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The Guitarist’s Best Friend (And Worst Enemy!)

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By Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor

Aspiring guitarists grapple with a number of challenges in perfecting the craft. From memory failure to reluctant hands, we all struggle with predictable challenges along the path to mastery. Some of these issues are inherent flaws in the human machine about which we can do little but struggle. Others are more within the realm of our choosing, and choose well we must if we wish to have the best possible results for our efforts.

Among the numerous assets we have to help us overcome barriers to progress, none is more potent than the power of habit. Mastering the guitar is very much a matter of cultivating good habits, both mentally and physically. Contrarily, allowing bad habits to persist will torpedo our efforts. Unfortunately the default setting of the human machine is toward counterproductive habits. On the other hand, through exercise of our will we may choose to cultivate good habits that support musical excellence. So we must persist in a productive practice routine with various repetitive mental and physical exercises such that basic skills like chord changes, scales, and rhythm patterns become habitual. Once these things become habitual we can then keep them habitual with only a bit of routine maintenance, and then we are free to focus on the more exciting and gratifying subtleties of making good music.

So let’s take a look at a list of techniques and strategies that will assist in cultivating good habits. These are not randomly selected tidbits, but rather key areas of fundamental knowledge and technique where I observe students struggling time after time. You can use the power of habit to help you get these fundamentals out of the way as soon as possible so you can move on to more interesting things.

Practice Scheduling – set up a designated place where you will practice. Keep your guitar handy on a stand and your practice materials and metronome already out or readily accessible. Make an effort to practice at the same time of day as much as possible so that it becomes a habit, where you then feel uncomfortable if you don’t get started at the appointed time.

Fretboard Note Recognition – set aside some time each time you practice to target some area of the fretboard for note memorization. Break this formidable task into small chunks according to various schemes of dividing the fretboard such as notes along one string, one fret, etc. Make it a habit to memorize the notes along any one such scheme every week.

Chord Changes – changing chords quickly and accurately is the most significant barrier that beginning students struggle with, and one of the more frustrating. It is one of the keys to making really satisfying music, so it is important to get this under control as quickly as possible. Many students tend to develop a habit of pausing the rhythm at chord changes and allowing themselves ample time to change chords. While this is impossible to get around at first, it quickly becomes a habit that persists long after the student is actually able to change chords without losing time. Avoid this trap by always making the effort to target the first beat of a measure for having your chord change complete. Be there on the 1 count!

Chord Strumming Technique – while focusing on changing chords, many fall prey to a weak pick attack consisting of a half-hearted push of the pick through the strings along with a short pick stroke. Cultivate a habit of starting each down stroke at the top of the guitar body and follow through to the other side of the guitar body. Then reverse this for the upstroke. Do not push the pick through the strings as this sounds harsh and unpleasant. Perform the pick stroke with a lively snatch of the forearm, allowing the relaxed hand/wrist to follow along, and thus drag the pick quickly and lightly along the top of the strings. This is not going to happen by accident. Force it until it becomes automatic.

Playing Scales with a Legato Feel – when practicing scale patterns always allow the previous note to run into the next note with no silence in between. This means you must maintain pressure on the previous note and snap your fingertip onto the upcoming note while simultaneously making the pick stroke for the new note. Pay attention to this important detail and keep paying attention to it until it becomes a good habit!

Playing Phrases in Time – to get started with solo phrasing, always play your scale notes on the beat and resolve on the first beat of the underlying chord change. This may be obvious to the mind, but getting the fingers to cooperate does not happen automatically. It is very easy and very common to get absorbed with fingering notes and lose track of the timing. Make it a habit to pay attention to the beat while phrasing, and play your notes on beat.

Habits can work for you or against you. Ensure that they work for you by diligently following the tips above every time you practice. Cultivating good habits will greatly increase your rate of progress.

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Practicing Guitar for Maximum Results

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By Chad Crawford, Guitar Instructor Greenville Guitar Lessons by PMI

If you have been playing guitar for any length of time then you know by now that the one supreme key to results is this: practice! However, it is possible to practice routinely and still get poor results. How is this? It is by practicing the wrong things, in the wrong order, and in the wrong way.

So how can you know what to practice, what order to practice it in, and how to practice for maximum results? Follow the recommendations below to make the most of your practice time.

What to practice:

(1) Playing guitar is a complex combination of mental and physical skills. In order to master the subject we need to break it down into manageable pieces. What specifically to practice is too big of a subject for a short article. However, what we can do here is narrow down the possibilities. The most important thing you need to consider is your goals. If your goal is too generalized it will not help you nail down what you need to practice. For instance, if you set an overly broad goal such as, “I just want to be able to play guitar,” this is not going to help you identify what information you need to learn and what techniques you need to master. If you are not sure about your goals then you should give some thought to what kind of music you like to listen to. Then you must identify what you must learn to do to mimic this kind of music. Those are the things that you need to practice. Make a list of those things and then go to work on them every time you practice. Do not get bogged down in practicing one technique or one song. Practice a variety of things pertinent to your goals.

(2) A common problem I see among aspiring guitarists is the tendency to want to know and master everything about guitar. While the idea is not a bad one in theory, the reality is that music has been under development for several thousand years. It is a huge subject. Some universities offer doctorate level programs in music. As a hobbyist you do not have time to master “everything” about guitar. You are going to have enough on your hands just to master one style and play fluently in two or three related styles. So don’t waste your time learning exotic scales and chords if your intent is to play popular radio songs. Learning obscure modes is not going to make you a better player if you are still struggling with applying the pentatonic scales. Master the basic chords, scales, and techniques and then work on applying them effectively. Once you have reached a level that you can enjoy playing the basics then it is time to work on the more complicated stuff, and then only if it is applicable to your goals at that point.

(3) At the other extreme is the tendency to want to learn only bare minimum requirements for playing specific songs. There is a bit of controversy in the music teaching community as to whether learning specific songs is a good approach to musical mastery. I think learning songs can be very helpful to mastering knowledge and techniques on the condition that the songs are incorporated into a balanced program of learning music in general rather than just learning the bare minimum information and techniques to play the specific songs. Taken by itself, learning songs is a dead end that leaves many aspiring guitarists frustrated and burned out. Don’t let this happen to you!

How to practice:

(1) One of the recurring problems I see with students of guitar is the tendency to get into a self-defeating routine with practice. It is not that a practice routine itself is problematic. Practice certainly does need to be a routine undertaking. The problem develops in that practicing specific exercises becomes a matter of mindlessly running through the same material with no specific mental focus on improvement. Practice becomes an exercise in repeating the same stuff from yesterday in the same way. This is the number one issue I see that impedes progress. When you practice any skill, it is important that you focus on doing it better today than yesterday. Whether it be memorizing some chord, scale, or song, or improving the speed or finesse of chord changes or scales, it is important to push yourself to make an increment of progress every time you practice something!

(2) Another common problem is the tendency to rush through practice. While speed is essential in executing chord changes and phrases, you must balance speed with accuracy. Rushing through every exercise as fast as possible will only delay your progress. Make the effort to ensure that your execution is accurate as well as fast. This often means that you will have to slow something down to a tempo that may be completely unrealistic for actual playing and then practice at that speed until you can execute the technique fairly well. Then gradually increase speed as you are able.

(3) Finally, be sure to practice as often as possible! Learning guitar is all about memory in terms of both mental recall and physical muscle control. Every day that you do not practice you lose a bit of recall and muscle memory. That is just the way the human machine functions and there is not much we can do about it. Therefore, it would be best to practice every single day. However, this is not feasible for many hobbyists. In this case, make it a point to practice more days than not … at least five days a week.

Follow these guidelines to ensure that your practice routine is leading to progress rather than frustration!

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Unlocking Musical Creativity

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By Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor

Among the challenges we face as developing guitar players, cultivating a sense of artistic creativity may seem among the most formidable. Many assume that creativity is a mysterious insight arising from the recesses of the fortunately gifted minds of a select few. In fact, creativity is not a mystery. As with all things musical it responds to focused effort to cultivate it.

So how do we get from having “no creativity” to the point of being able to write songs and play improvisational solos?

First let us address the occasional Mozart who shows up with tremendous innate musical ability. For most musicians, other artists, engineers, inventors, writers, etc., natural talent is not the key to creativity. So the Mozart’s are irrelevant in terms of understanding how a person of typical native ability can develop creative prowess. We should then waste no time considering natural talent, and most importantly avoid falling prey to the common misconception that creativity is something that one either has or does not have by inheritance.

Now let us consider what creativity actually is. Is it really assembling something out of nothing in a mysterious seizure of inspiration from quarters unknown? No! Even Mozart had to sit with paper and pen and work his inspirations into orderly, flowing pitch and time relationships. Consider this quote from prolific inventor Thomas Edison, whose record on creativity speaks for itself: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”.

Creativity is neither an unknowable mystery, an accident, nor a fleeting peek into the ethereal mists. It is rather a predictable result of a process involving mastery of the fundamental elements of an endeavor, and then applying those fundamentals in such a way as to generate beauty of function and form. This does not require creating something from nothing, or even something totally new. Rather, it means assembling the known into that which effectively solves problems or manifests beauty. It is well within the reach of anyone willing to apply themselves to the process. 

Now let us consider how this applies to music, and specifically to guitar. Music is fundamentally two objective phenomenon: pitch relationships and time relationships. Musicians assemble these relationships in such a way as to create the more subjective phenomenon of an emotionally satisfying flow of tension and release. This does not require the creation of anything new, but rather a well developed awareness of how pitch and time relationships work together to create a satisfying flow of tension and release.

So let’s break it down now even more specifically to the things we need to have mastery over in order to make music that satisfies ourselves and our intended audiences.

1. Know the notes on the fretboard – everything we do as musicians involves assembling notes in melody (one after another) or harmony (in unison, such as a chord or double stop) with reference to a tonal center (key). If you do not know the notes then you are limited to playing by patterns or by ear. While playing by patterns and by ear are useful tools, if you wish to cultivate maximum creativity then you need to allow yourself as many options as possible.  If you can visualize the letter names of the notes you are playing then it is much easier to choose resolving notes for phrases, or make useful alterations to chords to achieve just the right shade of mood.

2. Know the names of the notes in the Major Keys – the Major Scale is the starting point for all we do. Everything else is an alteration of some sort to a Major Scale. If you know the names of the notes in the key you are playing, and can also see them as you play them on the fretboard, these together will give you a great deal of power to achieve a desired musical effect without having to always guess your way through things with experimentation.

3. Understand Intervals – intervals are the building blocks of the pitch aspect of music. A thorough understanding of intervals will allow you to know what effect a note is going to have before you play it. If you know your intervals then you will be able to create musical effects at will, alter scales and chords to create precise shades of emotion, and transfer musical ideas from one key to another with ease.

4. Understand the effects of the basic divisions of the beat – along with pitch relationships, relative timing between pitch events is one of the fundamental components of music. A good set of timing relationships by itself is very powerful (think of a powerful drum intro that sets the mood for a song).  If you understand the basic divisions of the beat and how to modify them to tastes then you can create strong shades of mood at will.

5. Understand scale harmonization – knowing how to translate a particular scale into chord sequences will enable you to assemble pleasing chord progressions in a matter of moments. Knowing the chords in the key and the notes in the chords will also give you a lot of useful options for resolving solo phrases.

6. Listen to a lot of music – musical inspiration is often a residual effect of exposure to other music. Saturate your creative muse with immersion into a wide variety of music, and pay attention to the individual details such as the vocals, drums, and bass. In doing so you will cultivate a deeper intuitive understanding of music, much as a child learns to speak by regular exposure to speech.

7. Start from the known – creativity is often a matter of slight alterations to common ideas. Learn the signature licks, chord types and sequences, and rhythmic ideas of the masters of your preferred style. Then experiment with alterations until you uncover ideas that express what you wish. 

8. Constantly refine your technique – if you have ever wondered how an accomplished guitarist can play something very simple and yet have it sound very beautiful and powerful, the trick is often in the technique. What many experience as a “lack of creativity” is in fact a lack of technique refinement that will make an otherwise great idea sound lifeless or even just plain bad. Technique development is not just a matter of mere repetition. It is essential to pay attention to the quality of sound (a.k.a. “tone”) during technique development practice. Don’t rush through technique exercises with the goal of merely getting them over with as quickly as possible. Listen carefully to the small details. Strive to improve the quality of sound resulting from each pick stroke.

This may seem like a hopeless lot to get done along the path to creativity. Bear in mind that learning music, including the creative aspect of it, is a journey. It is not needful to be “finished” with all other aspects of musicianship before experimenting with creative application of known musical elements. The point of this article is that creativity is a predictable result of identifiable methods, and therefore is accessible to all who are willing to work for it. Cultivate the appropriate knowledge, technique, and persistence, and then you can be sure that your creative muse will show itself!

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.