The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

Woman seated with Underwood typewriter, Library of Congress

When a beginner starts guitar, the best thing they can do is start by playing basic chords and learn how to strum. This is the vernacular of guitar, the most commonly spoken language. It is the language of pop songs.

What happens when a beginner outgrows the vernacular? Perhaps she would like to branch out and start playing melodies on the guitar. To me, this is playing lead guitar. Just like strumming and playing chords, playing lead guitar has hacks that really help the beginner to advance quickly. The Typwriter Method is the one of the best I've come across. First things first: pressure.

Each finger has a specific amount of pressure it must use to fret a note on the guitar. The pressure needed is magnified when more fingers are being used. More than one finger is needed to play chords, which means you need more pressure (it's worse for barre chords). This is not the case in lead guitar. In fact, when a finger is down that doesn't need to be down, it can make playing lead guitar more difficult.

Let's say that the melody you want to play has two notes, starting on your index finger. If your index finger lifts up en route to the second note, then you are maximizing your energy. If your index finger doesn't lift up, you are adding more pressure than needed:

I like to compare this to old time typewriters. The gears will get messed up if you accidentally use more than one key at one time. Same thing happens to guitarists. Use only what you need.

"You never breathe when you are thinking."

I have this face... a thinking face. I think so hard that I sit extremely still and my eyebrows furrow. And the news to me is that I don't breathe. Hmmm...

What about guitar? Do I hold my breath when I play guitar? Until recently, yes. Lead guitar, especially. I noticed that I would take a deep breath as I started to play, but sooner or later I would desperately need oxygen. I would breathe a shallow breath to kindof, sortof make up for it.

In the grand tradition of nerdiness, I ran an informal experiment on the effects of deep breathing on my guitar playing.

I started by breathing deeply while I practiced a passage that was hard for me to do. Here is the result: I noticed that I messed up every single time I took a big deep breath, as opposed to a shallow one. However, I noticed that the tension was gone when I breathed deeply. When I played without deep breathing, the enemy marched on... tension.

My hypothesis: Taking deep breaths destroys tension, and whatever technique was built on it. Therefore, playing and breathing deeply at the same time will change your relationship to the guitar profoundly.

Could it be that simple? Just take deep breaths? I think it is.

We can cling to tension that we don't need by holding onto our breaths and breathing shallowly as needed. But the brain needs oxygen. That much is obvious.

Yes, taking some deeper breaths means we will mess-up more than we like. What to do about this? Let the mistakes be. I have a strong hunch that they will absolutely work themselves out of the picture in time.

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:

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.

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.

The experience of playing guitar is different for each person who picks it up. There is no blanket advice out there that will withstand a thorough query as to what is best for one's own body. This is part of the reason I like playing and teaching guitar. There is always room for learning something more in my own playing, and it is a trip to help someone narrow down exactly what it feels like to play guitar in a way that works for them. Part of this work involves eliminating the wrong kind of tension and focusing on an easier way of playing.

The end goal of "good technique," in my opinion, is one in which the person playing guitar has only the right amount of tension needed to complete the task, and no more. Notice that I didn't say that the end goal was to be completely relaxed. The common, but possibly false, assumption is that we need to be 100% relaxed in order to play. My question for the folks who are after such a thing is: Is it really good to have no tension in your body at all? If that's the case, consider that without the right amount of tension, our fingers cannot possibly grip the strings. Without the right amount of tension, we'd be spaghetti on the floor. Without the right amount of tension, our hearts will not beat. Without the right amount of tension, we'd be dead.

Consider the following possibilities. First, many people figure out that playing guitar isn't very easy when their shoulder lifts upwards as they switch chords. Once eliminated, less energy goes into the shoulder, and more energy is conserved for harder chord progressions. A second example would be tension in area of the jaw/mouth. By learning to eliminate this tension, we could have more energy conserved and ready to be dispatched to play a difficult passage. I've noticed this in my own playing, and I have noticed this is a cross-genre technical issue!

The point is how to eliminate what is unnecessary, and conserve the energy for better pursuits, i.e. having fun. Guitar is not totally an out-of-body experience, but I have found that finding the best balance of tension in our bodies as we play is well worth the effort. Besides, I am pretty sure we are all looking to have more fun playing music anyway.

Guitar is an interesting pursuit. If a person has any tension in the body, as a result of habit or whatnot, it eventually comes under scrutiny because it will hold them back from playing something they want to play. It's pretty normal to begin playing guitar with tension where it doesn't need to be. After all, we practically twist our wrists to fit around the neck of the guitar. It scares the willy-nilly out of me to see students play in a way that is bad for their bodies (as a side note, beware of blanket advice such as "Your thumb needs to be directly behind the neck of the guitar, at all times." It might not be the best for you).

There are times where tension is the result of bad technique. What if you have a solid technical ability and the tension is still there? The culprit might be even more invisible. I've noticed that there is a common thing that all guitarists will do if they are playing a passage that stretches their ability: They will twist and move their mouth and jaw muscles. If this sounds familiar, then try the following.

1. Get a mirror and practice in front of it for at least two weeks.

2. Observe your mouth (don't try to change it).

If your mouth moves any small little bit, you would do yourself a big favor by merely observing it. Try not to clamp down on your teeth. Try not to grind them! Eventually, and through observation of this problem, you can rid your body of another bit of tension that is unneeded.

If you are interested in a bit of further reading, check out this article on mandible jaw syndrome.