Nashville Guitar Guru | Guitar Lessons in Nashville, TN

Dave Isaacs, Nashville guitar guru and master teacher

Blog: The Perpetual Beginner

Core Concepts 8: play well with others

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There are lots of good reasons to play music with other people, no matter what your musical goals are.

A significant percentage of people spend most of their time playing alone. Not just in practice time, but playing in general. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but there are musical skills that are only developed by playing in a group. Relating back to last week’s “big ears” post, the ability to listen and react is one of the most important.

There’s a big difference between practicing a part by yourself and playing it as part of a group. Playing along with a backing track can be a good first step in learning to fit in and blend, but a track never changes. After some repetition, you know exactly what to expect. But in a live setting with other players, even solidly consistent performances have variations. Playing with other humans forces you to tune in at a more detailed and dynamic level, even if the parts never change.

 

One of the highest goals for the aspiring musician is to be able to play with intent in the moment.

The part might be thoroughly practiced and planned in advance, but in performance it still has to be executed musically and dynamically. There’s no better way to develop that intention by reacting consciously to other players.

Maybe most important of all, though, playing music is one of the best things people can do together as a group. When a performance is at its best, it’s a collective experience shared by everyone, a way to wordlessly communicate and share an emotional connection.

 

Core Concepts 7: the best musicians have big ears.

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“Big ears” means knowing how to listen, and what to listen for.

All the practicing in the world won’t make you a good musician if you don’t develop your listening skills. The best players can play the right thing because the music suggests it. The specific parts each person plays are shaped by the other parts and the overall feel of the music. Everyone is listening and reacting to everyone else, balancing the different elements to create the whole.

Even a soloist playing alone has elements to balance. There is a dynamic flow through the form of the song, and the relationship between melody and accompaniment. A strong rhythm part balances the different parts of the beat the same way a drummer balances the different parts of the kit. These things can all be worked out in a practice session, but each gesture should be executed consciously. We decide what to do and how to do it in the practice room, but in performance we practice the action of executing the thought in real time.

A good listener is a sensitive accompanist, a dynamic soloist, and a good conversationalist. It’s most important skill a musician can have, and the single best way to elevate your playing. Best of all, all you need to do is start paying attention.

Core Concepts 6: balance your practice time

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Learning how to practice is one of the most important lessons you can learn as a musician.

When you first learn to play, practicing is mostly repetition. To some extent, that’s always going to be true, and most great players spent many hours with their instrument when they were young and had all the time in the world. At some point, though, that honeymoon ends and the need for efficiency takes over. Professionals generally have a limited amount of time to learn and perfect a performance, so one of the skills a pro develops is the ability to practice effectively: to maximize the impact of the time spent.

This starts with recognizing that there are different kinds of practicing that accomplish different things:

  • Pure technical practice for skill development
  • Targeted problem-solving practice within a specific piece of music
  • Developing fluidity and flow

Practicing technique is not sexy. No one picked up a guitar to learn scales and finger exercises. But targeted, deliberate work on one small thing at a time is a very effective way to develop your accuracy and control. Many people neglect this kind of practice. Just as many others practice too casually and too fast. Your goal should always be for accuracy over speed. It’s target practice, so learn to take aim at the bullseye.

On the other hand, too many people don’t practice performing songs they already know how to play. You need to really spend time playing a song all the way through from beginning to end to develop real confidence and flow. You should also look to end every practice session with something that feels good to play.

“Balanced” practice means that you divide your time between the different aspects of practicing. Deliberate mechanical work build your fine control and coordination. Performing whole songs builds your overall musicianship and feeds the love that made you start playing in the first place.

Core Concepts 5: connect the dots, learn relationships.

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Learning the guitar neck is like geometry: relationships between points in space, and the formations or shapes they create.

To really get to know the guitar well, it’s really helpful to learn these shapes. The guitar neck is a complicated matrix, and the patterns on the neck can really help you learn to navigate it. But in music, of course, these formations represent sounds. So while the visual formations are a convenient shortcut, they’re ultimately just a reference. The real skill is learning to hear the sonic relationships.

 

Every musical sound is defined by the relationship between different notes.

Notes might be played together as a chord, or in sequence as a melody. We can organize these sounds according to the distance between the notes, creating harmonic and melodic intervals. Each interval has a distinctive sound you can learn to recognize. Chords are made up of stacks of intervals that also have recognizable sounds. Learning to identify these sounds is the process we call ear training.

Along with the physical formations on the neck and the sound each one creates, the third relationship to understand is the way the sounds and shapes relate to each other. We could say that these three kinds of relationships deal with three distinct and essential musical areas: technique and “geography” (where things are), vocabulary (what things are) and theory (how things go together).

 

If that seems like a lot of information, it is. But the good news is that you don’t need to know it all before you can play, or even play well.

In an earlier Core Concepts post we looked at how focusing in on a single musical area can help you progress. In the same way, we can choose to focus on a particular area of the neck, a particular type of sound, or a particular set of patterns. Just as with style, the key is to develop a depth of knowledge: to learn one thing really well. That information then becomes a part of your essential vocabulary, just in the way that a chord you learned in the very beginning might be something that you’ve used every day since.

There are many ways to organize this work. The single biggest thing to remember is that it’s very easy to get wrapped up in the fingerings. Those geometric shapes and sequences are important, but they’re just a shortcut to the sounds. Not only that, but any large shape can be broken down into smaller shapes. So a six-note “E shape” barre chord is actually not one shape but many smaller ones. Trying to memorize all of these is daunting, but if you treat the process as an exploration of sounds it becomes a lot clearer and a lot more musical.

The same goes for scales, or any other pattern you might learn. If you memorize a scale as a fingering sequence but don’t get to know the musical relationships, it won’t help you become a strong melody player. This is a trap many people fall into. I come across students all the time that learn fingerings and patterns but struggle to make music with them. Learning the sounds and the way they relate provides the context you need to use these patterns as the tools and raw materials they are.

 

Our entire musical system is based on an interwoven network of sonic relationships.

Every style has a particular set of sounds that are used most often. Becoming a confident and musical player in any genre depends on your ability to learn those sounds and how to use them. Learning the relationships gives you a context that will guide your musical choices, and over time will unlock not just the guitar neck but whole musical worlds.

 

Core Concepts 4: every technical challenge has a mechanical solution

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One of the great challenges for every guitarist is to train the hands to follow directions. Any musical gesture requires a series of targeted movements, placing specific fingers in specific places. Some gestures are much more difficult than others, but ultimately playing any part is just a matter of knowing where you need to land and having the control to make it happen.

This is a really powerful perspective to have, even though it’s a bit of an oversimplification. What it means is that there’s no mystery to how to accomplish anything on the guitar. The instrument is a mechanism, and so are your hands. You might not have the ability right now to do the things a more accomplished player can, but you’re using the same basic tools. Yes, we’re all proportioned a little differently and that can have an impact on what you can and can’t reach. But for the most part, hands are hands and guitars are guitars!

 

What this really means to you is that you should view any technical challenge as a puzzle to solve.

When you find something difficult to play, break it down. You should be able to identify the specific elements of the part. What fingers do you need to use, and where do they need to go? Are your fingering choices smooth and logical? It’s possible to beat your head against the wall for weeks struggling with a part and then realize that there’s a much easier way to play the same notes. This is where one of the challenges of the guitar becomes an advantage. Since so many notes duplicate in different places across the neck, there’s almost always more than one way to play any given part. The right fingering can make a difficult passage easy.

 

Even if something is way beyond your ability, there’s real value in at least understanding how the part is played.

You might not be able to reach a particular note or play a part up to speed, but if you’re clear on what the hands have to do you’ll be able to practice in a much more targeted and powerful way. This makes it possible to learn to play songs that are way above your baseline skill level, if you’re patient and methodical enough. Practicing is a process, and taking mechanics into account makes that process much more effective.

 

 

Core Concepts 3: what’s your musical direction?

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When I was first learning to play, I didn’t have a specific musical direction. I played the rock music I loved, studied classical guitar seriously, and played in jazz band, at school. I wanted to know everything about everything, and read the monthly issues of Guitar Player and Guitar World magazines cover to cover. Everything I read reinforced the feeling that a real pro ought to be able to play just about anything.

This was a good attitude for a hungry teenager. Having a wide musical interest was great musical preparation for a career as a player. When you don’t know what your next gig is going to call for, it helps to have the ability to handle anything that might get thrown at you.

 

The average casual player has different needs.

I don’t mean to say that it’s not good to be a well-rounded player, because I don’t believe more knowledge ever hurts. But one thing I hear from students over and over is that they feel they’re dabbling without any focus. Some get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information out there. One student told me, “I have hard drives full of gigabytes of guitar lessons, but I still can’t play the way I want to”. This can lead to “option anxiety” and ultimately paralysis. No wonder people get overwhelmed!

If we look at the players that inspired us to pick up a guitar in the first place, though, it seems to me that most of them were stylists. They staked out a musical territory and created a personal sound out of that sonic landscape: a kind of musical home.

 

This week’s core concept is built on that idea: that while versatility is essential to the pro and has value of its own, it doesn’t have to be your goal from the outset.

The stylists we all admire got to know their musical territory well, and the best mastered the style and sound in a way that set a new standard. But few could play everything with the same level of skill and conviction, and ultimately that’s not what most fans want from an artist anyway. We can fall in love with individual songs, but being a fan means connecting with the musical personality. Developing that personality demands a deeper familiarity of the music you play, a command of nuance and suble detail.
This is hard to develop when you’re skittering across the surface trying to pull information from everywhere. Building real skill takes focus, not just in the sense of concentration on a task but concentration on a style and sound. When you get to know the music in greater detail, you’re going to play it with more conviction and confidence.

 

So just because your favorite YouTube channel has three hundred lessons on playing in seven different styles, you don’t need to explore them all right away.

Pick a direction first. Find your musical home and get to know it well. This might remain your focus for a lifetime, or it might just be a starting point. If you find you’re losing interest, pick a new direction. But recognize the value in really getting to know the music you play, and stick to it for as long as it feels good. It will make you a better and more confident player in the long run.