Here is an outline of the syllabus that you will be studying with me. As with all individual tuition, this is flexible, we can alter it as needed, I’ve put it here so you can get some idea of what we will be looking at. (Cue maniacal laughter, heavily reverberated, against the backdrop of a vaguely gothic, eastern European castle in silhouette).
Basics.
This where you learn the simple stuff, basic chords and simple riffs. Strumming, picking and other techniques will be covered too, as will some simple songs. If you’re a beginner, this is where we will start. I often record custom made backing tracks for you to practice with, while you watch, so you can really see how the riff is played slowly, enabling you to replicate the exercise at home.
Blues.
The blues is vital. Its influence is all pervasive in modern music. Some people make the mistake of thinking of the blues as music by crusty old geezers (sitting in a field), for crusty old geezers in the next field over and being of no relevance to today’s bands. I can show an unbroken, track by track chain from some crusty old geezer (in a field) from 1920 to many modern bands you probably listen to today. We will look at the blues scale initially, it’s unlikely you can bring me a track that it doesn’t fit over. We will look at how to play it in all keys, and at all frets so that you are totally comfortable using it for solos or fills, getting you out of your same tired old shape and riffs. We will look at cliché riffs, this is very important because blues is about a shared vocabulary, you need to speak the same language. Then we are going to look at linking the scale to your ear so that when you hear a riff, either in your imagination or from your physical ear, you will know what it is and where to find it.
The 12 bar blues is a common musical vehicle, often used as a musical handshake between musicians and it’s also the basis for millions of songs, learn this, and its variations, and instantly your musical life gets simpler. We are going to look at the 4 different types of blues and get you ready, if you fancy it, for your first blues jam session. You will know how to provide tasteful rhythm and lead for the 4 types of blues, and not to merely survive the 12 bar but to actually take liberties with it and be creative, to actually have choice, and contribute.
If you are a bit of a blues geek we can start to analyse the style of players you like and amalgamate their playing into yours. The bit I find the most interesting is where we look at how we mix major and minor in our blues solos, using notes from the tritone and the major pentatonic, using target tones, and finally abandoning the prison of set scale shapes and play only what we want to, thoroughly exploiting my unique blues major/minor spectrum technique. The physical side of playing will also be addressed, we will be looking at ideas for scale practice to really get those fingers moving freely.
Funk/soul.
This is all about taste, dexterity and rhythmic freedom, this will show you how to provide a tasteful and economic rhythm to any track. Guitarists spend most of their time playing rhythm so being able to take a simple chord progression and turn it into something special, something greater than the sum of its parts, is an essential skill. We will look at loads of old Motown funk and soul tunes and pull them apart and look at our rhythmic options, and also at the chord progressions used, as these tunes were written at an evolutionary time and the chord changes still reverberate through tunes we listen to today.
The clash between major and minor is a vital aspect to carry over from the blues and you will recognise it as a vital ingredient. Tight tasteful strumming will be addressed, say good bye to huge barre chords whizzing up and down the neck, so long a staple of punk bands. We will look at how to fit our playing into the tight frequency slots offered by the ‘wall of sound’ common in the genre. Many guitarists consider it acceptable to just busk busily along on a barre chord, usually partnered with a cheeky smile, and consider that to be rhythm guitar, they are sadly mistaken. It is essential to start with an empty bar and have the taste and ability to only add what is needed and no more, to really nail the groove. We will look in depth at the major pentatonic scale and learn to play it with the same dexterity as we did with the blues scale. We will look at its application within the genre, playing thirds and sixths on non adjacent strings (the soul scale as it’s often known) and how we can use it to ornament simple chord progressions with tasteful rhythm fills, Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Little Wing’ leaps to mind as being the pinnacle of the style for me. My absolute favourite bit is the skank section, I have to confess I’m a total skanker. You will recognise this style from many tracks from the period, more modern proponents of the style would be Tom Morello on the verse section of ‘Wake Up’ and John Frusciante on ‘Can’t Stop’.
Rock/Metal.
In this module we will take what we learnt in the blues section and pump some steroids into it. More attention will be paid to speed and accuracy and we will work toward getting your riffs really flowing up and down the neck, using position shifts, one string playing, left hand techniques, legato, sweep picking, tapping and bends etc. On the rhythm side we will be looking at simple root 5th power chords, which are at the heart of most rock guitar, and seeing how we can take them to the next level with other intervals and inversions, and mixing in riffs to give you a truly modern rock/metal rhythm ability in the style of Metallica, AC/DC, Machine Head etc. An understanding of modes and non diatonic scales will be integrated from the theory module, so you will know how to surround your chord progressions with single note lines or pedal tones. Detailed attention will be paid to the evolution of modern rock, as it emerged from the blues via Led Zep, Deep Purple etc, then mutated into the NWOBHM via bands like Iron Maiden etc then fractured into different styles, Thrash, Death etc via Metallica etc. To be a truly rounded player you need to have one foot in the past and both eyes on the future, music really is built on what has gone before, ignore it at your peril.
Theory.
I can offer you just short of a legally binding guarantee right now that we will not be sitting there poring over dusty manuscripts. Neither will I flip open one of those horrendous books (Whittaker‘s Chord And Scale Compendium: Every chord and scale you need to know), what we will look at is how simple it is write the book your self. You may have seen web pages like this, if you’re anything like me, your eyelids begin to droop as soon as you see it, scroll down all the way and it starts to look like one of those colour blindness tests they made you look at in primary school. If you are trying to learn information in this manner it really is just like trying to memorise the phone book, you need to understand why these shapes are the way they are then they just make sense because they are based on simple principles that you already know.
We will start off with the basics, the chromatic scale and the major scale, these scales are essential because everything we will subsequently look at will be described by its relationship to them. We will then look at how to use the major scale to generate its native chords, knowing what chords are native to a key is so useful because it helps you write songs, to improvise, to recognise chord progressions by ear and to know what works instantly. We will then look at the modes and their native chords, how to clash them using modal friction, vital in today’s tunes, and how all this is used in modern music. We will be analysing hundreds of tunes and after a while you will start to see that music is not as difficult to understand as it initially appeared, what we will be doing is creating pigeon holes into which you will be able to slot tunes you hear, once you realise that a tune is like something you have already played it is much easier to tackle. Who would guess that ‘Hotel California’, ‘Stairway To Heaven’, ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ and ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ are all pretty much identical? I could have made that list a lot longer. Have a look at this brilliant video, all the tunes are one chord progression, understanding why is so useful. After that, we can look at chord construction, altering and extending our chords beyond the octave. Exotic scales are sometimes worth a look too.
Information Organisation.
Not a bizarre Orwellian bureaucratic department, this is where we develop a system of organising information on the fretboard using the CAGED chords. Every scale chord and arpeggio flows from this simple system. Learn this and you will never have to refer to the aforementioned dreadful book again, you will be able to write the book. It will show you the relationship between the note you are playing and any tonal centre, you will be able to play any new scale all over the fretboard almost instantly. Any strange chord can be worked out without looking it up.
Ear Training.
Connecting your ear to the fretboard is vital, if you can’t play what you hear you really are engaged only in fretboard aerobics, not music. Being able to name the intervals in the major scale is a good grounding, we will work on exercises to get this happening then we will move on to being able to name cliché chord progressions from the major key and listening for them in real music. Then we can tackle the modal chord progressions in the same way followed by the rule breakers.
Focused Aggressive Practice .
Probably the most important module because knowing how to practice effectively is vital, if you don’t understand how to do this, you could be wasting 90% of your practice time. In these days of long work hours, the time left to practice can be limited so making sure you apply the principles of focused aggressive practice is more important than ever, I’ll show you some of my techniques for practice, but more importantly, we will try to build in you an understanding of the philosophy of focused aggressive practice, once you have this you will see that you can make a lot of progress quite quickly.
Instrument rapport.
This is where we tackle your physical relationship with the guitar. Looking at good players it always looks like they are at one with their guitar, this is a quality you need too. This section will cover many areas, not least how to hold the guitar, how to hold the pick, hand position, string muffling etc.
Analysis and Integration.
A good teacher should eventually make himself redundant and it’s my intent to give you the skills to listen to a new tune, understand it in the context of everything we have spoken about, then be able to choose the right notes to play, or to omit, all in a fraction of a second hopefully. Everything you have studied is brought to bear on the tune in question.
Recording sessions.
This is a horror that I like to inflict on my students regularly, it’s my theory that when you are playing, only a small proportion, if any, of your critical faculties are left to listen to how you sound. I know for myself it takes about 90% of my brain to play guitar, 8% for housekeeping (Balance, breathing etc) so that doesn’t leave much for critical listening. Due to concentration, I have had students dribble during lessons and have beads of sweat drip from the tips of their noses! When you listen back to what you have just recorded, free of the demands of actually playing, you can listen more effectively, and as a result, you hear more problems, it took me ten years before I could stand to hear a recording of myself. Hearing how your contribution fits into the overall soundscape is a vital lesson, way more important than just ramming your latest riff across the track. We will look at track layering and how to break chords down into multiple textures and layers then re combine them into one recording.
Creative use of effects.
When you buy those multiFx units from guitar shops, what they don’t tell you is that most of the sounds in it are designed to sound good in noisy guitar shops, and are totally useless for real recording and playing. We will look at how to make your effects creative and subtle.
Software.
I use Cubase, Ableton Live and Garage Band, all on the Mac. When I started recording myself it revolutionised my practice, so if you need a jumpstart on any of these software packages, I can help you with that too.
Summary.
I’ve presented these modules separately here. In reality they are studied concurrently, as and where we see fit. It’s always good to skip about. The modules all overlap considerably. Eventually they will all meld into one for you.
‘I’d rather be dead than singing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m forty-five.’
-Mick Jagger
