Mastery, Mindfulness, and the 10th Millennium

As I've spent this morning and afternoon practicing Brouwer pieces, interval seeds, and jazz standards while massively sleep deprived, I'm reminded yet again of one of the crucial components of really getting the guitar to do what I want it to do. Mindfulness. Focus. Attention.

Popular authors, such as Malcom Gladwell and Daniel Levetin to name a couple, have made a rather big deal out of this 10,000 hours of practice stuff. While it's nice to have to some contemporary research that tells us we really DO have to put in 10k hours of practice to master an instrument (or most any other activity), it's been all over Chinese folklore and Taoism in various forms for, well, over a couple thousand years.

If 10,000 hours sounds like a lot, you're right! It's no coincidence that the number 10,000 is also used to symbolize infinity or eternity in that literature. And trying to get to that number will feel like an eternity sometimes. But even that isn't enough...

I've often felt that just putting in that 10k hours is insufficient. There has to be something else to make it work. It needs to be done mindfully. Practicing must become a meditation and, as the 10 thousandth hour approaches, it becomes an effortless meditation.

There's an interesting bit of research a student of mine recently shared with me which supports this:

If You're Busy, You're Doing Something Wrong

If you don't want to read the whole thing, here's a summary. Really Good violinists and EXCEPTIONAL violinists in this study were found to practice the SAME amount of time on average. Yeah. That's right. There were a couple of differences in HOW they practice, though. The truly exceptional musicians concentrated their practicing into two big chunks every day instead of a little here, a little there, and a bit more after dinner. They also focused their attention on repetition and refinement.

Mindfulness. They weren't distracted and that focus allowed them to do something over and over again to make it better.

Here are a couple of quotes from Pablo Casals on practicing:

"I always practiced as if I had forever."

An interviewer once posed this question:

“Mr Casals, you’re the greatest cellist of the 20th Century, perhaps of all-time, and your career has been nothing short of spectacular. Why, at the age of 95, do you still practice 6 hours a day?"

Casals answered, “Because I think I’m making progress.”

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OK, OK. You get the point. But a LOT of people have difficulty focusing on what they're doing for 10 minutes, let alone a couple of hours at a time. Not everyone is going to take up meditation or some other practice to help sharpen this skill, but there are some simple and very practical things you can do while practicing to help.

1 - Turn OFF the ringer on your cell phone.

2 - DON'T check email or facebook while you're practicing.

If you have trouble with either of these, turn your phone and your computer off entirely. Practice in a different room, if need be.

3 - If you have roommates or housemates, let them know that you are not to be disturbed while you're practicing.

4 - When your mind wanders, just reel it back in. If the brain LOVES to do one thing, it's zipping from one crazy idea to another at light speed. "A, C#, F#, apple pie! F, E, bathtub! G..." With practice, you can train it to slow down and, eventually, stay with you and your guitar for longer periods of time. "A, C#, F#, F, E, ice cream!, G..." Improvement!


Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

why bother? Part 2

One of the questions I posed was this: What are the components of melody? There's a simple answer to this, at least mechanically. Note that I'm not asking what the components of a GOOD melody might be.

1 - Notes
2 - Rhythm
3 - Articulation

Thinking about this isn't so much of an answer to "Why bother playing scales?" It's more an answer to "Why do I feel like playing scales doesn't help my improvisation?"

How is it an answer? Simple. Think about how you practice scales. If you're like most people, you play up and down in constant eighth notes or sixteenths, maybe practice some intervals or simple patterns, and that's really about it. Forget the fact that you're just practicing notes sequentially; you're just practicing notes, period!

Rhythm is simple to define. It's the spatial (chronological) relationship of different notes. So try playing your scales with some different rhythms!

Articulation is more complex. Basically stated, it's how a note is played. It could include things like dynamics, timbre, how it's attacked (harmonics, ligado, etc) what you do with it afterwards (bending, sliding...). So try playing around with some different articulations when you practice your scales.

Bottom line - You will play what you practice, so try to keep your practicing Interesting!

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

scales - why bother?

This post is inspired by a new student of mine. He's facing a dilemma that many people face in practicing. The bottom line is that he's not sure why he's practicing scales. What's the REAL benefit? To summarize an email from him, every teacher he's studied with has scale practice as part of the curriculum for learning to improvise, but he doesn't feel like he's getting better at it.


I can be a bit of a wise-ass teacher. I like to ask questions instead of giving answers whenever I can get away with it. I find that people learn more when they find their own answers. I'm mostly here to guide them in that search and point out some new places to look. Here's what I asked him:


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How often do you find yourself playing over non-diatonic changes, including things like secondary dominants?

How many different ways have you practiced a given scale? (C major in V position for example.)

How comfortable are you with key changes?

How often do key changes come up in the tunes you play?

What would say the components of a melodic idea really are?

What makes a solo a good one and what makes a solo suck?

What do you think theory is useful for?

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What are your answers to these questions? Feel free to comment away. I'll provide my own thoughts and my reflections on any comments in future posts.

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

Impressions Of Brouwer, Vol. 1 has been released

Impressions Of Brouwer, Vol. 1: Estudios Sencillos & Nuevos Estudios Sencillos is now available online:

Impressions Of Brouwer, Vol. 1

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

new Brouwer Electric Etudes video

The title just about says it all. I've just uploaded a new video from the last rehearsal.

Kickstarter campaign:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rbrantg/impressions-of-brouwer-vol-2-electric-etudes

Impressions Of Brouwer, Vol. 2 kickstarter campaign

This is an exciting moment! The kickstarter campaign for the second CD of  Leo Brouwer's music is live. This is going to be a fusion arrangement of 8 of the Etudes. Please check it out!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rbrantg/impressions-of-brouwer-vol-2-electric-etudes

the Hendrix chord exploded

The Hendrix chord, a 7(#9), is a favorite among musicians of any style. You can find it littering blues tunes, coloring rock tunes, flavoring jazz passages, and abusing modern classical music. The dissonance between the #9 and the major 3rd is sassy, brutally honest, and brimming with attitude. The conflict between major and minor tonality can't get much more clear cut. No wonder it ended up being nicknamed the Hendrix chord.

Most of us learn one way to play it:

This is a good way to play it. I have no bone to pick with it at all and I use this voicing often. I'm also a big fan of substitution when it comes to chords and arpeggios and my desire is generally to keep things conceptually simple while exploring different applications.

There's this goofy little chord that most people don't give much thought to. It's the diminished major 7 chord. R b3 b5 7. Kind of a creepy sounding bugger on its own. Guess why... It's moonlighting as a 7(#9) chord.

Here's how it works out. Let's say we're in E. Here are an E7(#9) chord and a G#°maj7 chord:

E7(#9): E, G#, B, D, Fx (yup, that's F double sharp, or G if you prefer.)

G#°maj7: G#, B, D, Fx

Hmmm... Notice anything similar about these two? If I ignore the E in the Hendrix chord, I have a G#°maj7 note for note. Ahhh, the beauty of chord substitution.

There's an introduction to the mechanics. Here are some new voicings to play with.

And on the top set of strings:

Some of  these are pretty rough on the fingers. The stretches are unusual, but doable. I suggest singing through every one of them to really internalize the sound of each inversion.

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

recording the Brouwer Etudes Part II: mixing

Note: all images can be enlarged by clicking on them.

In this second post, I'm going to walk you more or less through the process of mixing the Etudes. I recorded each piece as a "chunk" in Digital Performer. To simplify the mixing process, I created v-racks and routed each of the tracks through an auxiliary channel. I also setup aux channels for two different reverbs, one for handling the mix of all the different sources, and a master track. All of these aux tracks were in one v-rack. Here's a screen shot of the mix window:

My goal was to simulate different perspectives on the guitar - One right up front, another further back, and a third from rather far away. By blending these different perspectives, we get something that's closer to what the ear actually interprets than if we depend on only one.

For the room mics, I'd originally labeled and panned them from the perspective of the performer. I decided to mix from the perspective of a listener, so I had to switch the L and R channels for the room mics. Rather than go through 29 different chunks and re-pan everything, I used the Waves S1 Imager to switch L & R. I also decided to close the stereo field up by about 25 or 30%. I prefer, when recording, to get as wide a spread as possible. It's always easier to close it up (bring the channels closer to center) than to artificially widen it.

The next thing was to EQ out the frequencies I didn't want. For the most part, this just meant rolling off some of the sub frequencies (mostly below 100Hz), but I did pull out just a bit around 5k on the room mics. For this, I favor the UA emulation of the Cambridge EQ:

The close mic still had more of these really low frequencies than I wanted. You wouldn't even hear them without a subwoofer, but they're obnoxious at certain volumes with one. Of course, they also lend to the warmth of the sound, so I didn't want to just cut them even further across the board. I decided to use a multiband compressor to reduce the very low frequencies at higher volumes. For frequency dependent compression, the Waves C4 and C6 are hard to beat. I used this on the close mic and again on the aux for the mix of all mics. If you're familiar with the interface for this compressor, you'll notice that the compressor only triggers when the level at those frequencies is fairly high, but that the gain reduction when it does trigger is significant. Here's the C6:

The room mics received a little compression via the Waves C1 and just a tiny bit of post compression EQ. This was the ONLY EQing that was done aside from the initial surgical EQ applied to each track. The EQ boosted some mids and lows and rolled off the really high frequencies to simulate the sound of being even further away from the guitar than the mics really were. For this, I ended up using the UA emulation of the Trident A-Range:

The slight compression was applied to the room mics because dynamics tend to have less of a range from further away and this helped to reproduce that.

The next step was to apply some reverb to all of the tracks. I used a fairly short and warm reverb to do this using the Waves IR-L since the room I record in is (intentionally) almost entirely dry. If you look at the screen shot of the mix window, you can see that very little is applied to the close mic, a little more to the far mic, and even more to the room mics. This helps to create a sense of depth in the mix.

I also applied a bit of a longer reverb to the room mics using Waves TrueVerb. You can see that I first experimented with the UA EMT140 and decided against it. Again, the idea here is that a listener much further away from the performer will hear more room ambience than a listener right up close. I wanted the room mics to sound much further away than my physical space would allow and the extra reverb helps create that effect.

On both reverbs, I used a bit of compression to the signal going in. This is because most digital reverbs (including convolution reverbs like the IR-L) tend to really jump out in the high frequencies at higher volumes and be more subdued at quieter volumes. Real rooms aren't nearly as dramatic at the high end, so a compressor that could filter out (not respond to) lower frequencies was useful. The UA Precision Bus Compressor was just the tool for the job. I just used it to trim 1-2 dB off when the guitar got louder:

The last step in mixing was to try and "glue" these three different sources together. The first thing to do was balance the levels of the three sources. Since I wanted a fairly up close and intimate sound, I used more of the close mic, less of the far mic, and even less of the room mics. I then applied the C6 to tame the really low frequencies of the composite sound from all three sources. (See screen shot above.)

I would have then typically run everything through the UA LA-2A - a leveling amplifier that really does a brilliant job of pulling different sources together and which I use religiously on drums - and done some post EQ. I found, however, that the occasional fortissimo rasgueado (right hand strumming really loud) blew the meters on everything and needed to be brought under control if I wanted to have a decent over-all level and consistent sound across all 30 etudes.

For that, I used the Waves L3 Multi-Maximizer, a multi-band limiter, which I generally only use as a mastering tool. In this case, it was exactly what I needed to reduce the signal on those very occasional really loud parts without affecting everything else.

I found two interesting things after that. The first was that I didn't like what the LA-2A did to the mix! It's uncommon that that happens, but it did. I opted for using the C1 again instead. A barebones compressor with no "color" was, in fact, all this needed for finally blending my close, far, and room mics together. The second thing was that any little tweaks I tried to make with various EQs took away from the sound rather than adding to it, so I left the mix without any further adjustments.

Oddly, EQ was hardly a factor in creating these recordings. Most of it was finding different ways of using compression (which is often avoided in classical recordings) and using different mic "perspectives" to create the illusion of what the human ear interprets.

If there's one thing to keep in mind with the use of most effects, it's that less is more. You'll often get better results from dialing back a particular effect and applying it again at a later stage in the process if necessary than you will by simply dialing it up in the first place.

Take notice of the number of times that compression of some kind is applied, but just a bit. Not more than 1 or 2 dB. There are two different reverbs in use and each is used differently on each source. I used EQ to roll off some of the sub frequencies, but I didn't cut them out when that wasn't enough. I moved to a frequency specific compressor after that and ended up using that idea subtly twice rather than dramatically once.

Here are some effected recordings for you to listen to. Compare these to the dry ones in my previous post. Consider how the three sources relate to one another and help build an amalgam illusion of a real guitar hitting your ears instead of a recorded guitar.

close wet
far wet
room wet

And the end result:
mix

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

recording the Brouwer Etudes Part I: mic setup

I figured this would be a good opportunity to talk a bit about different approaches to recording guitar, specifically solo classical guitar.

The standard approach is to use a matched pair of mics placed a few feet back from the guitar player. The configuration people use varies, although ORTF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORTF_stereo_technique) using small diaphragm cardioid condensers is pretty common. The engineer will generally move the mics closer to get less room ambience or further away to get more.

This works.. It produces that mellow sound that most of us associate with classical guitar recordings. It also misses a lot of the subtlety of the instrument. Close micing the body, which is common place with steel string acoustic guitars, is generally avoided with classical guitar because it picks up more finger noise, you're more likely to hear the performer moving around, etc...

Close micing also gets a much more accurate sense of the dynamics at the more extreme frequencies. Most classical guitar recordings are heavy in the mid-range of the instrument. The guitar, however, makes a lot of noise in the low end and high end as well. Of course, guitar players don't like to be reminded of all the string noise and fret buzz and thumping that can happen when they're playing. Maybe this is one reason that close micing is often avoided.

For me, I wanted to capture the intimacy of the performance. I think the Brouwer Etudes are very visceral pieces of music. The string noise, etc. is an integral part of that. I was also thinking about why goo drum recordings are so dynamic and why a lot of solo recordings of guitar are sort of flat.

The human ear processes sound coming in from several directions and creates and amalgam from these various sources. A microphone processes sound at a given point. To more accurately capture the sound that the human ear hears, I wanted to work with different perspectives simultaneously.

Here's how I setup the mics to get what I wanted out of these recordings. I'm using the beginning of Etude 14 because it quickly covers a range of dynamics and timbres. (Click to enlarge the image.)

Here are the specifics for the gear-heads out there:

Close mic: Neumann TLM102 through a UA TwinFinity 710
Far mic: Studio Projects T3 set to omni through a dbx386
room mics: matched pair of Rode NT1As through a Focusrite TwinTrak

You can see the positioning of the mics in the photo. The tlm102 was set about 9 or so inches from the sound-hole and just below center. The T3 was back around 2 1/2' and was pointed more at the 10th or 12th fret. The room mics were an additional 12-18" back, about 5' apart, and close to 6' high, but aimed down at the guitar.

This gave me the range of different perspectives that I wanted to play with. You can hear what each sounds like here. These are all completely dry. No EQ, no compression, no nothin':

close mic
far mic
room mics
all together

In my next post, I'll walk you through the mixing process and explain how I thought about each of the mics as I pulled together a cohesive sound.

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

Brouwer Etudes update

This is more shameless self-promotion. The next post will be a combination of recording and mixing techniques with more of the same. Expect it in the next few days, assuming I wade through approximately 150 takes in time to mix them before I go on vacation.

Recording the Brouwer Etudes (the classical version, in any case) is finished. My performances of them range between 20 seconds and 4 or so minutes. This is one of the shortest of them and it's completely unmixed. (I want you to buy the CD, after all.)

Without further ado, here is take two of Brouwer Etude number 4.

http://brant.rbrantg.com/4%20unmixed.mp3

Practice hard, play the truth,

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

coming in 2011

This is a shameless plug for an album I'm preparing to record. I've not been updating my blog much lately because I'm very busy practicing and preparing for the recording sessions. Later this year I'll be releasing an album of all 30 of Leo Brouwer's Etudes. There will be some... surprises! I'll leave it at that for now.

Practice hard, play the truth,

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

more, more, more, more, more!

New ideas are a great thing. Searching for new ideas is part of what keeps us most engaged with life and with music. When it comes to writing music, improvising, and practicing, however, more is not necessarily better. In fact, too many ideas can quickly become trite, confusing, distracted, flashy, and entirely without meaning. Repetition and variation, on the other hand, can often lend depth to the impact of our music and the effectiveness of practicing.

I'm going to take one very simple and very specific melodic idea and illustrate how many different ways we can look at this on the guitar. Two intervals. That's it. Up a diatonic second and then up another 4th. If we're in C and starting on C, that gives us C, D, G, which is an inversion of a Gsus4 triad. (There I go with the suspensions again...)

Here's a shorthand example of how I can practice this idea throughout the key of C and all over the fingerboard. (Click the image to enlarge.)

The first example is showing how the idea can ascend and descend through a C major scale in V position. This should be played ascending to the highest note in a given position, then descending to the lowest note, then back to the root. I use 7 positions for most scales.

The second example shows how to practice this same idea along a set of two strings. Again, the short hand can be extended all the way up and down the fingerboard, from open strings to the highest fret. There are 5 sets of adjacent strings on the guitar. Some patterns won't work on two adjacent strings, but this one does.

The third example shows how the idea can be moved up and down sets of three strings as chords. We've got 4 sets of strings to practice this on in this case.

Does that seem like a lot? It IS, but guess what. There's MORE you can do with this simple three note motive without even getting into rhythm or articulation. Consider that this only addresses a major scale and the associated modes. You can also apply this idea to harmonic minor, melodic minor, and other synthetic scales.

I don't know exactly how to calculate the number of different ways to play that one simple little idea on guitar, but I figure it's well into the hundreds...

Oh, and what if I switch the second and third notes so it goes up to G then down to D? Mind boggling!

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

How music speaks to us

A friend recently shared this TED talk with me and I think it's definitely worth passing along. Benjamin Zander gives a very powerful demonstration of how music speaks.




Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

Music as truth

I had a few experiences this evening that got my brain going back over the relationship between music and truth. (Yes, this is going to be another more philosophical/spiritual post rather than a technical one.) This is something I've thought about a great deal throughout my life. The relationship between music and truth is also something I haven't payed much attention to for the past couple of years. More on this soon... The recent experiences that stirred up my thinking anew were these:

1 - Listening to three a cappella songs by Ravel that I'd sung in choir while I was in grad school and hadn't listened to for several years. One in particular, Three Birds Of Paradise (translated), moved me almost to tears while sitting on the bus. It did that to me 15 years ago even after countless rehearsals. There's a truth and a tenderness in that piece, regardless of who's singing it or where/when I'm listening to it, that transcends time in my own life.

2 - Having dinner and playing board games with two old friends, one of whom is experiencing the rather slow loss of his sister to cancer. His ideas about life and reality have often been found challenging by many who meet him. Tonight, they had the common element of "daring," but playfully and engagingly, even happily so.

3 - Reading a great article about "left" versus "right" in the political climate and what this editor believes journalism should be aiming for. The article, for me, reached beyond extremes and compromises. It spoke of reality in a dynamic and ultimately undefinable way that we rarely find in "news" reporting.

That's the stage. There's obviously far more to it than that, but there are the more immediate influences. Those are the things that I've been paying attention to tonight.

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My general thought is this - Music is a language. It's a way of communicating. We can communicate many things with one another - concepts, desires, images, feelings, realizations, formulas, regrets, beliefs... We use spoken language so regularly and for so many things that I wonder if many of us give pause to consider what we're trying to communicate at all when we speak. I wonder how often most of us pay attention to what's being said when we think we're listening.

Music is a language. It's a way of communicating. It's a LESS COMMON (I'm shouting...) way of communicating that speaking or writing. That doesn't make it less effective or more important. It DOES make it less familiar. That means we pay more attention. We tend to pay less attention to what is familiar and more attention to what is less familiar.

We tend to pay more attention to music whether "speaking" or listening. When we're paying closer attention to what we say and to what we're listening to, we're more likely to communicate something that is a deeper truth and we're more likely to hear that truth. If you're among those who create music, take a moment to consider the truth that you're speaking. If you're more a listener than a player, take a moment to think about what you're listening to. Are you really listening? What is the music telling you?

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

Why the guitar is like a lover

So far, my posts have been primarily about the technical and conceptual aspects of playing guitar. This evening, I'm going to depart from that and touch on the spiritual, and to some extent, the emotional side. Playing guitar is an unending ritual of courtship. Get used to it!...

Desire - We all come to the instrument because we want something from it. It's doubtful, in many cases, that we have much of an idea as to WHAT we want, but we want something. It seems to magically hold some promise for us that we eventually give in to. It's this desire that fuels our relationship with the guitar.

Flirting - Most people don't get past this. They pick up the guitar and play with it when the mood strikes them. They flirt with the guitar without giving much consideration to what lies inside. What makes it tick. What makes MUSIC tick. Those who do look closer find a good deal more.

Presence - "Being there" is what the guitar wants. It wants to know that you're listening, that you're focused. Being attentive to the little details of how we move and how the guitar behaves are the very definition of the path on which we tread every day.

Honesty - The guitar is like a mirror in this way. When we're dishonest with it, it lets us know. Haven't practiced in a couple of days? Feeling disengaged? Don't know what to say? Are you frustrated? The guitar will reflect that with the most pure sincerity. If you're dishonest when you pick up the guitar, you won't like what you hear. Be sincere. If you're honest about where you're at in every way, you'll feel it.

Dedication - Time and effort are a necessity in order to play guitar. There are times when giving those things are not what we have in mind and we have to deal with that. Practicing is something we need to learn and practice! We all reach a place where we have to dig our heels in sometimes. We learn that "doing now" is an investment.

Humility - The guitar doesn't respond to demands. If any of us are unfortunate enough to persist in insisting on getting something we want from the guitar, we meet resistance of some kind or another - tendonitis, despair, sloppy playing, gibberish, bad tone... The guitar is really here to teach us about ourselves. We learn to approach it as something to listen to and learn from. This has a lot to do with the practice of honesty and dedication, which lead to:

Altruism - Somewhere along this path, we begin to realize that the guitar really only responds to one thing - what we give to it and give willingly. What we want from it becomes inconsequential as we begin the courting ritual anew every day.

The shredder chimes in

German Shauss commented on my previous post and was kind enough to take a couple of photos demonstrating his own thumb position. Compare these to the photos in my previous post, The Most Common Bad Habit And Why

Here's what German has to say:

"I did grow up playing and studying classical guitar before I got an electric guitar at 14. I keep my thumb behind the neck but sideways, this enables my wrist to stay straight even when I wear my guitar low. It's very comfy on your hands and tendons as you don't overbend the wrist. Also since I don't use it as an opposing pressure force I don't fret so hard and can play less cramped and very fluid."

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

left hand

I posted a couple of weeks ago regarding left hand technique with an emphasis on guitar players who have classical training. Here is a link to a friend of mine from the shredder world who has unbelievably good technique. Take notice of his thumb in most of the photos.

German Shauss

Play on,

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

an introduction to chord scales

This is an idea that can be applied to absolutely any non-diatonic chord. Understanding this is crucial if you want to play over changes that aren't just I vi VI (ii) V all day long. What do you do when you encounter a modal interchange chord or a secondary dominant or something else??

The most common thing guitar players do is to play a pentatonic scale that's based on that chord. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The reason for that is that our ears want to hear notes from the key that we're in. When a non-diatonic chord shows up, we're thrown for a loop. (That's what those chords are supposed to do.) Something is "out," but we still want to hear something that has relevance to the key.

Here's an example of where a pentatonic scale doesn't really work, why, and how to deal with it. A7 shows up in a tune that's in C.

A7 introduces a new note which is C#. If we play an A7 pentatonic scale over it, we also introduce F#, which is another note that isn't in the key of C. Sure, it's comfortable to play, but it's a note that doesn't fit in. There are many good reasons to play notes that don't fit in, but those notes should be chosen for musical and emotional impact, NOT simply because the pentatonic scale is easy to play on guitar.

So how do you "know" what to play?? The equation is simple. The notes of the chord are most important. The notes from the key that you're in should be used to fill in the scale. In other words, the chord will give you the root, 3rd, and 5th, (and 7th in many cases) of your scale. The key you're in should be used to inform what other notes you use.

Here, we find a scale that conflicts with the pentatonic scale. The pentatonic scale has a natural 6. The scale that we "want" to hear over V/ii has a b6. The pentatonic scale will clearly pull us further away from our key than the chord really intended.

There are countless ways in which this approach to generating scales can be applied. Some of those will create surprising results. Play around with it in your own writing and improvising. Listen to how the new scale behaves once you're comfortable using it.

Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher

the power of pentatonics

Rather than write about the way people universally identify with the pentatonic scale, I'll let someone who knows a lot about keeping music fun illustrate:



Be well,
Brant Grieshaber - guitarist
Guitar Teacher">

Listen, Imitate, and Own

This is a basic formula for acquiring new skills. Listen, imitate, and own. As younger musicians, we do this almost automatically. We pick up on what we like, we try to do it ourselves, and then we try to make something new out of it. As we mature, we find these simples things more difficult in spite of the fact that they're the most basic things we NEED to do to keep growing and improving.

Listen - Open yourself to what you're hearing. Like it. Don't like it. Allow yourself to be moved by what other people play. Music conveys emotion. Feel what the music you're "hearing" says to you. Let it in, whether you like it or not. Listen to the music. Don't just hear it. Listen to it.

Imitate - Try to reproduce what you like. When the music you're listening to makes you feel good, pay attention. If you're really listening, that part is easy. Try to imitate it. It doesn't matter what you get "right" or what you don't. Pick up your guitar and try to do what you're listening to. Do it slowly enough to capture the essence, but try to imitate all that you're listening to - the notes, the rhythm, the articulation, the dynamics. Imitate all of it.

Own - This assumes that you've done the first two things. Listen to what you're hearing. Imitate it as accurately as you can. Then you need to try to do something with that. Play it in different keys. Try different fingerings. Write your own melody that captures something of what you've Listened to and Imitated. Use a phrase when you're improvising. Own the music.

Do this and you're on the fast path to being a better musician.

Improvisation, Creativity, and the Brain

I just finished watching a fascinating TED talk about how the brain behaves during improvisation.

The most common bad habit and why

There is one Very Bad Habit that afflicts the vast majority of guitar players, excluding many or most of those who started with classical training. It's a habit that creates tremendous roadblocks in speed and agility, which are the most common things that my more advanced students want to address. This nasty culprit is the location of the left thumb. Unfortunately, correcting this bad habit is not a simple process for one reason - poor thumb placement is a crutch for avoiding several other technical issues.

First, let's look at where the thumb SHOULD be placed and why. The left hand thumb should be at or BELOW the middle of the neck well over 90% of the time. Ironically, you'll probably see 90% of guitar players with their thumb above the middle of the neck or over the top of it 90% of the time. I'll come to why that is shortly.

What is achieved by placing the thumb lower?

In on sentence, it's the cornerstone for excellent left hand technique. More specifically, here are a few of the benefits:

•It brings the pinky, which is your weakest and shortest finger, much closer to the strings. The pinky, theoretically, adds 33% to what your other three fingers can do without it. That's quite a bit.

•It allows you to curl your fingers and get them on their tips, which gives much better control over intonation and vibrato and makes it easier to play clean chords.

•It puts your wrist in a more natural position, greatly reducing the possibility of tendonitis or other injury in the left hand.

•It facilitates stronger ligado (hammer-ons and pull-offs) with more efficient movement.

•It significantly increases mobility and range of motion for all fingers.

•It puts your hand where it needs to be for playing barre chords, which means more economical motion when getting into and out of them.

Why This Bad Habit Is So Common

The origin lies in the first time a person picks up the guitar, which is part of why it's so difficult to correct. Most guitar players pick up the guitar and either rest it on their leg or put on a strap that's far too long. The guitar wobbles all over the place and instinct kicks in - they grab the neck. Our hands are built first and foremost for grabbing things. They've been doing it for millennia and they do it well and without much thought.

You may not remember, but you had to be taught to hold a pencil. It was probably a pretty hard thing to learn at first, but it makes writing much easier. Holding the guitar correctly is similar. It takes focus and time, but it really pays off.

Another origin is that our fingers are just not strong enough to play guitar when we start. Grabbing the neck allows people to use their hand to compensate for the weakness of their fingers.

Other reasons for this have to do with compensating for poor right hand technique.

1 - Lack of accuracy. Strumming the right strings and only the right strings is hard. It takes a lot of practice. To get around this, the thumb is often used to mute the lower strings when playing chords. With good right hand technique, this isn't necessary.

2 - String noise. Bending strings and various other things that the left hand may do can create unwanted string noise. The thumb is often used once again to dampen strings. Good right hand technique involves using the palm and fingers to control which strings are allowed to ring.

How To Correct For This

Based on the things that contribute to poor positioning of the left thumb, there are a few basic things to keep in mind when you're learning to improve your left hand technique. I'll explore each of these in greater depth in future blog posts.

•Hold or wear the guitar in such a way that it's stable without the use of your left hand.

•Do exercises to develop finger strength in the left hand.

•Work on the accuracy of your right hand.

•Use your right hand to control string noise.

•Remember that your fingers on your left hand are going to have to relearn where things are because your hand is in a different position and that this is going to take some getting used to!