Nashville Guitar Guru | Guitar Lessons in Nashville, TN

Dave Isaacs, Nashville guitar guru and master teacher

The Perpetual Beginner

5 Tips To Help You Stop Avoiding Barre Chords!

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Lots of people do it, maybe you do too: avoid learning a song because it requires barre chords, or limiting your songwriting vocabulary because you struggle with them and it’s easier to just avoid them. I’m not going to suggest that barre chords aren’t a challenge, for most people they are at least in the beginning. But here are some things you can do to make the learning process easier.

 

1. Make sure your guitar is properly set up. If the your guitar has high or uneven “action” (distance of the strings from the fretboard) it can make everything harder, not just barre chords. If you struggle with chord changes in any way, you should make sure your guitar is set up with the action set as low as possible without any buzzing. Higher action helps the guitar project and can allow you to produce more volume, but it’s not worth fighting while you’re learning to master barre chords. You can always have the action raised later if you find you need more projection.

 

2. Try going to lighter strings. A light gauge set on an acoustic generally has a .012” string for the high E. I use a .013 set on my smaller-body guitar and 12s on the larger dreadnought. Know what you have on your guitar now, and try moving one gauge lighter if you feel like you need to press too hard to make the notes sound. Again, you can always work your way back up.

 

3. Detune your guitar a whole-step and then place a capo on the 2nd fret. This will reduce the string tension significantly. Yes, it displaces some things visually, and if you use a capo a lot you’ll need to move it two frets higher than normal. This is a temporary solution, unless you find you like the sound of the lower-tuned guitar…some people do. Listen to some of Neil Young’s early 70’s solo performances to hear how sweet a down-tuned guitar can sound.

 

 

4. Stop working so hard. Even if the guitar is set up perfectly, many people mistakenly believe they’re supposed to grip as hard as possible. Some well-intentioned but misinformed teachers contribute to this problem. Your goal with guitar technique is to learn to use less effort, not more. The next time you play, think about lightening your touch and letting your grip soften. This can be really challenging, and you might find that your whole upper body is trying to clamp down on those strings without your even noticing. Ideally, the position of your fretting hand should allow you to balance or “hang” on the strings rather that squeezing them: index finger extended, the rest of the fingers more or less curled with the fingertips resting on the strings.

If you do identify this as a problem, developing a routine of SIMPLE exercises to improve finger balance and coordination will really help. (I’ll dig into this in depth in a subsequent blog post). Be aware of how important hand and finger position is…changing the position of your wrist or thumb can make an instant difference. (Many people drop the wrist too far, or don’t drop it enough when they should. In general, a straight wrist is better because it produces more grip with less effort. Drop the wrist when you need to extend your fingers or stretch, but no further than you need to).

 

5. Recognize that in most cases a barre does NOT mean a flat finger. To play a 6-note F barre, the index finger should actually lean a little to the side…consider that the side of your finger is much straighter than the underside. The best leverage comes from the base segment of the finger, exactly where your thumb would land if you simply touch the thumb to the side of the index finger. Hold your hand up in this position with the thumb pointing up, and just envision the guitar neck in between the thumb and finger. Most of the power and force should come from the curled fingers, not the extended index.

 

All of these tips should help you develop your control, strength, and confidence in playing barre chords. Yes, it’s a big topic and a legitimate challenge for most people, but it shouldn’t be the barrier to improvement that it is for so many. Forge ahead and you’ll get there!

Droning or dynamic: be more compelling onstage!

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When we refer to someone as a dynamic performer, we mean that person commands attention. They draw an audience in and make a lasting impression. You might see this as pure talent, and sometimes it is. But these dynamic performers all make use of an important musical tool, also called dynamics.

“Dynamics” in music refer to degrees of volume: soft and loud sounds, and the gradations in between. In written music, “dynamic markings” indicate how loud a passage should be played: from “pp” (pianissimo, or very soft) to “ff” (fortissimo, or very loud). Actually the dynamic range for orchestral music can be even wider than that: pppp to ffff! Imagine an orchestra of a hundred musicians, and the difference between one softly played flute and the full ensemble (including brass, mind you) playing at full volume. That’s a lot of range!

An acoustic guitar is never going to match that, plugged in or not. Most acoustic instruments are capable of making more sound: a piano or violin played fortissimo can easily overwhelm most acoustic guitars. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use dynamics in your playing and performances. The trick is to recognize that since most of your audience isn’t listening with a decibel meter, loud and soft has as much to do with perception as it does with how much air is actually being pushed around. In other words, if your loudest isn’t very loud, make soft even softer. Dynamic range can expand in both directions, and the listener is going to respond to the perceived difference within the overall dynamics of the song and performance.

But there needs to be a difference. If there’s no change in dynamic throughout a performance, a listener is less likely to respond at all! You’re less likely to hold the audience’s attention if your playing is monotonous. But if your performance is full of dynamic contrasts, you’ll command attention.

In addition to the problem of playing without any dynamics at all, many perpetual beginners have one of two problems: playing consistently too hard or too lightly. The solution lies in the topic of some of my most recent posts: how you use your strumming hand.

Tuned guitar strings are at tension, stretched tight from headstock to bridge. This has a huge impact on dynamics, because the amount of force a string can absorb (and still resonate) depends on the string tension. If you strum harder than your string tension can handle, you’ll get an unpleasant, buzzy sound – or worse, you’ll actually start to muffle the strings as they snap back against the guitar instead of ringing out. (That percussive effect can be really cool and useful when it’s done right, but that’s a topic for another piece).

If you’re not getting much sound out of your guitar, you have the opposite problem: the movement of your hand isn’t generating enough energy to get the strings ringing. It’s simple physics: you want to produce sound by efficiently translating the force of your strum to the strings…”efficiently” in the sense that the energy of the arm or hand movement goes to the strings and not to extra movements that don’t contribute to the sound.

To break this down a little, just follow these basic principles:

1. Keep your hand light and relaxed. Movement creates the energy, not muscle. If it looks or feels awkward when you strum, it probably is. Relax and explore until you find a position that feels fluid and natural.

2. The further your arm swings, the more sound you’ll produce. Playing softly means relying more on the hand and a loose wrist, while playing louder will bring more arm into it.

3. You should have a sense what it takes to create three basic degrees of intensity: soft, medium, and loud. You should also be able to play a smooth crescendo: start as softly as you can, and gradually get louder. Check out this demonstration:

Notice the difference between the softer sound produced by the small hand movement, the loud sound produced by the swinging arm, and the gradations between as the movement gets larger. Notice also how the strum movement is relaxed and efficient…there’s very little muscle work involved, and the hand never moves further from the strings than needed to create the appropriate sound.

So to take this back to the opening of this post…if you play a song without dynamics, your performance will be much less interesting. Contrast is one of the most important elements in music, because variation draws attention and creates interest. Dynamic contrasts make music more compelling and dramatic, and can really help amplify the emotion in the lyric. Ultimately, performing is about communicating feelings. A dynamic performance will make your audience more engaged, interested, and able to feel what you want them to feel.

Strum series 3: wrist, hand, and arm

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Strum Secrets 3: wrist, hand, and arm

In this series I’ve been exploring some different approaches to strumming, and how to create a variety of sounds and rhythms by varying your technique.

Just like all other aspects of playing an instrument, there is an ideal of “perfect” technique balanced by the reality that there are many great players that do things differently. But a good place to start is to look at the anatomy of the hand and arm, and notice which movements are most natural and fluid.

Consider that there are basically three ways to move the hand to strum: moving the wrist from side to side, swinging the entire forearm, and rotating the hand. You can explore this away from the guitar and notice how each one feels….each one does feel distinctly different, and produces a different sound.

The wrist movement is the least natural, in my opinion. Not that we’re not meant to move that way, of course we are. And if you’re doing any muting with the picking hand it’s pretty much the only option. But you’ll notice as you move the hand that it’s the most muscle-intensive of the three approaches. In a lot of ways it’s also the most precise, because it’s easy to keep the movements small…so in music that requires a lot of fast picking like hard rock or bluegrass, it works well for lead playing.

Try using this approach to strum, though, and the limitations should be obvious. An acoustic guitar especially won’t “speak” the way it should if you’re playing a rhythm part that should be ringing and resonant. To make the guitar really project, you need to use a larger movement to create more force in the stroke. It’s basic physics, really: larger lever + more motion = greater power.

When we take this approach, we need to make a distinction between swinging the entire forearm parallel to the face of the guitar vs. turning the hand slightly outward and rotating the forearm in the process. The first works well for driving, powerful strumming, especially eighth-note backbeat rhythms. Swing the arm further for a nice accent on the backbeat to simulate a snare drum hit:

down-up-DOWN-up down-up-DOWN-up

To play more subtle or intricate rhythms, though, the entire forearm is awkward to move quickly. Faster strums tend to work better when the forearm is relaxed and the movement is led by a slight outward rotation of the hand. Lead the movement from the fingertips, not the wrist. (Think about it as you try to compare, you’ll feel the difference). You don’t need to rotate far…think of the point of the pick forming a narrow arc that swings through the strings. This works great for 16-note note rhythms and syncopated parts like these:

1. Speak this rhythm: Dum di-ga dum di-ga dum di-ga dum
2. Play the same rhythm: down down-up down down-up down down-up down

This one should be played at a faster tempo than the earlier example. You should notice a big difference in both feel and tone.

Again, there are no absolutes here. Whenever we talk about technique, look for “natural” rather than “correct”, and be clear on the difference between “unfamiliar” and “awkward” as you consider how natural the movement feels.

Check out this video from a YouTube series I posted a few years back, exploring this concept. Again, don’t worry so much about whether you’re doing it “right”: just notice what you feel and hear, and it’s likely you’ll find most natural approach just by paying attention to what feels and sounds best.

The Perpetual Beginner: confidence, competence, and self-limiting beliefs.

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I’ve spent a lot of time over the past year talking with people about how they see themselves as players and musicians. I work with students with widely different levels of skill and musical goals, so of course everyone has their own story. But one thing I hear from a lot of people is that they don’t feel like they really play. Some have played for years, but feel they haven’t improved in a long time. They know some chords and can play some songs, mostly, but it’s often a struggle and the music doesn’t flow.

Why do so many people get stuck? Is it just a matter of talent, that some people just have “it” and some don’t? What does it take to move from perpetual beginner to confident player?

There are some very simple answers to those questions, and they can set you on the path to where you want to be. That’s the main goal of this blog: many people struggle with the same challenges, so I firmly believe believe that the solutions that have helped so many others will help you too.

If there’s ONE single biggest problem many people share, it’s a lack of confidence. Not just confidence in their ability to play a particular thing: underneath is often a deeper unease, a sense that maybe you’re struggling because you just don’t have the talent. This is possibly the biggest and most damaging obstacle, because it often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We celebrate excellence and achievement in all fields. In most areas, everyone recognizes the amount of hard work and dedication that it takes to achieve excellence…but when it comes to music, so many persist in the belief that if it doesn’t come easily it’s not meant for you. This belief gets reinforced because musical talent is common enough that most of us know someone that obviously has “it”. Young musicians that quickly master multiple instruments, or develop the ability to play songs easily by ear seemingly overnight. Even the ubiquitous videos of shredding seven-year-olds on YouTube and Facebook, though fun and impressive, can also add to this overall negative impression.

While we celebrate the gifted, we can discourage the merely interested. What this misses is that both the gifted and the struggling learn and improve the same way: through exploration, trial and error, and enough love for the process that obstacles are challenges instead of barriers.

The simple solution for the perpetual beginner is to realize that your immediate goal is not to be a great player. Your immediate goal should be to be able to play whatever it is you’re working on with confidence and authority. That means that your goals need to be modest in the beginning – but setting one modest and attainable goal after another is a sure path to progress. You may not have the skills to play what you want to play just yet, but you can learn to play something easier and play it well. And there’s a LOT of gratification in doing even a simple thing very well.

If you feel like you’ve been struggling, take a good look at what you’re trying to do. A good practice routine should absolutely include some challenging things…after all, it’s how we grow our abilities. But it should also include some much simpler things: a song with just a few easy chords, or a simple melody at a slow tempo. Along with practicing your ability to land the fingers in the right place at the right time, you should also be practicing your ability to just play…no matter how simple the song is. It should be familiar enough that you don’t have to think much about the mechanics, just the music. Can you play a song beginning to end in a way that’s satisfying to you? Not even without mistakes, but with enough flow that your mistakes are bumps along the way instead of roadblocks. That’s an important immediate goal, because it builds your confidence…and in music as in many other things in life, confidence is half the battle.

In subsequent blogs I’m going to explore this topic in much greater detail. For today, think about your mindset. Do you have self-limiting beliefs about your ability to learn to play? Are your practice goals reasonable and attainable? Do you practice different things with different levels of difficulty? And most of all, does playing make you want to play more?

There are no barriers to entry in playing music, and no arbitrary standard you have to live up to unless you choose one. So play what you love and love what you play. Do the work that it requires, but remember that even the simplest sounds can touch people. And the person that most needs to be moved by the music is the person who plays it. It really comes down to just one simple thing: find the love and don’t let go. The rest all follows from there.

Strum secrets 2: touch and tone

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Guitars are percussive instruments. Like drums, we hit them to make a sound. Even a light touch has an “attack”: the way the finger or pick hits the string. The attack is the beginning of what we might call the “envelope” of the sound. If you’ve ever looked at audio waveforms on a computer screen, you know that you can see each individual note: where it begins, and how it “blooms” and fades.

Strumming has an obvious percussive element, and just like with all percussion instruments there’s a direct relationship between touch and tone: the way the sound changes when you change the way you strike the strings. Strum Secrets 1 – power vs finesse explores how arm, wrist, and hand movements create different sounds when strumming. If we take this idea a step further, we can incorporate picking dynamics and the natural properties of a plucked string to expand our tonal palette even more.

Try this simple exercise:

1. Using a flatpick, thumbpick, or bare thumb, strike the high E string as lightly as you can. Continue with slow, repeated strokes, gradually increasing the intensity and force. Notice how the sound gets louder as you apply more force (this part should probably be obvious). Try to play a gradual crescendo (getting louder) and diminuendo (getting softer). Notice how your hand changes as you play with more intensity. The actual hand position shouldn’t really change, but pay attention to the point of the pick or movement of the thumb: when playing individual notes, the arm doesn’t need to get involved. The point that strikes the string, whether it’s a pick or a bare finger, should move more to produce more sound and less to produce less. Picture the movement as an arc, a tight semicircle that gradually increases in size as you get louder.

2. Experiment with striking the strings in different places. Play closer to the bridge and you’ll hear the tone get brighter…it’s a great sound for twangy country and rockabilly, or to add more bite to a blues. Move the picking hand closer to the neck and you’ll hear a warmer, rounder sound. This can be great to produce a soft, jazzy tone or a gentle strum. You probably have a “default” spot where your picking hand hits the string, and that ought to be your norm and starting point. But whether you’re picking or strumming, you’ll see that where you choose to strike the string makes a huge difference. You should also notice that the string tension increases as you move closer to the bridge – so when you want to play harder, moving towards the bridge will give you a little more resistance and allow you to hit harder without the sound breaking up.

3. Even if you play primarily with a pick, experiment with using bare fingers. We can get into a discussion of whether or not to grow out your fingernails – that’s a discussion in itself…what whatever is on your finger right now, try playing with it and see what kind of sound it creates. Notice how many more variables there are in playing with the fingers vs the pick. The hard surface of the back of the nail produces a very different sound from the rounded fingertip or the pad of the finger. Don’t worry about “proper” technique, just explore. If something feels really unnatural, leave it alone. The goal is just to see how many different ways you can strike a string, and how it changes the sound.

Check out this video of the great maestro Andres Segovia demonstrating how he used different types of attack to create different sounds. Of course, playing in the classical style he’s plucking and not strumming, but the concept still applies. He gets very specific in his description of how the different tones evoked different instruments of the orchestra. Even if you don’t have any interest in classical music, it’s a great illustration…watch video of Segovia in performance to hear him put the technique into practice.

It’s unlikely that you’ll need to be quite so dramatic in your choice of contrasting “timbres” or tonal qualities. But it’s an important aspect of guitar playing to be aware of, and a concept and technique that can add great variety and expressiveness no matter how or what you play.

The simple first step to getting better

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Honestly, it’s so simple that you might wonder why it wasn’t obvious, but it’s not. The first step to playing better is to start noticing why you can’t.

Everything we do on any instrument has two elements, mental (intentional) and physical (mechanical). On guitar, we direct the hand to the notes we want to play. We develop technical control – “chops” – so the hands can respond accurately. But we also learn about the instrument – and about music – so we can give better direction.

I don’t mean to say you should always be thinking when you play – for me, a good night is when I play well WITHOUT having to think about it. But when you’re trying to solve a problem, you want to shine a light on it. Take a good look at the details: not just where the fingers go but how you’re using them. Is there a difficult reach? Are notes being choked or muted? Which fingers are you using, and is there another way? Is the problem in the mechanics of following direction, or are the directions fuzzy?

The way most of us learned guitar from the beginning actually sets us up for a disconnect down the road. Think about how you learned your first chords: probably as visual formations or shapes. Memorize the shapes and learn to apply a strumming or picking pattern, and you can play a song. We do it this way because it’s effective and is the quickest way to get a student to a functional level. The problem that creates is that it teaches us to hold static shapes, so all we’re thinking about is where the fingers LAND – but not how they get there.

So if the fingers aren’t landing where they need to, pay closer attention and see if you can identify exactly what isn’t working. Maybe one finger is consistently missing the mark. Maybe the fingers are moving too far away from the strings too allow you to get back in time for the next chord. Or maybe the fingers can’t comfortably reach and you need to adjust your hand position. These are all details you can observe if you take the time to.

Take a step further back and think about the bigger picture. Are you sitting or standing? Is holding the guitar comfortable or awkward? Is there something you can change that would help make you more comfortable? How do your shoulders and neck feel? (Many people hold tension in their upper body that limits both the free movement of the fingers and the ability to swing the strumming hand or pluck). I hear over and over again from students that they never even thought to consider these things. One of the biggest things that allows me to help them is that I have the experience to know what to look for when I see and hear particular problems. This is something you can learn to do as well.

I have a playing ritual I call “checking in”. Over the course of a set or practice session I’ll do a quick mental check of my body to see if I’m gripping too hard, tensing up, slouching too much, or holding my breath (to name a few common issues). This is a great habit to get into when practicing and performing. Essentially it’s a big-picture evaluation of what’s happening, and when I react to the feedback my body gives me I immediately start playing better.

When we “check in” on specific details like reaching a chord, the information you’ll get is more detailed: for example, the amount of bend in your wrist or curl in your finger. These details make a big difference, and as you learn more about mechanics you become more and more able to solve problems based on what you observe. If you can’t yet, you’ll at least have a clearer picture of what your challenges are.

I’m not looking to oversimplify: practice is essential and it takes work, time, and repetition. Focused, thoughtful practice is the most powerful approach. So the first step in effective practicing is a very simple one…when you pick up your guitar, pay attention. Notice what is and isn’t working, as specifically as you can. You can’t solve a problem that you can’t articulate, so seeing the problem in detail is the first step in solving it. I’ve been playing guitar for 35 years now, and the area I’ve improved most over the last 25 is in my ability to see and solve problems both in my own playing and in my students. My primary goal is to help you develop that same skill, and over 30 years of teaching have shown me that it can be done regardless of your technical ability or experience.

So open your eyes and ears…next time you play, just observe. That’s the first and most important step. We’ll work through specific issues in more detail as I continue to add to this blog.