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Primer on Guitar Effects

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Chad Crawford, PMI Blues Guitar Instructor

So you have an electric guitar now and maybe a small starter amp and you are starting to become aware of all these little extra boxes that some guitar players use. What is all this stuff? What does it do, and do you need it? Well, this could be a huge subject but I am going to cover only the basics. Once you understand the basics you can do a little more research on your own to decide what, if any, effects that you may wish to incorporate in your preferred tone. First, a little background information …

Definitions

Tone – At the root of all discussion of guitars, amp, and effects, is one core concept: Tone. You will see this term in all manner of advertisements for guitars, amps, and equipment, and you will hear it discussed and even argued among musicians. What does it mean? It has somewhat of a subtle meaning that will be hard to understand well until you develop a little skill on the guitar and begin to develop your discernment for sound quality. For the moment let’s try to understand it this way. Tone refers to the overall sound quality of your instrument. I do not mean quality in the sense of good or not so good, but rather quality in the sense of characteristics. For example you might say that wood has certain qualities and metal has certain qualities. Likewise, sound has different qualities and these qualities vary among different guitars, amps, and effects, and various combinations of the above. As you develop as a musician you will naturally gravitate toward a certain preferred quality of sound from your instrument. Musicians refer to this quality of sound as tone.

Pedal – a floor standing effect device usually actuated by a foot switch, leaving the rest of you free to work your guitar magic. Guitarists often install pedals in a Pedal Board, which is simply a suitcase specifically designed for mounting guitar pedals and associated wiring.

Rack Mount – the effect circuitry does not care if it is mounted in the floor, wall, ceiling, amp, or wherever you want. So some effects come in a convenient box that is designed to mount into a specific type of instrument electronics travel cabinet (rack). This allows for manipulation of the parameters of the effect without having to kneel to the floor. Rack effects are also more typically able to be controlled via “midi”, which allows for advance programming of various combinations of effects such that one can have preset effects combinations for each song, readily accessible either by foot control or else remotely by the sound engineer at the control board. Rack effects tend to be more sophisticated than their floor pedal counterparts.

Sensitivity – the ability of the guitar to sound out clear notes with minimal finger pressure and string striking power. This will depend largely on the guitar and amp, but some effects also affect sensitivity. Generally, more is better.

Sustain – the ability of the guitar to continue sounding out a note after it has been plucked. As with sensitivity, this will also depend largely on the guitar and amp. Some effects will affect sustain and in fact some effects are specifically to enhance sustain. As with sensitivity, more is generally better.

Utilities:

Some devices referred to as “effects” are not really so much effects but rather are more like utilities. This will make more sense as we discuss specific devices. So let’s dive into specific effects now. Keep in mind we are speaking in general terms. There are literally thousands of effect devices on the market with various combinations and qualities of various kinds of utilities and tone alterations. We will highlight the basic concepts here.

Noise Suppressor or Noise Gate – the purpose of a Noise Gate is not to alter tone but rather to remove noise, as the name implies. If you have had some opportunity to play around with your guitar and amp you may have noticed a hum from your amp when you are not playing the guitar. The purpose of the Noise Gate is to remove that hum or at least reduce it to a very low level. If you are new to guitar and mostly playing at bedroom volumes then the hum may not bother you so much.  As your ear for music develops and you begin to gravitate toward higher volumes for live group performance, the hum will grow louder and more annoying! Then you will want a Noise Gate.

Volume – more of a utility than an effect, although you can use a volume pedal prior to the pre-amp to create a keyboard-like tone from your guitar (a.k.a swell). The main purpose, however, is to control the guitar volume without having to use your hands to manipulate knobs.

Tuner – an electronic device that provides a tuning reference for you to measure your guitar’s tuning against. It allows for very rapid and accurate tuning.

General Purpose Effects:

Echo – May also be called Reverb. This is a very common effect and many modern amps will have this effect built in. The echo or reverb effect is similar to the natural phenomenon of echo. It works like this: you play a note on your guitar. The echo processor will expand that as if you played it in a large room or cavern. This effect adds fullness to your tone, making it sound more natural and thick. Of course you can dial it in to an extreme that does not sound natural at all.

Delay – similar to echo, but delay is a more specific, narrow reproduction of the note you just plucked. Unlike natural echo, you control the volume level and timing of repeats, as well as the decay (attenuation level or loss of volume level) of the repeat notes. As with echo, this effect adds fullness to your tone, making it sound more natural and thick. And again you can dial it in to an extreme that does not sound natural at all.

Expression – this effect is often referred to as Wah, Wah Wah, or Crybaby. It is typically a pedal that you oscillate with your foot to move an internal tone control through a range from very pronounced high/mids to very diminished high/mids. It will also alter your overall tone. You may also see it in the form of a device that automatically cycles throughout a preset tone range without oscillating foot pedal input.

Distortion – Distortion is the characteristic electronic fuzz sound associated with electric guitars. There are different levels of distortion and different types of distortion that yield different overall guitar tones. Most modern amps will include a distortion effect by design, often referred to as Drive, Overdrive, or Gain. Additionally, you can usually achieve a certain natural distortion by over powering your amp speaker(s) at high volume levels. A distortion pedal can enhance tone, sensitivity, and sustain at lower volume levels. Choosing a distortion pedal can get complicated because this is very much a matter of personal preference. Also, the different types and degrees of distortion have trade names, such as crunch (mild distortion), overdrive (substantial distortion), and fuzz (extreme distortion). Beyond this, the brand names of distortion pedals, like the popular Tube Screamer, may not indicate distortion at all. You will often see distortion pedals referred to as a Stomp Box.

Compressor – the purpose of a compressor is to raise low volume signals and suppress high volume signals. The intent is to level out the harshness of extreme variation in volume levels. Because it raises the power level of lower volume or weaker signals, it will also enhance sustain.

Modulation – this effect comes in a variety of forms and goes by different trade names even though it is all the same underlying effect. You may see it identified as Flange, Chorus, Phaser, Rotary Horn, Tremolo, or Uni-Vibe. The basic idea is to impose a varying frequency signal over your guitar signal, creating a wobbling sound. As with other effects, you control the rate and degree of the wobbling. The various names indicate different types or tonal qualities of the effect.

Many vendors have floor controllers or rack-mount controllers that incorporate some or all of these effects and more all in one box, such as the POD products by Line6.

Now that you know the terminology, you may be wishing you had some sounds to associate with these names. You can easily find demonstrations on various vendor sites such as MusiciansFriend or Sweetwater, or video hosting sites such as YouTube. Alternatively, if you’re willing to invest around a hundred twenty dollars for an entry level converter box (interface) such as the Focusrite Scarlett solo, along with another hundred for an entry level guitar simulator program such as Amplitube or Bias FX, then you can experiment with a variety of guitar effects with a simple click of the mouse.

Hardware or software, experiment and enjoy!

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Nature vs. Nurture: Overcoming Fatal Guitar Technique Flaws

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By Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor

After a couple of decades of teaching guitar and interacting with other teachers and many clients, I can make a number of predictions on what any aspiring guitarist will struggle with and how the various responses to these stumbling blocks will either help or hinder progress.  The guitar is a challenging instrument, and there are any number of areas where one might encounter a temporary roadblock. Of these typical areas, there is one that stands out above all others as the number one barrier to progress: not following the instructions.

Allow me to clarify this concept since the phrase alone may seem too broad and actually contrary to your experience. I doubt you have ever openly refused to learn a particular chord, for example, or a basic scale pattern. This is not the sort of thing I mean when I suggest that a significant percentage of guitar students often stumble in implementing course recommendations. It is not a matter of people intentionally side-stepping the instructions. Rather it is that certain aspects of optimum physical technique run contrary to our instincts. Most students tackling a challenge in physical technique tend to unconsciously default back to instincts rather than consistently apply good technique recommendations. For the record, I am guilty of this as much as anyone, although I have improved significantly over the years in applying what the guitarist community has found to be the most effective technique development methods. 

Now let me narrow this down to the specifics items that I see over and over. If any of these seem to apply to you, keep in mind that I am not writing about any specific person or experience, but rather my collective experience as a guitar student and teacher. I assure you that although some of these may apply to you, they are universal themes in the guitar community, so don’t feel like I’m singling you out to give you a hard time!

  1. Tickle the strings rather than tackle them.
  2. For playing chord rhythms, use a wide, fast, and light-contact pick stroke.
  3. For playing individual notes or two-string intervals (fifth chords, double stops) keep the pick hand palm turned into the guitar so that the pick moves parallel to the plane of the strings with a mere flick of the wrist.
  4. Apply no more pressure to the strings/frets than necessary to sound out a clear note.
  5. Avoid grasping the guitar neck with the palm and thumb as if it were a baseball bat.
  6. Use your elbow to change the working range of your pick – not your wrist or your shoulder.
  7. When changing to an upcoming chord, avoid chopping off the last beat of the previous chord by releasing pressure too early.
  8. Unless you are practicing certain exercises specifically intended to develop speed, do not practice at a tempo faster than you can play with good note articulation and two-hand synchronization.
  9. When learning a new rhythm pattern, go slow and consciously count the beats and divisions of the beats, rather than trying to play the rhythm by “feel”. Once you have conscious mastery of the pattern only then should you work on keeping time by feel. 

If you have taken lessons with me for any length of time then you will know that I teach these things routinely, so you may wonder why I am taking up a Newsletter column with this routine lesson fare. There is a reason I am emphasizing these things:  between knowing good technique and doing good technique, there is a subconscious barrier that we all struggle with: instinct. As your teacher, one of the most significant challenges I face in helping you develop your skills is your own instincts. Your basic instincts tend toward moving the fingers as a unit, favoring the index finger, using much more strength than is necessary, and handling the pick as if it is a plow. Your secondary instinct is to do just the opposite of this. For example, when attempting to play scales for the first time, you will note that your fingers want to stay together and mute the string you are trying to pick, so you will then pull your other fingers way back from the fretboard. Then you have to slam the next finger down like a dive bomber in order to stay in time on the next note. This causes subtle delays that cap your top speed at limits far below your potential.

 The first step in conquering this barrier is to be aware of these instinctive actions and over-reactions, so that you can be ready to spot them and counter with deliberate focused repetition of a balanced, optimum technique method that cooperates as far as possible with your natural physiology.  Then, apply focused attention to repetitions of good technique. Repetition of good technique results in habits, such that good technique becomes increasingly automatic, enabling to you to move between chords and notes accurately with little conscious effort.

Here is where the process breaks down: the focused repetition of good technique, and specifically the focus aspect. Your hands will constantly try to resort back to instinctive positions and motions, even though your conscious mind is well aware of these issues. You must pay close attention to these details of technique when you practice. This can be tedious at times, but the pay off is more than worth the effort!

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Automating Technique

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By Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instrcutor

Automaticness does not come automatically. Allow me to explain.

Have you ever had the experience of freezing in front of an audience, whether it be one or two friends or an auditorium? Maybe it was a piece that you had practiced diligently for hours and thought you had it sorted out, but when the critical moment came your hands just wouldn’t deliver. If you have been playing guitar for any length of time then you have certainly suffered such an embarrassing, frustrating moment. Why does this happen?

Your gut response might be something along the lines of “stage fright”. Is that really the final answer? Let’s consider this scenario … you are thrust on stage in front of ten thousand spectators and asked to simply walk to the other side of the stage. Could you do it? Of course! So what happened to stage fright? Well, if you are not accustomed to withstanding the observation of thousands of people then you may indeed experience a high level of discomfort and even some symptoms of mild illness, such as upset stomach and sweating. However, odds are high that you could get to the other side of the stage without anyone even suspecting that you were the least bit out of sorts.

So you see … when you know how to do a thing so well that you can do it automatically, you will be able to do it well even under duress. Automaticness.

This applies to making music in the same way it applies to walking, and the stages of development are similar. You start by crawling, then by holding onto the couch while you experiment with standing. Next you try a few steps, next thing you know your Mom is yelling at you for running through the house, followed by your Coach yelling at you for not running fast enough or long enough. By that stage the mere act of walking is long since a given.

So how do we develop automaticness in guitar technique? The same way we do with walking. We start with simple chords and pieces of scales and arpeggios and then we progressively work our way up to more complex tasks, with an occasional bloody knee so to speak. For the guitar player this means beginning with simple songs played very slowly and deliberately, and then chords, scales, and arpeggios, all with slow and deliberate repetition of efficient fingerings along with a metronome until they become automatic. That takes more than two weeks or two months. Speed will grow naturally out of good technique perfected at much slower speeds. There is a time and method to develop speed, but it is pointless to do so until achieving a foundational level of automaticness in each of these core skills.

When it comes to music many simply want to go straight to running track without first having held on to the couch to experiment with standing. The results are just as predictable … perpetual bloody knees. I cannot count the times that I have asked a student to SLOW DOWN with a scale exercise and focus on note articulation only to have them continue hacking away at speeds beyond their capability, and thereby  ensuring a reduced rate of progress.  If you are one of my students reading this then you are probably thinking I am talking about you. I may be, but not you specifically … I have hardly seen a guitar player that did not go through this stage, including myself.

This is somewhat analogous to the lifeguard who waits until the drowning swimmer has given up before rendering aid, since it is impossible to help while the panicked swimmer is still flailing about. There is not much I can do for determined scale hackers until they reach a certain point near resignation. Then comes that moment that I eagerly wait for with every student … that moment when I finally observe determined focus on accurate articulation and timing of each note within a scale. This is when I know I am about to observe a breakthrough to the great satisfaction of myself and my client.

So here is the point … slow down, focus on the details, and then bare down on the basics to the point of automaticness. This is going to involve some tedious focused repetition with a metronome, but it will pay handsome dividends over the long haul in the forms of instant chord changes and ripping through scales as easy as breathing. It is well worth the short term effort to gain these long term benefits.

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Can I Help You? – Part II

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By PMI Guitar Instructor Chad Crawford

In part I of this two-part series we considered some generalities of how an aspiring musician’s overall attitudes about work and people affect musical accomplishment. In this part we will consider how attitude more specifically affects the technical details of cultivating music skills.

Review from Part I … (hint – I am reviewing this section because it is very important! Scroll down to view Part I)

The Singular Importance of Attitude

Probably the single most important thing I have learned in my decades of musical endeavor is that music is not just about technical matters pertaining to managing the fingers or voice effectively. Rather, it is mostly a matter of cultivating the mind, and that means among other things that a person’s overall attitude about life, work, and people is going to have a great deal of impact on his or her accomplishment as a musician. As with any “rule” there will certainly be notable exceptions, but they will be notable because they are exceptions. Mastery of things technical is certainly very important, but the foundation of it all is mental attitude. Can I help you? Well … it depends very much on your attitude. That terminology is often used in a way to imply contempt, as in “He has an attitude!” That’s not the way I am using it here. I don’t say it with any kind of judgmental intent. It is just an objective fact. Let’s clarify by considering some examples of how attitude effects musical results.

Now, on to Part II proper …

Give Me the Giggles! – I haveobserved many instances, particularly with kids and their parents, ofmusic students or prospects who approach learning music purely as entertainment, similar to sports. Professional athletes must of course work hard for many years to achieve a world class level of performance. However, much of the fun of sports for kids is simply running around excitedly on a field or court. A coach can train a kid in the basic rudiments of a sport within minutes and the kids can begin to enjoy the fundamental physical activity of the sport immediately, even if they are actually comically terrible at it in the beginning. 

This is not so with music. While making music can and should ultimately be a very satisfying experience, reaching this level of musicianship is a process more along the lines of learning math, science, or language. No one expects to start a science class and be a functioning research scientist before completing the first class. For whatever reason, many people who have an interest in music lessons, and this is the worst with guitar in particular, seem to have some idea that it is something along the lines of an alternative to sports or watching TV, something that is purely a form of entertainment. I suppose this has something to do with so much of the advertising for guitar training that appeals to the quick fix – click here, or come take my lessons, and you will be playing your favorite songs immediately!

Let me be clear here that I am not suggesting it isn’t possible to learn to play some great music without submitting to twelve years of education. That would be one extreme. I am addressing the other extreme, where the prospect or client feels that the whole process should be an experience similar to sports – giggles out of the gate, with the real work required only for the elite. Well, it isn’t. For a typical hobbyist level musician with a good work ethic and a good teacher, pursuing fluency in popular music styles, it is going to be a multi-year process to get to a point of functioning predictably and comfortably in a group playing setting such as a band or open jam session. Up until that point, it is going to be like school. Go to class. Do homework. Repeat. When you get through first grade, then you go to second grade. There is no way to jump from day one to diploma, or third grade to eighth grade. It is a process consisting of many small steps, and if anyone is telling you otherwise, be sure to keep an eye on your wallet until you get clear of them!

If you are looking for giggles out of the gate, I can’t help you. If, on the other hand, you are willing to approach learning music as an educational endeavor with great rewards on the far end of some work, then I can help you a great deal!

I Can’t! – Yes you can, if you are willing to persist in an informed approach to working at it. There is no “I can’t”. There is only, “I haven’t yet”. Students of guitar all experience the same struggles with finger control, comprehension, and confusing those two issues. For instance, chord changing exercises can be quite frustrating in the beginning, and many feel that they will never be able to accurately and rapidly place fingers in the correct location fast enough to keep up with the rhythm. This is simply an illusion, arising from unrealistic expectations. Fluent chord changing requires a well-developed muscle memory for each chord, and that means lots of repetition over time. It is a process, and the desired results are inevitable.

Similarly, when I introduce students to the concept of resolving solo phrases to target scale notes, it is universal for students to struggle with tracking the chord changes while also trying to remember finger placements. With the introduction of each new level of complexity as we move through alternate resolving notes and various positions along the fretboard, it is a recurring struggle to get one’s mind and hands around the ability to accurately place the right note at the right time. This does not mean anything is wrong or that you have no talent. It is just something that you have to work at until you have cultivated the totality of it into your thinking, and then it will work.

Let me share with you an example of a common experience I observe in teaching. I was once teaching a teenage a girl who was struggling with her chord changes. She came in for her lesson one week and went through the exercises. She kept fumbling the chords, but I knew she had been working with them long enough to get them right. So we kept going over them with me leading her through a series of steps to get her reservations out of the way and let her muscle memory take over. Toward the end of the class she started playing through the exercises smoothly, to her great amazement and delight. However, what I remember most is the look of surprised understanding on her face when I pointed out to her that she was already able to perform those exercises well when she walked in the door that day. The only thing that was preventing her from peak performance was that her mind was closed to the possibility that she could do them well, and so she had been unconsciously choosing to perform habitually sub-par chord changes in fulfillment of her expectations.   

See how important attitude is? You can literally prevent yourself from doing something that you are in fact presently capable of doing, by convincing yourself that are not able to do it! This is what performance coaches mean when they speak of believing in yourself.  It does not mean some kind of voodoo such that you can wishful think yourself into doing something that you can’t actually do. Rather, it means you choose to be confident in your potential to do a thing, and you cling to that belief tenaciously through the struggles of the building process until the work finally delivers the desired results. It is not magic. You still have to do the work. But you can do the work and still suffer less than desired results due to a self-defeating, “I Can’t!” attitude.

Besides talking yourself out of doing something that you can actually do, an “I can’t!” attitude will also give you an easy escape when faced with some work. It is an unfortunate fact that all of us human beings are inherently lazy, and we will jump on any excuse to avoid work. If you can convince yourself that you can’t, well then there is no point doing all that work, is there? I can’t, so I won’t try, and then I won’t be able, and that will prove that I couldn’t, and then I can watch TV and eat marshmallows instead. See how this works?

Are you inclined toward believing that lying internal voice that whispers, “I can’t!”? Well, if you do give in to that suggestion, then you will choose to make it so, and then I can’t help you. If you will instead choose to believe, “I can!” regardless of the struggles of the moment, then I can help you a great deal!

When Does it End! – I get all manner of people with all kinds of ideas about music coming to me for lessons. I conduct pre-enrollment consultations with all prospects for a number of reasons, one of which is to identify what they may be thinking in regards to how long it takes to learn music. The answer will vary a great deal depending on goals, but some folks have really unrealistic ideas such as a few weeks or a few months. I never let these folks enroll thinking it is going to be a few weeks or months. Some of them do not enroll, either because they think I don’t know what I am talking about, or else they are just not willing to commit a realistic amount of time to it.

Then I have prospects who enroll and get started. Some of them come in with a great attitude driven by a passion for music, and they stay enrolled for multiple years and become potent musicians. Others stay for a few weeks or months until they realize I wasn’t exaggerating about the commitment required, then they give up and quit. Unfortunately those folks are a lost cause before they even start, not because of their inherent potential but rather because of their attitude.

Then there is the mid-range group. They get off to a good start and make rapid progress, but then get bogged down somewhere between six months and a year. They may continue with lessons, but they get stuck at a certain level, often with learning improvisational soloing. This is where the weight of a self-defeating attitude begins to take its toll. They fall into a habitual routine of practicing the same mistakes over and over rather than truly applying intense focus to solving problems, and then they get stuck. It feels to them as if they have reached a limit they can’t pass, then they either resign themselves to current limits, or else give in to frustration and quit.

This is where attitude becomes the critical factor in success. When you reach that point where you feel you are stuck, you can do one of three things. Quit, keep doing what got you stuck, or do something different that delivers better results. I can tell you from much experience that the thing you need to do different is to focus more closely on the details of the specific problem you are having, rather than simply practicing the same mistake over and over and hoping it will resolve itself. I can also tell you from experience that many folks won’t do the extra work most of the time. They will instead either go on repeating the mistake or else give up.

When does it end? When you choose to focus intently on correcting the details, conquering the problem instead of letting it conquer you. If you choose to give up, or try to side-step the work necessary to succeed, then I can’t help you. If you love music enough to commit up front to working at it until you can do it well, then I can help you a great deal!

The Grass is Greener Over There! – Question: “When do I get to stop practicing all the time and just enjoy playing?” Answer: “The instant that you stop thinking in terms that ‘real music’ is limited to stuff that you can’t already do.” Music has been around since the dawn of time. You are not ever going to run out of “stuff that you can’t already do”. If you learned every song that has been played in the history of Western civilization, then you would have just got started with the possibilities. There is always going to be some new hill to climb. You will never get past needing to practice, if for no other reason than to maintain your technique. However, this does not mean that you are not in fact a capable musician. The first time a student plays through my first exercise, they are in fact making real music. Consider that if you know your open position major and minor chords, power chords, and command basic rhythm skills, then you can play literally thousands of popular songs. Maybe tens of thousands. But for some folks, they tend to set the bar of “real music” or “good music” so arbitrarily high that they can’t ever just relax and enjoy what they can already do, even if it is songs that are literally million-sellers.

Here’s the hidden source of this attitude problem: vanity. A lot of aspiring musicians, especially guitarists, are more interested in acclaim than self-expression. I have had prospects at pre-enrollment interviews outright tell me that what they most want from lessons is to impress others with their guitar playing. I don’t enroll these folks if they can’t also express some other more substantial goal, because I know that if this is their sole motivation then they are wasting their time.

There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to move others with music. But there is wanting to reach people through music, and then there is wanting applause for musical accomplishment – two different things. The former is the core of what the phenomenon of music is, the latter is empty egomania. Folks in the former camp will be quite happy to see folks enjoying their simple 12 Bar progressions and Blues phrasing as much as they will enjoy ripping out some Dream Theatre symphonic rock. Those in the latter camp will always experience music as something along the lines of eating burned oatmeal, because they will always be consumed with the feeling that others are not impressed with their technical prowess.

Let’s not go to either extreme. As with all good art, you must achieve pleasing quality, proportion, and symmetry for beautiful results. Of course you need to be in time and on pitch if you wish to make music that is “good” by any reasonably objective criteria, and that means there is some work to be done. The farther you want to go, the more work you have to do. At the same time, if you can’t enjoy the plateaus on the way to the peak, you will probably not be able to keep up enough steam to make it to whatever the peak is for you.

Consider an artist like B.B. King. He did not play technically complicated music, but what he is really great at is expressing himself with his library of simple Blues licks. If you watch him play you can see it on his face quite plainly. People do not go to see B.B. King perform because they want to hear someone rip scales at supersonic speeds. They enjoy B.B. King because they connect with the feeling he is able to convey through his simple music. That is what music is all about, and he is a master at it. Artists like Yngwie Malmsteen need much more technically complex music to fully express themselves, and that is also perfectly valid. What is not valid is to suggest that one is “better” than the other. Those kinds of arguments are a waste of time.

Many widely acclaimed musicians moved millions of people with relatively simple music. Johnny Cash. Kurt Cobain. Bob Dylan. Eric Clapton. Tom Petty. I could go on and on listing names. The point is, as a student of guitar you are not doing yourself any favors by refusing to allow yourself enjoyment of the music that is currently accessible to you. Of course keep striving for that next level, but at the same time give yourself a break and allow yourself to enjoy what you can already do!

Let me clarify that I am not meaning to express contempt for those who are suffering inability to enjoy their music due to vanity. We all suffer from it a bit, myself included. It is a major barrier for many aspiring musicians, and one of my goals as a teacher is to talk people off it because it hinders their realization of musical goals. Indeed, there is a certain level of musicianship we need to achieve before we can do anything more than annoy others with our guitars. Once you reach the level that you can change chords quickly and hold a rhythm through twelve or sixteen bars, get busy making music and enjoying it while you continue climbing toward the next plateau!

Do you find that when you play music you are more involved with what others are thinking of your performance than you are the music itself? If so, and if I can’t persuade you off that approach, then I’m sorry to say that you will never enjoy music enough to persevere, and so I can’t help you. If you will instead recognize that music does not have to be “impressive” to be good, then I can help you a great deal with both simple and sophisticated music!

Show me the Low Road! – We speak of“taking the high road”as a colloquialism for doing the right thing or doing the better thing. The idea is based on the understanding that taking the high road will be harder, but there will be a reward for it at the end of the road, so it will be worth the trouble. This is certainly true in music training. Choosing the low road might be easier in the present moment, but in the long run it is going to lead to frustration, and drag the process out longer than it has to be.

So what does it mean to choose the high road in music training? I will give you an example that illustrates the concept. Every student of guitar reaches a point of wanting to play scales much faster. There is a process for this with predictable, guaranteed results. The process starts with slowing the scales down to very, very slow speeds and working with painstaking attention to detail on perfecting technique. It is very tedious and requires a great deal of sustained mental focus on multiple aspects of technique. Very few actually submit to this part of the process and see it through, but rather try to push through it as quickly as possible. This renders the exercise useless or far less effective than it could be.

I have seen this over and over. A student tells me they want to play faster. I lay out the exercise. I follow up later only to find that they haven’t done it. What would you think if you put a hundred dollar bill on the table and told someone they could have it if they would just pick it up, and they told you they really wanted it bad, but would not reach out and pick it up? This is what students of guitar do with developing speed. They tell me they want to play faster. I tell them in great detail exactly what to do. Then they don’t do it.

Does this mean they don’t really want to play faster? No. What it means is that during the exercises, they repeatedly allow themselves to fall apart over maintaining sustained mental focus. They take the low road.

This sort of thing comes up in numerous ways, anytime there is a decision to be made over doing the harder thing or the easier thing. Another good example … experimenting with new phrasing paths rather than just rehearsing paths you already know. Are you guilty of this? Playing phrases in straight time rather than making a pointed effort to mix up the timing across a phrase. Guilty? I bet you are. I am, although more so in times past than recently.  

There are a hundred ways in any practice session that you can take the low road. I won’t take time to present an exhaustive list here, but generally you probably know if you are doing this. It is very simple to see if you pay attention to it. Are you avoiding the harder thing and doing the easier one instead? If so then you are taking the low road. Though it might make your practice seem less burdensome, it is slowing down your overall progress rate by multiples.

I can help you learn to play guitar even if you insist on taking the low road, but what I can’t do for you is help you achieve the maximum results you are capable of in the shortest possible time. If you want that, then you will have to take the high road, and in that case I can help you a great deal!

Conclusion – I could go on and on with this matter of how attitude translates into results, but as you can see it is already quite a bit longer than my usual articles. Hopefully I have got the point across enough to help you identify ways in which you might be harboring some kind of attitude that is hindering your progress.

Please bear in mind it is not my intent with this article to beat anyone up. It is difficult to speak on the subject of attitude without stepping on some toes, but it is such a critical component of success with music that I feel an ethical obligation to address it, even it makes some folks mad or costs me some clients. If you are one of my active or former clients and feel like I wrote this thinking of you, I assure you I didn’t write any of this article, or part 1, with any one person in mind, except the one illustration with the teenage girl struggling with chord changes. This is all about generalities from my overall experience as a developing musician, and observations as a performer and teacher. If you do feel that any or all of this applies to you personally, well … then it probably does. Don’t give in to “an attitude” about it. Instead, take the high road and use it to identity and eliminate any such hindrances, so you can get on with that which works!

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Out To The Woodshed

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By Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor

In earlier times wayward kids were subject to a form of corrective discipline referred to as “woodshedding”. The parent would take the straying kid out to the woodshed for private application of a paddle or belt to the straying kid’s hind quarters. The practice was universal such that over time the term “woodshedding” came to be used as a colloquialism to refer to all manner of discipline, including the self-discipline involved in mastering a skill through practice. Musicians picked up the term to refer to extended sessions of private practice – sometimes literally in a woodshed for privacy.  

The woodshed ultimately fell to the wayside of history with the rise of electricity, but the term woodshedding has stuck with musicians as a way to refer to intense efforts toward improvement through private practice. For us guitarists the idea is to get in a place where we can be free from the pressure of others hearing our flaws and mistakes, the distractions of people, phones, televisions, etc., and focus intently on improving our mastery of technique, improvisation, or details of specific songs.

If you read about or watch documentaries about highly acclaimed musicians you can’t miss the importance they place on practice toward achieving their goals. In many cases you will hear stories of spending nights and weekends daily for years to develop their impressive skills.  If you are a hobbyist with limited time to practice you may come to the discouraging conclusion that routine woodshedding is essential to developing satisfying musical skills that you can be proud of sharing with others.

Make no mistake: the more time you spend engaging in effective practice, the better you will get. However, it is quite realistic to expect to achieve a satisfying level of functional musicianship without practicing five hours a day every day of the week. For a hobbyist musician, a half hour to an hour of effective, goal-oriented practice per day for five days a week will deliver meaningful results. While there are a number of elements to effective practice, the object of our focus for this article is the importance of consistency.

I often observe students of guitar setting aside my recommendations to cover a broad range of materials in every practice session and instead focusing on one element that they have become temporarily absorbed with. They will then woodshed this one item, and then everything else they have been building falls to the wayside. Then we have to go down the deadly road that sucks the ambition out of the most enthusiastic students of music: review.

When you are learning the fundamentals of music, woodshedding is NOT a productive substitute for consistency. Not only does it rob you of costly skills in the areas that you are neglecting to practice, it also doesn’t work well for the one area that you have focused on. It may deliver a temporary sense of satisfaction in that over a few days of woodshedding one thing you may see a visible improvement in that one thing, but here is the dirty secret about woodshedding: the gains disappear as soon as you stop woodshedding that one thing.

You can easily perceive this for yourself by considering the equivalent of woodshedding in the academic world: cramming. We have all been through the experience of neglecting consistent homework and then trying to intensely study in preparation for a test. Does it work? Yes, many times you can pass the test with a lot of short notice intense study. However, did you ever go back and take a test on the same material a week later? How do you think you would have done?

If you are studying music it is most likely not something that is being forced on you, so you should not be reluctant to do your “homework”, nor should you be eager to put behind the most recent material you studied. If you are … maybe music is not the right thing for you, or maybe you are pursuing skills in a style that is not the best fit your inner muse. Assuming you are passionate about learning music, you should logically wish to pursue a course that will allow you to retain hard won gains, rather than constantly cramming for a test (such as your next lesson) and then forgetting. It is a simple fact of human memory, both cognitive and physical (i.e. muscle memory), that repetition is the key to long term retention. So you should pursue a practice routine that includes consistent repetition of the knowledge and skills you need to achieve your short to medium term musical goals. While you may not see the more immediately satisfying visible gains of woodshedding one area, you will continually improve your musicianship by increments each day, and medium to long term you will be a much more potent musician for it.

It is important to understand that consistency does not mean that you will be ever stuck practicing everything you have ever learned. There will come a time for instance when you can perform your basic chords with ease, such that you do not have to practice them specifically and routinely any more. It is the same with scales and phrasing, and general knowledge. Once you have reached a particular goal, you replace it with something you can’t do yet and get to work consistently practicing that new thing until it also becomes habitual.

And finally, let us consider the real and practical value of strategic woodshedding. If you are performing publicly then what you need for a given performance (such as my application group classes) is a high level of fluency in those things you will be performing for that one occasion. Then it makes sense to woodshed the specific things required for that presentation. Then after the presentation you go back to a more generalized practice routine until a few days before your next public performance. Likewise, if you join a band and suddenly need to learn a list of new songs, you may need to get up to speed on those songs very quickly. So you would woodshed the set list as much as possible before your first group practice, then make practicing though the set list a part of your regular practice routine.

If you are situated such that you have time to woodshed everything on your highly effective practice schedule, then by all means go for it and we will look forward to seeing you on the Billboard charts soon. However, if this is not you then don’t despair. The proverbial tortoise wins the race most of the time. Consistency is the key!

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Overcoming Overwhelm

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By Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor

If you are new to guitar, or especially if you have been playing for a while then you may already be acquainted with the vaguely uncomfortable feeling that there is a long road ahead and you are not sure you can see the destination. If you have attempted any kind of lesson program you have surely observed that there does not seem to be any one clear thing or few things that you can do to get the results you seek. Maybe you have sensed that there are a LOT of things you need to accomplish. If you are currently involved in a program of instruction, you may have a pile of those things on your desk right now.

As with other impediments to eventual success with music, this feeling is quite normal. Once you get deep enough into this to realize how much is involved with fluent guitar playing, it is easy to become awed by the amount of information to learn and tasks to work through. You may then conclude something like this … “I am not able to do this”, or “I could possibly do this, but I do not have the time”. Then the next logical step is, of course … giving up.

So let’s consider how we get stuck in this trap and then how we can avoid it, or work around it. The first thing we need to know about overwhelm is this – it is a state of mind, not an objective reality. Particularly, it is a feeling … a feeling that we are not up to the job ahead of us. It is also a false feeling. Unfortunately, there is enough of reality inspiring this feeling that it may be difficult to see the falsehood in it. Let’s put on our reality glasses and take another look at this self-defeating false feeling of doom.

1 – Know The Facts: The first thing we need to do is address the truth – that learning to play an instrument well is a big task. Although I am a proponent of “positive thinking” to a reasonable extent, a positive attitude does not change the immediate reality of things. We can sit all day and think positive thoughts about being a great musician. Other than a fleeting feeling of self-satisfaction, this will accomplish nothing unless we allow this positive framework to motivate sustained action toward a specific goal. A positive outlook combined with focused action will indeed yield impressive results, possibly far beyond what we would have thought ahead of time. So, let’s start by rejecting the sense of doom and replacing it with a positive outlook that we are indeed potentially capable musicians. Let us also combine that mental framework with the willingness to do some work toward our goals.

2 – Formulate a Properly Balanced Perspective: Second, let’s narrow down our goals to something realistic. Let us not go to either extreme. One extreme might be what I call the “moon child”. In other words, shooting for the moon. Example, “I’m 38 years old, know three chords, work sixty hours a week, have a wife and three kids, and I want to play like Eddie Van Halen within 6 months of dusting off my old high school guitar”.  Here is another example that I see routinely in my pre-enrollment consultations, “I want to be able to play expertly in any style from classical to progressive rock and everything in between” (have you ever taken note that well known accomplished guitarists only play in one very narrow range of style?) The other extreme might be, “Since I can’t play like Eric Clapton my playing is worthless”. Really? Try telling that to B.B. King – one of the most acclaimed guitarists who has ever lived, who made a long, lucrative career and legacy out of simple repetitive blues licks.

So let’s face some facts – some goals are completely off the chart unrealistic, and some goals are simply not appropriate for some persons. On the other hand some folks go to the other extreme and assume that ANY goal is beyond their reach. Here is the balance of truth in the middle of the extremes – there is plenty of fun to be had with guitar at skill levels within the reach of the average person. If you set a goal that is out of proportion to the amount of time you can and will invest into guitar, this is a set-up from day one for overwhelm. If you give in to overwhelm at the slightest appearance of difficulty, you are robbing yourself and others of the great satisfaction to yourself and others that comes from you expressing yourself well with an instrument. Let’s avoid both extremes. Balance is the key.

3 – Set Effective Goals: So what is a realistic goal? That is of course going to vary greatly from person to person according to any number of factors. We can look here at some of the common factors. It is very important to pick a range of style to focus on. For instance, classical guitar is a very different approach to guitar than rock. It is unlikely that anyone, and particularly a hobbyist, is going to achieve great things in both of these styles. Even professional musicians tend to focus on one style. So pick the one you like most – the one that has the most songs that you enjoy hearing. In doing so you have eliminated a great deal of material that you need to bother with learning.

Now let’s narrow it down some more. For instance, within the Blues style, we have a number of even more specific styles …. Delta Blues (acoustic slide), Chicago Blues (low gain electric guitar), Texas Blues (medium gain electric guitar with a rock flavor). If you want to play Texas Blues, you do not need to master alternate tunings for acoustic slide guitar. So you see, when you narrow down your goal, you eliminate a LOT of material that you would be wasting time to pursue. This does not mean you are permanently eliminating the possibility of playing songs from any other style. Contrarily, learning to play well in one style will undoubtedly leave you potentially much more capable to approach other styles with better results, especially closely related styles such as Blues and Rock.

Ok, so we have narrowed things down to where we can see some outer limits to what we have to accomplish to reach our goal. There is still a lot left to do. So how do we look at all this and avoid a sense of doom? Very simple. There is an old adage I am fond of repeating to my clients: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! Rather than look at a whole body of knowledge and tasks with awe and overwhelm, we break the project into parts that we can manage and set up a plan to start building up fluency in each of a number of targeted areas.

If you have been at this for a while you have probably accumulated a lot of material and it becomes practically impossible to study all of it routinely. So what do you do? You have to look at your short term goals and see what material will help you reach those goals. If you have material that is not pertinent to your short term goals, set it aside for now and focus on things that are directly relevant to the closest goals. For instance, if your near-term goal is the ability to play pop rock solos, you do not need to practice exotic scales and diminished arpeggios. Focus on pentatonic scales, embellishments, and phrasing. The more advanced materials can wait until you have mastered the basic stuff to an extent that you can yield more practice time to exploring new ideas.

Essentially, the problem of overwhelm yields to these things: positive attitude combined with positive action, goal-oriented organization, and targeted elimination of non-essentials. Push aside incapacitating thoughts. Replace them with enthusiastic action. Organize your practice time and materials around your near-term goals. Eliminate (for now) those things that do not contribute to these goals.

Finally, as with all things guitar, practice well and often!

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Defeating the Scary Guitar Clown

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Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor

If you are in my age range or better then you may remember IT. IT was a millennia-old creepy space alien featured in the 1986 Stephen King novel of the same name, and a TV miniseries in 1990. IT manifested itself to the neighborhood children in the form of a circus clown. IT would appear in a benevolent clown form and woo the neighborhood children with laughter and promises of balloons and parties, and then when he had their confidence would morph into a scary clown and steal them away to a creepy underground bunker.

In the novel and film the surviving neighborhood kids grew up and came home to band together and defeat IT once and for all … or so they thought. The fact is, in teaching guitar to beginners and up for some years now, I have found that IT is hanging around my studio. He pops up all over the place. For example, when providing feedback on technique refinements I often hear responses such as, “I’m trying, but IT (“my hand”) wants to do it this way,” or “IT wants to tense up when I try to move that fast,”, or “IT (the pick) shifts around when I try to hold IT this way.” “IT (my thumb) wants to hook ITself over the top of the neck.” “IT (my pinkie) wants to curl up into a popcorn shrimp when I make a fifth chord.”

Indeed. Creepy IT seems to be the number one barrier to progress for many students of guitar. This need not be so, because the fact is … there is no IT. There is only YOU. YOU are the Scary Guitar Clown. It is YOU who is permitting excess tension, allowing the fingers to fly and flop around chaotically, plowing the pick through the strings like a bulldozer, allowing mental focus to drift, and generally making the hands and fingers wrestle against the strings rather then dance with them.

If you like your IT you can keep IT! However, if you want maximum results in the shortest possible time then you will have to deal IT a crushing death blow sooner rather than later. The first step in conquering IT is to acknowledge that IT is YOU. If your fingers are doing anything at all other than totally relaxing, then YOU are doing it. Apart from direct physical manipulation by someone or something other than you, your fingers can not do anything except exactly what your brain tells them to do. Pinkies do not curl up into a tight ball on their own. Likewise, if you are locking up your wrist and clamping too firmly on the pick during rhythm strokes, it is YOU tightening up the forearm muscles that control the wrist. YOU are doing that, not IT! So take responsibility and avoid passing the blame to IT!

Now let us discuss for a minute why IT gets the blame for so much technique chaos. We come from the factory equipped with several levels of control over the muscular systems. Level 1 is the autopilot mode. The heart, for example, will continue to beat at the set tempo regardless of our consciousness of it or efforts to manipulate it through focused attention. Level 2 is the autopilot with manual override. The eyelids are a good example of this one. When we are awake they close and open without any conscious attention, and when we sleep they remain closed. However, we may at any time take full control of them, either blinking, holding open, or holding closed as we prefer, until we release them back into the control of the autopilot mode. Then we have the skeletal muscles on Level 3. They run mostly in manual mode with autopilot override for special circumstances, such as the knee jerk reaction when the leg responds to a strike to the knee joint.

Then we have the fingers. How do we label the control mode of the fingers? I think most entry level guitarists would say something like, “Manual mode until I try to play guitar, then Scary Guitar Clown mode,” by which they mean that it seems impossible to fully control the fingers when trying to manipulate them individually, when IT appears to take over. Is this really true? It is partially true and partially not true. The fingers run on a mix of all the above modes, but mostly on manual control. If you don’t think they have an autopilot override, try putting them on a hot stove burner and you will see how quick they go into autopilot override.

So how does this examination help us to defeat the Scary Clown Mode? We must understand four important things about the control of the fingers:

(1) The default control mode of the fingers is a hybrid of manual control of the fingers as a group, with autopilot control of the other fingers when trying to use one independently.  To illustrate, put the tips of all four fingers downward facing on the edge of a table and then use the other hand to curl the pinky until the tip touches the palm. It is quite easy, with no strain on the knuckles, muscles, or skin. Now try to do that same test with your fingers free from outside constraints, using only the control offered by your mind. You will observe that the ring finger follows along with the pinky, no matter how hard you try to separate the two. Why does this happen? Mechanically the two are completely independent. It is the default programming of the brain making the ring finger follow the pinky. The default program is to use the fingers as a group. This is great for grasping things firmly, but it is totally contrary to what we need to do as guitarists. This is the deadly IT of which we speak, and the one we must overcome in order to develop a great command over guitar technique.

(2) In addition to the limited degree of manual independent control we have over the fingers by default, we can cultivate greater individual finger control through focused repetition of specific movements. This is why scale practice should always be near the top of your guitar practice priorities. Scale practice is not simply a tool to remember note placement. Among other things, if done correctly it is the most powerful technique improvement tool available. With enough practice we can not only cultivate finger independence, but we can actually reprogram the autopilot portion of our finger control so that it does new things in autopilot mode, such as play through scales accurately and efficiently. This is the secret of mastering guitar technique. It is important to note here that we are reprogramming the autopilot every time we practice, regardless of whether we are practicing great technique, good technique, or slop. This is why it is important to pay attention to the details while practicing scales!

(3) Regarding the pick hand, it is very important to understand that you have already spent many years cultivating an alternate autopilot program that takes over when you attempt to exercise fine control over the pick hand – writing. Writing is similar to picking, but not the same, so when you allow the writing autopilot to take over when you go to pick, you will have poor control over the pick.

(4) Ultimately, we DO in fact have a great degree of control over individual fingers, but we must consciously choose to exert this control in defiance of the default programs. For example, I often see a tightly curled pinky when making fifth chords (power chords), and I always advise that this creates unnecessary tension, which further causes unnecessary levels of finger pressure and undue difficulties in changing from one fretboard location to another. I then advise to manual override the pinky popcorn shrimp of death while making the fifth chords. It is always a struggle at first, but I have yet to observe a student who can not eventually cultivate a new habit of keeping all the fingers straight and relaxed while executing fifth chords. Likewise, the pick hand technique always starts out with a sort of stabbing motion coming from pushing the index finger and thumb out from the side of the hand which is planted on the bridge, and then curling it back in to make the pick stroke – just like writing. With enough focused effort the student can defeat the writing program and develop a new autopilot mode of efficiently picking from the wrist, with the fingers immobile and the base of the hand planted on the guitar or strings. (See my pick technique video for in depth analysis)

Don’t let IT ruin your technique. IT is a formidable enemy at first, but by consciously choosing to control your fingers until they do what you want, you can send IT packing and make beautiful music instead. Get to work, and don’t stop until you get the desired results! 

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Managing Musical Frustration

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By Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor

If you have been learning guitar for any length of time then you know that musical mastery is a journey rather than a destination. As with any significant endeavor, the process involves working on individual elements of knowledge and skill and then assembling these pieces toward a finished product over time. Given a good course of instruction, this is a systematic process with predictable results. However, for best results we must also take into account the human elements of dealing with elaborate long term processes.

We find that the human psyche does not always respond favorably to study and repetition in the absence of immediate satisfaction from desired results. As guitarists we must retain a sizeable amount of information and master physical tasks such as chords, chord changing, scales, and phrasing. Both the mental and physical aspects require repetition, repetition, and more repetition to the point of making them second nature. Alongside this process arises the predictable human response to delayed gratification: frustration.

Frustration is a feeling of dissatisfaction arising in response to not having what we want in the present moment. It is an inevitable aspect of any long term complex endeavor, and so you can be sure that you are not the only one suffering from it, nor does its presence have any bearing on whether or not you have “talent” for music.  Although it is not a pleasant feeling, like all feelings it can be an asset or a hindrance depending on how we respond to it.

First let us consider the less problematic level of frustration. In my lessons I have made analogy to the angry baker hovering outside the oven door with the light on and watching the bread rise ever so slowly. Although he has done everything he is supposed to do and the results are inevitable, while watching the bread rise in its normal course of process he laments that he does not already have some bread, questions whether he is a competent chef with culinary talent since he has no bread in hand at present, and throws the recipe book across the room while screaming at the stove for not having already delivered the bread he has labored for. Silly baker! The problem for this frustrated chef is that he is indulging unrealistic expectations about how long it takes to have the satisfaction of freshly baked bread. The solution for the baker is to refer back to the recipe and get a realistic idea of how long it takes for the bread to bake.

So how long does it take to learn to play guitar to the point that you can express yourself freely? Well, that is not so straightforward to answer as the bread analogy. It is going to vary a great deal from person to person due to a number of factors, but what you should understand is that it is going to happen over a period of months and years rather than weeks, so be realistic. If you are allowing yourself to become overwhelmed with frustration over some new song, skill, or technique that you started working on two weeks ago, that is not realistic and it does not help you in any way. So stop it!

Now let’s consider the more troublesome deeper level of frustration that arises after you have in fact been doing all the right things that you know to do for a long time and it still seems that you are not getting anywhere. This is the kind of frustration that can ruin your experience of guitar and often leads to reluctance to practice, long periods away from the guitar, or giving up altogether. Therefore, we must have strategies to deal with this kind of frustration in order to prevent it from derailing our musical endeavors.

1. Acceptance – just as every rose comes with thorns, every long term endeavor has its frustrations. Frustration through the process of long term endeavors is an inevitable aspect of the human experience. It is not unique to you. It is perfectly normal, and it does not mean that you have no “talent” for guitar. Even if you have the best practice routine ever conceived, bucket loads of native ability, the best teacher in the galaxy, and six hours a day to practice, you are still going to experience some frustration, as has every musician who has ever trod this path.

2.   Short term goals – one way we can mitigate frustration is to allow ourselves an occasional victory by setting up short term goals regarding various specific aspects of our skill set. If your only goal is “to play guitar” then you are setting yourself up for massive, crippling frustration because you are never going to be finished learning to play guitar. Your goals should be specific, relevant to your overall playing goals, and appropriate to your current skill set. If you are new to guitar then appropriate goals might be along the lines of getting control of changes between common open position chords such that you can execute them without losing time, and more times than not. That is achievable within a matter of months, providing you some sense of progress and accomplishment. For an intermediate level player the goal might be more along the lines of being able to move between the pentatonic scale shapes without getting lost or out of time. Write your goals down so that you can have a record of your progress.

3. Avoid comparisons – while it is useful to analyze what others are doing well and incorporate those skills into our own, it does no good whatsoever to evaluate your overall competence as a musician by making comparisons of your current skill set to that of others. For instance, some of my clients already had a good skill set and previous lessons when starting with me, so if you started as a beginner and compare your skills after six months to those of some of my other six month clients, you will of course come up short. You have no way to know what advantages any other player may have compared to you, and even if you did this sort of comparison still does not help you in any way. As for comparisons to pros, bear in mind that you are setting yourself up to compete with people who have practiced for hours per day for many years, and their recordings (even the “live” ones) are multiple takes, and further doctored to edit out mistakes. The only comparison you can make that has any value toward increasing your skills is the comparison to what you were doing last week, six months ago, a year ago, and so forth.

4. Follow the instructions – it is often the case that students of guitar do not make the most of practice time because they do not fully follow the instructions. This is particularly noticeable in regards to details of technique. Do not allow yourself to mindlessly crank out repetitions of exercises with little attention to the details of your technique. This will rob you of the full benefit of the repetitions and will in fact reinforce counterproductive technique habits. Technique is the primary barrier to self-expression for intermediate guitarists, and it is the result of poor habits during the beginning stages. While it can seem overwhelming to manage technique details on top of just getting the exercises played, it really only takes a little bit of extra effort to pay attention to technique. Unless you are specifically working on speed itself, always practice at speeds that allow you to execute well so that you develop efficient technique over time. If you are struggling just to get the exercise played at all and have no attention left for technique, this means you are playing too fast. Slow down. Exercising patience and self-control regarding development of your technique will save you a lot of frustration later.

5. Give yourself due credit – the primary problem with frustration is that we tend to allow it to fill up our view of how we are doing with guitar, and thus it can ruin our enjoyment of learning music. Bear in mind that as a guitarist you will always be focused on learning something new, and thus there will always be some level of frustration before you. Do not allow your view of your guitar endeavors to focus on nothing other than this frustration. If you have got far enough with guitar to be wrestling with frustration then you have already learned to do some things well. Give yourself credit for those things, include them in your practice routine, and enjoy them while you wait for new things to fall into place through repetition. If all you are experiencing with guitar is frustration it is because you are choosing to see only what you can’t do yet and ignoring what you are doing well. It is a mind trap that we can all fall prey to, and you will do best to avoid it.

6. Use it – even though frustration is an uncomfortable feeling, it does have an upside in that it can provide helpful clues as to what we need to do next to improve our skills. If you are working on an exercise or song and you keep falling apart at one spot, this is a clue that you need to isolate that one spot for extra attention. If you feel frustration that you have ceased to make any progress with guitar this may be a clue that you are not practicing enough, not following the instructions, do not have clearly defined goals, suffer technique deficiencies, or in some other way need to make adjustments to your practice routine. When you run up against a barrier that provokes frustration, use this as an indicator that you need to look around and uncover the source of the problem that is holding you back. Rather than give up in frustration, discuss this with your instructor.

7. Avoid perfectionism – if you are inclined to want to do everything to perfection, you will do best to drop that ideal now. Of course we want to have perfection as the ultimate ideological standard, but we need to balance that with reality. You are never going to play guitar to the point that you never make any mistakes. Even pros with years of training and experience make mistakes, although you rarely hear them because either you haven’t yet the ear for pitch and time to hear them, or else audio engineers edit them out of the recordings. Do everything you do as well as you can and strive for excellence of course, but do not feel like you have to perfect every detail of every exercise or song before you move on to new material. It is a balancing act, and you will develop increasingly good judgment as to where the balance is as you progress in music.

8. Employ Objective standards – progress does not always feel like progress. If you are practicing the right things, in the right way, in the right order, then you ARE making progress even if you do not feel like it at times. If you are judging your progress solely by how you feel about your playing then you are setting yourself up for a guaranteed case of catastrophic frustration. Look back to how you were doing with the same material six months ago, follow a practice schedule with clearly defined goals, and use a metronome to objectively measure your timing.

Practice patience. Learning to express yourself freely with the guitar is a complex endeavor, the result of a process that you realize success with in stages over time. Do not expect short term success regarding long term goals. Break it down into manageable pieces and work on short term success with these realistic goals. If you want to win at guitar or anything else then remember and implement this – never give up!

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Progress Pitfalls: Practicing vs. Playing

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Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor

Practicing guitar and playing guitar are not the same thing, and it is important to understand the difference if we want to maximize our progress.  While playing guitar is the end game of practicing, and we need to spend plenty of time playing, practicing is the means to the end of playing. It is essential to practice well and not allow playing to take over during what should be practice time. Although this may seem obvious on the surface, it is very easy to drift over into playing while trying to practice. Here we will look at the differences and consider how to avoid this pitfall.  

So let us consider the differences between the two and how to avoid mixing them up. Playing guitar is the broad application of all our knowledge and technique skills into making music. Practicing guitar is deliberate focus on a narrow range of knowledge and technique skills with the specific goal of cultivating improvement in those specific areas. While playing, we focus on all that we can do. While practicing we focus on what we can not yet do, or do as well as we would prefer.

Here are some measures to avoid getting stuck in a rut by playing through practice time:

1. Consider where you are, where you need to be, and how to get there – if you have no master plan for reaching your musical goals then you can be sure that your practice time will consist of merely playing what you already know rather than making specific improvements in those things that will allow you access to the next musical level. To devise a master plan you should look to the music you wish to play and find out what kinds of chords, rhythms, scales/arpeggios, and techniques arise in that music. Focus on those things in order to play that kind of music.

2. Define goals for every practice session – if you practice with no particular goal in mind then you will get exactly where you planned to get – nowhere. In every practice session have a plan to work on improving specific aspects of knowledge and technique according to your overall master plan. Committing your plan to paper will aid greatly in keeping it in view during practice.

3. Focus on specific aspects of knowledge and technique during practice – when you are for instance practicing the scales you need for your preferred musical style, focus specifically on timing, note articulation, resolving notes, technique (relaxed fingers!), two hand synchronization, and eventually speed. You may have to break these goals down across several practice sessions per week so that you can devote adequate time and attention to each. Playing licks that you already know, or mindlessly wandering up and down through scales, is not practice. That is playing and it will not help you improve nearly as much as practicing. 

4. Push yourself to do better than yesterday – profitable practice does not come from merely repeating what you did yesterday. It comes from making it a point to do better than you did yesterday. Doing better than you did yesterday does not come from merely accepting the vague proposition that you will try do better today then you did yesterday. It comes from focused attention to the minute details of your playing, such as striving for better note articulation of scales, faster chord changes, or deliberately playing with less overall muscular tension than yesterday.

5. Maintain your attention on the details – it is very easy to allow the attention to wander off during doing repetitive aspects of a practice routine. Focus yields much greater results, and focus is an ongoing choice because the mind tends strongly toward wandering off from one thing to another. Choose to keep your mind focused on the details of what you are working on!

6. Include some playing time in your musical endeavors – it is pointless to pursue music if it is going to mean nothing but practice. Allow yourself some time within each practice session, or a few times a week if that works better for you, to just play without being overly concerned about the perfection of the details. Perfect the details during practice, and then relax and let your hands do their thing when you play. During playing time, do whatever is the best you can do and don’t allow mistakes to rob your enjoyment of it. Just play and enjoy what comes out well. As you progress through diligent practice, you will find that your playing includes increasingly fewer mistakes and more enjoyment. It is a process. Give it time.

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Mastering Musical Memory

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Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor

One of the greatest areas of struggle for most guitarists is remembering the numerous chords, scales, chord progressions, and other odds and ends that we must employ to reproduce our favorite songs or to improvise. While there is no way to make memorization of large amounts of information easy, there are things we can do to make it more predictable and consistent and thus produce better results and faster progress in our playing.

Psychologists advise that lifestyle greatly affects memory. While this article is specifically directed at musical pursuits rather than memory in general, it is worth mentioning that a healthy diet, regular exercise, and adequate sleep allow our memories to function at their maximum potential. If you want the best results from your musical endeavors, take good care of yourself!

For musicians, we need to focus specifically on two components of memory: procedural memory and declarative memory. Procedural memory, for our purposes, refers to that aspect of recall pertaining to executing physical tasks. In musician lingo we often refer to this as muscle memory. Declarative memory is that aspect of memory that allows us to recall facts and figures, such as chord shapes, scale patterns, and the intervals of the root notes of chord progressions. So now that we have a view of the two aspects of memory we need to master, let’s look at some specific strategies.

Improving Muscle Memory

  • Repetition – there is no substitute for repetition. You may have heard something of the old adage among guitar players about “playing until my fingers bleed”. While this may sound like a ridiculous hyperbole, I have in fact literally practiced extreme bends for certain licks to the point that one of my fingernails began to separate from the nail bed and seep blood. While I don’t recommend this, it does illustrate the point that repetition is the key to muscle memory. The more you repeat good executions of a given technique, the better you will play it. This is also incidentally one of the keys to overcoming “stage fright” – embed your skills so deeply into your muscle memory that you can execute them accurately regardless of any distractions.
  • Consistency – you will get much better results from your muscle memory by practicing a moderate amount of repetition daily as opposed to trying to cram in a large block of repetitions on the weekend or the day before your next lesson!
  • Focus – repetition of slop leads to playing slop. It is extremely important to pay attention when practicing scales, for instance. Be sure that you are relaxed and using the most efficient motions possible for each note. When you are learning something new it is important to practice it at a speed that will allow you to play it accurately and efficiently. That often means “excruciatingly slow”. If that is what it means then do it that way. You will never have speed without slop until you thoroughly train your muscle memory to execute the required motions as efficiently and accurately as possible. Then gradually increase speed, maintaining a balance between speed and accurate execution.
  • Test – it is critical that you push the limits of your muscle memory by testing it routinely. Once you have learned a scale pattern then work on playing through it without looking at your fret hand fingers. Likewise, once you have learned a new chord then get started with applying the chord in a chord progression without looking at your fretting hand. Observe mistakes, correct them, and repeat. This will greatly increase your speed in mastering technique.

Improving Recall

  • Focus – as with muscle memory, focused attention on the details of new information will greatly increase your ability to recall that information. While this may seem obvious, it is important to be aware that we all have a tendency to allow our thoughts to drift randomly. For maximum understanding and recall it is imperative to willfully interrupt the random flow of thought and focus your attention while trying to digest new information.
  • Focus – see item 1. This is so important that I am repeating it to help you remember it!
  • Relation – as often as possible, try to relate new information to things that you already know. For instance, if you know the first position A Major chord shape then it is not so difficult to recall that the A7 is simply A Major minus the middle note. Likewise, all of the A form bar chords are an offshoot of the A Major chord shape, so if you know the A Major well enough then the various bar forms are not so hard to remember.
  • Isolation – break complicated sets of information into parts and memorize the individual parts first, then assemble them into the complete set. For instance, with a new scale pattern memorize the notes on two strings. Then move to the next pair of strings, then the next. Then go back and put them all together into the complete pattern. For a tablature score, learn one line. Then move to the next and learn that one. Then play the two together. Then learn the next line, and then add that to previous two. Repeat until the song is complete. Then repeat until your fingers bleed!
  •  Consistency – as with muscle memory, recall responds well to repeated exposure to the same information. This is why it is much more productive to practice a half hour a day than to run practice marathons on the weekends.
  • Vocalize – where feasible, find some way to say out loud what you are trying to memorize. Speaking things aids the memory in storing them. Example: when trying to memorize notes along the fretboard, say the notes out loud as you are playing them. This will greatly speed up your ability to recall the names of the notes.

Following these recommendations will greatly increase the rate of speed of your mastery of all things guitar. We all struggle with memory, but these strategies will assist you in increasing the rate at which you conquer various elements of musicianship. Remember this: never give up!

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute