Tag: guitar

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Why Creativity is Messy (And How You Can Master it!)

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We imagine a creative person as a messy genius, with paint splashed everywhere, dishevelled hair and wild emotions. But in reality, creative people are like two sides of a coin: willing to experience temporarily chaos, but only for a long term vision;  messy, but also very organised. After all, a painter needs to ensure their brushes are readily available when they need them.

The misconception comes from the initial spark of creativity, which often is messy, unpredictable and chaotic. Musicians, painters and writers learn to navigate their way through the first foggy stage by using their taste, instincts and experience until they have something that resembles their initial idea. The initial stage is like being a gardener – planting the seeds, waiting for them to grow and then nurturing them; falling in love with process. The second stage is more like being an architect, using logic, structure and order, and falling in love with the outcome.

I have a friend who is an astrophysicist and I often wish I could do the things he can do. Recently I was talking to him about my writing and he said, “I have no idea how you do that”. And that was when I realised that being creative is not something everyone feels comfortable with. Some people are more comfortable with numbers and a definite, concrete outcome. The messy initial stages of creativity are unbearable for some people, as they haven’t developed their internal compass to navigate through it. If you sit down to write a song, there are no guarantees or tangible truths to guide you there.

However intangible, creativity is also something that can be practised. There is no need to wait for “inspiration”, you only need to sit down and start. See what comes out. It may be mediocre, but that’s okay – just learn from it and know that the next thing you create will be a little bit better. You need to write 100 bad songs before you write your first good song. Before writing this post, I felt stuck and didn’t know what to write, so-called “writer’s block”. After much procrastination, I realised I just needed to write down the first few words and the rest would eventually come.

Creativity takes time, reflection and patience, but it is easy to lose these virtues with so many distractions readily available to absorb our senses. So whatever you want to create, just make a start right now, even if it is just the first twenty words of your novel, the first three chords of your song, or the initial pencil sketch for your oil painting. Make a start. And then do the same tomorrow.

My latest book “Guitar Gymnasium” is available on Amazon:

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Focus vs Exploration

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.

– Steve Jobs
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Someone once asked me what makes ‘Jump’ by Van Halen such a good song. I really didn’t know how to answer that. There are so many elements that combine to make it great: the intro keyboard riff, the guitar playing, the singing, the backing vocals, the way the bass and drums interact. Then there are the recording techniques, the tempo of the song, and the personality of the musicians. So many elements that could have gone badly wrong come together to make a great song.

As musicians we spend a lot of time taking leaps into the dark, and that takes faith and trust. We have to trust that our skills will improve, otherwise we wouldn’t practice; when we write a song we are connecting dots (sometimes literally on manuscript), but each note can feel like a blind man in an unfamiliar room, arms extended, trying to get a sense of its shape. It is only when we finish writing the piece that we see the totality of it and how each note seems to “inevitably” lead to the next. We can only connect the dots looking backwards and we have to initially explore in the blindness before we arrive at the destination. We have to trust it will lead somewhere.

It is important to allow time for cross-pollination between different fields of interest or areas of our lives. Steve Jobs took a calligraphy class in college which later played a part in the typography on the Apple mac. If he was too focussed solely on computers he might have missed that opportunity for cross-pollination. Sometimes it is our side-interests which have the greatest impact on our main passions.

But what about focus?

I have noticed, however, that the times in my life where I have really excelled are when I have solely focussed on one thing for an extended period.

Arnold Schwarzenegger said “knowing how to focus on one thing at a time has made me better at everything I did”, and he has certainly achieved a lot in his life across a diverse range of fields such as bodybuilding, real estate, acting and politics. But he did them one at a time.

This means that every day we have to make a decision – we have to choose to either focus or explore.

Focussing on one thing logically means that you must remove all the other things that are distracting you. The idea of “via negativa” means to improve something by deducting, rather than adding. For instance, to improve your health you may be better off by removing all the sugary drinks from your diet before you add a new workout routine. Deducting is often easier to do (and sustain) compared to adding a new habit.

The times when I have focused on one thing are like meditation: the outside world slows down and every action seems to flow into the next. By sustaining that focus over an extended period of weeks or months, my motivation increases as I can see myself improving, and the habit starts to form, making it easier to continue the upward spiral.

On the other hand, my explorations into different fields make my main passions richer and deeper. For instance, learning about the different energy levels of pencil strokes in art has given me a greater appreciation for the different energy levels that emotion can bring to a musical line on the guitar.

Ultimately, I think the only way to balance these two approaches is to spend extended periods of time doing deep learning, but allow shorter periods of exploration between these extended blocks. This will create a depth of knowledge and understanding within a narrow passion, which will then be enriched by other diverse and seemingly disconnected interests.

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Inertia, Incentive and Momentum

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Inertia and momentum are both spirals, one negative, the other positive. During my own periods of inertia I feel stuck yet unwilling to take any action to improve my circumstances.
But I’ve also experienced the upward spiral where I am taking action with focus, joy and a calm aggressive determination.

What I’ve noticed about both of these states is that they seem to spill over into other domains. When I’m taking consistent action writing or practising music, I find it easier making my bed in the morning or fixing that broken door hinge. Conversely, when I’m feeling stuck and refusing to improve my situation, I notice that I’m more reluctant to do chores around the house or exercise. It seems like “taking action” is a muscle which can rapidly atrophy within a day or so when not used.

I’ve read many great books on the science of motivation and many acknowledge that motivational “theory” is not enough. To actually take action we need incentive, accountability, a bit of fear, a bit of ego, a bit of confidence, a bit of insecurity, mixed with the possibility of public ridicule if we don’t succeed. Humans are such complex machines and yet in some ways we are also very simple: I may not want to go for a run, but if a lion was chasing me I would suddenly have an incentive to sprint for many miles.
Intellectually I realise that if I just start for two minutes, that would be enough to gain traction and slowly build momentum. But so often I get bogged down in theory, insecurity and the idea of “perfection” that I don’t get started.

There is also the element of being overwhelmed by too many choices. When searching YouTube for a guitar tutorial, it is easy to flick through the endless stream of videos and never really make a start.
One way I counteract this is to create a schedule. I like to be organised and write out my goals for the year, breaking them down into quarters (i.e. January to March) and then every Friday I write out a schedule for the coming week, so I don’t need to think about what I need to do, I can just execute the task to move nearer to my goals.

Scheduling means I can live my week deliberately whilst scheduling time to watch television or go to the cinema without feeling guilty. It also lets me see where my time is being allocated, so if one of my goals is not scheduled in, I can try to adjust for that the following week or see why it won’t fit into my schedule.
Disclaimer: During the current covid-19 lockdown I haven’t been doing my weekly schedule and I have noticed a creeping lack of motivation. During times like these it is actually more important to live our lives deliberately, rather than drifting on the tide of current events and daily news.

I notice that the times when I am most motivated is when I have a strong incentive such as practising for a performance, learning a new piece to teach to a student, or going to the gym in the build up to a summer holiday. A strong incentive takes away the element of choice in what we should be doing: if a lion is chasing you, you won’t debate whether to run or watch Netflix – you’ll just run!

Maybe the key to motivation is to unleash the lions upon ourselves: book ourselves into an open-mic slot even though we don’t feel ready; join a band even though we aren’t “perfect” yet. I have been procrastinating starting a YouTube channel as I don’t feel confident enough or “authoritative” enough. But I also realise that confidence will emerge once I begin: action creates confidence.

How could you unleash your lions?

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Should I Buy a New Guitar or Play The One I’ve Already Got?

I have a dilemma: I am really, really tempted to buy a new guitar. Admittedly it is not a life-shattering problem. I have managed to save some money over the last few months by making packed-lunches for work and not spending money on coffee.

But I also see my dilemma as a deeper issue: can I justify buying another guitar when I really don’t play my current guitar as much as I should?

Part of me knows that I am being pulled in by the marketing that a new guitar will make me a better, more inspired guitarist; the other part of me realises the harsh truth that buying a new guitar will not create more time to practice, and that my improvement as a musician is purely reliant on me focusing on developing my skills and putting in the hours of practice.

I am trying to reconcile what will make me happy and what will give me meaning, and these are very different things. Buying a new guitar will make me happy – even though it may be transitory – and there is also the anticipation of ordering a guitar, waiting for it to be delivered and then finally unpacking the box and looking at my shiny new guitar with all the case-candy (even just writing these words makes me want to reach for my credit card!).

But the rational part of me thinks that what I really need to do is play more and practice more: finish those songs I’ve half-written; go through some jazz chord books and expand my harmonic knowledge; re-learn some of the songs I used to be able to play flawlessly, but which are now a little rusty; go through the tutorials from my old guitar magazines; jam along with a backing track. Perhaps if I did this consistently and aggressively, then I could emerge like a Ibanez-swirled-butterfly from the lock-down chrysalis.

As I’m writing these words, a thought just occurred to me: maybe I should do both: rather than choosing one or the other, I could buy a new guitar and change my mind-set to practice more consistently. Maybe a new guitar will be the catalyst to kick-start my motivation?

If you have any suggestions, put them in the comments!

Latest book available on Amazon now!

My latest book ‘Guitar Gymnasium: Habits, Hacks and Tricks to Accelerate Your Playing‘ is available on Amazon now.

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Write Great Songs By Developing Intuition

“For a songwriter, you don’t really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they’re made of, and wonder if you can make one, too”

Tom Waits

When learning an instrument we usually apply ‘deliberate practice’, working methodically and efficiently to improve our skills. When writing songs, however, we instead use intuition to express our feelings and emotions.

In reality, they are two sides of the same coin: with enough deliberate practice a new skill sinks into our unconscious, becoming automatic intuition. But how can we use these two parts of the brain to help us write better songs?

With deliberate practice we must learn something so deeply that we can then forget it. We would learn scales until we no longer consciously think about them, and they instead form an invisible framework that sits in our unconscious.

There are a lot of musicians, such as Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen and Noel Gallagher who claim to know no music theory, relying instead on intuition to write a song; although I’m sure they spent many years learning lots of songs. This may not be ‘deliberate practice’, but all those songs will sink into the intuition of the artist and inform the songs they write in the future. Noel Gallagher’s years of listening to The Beatles clearly had a massive influence on his song writing.

So one way to develop our intuition for writing great songs is to simply learn lots of songs by other artists. But if we wanted to go deeper than that, we could analyse songs more methodically. At the moment I am teaching a student ‘Patience’ by Guns N’ Roses . The verse chords are C – G – A – D,  so the key is G major, starting on the IV chord (‘C’), and then moving to the I chord (‘G’). It then starts to shift key, using A major to temporarily modulate to D.

The fact that we know this doesn’t necessarily help us to write a song, but we could steal the chord progression to use in our own songs, twisting it and blending it with our other influences, internalising the chord progression and adding it into our vocabulary.

Analysing music helps you to understand why a song works (i.e. after it’s been written), but it doesn’t help you write one from scratch. The pop songwriter Max Martin, who has written numerous hits song for Britney Spears, Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson, said in an interview with NME magazine:

“…a great pop song should be felt when you hear it“

Max Martin

Although you may not be writing pop music, the point remains the same – don’t let the theory get in the way of the song. When I studied music at university, there were many teachers who were really good classical composers, but they couldn’t write a good song. Their music was too deliberate and lacked spontaneity.

Composers are more like architects and songwriters are like gardeners: to write a classical piece you need to have balance, thought and structure deliberately built into the process; to be a songwriter you need to let the piece naturally grow from a source outside of yourself.

The initial spark of the song will be ignited by your intuition; but the fire of your intuition must be fuelled with continual practice. If you do that, your intuition will always be there when you need it.

Ways to develop intuition in song writing:

  • Play anything for ten minutes without judging whether it is good or bad. I really struggle with this, but my brain eventually calms down after a few minutes.
  • Record yourself whilst playing for ten minutes. You may listen back later and hear a few gems that you missed. Distance often helps us gain a new perspective.
  • Write with other people.
  • Don’t expect anything to happen – just let it happen.
  • Write often. You need to write a few bad songs to get to the good songs.
  • Whilst I’m writing, I sometimes visualise that I’m improvising a song to an audience of friends, family or strangers. This takes my conscious mind off what I’m doing and helps with flow.

Ways to apply deliberate practice in song writing

  • Learn lots of your favourite songs.
  • Analyse the chord progressions.
  • Analyse how the notes of the melody sit over the chords: are they consonant or dissonant (i.e. are they notes within the chord or outside of the chord)?
  • Analyse the shape of the song: is the chorus melody the same as the verse melody (e.g. ‘I Wanna be Your Lover’ by Prince); Are the chorus and verse chords the same (e.g. ‘High and Dry’ by Radiohead)?
  • Analyse the note clusters of the melody: is the verse melody made up of only long notes, or only short rhythmic notes, or a mixture? Does the chorus melody contrast this by doing the opposite?
  • How are the principles of repetition, contrast and development used?

My latest book ‘Guitar Gymnasium: Habits, Hacks and Tricks to Accelerate Your Playing‘ is available on Amazon now.

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Use Limitations to Write a Song Today

“The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self.. “

Igor Stravinsky

The blank page, the empty canvas and the silent guitar are the most difficult starting points, yet that is where we must all begin. When our options are infinite it is difficult to make creative decisions, but we can channel and focus our creativity by setting restrictions and limitations.

Below are some limitations you can use to write a song today. These are only starting points which we can always change later:

  • Limit yourself to some simple chords: C, Am, F, G. You might change these later, but they will serve as a good starting point.
  • Think of a rhythm you can use for the melody – don’t worry about what pitches will be sung, just the rhythm. You can keep it simple and use a rhythm similar to the word “coff-ee”  on each beat, or do something like:
  • Now play the chords whilst you hum the rhythm you previously made. Start by using one pitch for the whole rhythm, and then make some notes higher and some notes lower. There are lots of good melodies which are based on only one or two pitches, such as the verse of “I Am The Walrus” by the Beatles, the verse of “Manic Monday” written by Prince, and the verse of “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis.
  • After a bit of experimenting you will have a basic structure which you can start to sculpt. Try changing the chords, switching the order of the chords, or change chords at a quicker pace  (harmonic rhythm”).
  • When you’re ready to create the next section, repeat the process above, perhaps starting with different chords.

The tips above are for when you feel stuck and uninspired. In his great book ‘On Writing’, Stephen King says “Writing equals ass in chair”. If your inspiration is flowing, then grab it and seize the moment without over-analysing it.

Following the process above doesn’t guarantee you’ll write a great song, but you will write a song of some sort. Many legendary musicians have lots of songs that have never seen the light of day: Prince’s famous ‘vault’ contains thousands of unreleased songs; Adele’s initial songs for the hit album ‘25’ were shelved after legendary producer Rick Rubin thought they could be better.

If you write a hundred songs, most will be mediocre, but a handful will be good; and the more you write, the better you will become.

No one in existence has lived the same life as you, and no one except you can write the songs of your life.

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How to Learn Songs Faster (and remember them for longer!)

When I started learning the guitar, my learning process for a  new song was “First fret, sixth string…move this finger to the first fret, fifth string… then slide it up to the third fret…”

There’s nothing wrong with this – it’s how we all learn in the beginning. As I learnt more songs and studied music theory, I developed better ways to learn pieces more efficiently.

1.Sequence

Just because we listen to music from start to finish, doesn’t mean we have to start learning a piece from the beginning. My preferred method is to listen to the whole piece first and identify the tricky parts; if there is a difficult lick in the solo, for instance, you can start practising that now whilst learning the rest of the piece alongside it. We can master things quickly by learning them in parallel, rather than sequentially.

2. Give yourself a deadline and stakes

I find myself more motivated to learn something if there is a definite deadline and some sort of pressure or stakes involved. If I know I will be performing a song in a gig, the pressure will motivate me to make sure I learn the piece thoroughly and to a higher standard. Other ways to motivate yourself might be to play the song to some friends, teach the piece to someone else, or upload a video to YouTube.

3. Tempo

It might sound obvious, but practicing with a metronome really helps me to stay focussed on my timing as well as gradually building speed on any difficult sections. Once I can play the piece at the correct speed, I will then play along to a backing track to improve my musical feel.

4. Technical ability

This refers to how well your fingers are connected to your brain. Developing this should be a daily part of your routine, usually by playing exercises, but you can also use the piece you are currently learning to develop your technique: if you are struggling with a legato lick or a particular chord change, you can make this into an exercise by playing it slowly with a  metronome and gradually speeding it up. Also try moving the pattern around the neck or onto different strings. Many of the musical patterns we encounter will repeat in various other songs, so it all helps to build our musical repertoire and makes it easier to learn future pieces.

5. Sing as you play

When you are learning something new, sing along with what you are playing on the guitar. I started doing this when I was learning a lot of solos and it really helped me build the connection between my fingers and my ear, meaning I could learn the solos quicker and also remember them for longer. If you are learning a chord progression, you could either sing the root notes of the chords you are playing, or you could sing the whole arpeggio.

6. Look for familiar patterns

If I really understand what I am playing from a music theory perspective, I find I can learn it faster and remember it for longer. By having a solid understanding of theory, you will be able to analyse the scales which are being used and also the harmonic framework of the chord progressions. Most songs follow very similar chord patterns, so understanding common progressions like  ii-V-I , I-IV-V, and I-vi-IV-V  allow me to “chunk” the piece into familiar patterns, so I don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time I learn a new piece.

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Making Smaller Circles

“It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set.”

Josh Waitzkin – The Art of Learning

Whenever we start learning a new skill – whether it’s yoga, martial arts or a new instrument – we naturally measure our progress in terms of how much we know: learning more scales, more techniques, more songs and more licks gives us a great sense of progress and makes us feel like we are getting better.

Usually, however, we are not. In fact, I recently learnt that doing the exact opposite can elevate your skills to a much higher level.

When I was a teenager learning the guitar, I was obsessed with how many scales I could learn: harmonic minor, Phrygian dominant, Japanese pentatonic scales. I really believed that the more scales I knew, the better a guitarist I would become. When I later started playing in a band, I realised most of these scales were totally impractical and redundant. Not only that, but because I was cramming as many scales as possible into my brain, I had learnt them all in a very superficial way and usually in only one position on the neck. I was making the common error of over emphasising the quantity of what I was learning, and not developing the depth and quality of what I was learning.

In his excellent book ‘The Art of Learning’, Josh Waitzkin discusses the idea of “making smaller circles” – a concept he used to become a chess champion and then a martial arts master.

The principle of “making smaller circles” is to start with broad movements which are then gradually narrowed and refined. In chess this might mean that you start learning the End Game first, with only a few pieces on the chess board. When learning a new guitar solo, this might mean playing through the solo once and highlighting the difficult sections, before narrowing those sections further to isolate a particularly tricky phrase, and then narrowing further again to a small sequence of notes.

Once I have zoomed in and identified a problem, I usually find that the stumbling blocks are just a handful of notes or a particular technique that needs to be drilled repeatedly as an exercise.

Refining one small element can then have a  massive impact on your overall skill, elevating everything else onto a new level.

“Making smaller circles” is something that Steve Vai uses in his own practicing, where he focusses on a narrow technique for an hour and tries to expand and develop that technique. An example of this is where he focussed on his finger vibrato for an extended period and realised that he could combine the typical Rock vibrato (i.e. bending and releasing the string) with Classical vibrato (sliding your finger up and down within the fret) to create his own distinctive ‘circular’ vibrato.

Although I wasn’t previously aware of the “smaller circles” concept, I often applied it intuitively when teaching others. When I recently taught someone how to play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin, he was struggling with the chord changes in the introduction. He had been practising the song at a slow-tempo with finger picking, as it sounds on the record. I suggested he isolate the chord changes by strumming each chord once, whilst playing the chord sequence in a repetitive loop. This meant we could focus on improving the speed of the left-hand chord changes without using lots of cognitive space worrying about the right-hand finger-picking. Strumming the chords also took half the time as finger-picking, so we could get more repetitions into a practice session, again “making the circle smaller”.

In my own learning, I realised recently that my knowledge of pentatonic scales was a little superficial, partly because I’d spent my teenage years learning loads of fancy scales that were not as useful as the humble pentatonic. I decided I would “make the circle smaller” and concentrate on learning the pentatonics deeply, mastering them in all five positions across the entire neck. I came up with a  host of different techniques to really understand the pentatonics and internalise the feel and sound of them rather than just trying to ‘shred’ through them. I looked at where the root notes occur within each shape; where the major or minor tonic chords are within each pattern; I also sang the scales as I played; I would improvise a lick, then try to play it in each pentatonic shape across the neck. I also looked at how far I could bend notes whilst staying within the pentatonic scale.

After all this in-depth pentatonic practice, something strange happened. My student was ready to learn the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ solo and I said “yeah, that’s fine, I’ve played it loads of times – it’s all pentatonic scales”.

Only it’s not.

As I was playing the first bars of the solo, I realised that Jimmy Page steps outside the pentatonic scale to play an ‘F’ note. I thought: “Hmmm, I’ve never noticed that before. Why does he do that?”

I realised that by moving outside the pentatonic, Page gives the solo an added sophistication, highlighting the root note of the F Major 7 chord he is playing over, even though he could have stayed within the pentatonic scale and it would have sounded fine. I then looked more closely to see if he always played the ‘F’ note each time this chord arrived and I saw that he later plays the unusual note of ‘G’ over this chord (the ‘G’ is in the pentatonic scale but is not in an F Major 7 chord, so the note functions like a jazzy major 9th). I began to see all the nuances I had previously missed when I first learnt the solo, as I had superficially assumed it was all pentatonics and didn’t have the deep knowledge of pentatonics to realise otherwise. I had made my circle smaller.

So, if you really want to improve your playing, focus deeply on one thing and explore it fully before moving on. You will find that this new-found mastery spills over into other aspects of your playing, giving an extra dimension to your knowledge and musicality.

My latest book ‘Guitar Gymnasium: Habits, Hacks and Tricks to Accelerate Your Playing‘ is available on Amazon now.

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5 Ways to Find Your Own Style

All great guitarists have their own distinctive style. Steve Vai, Tom Morello, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain have a sound and style which is immediately identifiable. Below are five tips to help you find your own style.

Don’t just ask “How do I do this?”

When we want to learn something new our first instinct is to find a tutorial video on YouTube, which is absolutely fine and is a great way to learn. However, once we’ve learnt a new song or technique the temptation is to quickly move on to the next thing, learning everything in a superficial manner. To really master something we need to go deeper.

For instance, once you understand two-handed tapping, expand on the technique and develop your own way of doing it. Some experimental ideas are: mix tapped harmonics with normal tapping, bend whilst tapping, slide whilst tapping, tap across multiple strings, include the whammy bar whilst tapping, detune the tuning peg whilst tapping, tap on the pickup rather than the neck. Once you have found something that sounds good, start writing lots of different licks based around the new technique to incorporate it into your playing.

Learn from other instruments

Other instruments have a range of techniques we can blend into our own style. Violinists can make the volume of a note “swell” from very quiet to very loud and this technique has been copied many times on the guitar by using the volume control. Maybe you could use the volume control in a different way?

The gamelan orchestras of Bali do not tune to a standard pitch, giving each  orchestra its own unique sound. What would happen if you tuned your guitar in a non-standard way or your whole band tuned their instruments in a different way?

Saxophone players breathe between phrases and this can be copied on the guitar by leaving a moment of silence between our licks. What if you left more silence in your playing?

Because pianists have ten fingers, they can play ten notes at the same time – could you think of a way to do this on the guitar, even though we only have 6 strings?

Don’t just learn songs – master them

Often we learn songs and then forget about them, or we might dust them off when Auntie Dorothy comes to visit and wants to hear us play.

Instead, our aim should be to master songs. We can do this by going deeper and understanding the musical framework of the song: why are certain chords used? How do these chords fit within the key structure? What if we re-harmonised the song using different chords?

If you have learnt a solo, analyse the scales used and how they fit with the underlying chords; write ten variations of the solo; use different areas of the neck to play the solo; write your own version of the solo but only using two strings.

By building up our mental models, we can understand the musical structures and retain the music in our long-term memory.

Learn from your hero’s heroes.

We all have favourite guitarists and it is a great idea to find out who they were inspired by and see if we can learn from them.

If you love Van Halen, go back to Eric Clapton; if you love Steve Vai, listen to Frank Zappa or go back even further to Zappa’s big influence, the classical composer Edgar Varese. You may find that you don’t like the music or you may find a new favourite musician to learn from.

By finding commonalities between our heroes and their mentors, we can figure out exactly what it is we like about their style and incorporate it deliberately in our own playing: Steve Vai’s use of the Lydian mode is derived from both Frank Zappa and Joe Satriani; Van Halen’s use of two-handed tapping is derived from Allan Holdsworth’s long legato lines, but his aggressive bluesy soloing is influenced by Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.

Once you dig into their style, you can follow the process of Learn, Assimilate, Expand –  meaning that you learn it, merge it into your playing, then expand on it to make it your own.

Inner States and External Music

Our inner state affects everything we do on the guitar. Certain guitarists will play very aggressively, like Zakk Wylde or Dimebag Darrell, and that aggression will manifest itself externally by angling the pick for a more aggressive sound or hitting the strings harder. Others guitarists like Eric Johnson or Lari Basilio will have gentler or more playful personalities and this will be expressed physically by picking with their fingers or pressing a chord down very gently.

Our inner state also affects whether we play very short aggressive phrases or long flowing melodic lines. It will dictate which notes we end each phrase on and whether we play all over the neck or stay in one position in the middle of the neck.

As humans we all experience a wide spectrum of emotions and feelings, and the guitar is a great instrument for expressing these. We can set our intention before we even pick up the instrument and can deliberately focus our emotions to be calm, aggressive, melancholy, joyful or excited and the guitar will respond to these feelings. Practising scales and exercises is essential, but only so we can express ourselves fully on our chosen instrument.

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DEVELOPING AN EFFECTIVE PRACTISE ROUTINE Part-Two: Turning Weakness into Strength

Often when we sit down to practise, we actually end up playing. Practising means working on the things we can’t yet play.

Playing is really important, after all that is why we practise so much in the first place and ripping through some solos is really fun and satisfying. Practising – like the large section of iceberg that sits under the water –  is the part no-one else ever gets to see.

The purpose of practising is to find our weak spots and turn them into our strengths, but this is the part that can be challenging. Psychologically it is difficult to admit that we are not perfect.

In his autobiography ‘Total Recall’,  Arnold Schwarzenegger mentions how as a teenager he never worked on his calf muscles, with the result that he had a great upper body, but skinny calves. Some of his early photos even had him standing in water so his legs couldn’t be seen. When he later decided to work on his calf muscles he would wear shorts all the time, showing the world his weak spot and often being ridiculed by other bodybuilders in the gym. But he knew this would give him the motivation he needed and eventually his calf muscles became one of his strengths.

Identifying Your Weak Spots

A good to find your weak spots is by learning lots of songs. I always use a backing track for the song I’m learning, as it ensures I stay in time and learn the music at the right speed. Playing without a backing, it’s easy to unintentionally slow down at the fast bits and fool yourself that you’re playing it at the right speed.

As I play through the song I highlight the difficult sections, then use a metronome to find the current speed I can comfortably  play them, writing this tempo on the tablature.

I turn each tricky section into an exercise, playing it in isolation with a metronome, gradually building up speed and accuracy, and marking my new speeds on the tablature. This may take many weeks, but you can see your improvements in the new speed markings. You can even record yourself each day to hear yourself improving.

It’s important to decide on the most comfortable fingering at an early stage, as you want to use consistent fingering to maximise your practise time. Once the tricky part is at the correct speed and feels comfortable, you can put it back into context and play along with the backing track. Record yourself and listen back: does it flow? If it is a fast part that you find tricky, build up speed until you can play it a little faster than the actual tempo; when you play it at the normal speed it will feel easier.

When you find a weak spot in your playing, try to identify the underlying cause of the difficulty. For instance if you have difficulty switching from a D chord to an A chord, play really slowly and watch what your fingers are doing. Can you play each chord on its own? If not, practise each chord in isolation. This is the idea of ‘tightening the circle’ where we start with the biggest movements and gradually refine them in smaller and smaller detail. This concept is mentioned in the excellent book  ‘The Art of Learning’ by Josh Waitzkin, who is a chess master and martial arts champion. The smaller we make our circle, the faster we can target our weaknesses and turn them into strengths.

Play with Other Musicians

Another great way to find your weak spots is by playing with other musicians. A major benefit is that you will be exposed to songs you may not usually listen to: if you are mainly a rock player, but you are asked to solo over some jazzy chords you may realise that you aren’t comfortable soloing outside of a pentatonic solo.  Or you may realise that your rhythm playing isn’t quite as tight as you thought it was. Or you may discover a new love for Latin Disco Techno-Funk!

When I was a teenager playing in my first band, we used to learn songs from CDs and tapes. I realised that my ear wasn’t very good at identifying chord progressions, so I started making my own ear-training tapes to improve my relative pitch. I would never have done this if I’d just stuck to learning songs from tablature.

Emulate Your Heroes

Find a backing track to one of your favourite guitar solos and then emulate the solo, but don’t copy it note-for-note. Just copy the overall shape of the solo.  I tried this with Zakk Wylde’s solo from ‘No More Tears’ by Ozzy Osbourne, following the overall shape of:

  • Smooth melody (starts at 4 minutes 13 seconds into song).
  • Aggressive pentatonic solo (starts at 4 minutes 41 seconds).
  • Climactic build up, using ascending legato patterns (starts at 4 minutes 56 seconds).

I realised that I found it difficult to use fast pentatonic patterns to build to a climax, mainly because I didn’t know my pentatonic scales well enough across the entire neck. I had discovered my weak spot and could begin making it a strength.

Steal from your heroes

Once you have learnt a new solo, take some of the licks and write ten variations to use in your own solos. When we engage with the things we’ve learnt it makes us process it in a deeper way and helps us retain it for longer. This makes our new knowledge “disfluent”, meaning its more difficult to initially absorb, but is more memorable for our brains. See the book ‘Smarter, Better, Stronger’ by Charles Duhigg for a great chapter on this.

Practise with “Emotional Content”

Bruce Lee said it is better to practise a punch once with focus than practise a punch one hundred times with no focus. He called this “emotional content” and we can apply this by practising with our full attention. Allocate a realistic time period for your practise session with a clearly defined goal (i.e. “I’m going to practise for 25 minutes and learn an A Major 7 arpeggio in five different positions on the neck”. This will help you maintain focus. Make sure you have a break when the time limit is up as it is vital to rest your hands and mind.

One of the great things about music is that it is a life-long endeavour and we all have areas that we can improve. Never let your weaknesses discourage you, as each weakness is a gift that will push you closer to being the best musician you can be.