off of the whole Am chord instead of just individual notes, you can be adding a whole harmony line to your riff, like this:

This playing of two strings in soloing is called a double stop. It is a widely practiced technique and one that will be examining more closely this spring.

At the end of this particular section is the part where everyone plays those three sharp notes together on cue. It’s one of the songs many hooks and in this case should be treated as sacred. Unless you’re the soloist (and even then), hang in with the band and belt out those notes in the last two measures. You can play a regular E or E7 if you’d like. I’ve chosen this voicing (a B7 shape (albeit with an open E string) moved up five frets) of E7 because I like it. A lot.

The last two lines are straight strumming of Am and Dm chords with a regular E7 thrown in first to break things up and then as an exclamation point at the very end in order to set up going back to the verse progressions. After going through two verses (with choruses), the song does an instrumental verse and chorus and then the first verse (and chorus) is repeated again for the final verse.

After the last chorus, there is a coda, or outro, if you will. First, you go back to the verse progressions and play those while there is more soloing and vocal ad-libbing going on. Then everyone pretty much joins in the following the singing of the last line. This is done in counts of threes (think of a jazzy oom-pah band…). On the guitar, I find that simple arpeggios work well:

You can see and hear that this is just descending from Am to Dm via the A natural minor scale. When you reach the Dm, that is your cue to hold that chord for dramatic effect. I like to end this song with a trill. It’s very easy and you’ve probably done it lots of times yourself: Play an Am chord, but without the C note on the B string (this is technically an Am sus2). Now use your index finger to hammer-on and pull-off the first fret for as long as you can make the note last on its own. This is a good technique to practice and keep in your catalogue.

Well, I guess that covers everything. Now all you have to do is put all the pieces together in whatever way you like. Oh, and for those of you who are interested in such things, according to the book, Van Morrison – The Guitar Collection (Warner Brothers Publications, Inc – 1995), the tempo on this is 132 beats per minute. They call this “moderately,” by the way.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed working on Moondance. It’s a great song.

If you’re interested in checking out more about some of the little things – the “moveable” chords, the riffs and fills and the chord shapes and scales they come from, the double stops – that make this arrangement work, we  have many Beginners song lessons that help illustrate these various techniques. And you can also find discussion on them in our various Guitar Columns as well. Moving On Up is a great one to start with

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Moondance – Van Morrison was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

This is one of the reasons that first few of Guitar Noise’s easy songs for beginners lessons use songs that  involve just two or three chord changes, and relatively easy chord changes at that. It’s also why that songs have been of a moderate tempo, as well. The most fundamental thing you can learn when you start to play is how to make smooth, confident and correct switches between chords, and then to make sure you can perform those chord changes in rhytym while playing the song in question.

Liner Notes: The Wallflowers

Hailing from Los Angeles CA, The Wallflowers are fronted by singer-songwriter Jakob Dylan, the son of Bob Dylan. The song Three Marlenas is from their 1996 album Bringing Down The Horse.. The band is reportedly in the studio working on a new album as recently as January 2012.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

In this lesson, we’re going to up the ante a bit but not in a scary way. In fact, what we’re going to do is essentially let the guitar transform a two chord song into a three chord song for us! I know this sounds a bit weird, but I think you’ll catch on fairly quickly.

The song is Three Marlenas, written by Jakob Dylan. You can find it one the Wallflowers’ 1996 (man, was it that long ago?) CD, Bringing Down The Horse.

On the disc, the song is in the key of Eb Major and, before we go any further, let’s talk about that! If I happen to say a song is in, say Eb Major, for instance, this means that this is how I have worked it out on my guitar (standardly tuned) playing along with my CD player. I have seen this (and many other songs) tabbed out in various keys using various voicings of various chords. Please understand that I am showing you how I understand the song to be played and I am not in any way saying (in my best James Earl Jones’ voice), “THIS IS HOW IT IS DONE.” Those of you who have read my columns for any length of time know that (no pun intended) this is not my style. Not at all. If you have another interpretation of this or any song we go over that you like better than the one I demonstrate, then by all means, please use it. None of our lessons here at Guitar Noise is meant to be THE authorized of anything. These are just arrangements, ways to play the song as you would if you were performing by yourself or playing it with another person singing.

So, moving onward, by playing along with the CD, I’ve found Three Marlenas to be in the key of Eb major and also that the two prominent chords are Eb and Ab. Just reading that gives me the heebie jeebies! So, without a second thought about it, I decide to use my capo and find a better key in which to play this song, rather than to subject myself to these particular chords. If you’re not familiar with what a capo is and what it can be used for, I suggest you take a moment and read the column I wrote about a year ago (the one with the incredibly long title(The Underappreciated Art of Using a Capo)) on this subject. It also would be worth your while to check out our article on transposing, Turning Notes into Stone.

When I see the signature of Eb major, my usual choice is to think about playing in the key of D major instead. The key of D is simply a half-step lower in than Eb, so if I put my capo on the first fret of my guitar and strum a D major chord, I am actually playing an Eb major chord. Using the same logic, I realize that a G major chord, played with the capo on the first fret, is now an Ab chord. Our crisis, brought on by the prospect of playing Eb and Ab chords throughout the song, has been averted.

And for the sake of simplicity, we will now discuss this song in terms of the key of D Major. I know that this may be a bit confusing to some of you, especially those just starting out, and I apologize for that. Please feel free to write me and I’ll be happy to go over it in greater detail.

I’m sure that most of you know how to play both the D and the G chords, but I’m going to throw you off a bit here by introducing a different voicing for the G chord that some of you might not be familiar with:

My suggestions as to which fingers to use where on these chords are as follows:

Okay, now let’s take a quick moment and look at this “new” G chord.

As you can see, the only difference between the “standard” G and this particular voicing is the use of the D note (third fret on the B string) instead of the open B string itself. Since we know that the G chord is made up of the G (the root), B (the third) and D (the fifth) notes, you can see that all we’re really doing is changing the number of D notes we’re using in our chord. Some people like to call this a “G5″ or a “G add 5″ but neither of these names makes sense. “G5″ usually means playing what guitarists think of as a G “power chord,” namely, just using the G (root) and D (the fifth. or “5″ if you will) and “add 5″ makes even less sense since the normal G chord already has the D note in it. This new chord voicing is still just a G chord, pure and simple.

But why play this voicing of G in the first place? Well, if any of you have read the column I cowrote with Abel Petneki concerning sustained tones, you might already have a good idea. But I also have something a little more fun and practical in mind.

If you listen to the song on the CD, you could with me that it sounds like there are more than two chords in this song. And you would be right to do so. There is indeed another chord. You can hear it in between the D and G chords, both from D to G and then from G back to D again. It’s a rather peculiar chord at that, isn’t it? It sounds very vague.

What is going on here is we are letting the guitar do some of the chord changing work for us. If you look at the fingering of our D and G chords, you see that, because of this new voicing of the G chord, we don’t have to change the position of our ring finger when we change chords. It stays in one place. So, we’re going to start out with our D chord and then simply remove our index and middle fingers from the strings (all the while keeping the ring finger firmly in place) in preparation of placing them on their new positions on the G chord. And if we strum the strings while doing this, we end up with the following chord:

Do you hear and see what we’re doing? The D note, here being played on the third fret of the B string, is our sustained tone. It links all three of these chords together, serving as an anchor amidst all the changes. And this third chord, the “A7 sus4″ is nothing more than us strumming the guitar in the middle of a chord change! And the cool thing is that it works both ways – from D to G and from G to D. Because the notes involved not only form a chord, but a chord that perfectly fits in as part of the song, it carries us along these changes while creating a transition chord at the same time.

Now, I could call this chord by other names as well, but I am going with “A7 sus4″ because naming it so gives me, in essence, a variation of a I – V – IV chord progression. This is a fairly common progression and it easy to explain to someone playing along with me on an instrument other than a guitar. Now, having explained that, I’ll change my mind (and simply for a selfish reason!) From here on out, and simply to keep me from writing out “A7 sus4″ all the time, we’ll just call it A. But we all know it’s not really an A chord, okay? Here, then, are all the chords we are going to use:

When you play this progression back and forth, D to A to G to A to D, etc., you should note two things. First, it sounds very smooth and flowing. Second, the reason it sounds so smooth and flowing is not only because of the chord voicing (owing to the fingering), but also because you should be able to play it that way. By releasing your fingers (but not the ring finger!) to get the A chord, you are sort of giving you guitar and yourself some breathing space between the two main chords. And you should also find, even with a minimum of practice, that your changes will come very naturally. You should be able to play this along with the CD (or “at speed,” if you prefer) in no time at all!

Another thing I especially like about this song, from a beginner’s standpoint, anyway, is that it gives you a chance to work on the “range” of your strumming. Each chord has its bass note on a different string: the open D for the D, the open A for the “A” and the G note on the third fret of the low E string for the G chord. As you’re strumming the chords, it’s a good idea to work on concentrating on just how many strings you’re playing with each successive chord.

As for a strumming pattern, this is a fairly easy one to get you started. I also took the liberty of tossing in a percussive stroke (designated by the ” * “ ):

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

A very important thing to notice here is that, after the initial first beat, we’re jumping the gun a bit – changing the next measure’s chord on the half beat before the one. This is called an “anticipation.” You can read all about those in the ”Music Guide Mini-Lesson” that will be up online in the next few weeks or,  if you’d like a head start on the subject, might I suggest reading Dan Lasley’s bass guitar lesson, Playing Along.

Remember that if this particular strumming pattern seems difficult at first, slow everything down and count it out as deliberately as possible. This song, like the others we’ve done up to this point is of a medium tempo. It really won’t take you long at all to get up to speed.

Oh, that strumming pattern and that chord progression is the entire song, music-wise. Here’s the lyrics:

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns,  or even a song, riff or lead you’d like to see covered in a future “Songs For Beginners” article. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

Three Marlenas – The Wallflowers was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Indeed, you don’t have to talk to too many guitarists before you’ll hear the view expressed that there is actually something pretty uncool about being able to read music – almost as if gaining this particular skill will somehow strip you of your ability to play spontaneously or with feeling.

Yet, if you ask anyone who has taken up guitar after having cut their teeth on a different instrument; one that is usually taught using standard notation; then I guarantee you will never hear them complain that understanding standard notation is any kind of disadvantage when it comes to learning to play guitar.

There are of course several notable examples of truly great musicians who never learnt to read – the incomparable Django Reinhardt being, to my mind, the best of these. But there are also many great rock guitarists who were classically trained and most definitely can read music: Brian May of Queen being the first one who comes to mind.

What we may never know is: – could Django Reinhardt have been somehow even greater if he had learnt to read and write music? Or, would Brian May have played even better had he never learnt to read music?

Let’s get away from these imponderable questions a moment and also away from the sphere of the immortals and concentrate on the more familiar world of your average guitar player trying to improve their playing skills and their understanding of music.

In this world, I believe there is a better question to ask: When does it make sense to invest the necessary effort to learn to read and understand standard notation?

From my experience as a guitar teacher I would immediately say that the answer is different for each individual, depending on a variety of factors that I think are worth outlining. For beginners, I have to say there are only two circumstances where I have found it useful to introduce the reading of standard notation from day one:

• For some very young students (age 6 – 8) who have a leaning towards playing melody as      opposed to strumming chords
• Anyone wanting to learn classical guitar

I have to say that, for all other students (those with a preference for Blues, Rock, Country and even Jazz guitar) I have found only a disadvantage in introducing the learning of standard notation in the first year or so of their learning. However, it should be noted that other guitar teachers may have very differing views on this, largely depending, I think, on how they themselves learnt to play guitar.

For more advanced students the early introduction of standard notation is I think, definitely appropriate if they come for lessons with one or more of the following specific goals in mind:

• To play guitar in a big band or orchestra
• To pursue a career in mainstream music, particularly as a session musician
• To help with passing music exams
• To gain entry to a mainstream music course
• To be able to write parts for other instruments (saxophone, trumpet, keyboards, for example) in their band

But for most guitarists, I personally believe in a more gradual approach to coming to terms with the various ways of understanding music. I believe that to progress through the various stages of learning guitar in a way that is in itself, both rewarding and genuinely educational, I suggest the following path.

First, by being shown that there is nothing better than being able to physically see another, more experienced guitarist, hold down a chord shape or play a simple melodic or lead guitar phrase.

Next, by learning to understand grid-type chord diagrams. Most of us (but, I should stress, not all of us) think of chords as shapes, and grid diagrams are a great way to represent chords in this way. For those that don’t think in shapes, the various methods of showing chord grips numerically are well worth exploring. ‘X02220’ for an A major chord for example.

Then, I advocate learning to read basic guitar tab. By basic, I mean the style of guitar tab that doesn’t give you time values for notes – just fret numbers on strings. With the rapid rise in popularity of tab sites on the Internet, gaining confidence in reading tab is an essential step towards being able to access music in written form.

If you find yourself mystified by tab then don’t panic, you are not alone! Here is a short video lesson designed just for you:

How to Read Guitar Tab:

I think it is fair to say that, for a great many guitar players, this is as far as they feel they need to take the process of learning to read music. After all, what more is required? There are hundreds of publications, web sites and iphone apps that will produce grid diagrams for every chord under the sun. There are tabs available, both online and in book form, for practically every guitar solo or rhythm part ever recorded.

So what, if anything, is wrong with playing guitar from tabs and rhythm charts alone? The answer is that by restricting yourself to reading music in this way, you are limiting the growth of your understanding of music.  You are literally just following instructions. This may still result in your playing perfect sounding copies of other people’s music and if that is what you enjoy about playing guitar then personally, I think it’s fine to stop right there.

My teaching experience tells me though that it doesn’t matter whether you learn one piece of music from tab, or two hundred – because you are relying on someone else’s instructions you will never scratch below the surface and gain any real insight into what notes you are playing, nor why those notes work over those particular chords.

But now we come to the crunch. I think the heart of the issue lies in how you answer the following question:

What kind of guitarist do you want to be? 

We’ll go on to explore some of the answers to this question in “Part Two” and then look at how your own answer might determine when, if ever, you may best be advised to bite the bullet and expand your ability to read music to include standard notation.

Happy Playing!

Nick Minnion

Lots more lessons, articles and videos by Nick available at his main websites:

For guitar players: www.secretguitarteacher.com

For guitar teachers (or aspiring guitar teachers): www.teachguitar.com

More from The Tyranny of Tablature

• To Read or Not to Read? Part 2 – Making Musical Milestones
• To Read or Not to Read? Part 3 – Some Practical Pointers

To Read or Not to Read? Part 1 – The Tyranny of Tablature was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

But at some point, the individual personality of the fledgling guitarist starts to emerge. It may be in very minute details, like a favorite picking pattern or a fill that he or she does extremely well and (consequently throws in wherever the situation allows). From these basic riffs, fills and rhythm patterns will blossom leads and more complex techniques. We call this growth a musician’s style.

Liner Notes: America

A Horse With No Name by America is a classic folk-rock song written by Dewey Bunnell. This song bears some resemblance to Neil Young’s folky acoustic rock. Ironically, back in 1972 “A Horse With No Name” is the song that replaced Neil’s “Heart of Gold” as the number one single in America.

Learn the basic chords and strumming of this song in Part 1 – The Simplest Song.

Bass players will want to check out the Bass for Beginners Lesson for this song.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

So how and when does one start to develop a style? Well, personally (obviously), I think that one’s style starts at day one. When you learned your first song, did you copy the strumming pattern right off the recording? Maybe you followed your guitar teacher’s suggestions. Maybe you came up with something all your own. And maybe you did all of the above.

It’s like cooking or telling a joke. You get the basics from somewhere and then you add your own touches (or not) to make it fit your tastes (or to cater to someone else’s tastes). Well, that’s essentially the same thing that happens with your playing.

In our lesson on “Horse With No Name,” you learned the basics of the song along with some simple strumming patterns. Today we’re going to work on adding a bit of accessories to the basic model. Feel free to use any of the ideas, riffs or leads we develop here or use them as a foundation on which to create your own musical ideas.

Picking And Choosing

It amy seem that I probably never play the guitar ’cause I seem to spend so much time thinking about things. The reality is that there are a lot of things to think about before (and while) playing. Most of it takes less time to deal with then you will spend in reading this sentence. Do I know the song? How well do I know this song? How many people are playing the song? What instruments are they going to play? What sort of role should I play? What role do I want to play? Do I intend to sing? What key is the song in? Do I want to play it in that key or use a capo? What chords changes are there going to be? Will those chord changes affect the scales I plan to use? Do I need to rethink my fills or leads? What sort of tone or effects do I think will work? All this (and more) passes through my head when I’m getting ready to strum the first chord or join in with a fill or sing a harmony part or whatever.

Let’s start with the obvious things first. As we discussed last time, the song is in the key of E minor and consists entirely of two chords: the aforementioned Em and the mysterious Dadd6add9. Each chord lasts for four beats; there is no variations to the pattern. It truly doesn’t get much simpler than this.

You’ll also recall that last time, we came up with this simple strumming pattern:

Listening or playing the song again, I realize that virtually all the singing takes place in the Em measures of any given verse. The last two beats of an Dadd6add9 measure, except during the chorus, are usually free of vocal traffic. This makes those spaces particularly attractive spots to throw in a fill. I don’t have to worry about stepping on the vocal line (which could be bad) or trying to sing and play something a little complex at the same time (which, in my case, could be really bad!).

Now a fill, as we discussed in Tricks Of The Trade, need not be some flash of technical wizardry. It can be something as simple as a well placed hammer-on:

I could easily use either of these fills while playing the song by myself or while playing with someone else. If I trust my fellow guitarist(s) with the rhythm, and if someone else were singing the lead, I might attempt something slightly more complicated, like any of these:

Again, there’s nothing phenomenally complicated here. Fill A is an “expanded” version of our first fill. Fill B utilizes a slide from the A note to the B and then some pick-offs to get us back again. More (and simpler) pick-offs are used in Fill C while, a combination of slides, pick-off and hammer-ons is used for Fill D. Fill E is something I might use if there is no bass player and I want to give a bit more interesting bottom to the song.

Mood is important, too. If I think it’s important to have something to steady the beat, then I will not only play something simple, but play the same one over and over again. If I’m being a bit playful, then who knows what fill might pop up at its designated place.

Let me stress that these are not “be all and end all” transcriptions. Any riff or fill you learn is meant to be played with, to be tinkered with so that you can use it when and where you think it might add a bit of zest to a song. Add an additional note or two here or there. Stretch or shrink the timing to your liking. Think of a fill as silly putty, if you will. But above all, have fun.

The Origin Of The Species

Ah, but I hear someone asking the age-old question, “Where do they come from? If I only have notes, how do I turn them into a fill or a lead?” This answer is going to really disappoint some of you (and really excite others). There is no “formula.” You simply arrange the notes into a way that (A) you can play, (B) that sounds good, to you at least, and (hopefully) (C) that fits the song.

Points A and B are almost constantly evolving as you learn to play. By starting out with riffs and fills, you subconsciously develop playing patterns, just as you do with strumming patterns. As a consequence, certain things might be easier for you to play than others. Some people learn “the box” and work it to death. Eric Clapton has mentioned in interviews that he tried to learn as many riffs and leads as he could off records and then worked on incorporating them (or altered versions of them) into the music he was playing.

Notes (and the patterns in which we play them) are often dictated by scales. The scales are (again, usually) determined by the tonality and the modality of the song itself. This is where things can get a bit confusing. Take Horse With No Name, for example. The song is in E minor. E minor is the relative minor of G major. So if we were to look at the music for this song, it will undoubtedly be written with one sharp (F#) on the staff. And this is indeed the case.

But, as we’ve read in Scales Within Scales, there are many E minor scales and it is conceivable that we don’t want to even work with any of them. How do we choose what to use? In most cases, the music will initially do that for us. Since there are only two chords used in the song, let’s look at the make up of each:

Remember, too, that we do not play all the Dadd6add9 notes on the guitar. With the fingering used in the song, the G# and C# are eliminated from the chord.

Technically, we can make the case that a G could easily stand in place of the G#, especially if we call decide to call our Dadd6add0 an F#m (b)13. This would be much in keeping the center of the song in E minor and that is something that is not open to debate. Everything about the song – the chords, the melody and the harmonies – dictate that the tonality of this song is E minor. The Em chord (with its notes of E, G and B) is its tonal center.

But the “flavor,” or modality, is still up for grabs. Looking at all these notes (and eliminating the G# for the reasons we’ve discussed), I see that there are two sharps (F# and C#) to deal with. Two sharps dictates the key of D major. Again referring to Scales Within Scales (or to our soon to be new-and-improved scales and modes page), I know that in this scenario I can use an E Dorian scale in order to get the notes that I want.

Another question, though: Why can’t I simply use the D major scale? What is the difference between the D major scale and the E Dorian scale? And the answer to this is probably as close to Zen as any answer I’ve ever given you: There is no difference between the two and there is every difference. Here’s why:

Each note in the E dorian scale has an exact counterpart in the D major scale. But because you start (and end) one scale on D and the other on E changes the whole color of the scale. If you refuse to believe that, try singing each scale note for note (and use an instrument to accompany you). Sing “do, re, mi…” if you like or simply to phrases. By making E the focal point (the “I,” “do” or root) of the scale, by making E the “center” of tonality, you change how each and every note corresponds and interacts. Yes, for all intents and purposes, you are playing the notes of the D major scale but they no longer have anything to do with that particular tonality. This is a difficult concept to grasp and we will be devoting more time to it this winter, but I hope this gets you started to think in the right direction. You can check out any of our many articles on the subject here at Guitar Noise, such as Part 6 of our Turning Scales into Solos series.

Take a look at the lead from the original recording and you should see that it’s pretty much created from simply going up and down the E Dorian scale:

It’s important to point out here that this lead finishes with three different acoustic guitars playing lead in the final two measures. One trills away on the E note at the twelfth fret of the high E string (as shown in the last example) while the other two play a series of descending triplets like this:

It’s close to impossible to play all three of these guitar parts at once on a single guitar, which is one of the reasons why you shouldn’t worry a lot about playing everything according to the original recording. However, you can use the open high E string as a droning note and play one of the other two guitar sequences an octave lower as well, las in the first two of the following these examples:

The last line of the above example uses the original “3rd Soloing Guitar” line from Example 5 and pairs it with the open high E string. You might find this the easiest of the three to play.

Making adjustments of this nature is part of how you develop your own style. It’s also a perfect example of what I told you at the beginning of this section. Point A, being “what I can play,” will (hopefully) always be improving and, because of that, my leads will become more interesting (technically and musically) as I evolve as a guitarist. And as I expand my musical tastes (and abilities), “what sounds good” (Point B) will also change radically. It’s up to me to make sure that Point C (“fitting the lead to the song”) follows suit.

This is how your “style” develops. It is a natural process that will occur as fast or as slow as your musical abilities do. Let it happen.

Sharing The Wealth

And then share it with the world. I can tend to go on and on about things, but this will always bear repeating: music is meant to be shared. It is its nature. The high that you get from playing is amplified enormously when playing for and (more so) with others.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in future columns. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

More in this series

Learn the basic chords and strumming of this song in Part 1 – The Simplest Song.

A Horse With No Name – Adding Some Personal Touches was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Really and truly, you can learn to play a song in less time than it takes to talk about doing it. But the problem comes with trying to figure out what you have actually learned and whether or not you will be able to apply that knowledge down the road. In my mind, simply copying something rarely teaches anyone anything. Oh, there will always be exceptions, the geniuses who will take the time to figure things out for themselves, but most of us tend toward the lazy. Better to start in learning the “whys” along with the “hows” than to try to piece it all together later.

Liner Notes: America

A Horse With No Name by America is a classic folk-rock song written by Dewey Bunnell. This song bears some resemblance to Neil Young’s folky acoustic rock. Ironically, back in 1972 “A Horse With No Name” is the song that replaced Neil’s “Heart of Gold” as the number one single in America.

Spice up your strumming and learn the solo from the original recording in Part 2 – Adding Some Personal Touches.

Bass players will want to check out the Bass for Beginners Lesson for this song.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

This lesson, our very first Guitar Noise “Easy Songs for Beginners” lesson is meant to help you do both – learn a song and learn about the music that goes into it so you can actually play it and use what you learn in other songs you play. After we pick up the basics of the song, then we’ll have some fun “really playing” it by adding some strumming variations (including a very basic bass part) and in the lesson, Adding Some Personal Touches, we’ll also add some rhythm riffs (fills) and some leads (ranging from easy to intermediate). You didn’t think I was going to let you get away and not learn something, did you? It should (hopefully) be harmless…

The Absolute Basic Model

Say you’ve never played the guitar before? Well, step right up here and I’ll make you a guitar god for only $49.99 or my name ain’t…

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It gets really crazy sometimes, doesn’t it? Well, in order to proceed, I am going to (gasp) assume that you’ve held a guitar before and that you are somewhat familiar with the terminology. If not, then you need to start out with our Absolute Beginners Chords lesson. Just get to the E minor chord (it’s the first one) and you’ll be all set. No lie!

Because this lesson’s song is Horse With No Name, written by Dewey Bunnell of the group, America. The entire song consists of two chords, one of which (E minor)  you know and the other we can argue about almost forever:

The E minor chord is, as you’ve discovered, one of the simplest to learn, but how on earth did Mr. Bunnell come up with the second chord? Well, I certainly wasn’t there when he did it, but I think it’s a pretty fair guess that it was either the result of a mistake or just exploring the fretboard. Either way, I’m sure he looked up and said to himself, “Hey, this sounds pretty cool!”

Both chords are easy enough to do. An Em requires you to use the second fret on both the fourth and fifth (D and A) strings while the Dadd6add9 simply has you move your two fingers to the next outer strings, the third and sixth (or G and low E). It’s not a hard change and it requires little thinking. Use whatever finger is on the second fret of the A string (it will probably be the index or middle) to play the second fret of the low E. Likewise, simply shift whatever finger is on the second fret of the D string to the second fret of the G. It’s kind of like doing jumping jacks with your fingers!

(And yes, we’re going to discuss this “Dadd6add9″ later. If you can’t wait, just skip down to the section entitled, “What is that chord really?”)

The rhythm of the song is in 4 / 4 time (four beats per measure) and the chords change each and every measure. For starters, do a simple downstroke, either on all four beats or, if you’d like a little variation, on the first, second and fourth beats. Remember that this song is moderately paced – it’s not really fast and not really slow. When you’re first learning a song, go as slow as you have to in order to make comfortable chord changes while keeping the overall beat smooth and steady. This is where a metronome can come in very handy.

Here’s a cheat sheet of how verses and chorus should shape up:

Nothing to it, right? Okay, let’s move on, then…

Tinkering

Usually the first thing a beginner needs to work on is chord recognition and formation. You need to know the chords you want to play and how to finger them on the fretboard. Your next concern will be about being able to change from one chord to the next smoothly and cleanly. With this particular song, both of those concerns become almost minimal and, because of that, you can work instead on your strumming.

You might think I’m a bit nuts about this, but I really can’t stress enough how important it is to work on your rhythm. Not only the fundamental task of keeping a steady beat, but also creating patterns that make the song better, more fun to play and interesting to hear.

But hey, it’s just hitting the strings, so how hard can it be?

Well, not hard at all if you’re aware of it from the start. This is the suggested rhythm I gave you.

An symbol indicates an upstroke and a denotes a downstroke.

Now this will work but it’s hardly interesting except as a tool for helping us to keep time. A rhythm that would be closer to the original would involve working on our upstroke (coming up the strings, toward your head). It would also involve working on the beats in between the beats. The length of a note can be divided almost infinitely, but we’re going to just work with eighth notes for now. So instead of us counting, “1, 2, 3, 4,” we would want to count, “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and…” The four beats per measure have not speeded up in the slightest. You will probably think that they have, though, if you’re not familiar with this. Don’t worry. It’s not that hard to catch on.

So here is an alternative strumming pattern, complete with the appropriate chords:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Again, start out very slowly if this is new to you. As slowly as you need to in order to count out each beat and to get each stroke in its proper place. You’ll be surprised how easily it will come to you, even if you’ve never tried an upstroke before.

Filling In The Bottom (and sides!)

Once you’re feeling up to speed we can tinker a bit more and add a bass part. Granted, it will not be the most exciting bass line in the world, but if you’re a beginner, it should impress you with how easy it is to add a lot more texture to your playing with such a simple technique.

Here’s how we’ll do it. Whenever we hit the first beat of any given measure, we will strike only the sixth string (which will be the lowest tone on either chord). Just that string and nothing more. When you add in the chords (upstrokes and downstrokes), it should be something like the following example. With this Finale software notation, I indicated downstrokes with “D” and upstrokes with “U” just to make things a little easier:

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Using this pattern as a starting point, you can then start to really have fun. One thing I like to do is to play an upstroke on the second beat of the E minor as close to the bridge (as far from the neck as the strings allow) as possible and let it ring through the remaining three beats of the measure, like this:

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You can also pick out individual strings instead of strumming. In the following example, the three highest strings are all picked as upstrokes on the last beat and a half of the measure:

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Once you have a couple of patterns that you like and can do without thinking, you’ll find yourself playing “mix and match,” throwing “E minor pattern 1″ with “Dadd6add9 pattern 4″ and what have you. It can become a lot of fun as well as a challenge to see what you can come up with next.

You see, even the simplest of songs can provide you with a lot of interesting opportunities if you are willing to put the time and effort into finding what can be done with it. Or you can simply learn the chords and then move on to your next song. As always, the choice is yours.

What Is That Chord Really?

Okay, let’s look at that second chord. If we examine the notes on each string, this is what we would find:

Last time out (Building Additions and Suspensions) we learned that we could, if we so desired, call this chord by a lot of different names. Who wants to start? Bm7 (add 4)? D6 (add 9)? Hey, how about E9 (sus4)? Those are all viable answers, given the notes of the chord.

We also touched on the fact that the context of the chord (how it is used in a progression) can be vital in helping to determine which chord name we will give it. An important factor in determining the context is the voicing of the chord, meaning not only which notes of a chord we use but where we play them on the guitar. Let’s take another look at both of our chords in this song:

Okay, first let’s establish the key of the song. Now we could do this the easy way: “Gee, David, it starts with an E minor chord and it ends with an E minor chord. Why don’t we just say it’s in E minor?” And I could live with this approach. But take a listen to both chords. Another reason for coming up with the same answer is simply by hearing how much more at ease the Em chord makes us feel. In contrast, the Dadd6add9 sounds unsettled, like it’s got to be going somewhere. Play the chords in reverse order and the Dadd6add9 still doesn’t sound like a resting point, like “home.” It’s just begging for a resolution.

Now, having just played the song to death, one thing that I can tell you is that I like the F# in the bass. It fits well, much better than having a D or E or even an A serving as the root. This, more than anything else, is what makes me decide that F# is going to be the root note on which to build my chord. So if I build a stack of thirds on top of my F# and fill in the notes I have from the chord (using a “-” to indicate a missing note), this is what I get:

You can see that the fifth (C#) and the ninth (G#) are not among the six notes in the chord. Instead, we get a second A. So we can call it F#m13 if we want to stay reasonably simple. Or F#m7 (no 5)(add 4)(add 6) if we want to be absolutely looney about it. But there is a lot to be said for simplicity when trying to write something out. As I mentioned earlier, people can (and do) argue about this sort of thing for ages.

But it does bring up an interesting thought – if you’ve got a chord that has seven notes what do you do? After all, you can only get six notes out of your guitar at a time, which one goes?

Traditionally, the fifth would be the note left out  but, believe it or not, there are instances when the root is the “missing” note (and we’ll be examining chords like this in other Guitar Noise song lessons). But the real determining factor is what notes you are able to finger (or not finger) on your fretboard. For instance, if you strum your guitar (standard tuning) without putting any fingers on the fretboard at all you would have an A11. The notes, from low to high, would be E (fifth), A (root), D (eleventh), G (seventh), B (ninth) and E (fifth again). Here the third (C#) is the missing note. You could always add this by playing it on the 1st (or 6th) string but it sounds perfectly fine as it is. Generally a good rule of thumb with 9th, 11th, and 13th chords is to really try to include the seventh along with the root in order to give it some sense of identity.

Is any of this really that important? Like any knowledge, it all depends on what you want to do with it, and that’s what next week’s topic is all about. You’ll see that by giving our second chord an identity of Dadd6add9, we are helping to determine the modal centers of our harmonies. This is ultimately where our fills and leads will come from. And no, it’s nowhere near as complicated as it sounds!

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in future columns. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next week…

Peace

More in this series

Spice up your strumming and learn the solo from the original recording in Part 2 – Adding Some Personal Touches.

A Horse With No Name – The Simplest Song was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

We’re going to work a bit of the same sort of magic with “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” written by American Episcopalian priest Phillips Brooks (inspired by his 1865 visit to the fabled city) and his church’s organist, Lewis Redner. For the most part, we’ll use either pairs of notes of chord arpeggios to create our arrangement of this beautiful carol.

The First Two Lines

I’ve chosen to write this arrangement in the key of D to make use of both the open D and A strings for bass notes and also the open B, G and D strings as part of the G chord. You get a taste of that right in the first line:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Even though the first set of notes is based on an open position D chord, it’s a good idea to fret the high E (first) string with your ring finger and the G string with your middle finger. In fact, you want to use your middle finger as a bit of an anchor during the most of the instances where you’re playing two notes at the same time. If you use your middle finger on the G or D string, that frees you up to use your ring finger whenever the high note is on the same fret and to use your index finger when the high note is one fret lower, as in the second pair of notes in the second full measure.

The third measure demonstrates why this use of the middle finger as anchor can be so helpful. If your first inclination is to use your index and middle fingers for the pair of notes on the second fret of the B and D strings, then you’d find it more than a little awkward making any sort of smooth transition to the two subsequent pairs. But keeping your middle finger on the D string allows you to quickly move from pair to pair.

By the bye, you definitely want to finger a “normal” open position D chord at the start of the last measure in this example!

As mentioned, playing this song in D is giving us a number of opportunities to use open strings, which in turn gives us a chance to reposition our fingers when the melody makes a bit of a leap to higher notes, as it does in the start of the second line:

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The first two measures of Example 2 are the trickiest part of our song. Use your index finger to barre the first five strings at the fifth fret and your ring finger to barre the first four strings at the seventh. This will allow you to play the first two eighth notes and the following quarter note (where the B and G strings are played at the seventh fret).

Then stand your ring finger up on its tip on the seventh fret of the D string. Use your middle finger to play the sixth fret of the A string and your pinky to get the seventh fret of the high E (first) string. Lift up your pinky and your index finger will have the two notes at the fifth fret (on the high E and G strings) that you need to close the measure.

You’re still not out of the woods, though! You next need to make a bit of a leap to place your index finger on the second fret of the D string and to put your pinky on the fifth fret of the high E. This takes a bit of practice but it’s not as hard as it sounds. You could, as an alternative, play the E note (second fret of the D) at the seventh fret of the A string and the G note (third fret of the high E) at the eighth fret of the B string. That’s a lot fewer gymnastics for your fingers but you’re still going to have to jump down the neck for the G in the bass (third fret of the low E string) at some point. I’ve tried it both ways and find myself preferring the former. You may find otherwise, though, so be sure to experiment.

The final two measures in this example are more chances to use your middle finger anchor when playing. If you thought you were getting good at it earlier, now’s your chance to find out for sure! And, like the first line, you want to finish this section off with an open position D chord.

The Last Two Lines

That D chord kicks off the third line of the song:

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It’s a good idea here to use your ring finger to get the E note (second fret of the D string) when you play the third chord (Em) and then slide it up the D string for each of the following two chords. You should end up starting the second measure with your ring finger at the fourth fret of the D string, your middle finger on the third fret of the G and your index finger at the second fret of the B string. This is an F# chord, by the way. For the second F# Lay your index finger flat across the second fret to make a barre chord out of it and get you the F# in the bass (second fret of the low E string).  You’ll revisit this F# barre in the last measure of this example.

The last line starts out the same as the first and ends a little like the second:

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Try to get the G note in the bass in the second measure with your index finger. This will make the next pair of notes (seventh fret of the high E and the fourth fret of the low E) a lot easier to manage!

As always, here, is a full version for you to work with. And (again, as always) please forgive any of the numerous performance mistakes!

Download a PDF of the complete arrangement (Right-click and “Save as”)

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this arrangement of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and that you find it a great Christmas present for both you and your family and friends.

And let me take a moment to wish all our readers, their family and friends, a wonderful holiday season. We thank you for your continued support of Guitar Noise and look forward to bringing lots of great lessons in 2012!

Until the next lesson…

O Little Town of Bethlehem was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

In order to allow your musical feeling to emerge and give life to the notes you play, you must have the technique required to produce those notes in the first place. “Technique” is the conduit through which musical feeling flows.

People are often surprised when they learn that I have continued to practice and improve pieces of music that I have played for decades, including pieces I have often performed or recorded. “Don’t you know it by now?” they say!

Apparently, they are not aware of the dictum I have laid down in “The Principles of Correct Practice For Guitar” for students to follow if they wish to continue to improve and expand their abilities on guitar, and realize their highest potential as guitarists. It is this: always tell yourself “I don’t know how to play the guitar.” After forty years of playing, I tell myself everyday “I don’t know how to play the guitar.”

Why do I tell myself this? Do I just like to remind myself what a slow learner I am?

No, not really, although I know I have had to work a lot harder to get what others found easy. I tell myself “I don’t know how to play the guitar” so that my mind will constantly be open to new ideas and new intuitions about ways to improve my playing. I tell myself this so that I will not become complacent and stale in my ways of thinking and doing things. I tell myself this so that I will never fall into the common rut of operating from assumptions that have never been reexamined, and have actually outlived their usefulness. Because I tell myself this (and thus keep “Beginners Mind”), I now play light years better than I did at any time in my past.

This is why I counsel my students to think in this way – so that they can be the guitar player they are really capable of being.

What Is “Getting Better” And Do I Have To?

Now, someone may say, “well, do I have to keep getting better? Can’t I just stop getting better and enjoy myself? Anyway, what does “getting better mean?” Those are fair questions.

First of all, of course it is okay if you say “I don’t want to get any better, I am happy where I am and I just want to play my guitar.” That is fine. It is not fine for me, but it may be fine for you. I enjoy getting better and better on guitar, and I have discovered the interesting fact that the better I get at playing guitar, the more I enjoy playing guitar! And since I like to have as much fun as possible in my life, I keep working at getting better on guitar. If you don’t want to get better on guitar, I probably won’t run into you, since my job is to make people better and those are the people that come to Guitar Principles. If you are not looking to get better you probably won’t be reading this anyway, you’ll be busy playing your guitar, at whatever level you play it! How much you are actually enjoying it, though, is another question.

As far as what “getting better” means, it means two things:

1. Becoming able to do things that you could not do before
2. Being able to do things you can already do, but learning to do them much more easily

Both of these possibilities are very exciting for the guitar player who knows how to make “getting better” happen, and both lead to increased joy in playing guitar, and increased musical quality and power for the music we make.

Learning To Do What You Can Not Do

When someone begins to learn guitar, they, by definition, fall into the category of needing to learn to do things they cannot do, because they cannot yet do anything! So they are not ready to sit on their laurels and enjoy the fruit of their accomplishments. They need to set out on an effective path of learning to do what they cannot do. Some do actually learn the necessary new skills and continue on playing guitar, and many don’t, and stop trying.

Many of those that do get up and running as guitar players reach a particular point of ability and stay there. There are things they can do, and there are things they cannot do. This is fine if they do not want to do the things they cannot do. It is a problem if they want to do new things, but find they cannot learn to do them. Then, they go through a cycle that begins with struggle, leads to frustration, and finally resignation. But the frustration is always burning underneath, they feel a resentment that they cannot do what they see other, “better” players doing.

Anyone familiar with “The Principles” knows that the entire goal of my teaching work is to enable any guitar player to learn to do what they cannot yet do, and have not been able to learn to do. We have that one covered. We have saved thousands of guitar players who could not even get to first base with guitar from the horrible fate of continuing to live without being able to play the guitar. Because of “The Principles,” no one need any longer suffer silently with the torture of unrequited guitar love!

So, let us turn our attention to the other aspect of “getting better,” which is learning to do the things we can do already, but learning to do them more easily. Why is that important?

Learning To Do Things More Easily

I once saw a video of the legendary classical guitarist John Williams talking about practicing guitar. He remarked that guitar players needed to learn to enjoy practice and to understand what it is. He said “Practicing is sitting with your guitar and saying, ‘Now how can I find an easier way to do this?’” This statement contains a great truth, but unfortunately, for many players that truth will be useless, because they simply do not know how to make anything easier. Like most great truths spoken by great players you have to actually be in the same place they are in before you can see the truth of what they say.

Knowing how to make things easier is what all of my teaching work is about. I show you step by step how to do everything in the best possible way, and in a way that does not prevent continued development. “Skill” is the ability to reconcile opposing dynamics. When we can do something easily, it is because we have found a way to balance the opposing forces that must be applied to the guitar strings in a way that does not create excessive and uncontrolled muscle tension. When we struggle to play, we are suffering from this muscle tension during playing that is resulting from movements that do not apply force to the strings in precisely the correct way. This is always true.

When we are struggling to play, and our body is constantly tensed while trying to make the movements that will make the notes (and there are many, many players in this state even though they are only dimly aware of it) everything that makes music so wonderful begins to degrade. Our rhythm and smoothness in playing, our tone, even the notes themselves begin to be only a pale reflection of what they could and should be. It is no fun for either player or listener.

Now that we have looked at the “what” of playing easily, let’s look at the “why.”

The reason we should always strive to find easier ways of doing things on guitar is quite simple: the easier something is to do, the more our musical feeling can be poured into the music we make. The more developed, ergonomic, and optimized our technique is, the wider the pipeline though which musical feeling can be poured. We must still supply the musical feeling, but it is amazing how much easier it is to feel the music once the physical body is relaxed, comfortable and actually feeling pleasure in its movements to play, and the mind is concomitantly composed, quiet, and able to simply be aware, listen to and enjoy the music even as it creates it in each moment.

The easier something is to do, the more our musical feeling can be poured into the music we make.

Understanding this vital relationship between musicality and technique is extremely important. People often argue about which one is more “important,” musicality or technique. That is an absurd question, like asking which is more important, the chicken or the egg! One gives rise to the other, and each is the “reason” for the existence of the other. Technique is needed so that we can make the music, and without the music we would never need technique. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin, and I don’t think we would ask “which is more “important,” heads or tails? Unless maybe we bet on heads!

The desire to express our musical feeling demands the need for technique with which to do that. The more refined our technique, the more refined our musical feeling is allowed to be. The size of the pipe through which our musical feeling can flow depends on the ease with which we perform the movement process called “playing the guitar.” I call this pipeline our “musical margin.” As we learn to continually surrender ourselves to the music, and increasingly intensify our emotional involvement with the dimension of “sound with meaning” that we call music I believe that we, as players, should be in continual search of widening our musical margin. There should always be as much room and freedom for the flow of musical feeling as possible, but when we struggle to play, the flow of feeling is strangled.

There is a direct relationship between technique and feeling in making music, the more there is of one, the more there can be of the other. We must keep in mind, however, that not all music is equal in its demands for technique. Some things are simply easier to do than other things, and some styles are more demanding of technique than others. People’s attitudes about technique are often fashioned by the particular style they play. The basic rule of thumb is to acquire the technique you need to give life, not death, to the music you wish to play.

One other important benefit of learning to do things more easily is that it increases our consistency during playing. Everyone who performs or records has had the experience of having things go really well in the practice room and fall apart on the stage or in front of the mic! We usually blame “chance” or any number of indeterminate factors for our playing breakdowns. The fact is that these breakdowns have a technical basis. Sure, on a good day when no one is watching we might make the notes three times out of five. But when the pressure is on, the power of every technical weakness is magnified a hundred times. As we learn to do things in better and better ways, using less effort and causing less tension, it is amazing how solid our playing becomes!

Hearing The Music

Another interesting fact is that the easier it is for us to make the music, the more we are able to actually hear the music as we make it. And the more we hear the music we make, the more we feel the music we make. As I have improved my playing over forty years, I have seen the notes themselves sink deeper and deeper into my bones. Every note is more alive, more vibrant, and carries more meaning to my inner ear. For the listener, who is on the other end of the notes I play, their experience with the music I make is primarily dependent on the experience I am having with the music I make.

This intensification of the musical experience is the primary reason for continuing to widen our musical margin. For those who desire to do so, it is an endless and ever deepening process. When you do it for a long time, you become known as someone who is “great” on guitar. All great players have a wide musical margin. All struggling players have a narrow musical margin. All “non-starters” on guitar have no musical margin, they have no ability to feel the music – because they cannot make music to begin with.

This is the situation of a player who wrote to me recently, wanting to know how to “feel” the music more………..

Hi Jamie

I want to know how I can play the guitar with more expression. My problem is that I can read and play the notes in the song but for some reason I can’t give the music the expression and passion needed to make a good performance. how can I overcome this brick wall ? My profesor tells me that I have the passion inside but I need to let it out. For some reason it hasn’t happened yet. I am very frustrated, I hope you can help me.

Thank you Jamie!!

Ed

I have never met this person, but I have met hundreds of students over the years who say the same things when they first come to me. In all these hundreds of cases I have seen one thing, and one thing only: there is no musical feeling because the person is struggling to play and does not know how to make the music without struggling. Many times, the person was studying with a teacher, often at the university level, and the teacher could do nothing to improve the situation either. I have no doubt this is the case here as well.

For those who wish to widen their musical margin, no matter where you are right now, Guitar Principles is the way to the deeper experience of making music you are seeking.

Copyright 2011 Jamie Andreas. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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The Musical Margin: Why Technique Equals Musicality was written by Jamie Andreas for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise