Guitar Lessons - Music Instruction Blog by Scotty West

Batter Up! Our Guitar Lessons Teach You The "Rules Of The Game".

     It happened again just the other day.  A guy named Ed came in to inquire about taking private guitar lessons from me.  He had actually been playing for several years and was even in a Blues garage band.  He's asking me how my guitar lessons will help take his guitar playing to the next level.  I asked him a few questions and it became apparent that, like a lot of folks, he didn't really know ANYTHING about music.  He's totally self taught.  He knows a few guitar chords and some riffs.  His friends have been showing him some finger patterns but he doesn't know what they are or how to use them. 

     I tell him that I think it's important to understand guitar/music theory in order to get where you REALLY want to with your music.  How are you going to MASTER that instrument if you don't UNDERSTAND how it works? 

     He says "Yeah ... but I'm not interested in becoming a PRO or anything.  I just wanna' jam with my friends ...  play what SOUNDS good.  What the heck do I need to know all that music theory crap for?"

     I get that all the time and it's so frustrating to me.  I know that if I didn't understand what I do about the LANGUAGE of music, I wouldn't be able to do ANY of the cool things I can do on my guitar.  I have so much fun.  I write my own tunes, jam my brains out and play anything just by listening to it.  I owe it all to the excellent teachers I had and the hard work I did learning my theory and getting my ears trained.  I want everybody to get to where they are as happy with their own guitar playing.  It's kinda' my mission in life and it can be pretty discouraging when you see how many folks become blinded by all the misinformation there is out there ... so I'm always looking for ways to answer folks when they raise these objections.  I suddenly had a flash of inspiration. 

     I said to Ed "Hey, do you play sports?"  He said yes. 

     I said "How about Baseball?"  He said it was his favorite.  He's in a softball league.

     I said "How the heck ya' gonna' play ball if you don't know the RULES OF THE GAME?"

    He looked a little confused so I elaborated.  THEORY is like the "rules of the game" for the sport of MUSIC.  I guess you could get up there with your bat ... but why is this guy throwing that ball past me so fast?  What am I supposed to do now?  Hit the ball?  Run to a base?  What's that?  What does it mean if the guy tags me with the ball?  What the heck is an inning ... or a bunt ... or a pop fly?

     We all seem to understand that games have rules.  There is stuff you have to know to make sense of what is going on around you.  Otherwise you would be totally lost.  And it doesn't matter whether you're in the Little League, your local softball team or shooting for a career in "The Majors".  Ya' gotta' know the rules of the game.  Why is it so hard for folks to see that music has rules too?

     Music is an ART FORM and I know a lot of you want to believe that there are no rules in art ... and indeed there AREN'T.  Art is about SELF EXPRESSION ... right?  You have my full permission to get up there and make whatever stupid racket you want.  But is anybody else going to care or appreciate what you're doing?  Will you be able to add anything of value to the history of the form?  Probably not.  You've heard it time-and-time again.  You have to KNOW the rules in order to creatively BREAK them.  In music, as in most everything else in life, KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.  You can believe me now or believe me later.

    And remember ... the main reason that folks resist learning "the rules" of music is that they are under the mistaken impression that this stuff is complicated and confusing.  But the truth is it's actually pretty simple if you get it explained to you the right way.  Music is very much like a simple language.  It's pretty logical and straight forward.  It ain't rocket science.  It's just so often TAUGHT really badly that folks get the idea that it's this big deal.  So now that you know better, why wouldn't you want to take a little time to learn the rules?  The rewards are very real.  You could ultimately play guitar as well or even BETTER than the guitar heroes you have now.

    I guess I made my point because Ed signed up for some lessons and I'm sure he'll do just fine.  So batter up and let's hit one out of the park!  Give our DVD guitar lessons a try.  By the time we're done, you'll know pretty much everything about music and how it works on the guitar ... and call me anytime if you have questions.

     Otherwise, you'll probably just wind up "sitting on the bench".  Tennis anyone?

All the best,  Scotty West

      

Improvisation As A Language Skill. Make Your Guitar Solos "TALK".

     Those of you who are at all familiar with how I teach guitar know that I think of music as a LANGUAGE.  This makes the guitar itself merely the TOOL that you use to express the language.  I'm always trying to get folks to see that if you don't understand how the language really works, you're not going to see how the instrument itself works.

     This is a hard sell for many people.  They think that learning music is complicated and intimidating.  They're afraid they won't get it and they don't want to feel stupid.  They want to believe that they can learn to play guitar just by copping some more tabs or watching a few more YouTube guitar lessons.  Well I've got some good news and some bad news.

     The bad news is you probably won't get to play guitar the way you really want without learning how music works.  The vast majority of folks who start off playing eventually crash and burn because they don't know enough about how the language of music works to get to where they can actually THINK on their instrument.  This keeps them from being able to do the really fun and creative stuff with their guitars ... like songwriting and improvising.  Others waste literally DECADES worth of time fumbling around in the dark, attaining a level of playing that they could have mastered in just a few short months with a small expenditure of focus and discipline.

     The good news is ... believe-it-or-not ... music is a pathetically SIMPLE language to learn if you get it explained to you the right way.  If you don't think so, try our Absolutely Understand Guitar Video Home Study Program.  I guarantee that our video guitar lessons will get you to understand most of what's going on in music in just a few short weeks.  We've sold thousands of our guitar instruction programs around the world in these last 9 years and we still retain that 100% satisfaction rate  so we must be doing something right!  I'm also available 7 days a week to answer questions if you're confused or need help.  Call toll free or send me an email and I'll talk you through it free of charge.

     Here's a great example of how much music is like a language and how thinking of it that way will launch you into areas of creativity you never dreamed possible.

     Many of our modern styles of music involve IMPROVISATION ... Jazz, Blues, Rock and Country just to name a few.  Everybody wants to learn to solo and rightly so.  It's some of the most fun you can have anywhere in music.  In our previous guitar lesson posts and on our website, we try to get folks to see that the path to becoming a great improviser involves EAR TRAINING.  You solo by HEARING the riffs in your head and then you simply execute them on your guitar by understanding the layout of your fretboard.  Our YouTube sample videos talk all about this.  Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/user/scottyxcom .  Our website also contain lots of information on how to arrive at this level of musicianship.  Check out this essay page http://www.absolutelyunderstandguitar.com/guitar-lessons-instruction-dvd-improv.html .

     We've also pointed out time and again that you have to have a reasonable knowledge of music THEORY in order to do any meaningful ear training.  How are you going to train yourself to RECOGNIZE these note patterns if you don't even know they exist?  If music is a language, then music theory is the equivalent of the rules of SPELLING, GRAMMAR and VOCABULARY in other languages.  It's that simple.  How could you ever hope to do anything creative with the English language if you didn't know how to spell words or construct sentences?

     So here's my new example involving soloing on guitar.  While I was talking to one of my private guitar students the other day,  it occurred to me that we are CONSTANTLY IMPROVISING when we speak in our native language.  When you converse with someone, you USUALLY only have the faintest idea of what you are actually going to say ... right?  You're kinda' makin' it up as you go along.  You respond to input from the person you are conversing with and you didn't already know what they were going to say when the conversation began.  I dare say you often START sentences without really knowing how they are going to END.  I'm not exactly sure at this moment exactly how I am even going to end this paragraph!

     It struck me that this is exactly like doing a guitar solo.  You're making it up as you go along, responding to what the underlying chord progression suggests and expressing thoughts and feelings as they stream through your consciousness ... not always knowing where you're going to end up.  Once again we see that music is just like any other language.

     Of course, being able to converse in the language means that you have to understand how to choose your words by knowing what they mean and how they function.  You have to understand grammar in order to form your words into sentences.  This is exactly like what music theory does for you when spontaneously "conversing" in the language of music when doing a guitar solo!  Not only that, but you know what all the words SOUND like ... and that is exactly like what ear training is!

     So once again we see that music is just like any other language and you owe it to yourself to do your homework if you ever want to truly master it.  And remember, it isn't even all that complicated.  It's just often TAUGHT SO BADLY that everyone thinks it's this big deal.  I stumbled around for years until I found the GOOD teachers and resources that got me to see how simple and elegant the whole musical language really is and I always say that if an IDIOT like me can understand music, then ANYONE can.  You just need to BELIEVE and you will be on the true path.  We're here to help you any way we can.

All the best, Scotty West

Give A Man A Fish. Why You Need To Understand Guitar Theory.

     We all know the old saying "Give a man a fish and you feed him for one day.  Teach a man to catch fish and you feed him for a lifetime".

     What's this got to do with learning to playing guitar?  I was just looking at some of the other top ranked guitar lesson sites on the web and I realized that they're just "giving you a fish".  Each short lesson just shows you one song ... or one riff ... or one concept ... or one finger trick.  I guess you can try to learn to play guitar that way but it's gonna' take forever and you may never really wind up with a holistic, integrated vision of music ... at least not one that will allow you to do the really fun and creative stuff like songwriting and improvising.

      Remember ... MUSIC IS A LANGUAGE.  The guitar is just the TOOL you use to EXPRESS that language.  All along I've been saying that you can't really learn to play guitar one little "sound bite" at a time.  That's why we developed our Absolutely Understand Guitar course the way we did.  Each DVD video guitar lesson is an hour long and TOTALLY covers a particular guitar theory subject.  Our 32 video guitar lessons are also designed to be viewed in a strict order so that each concept flows into the next providing a total picture of how the entire language works.  This is how you "teach a man to catch fish" in the world of guitar. 

     If you have that fundamental understanding of the language, you'll figure out all the details for yourself.  You don't need all these dumb little video clip lessons.  In fact, you'll find that they're counter productive ... giving you the impression that if you learn enough of these little finger tricks, you're somehow going to become a real musician.  YEAH ... RIGHT!

     Another benefit is that once you understand the language of music, you find that all these different STYLES of guitar are really much more similar than they are dissimilar.  You'll realize that Country guitar ain't all that different from Metal guitar.  You can believe me now or believe me later.

    I also realized that a lot of these other instructors don't have "The BIG Picture" themselves.  That's why they try to teach the way they do.  I was watching some of these video clips and they were so full of misinformation that I was truly appalled!  I saw guys routinely demonstrating techniques and concepts that were flat-out totally wrong and misleading.

    I feel fortunate that I had the awesome instructors that I had ... the guys that got me to see the total picture.  Chief among them was my late dear friend Dick Wetmore ... the legendary Jazz Violinist.  He could play ANYTHING.  You could hear that he was SPEAKING through his instrument every time he played.  He's the one who taught me the relationship between THEORY and EAR TRAINING that leads to true musicianship.  These are the lessons I hope to pass on to my students.

    Another reason they produce these little video clip guitar lessons is that web video is still so primitive and audio/video files are so big that it isn't POSSIBLE to provide long video guitar lessons online and still maintain good image quality and resolution.  That's why we're still sticking to DVD at this point.  Our hour-long DVD guitar lessons have excellent video and audio quality.  That's also why our lessons can be a little more expensive as well.  It takes a lot of time and effort to create a course this well designed and produced.

    So here's what I say ... "Teach a man a song and all he knows is that song.  Teach a man how the language of music WORKS and he can figure out how to play any song he wants for the rest of his life".

   And that ain't no fish story ...

   All the best, Scotty West    

Our Guitar Lessons Make A Great Christmas Present. Give The Gift Of Music.

     First ... Holiday Greetings to all our loyal readers!  Thanks for helping make 2008 our best year yet.  Thanks also for all your positive feedback.  Our staff works so hard providing the best video guitar lessons anywhere and it makes our day to hear that we have so many happy students out there.  Tell all your friends!

     For those of you new to our video guitar lesson program, check out our website at www.AbsolutelyUnderstandGuitar.com .  We've been in business for 9 years and have sold thousands of our DVD guitar course worldwide.  Believe it or not, we still retain a 100% satisfaction rate.  Everybody loves the course and we're here to remind you that it makes the perfect Christmas gift for the aspiring musician.

     Talk about value!  You can purchase 32 hours of our world class video guitar lessons for about the same price as 3 hours of private guitar lessons ... and you'll find that Scotty is just about the best guitar teacher you'll ever find anywhere.  He knows the subject inside-out and with 25 years of teaching experience, he's gotten real good at explaining the stuff so that everybody understands it.  It's fun and easy.

     The program comes with a comprehensive printed support material package as well ... the official course handbook, a complete scale, chord, mode, arpeggio fingering encyclopedia containing nearly every finger pattern known to man.  Scotty's famous musical sliderule will show you how to spell any pitch pattern in any key!

     Absolutely Understand Guitar is a complete education in guitar technique, music theory and ear training.  It applies equally to all styles of music ... acoustic or electric ... and all skill levels.  You can even call or email Scotty seven days a week if you have questions or need help ... no charge!  Call right now if you like.  Our toll free number is 866-477-9900 and our email address is auguitar@capecod.net .

    We ship USPS Priority Mail (max 3 days shipping time anywhere in the country) the very day you order our course so there's still time to get it before the big day.

     So have a great holiday and here's wishing you a happy, prosperous and melodious New Year!  Best wishes from the whole staff here at www.AbsolutelyUnderstandGuitar.com .

      

Myths About Scales When Creating Guitar Solos

Greetings fellow guitar players,

     I'm constantly amazed by how much misinformation there is out there about the use of scales in guitar solos.  I'm often disappointed by how the main stream guitar instruction magazines often promote and perpetuate these misconceptions in their guitar lessons, attempting to make soloing look easier than it actually is.  Most online guitar lesson and music theory instruction programs also fail to provide their students with a clear understanding of this fascinating subject.  This does guitar students a grave disservice and makes learning to play guitar much more confusing.

     Here's the problem.  Many guitar lesson venues will try to convince you that the guitar solo in any given song is based on ONE PARTICULAR SCALE.  There are some (but only some) songs that CAN be viewed this way, but it is not a particularly useful or enlightened vision ... and there are other songs that totally defy this line of reasoning (chord progressions that contain a KEY CHANGE for example).   Many of you have been disappointed by guitar solos that you tried to create using this line of reasoning.

     The truth is there is a SEPARATE SCALE FOR EACH CHORD IN THE SOLO.  If you think about it, how could it be any other way?  If they tell you that the guitar solo is based on a MAJOR scale, how is this going to work when the chord progression contains a MINOR chord?  Shouldn't we be playing a minor scale when that minor chord comes around?  The answer is YES ... though many of you are going to have a hard time believing it.  You might say "well I know there could be better guitar solos than the one I just played, but all-in-all I think I did pretty good using that one scale".  The point is, to REALIZE those better solos, you might have to change your thinking and embrace this more enlightened understanding of the process of improvisation.

     Here's the really funny thing.  YOU'RE ALREADY PLAYING ALL THESE DIFFERENT SCALES.  You just don't know it yet and so you're unable to control your guitar solo the way you might like.  This is what the true understanding of MODES will help you see.  The same set of notes actually IS SEVERAL DIFFERENT SCALES depending on which note in the set is working as the ROOT.  The other notes in the set are FUNCTIONING differently depending on which chord you are playing them over!  Understanding and controlling these shifting relationships is what can take you to the next level in your quest for better guitar solos.

     Have you ever heard of the MIXOLYDIAN MODE?  You might say "Yes ... but I don't know what it really is and I don't know how to use it".  The funny thing is YOU ARE ALREADY PLAYING IT.  In fact, you'll hardly ever play a song that doesn't have Mixolydian in it!  It just might be the 2nd MOST COMMON SCALE IN ALL OF WESTERN MUSIC yet most of us don't really know about it.  This is just one example.

     Many of you might be surprised to find that the process of becoming a better guitar soloist is a bit more complicated than you thought.  There is an extended list of guitar scales that you need to have a grasp of.  In my video guitar lesson program, I have what I call the "MUST KNOW LIST" of scales and there are 17 scales on that list.  If the chord progression you are soloing over contains 5 chords, you will be using 5 of those scales in that very song!

     So there are more guitar scales to learn and ultimately we have to EAR TRAIN all of them ... but the results are very real.  With this deeper understanding, there is no reason to believe that you couldn't solo as well or better than any of your great guitar heroes.  I'm totally serious!

     Once again I might humbly suggest our Absolutely Understand Guitar Video Home Study Program as a great way to learn this stuff.  It's one of my specialties.  I've been explaining this concept to guitar students for 25 years and have gotten it down to a science.  Nobody has trouble understanding this stuff the way we present it.  Check it out at http://www.AbsolutelyUnderstandGuitar.com/ ... and you can call or email me anytime if you need help.  Our toll free number is 866-477-9900.

     Continued good luck with your music!  All the best, Scotty West 

PBS Streaming Audio - Broaden Your Guitar Lesson Horizons

Greetings,

     Now that so many school systems have dropped music and art education due to budget constraints, young guitar students are at a terrible disadvantage when trying to put the music they listen to into some kind of historical framework.  Though, in my view, public school systems rarely did a very good job at it, at least they provided music history and appreciation classes that gave guitar students some sense of how the art form has evolved over time.  Without that, we are often left with a rather narrow vision of music and many students are totally unaware of artists and styles that fall outside of what they hear on the mainstream web and commercial radio stations.

     My guitar students ask me "so where can I go to hear these other forms of music?  I turn on my radio and all I hear is the mainstream stuff".  Well, there are a few bright spots out there in veil of mediocrity.  A few posts back I told you about Pandora.com ... a site where you can set up your own web "radio" feed built around a particular artist or style like jazz guitar or jazz piano.  They will then feed you music by that artist, but also from other musicians who's styles are similar.  It's a great way to discover new guitar players.

     I have another suggestion as well.  Actually, I've been recommending this option for decades but just recently I've been researching improvements in this venue.  I'm speaking of our venerable NPR radio network as a way to supplement your ear training.

     NPR (National Public Radio) is a radio network funded by government grants and donations from listeners.  It is non-commercial so not so tied to the corporate music mill.  They genuinely see themselves as educators and so you are going to hear music here that you won't find anywhere else.  They play primarily "fine art" music (as opposed to popular music) ... that is what might be loosely labeled as Classical and Jazz.  It's not that they don't like or appreciate pop music.  It's more that they figure you can get that stuff from any number of other sources.

     You might hate to hear this, but I have come to believe that ALL TASTE IS ACQUIRED.  You were not born to like the music you enjoy.  You were SOCIALIZED into it.  You like first what you're EXPOSED to ... what your peer group listens to ... what the media ALLOWS you to experience.  It can take courage and deliberation to rise above the confines of your own preferences.  But I say, if you aspire to becoming a REAL artist, you owe it to yourself to investigate other forms of musical expression.  You never know what you'll find.  Heavy Metal guitar players can learn from Classical musicians.  Just look at Yngwie Malmsteen!  Pop musicians learn from Jazz players ... Sting and Steely Dan for example.

     Love it or hate it, Classical and Jazz music tends to attract the true genius level musicians of the era.  Let's face it.  Free your mind and answer the question honestly.  What can you REALLY do more with ... a 50 piece orchestra or a 5 piece Rock band?  With it's layers of complexity, Jazz improvisers routinely create melodies that your average Pop player can't even imagine.

     If you don't like these styles, it might simply be that you haven't been EXPOSED to them enough to begin to develop an appreciation.  Sometimes new modes of expression can be disorienting and intimidating at first.  You're not going to like everything you hear right out of the box.  But allowing yourself to experience these new artists and compositions is the very thing that helps you GROW as an artist yourself.

     These are the styles that NPR stations tend to play.  In their rolls as educators, they tend to air more EXPERIMENTAL forms.  Commercial Classical and Jazz stations play only the safe stuff like Beethoven and Lois Armstrong.  NPR stations will play those as well ... but also more avante garde artists like John Cage and Anthony Braxton.  Prepare to have your mind totally blown.  You may find you know almost nothing about where the cutting edge of the "art of noise" has gone in the 20th and 21st centuries!

     My wife and I live on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.  We are fortunate to live within broadcast range of one of the flagship stations of the entire NPR network ... WGBH radio 89.7 FM in Boston.  Many of the fine programming that airs on NPR stations word wide originates right here at WGBH ... breakthrough programming like "Classical Performances" with Richard Nisely and "Eric In The Evening" with Jazz maven Eric Jackson.  I've been listening to this station for about 30 years now and have gained what might be equivalent to a Masters Degree eduction in music just by tuning in.

     Many of these shows feature LIVE PERFORMANCES by world class artists who stop by WGBH's million dollar studio when they're in Boston to perform!  The hosts interview the artists live.  You learn about their music ... their aesthetic philosophy ... their instruments ... their influences ... their lives as performing artists.  Name one other venue where you can hear the likes of John Scofield or Pat Metheny play live for you right on your radio!  They also broadcast Boston Symphony and Boston Pops concerts LIVE! 

     Now with STREAMING AUDIO on the web, anybody can listen to WGBH no matter where in the world you live!  Simply visit http://64.71.145.107/online/play.php?xml=897.xml , sit back and enjoy.  Prepare to have your musical horizons stretched beyond your wildest dreams.  No matter what styles you want to play, you'll pick up all kinds of new ideas to bring to your own music.

     Much more guitar instruction information can be found on our website www.absolutelyunderstandguitar.com .

All the best,

Scotty West  

Private Guitar Lessons vs Video Guitar Lessons

    I guess everyone would agree that these are tough times.  We are in a major global economic crisis and the price of energy is going through the roof dragging everything else right along with it.  Folks wonder how they're going to get through this winter with skyrocketing fuel costs.  Food costs here on the east coast have gone up dramatically.  People are losing the homes they have worked so hard to purchase

     It's tough for folks to justify expenditures for leisure time activities like sports and music.  My private guitar lesson business is way off right now ... down by almost 30%.  This is sad as many of my students tell me that their music is the one thing that boosts their spirits when times get rough.  The last thing they want to give up is their guitar.  Parents find it hard to come up with cash to continue their child's private guitar lessons but are conflicted about depriving them of the creative outlet and satisfaction it brings them.  They wonder if there are alternatives to expensive private lessons.

    More and more folks consider turning to video guitar lessons and the internet but wonder if these are viable options.  I believe that they are as long as you pick the right program.  There are a lot of bad guitar teachers out there ... on video as well as in person!

    I think it's difficult to learn guitar from the short little clips you get on say YouTube.  Music education doesn't seem to lend itself to the short "sound bite" approach.  You can learn some interesting things  ... songs and riffs and such ... but it's difficult to get "The BIG Picture" ... an integrated vision of the art of music and how it applies to the fretboard of the guitar ... and that's what you need in order to do the truly creative stuff like soloing and composing.  Many other web based guitar lesson programs feature short streaming lessons that only leave you wondering what comes next.

     Many of you have already discovered that just learning songs by rote is not the road to a satisfying guitar experience.  You're beginning to see that UNDERSTANDING how music works is the only real path to true musical expression.  Music is a LANGUAGE and it takes knowledge and experience to master any language.  These things simply can't be learned in a haphazard fashion.  You need a comprehensive, organized and integrated approach.

     So can you get this kind of holistic vision from video guitar lessons?  I think you can.  We worked for nine years to put our Absolutely Understand Guitar Video Home Study Program together ... and now after almost nine more years of global internet sales, we still retain a 100% satisfaction rate.  All of our students have enjoyed and benefited from our video guitar instruction and they call and email us evryday to tell us so.

    So our guitar instruction DVDs might be just what you're looking for in this difficult economic climate.  We also pride ourselves on taking care of our students by offering personalized support via email or phone.  You can contact me anytime if you're confused or need help.  It just might be BETTER than your average private guitar lessons at a FRACTION of the cost.  Check us out at www.absolutelyunderstandguitar.com .

All the best,

Scotty West 

     

     

Pentatonic Mythology - Become a Better Guitar Player

     It happened again the other day.  I was reading an article on how to play guitar like Eric Clapton. The sentence read "Start with a Pentatonic Scale and then add this note and this note and this note" and I'm thinkin' to myself "Well it ain't a Pentatonic Scale anymore then, is it?"

     I'm not quite sure where all these myths about the Pentatonic Scale got started but it's all pretty silly.  Yes ... there are many Rock and Blues Guitar riffs that are based on Major and Minor Pentatonic Scales, but the notion that these are the primary or ONLY scales you need in order to SOLO is ridiculous.

     Anybody who knows anything knows that MUSIC IS A LANGUAGE with 12 notes in it's alphabet.  Pentatonic simply means "5 notes".  People who play pentatonically are only using 5 of the 12 notes.  Why would you think that's a good idea?  Why would you want to ignore those other 7 notes?

     Some folks would say "Those 5 are the easy notes to use.  I have trouble integrating the other 7 notes" ... and that may indeed be true ... but maybe that means you just need to work a little harder to learn how to use those other 7 notes ... that is if you're serious about becoming a REAL guitar player.

     Diatonic Scales (like "Do - Re - Mi - etc) utilize 7 of the 12 notes and historically represent the true benchmark of Western Music theory.  Scales and Modes like the Natural Minor, Mixolydian, Dorian and Lydian are absolutely essential to smart soloing and melodic composition.  More modern and sophisticated music (like Jazz) is more CHROMATIC ... that is it utilizes all 12 notes.  This level of playing requires a deeper knowledge of music theory and better trained ears, but the rewards are very real.

      This doesn't mean that I'm advocating blowing off a whole bunch of stupid notes ... over-playing ... showing off.  I'm just suggesting that you have more options available to you then you may realize.  Why would you ever want to paint a picture with 5 colors if you could use 12?  How could you ever write a short story using only 10 of the letters in the English alphabet?  That's very much like what Pentatonic guitar playing is like.

     Free your mind from all this Pentatonic hype and begin to see the bigger picture.  We're here to help you anyway we can.  Check out our awesome guitar lesson, music theory and ear training home study program at www.absolutelyunderstandguitar.com .  You can also email or call me toll free anytime if you have questions.

All the best, Scotty West

Guitar Lessons - Get Yourself A Beat Machine.

Greetings,

     I was reminded once again last week how much pure FUN rhythm can be in music.  Kathy and I saw the Return To Forever reunion concert as I mentioned in my previous post.  It fascinates me to this day how these guys can play such complex music so fast and tight.  The shifting tempos and time signatures that these guys can control gives their music a depth, breadth and expressive majesty unavailable to less accomplished players and writers.

     How can one hope to attain this level of rhythmic control?  The answer once again is "PRACTICE MAN, PRACTICE" ... and ya' gotta practice SMART.  I try to get all my students to understand that practicing without some kind of MECHANICAL time keeper is kinda' like wasting your time.  There is this myth that some folks are born with rhythm and others are not.  It is true that it comes easier to some folks, but the truth is, the only players that ever develop a professional STAGE PERFORMANCE control of rhythm are the ones that work out with some kind of beat machine.

     Back in the day, we were all advised to use METRONOMES ... but let's face it.  They're BORING!  That stupid thing clicking back and forth could drive you out of your mind.  Most of us blew it off and fooled ourselves into thinking we could do without.  The result?  Sloppy, fuzzy playing.  Those of you who are into these modern 'SHREDDING" monster guitar players ... how do these guys get to play like that?  Two words ... DRUM MACHINE.

     We live in a marvelous age of music technology.  These days there are awesome alternatives to the old metronome.  Ya' just gotta' make sure you take advantage of them.  Get yourself some kind of drum machine.  Not only are they superior time keepers, they are actually FUN to use!  How often does that happen?  The FUN thing to do is the RIGHT thing to do?

     There are lots of different kinds of drum machines you can consider ... but for most folks I say keep it SIMPLE.  I recommend getting one of those plastic, department store KEYBOARD instruments ... Casio or Yamaha ... in the $100 range.  You want to get a machine that has good sound quality (so you'll actually ENJOY using it) and a wide variety of different beat PATTERNS (often referred to as STYLES) to choose from.  The keyboards also have a built-in SPEAKER system so you won't have to plug it into an external amplifier.

     You also know how much I stress that all musicians should have at least some knowledge of how keyboards work.  Music theory concepts are often easier to see on a keyboard and then you can translate it to your guitar fret board.  So when you buy the keyboard, it's like you're buying the drum machine and they're giving you the keyboard free!

     You learn to play in time by starting off slow and then gradually increasing the tempo until you get to the speed you want.  You will , of course have to know something about how rhythm works and our Absolutely Understand Guitar Home Study Program can help you with that.  Check us out on the web at www.absolutelyunderstandguitar.com .  We'll get you to understand TIME SIGNATURES and how they relate to the songs you like.

       The rest is all practice and experience.  You could eventually play as tight and fast as your great guitar heroes!

All the best, Scotty West