Ignorance is not bliss.

There is a LOT of guitar instruction material on the internet. I’ve been exploring lately, looking to see what other teachers are up to as I organize my own thoughts. And while there are plenty of smart and talented people out there with something to offer, they sometimes seem to be islands floating in a sea of….well, fill in the blank.

To make a sweeping generalization instead of a blanket indictment: there are no magic bullets. Learning to play an instrument is a lifelong journey, there’s always something else to learn, and all of those things are going to take work. Anyone who promises you shortcuts, secrets, or tricks is minimizing that fact, but it’s a common thread I keep seeing in so many of these courses.
There ARE simple ideas that can make a huge difference in how quickly and how efficiently you learn, but these are concepts – a mental approach that pave the way for the work to follow. My issue with a lot of what I’m seeing out there is the repeated assertion that it’s not important to know about music….that these so-called shortcuts do so by eliminating pesky details like vocabulary and musical literacy.

You certainly CAN choose to learn that way, and there are plenty of working professionals….even stars….who did just that. We all did in the beginning: here’s a chord, memorize it, here’s a lick, memorize that. And it’s true that you don’t need to know how to read music or how to spell a minor 11th chord to be a songwriter, or an artist, or even a professional musician. There are many who don’t, they just do what they do and some people do it amazingly well.

But realistically, unless you are a genius savant and really don’t need to (and even then), knowing more about what you do can only help. Musical knowledge gives you more choices and more options. Musical literacy makes it easier for you to communicate your ideas to others and to absorb theirs. Even Mozart had teachers and went through a process of musical education. (He may have mastered it all by the time he was ten, but that’s a separate point).
This is not the sexy stuff, this is the grunt work. Not instant gratification but a payoff that comes down the road. Like any investment, it takes time to mature. See the shortcuts for what they are: a means to get a little taste of the good stuff, and enjoy them…..but don’t mistake morsels for a meal.

The great jazz pianist Bill Evans had this to say on the subject:

“It is true of any subject that the person who succeeds in anything has a realistic viewpoint at the beginning in knowing that the problem is large. He has to take it a step at a time, and he has to enjoy the step-by-step learning procedure".

We’re talking about applying a small idea to a big thing: be aware of the big picture, but process information in snapshots.

It’s not a secret or a trick, just the recognition that music is an interconnected system with many, many interwoven relationships. Start by knowing these relationships are there, and then start looking for them, one by one. Be aware that this is going to take a long time to really get to know the material….but the beauty of it is, you don’t need to know everything to make music. Every one of these small pieces can be put to use right away. Learn a chord, use it in a song, then use it a different way and it will lead to another new chord. Every piece of the puzzle brings you closer to seeing the whole picture.

Adopting this mindset will keep you from getting stuck; stagnation in any aspect of life happens when you no longer see possibility. Acknowledging how big a thing we’re tackling here should make it clear that you’ll never know everything, so there’s no way to run out of possibilities…unless, of course, you decide some things aren’t worth knowing.

Phrasing & Space

In writing a lyric, one mistake many beginners make is not following a recognizable meter or pattern of stressed beats. (Think back to ninth-grade English class, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, etc). No matter the style of music, if you want your lyric to be understandable when set to music it needs to be musical to start with…..and like most poetry low and high, from limericks to sonnets, nearly all music follows some kind of meter. The meter of a lyric can strongly suggest the feel and tempo of the music that goes with it, just as the words you choose determine the attitude and tone of the song.

Inherent in the idea of meter and its stressed syllables is the opposite idea: unstressed beats and open space. Think of rhythm as operating on several levels at once: the steady pulse at the foundation, the stressed beats that define the meter, the unstressed beats that make the accents “pop” and complete the line, and the spaces between the lines that define the form.

This is the essence of phrasing, in both the lyrical and musical senses. Phrasing is the organizing principle in speech, poetry, and music, and makes your message easier to deliver by giving the brain a pattern to connect to. That’s not to say that phrasing is repetitive by nature, it doesn’t have to be…but the complexity of your phrasing is going to be determined by what’s appropriate to the style. Country music as a rule uses simple, short phrases:

Hey, (beat)(beat) good lookin’ (beat)(beat)(beat)
wha- (beat) (beat) -tcha got cookin’ (beat)(beat)(beat)
hows about cookin’ (beat) something up with me? (2-3-4-5-6-7-8)

Notice how the held notes and spaces complete each eight-beat line….in other words, how the phrasing comes from a combination of the natural stresses of the words (good LOOKin’) and the added beats (the spaces between) to complete a coherent, symmetrical 4-line form of 8 beats per line.

Now, if you have a strong innate sense of rhythm (and many songwriters do) you might work these things out without any effort or conscious thought at all. But looking at phrasing and stress patterns in a lyric can open up new possibilities in a song, taking it in a musical direction you might not have thought of initially. Here’s an example, from Travis Tritt’s “Great Day To Be Alive”, written by Darrell Scott:

It’s a great (beat) DAY to be alive
I know the sun’s still shinin’ when I close my eyes
There’s some (beat) hard times in the neighborhood
but why can’t every day be just this good?

Notice how the added beat before the word “day” not only emphasizes the word but also makes it into a memorable part of the hook. The pause before “hard times” not only does the same thing, it adds a two-count “knock-knock” motif that is established by “there’s some” (pause) followed by the words “hard times” in the same rhythm. The contrast of the breaks in lines 1 and 3 with the unbroken lines 2 and 4 also gives the lyric added balance and musicality.

It’s worth mentioning as well that Darrell Scott is an instrumentalist of the highest order, and as strong a case as you could make for the added dimension instrumental ability brings to songwriting. But just as in lyric writing, strong phrasing is essential to great music, as any great musician will tell you: just ask Darrell, or B.B. King, Miles Davis, or Floyd Cramer. Too often we try to separate writing ability from musical ability, but the two go hand in hand….after all, we’re talking about SONGwriting.

A crash course in harmony: or, what I SHOULD have been taught in theory class.

This is a music theory article!

I can hear the groans already. Triads, augmented fifths, leading tones, wha?? My first theory class felt like math, and I hated math. My first three theory classes, really. But then came the eureka moment....when the light bulb clicked on over my head and I GOT it. And at that moment I realized that had certain things been explained from the get-go, the whole business would have made more sense. That's what I want to talk about today: a simple principle that easily explains what music theory is, how it works, and why it's important.

Randy Halberstadt, a jazz pianist and educator from Seattle, wrote a fantastic book called "Metaphors for the Musician", which I highly recommend to anyone who already has a basic grasp of theory and wants to dig deeper. But he used a phrase as the title of one chapter that sums up the whole concept beautifully: "Harmonic Astronomy".

"Harmonic" in that we are talking about how notes played together create harmony. "Astronomy" in that notes and chords exert influence and force upon each other much like celestial bodies do. And understanding this simple concept provides a framework which is filled in by all the specific details. In short, learning theory gives you a convenient way to organize which moon revolves around what planet, and how all revolve around the sun.

Let's get into some detail. You've probably heard the word "key" used as a musical term: as in, this song is in the key of C. Now, the technical explanation of this is that the key of C uses only the white notes on the piano: in other words, out of all the notes on the keyboard we are using a subset (haha, math class, remember?) that includes only the white keys.

But what we really mean when we say we're in the key of C is that the note (or chord) C is the sun around which all the other notes revolve. In other words, when we're in the key of C the way you hear every note is filtered through the prism of its relationship to C. Change keys and gravity shifts....the same note can be heard in a completely different way.

To illustrate this, play this sequence of chords on piano or guitar: C - G - F - C - F - G...

I followed the G with those three dots for a reason....does that series of chords sound finished? Or does it sound like you've been left hanging, waiting for something to happen?

Well, you have. That G chord wants to resolve: to bring us back home to C. Now play the same sequence but end with the C chord and notice how it brings a sense of finality that was missing before.

Now play this sequence: C - G - D - G - C...

This time, the C doesn't sound quite so final. Follow up with this: C - G - D - G - C - D - G

Now G sound like home, and we have moved into the key of G.

This is the whole concept in a nutshell. Chords want to lead to other chords. Notes of a melody have an inherent need to resolve, to move one way or another. Music theory is a way to organize this set of interwoven relationships into a tool box you can use in your writing and playing. Obviously there's much more to learn here, and subsequent articles will explore this further. But listening to music with this in mind can change your whole way of hearing....and have a huge impact on your musical choices and vocabulary.

On music theory: do you REALLY need to "know the rules before you can break 'em"?

It's a statement I've heard repeated often enough to have become a cliche. Let's face it, when it comes to music, "breaking the rules" is not a conscious decision. Musical innovators develop their own language by following what they hear, and while any writer or composer is influenced by the music that moves them they don't have to have a formal grasp of the vocabulary to absorb elements of the style and sound.

On top of that, the subjective filter that we comprehend music through is different for everyone...one man's celestial harmony is another man's noise. And with the whole of human musical history a few mouse clicks away, you can go from Gregorian chant to Sonic Youth in the blink of an eye. Any combination of sounds anyone's ever made are probably on a YouTube video. There are far more sonic and tonal possibilities open to the contemporary musician than Bach or Mozart would have dreamed of. So is it still relevant, given all this, to study four hundred year old "rules" to learn how to make music in the 21st century?

Well, yes, it is. The tonal system as we use it in most popular music today still follows the same principles of tension and release that form the basis of classical harmony. A major chord is still a major chord, and ending a song on a 5 chord is sure to leave most of the room hanging. A 12-bar blues or a three-chord country song still moves forward not just on the narrative thrust of the lyric but by setting up dissonance: the diversion from 1 to 4, and the expectation and gratifying sense of release when 5 brings us back home to 1. Fundamentally, harmony is like gravity: combinations of notes and chords exert force on each other and bring about movement as a result. So music theory is simply a way to categorize and explain how and why this works. The earth revolved around the sun before Galileo postulated it, and Newton's apple would have fallen whether he was there to observe it or not.

So the "rules" are not really rules at all, but explanations why some notes sound good together and some don't. The major triad is present in the overtones of a vibrating string: it's a sound that existed before someone gave it a name. And understanding of THIS aspect - music theory as an explanation of natural sonic phenomena - is a great tool and stimulus for creativity.

This is a large and complex topic, but understanding this simple fact makes the study of music theory both more relevant and more interesting. So to go back to our cliche: you really CAN'T break the rules, they just exist....and they're more flexible than you might think.

Capos Are Not Cheating!

as originally published in Susan Tucker's Songwriters E-Tip Newsletter. To subscribe, email songconnection@aol.com.

There's no reason to be apologetic about using a capo, even if it is sometimes called a "cheater"!

When you use a capo you are applying at least a basic knowledge of music theory, and if you really know what you're doing it opens up a whole range of new sonic possibilities without your needing to learn lots of new chords.

First of all, let's address the "cheating" thing. It's true that an accomplished piano player can play in all (or at least most) keys without much difficulty, never mind the "transpose" button on most modern electronic keyboards. But the truth is that there isn't nearly as much of a difference in difficulty playing in different keys on the piano as there is on the guitar. In terms of what the change requires of your hands, it's less of a challenge than many beginners might think once you master basic technique....the greater challenge is mental, because every key has its own configuration of notes.

On the guitar, especially if we're talking about playing rhythm on an acoustic, there's a tremendous difference in difficulty between playing in, say, D and D flat. Adding bar chords into the mix levels the playing field a whole lot, but bar chords just don't ring the way open chords do....the instrument doesn't resonate nearly as much. Also, in many flat keys we lose the sympathetic vibration and overtones created by the open strings. (That's a topic for an entirely different article, though, suffice it to say that when you play certain chords other strings will sound whether you struck them or not....this is called sympathetic vibration and adds to the richness and depth of the sound).

So now that we've established that using a capo is part of maximizing the sonic potential of an acoustic guitar and is NOT in fact "cheating", let's talk about how we use it.

The most important idea to understand is how much you have moved or "transposed" a chord when you clip on that capo. It's helpful at this point to visualize a piano keyboard: white keys in a row, with black keys between them. The white keys follow the letters of the alphabet, while the black keys fill in the sharps and flats. If you're at all familiar with a keyboard, you already know that not every pair of white keys has a black key (and therefore a sharp or flat) in between, and here's where the main concept lies.

We're now talking about measuring the distance between two notes: between, say, two white keys when there's a black key between them, or when there isn't. The distance from A to B is what we would call a whole-step, because there's a black key between them. Same with C to D or F to G. But there's no black key between E and F or B and C, and so the distance in those two cases is called a half-step.

Still with me? It's simpler on the guitar....a half-step is one fret, a whole-step is two. And remembering these two small pieces of information are the key, because now you know that if you put a capo on the second fret you have moved (transposed) every chord up a whole-step. So C becomes D, F becomes G, and G becomes A.

Remembering where those naturally-occurring half-steps are also tells you that with that capo on the second fret, E becomes F SHARP because ordinarily E to F is only a half-step.

It's true that it takes time to soak up all this information to the point where you can use it without having to think too much....so let's throw in some shortcuts. Instead of thinking letters, let's now go to numbers: an eight letter sequence C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C would be numbered one through eight (seven really, because eight is just the recurrence of one....the pattern is really a circle just like on an old-fashioned clock). The chord built on each of those notes has the same number: so C is the "one chord", F is the "four chord", etcetera. Musicians often shorten this and just say "one", "four", and so forth. This is the "Nashville number system" in a nutshell.

So here are the shortcuts. First, common chords in two common keys and their numbers, but note three points first.

1. The minor chords on the 2, 3, and 6. Major chords may be substituted as well but these are what we would call "diatonic" chords, meaning they use only the notes of the scale.

2. The one exception is the use of the "flat 7" instead of the seventh note of the scale. This is actually a far more common chord in popular music than the diatonic 7, and makes an interesting substitution for a 5 or to approach a 5.

3. The flat 7 in both these cases uses a bar chord, the B flat and the F. This is a hurdle that everyone needs to get over at some point, but once again that's a topic for another article.

Here are our examples:

Key of C: 1=C, 2= D minor, 3= E minor, 4=F, 5=G, 6=A minor, flat 7=B flat.

Key of G: 1=G, 2=A minor, 3=B minor, 4=C, 5=D, 6=E minor, flat 7=F.

Now visualize the keyboard again. Keeping in mind the naturally-occurring pattern of whole and half-steps, you can move of "transpose" to any other key by using these patterns in higher capo positions. For example:

C with a capo on the 2nd fret becomes D, the 3rd fret becomes E flat, or 4th fret becomes F.
G with a capo on the 2nd fret becomes A, 3rd fret becomes B flat, and 7th fret becomes D.

As I said earlier, it will take some time to become thoroughly familiar with all of this. But I hope the basic concept is clear and its application useful. A future article will explore more creative and unusual uses for the capo.

Some cool folks I'd like to share!

First of all, I'm just thrilled that my blog and articles seem to be circulating...I'm hearing from people from all over and it's very gratifying! So here are some links to some fine folks who have featured my work and I want to acknowledge them as well.

GuitarPlayerZen: great guitar resource with new articles posted regularly.

Guitar9 Records: a home on the web for shredders everywhere:

And here's my new friend Anne and her site My Guitar Buddies.

I'm told there's other stuff getting out there, but I'll make the announcements when the articles are posted. In the meantime, thanks for reading and for spreading the word!

Songwriting And Rhythmic Identity

(As published in Susan Tucker's Songwriters E-Tip Newsletter of 7/19/08. Subscribe by sending an email to songconnection@aol.com)


I’ve focused a lot in my articles about rhythm and how important it is in songwriting. Previous posts have established that having a wide rhythmic vocabulary can diversify the sound of a writer's catalog and allow you to pitch to a variety of artists and markets.

As a musician that plays multiple styles, my contributions in a cowriting session often lean more towards the musical than the lyrical....I’m not the type of writer that keeps a journal or a book of ideas. (Perhaps I ought to start, but that’s another matter). And we know that every cowriting situation is different....sometimes you start on an idea from scratch, sometimes one writer has a verse or a chorus, or even more. Perhaps one writer even has a song completely written but feels it’s missing something. This opens up a question....according to copyright law, a song is music and lyrics. So if your contribution in the session is a rhythmic idea that gives the song a new identity, does that constitute a cowrite even though copyright law doesn’t recognize it?

I do believe that every song needs a rhythmic identity of its own. There are songs that you’ll recognize instantly from a drum intro or a guitar lick before a note of melody is heard. If those musical contributions come from a session musician, that player doesn’t get a writing credit as a rule....but would Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” be the same song without that distinctive guitar intro? Besides being hooky, the intro establishes the rhythmic framework of the song as the bass figure that follows is strongly related and supports the entire rest of the tune.

I do believe this constitutes a gray area, and it may be more a matter of courtesy than law. I’m not suggesting that session musicians are entitled to writing credits, because their contributions are considered more arrangement than composition, and copyright law as I understand it doesn’t cover arrangements. But in a cowriting session the dynamic is different. And Nashville courtesy as I understand it is that all parties present in a writing session are generally given equal credit for the song. So my answer to the question above is, yes.....rhythmic identity may not be recognized by copyright law but can be as important to a song as melody and lyric. And in my opinion this strengthens my initial assertion that it is in every songwriter’s best interest to have as wide a vocabulary as possible.

Serving The Muse: a lesson learned

I had a defining musical experience the summer after my junior year in college, a series of events that had a huge impact on my approach and philosophy. The lessons I learned over those two short weeks have stayed with me throughout my career because I do believe they illustrate a fundamental fact about music....and everything I've observed or learned since has only driven the point home.

The first week, I attended a well-established summer music program for six days of intensive class study with one of the foremost and most influential jazz guitarists in the world. Who it was is peripheral to the story....the relevant part is that the prospect of soaking up some of this man's knowledge drew guitarists from all over the world, all equally devoted to mastering the bebop style of jazz. Now, bebop is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult and complex languages in any genre of music, and I have tremendous respect for any musician on any instrument that can master it. But my interest in this workshop was more to broaden my musical horizons....I knew that this master teacher had worked with other musicians I admired that were not strictly jazzers but creative souls looking for a new approach.

Sadly, the master I had come to see suffered a debilitating illness and was unable to lead the class. The teacher who came in his stead was a wonderful substitute in that he himself had a complete and in-depth knowledge of the style himself and was at the same time probably a better communicator than the sometimes thorny genius we had all come to see. But I'm still relating peripheral details, as you'll see.....while I did get a lot out of the class, the great lesson I learned came later.

I was entering my fourth year of music school, studying classical guitar and practicing three to six hours a day. I was reading the journals of John Cage and Stravinsky and listening to Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett. In short, my head was full of high concepts and while I knew I had a lot to learn I felt I was thinking and playing on a highly sophisticated musical plane. But I also had the tendency towards hubris and the sense of invincibility of a young man in his early twenties, and I was about to be put squarely in my place.....by a bunch of middle-aged ex-hippies playing folk music.

I grew up on folk music and always had a love and appreciation for it...I still do. No amount of education will ever change the fact that the Clancy Brothers made me bawl like a baby singing "KillKelly" or that Jean Ritchie's "Black Waters" continues to give me goosebumps. So after my week in the rarified atmosphere of quartal chord voicings, the lydian flat 7 substitution, and post-tonal harmonic extensions, I went to "folk music week" at a summer retreat on Cape Cod. And here's where I learned my lesson: the folkies were better musicians.

Sounds like an audacious statement. Obviously the music they were playing was much simpler. But even though they played songs with three and four chords, they played with an authority that despite my training and supposed greater skill I was unable to match. And even more strikingly, fifteen or twenty people could sit in a circle making music together without stepping on each other. And I'm not talking about fifteen people strumming the same C chord and singing Kum-Ba-Ya.....I'm talking about a group of musicians listening to each other, each choosing their moment to contribute to the whole and then melting seamlessly back into the ensemble. Some able to play five or six instruments with equal authority and ease. Singing spontaneously in three and four and ten-part harmony. Knowing exactly how to listen to each other and blend into a harmonious whole.

Now, don't get me wrong. The masters of bebop and high-concept exploratory jazz who were teaching the first class I attended are musicians of the highest order. They DO possess listening skills and an understanding of harmony that is attained by few musicians in any style. But by and large the aspiring younger players who attended the class did not, myself included....and it was instructive to observe that while most of these guys (and it WAS mostly guys, another little detail that made folkie camp much more pleasant) could play every standard in the Real Book backwards and forwards, they still needed the book to know what to play. And two of them playing together often couldn't keep from stepping all over each other instead of blending to make music together. The ensemble class was a particularly grevious example, with near-cacophony threatening to take over until the instructor (who I hold in very high esteem and absolutely DOES "get it") pulled back the reins.

I don't mean to make a blanket indictment of jazz and jazz musicians. Great jazz players continue to be an inspiration to me, and in my opinion John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" still stands as one of the most incredible recorded examples of master musicians tuning in to one another and together pushing their explorations into the stratosphere. But the lesson is this: it doesn't matter how many chords or scales you know if you can't listen to someone else play and complement it in some way. Vocabulary without proper context and the means to put it there is useless. I've hired sidemen who possess tremendous skill only to have them completely ruin a gig by overplaying and being more in love with their own ability than with the needs of the song.

Technique and vocabulary are wonderful in that they give you options. But artistry is in how you use what you know. These ideas aren't mutually exclusive but most musicians seem to come down on one side or the other. Here's what I think: technique and vocabulary are meant to function IN THE SERVICE of artistry. In other words, know how to authoritatively use what you've got. Then seek out new information and learn to use that properly. In this way your skills serve your muse instead of dictating your style....and as your abilities grow, your music grows along with them.

Hear Beyond Your Instrument

I often hear songwriters say that their goal on the guitar or piano is to play "just well enough to write songs". I think what they mean is that they don't want to learn to play things that aren't going to impact their songwriting, but I think it misses a point. (First of all, I think everything can impact your writing, but that's a topic for another article). What we really want to be focused on is not the vocabulary in your fingers but the vocabulary in your head. So today I'd like introduce a way you can broaden that vocabulary without even touching an instrument, and it's as simple as opening your ears.

A core element of any formal music education is something called "ear training". This is the process by which we learn to identify and categorize sounds....melodies (notes in sequence), intervals (distances between notes) and chords (notes that sound simultaneously). While an instrument can be a helpful reference in this process it can also get in the way, by keeping your mind on your fingers and visual relationships rather than on your ears and aural (heard) relationships. So we're going to use our ears and voice as the primary instruments, and use the guitar or keyboard as a reference. Keep in mind that this is not about being a vocalist, so it doesn't matter if you're a strong singer or not. The idea is to use the voice to establish a direct connection to what I'll call your inner ear....."inner" not in the anatomical sense but the musical one.

For the purposes of this exercise you will need to work from an existing song, preferably one you didn't write. It could be on your computer, an I-Pod, or a CD, but most importantly you should be able to move easily from one part of the song to another.

Listen through the entire song and sketch out the form or "map" of the tune. As a writer you should already be familiar with the basic structural elements of song form: verse, lift/pre-chorus/ channel, chorus, and perhaps a bridge, intro, interlude, or outro.
Your map should list all of these sections in the order they appear.

Now listen through the song again. Since we've established where the primary sections are, this time we're listening for a greater level of detail. See if you can figure out how long each section lasts, and more importantly how many times you hear the chords change within each section. This is where the voice comes in: see if you can sing along, but instead of singing the melody try to sing along with the bass or primary rhythm instrument. Note that it doesn't matter whether your voice is low or high, the point is not to match the exact pitch but to give you the clearest outline of when the chords change. More often than not, the note played by the bass or rhythm guitar will be the note that names the chord (called the "root').

If you find that you're having difficulty finding the notes with your voice, try listening to just a small section at a time. You may end up listening to only a couple of beats before you stop the music, but that's OK. With repeated attempts you should be able to zero in on the basic "chord changes" for each section, and once you can sing along you can move to your instrument and try to find the notes you're singing. Don't worry about whether you can find the complete chord that goes with each change.....all we're trying to do in this case is to identify one note for each chord. If you can, fill in these notes on your map or "chord chart", and then see if you can find a pattern to the order the chords appear in.

What we're ultimately trying to accomplish is make your ear aware of chords and how they fit together. The more adept you become at this, the more possible options you'll have open to you in your writing, as you start to hear chord changes in your inner ear that your fingers haven't yet learned. Using the voice to guide the way we can sketch out the basic direction of the chord changes, and then use a chord dictionary (or ask a more skilled player) to suggest some possible options that might fit what you're hearing. This way of thinking should open your ears and broaden your horizons musically, so that when you sit with your instrument you can follow what you hear in your head. This is what it means to hear beyond your instrument: to be limited only by your imagination instead of by your fingers.

What Every Music Teacher Should Know

In my twenty years teaching, I've worked with students of all ages and skill levels....from small children taking their first steps in music to retirees looking to fulfill a lifelong ambition. I've taught every style of music from jazz to bluegrass to classical to hard rock, and I've come to believe very strongly that the most important skill a teacher needs is the ability to assess and adapt to the needs and learning style of the student.

In my opinion, many teachers approach music lessons like math class. Here's what to do, here's the "right" way to do it. But music is as varied as the people who make it, and many of the greatest and most influential artists of any style were outsize characters with unique personalities and approaches to their instrument.

While there are basic foundation principles I do believe every student should learn, the way we put those principles across might be different for everyone. And I've seen students who had been struggling with an idea or a particular musical gesture for months master it instantly when they try a new approach. In fact, I've experienced it myself as a student and as a working professional.

My greatest teachers were all highly creative and open-minded musicians, and they taught me that there is nearly always another way to achieve a given result. In my own teaching I strive to remember and apply this principle above all, and I hope my students reap the benefits and thrive as I did.

What Can A Lyricist Learn From Musicians?

I had a conversation today with a representative from a songwriting organization about a workshop I was proposing, and he asked an interesting question. He wanted to know how the workshop I offer might benefit someone that doesn't play an instrument, but is primarily a lyricist.

One thing I've observed in working with lyricists is that they have a flexible concept of meter, and it's often the role of the "composer" to find a way to make that meter fit the rhythm of a song. Lines that work as spoken word or poetry might not flow as easily when sung, at least if we're proceeding with the idea that sung lyrics are meant to be understood by the listener. (This is not always the case in rock music, "Louie Louie" being one of the first and most famous examples).

But a lyricist who can think musically can have much more influence over how his or her writing partner sets their words to music. A spoken meter can imply a rhythmic feel, and that rhythmic feel can become a groove. Words have an inherent rhythm....when I teach rhythm to kids I use spoken words to illustrate what the beat sounds like. (Say "watermelon" four times over and you'll feel sixteenth notes in four-quarter time....say "pineapple" and you'll feel triplets).

Many of my articles and blog posts have been about how to write from a groove, and how every song has a rhythmic essence or foundation that drives the feel. If you write lyrics that set up that rhythmic feel, the music follows very naturally. Here's a great example, from John Hiatt's "Tennessee Plates":

I woke up in a hotel, didn't know what to do
turned the TV on, wrote a letter to you
the news was talkin' 'bout a dragnet out on the interstate
seems they was lookin' for a Cadillac with Tennessee plates

Hiatt says when he wrote that song he wanted to imitate Chuck Berry's rapid-fire delivery and lyrical style, and when you recite those lyrics to yourself I bet you can easily feel the chug-a-chug-a rhythm that drives so many of those classic songs.

There are of course many other examples.....and when you start to listen in this way, the concept should be readily apparent. So the next time you work on a lyric, look for the implied meter and see what it implies to create the heartbeat of the song. A melody can be implied by the natural rise and fall of speech as well: it's really all about hearing implications and potential, which is what the best musicians learn to do in approaching their instrument. Give it a try and see where it leads you.

Listening Is A Choice

On one of my first gigs after arriving in Nashville, the drummer turned to me and said "it's really nice to play with a guitarist who listens".

I was a little surprised at this, being a new arrival in Music City and knowing the old joke about how if you come to Nashville to be a guitar player and the first guy you meet after entering the city limits plays better than you, you turn around and go home. (And odds are that happens frequently, there are a LOT of phenomenal guitar players in Nashville, my drummer friend's somewhat cynical comment notwithstanding).

But he does raise a good point. Just because a group of people are onstage playing a song together doesn't mean they're listening to each other. And I don't mean that in a mean-spirited or overly critical way....there is hearing and there is listening, so I'll take a moment to elaborate on what I mean.

Let's define "listening" from a musician's perspective as an active rather than a passive activity. In other words, a musician who is listening is constantly evaluating and reacting to what they hear, and those reactions are expressed in how they play or sing. Simple example: if the lead singer feels that a certain part of the song should be delivered with a softer, more relaxed energy, a band that is listening will simply react and follow the singer's lead. The first rule of accompanying is that the lead voice/instrument sets the tone: volume, intensity, feeling - and the accompanists (e.g. the rest of the band) follow suit. In a good band, this happens easily and the entire performance is dynamic and musical.

So why WOULDN'T someone not be listening? It's generally not a question of ego, or childish onstage behavior.....for the most part, people want to do their best and for everyone to sound good. But because playing an instrument or even singing comes from certain physical/mechanical movements and actions, it's often easy to get more focused on that aspect than on the sound that's being produced. Guitar players have a (somewhat deserved) reputation for being the worst offenders in this area....playing too loud being the most obvious expression. But I've seen players who sounded incredible warming up who suddenly seemed lost when the band started to play. What happened? Their fingers can lead the way, but place them in a musical context where the ears have to come first and the fingers don't get the guidance they need.

Singers do this too. The old gag about how you know when there's a singer at your door because he/she doesn't have the key and doesn't know how to come in. But well-arranged music has a natural ebb and flow, an energy that moves and leads the ear.....a singer who is REALLY listening will naturally hear when the spotlight is shifting to them, because the band's performance will make it clear. (For example.....when the song begins, the intro may be high energy to grab the audience's attention, but then the volume comes down and the texture softens at the beginning of the verse to make room for the singer).

What all of this means to any musician is that your goal is to be an active, attentive listener. And while musicians who study formally take classes in "ear training" these skills can be picked up simply by paying attention to the right things. Listen for dynamics, the rise and fall of volume and energy. Listen for who has the primary voice at any moment....if it's you, grab the spotlight, and if it's not, stay out of the way until your turn comes. If you're jamming along with a band you've never played with before, don't play your guitar licks WHILE the singer is singing but in the spaces in between. A great performance in almost any genre of music is a conversation in which each member gets to have the floor....sometimes the spotlight shifts quickly and you might only have a moment to add something, but a moment is all you might need. It's as simple as choosing to pay attention and being as aware of what's going on around you as you are of what you're doing yourself.....and that's a worthwhile thing to strive for in many aspects of life, not just music.

How much does a songwriter need to know about music?

It's a reasonable question, especially for a writer that doesn't have aspirations to be a performer. If you've got a basic level of skill on your instrument and you're writing your songs, haven't you got what you need? After all, you don't have to be a great singer to write a great melody....so do you have to be a great musician to write a great song?

The short answer is, no, you don't. But I think the real answer lies in how we choose to define "great"....and in my opinion, the qualities that make a great musician can absolutely help you be a better songwriter.

We can probably all agree that the ability to play blazing fast scales doesn't necessarily help your songwriting. But more thorough knowledge of your instrument and its possibilities absolutely does, because it gives you more options to choose from. So when we talk about technique.and skill, we're talking about the ability to conceive and execute a wider variety of musical ideas.

On the guitar, this might mean knowing six or seven ways to play a C chord instead of just one. Or knowing how drop-D tuning changes the way you finger your basic open chords. (A topic for an entire article in itself, of course, but you get the point). If you're a pianist, maybe it means learning some new left-hand patterns that "drive" your songs more. Or learning a classical etude (literally "study") that develops finger dexterity and therefore allows you to reach chord voicings that you couldn't reach before. On any instrument, it could mean knowing the difference between a blues shuffle and a Western swing feel (hint....listen to the drummer!), or what a band does to make a power ballad lift at the chorus (it's all about dynamics and texture). Any time you can increase your musical vocabulary you give yourself more creative options for songwriting, and having more options will probably make you a better (or at least, more versatile) songwriter.

There's a lot to be said for the classic country song model, and part of what makes the classic old-school writers so great is their ability to make moving, memorable music with a limited number of musical options. But modern pop, rock, and country music has room for a wider vocabulary, and the modern listener has come to expect more different sounds. I look at the variety of music my average teenage student has on their I-Pod, and I see everything from Timbaland to Sugarland, the Beatles to Bocephus. They aren't confining themselves, so why should we? This is a major slice of the audience we want to reach, and a writer with a wide musical vocabulary probably has a better ability to reach them.

So how much should a songwriter know about music? In my opinion the answer is, as much as possible...that is, if you want to be a professional writer with the ability to reach a wide and diverse audience. So that means learning to listen for new sounds. Learning to know your chosen instrument better, whether you take lessons or just open your ears and explore. Learning to identify what makes a song compelling, whether it's a dramatic chord change, a driving rhythm, or fluid melodic phrasing. One of the amazing things about music is that there's always something else to learn, no matter how much you know. And that also keeps us engaged, challenged, and stimulated as writers and artists....and that's as worthwhile a goal as that number one hit.

Are You In The Groove?

Duke Ellingon famously wrote “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”. Swing is not a term we hear a lot in modern music, but we do hear proof of what the Duke meant every day.

If you listen to musicians talk to each other, you might hear them use words like “groove” and “pocket” to describe how they play. Those terms are the modern equivalent of Duke’s swing. Country music certainly does swing when it’s played well, and sometimes it grooves or even rocks. What does all this mean, and especially what does it mean to songwriters?

Of course, we’re talking about rhythm, and how music is played to make it feel good. We’ve all had the experience of being caught by the feeling of a song before we’re even clear what the words are. “Groove”, “swing”, and “pocket” are terms musicians use to describe what happens when the music feels the way it should....when all the parts are in balance and each element plays its appropriate role without overshadowing the others.

Understanding this concept is important to any songwriter whether you are a performer or not. To many that do perform, it’s second nature and part of what makes being onstage so gratifying....the visceral sense of making and being moved by music on a physical, gut level. But even if you never set foot on a stage or in a recording studio, as a songwriter you want to know what your song FEELS like.....how it grooves.....and the more you know about how those sounds are produced the easier it is to play them or to communicate them to someone else who might play for you.

At the heart of this is quite literally what we might call the heartbeat of the song, the pulse. Is it fast or slow? How does it feel in your body? A hard-hitting uptempo tune might quicken the pulse, while a ballad might feel spacious and relaxed. The pulse is a constant presence through the song, and whether it’s being actually played or not it is meant to be felt.

That pulse becomes the foundation of the rest of the rhythm of the song when it is divided up, generally into pairs in which one pulse is stressed and one isn’t. A drummer alternating between the bass (kick) drum and snare drum would illustrate this nicely: two different sounds, one low and one high, with one accented more strongly than the other. Many if not most different rhythmic “feels” can be ultimately broken down to this simple alternation of stressed and unstressed, low pitched and high pitched sounds. When those two parts sound balanced and “feel” natural, we’re in the groove.

Now think of a piano player playing those alternating sounds with the left and right hands producing the lows and highs. Or imagine a guitar strummed back and forth, and hear the difference in tone and stress between the down and upstrokes of the arm. These are the essential elements of groove. Different kinds of grooves are created by changing the pattern of accents, shifting beats around, or simply adding or subtracting beats or subdivisions of the pulse.

This is of course a very general overview, but you will find that the concept applies to virtually any style of music or any kind of feel you might want your song to have. Listen for these elements when you hear music, and listen to how different instruments and instrumentalists use them to bring a song to life. Then see how this knowledge might inform and impact your songwriting.....and get you into the groove.

Strum-a strum-a strum....a rhythm primer for songwriters

A lot of songwriters learning to play the guitar have it backwards, and in all fairness it’s hard not to get wrapped up in the paradox. You want to play the guitar to accompany your songs, but your songs end up getting limited by your ability of the guitar. So you might call a teacher and ask if you can learn some new strums to spice up your vocabulary. But a strum pattern is exactly that, just a series of motions....what you really want are new ideas and new sounds. So the idea is to get PAST the strumming to the sound....in other words, to be guided by your ears and not your hands. Your ideas can lead your fingers, rather than your fingers limiting your ideas.

Yes, this requires practice, but it doesn’t require as much skill as you might think. What we want is to allow the lyric or even the idea of the song to suggest the rhythmic feel, and then figure out how to produce that sound on the guitar. For example, you can find the natural rhythm of a lyric by just speaking it, and see where you feel the stresses. Then try to tap out the beats where you feel them. Don’t be afraid to be simple! And if you can tap or sing a rhythm, you can play it by asking the hands to follow the beat you’ve just established. The following exercise will help start you along the way.

Remember that your strumming hand is your rhythm generator. Hold a chord, hit the strings and feel a single beat. Hit the strings four times in succession and feel a measure. Then hit the strings repeatedly, counting to four each time and accenting the first count of each group. Now you felt a meter, four-four time (or just 4). Do it faster, and the song is uptempo. Do it slower, and now it’s a ballad.

Subdivide the beat by swinging the right arm back and forth. We’re still counting, one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and as we alternate down and up strums. Notice that strumming down accentuates the bass strings, while strumming up brings out the trebles.....so don’t try to hit all the strings on every stroke. Let your arm swing like a pendulum from the elbow, steadily back and forth, two parts of the same cycle. The down strums are downbeats, the up strums upbeats.

So now we have eight different beats, some of which could be accented (or played more strongly) and some might be skipped (counted, but not played....the hand just misses the strings on that pass). Experimenting with different combinations of accented, less strongly accented, and skipped beats will reveal MANY different rhythmic feels, and as long as the back-and-forth of the right hand is consistent your hand will always be moving in the right direction at the right time.

This might all seem very mechanical right now, and really it is....but through mechanics we develop control and possibility, which together add up to freedom. Great musicians know how to make music FEEL good because they have mastered the mechanics and therefore are free to conceive and execute ideas. And if you let your exploration of mechanics be guided by the pursuit of sounds you hear in your head, then your practicing is never abstract but just another aspect of your songwriting process. Above all, remember to be patient with yourself....mastery of large tasks takes a long time, but mastery of a single, small idea doesn’t seem so daunting.

Are You Still Recovering From Childhood Music Lessons?

I often meet songwriters and players who tell me they took music lessons as a kid and hated it. That little old lady down the street who gave piano lessons, or the guy with all that hair from the local band who taught guitar at the neighborhood music store, may have done more harm than good. I’ve heard stories of people who were told they “had no musical aptitude” or “just didn’t have the talent” as if to play music you needed to be touched from above. Or the teacher had an ironclad method that they insisted upon, whether it involved mastering “Fur Elise” or “Smoke On The Water” before you could move on to something more in line with what you wanted to learn.

First of all, let me be clear: methods are useful tools, and I’m not suggesting that some people aren’t given great gifts or that learning an instrument doesn’t require a set of concrete skills. But in my twenty years of teaching music, I’ve come to believe that the gift is in how quickly you understand, absorb, and learn to master those skills, and the method needs to reflect and be based upon the learning style and goals of the student. In other words, my job as a teacher is not just to show you how to do things but to figure out how you learn and deliver the information accordingly. And if that little old lady or the shaggy guy from the music store didn’t see it that way, you would be unlikely to learn much from them, and you probably don’t have the most positive memory of "music lessons".

But music is probably pretty important to you if you’re reading this right now. And because lessons are not the only way we learn to make music, you may have been writing, singing, or playing (or all three) for years now and are good enough at it to be seriously pursuing a career as a performing artist and/or songwriter. But because there’s always something new to learn, you may have come to feel that some sort of lessons might be a good idea, IF you could find a teacher that wasn’t going to make you repeat that childhood experience.

All my best teachers were the ones who could show me not just where to put my fingers but also how to think about and hear what I was doing. Their teaching transcended the nuts and bolts of playing the instrument..... and realistically if you practice regularly, as I was, that part takes care of itself. If you go to the gym every day and work out, you will get stronger, it can’t NOT work. They were not just teachers but coaches, in the sense that they helped me identify and bring out my strengths while recognizing and addressing my weaknesses. So I’m suggesting that if you’re looking to grow as an instrumentalist, writer, or artist, what you need is not “music lessons” but performance coaching.

We all have a process for developing and refining new material. If you're formally trained or just very organized it might be a very clear conscious series of steps, or it might just be a matter of exploring and changing things until they feel right. Then once we feel like we’ve got it where we want it, we start looking for feedback.....from other writers and performers, from friends and family, from teachers, and of course from pros in the industry we're all trying to break into. Some of it carries a whole lot of weight and some of it doesn't, depending on the source; then most of us file that information away in our heads and decide later on whether it rings true. I think that's the right approach, because a lot of the feedback we get is almost purely subjective....what we're being told is whether someone likes what we do or not. There might be concrete information we're being given, and it's up to us to decide how much value it has, but ultimately the feedback is the answer to a yes or no question: do you (the listener) like this song/performance/artist or not?

All of that's important.....if NO one likes what you're doing, you should probably go back to the drawing board, so to speak....and if the feedback is almost entirely positive that's obviously proof that you're on to something. But most of us live in the middle ground between those two extremes: we get positives AND negatives, which makes it a little more difficult to decide what’s valuable and what isn’t. And if we’re in agreement that much of what we do get is primarily subjective opinion, it's hard to know whether we can really use it to hone and refine what we do.

I’m suggesting that a great teacher is able to help you sort that out by accomplishing three things.

1. Identifying realistically and clearly who you are and want to be as a person and artist.

2. Defining as specifically as possible where your strengths and weaknesses are.

3. Devising ways to brings out your strengths and develop your weaknesses in a way that works for you and the way you learn.

I believe that all three of these points can be discussed in a way that focuses more on concrete things and less on subjective likes and dislikes. Speaking for myself, when a student brings in a song I don’t offer any commentary on whether I like it or not, because I don’t feel that’s important to our interaction. What IS important is whether the song is communicating what its writer intended, and whether the performance is helping to put that message across.

So f you are looking to study with someone, think about this article and the three points I just outlined when you evaluate whether that teacher is right for you. And if you’ve found the right person you’ll walk away from the experience a better writer, player, and performer, and hopefully with a better feeling about music lessons than you had as a child.