When was the last time you learned a new way to play a familiar chord? It’s relatively easy to learn the primary “cowboy” chords. If we include the F chord, there are nine: A, Am, C, D, Dm, E, Em, F, and G. This plus a capo is enough to serve the most basic strummer, […]
5 essential rules for accompanists
There’s an art to being a good accompanist. To do your job well as an accompanist you have to be essential but invisible, because your role is to make someone else sound better. Whether you’re backing up a singer in a band or supporting your own singing as a solo player, there are essential things […]
Guest post: speaking of practice…
This week, “Speaking of practice…”, a guest post from drummer Robert Crawford’s drumbad blog. I had a drum teacher named Bill Roth. I took lessons from him when I was 15 for only about three months because for the 15-year-old me, he was old and said lots of weird stuff. I later went back to […]
Does your playing serve your writing?
Does your playing serve your writing? If you play to write songs, of course you use the instrument as a creative tool for writing. But do you use it in a way that both serves and stimulates your creativity? One way of looking at this is fairly obvious. Session musicians and side players know that […]
A better way to learn scales
Guitarists tend to learn scales by memorizing finger patterns. To some extent, that’s because of the tactile nature of the instrument and the way we learn it. On piano, there’s an obvious linear logic to way a scale lays on the instrument. On guitar, most students find it challenging to see scales as anything other […]
What you know and why it matters
You don’t need to know everything to play the music you want to play. But when you know more it will help you play more things better, and thanks to the internet it’s easier then ever to find new information. There was no shortage of information before the digital age, of course, but now it’s a […]
