The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

I love how he makes it look so easy. 

Barbara Lynn is the only musician I have ever seen who plays upstrokes on the downbeats and uses a thumbpick for melodies in-between the strums. It's so completely unique, and still somehow is secondary to the soul she has in delivering her song. It reminds me of the anonymous Haitian guitarist who plays so differently, and yet perfectly.

The video is great for one final reason too: It is ample proof that there is no wrong way to play guitar. One's guitar-ability doesn't matter as much as the spark, the soul the person exhibits, the love the audience feels. Yeah!

Much thanks to Charles for hipping me to Barbara Lynn and for sending me this video. 

Palmyra (Tadmor). Pillars of colonnade, showing brackets for statues, photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Hugh MacLeod has an interesting way to describe how really successful people get stuff done. He feels that they refuse to hide behind what he calls pillars, and can therefore execute ideas with ease.

Pillars are things that we think can help us be successful in our creative endeavors, but really just get in the way. The danger is that when more pillars than needed are allowed on the playing field, lots of energy is wasted on them.

Consider a wall, filled to the brim of beautiful vintage guitars. Pre-CBS Fenders, Gibsons that are at least 30 years old, and Martins from the 1800's. Would you feel okay having a wall like that to yourself? Are you salivating at the thought?

Remember this: all you need is one guitar to write thousands of songs, not a wall of them. Less is more. Or in the wise words of Hugh MacLeod...

Successful people, artists and non-artists alike, are very good at spotting pillars. They're very good at doing without them. Even more important, once they've spotted a pillar, they're very good at quickly getting rid of it.

Ignore Everybody, page 45,

What pillars could you do away with? What extras are getting in your way? Eliminating them might be terrifying, but the liberation that comes from giving them up can be breathtaking.

I know you've seen it.

The eighties were notorious for poofy hair bands, egregiously long guitar solos, and the extreme proliferation of the fatal disease known as Guitar-Face. It's a horrible, incurable malady.

What is Guitar Face exactly? It's the playing of lead guitar so-blisteringly-fast-that-the-whole-face-has-to-play-the-guitar-too. 

As I have mentioned before, there is very little hope of curing Guitar Face once transmitted. The lead guitarist is scarred, forever. This is mostly due to inaccurate early detection of the disease. 

How can we protect ourselves, and our children, from Guitar-Face?

First, never show off your chops in a guitar store. Please, don't! No one wants to be infected if by chance your Guitar-Face shows up.

Second, make fun of all the people who do show their Guitar-Face in a guitar store. Throw some paperclips at their guitar to mess them up, or try to stick straws in their poofy hair. Try to accomplish either or both in a discreet manner. 

Third, work to ease some of the tension out of your playing. Want some ideas? Try to isolate any tension in your mouth or jaw so that you can eliminate it. Perhaps try to balance the tension in your body. Try observing how fantastic classical guitarists play without any excess tension. Or, dare I suggest, take guitar lessons in Austin with an absolute utter nag about playing guitar effortlessly.

Okay, maybe Guitar-Face is kindof fun. Maybe I do it all the time and I don't know it. I'm not really sure. But, I got a huge kick out of searching for photos:

Any project counts. Professional, creative, or personal projects. Anything. It could be learning the trumpet, trying out watercolors, putting together a power-point slideshow, or even taking a random photo of flowers and sharing it with everyone.

Ahem.

A very common reason why most people delay starting a new creative project (including yours truly—I am not beyond feeling the fear of starting) is the assumption that everything must be good in order to justify the effort. 

Sometimes it's nice to be surprised, but if the result of a creative project doesn't turn out to be good, it can be wildly frustrating. We would think we were stupid for wasting our times on a bad such-and-such.

I might be in the minority about this, but why not aim to be satisfied instead? After all, good and bad are both judgments, and there is little incentive for us to continue to get better at a project after we label our work as such.

Being satisfied, or even dissatisfied, is different. If what we have created is satisfying, we'll savor our efforts, and sooner or later we'll let go so we can move onto the next project. What if what we create is unsatisfying? We could try to make it satisfying, or just try a different route to see if it turns out better. Or we could just as easily abandon it without a second thought.

Working to be satisfied seems a teeny-weeny-little-bit less harsh. Instead of the final product being a product to be viewed and judged, we could just aim for our efforts to be be satisfying to look at, to mull over, to gaze at, to listen to...

...to enjoy.

According to Shaun McNiff, author of the wonderful book Trust the Process, a healthy regard for the beginning of any new creative idea is incredibly necessary. 

The most rudimentary exercise for those wishing to experiment with stepping into the unknown, involves painting, drawing, moving, writing, or making sounds without any goal in mind. If you begin to work exclusively for the sake of expressing yourself, you have begun to practice "negative capability."

Perhaps you have experienced negative capability before? It's the capability to tolerate doing something completely new and not knowing if it's a good idea or not. It could mean starting a painting from scratch, writing a song from nothing, or starting guitar for the very first time. It can feel really exhilarating, or absolutely horrifying. As Shaun McNiff points out, there really isn't any goal in mind except expression of the self. That takes time, but it's do-able. Therefore, once a person gets through the awkward first moments and finds a rhythm in a pursuit, continuing on gets easier.

In other words, well begun is half done.

Many artists and musicians are very comfortable with the process of creating something from scratch. Most of the time, the song never turns out the way the musician had in mind. The painting has a creative spirit all of it's own when a person is okay with being surprised with the result. Dancing, as I have mentioned many times before, gets easier when you just jump in. Hell, you never know where you'll end up. We all could use more of an ability to just let go, jump in. All the more so if we are dying to try something new.

So, what does it take to have an unconditional regard for what we are creating, even if we have no idea if we'll like it later? What does it take to develop "negative capability?" I don't know about other people, but I know I know what works for me. I need a healthy respect for even the most frustrating failures, and a deep faith that the right (and most satisfying) answer will be made clear, eventually.

This is tip #37 of my new book, How to Learn Guitar and Have Insane Amounts of Fun: 

Keeping a guitar on a guitar stand tends to inspire more fun.

When your guitar is on a guitar stand, it is in full view begging to be played. It's a simple trick. If your guitar is ready to be picked up in a moment's notice, you'll pick it up and play it just for fun. Clean up is easy too. Just put the guitar back on the guitar stand. Conversely, when your guitar is in your case it is resting. It's just a bit more effort to take it out of the case and tune it up, and it will add another two minutes to practicing. Plus, clean up is just not as quick as before.

Fortunately, there are plenty of inexpensive guitar stands available online that are highly likely to fit your electric and acoustic guitar. To find the best guitar stand Google the words, “(acoustic or electric) guitar stand.” Since guitar stands are designed to fit many different types of guitars, chances are that you'll find one that will fit your guitar. If your guitar is shaped differently like a Jackson Kelly or a Gibson Flying V, this might not be the case.

Do not keep your guitar on a stand permanently if it's worth more than $800. It's easier to control the humidity by keeping them in a case. Besides, it's best not have a beautiful guitar in plain sight when clumsy people are around.

No other piece of equipment will help you have more fun at guitar than a guitar stand.

If you had the entire book, you could learn how to make practicing guitar even more fun by understanding where to place your guitar stand. Want to check it out?

Deerhoof // Reville, The Runners Four, Apple O, Friend Opportunity, Offend Maggie, Deerhoof Vs Evil

Neko Case // Blacklisted

Malloc // Louisian Stars

Fitz and the Tantrums // Pickin' Up The Pieces

Dan Lippel // Sustenance, Resonance

The Fleet Foxes // Helplessness Blues

This is tip #49 of my new book, How to Learn Guitar and Have Insane Amounts of Fun: 

Information that is beautifully laid out tends to be more functional than information that is not. I am more likely to look longer at information that is structured and presented well than something that merely looks okay.

An author who spends his or her time notating every single nuance of a song might be doing the discerning reader a favor by including such detail. If, however, those details are not laid out or formatted in an easy to read and aesthetically beautiful way, it is far easier for the reader to become hopelessly lost. Some tablature authors plug in every single variation of every chord in every single part of the song in the name of accuracy. More often than not, this clutters up the view of the page and it makes it very difficult to learn the song.

It's okay to use a chord sheet that has a lot of chords on it. If it is well-laid out, formatted beautifully, easy to comprehend, and aesthetically beautiful, get it. It's worth it.

If you had the entire book, you could find out one the best ways to practice a song, and be blissfully unaware of mistakes at the same time. Want to check it out?

Imagine for one moment that you are completely without tension. You'd be on the floor, swallowed up by the Earth's gravity. You wouldn't be able to move one muscle in your entire body. That also would mean you wouldn't be able to feed yourself, hang out with friends unless they came to you, or play guitar.

Now imagine the opposite. Imagine that you have as much tension as the Golden Gate bridge in San Franscisco. You also would not be able to move one muscle in your body. You also wouldn't be able to feed yourself, hang out with friends unless they came to you, or play guitar, either.

Any which way you put it, it sucks.

The most common way of approaching the tension problem in guitar is to polarize it: Find the extreme opposite, and see if it's better. But, there really isn't anything better about one way or another. One way leads us to feeling like a wet noodle, the other like a stone.

It's one of those "duh" moments, but having a good balance of both tension where we need it, and eliminating tension where we don't, is key. It might do us good not to polarize in an effort to compensate. Instead, it may do us well to give a slight nudge to the right conclusion.

A person who is on the too-much-tension side of the spectrum (and most people are like this), might do well to focus on the tension that collects in the mouth. A person who is on the too-little-tension side of the spectrum might do well playing an easier playing guitar, using smaller gauge strings, and building up strength slowly. 

The take home message? A balance of tension can be found quite gracefully, and effortlessly. Perhaps it takes exploring the absolute opposites in order to find that balance (I have most certainly done my share). Once found, we don't regret the path.