Category : guitar

Getting off the plateau

Remember the plateau? That place where you feel like you’re ust kind of staying where you are, playing stuff that doesn’t feel much different than what you’ve already been playing forever.

Try looking at scales. 

I know. Gross, right? For good reasons, many people don’t like to practice scales. But it depends on how you use them. You may not be interested in improving your ability to move your fingers around the fretboard, but there are other uses for scales.

Making chords

Every note in a chord comes from a scale. Many of us don’t often think in this way since scales are about single notes, and chords are about multiple notes. 

Here’s the C major scale:

C D E F G A B

Here’s a Cmaj chord: 

C E G

If you know where all the Cs, Es, and Gs are on the guitar, you can start making C chords that aren’t the one in open position that we all learn in our first week of playing the guitar. Or the barre chords we learn not too long after.

If you don’t know where all the Cs, Es, and Gs are, you’re stuck with what you’ve got. 

So I think you know what to do. That’s right. Memorize where all the Cs, Es, and Gs are. It won’t really take all that long, and once you know those ones, the rest are easier.

Make different triads

Triads = three-note chords. Just start throw any three notes from the scale together. What does CDG sound like? CFG? ABD? Find those notes on the guitar, play them like a you would any chord, and suddenly your ears/mind have all sorts of new ideas.

Beyond triads

But why stop there? Add one of the other notes in the scale to that C triad. After C E G, we have D F A B. So…

• C D E G
• C E F G
• C E G A
• C E G B

In the short term, this can all seem tedious.In the long term (and I’m only talking months; weeks if you’ve got time and you’re efficient), it’s so worth it. Creativity soars. Suddenly, you’re creating chords and progressions you never knew existed.

What do you do when you pick up the guitar?

A fundamental question to ask is, “What do I normally do when I pick up the guitar?” Make a list. It might look like this:

1. Strum a favorite chord progression
2. Noodle around with the pentatonic scale
3. Start learning a new song/solo

Doesn’t matter what it is. Just write it down. Now ask yourself, “Which of the things on the list really get my brain working?”

From the list above, number 3 is the most obvious. 

Number 1 is you doing something you already know how to do.

Number 2 has some potential, but only if you’re thinking about what you’re doing. Noodling implies that you’re zoning out, and just letting your fingers move around. Some people do this in front of the tv.

To create new neural pathways, you need to consciously make your fingers do something they don’t normally do.

So number 2 needs a sub-list of things you normally do when you play scales. This could be any number of things, but just for argument’s sake:

1. Alternate index and ring fingers on a single string
2. Bend notes on the first string using my ring finger
3. Hammer-on, pull-off from index to ring finger

Now, for the sake of this exercise, don’t do any of that. 

But what do you do? 

Using the list above, try varying those things. 

Instead of alternating index and ring finger on a single string, try doing that while moving between different strings. 

Bend notes on the first string with other fingers. Bend notes on all of the strings using whatever finger you want.

Hammer-on, pull off using every finger combination.

Can you think of any other variations?

I’m not giving you examples using notation because the idea here is to get you to work these things out on your own. To create new neural pathways.

I’ll talk some more about how to look at scales in my next post.

Just open the case

You’d think it wouldn’t be that simple. But as soon as the case is open, you’re looking at the guitar. And as soon as you’re looking at the the guitar, it’s difficult to not pick it up. Once you do, it’s difficult to not start playing it.

And now you have to make a decision.

What’s your intention for picking up the guitar. Fun? Improvement? Those two things don’t always go together.

If it’s for fun, you usually play stuff you already know. If it’s to get better, you generally need to work on new stuff, listen to new stuff, work on new ideas. 

That can feel like work. One of my college students once told me that I had taken something he loved, and turned it into homework. 

The plateau

Not looking at new things can lead to complaints of reaching a plateau, of not progressing, either technically or creatively. You just stay where you are, playing and making stuff that doesn’t feel much different than what you’ve already been playing and making for a long time.

So, how do you get to the point where you feel like you’re progressing?

It’s pretty simple. Stop playing stuff you already know, and seek out stuff you don’t. 

Deliberate practice 

Which leads to the idea of deliberate practice, something many people aren’t willing to do. Here’s what I mean when I say “deliberate practice.” This is from Ethan Mollick’s book on AI.

“Imagine two students: Sophie and Naomi. Sophie spends her afternoons playing the same pieces she’s comfortable with over and over again. She might do this for hours on end, believing that sheer repetition will improve her skills. She feels a sense of accomplishment as she gets better and better at this work. Naomi, on the other hand, conducts her practice sessions under the guidance of a seasoned piano instructor. She begins by playing scales and then moves on to progressively more challenging pieces. When she makes mistakes, her instructor points them out, not to chastise her but to help her understand and rectify them. Naomi also regularly sets goals for herself, like mastering a particularly tricky section of a piece or improving her speed and agility on certain passages. The process is much less fun than Sophie’s experience, because Naomi’s challenges escalate with her skill, making sure she is always facing some degree of difficulty. Yet over time, even if both students clock in the same number of practice hours, Naomi will surpass Sophie in skill, precision, and technique. This difference in approach and outcome illustrates the gap between mere repetition and deliberate practice. The latter, with its elements of challenge, feedback, and incremental progression, is the true path to mastery.”

In other words, practice stuff you’re not already good at. No, it’s not always fun, but experiencing yourself getting better is worth it. 

Listen to stuff you don’t like, and ask yourself, “What makes this good?” Does it feel like you’re threatening your identity as a hardcore metalhead, a pure-hearted folkie, a whatever? Don’t worry. Nobody’s watching. And you might learn something about your own tastes.

As you get better technically, as you accept other approaches, your creativity will soar. You will be able to do things you couldn’t do before. You will get ideas you never knew existed. That’s exciting. That’s worth the exploration.

It’s really about getting your brain moving down different pathways, to stop thinking the way you normally think.

Consider all that for a bit, and then check out the next post.

Guitar preparations and digital effects

Here’s one of the preparations that I use to get unconventional sounds from the guitar.

 

Guitar preparation allows me to create sound that doesn’t suggest the sound of the guitar. Eliminating the associations that the guitar brings to mind allows listeners to experience the sound itself.

The plastic stencil muffles the sound to a certain extent when the strings are activated; the knife produces a sustained ringing sound when struck with wood or metal; the stone cube with the metal stems muffles the sound, but in a different way than the stencil. It can also be used to scrape the strings.

 

Digital processing 

The great thing about digital effects software (I’m using Guitar Rig 5) is that you can experiment with effects by “piling on.” This means using multiple iterations of the same effect just to see what happens.

Here’s one of my favourites.

 

Resochord is a pitch modifier and harmonizer. It uses single pitches or chords and can pitch shift them and sustain them. Stacking a number of them like this creates a preset with a ton of harmonic possibilities. I’ve added a pitch pedal for more control, and a fuzz pedal when I want a grittier sound.

 

Preparation and effects

With the recipe of preparations and effects preset that I’ve outlined here, I’m able to produce the following sounds:

 

• Scraping the strings with stone

This reminds me of an animal sound (a roar of some kind?) slowed down. It’s difficult to hear it as a guitar sound.

 

• Knife strike (weaving a knife between the strings and striking it with metal)

A bell-like sound with something that sounds like a distorted organ.

 

• Flicking stencil (weaving a plastic stencil between the strings, pulling it upwards and letting it go)

Similiar to the knife strike, but with a different attack sound.

 

Playing straight (no preparations)

In this example, you can clearly hear the guitar.

 

These are examples of what can be done with one preset and guitar preparations. Preset creation is not limitless, but it’s extremely extensive. Mixed with the huge variety of guitar preparations, the guitar becomes an instrument capable of tremendous sonic possibility.

 

Songwriting…

And it can be used this way for songwriting. More on that in the next post…

 

Guitar machine

I described a connection in my last post between myself and the guitar. This connection doesn’t by itself differ from connection between humans and other musical instruments. All instruments are pieces of technology that communicate thoughts and feelings originating in their players’ bodies.

But the electric guitar is the first musical instrument designed specifically to create sound by connecting to electronic technology outside of itself. Orchestral instruments are able use electronic technology, but doing so isn’t their normal way of operating.

For the electric guitarist, electronic technology (on-board electronics, amplifiers) is integral to its origin story, and that story has evolved over decades to include effects pedals and digitization.

The electric guitar doesn’t exist without this technology, a technology that represents a basic otherness, a machine-ness outside of human experience.

 

Blurred boundaries

The electric guitar blurs the boundaries between human and nonhuman, and expands the concept of what it can mean to be human. This can be said about any instrument, but the electric guitar foregrounds this idea in its extreme and varied use of technology.

And this extreme is normal for the guitar. Not so for orchestral instruments.

Given this normality of extremes, the electric guitar is more obviously a machine than other instruments. It becomes the standard-bearer for human-machine collaboration in a musical context.

With the guitar, a machineness outside of human experience changes to become a natural part of what it means to be human. This given the the fact that it is the machine that allows us to demonstrate our humanness by allowing us the possibility of emotional and intellectual expression.

 

Guitar-machine

If we connect to a machine (the guitar) in the way I describe here, then it makes sense that we change how we think about ourselves.

Essentially, when we play the guitar, we become part machine. We forget ourselves. Sometimes we forget the guitar. Our experience is reduced to sound, and that sound is what’s left in the fusion of human and machine.

Which is kind of cool. And kind of scary. And kind of what musicians have always done.

 

Posthumanism and the guitar

Is the electric guitar posthuman? Is that a weird question?

Ten years ago it might have been. Now I’m not so sure…

 

Posthuman, transhuman

Bear with me here. I have to lay a little groundwork.

Unlike transhumanism – the desire to augment humans physically and intellectually – the posthuman (related to posthumanism) is a human that has gone beyond humanism. And humanism approaches the world by emphasizing human interests over the interests of non-humans.

The problem with this is that it doesn’t recognize a connection between human and non-human. We’re up here, they’re down there. And if we think that way, we close down different ways of thinking that might lead to useful insights.

After all, we learn to know ourselves through daily interactions not just with other people, but with animals and with things. Things like the guitar. By trying to get better at it, we test our limits and learn about ourselves.

 

Talking to the guitar

A posthumanist attitude places humans and machines in a relationship that recognizes connection. So how does this connection change how you approach that machine we call the electric guitar?

Think of it this way:

 

Question: How do you connect to (or communicate with) the guitar?

Answer: With your thoughts and feelings communicated through your fingers.

 

How does the guitar connect/communicate with you? Through the sound it makes; this sound is its feedback that you use to learn about yourself.

That feedback could be…

 

1. That sounds great.
2. That doesn’t sound great. Which leads to…
3. You need to work on whatever doesn’t sound great.

 

The guitar is almost like a mentor, taking input from you and giving information that enables you to get better.

Try it. Play something, and see what thoughts arise in your mind. Think of those thoughts as the guitar communicating with you.

Am I insane? Deluded? No, I’m a guitar player totally engaged with the instrument.

There are reasons I do things like this.

 

Openness

When I think of playing the guitar as creating a connection, I feel a sense of openness and possibility. The guitar is no longer just a thing; it actually feels like an extension of me, integrating information it receives from my body, coordinating it and organizing it into a stream of non-verbal communication.

Because of this, I feel more connected to the sound I’m making. And because of that, the expression of that sound feels deeper, more meaningful. When I pick up the guitar, it becomes a collaborative venture instead of a human manipulating a tool.

This change in perspective has changed the quality of my time with the guitar. It feels more positive, and the things that I make feel more like what I want to make, instead of what I think other people want me to make.

I find a bit more of myself every time.