The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

I love how he makes it look so easy. 

I recently caught up with an old friend of mine from grad school. Corey Harvin is a classical and rock guitarist based in Miami. He is professor of guitar at Palmer Trinity School in Miami, had studied classical guitar with both Bruce Holzman and Nicholas Goluses, and also travels around the world to perform. He earned his DMA (Doctorate of Musical Arts) from the Eastman School of Music. Getting a DMA from Eastman is an incredibly difficult feat. The exams a person must take at Eastman are comparable to the MCAT in difficulty. 

In short, Corey really, really knows what he's doing.

Great guitarists make playing guitar look easy. Simple. Like breathing. There is an ease of movement that speaks loudly of years of practice and study, a lifetime of learning. What is really impressive, and quite intimidating too, is that Corey manages to make the most difficult pieces in the classical guitar repertory look like they are a piece of cake to play. 

I am pretty adamant that playing guitar is easiest when a person plays with only the right balance of tension. Tension, in playing and learning guitar, is comparable to a clogged drain; it tends to collect in the body at specific places. One of the most common places that tension can collect is in the mouth or jaw. I've mentioned this a couple of times before on this blog, namely here and here.

Corey is a textbook example of having no tension in his mouth.

What's more interesting about Corey is that although he has mastered all the technical aspects of guitar, he is unafraid to try out and experiment with new avenues of expression and creativity. He has done rock and roll and continues to write and record music on his own. This is a stark contrast from many of the classical guitarists I have met in my life, who just hate the idea of playing with a pick. It's too bad; As I am very happy to admit, we rock guitarists know all too well that plugging into a loud amp and pissing off our neighbors is immensely enjoyable. 

It goes without saying that it's really intimidating to watch a guy like Corey Harvin play guitar, too. He's damned good. He has practiced years and years, and has come to extraordinarily refined place in his artistry. Does that mean he has "arrived," so-to-speak? Does that mean he is done learning? Nope. As I mentioned before, Corey has no trouble experimenting, and he always seems to be looking for new stuff to create with. Learning is lifelong.

No matter how much we know about guitar, we'll never quite have access to everything. Although that can be frustrating, it's also quite beautiful, too. 

Finally, this is a video of Corey playing a selection of the concerto for guitar by Villa Lobos. It's gorgeous! It is my hope that he can come to Austin at some point and give us guitar enthusiasts a concert.

If anyone ever tells me that their hands are too small to learn guitar, I think I may show them this...

One of my first teachers, Jason Werkema, had an awesome way of learning how to play a classical guitar piece with the right amount of tension. Simply, he would try to play so light that he would buzz each note. This is a brilliant strategy. It worked great to ease tension, and he played his pieces quite flawlessly. Since he was aiming to sound bad and buzzy in the pursuit of the right amount of tension (in practice of course), he also managed to import the visual piece of the song. When a guitarist eases up, the emphasis is tremendously visual.

Guitar is an appealing instrument to the eyes, as far as I am concerned. Why else would we be so enamoured with how cool people look when they play it? The techniques of learning to play a difficult piece with the eyes could be just as good as with the ears. The funny thing is that by aiming for it to sound bad, we gain an appreciation of how our fingers look as we play.

Try this out: Find a song or piece of music that has a passage that is a little bit more difficult than what you are ready for. Then, tune your guitar in an awful, random, tuning. Finally, aim to buzz each note. I mean it: Every single note should sound buzzy and out of tune. Since it will sound bad, you'll be forced to look at the sight-lines of where your fingers are more than hear the result. If you can stand playing your music this way, the look and feel of how your fingers do the work will be fascinating. Perhaps when you tune your guitar back to normal and play it, you'll find that your ability to play the difficult passage has been enhanced.

Voila. Looks good, sounds good, more fun. Two great tastes that taste great together (Thanks to Mike S. for hipping me to The Bad Plus covering Radiohead's Karma Police, with pretty much the same words).

Flow. I like to describe it as the feeling I get when time disappears. When I am not focused on anything except playing music and I am so drawn into it that someone new could walk into the room and I wouldn't know it, I am in the flow state. In my opinion, everyone who picks up the guitar has different reasons to, but flow is possible regardless. Flow, to me, is the reason everyone slowly gets pulled into playing, and all the better.

The following is a comparison between two types of guitar styles, namely classical guitar and pop guitar, and how long and dedicated a person must be to get into that flow state with either.

Pop Guitar

Usually, all it takes for a person to learn pop guitar from scratch is to learn chords comfortably, learn to strum, and learn how to change chords within a strumming pattern. Then comes the songs and learning how to play along and listen. That's about it. Getting to the point where time can absolutely disappear isn't really that difficult or far off. It's merely being comfortable enough with the instrument and those three skills. This is not very hard to do. I would guess that it can take anywhere from about one to six months of work.

Classical Guitar

It takes a minimum of at least two years of study with classical guitar to get to a flow state. A minimum, and it's not guaranteed! The skills? Well, learning the Andres Segovia or the Aaron Shear scales, finishing up the 120 exercises for the right hand by Giuliani, practicing Scott Tennant's Pumping Nylon, learning a lot of etudes by Sor, Carcassi, and listening. Then come the actual pieces. Choros or Preludes by Villa Lobos, Julia Florida by Barrios, or Capriccio Arabe by Tarrega.

So what are the implications?

First, classical guitar is not just something we can up and decide to do. Most people who do want to learn classical guitar already have a love of that music. Second, if anyone wants to teach classical guitar and wants to teach only classical guitar, they will have an uphill battle. Look at the hoops a person has to jump through! Instead, why not learn how to teach pop guitar and gradually introduce the student to the wonders of classical guitar? Third, flow state, the place we go when we are on stage or playing with friends, having a blast, etc, is the only reason we play. Flow is important, and it takes far less time playing pop guitar to achieve this state than it does classical guitar.

Finally, which sounds most fun? Perhaps there is an iconoclast out there who is working to soften the educational tradition of classical guitar so that flow is easier to achieve, faster? I hope to meet you if you are reading.

Mark Elf is a jazz guitarist in NYC. When I was an undergrad, I cornered him and fired a bunch of questions at him about the music business. The following was one of his memorable quotes:

"Imagine this room to represent the entire amount of money in the music industry. You see those three bread crumbs on the floor in the corner? Those represent Jazz."

Ouch. Was it any better for classical guitar I wondered? Eh, no matter. I got accepted into a really good school, I should be fine, right?

I believe it was either (or both) Seth Godin or Hugh Macleod who said that youth tends to underestimate the competition, and speaking of which there is quite a lot of it in classical guitar. There are lots and lots of people doing the same thing, beating down the same doors. It's pretty hilarious. "Gotta get into Juilliard, gotta practice 50 hours a day. Sacrafice seeing the sun! COFFEE!"

The only way that I personally found to make money playing classical guitar that I could handle was to get a doctorate and get a job teaching at a university, and play shows on the side. Sounds pretty sweet right? I could be a professor, I could have my own library, tweed jackets with patches on the elbows, smoke pipe tobacco and say things like, "I disagree." It's not all roses, especially when considering the student debt. Eastman wasn't a cheap place to go to. Worth it, but not cheap.

But what about touring? The Ying String Quartet started by playing very small community centers, building their base of fans slowly. Eventually, they became a very highly regarded string quartet. They even ended up as the quartet in residence at the Eastman School of Music. Not bad. I like their story, because they really put themselves out there, which brings me to my final point: How many classical guitarists are really putting themselves out there? Are they too afraid of making a mistake?

The ones who are putting themselves out there recognize the trouble they are asking for, and they accept it. They accept the fact that they will not make an assured amount of money until later, when they have notoriety. They will make many mistakes. They will be burned quite a few times. They realize that they have a lot of work to do in their careers that equals or exceeds the amount of work it took them to have gotten where they wanted to be musically. But they do it anyways because they love it. Dan Lippel is one of these guitarists.

Dan and I were in a bar in NYC when we were talking about motivation. Dan said this:

"If during your darkest period of life, where everything is going to total s**t, you still feel as if you can't live without your guitar, then it's obvious what you must do.

I agree.

If you are a classical guitarist, and you want to be up there with the best classical guitarists at least as far as notoriety is concerned, do it. Don't mess around, just do it. Get out there, tour, and expect that people will call you crazy. It will not make sense, it will seem like you are hitting your head against a wall. But if you fight for it, it will come.