The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

Before reading this blog post, remember that it is not unusual to gravitate to one of these motivations a bit more than any others. This is not "black and white" so-to-speak. We all want to learn, have fun, feel creative, and connect with others. However, each of us has a bit more compelling of a reason to do it. The following is a summary of four of the most common motivations all of us, including me, have when we pick up the guitar and decide to learn it.

Fun and Enjoyment.

Enjoyment? That's probably the number one reason why people play it and want to learn it. If it looks fun and enjoyable, then why not?

Connection.

Connection. There are people out there who feel that the most important reason to play guitar is to connect with others. I am reminded of a colleague in grad school. Her mother always held her as a baby and played guitar at the same time. The result is that she formed a sort of association of connection with the instrument. For her, seeing a guitarist live meant she could feel that connection. Getting together and playing music with other people is a fantastic way to just hang out too. Musicians love to hang.

Creativity.

There are people out there who look to guitar as an avenue to create. The tell-tale signs? Time passing by and enjoyment of finding and exploring the capabilities of the guitar. Pushing the sound. Recording musical thoughts. The person who is obsessed with creating music just wants to find the ways that work for them with guitar, and educational tradition is playfully tossed out in the pursuit.

Intellectual Stimulation.

There are many people out there who love to learn. However, there are people who like to know the nuts and bolts of music and want to know what it's all about to a large extent. Learning guitar, for these people, is often guided with an intense curiosity with regards to music theory and/or scales. For these people, guitar is a lovely way to grow and expand their thinking abilities, and look cool at the same time when they play... of course!

I am rather fond of saying, "No one learns in a bubble." It's true. Many students march up to me in their first lesson and tell me that online guitar lessons were a complete waste of time. I won't blame them; There is no interaction with online lessons. Neither is there is any encouragement either. Playing music basically means learning from other people, people who can empathize with you and perhaps offer a suggestion or two. Playing music also means not limiting oneself to learning from one teacher, either.

The people I work with who have the most fun with guitar branch out and find other people to play music with. It's the jamming with others that is exciting about playing guitar. It's even more fun to play with a good drummer and a solid bassist. In six years of intense study, I played with countless musicians. Each one taught me something or at least inspired me to learn even more. Sometimes it was bad, sometimes beautiful, but always instructive. Also, the good news is that you don't have to buy lessons from everyone you play guitar with. Just play and pay attention!

But gingerly and begrudgingly I must also offer that learning guitar also means learning from more than one teacher, especially if the goal is to get a world-view that is incredibly wide. I had six teachers (see the list at the end of the post if you're curious), and each taught me something different, thus expanding my palette exponentially. I must say that as much as I do want to keep being a teacher for any one person, and be a complete teacher from scratch to mastery, it's better ultimately for a person to find many more sources of information. It's all about connecting the dots.

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I had six guitar teachers. They were:

1. Jason Werkema (Grand Rapids Guitar Quartet)
2. Chris Buzzelli (BGSU)
3. Dan Lippel (BGSU)
4. Jack Edward Smith (Rochester, NY area guitarist)
5. Bob Sneider (Eastman School of Music)
6. Nicholas Goluses (Eastman School of Music)

Hard chord progressions pop up from time to time. About the only thing we can count on is that they will show up, and that they will stretch our technical ability. Here are some things I do when a chord progression is giving me difficulty:

1. I will take the chord progression completely out of context and make it without any rhythm at all. The presence of rhythm on any chord progression adds a subtle stress on the player. "I better get this right or it will sound bad." Taking the progression out of context in this way helps tremendously. Bonus: You could watch TV while doing this.
2. Look in a mirror at your jaw. Do you notice any movement? If you do, there is probably tension there. To understand this point better, read this blog post.
3. The order of the fingers arriving to the new chord is the least looked at aspect of playing chord progressions. If you see your fingers not getting to the new chord all at the same time, then perhaps you need to take the chord further out of context and rhythm. Playing chords is often like hopping and skipping from one to the other. All the fingers need to land all at the same time.
4. Graceful Degradation of rhythm. If you are ready to add rhythm, make sure to allow yourself to go slow if you need to. If you aren't quite up to speed just yet, it's okay to go slower! Just make sure you aren't forcing it.

Enjoy!

What does it mean to play guitar correctly anyways? I propose that if you can answer yes to the following two questions, you are playing guitar correctly:

1. Are you pain-free when you play?
2. Are you having fun?

The first question is a bit elusive. Good technique is different for every single person who decides to pick up the guitar. What works for one person doesn't neccesarily work for another. Consider this little gem I like to harp on guitar teachers about: "Place your thumb on the back of the neck of the guitar at all times." The trouble with this advice is that it doesn't work with everyone, especially the ones with longer thumbs. If people with longer thumbs always placed their thumb on the back of the neck, their wrist would be bent on a number of occasions (a precursor to tendonitis if ever I saw one). I personally have seen student after student respond best to having a strait wrist:

The more I try to play without pain, the more it ends up being more enjoyable.

The second question is also an elusive one. "Are you having fun?" This is a really good question that I'll ask my students sometimes, especially if they are frustrated! If the fun still out-weighs the frustration, we're in good shape. If not, I have some serious work to do. Guitar ought to be fun. If it weren't, then why play it at all? Why take lessons? Why try to do it? Why? It'd be just another expensive hobby.

The trouble with musicians is that many of us over-complicate why we do music, and that unfortunately transfers to everyone else who wants a piece of the action. There doesn't need to be some huge burden, a heavy philosophy that we must shoulder in order to play guitar. Neither do we need to be weighed down with the idea that our contributions to guitar aren't worth it ("so why try?"). No. We all have something to give to guitar, as long as we're doing it without chronic pain and we're having fun with it. That's my two cents, at least.

Strumming loudly has it's place, but what does it accomplish? If we are talking about rock and roll, it accomplishes a lot. Of course, there a lot of power and aggression with strumming loudly. People like the sound of aggressive strums especially when playing music with more energy. However, there are other situations where strumming with a bit more control, a bit less volume, and playing a bit more "cloud-like" is appropriate. The following entry is all about understanding what strumming loudly does, as well as reasons for easing up on the volume.

The following are some not-so-good consequences of strumming loudly:

1. The left hand usually tightens up. This is usually an experience factor, meaning that it's possible to play loudly and not have the left hand tighten up when one has a bit more time on the guitar.
2. Since the left hand is tighter, the pressure used on one chord is immense, and it makes getting to a new chord a bit more difficult.
3. Every buzz, at the result of finger positioning not being close to the fret, get's magnified.

The solution? Like all of them, this is something I wouldn't have ever figured out if I didn't teach: Play guitar like a nice rolling cloud is ambling over the country side. Of course you can also get in touch with your inner zen, reach satori, and/or levitate. Those might help, and if you figure any of those out let me know. Especially the levitate part. That would be really cool and I would love to have a nice new party trick. Anyhow, just imagine the cloud going over the country side while strumming and watch what happens. This has the effect of making most fret buzzes dissapear, loosening up the left hand, and giving you more control over strumming and changing chord progressions.

This chord progression hack is simple as pie! This works particularly well when I get to show people how to play In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel).

There are two ways of playing an E Minor chord. The most common way of playing an E Minor involves the middle and ring fingers on the second fret of the A and D strings. In many cases this makes sense, but the movement can be cumbersome moving from an E Minor to a C. Since this is fairly common beginning chord progression, E Minor to C Major, why not work it so that there is one finger similar between both? This is actually pretty easy: Keep your middle finger on the second fret of the D string the entire time, and use your first finger for the rest of the E Minor. Voila! Moving between these chords is now far more approachable.

Common fingers are totally the move.

One key failure that online guitar lessons have not been able to escape is that they do not seem to make most challenges beatable. What I mean is that most online guitar lessons do not take into account where the student is coming from and exactly how much to guide them along. Most of these lessons somehow skip a crucial step here and there that would greatly aid in understanding. Worse, they will put pressure on the student to get over it, buckle down, struggle, and learn guitar. This is analagous to being given a 500 page book on anatomy and being told, "You have a test in three days on this. Fail, and you will be thrown off a cliff. Pass, and we give you a different book. It might be Quantum Physics, too. Good luck."

The trick to learning anything is making sure that the information presented to us, as students (and I am absolutely a student as well), is thoughtfully selected and tested in real-time. I am wary of any teacher who tells me to memorize things; If it's not useful then it's a waste of my time and energy! Selectivity is everything. Furthermore, memorizing things makes it hard for each challenge must be commiserate with my ability. I only have so much brain power. In conclusion, the entire set up of the lesson, the presentation of the material, everything, must ultimately help the student learn what it is they need to learn, and no more. Anything more is like cotton candy; Lots of sugar and little substance.

Capos can be confusing.

Take this example: If you have a capo on the fifth fret and you play an E Major chord shape, are you really playing an E Major anymore? Nope. What about this: If you put a capo on the fifth fret and play a D Minor shape, are you really playing a D Minor? Nope. It's even more interesting when you are trying to tell a piano player what chords you are playing so that he/she can play along. All of a sudden, the music you are playing will sound really interesting!

There is a way around this, although it's a bit annoying. In two parts, what are: First, recognize that the chord you are playing is merely the same shape as the other chord you were playing. An E Major is no longer an E Major when a capo is on the fifth fret, even if you were using the same fingers. Just because someone is using the same shape doesn't automatically mean that it is the same chord. Second, remember that whenever you put the capo on any fret, it will change the tuning of the guitar. If you put the capo on the fifth fret then the lowest note on the guitar becomes an "A." Therefore, an E Major chord shape really becomes an A Major chord. Confusing? You bet.

Capos are even worse when it comes to how to describe notes. That I will leave up to the next blog post...

In a previous post, I stated a dirty little secret that 98% of guitarists know. It is what I like to call, "The Ghost Chord." What I stated was that 98% of guitarists use the final strum before any change of chord to lift up their fingers and land on the new chord. The result sounds smooth and like someone has been playing guitar for years. I mentioned that there were a couple of reasons why this works.

• Rhythm guitar, like drums and guitar leads, keyboards and bass, is a texture. It is much like a color that a painter would use to paint. In much, but not all, pop music that involves a guitar the texture of it is mostly filled up and present. This means that many, but not all, listeners are expecting that rhythm guitar to be full of sound for the entire song. By using the open strings like in the ghost chord, there is no drop in volume.. No drop in volume.
• Listeners of much, but not all, pop music are expecting a chord change at beat one of the next measure. There is an expectation that the listener has (to the point of bias) to hear the chord change at the top of the measure, on beat number one. Try this out if you have a guitar handy: Pick a chord progression of two chords that you know best, but give an equal and long amount of time for each chord. Change the chords starting at beat four, beat three, and even beat two but no matter what always be at the new chord at beat one of the new measure. This is the aural equivalent of an optical illusion! Even though a person is taking forever to change a chord, as long as the switch is complete by beat one of the next measure the listener won't notice!

The Ghost Chord is an awesome trick that works really really well even for someone who has never picked up a guitar before. Guitar is such a lovely instrument to pick up. So easy to play, and still it brings surprises (even after 18 years of playing).

As the title of this blog suggests, the mindset a person gets into when strumming a guitar is analogous to Harry Houdini. We sort of dissapear into the music, and magically reappear after the song is done. The more that time stops when you or I are playing guitar, the more fun it probably was. Even more so, perhaps we become like Guitarzan.