Raised fingers in slow scale practice.

If you’ve ever listened to the great pianists play, it’s dazzling how pristine their single line fast passages are. Magical and pearl like evenness.

The solution to this is the raised fingers approach in scale practice.  When practicing scales and arpeggios slowly (and you should be practicing them slowly), raise each finger above the note before striking it, then bring it down precisely and emphatically the carful attention to the exact position and timing of the stroke.

This may seem like a strange idea, after all when you play fast you don’t wan’t to be doing this.  The reason this works is that these pristine fast passages are largely achieved by the releasing of notes. Yes the lifting of the finger after the note has been played. The raising of fingers in slow practice helps strengthen this mechanism, training the muscle memory to lift the fingers precisely so as not to let them drag.

Happy Practicing.

Howdy there you plunkers! It’s time to dust off the old Jazz box and prepare to launch yourself upon that excruciating voyage of musical discovery par excellence – that’s right, it’s time to learn your Jazz chords in all inversions!!!

However, in the interest of limiting the torture to merely modest levels of agony, I’ve limited the exercises to one string set and one key – so get strumming and with any luck you should have those inversions under control in time for next weeks keybending episode!

Here’s the guitar pro tab:

Jazz_-_7th_Chord_Inversions_-_String_Set_6,4,3,2_Part_I

You can download TuxGuitar for free if you don’t have Guitar Pro to play

Have fun!

and keep pluckin’…

When you hear the pros playing funky with great rhythmic feel and continual variation they sound awesome. The best players seem un-phased by the complex coordination and endurance required to play this material. Since it can seem intimidating trying to fathom how to acquire these skills and start sounding as good as the pros, I’ve outlined 5 essential practice methods for getting your playing sounding awesome.

Funky piano – when we hear someone doing it well we think “Wow! I really wish I could do that.” Unfortunately its typical speed and complexity make it hard for a beginner to learn. The trick is to slow it down (half speed) whilst you learn it and also study transcriptions of funky patterns.

Whilst learning suitable funky patterns is necessary, sounding funky isn’t just about playing fast and complex. In fact if you haven’t developed a good rhythmic feel playing less busy material, you’re not going to be able to make the more complex stuff sound good!

Developing a good sense of rhythm can take a little time but the good news is, if you find yourself digging those funky styles, you definitely have it in you to play funky yourself.  Early on it can seem impossible and it’s common to hear people say: “I have no sense of rhythm.” – which is almost never the case. People who enjoy rhythmic music often have the potential ability to play too.

1- Listen to the music that you want to play

This is actually incredibly important for all styles of music. Even music that is less obviously rhythmic has a unique feel that you must “get” to be able to imitate it.

When listening to funky music you can help develop your rhythmic feel by clicking your fingers, dancing, or getting a shaker and playing along.

Next try playing simple repetitive patterns on the piano like basslines, riffs or chord vamps

2- Practice with a metronome/drum track

Now this one can be a little controversial. Playing with a metronome with 4 clicks to a bar can leave everything sounding rigid and soulless. What jazz players do however is to set the metronome to half time and then play against it so the clicks land on beat 2 and 4. This really helps playing with a swing feel but even if you’re playing straight it allows you a little more freedom to develop a feel whilst still keeping you in time.

A lot of people find playing to a metronome very hard at first so start with   playing simple patterns or even just tap along with it playing a regular 4 beats per bar. If you can’t do this first you won’t be able to play against 2 and 4 nor will you be able to play correctly against a drum track. The good news is that once you get over the initial hurdle of playing simple patterns against a metronome, things get easier very quickly and the benefits are definitely worth it.

3- Listen to yourself / Record yourself playing (and listen to the recording critically!)

Yes, it’s surprising how few people really listen to themselves whilst they’re playing. This can be quite tricky at first so try doing it whilst playing something that you’re already pretty solid on. By focusing on the sound you’re creating as you play something repeatedly you should be able to notice and correct minor mistakes.

Recording oneself is also a great if excruciating test. Yes it can be painful at first but please don’t let that discourage you. The very moment you start hearing all the little imperfections, you’ll already be well on the way to fixing them and as a result start sounding a lot better.

4- Play with other musicians

This is a fantastic thing to do! Playing with other people will enhance your feel, musical communication and spontaneity. You can only really learn the skills of musical interaction by playing with other people, so get out of your bedroom and find some musos!

Playing with musicians better than yourself can do wonders for your playing. One way is to go to jam sessions. If you don’t feel ready to sit in on the piano, go along and play the tambourine or a shaker.

Playing with other musicians your level is equally important however. Even if you’re a beginner, it’s going to add a whole new dimension to your playing.

Developing rhythmic feel is the most important and subtly challenging, aspect of sounding funky

5- Develop your Left Hand

People tend to shy away form it and yet it’s such an important element in funk! Here are some areas where you can improve

Scales & Arpeggios

Some technical practice playing scales and arpeggios can be very important.

Work on your left hand basslines. Track down a book of funk, jazz or blues basslines and spend some time playing through them with the left hand (always whilst practicing your feel). You will soon see the benefit and start seeing how to incorporate them.

A couple of starter tips on how to construct your own left hand bass parts is to find yourself some chord progressions (4 bars-8 bars long) and use them for practice. Learn to play the bass notes only, learn to walk in octaves (playing notes on beats 1 and 3), learn to add in the 5th as another options. Another common move is to approach the new chord by a semitone above or below

Learn some typical funky patterns and chord shapes. Pianists often aim for a punchy percussive sound -  by using fourths and fifths in their patterns in places where they want to add accents.

Also commonly used are 7#9 chords (e.g. C7#9 voicing, left hand is already playing the C, right hand can play E, Bb, Eb, spread out like this it sounds very punchy).

Another classic is the fourth chord. This is essentially just two fourth intervals stacked upon one and other (e.g. C,F,Bb). The use of such chords warrants a tutorial in it’s own right but these have a great punchy sound and are commonly moved around in parallel quite freely, even non diatonically. There are of course plenty more shapes that can be used but this tutorial will have to suffice with this for now.

Hopeful you have found some of this useful. Above all, make sure you’re having fun with it and don’t be disheartened when the going gets tough. These things can take time but it’s definitely worth it when you get there!

Greetings fellow music lovers.

As you no doubt know, or should do if you’ve been learning jazz, transcribing, learning and analysing the solos of the greats is one of the best ways to get your improv skills cooking. However in my experience a lot of people seem to get put off attempting this – perhaps because they find the idea of transcribing music incredibly daunting.

There also seems to be a strange idea amongst some jazz people that if you’re not transcribing the solo before you learn it, it’s not cool. I think this is ridiculous!

If you think about the entire process of transcribing, playing and analysing, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that each part of the process is developing different skills. Yes transcription is hard, but it is also greatly beneficial to your overall playing because of the aural skills you develop in the process. Even a little bit such as writing down a single lick goes a long way!

However, there is also great value in learning to play the entire solo and analysing its content, so there is no sense in losing out on the other benefits of learning and analysing solos simply because you can’t or don’t want to transcribe.

Fortunately there are plenty of resources out there with pre-transcribed solos. One in particular that I’ve found is fantastic. Thanks to someone at the School of Music in South Carolina we have a whole ream of transcriptions and references for original recordings at our finger tips. To check it out click here.

Well all the best for now guys. Until next time, get learning those solos!

Hey folks,

I just wanted to big up Paul Burton for making such great tutorials on youtube. He’s a fantastic pianist as you can hear on his channel, and he’s also done some fantastic tutorials on learning some wonderful but advanced piece of the repertoire. His insights and ideas about practice methods are are really useful and the videos are a pleasure to watch. I would recommend watching them even if the difficulty of the repertoire is currently too advanced for you. The techniques he teaches can of course be applied to easier repertoire and in a couple of the videos he suggests some easier pieces to learn in order to work towards the more challenging work. I really like this aspect Paul. Would love more recommendations like this.

Anyway here is one of his tutorials on learning Schumann’s Symphonic Etude Op.13 Variation No 1. Enjoy…

Hey folks…it’s me again…time to settle down guitar in time with a nice cup of tea and a biccy and listen to my words of wisdom…

No but seriously… today I want to have a chat with you all about the usefulness of transferable skills, specifically transferable skills on the guitar, more specifically guitar playing skills which can be transferred from one style to another.

First and foremost, how to practice effectively.

This is essential to your progress as a musician whatever style you play (and I wrote an article on the topic here {insert hyperlink}). If you don’t know how to practice your progress will be haphazard at best. Knowing how to practice consists of: knowing what you want to achieve; knowing how to achieve it; knowing how to practice the material you’ve chosen each day; knowing how to keep yourself motivated over the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades of your playing career. Any break in the chain will cause you to progress less the optimally.

Secondly…developing a good ear.

Whatever style you play, skilfully trained ears are a massive asset. They enable you to learn new music more quickly, detect mistakes in music that you’re playing or hearing and interact effectively in a band. Some of the biggest ears in the world belong to jazz musicians! Sure…it’s not as bragable as being able to shred semi-quaver licks at 600bpm but damn…other musicians are going to love to play with you (oo-er missus behave!)

How can you improve your cloth ears I hear you say? Well there are plenty of free ear training sites out there like this one or you could go upmarket and get a copy of Earmaster Pro. These will basically drill you hard (don’t go there) – sure it’s a  bit dry but the medicine is good – 5-10 mins a day will give you an edge.

Of course the gold standard for ear development is learning by ear (and if you’re particularly hard, writing it down – aka transcription). But you can start easy…just figure out simple tunes, riffs and solos by ear. If you don’t know how…well I’ll get to that in a later article.

Thirdly, learn some theory.

Ok…I’m sorry to have to tell you this but it’s for your own good. You’re going to do a lot better if you learn a bit of theory. Yeah yeah…I know some of the greats didn’t know a hyperlocrian b6#7bb9 scale from a german sausage but you know what? They had ears for years…so they undersood how music works on an intuitive level. Average guys like you and me need all the advantages we can get. And theory is one of them. What’s it about? Two things : two things – reading and writing music (developed before we had recordings) and a set of rules for composers and improvisers (who are also a type of composer) on how to avoid sucking. Put it like this – if you used trial and error alone, there is a high probability that you will suck hard. Learning Music theory reduces that probability.

HOWEVER…don’t full into the trap of thinking that just because you memorised the rule book you’re going to rule the world. What you have to remember is these rules are empirical. E.g they are the result of hundreds of years trial and error to determine what does and doesn’t suck. And further more many of them are specific to a particular style – if you want to sound like classical music, obey the rules of classical music; if you want to sound like a metaller, obey the rules of metal. If you want create a new style, play around with the rules until you come up with something you like. In all cases though, theory is a great reference point.

There are scores of theory resources out there (musical pun)…you could try the following Musictheory.not

Well folks…looks like I’m running out of time and space but I hope I’ve given you some brain food. Above all aim to work and play smarter as well as harder. Till next time, keep it plectral…

Your hard plucking amigo

Hey folks…I’m back again and I’m here to tell you about all the wonderful things you can do with a guitar! Seriously…aside from music you can employ it for a variety of manual tasks such as improvising a hammer, a cricket bat or even going as far as Antonio Banderas’ character in “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” and concealing a grenade launcher in it…

Ok..so seriously though – that’s not quite what I’m getting at. A lot of people feel there’s one way that they’re meant to play guitar – like the classical guitarist playing intricate bach arrangements or a metaller shredding out atonal solos at ear splitting volume. But in both cases they’re playing the fundamentally the same 6 string instrument. True, one is a nylon string acoustic classical guitar and the other is a pointy headstock electric shred-machine, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t transferable skills. Transferable skills means be able to enjoy a wider range of music for a casual player and being able to play a wider range of gigs for a pro. If you play a narrowly defined style, be aware that you don’t have to paint yourself into a box. For instance..

Our  refined Classical Guitarist could also turn his hand to styles like Bossa Nova,  Flamenco, Tango,  or even Pop (check out Edgar Cruz’s brilliant Queen arrangements if you don’t believe me.

And our erstwhile demented  shredtastic metaller may find he has a knack for Rock, Blues or Country (all these styles can contain heavy lashing of lead guitar)

And if you primarily play a steel string acoustic, you still have a range that includes folk, delta blues, bluegrass, ragtime, pop and rock.

And these are just styles that you can explore on your primary instrument (Classical Guitar, Electric Guitar or Steel String Acoustic).

Of course, you’re gonna need to make some adaptions. Sanity dictates that you won’t be able to use the same squealing lead to that you use for metal in a country number. The country lead guitarist uses a different way to stand out – a bright clean twangy tone with maybe a touch of reverb, compression and delay. But it doesn’t mean they don’t tear it up!

If you’re a classical guitarist moving into boss nova, you’re going to encounter some unfamiliar jazz chords that might throw you. Or if you start exploring flamenco, you might find the extremely rhythmic nature of the music challenging.

If your primarily a steel string pick player of pop and and rock and you decide to explore ragtime, you’re going to encounter the need to use some kind of finger style, either naked fingers, pick and fingers, thumbpick and fingers or thumbpick and fingerpicks – professional players use all these combinations so it’s a matter of seeing what works well for you)

So don’t paint yourself into a box..if you find that you’re lacking enthusiasm for your normal style, you can inject a whole new lease of life into your playing by embracing a new style. Sure, we might like to define yourself by the style we play (much like teenagers might define themselves by their favourite band) but the truth is there’s only 2 kinds of music…good music and bad music!

Till next time…

Your pleasant plucking phriend

Nat

So you’ve finally decided to take learning the guitar seriously? Good for you! You love the music, you’re enthusiastic and you’re raring to go… Or maybe you find yourself longing to play well but daunted amount of information about how to play….we are living after all in the information age!

Fortunately for the daunted, we can easily reduce this mass of information down in to manageable chunks and make sure we concentrate on each of them in turn.

Obviously the specific requirements of an acoustic steel string folky and hardcore metaller are going to be somewhat different…but beneath their superficial differences all guitarists have more in common than they think…

So here’s what I recommend to become a well rounded guitarist:

1. Develop Fretboard Knowledge

Finding your way around the guitar is like trying to navigate a maze…blindfolded! Unlike our blithely plinking brethren on the piano or the hard blowing sax players, our instrument is not a linear arrangement notes…it is a complex six string matrix (and that is as confusing as it sounds). Here’s what you can do about it:

1. learn the notes of on the fretboard
2. practice scales and arpeggios and patterns (it’s very very good for you!)
3. learning the CAGED system of fretboard navigation (a god-send)

2. Practice Sight-reading

Unless you can play purely by ear you’re going to want to learn some music from one of the following formats:

1. Chord charts
2. Tablature (tabs)
3. And even…(sinister organ noises)…standard notation!!

Don’t worry though – with a bit of time it’s a skill that you can definitely acquire. Half the battle is obtaining the most accurate and clearest written music you can.

3. Playing by Ear

Ok..ok…I know I just told you should be working on reading music instead of “just” playing by ear…in reality though, a good ear makes a musician, so….

1. figure simple tunes (silly melodies like nursery rhymes can be really helpful)
2. figure out licks, riffs and chord sequences by ear – cherry pick your favourites
3. practice playing along with recordings and backing tracks

4. Learning Songs

This is the classic achillies heel of the guitarist! As a breed we tend to be excellent at playing small parts of songs but never knowing the whole thing! Never mind though…with so many excellent tabs and play-alongs we’ve got no excuse not to sit down and tackle our favourite pieces from start to finish.

PS Do your best to memorise the tunes! A strong memory is essential for any kind of performing where you don’t have the luxury of reading from a sheet…

5. Inventing new ideas

Here’s a fun one for you. After all that time an effort learning and analysing other peoples’ material, it time for you to start screwing around with it and trying to reshape it in your own image….so give yourself permission to just mess around with ideas you find interesting and see what you come up with

It’s up to you how frequently you practice each area; you could try and do a little of everything all on one day, or maybe a couple of areas each session. Experiment and see what suits you best.

And just for fun, a few things you can do between practicing…

• Perform music in front of people
• Listen to a wide variety of music
• Study music theory
• Learn about music history

Howdy Again…this is starting to become habit forming…This week on the KNSounds – installment one of my multi-part mini-epic on Jazz-a-matizing your playing.

Now…I know what you’re thinking: “Jazz is well hard!” (and if you’re not thinking that you’re wrong!). But that doesn’t mean you can’t add a meaningful pinch of Jazz to spice up the vanilla flavours of your everyday styles. That’s my mission, so check it out…

Here’s the guitar pro tab Adding a Splash of Jazz

You can download TuxGuitar to play the tabs if you don’t have Guitar Pro.

Part 1a

Part 1b

sayonara

and remember kids…don’t try this at home!

Hey folks…staying again in the 50s vein, I have your next rhythm installment!

In this episode we’re going to learn a classic R-Guitar technique – what I have dubed the (palm) muted Arpeggio Strum! Despite the awkward name, this little baby is great for those 1950s ballad situations where our teenage hero is declaring his undying love to the would be object of his affect. Have a listen and you should get the picture…

Here’s the guitar pro tab:

50s Rhythm – Muted Arpeggio Strums

You can download TuxGuitar for free if you don’t have Guitar Pro to play the tabs

Have fun!

and continue to maintain an upright and locked position!