I'll be there. Will you?

A blessing quite unforeseen: the best guitar forum on the web offering free lessons for amateurs like myself. Color me thrilled. Click on the graphic to color yourself. Maybe when I have lessons to work on I'll take it easy on the metaphors.

Tweaker 40 Demo Video

Are you good?

What is a good guitarist?

That's the wrong question. Let's try again:

What is a good musician?

Disagree if you wish, but it isn't the mastery of specific techniques that makes a guitarist a good guitarist. Those things are an important part of it, but they aren't the final picture. There are lots of guys (more every year, it seems) who can play circles around a hummingbird. There are lots of guys who have great touch and can play very expressively (less than the hummingbirds, but still not in short supply if you know where to look).

Maybe it's because so many people play this thing, and the ratio of good-to-bad is skewed. Maybe it's because the proliferation of small combos has put the guitar in front, regardless of whether or not it should be. Regardless, I just haven't heard that many who give me a whole package worth emulating outside of my bedroom jam sessions.

Play less, say more
The most common deficiency I see in guitarists, including myself, is that we play way too much. I'm not talking about practicing or getting experience. I mean that, within the context of a single song, we play entirely too much. But what do I mean by "too much"?

1. I'm your density. Just because the thing has six strings doesn't mean you have to play them all at once. We guitarists have this bad habit of looking for chord voicings that use as many strings as possible. Unless you're playing by yourself, this is seldom necessary. Just you, bass and drums? Try some three or four-voice chords. A piano or synth, too? Try one or two notes at a time. If that concept sounds ridiculous to you, you probably aren't doing much listening when you're playing. Either your extra notes are getting lost in the mix, or they're having a negative effect on the sound. Don't waste effort, and don't hurt the sound. Trust me.
2. Tip-toe through the tulips . . . err, the changes. A rhythm chart that doesn't tell you to drop out is not a license to be right there, all the time, up in everybody's face. Your hands don't have to be moving every eighth, or even every quarter note. Again, unless you're playing by yourself, it isn't your job to fill the entire song with sound. It *is* your job to contribute a part to an entire unit of sound. Don't step on the other parts. Don't hurt the sound. Please!
3. Arpeggio! Gesundheit! It may look cool and powerful to strum, strum, strum like you're the Beatles fixing to take over America, but it is rarely a good song-long strategy. Don't be so eager to fill up the sound (see #2). Chords are often the right choice, but try spreading the notes out and playing arpeggiations instead. Two sequential notes of a G chord when the melody rests? Yes, please!

Obviously, your musical situation may dictate different things, and if you *are* playing by yourself, there's nothing wrong with that. This is mainly aimed at most of us, we who bring our bedroom approach to the rehearsal room or the performance without considering how to interact with, rather than play over top of, the other instruments.

Work with what (time) you have

If you play the electric guitar, chances are, the thing you think about the most is gear. If there's something you want that you don't have, chances are, it's something that can be bought with money.

If you're a little different (and I hope you are), the thing you want that you don't have is a particular level of skill. We guitarists are really good for blaming our sound problems on gear, while all the while ignoring deficiencies in our abilities. Playing sloppily through high-end gear is a bit silly, really, and there's a greater shortage of skilled players (more on what that means later) than sweet gear in the world.

Ok, so let's assume/hope/demand that you're on board with me so far. The clearest application of my view is practice. If you want to improve, you've got to practice. And to practice well, you have to answer three questions: what is practice, when do I do it, and how do I get the most out of my time?

What is practice?


It might help if I start out by saying a few things that practice is not:

1. Practice is not jamming
2. Practice is not fiddling with your amp or other equipment
3. Practice is not writing songs
4. Practice is not noodling while you watch TV

That's a short list, but I think it covers the big things that people do while telling themselves that they're practicing. They aren't bad things, necessarily, and can all be enjoyable, and even a little bit helpful to an extent, but they are not forms of practice.

This is going to be unpalatable to a lot of folks, but practice is work. Playing is a joy, a great form of self-expression, a way of saying things we can't say in other languages--but practice is work. Practice is putting in the effort to enable you to take joy in playing out, to hone your ability to express yourself in as limitless a way as possible, to say things with greater clarity. Practice is work.

You can noodle around for an hour every day, and you might see some improvement, but it's not a good way to generate sustainable progress. If you want to get better, you have to be willing to dedicate time to working on specific things that need improvement. You have to be willing to invest in your abilities without the guarantee of an immediate return. You have to have patience and accept that you might not see the real results for quite some time.

None of this is to say that practice can't be fun or enjoyable. On the contrary, finding methods that do the work in a musical way is one of the best ways to encourage yourself to practice. It's just important to remember that it won't always be fun, sometimes it most definitely won't be fun, but that working through the rough patches and staying disciplined and dedicated is what will get you to the next level. When practicing your guitar isn't fun, you have two choices: stop, or continue. If you elect to stop, there's a good chance it won't be fun next time, either. Eventually, you'll wonder why you play, and when you stagnate in the same level of ability for years, quitting altogether will seem like a pretty good plan. Trust me, I know--I've been there.

If you elect to continue, however--if you hold fast to the idea that perseverance will produce results--you will improve. It might not be as quickly as you had hoped, and it might not be as detectable as you expect, but you will improve.

So, practice is work. It's good work, and produces good fruit, but it is most definitely work.

When do I do it?

This is the hardest part for the semiprofessional (or complete amateur). When is a good time to practice? How long should you do it? How long do you have to do it if you want results? I have two recommendations:

1. Practice for at least one hour each day. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I feel like I can just barely get warmed up in a half hour. I try to practice at least an hour each day. I'm not saying you can't get results with less, but if you really want to have steady progress, I think this is a good baseline. It might mean you get up extra early, or pick a set time after the kids are in bed, but trust me--it's worth it.
2. Pick a set time and stick to it. I have two practice times (though I have of late faltered in the second one): 9AM and 8PM. At 9 each morning, I take a short break from work and practice classical methods for one half hour. At 8 each evening (after the kids are in bed), I practice electric guitar/jazz/sight reading for one hour. It is a big, big help having an appointed time for these things. If you don't, it's just too easy to shove practicing to the margins because it isn't an official part of your schedule.

How do I get the most out of my time?

This is perhaps the most important part of practicing well. If you accept that practice is work, set yourself an appointed time and duration, but you fail to clearly define what you will work on at that appointed time, for that appointed duration, then you will fail to practice well. And so as with everything else, it helps to be deliberate. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Divide, conquer. Two hours of practice poorly planned are of lesser worth than thirty minutes spent purposefully. If you don't set up specific tasks with specific times, you'll end up practicing that repetitive lick from the Freebird solo for two hours straight. And the really bad news is that you still won't be able to play it, and on top of that, all of the other gaps in your playing will still be just as wide. I try to prepare a practice guide for each of my students each week, telling them how to get the most out of a half hour of practice each day. Play this for five minutes. Play that for ten minutes. Play this for fifteen minutes. Every practice session works different skill sets. Every practice session bears fruit in at least one of those skill sets. The whole guitarist is improved gradually over time.
2. Don't rob the clock. If you've committed to an hour of practice, you should actually practice for one whole hour. That means hands should be playing the guitar for one whole hour. If you've taken the advice in number one above, try this: set a timer for each task, kick it off, then practice the task. This does mean that your hour of practice time will actually take something more like an hour and fifteen minutes, but keep that in mind when setting your practice time.
3. Don't play the whole song to practice one measure. It's great to work on a few songs at a time, so that your practice isn't one long string of technical exercises. It helps to make some real music when you practice. But practicing songs efficiently is something most folks never do. Most of us sit down, attempt to play through the whole song, screw up in measure twelve, and then start over again. We play through the song two or three times, and then we finish that task frustrated, feeling like we'll never get it. I suggest we take some advice from Steve Morse: don't keep practicing the whole song--just practice measure twelve. If you can play most of a song flawlessly, it does you no great benefit to prove that three times in ten minutes. Instead, isolate the problem passage, and practice it over and over again. You're much better off practicing the problem passage thirty times in ten minutes. In a few days, or a few weeks, you'll be able to play the whole song flawlessly. And when you finish each practice session, you might even be able to see that you've improved on that problem passage with just ten minutes of work.

Well, that's it for this time. Remember--practice is work, but it's good work. Do it well, and you will find more joy, expressiveness, and clarity in your playing. If you've spent more dollars on gear than you've spent hours on practice, you're doing it wrong. Put away your wallet, pick up your guitar, and get cracking!

For my beginning guitar players (you know who you are)

Work with what (gear) you have

We're a single-income family by choice. We've always been happy with that choice, but it does make it a bit difficult to come by money for equipment.

So what's an active amateur guitarist to do? I play (at least) three times a week, so this is more than just a hobby. I need gear that is playable, reliable, and produces a good tone. If my tone is bad, or I can't keep my instrument in tune, or my amp melts in the middle of a song, I drop out of the mix at best, or create a pretty bad distraction at worst. Trust me--nobody in my church wants to hear fizzy microtones.

As I have thought about this over the past few years, I have arrived at a pretty simple solution:

Work with what you have

Accept that you are in a situation, and that unless you forsake your responsibilities (a wife and children in my case--your specifics may vary), you aren't going to be able to do a whole lot to change that situation. Accept that you won't be able to plink down ten grand on a few new Andersons, and it will be less surprising when it doesn't happen.

Have you accepted it? Good. Now, how do you curate your presence in the mix if you can't invest money (at least at the moment) in your sound? Here are my suggestions--please add anything you think is helpful in the comments.

1. Grade your tone in the mix: Your rig sounds completely different when you're playing by yourself than when you're playing with the band. And, in general, it sounds a lot better with the band than it does without. The blend of sound can help hide some of the things you find less desirable about your tone, both from you and the folks who will be listening to it. This was true for me with my Spider IV combo--it wasn't made perfect, but it was such that I could still enjoy hearing it and have confidence that it sounded good in the house, too.
2. Tweak your settings: Most guitarists I've met (including myself until recently) will lazily settle for the conclusion that they don't have decent gear and that the only possible remedy is to replace it with something that costs at least twice as much. Get in the habit of searching for tones in your low-end gear, and if you ever get your hands on high-end gear, you'll already be primed to get the most out of it. This also gives you a much better sense of what you actually want in your sound, because you're investing time in trying different things to see what works. Don't expect it to sound perfect when you first plug in--turn the knobs and listen!
3. Do your own maintenance: You don't have to pay someone to change your strings, tweak your truss rod, adjust your intonation, or clean up your instrument. A properly set-up guitar will have more stable tuning, produce a better tone, and be easier to play. You can have this properly set-up guitar with a little know how and a few tools (some of which may have already come with your guitar).
4. Don't be a collector: Guitars have sentimental value--I won't deny that. But don't hold onto a guitar, amp, or pedal that you never play while a critical part of your rig suffers. Don't be the guy with three $1000 Carvins and a Princeton Chorus (trust me, I've been that guy, and it isn't pretty). If you have something that you aren't using, or even something that you occasionally use but is reasonable to part with, then part with it.
5. Settle for less than perfect: I would love a Matchless and an Anderson Short T. But the chances of me getting either of those (let alone both), even on the used market, are slim to none. I just will not have the money. And so while many of you will rage against the idea of settling for anything when it comes to tone, I would encourage you to learn to do so. There are $500-$1000 amps and guitars out there today that will serve you well, and they're much more realistic for your strapped budget than that "super gear" that will probably end up letting you down once you finally have it.

Well, that's all I have for now. The most important thing is to be realistic, and make the best of what's real and feasible. Remember, that C-30 probably won't fit in a shopping cart, so before you sell your house, work with what you have.

Here I go (again) . . .

It's been a while since I tried my hand at blogging. I've started several times in the past, and always because I felt like I ought to be doing it. This time is (I hope) different, in that I actually have something I want to write about.

I'm an amateur guitarist. But I'm a busy amateur guitarist. I play at church 2-3 times per week, I teach (sometimes for money!), and I practice on a regular basis. It isn't my job, but it is one of my callings.

I thought it would be fun (and hopefully helpful) to write a little bit about what I do, what I think about it, the tools of the not-quite-trade, and any other related thing.

And so there you have it. Until next time, I remain

Yours,
Brian Warshaw