Glenn's Daily Script » Guitar

Guitar Practice

Glenn — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:21:08 +0000

So for the past three years, I have been actively working to learn how to play the guitar. My view on what this means has changed over these three years.

When I first started, I wanted to learn to play chords so I could play campfire songs. My first year or so was with a teacher who taught me exactly that. He would occasionally insert music learning or technique learning but I would resist it and back we would go to songs.

After a while though I realized that my memory of campfire guitar players was clouded. In the beginning, I thought that playing campfire songs was playing the hyper simple versions of any song. I was wrong and realized this when I revisited my memories. Guitar players that were comfortable playing campfire songs were often very skilled yet never in your face about their skills. Yes, they would play simple songs with chords but they would also have complex strumming patterns, finger picking, actual guitar riffs and other elements that made the songs more interesting and fun.

So I changed teachers and began learning technique, music theory, and a more complete view of guitar playing. At first, it was great but after a short time I had an issue. I stopped having a focused practice.

About a month ago, I began the process of refocusing my guitar practices. I defined ahead of time what I was going to work on. I defined the length of time to practice. I either picked a time when my family wasn’t around and asked them to respect my practice time. About 2 weeks ago, it started clicking again and I feel like my progress forward is more definitive rather than haphazard.

It does seem that you can take 10 years to learn something but if you put some mental focus and effort behind it you can greatly shorten that time and be more satisfied with your day to day progress.

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Guitar Practice

Guitar Repair Maintenance

Glenn — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:47:50 +0000

I bought a DVD talking about Electric Guitar setup and maintenance. The DVD is titled Fret MD: Electric Guitar and Bass Setup and Maintenance with Al Markasky.

Short of a class on this subject, I thought the presentation of the areas covered were excellent. He covers the main areas of setup which in his process is 5 steps. Some of the steps still look a little scary but that is probably more about changing the current physical setup when you are not an expert.

He also covered a couple of small things regarding maintenance.

The complete process of setup and maintenance would be really useful on a beat up garage sale find. Taking the steps here and maybe adding a few like part replacement (he only covers nut replacement but if he covered changing out electronics, that would be very useful) could turn a non-functional garage sale find into a great instrument.

Overall, this is a good DVD and could be great if it included electronic replacments.

Guitar Scale Sheets

Glenn — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:58:43 +0000

I’ve been working on all my Guitar Scale sheets which you can find the current version in my downloads area (see tab at the site of my blog site).

I’ve decided to update them and add additional keys to fill out my collection.

The updates are around making the graphics (which are JPG files) have layers. I can have the background be a fretboard and the top layer (or layers) be the scale. This will give me additional flexibility to make new Key diagrams by simply sliding the top layer (or layers) to a new fret board location. I’m also cleaning up some of the graphics to make them a bit more uniform (like the actual dots for finger press or the fret location dots). This is going to take me a bit of time though I have just finished to first key for all the scales that I have. Now I have to copy them and then start positioning the top layer at the correct fret location for the next key.

I will upload them when I have them complete.

Note: my selection of scales that I do are based on my work with my guitar teacher, Mick Radford.

Guitar – String Bending and Vibrato

Glenn — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:26:23 +0000

Now, I’m probably not a beginner guitar player anymore but I’m not really sure that I’m that far from a beginner. I guess this is one of those areas that I lack confidence in. Yes, I’m building up knowledge and even some skill but putting it all together so that I can replicate the guitar players that I grew up with (some were great but most were just players who could strum chords and probably didn’t know too much music theory) is another thing entirely.

Lately, Mick has us working on a project that is playing along with a jazzy/blues chord progression that begins in B then changes key to C, then to C#, then to D then back to B and over again. The progression is nothing special but it allows for some improv or in our case some simple composition. The composition though is really just giving us a progression that presents us with new elements to work on.

The first that we worked on was string bending. Bending a string wrong is pretty simple as I found. Bending a string correctly takes a lot of work and concentration. To maintain control, you are usually using the inner most knuckle on your fore finger as a pivot point on the neck of the guitar. To give additional control, you keep as many fingers on the string to be bent as possible. In some cases, this may be one but could be four. NEVER – NEVER forget that you have a target note that you are aiming for. This can be 1/4 bend, 1/2, or whole bend. In practicing to hit that note, you have to constantly play the target note so you can hear where you are going. It’s hard but eventually your ear will tell you what is right or wrong so practice will pay off. I’m still striving to get this correct though I’m getting better all the time.

The next thing we added to the riff is vibrato. It is similar to string bending in that you still want to maintain control so you use the inner most knuckle on your fore finger as a pivot point on the neck of the guitar. Mick says that fast vibrato’s don’t sound good so the vibrato that is slow and even are the best. Now, I’m sure that speed is related to the skill of the guitar player and speed of the song so a fast pace rock riff might have a faster vibrato that a slow sad blues riff. So far, the middle strings are the easiest for me and outer strings are really hard to get to sound right. This one is going to take quite a long time to get right though when you play riffs, you can hear spots where this technique just fits right so you want to perfect this technique.

In the riff that Mick has be working on, the hardest thing is keeping technique elements straight. You may have a whole bend followed by a 1/4 bend followed by a vibrato. The 1/4 bend and vibrato are very easy to get mixed up so concentration is really important. This is challenging but very fun.

Online Guitar Lessons

Glenn — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:27:38 +0000

I came across an interesting and really well done Guitar Lesson site. The site is basically a video lesson site providing lessons that teach songs and providing lessons on certain techniques.

Their gimmick, at least with songs, is that some of the lessons are actually provided by real NAME artists. I can see the benefit of the hook of that but I’m not sure I see the real benefit of that. We can all agree that certain artists have a great deal of skill as a guitar play or a piano player or a drummer or whatever but it is not always true that they have equal skill as an instructor in that same area. Hopefully, the artists that are willing to be part of this effort do have some skill in this area.

You can check out some of the material for free. The Tutorials on skills (string bending, alternate picking, blues riffs, … ) are free though remember the songs all cost money.

My impression is that the video is top notch quality and very easy to follow. The video is professional and better than almost anything that I’ve seen out there.

I do think that there are 2 major limits though that they will need to fix before it can really gain a lot of traction.

The site needs to provide supplemental printed materials (i.e. PDF’s or something like it) for each video lesson for the student to print out and follow along with. The lessons can be hard with out these.
Lessons should be organized more so that there is more of a progression. I mean tell the student, take this lesson first, then this lesson, then this lesson then this lesson. Once you have done that and have mastered the techniques, you progress from beginner to intermediate or from one level to another. This actually provides real instruction.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

New Guitar Toy

Glenn — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:47:00 +0000

I got to sample this cool device at my local Music Store and I was way impressed by it.

The device is a Vox PreAmp which is battery powered and plugs directly into the guitar and the speaker is a pair of headphones. According to Troy (again at my local music store), a good pair of headphones makes a big difference over a bad pair of headphones.

Anyway, the sound is super impressive. The are 3 models and the one I listened to was AC30 which had a really nice clean sound.

I’ve tried one device and seen other devices that might be good quiet listening devices (you know, play while others are in the room kind of thing) but they were not very good. This one really feels like it could be the one.

Harmonic Minor Scales – Guitar

Glenn — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:28:33 +0000

So in my last post, I shared with everyone the generated printouts of the various scales that I’ve produced via the lessons that I’ve had from my teacher over the last year and half (Mick Radcliff). My motivation for the last post was that Mick was teaching me about a new scale (new to me) called the Harmonic Minor Scale.

My observation of the Harmonic Minor Scale is that it’s first based on the Modes (Ionian, Dorian, …) but is shifted. For instance the first note of the Modes begins with Ionian where as the first note of the Harmonic Minor Scale begins with Mode 1 which is based on the Aeolian form with an important difference.

The important difference is that the seventh note of the scale is sharped. This continues for each mode in the Harmonic Scale. So Mode 2, which starts with note 2 still has the seventh note of the scale sharped and so on.

My other observation for this scale is the tonality of it. Of the scales that we have gone through, this scale is the most emotive and evocative. I like an occasional sad song but mostly I’m about up beat and happy songs but I can really see the advantage of the Harmonic Minor Scale because you can really put your heart into it. It just produces some amazing sounds and that is just the scale so I can just imagine some talented improve work behind it!

Anyway, I hope that those of you who play guitar or hope too can give this a try. Check out my downloads section (see the top of my Blog page) and you can find the Harmonic Minor Scale in a generalized form (no key) and then in the keys of A, B, C, E, and G. Enjoy!

Guitar Music Scales – File Download

Glenn — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 07:05:08 +0000

I’ve cleaned up all my guitar related PDF’s in my download area so check them out. They include Modes (Ionian, Dorian, …), Pentatonic, Blues and such. They include scales for the keys of A, C, E, and G as well as some useful diagrams.

I’ve added a new scale which I’m learning about called the Harmonic Minor Scale so check that out. Also, because I’m learning about it in the key of B, I’ve added the key of B to all the above scales so check those out as well.

I hope these prove to be useful to everyone. Feel free to let me know if you find them helpful!

UPDATE: Oops!� I missed marking the B Key files as uploaded.� They are marked and there now.� Sorry for the oversight.

DigiDesign/M-Audio M-Box 2 Pro Vs Roland/Edirol FA-101

Glenn — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 00:01:58 +0000

I’ve had an M-Box 2 Pro for about a year now.� I’m a hobbyist and use it to record practice sessions on my guitar so that I can help myself get better (not sure it helps but hope springs eternal!).� DigiDesign/M-Audio who is the manufacturer of the M-Box 2 Pro is very well know for the audio products and many professional and semi-professional artists use their products to record their music, podcasts, or other content.� They also makes a leading software for audio recording professionals called Pro Tools.� Pro Tools LE comes with the M-Box 2 Pro.� The way that DigiDesign/M-Audio has designed their products is that they have replaced the default CoreAudio drivers on Apple’s OS X in order to run with their devices.� I’m not sure the reason they do this but I’m sure they would say it ensures overall quality from end-to-end in recording audio.� Another result though for the user is that it locks the user into a particular version of the operating system (for instance, DigiDesign/M-Audio claims that the latest version of the software only works with OS X 10.4.9).� While I’m talking about OS X, similar restrictions do apply for the Windows side too.� Also note that history has shown that DigiDesign/M-Audio is very slow to come out with drivers for newly released OS versions (they only just released Windows Vista updates, a year after Vista was released!).

With all, that in mind, I went out and purchased a product from Roland/Edirol called the FA-101 (very similar in specs though not identical).� They seem to have a fairly strong reputation though maybe not as strong as DigiDesign/M-Audio for audio recording professionals.�� They don’t make any recording software though and instead work with other software manufacturers software.� Roland/Edirol takes a different approach and makes their product work with Apple’s OS X standard CoreAudio driver so it works out of the box, no driver required.� Windows requires a driver but they were among the first audio recording hardware manufacturers to produce Windows Vista drivers so they seem to be on top of things for their customers.� When I got the FA-101 home, I plugged it in and it just worked with OS X 10.5 (Leopard) which was something that I could not get the� M-Box 2 Pro to do.

I’m not sure that I am the right person to do an in depth analysis on overall audio quality for the recordings but from a usability point of view the FA-101 wins hands down.

Another Guitar file

Glenn — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:02:50 +0000

Lately, my guitar teacher (Mick) has been working on some synthetic scales with me. These scales combine a mode for the first two strings, the overlapping pentatonic major scale for the next two strings, and the previous mode for the final two strings. The last restriction is that we restrict the synthetic scale to four frets.

The tone for the 3 that Mick has taught me are really nice and I created one more that I added to the bottom with the hopes that it fits well into the scheme.

Here is the link to the file with the scales.� I have also been using these scales to practice my counting which has added some additional interest.

New Guitar File

Glenn — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 21:33:46 +0000

I’ve added a new Guitar download. � C Chord Guitar Overlays provides the overlay of Modes (Mixolydian, Aeolian, …) with Pentatonic Major scale.� These two scales are often used in improvisation together and apart.

My guitar teacher, Mick, has been spending quite a bit of time showing me these overlays while working through some other issues I have with counting (never learned this when I was young apparently ).

I’ve tried to provide it in a form that shows that each scale has common notes and individual notes.� This bit of information along with knowing the scale can provide interesting information for the improv work as you gain more knowledge and experience.� That’s far off for me but I hope that those who download this can get some use of it now.

New Guitar

Glenn — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 02:53:46 +0000

After changing guitar teachers, it became pretty evident pretty quickly that much of what I was leaning towards now (and what my teacher was eacher to teach) was more focused towards electric guitars. I had an accoustic (see Gallery/Hobbies/Guitar for a photo) – it’s an excellent guitar.

Kathy approved (she is wonderful!) getting a new guitar for Christmas. Well, I was struggling quite a bit so I got her to begrudgingly let me get the new guitar early so…

I, with the help of my instructor Mick, tried a bunch of guitars out. I was actually having a tough time of it because my skill set is just not to the level that I feel like I can really differentiate between 2 comparable (to me feel, tone, and such) choices. It’s good to have advice. I finally picked a Schecter solid body guitar pictured below:

It has a wonderful sound and feels great. It also happens to look great. The picture doesn’t really do it justice. The color is a black cherry which is much darker than the picture shows. Also the inlay on the finger board is very nice.

Guitar Update

Glenn — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 16:20:21 +0000

I’ve been taking 2 summer classes in addition to my normal lessons.

The first is about recording and recording equipment. I bought a small personal stand alone recorder about 6 months ago so that I could hear my playing and determine if progress is being made. The reason for it is that I don’t think you can accurately hear from your playing position.

The first few classes have were a little slow but the last few have been fun because we had a chance to actually record and play with equipment including mic’s and recorders. It’s been a pretty useful class.

The second class was called Zen and the Art of Guitar. It’s covering a bunch of things though some of these things are not all that interesting to me at this point. The important points that I’m getting out of the class are little bits on theory as it applies to guitar, some practice components and regimes and insight on a possible new teacher. The class has a lot of hands on and is covering soloing, improvisation, working with backing tracks and soon other stuff like open tunings and more.

This class started aggressively out of the gate so I’ve gotten a lot of value out of every class. In fact, to be truthful, the teacher, Mick, is a bit intimidating.

Based on all of that though, I have decided that after a year and half, it’s time to change teachers. Edward has been great for the start of my guitar learning. He’s got a nice soft style with lots of patience about him which was exactly what I needed and wanted at the beginning. Now what I need is someone willing to push me harder. Mick, with his more forceful style, will probably provide that so I’m hopeful that I’ll make some different and perhaps more progress over the next year.

Should be fun.

The Song of One Chord

Glenn — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 22:42:40 +0000

I haven’t talked about my Guitar in a while. On Monday, Edward, my teacher and I were discussing 2 new songs. One of them was Creeque Alley (Mammas and Pappas) and the other was Horse with No Name (America).

We had run short on time when we got to Horse with No Name and Edward had made some jokes around the lyrics of the song because the song only has two chords (in the whole song – pretty darn amazing!).

When I got home, I of course practice here and there and sometimes Kathy even sits down and listens. One time while she was I retold the story above to her and she immediately recalled a funny song she recalled from her youth.

The Song of One Chord by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper (my favorite of theirs is Elvis is Everywhere!). My ear is not refined enough to be totally sure (there is a lot of other instruments going on in the song) but it does sound like the guitar part is actually only one chord. It’s a funny song about a guy in search of second chord.

It’s amazing the train of thought and connections that can happen through a day or few days.