Guitar Practice Routine: Etudes over Exercises over Licks

I don’t know about you, but my ultimate goal as a guitarist can be summed up in one sentence: to be able to play anything I hear in my head.

Now, in order for that to happen, these elements need to be in place:

  1. You have something in mind to play.  This may seem obvious, but I’ve been in situations where I don’t know what to play.  Discerning the musical context and envisioning (enhearing??) your part in your mind is a skill in itself.
  2. You understand what you have in mind.  This may also seem obvious, but not always true — can you play every melody you can hum, instantly?  Hearing it and knowing how to play it, are two different things.  Again, this is a skill in itself.
  3. You possess the capacity to play what you have in mind.  Finally, here’s the easiest part to practice.  The physical skill of pulling off techniques involved in executing the part you hear in your mind.

So, there are three parts to this act of playing the guitar (or any instruments), and the question is, what guitar practice routine is the most effective in developing all three aspects involved?

3 Types of Practice Methods

To consider this, I’d like to categorize common practice methods into three subsets: exercises, licks and etudes.

  1. Exercises, I define as routines designed solely on making the hands develop the ability to execute the physical motions required to play.  These are mechanical in nature and have little musical value.  It’s like memorizing one word at a time.
  2. Licks are musical phrases, like a complete sentence.  It’s usually organized by the techniques they focus on, and a particular musical style they belong to, such as blues, country, jazz, and so on.
  3. Etudes are actual self-contained pieces of music.  They are designed to make the player focus on certain techniques, but they don’t always adhere to strict repetitions because they also have to make sense a piece of music.  It’s tough to come across etudes that are really interesting as a piece of music, but good ones (Chopin wrote etudes for piano that are concert-worthy) can have a lot of musical values.

The Impacts of Each Approach

Now, of the three, I find that etudes are the most effective in developing all three aspects of playing what’s in your head.  Here are the reasons why:

  • Etudes helps me understand the musical context. Chords and phrases are put together to make sense as a stand-alone piece of music, so I can see how a certain phrase fits/functions within the overall context of the music. This helps me develop the ability to hear what to play in a certain situation.
  • Etudes still make me focus on a particular technique, but it often has some variations built in, so it’s not just straight repetition.  I can learn how to apply a certain technique to make the music work instead of blindly repeating a lick.
  • Etudes have some musical values, which make me learn how to play it musically.  For example, if a certain phrases is repeated twice in a piece, it allows for a whole range of interpretations — play the first time loud, the second soft, and vice versa — so I can practice not just the technique, but how to be expressive.

After etudes, I also have grown to like exercises because they are efficient in making my hands gain ability to move a certain way, to pull off a particular technique.  The problem with exercises is that it’s dry and mechanical — it doesn’t help me visualize what to play or how to play it.  But even after the first two are down, having the physical ability to play is definitely fundamental to my success as a player.  Exercises can’t be all I do, but given that the other two aspects are primarily mental, if my guitar-practice time is limited I often focus on exercises.

Why I Don’t Practice Licks

Licks, I’ve grown to stay away from. And here are the reasons why:

  • They are often presented without musical context. Sure, some do let me see how it fits over a chord progression — but that’s not big enough picture to see how this lick can function within the overall piece.
  • Practicing licks is still repetitive enough so that both my hands and my mind tend to get stuck with it. So instead of hearing what’s in my head, I just pull out some licks because that’s what both my mind and hands have a habit of doing. And memorizing licks by itself doesn’t develop the skill to take a particular technique and apply it to serve a musical purpose.

I can see why there are lots of licks books out there, as they are not as dry as exercises and yet it’s just easy to repeat licks, thinking you’re learning to play in a certain style. But I find that when it comes to playing the said licks in a real, live musical situation, using a set of memorized, habitual-ized licks rarely get you very far. You have to have a huge catalog of them if you want to pull off a complete piece of music without repeating yourself.

It’s one thing if you down the entire “50 must-know licks for blues turnarounds” — there, the musical context is specific enough that you may still find your licks to be practical. But even then, blues turnarounds may seem all similar and rigidly unchanging, but in reality there are countless variations, big and small, that if you’re just pulling out a memorized lick you better know a lot of them and how each fits within a particular flavor of turnaround for it to be useful.  Tempo, groove, arrangements all affect what fits and what doesn’t fit, so forcing a memorized lick can often result feeling just that, forced.

Plus, most musical situations aren’t as clear-cut and obvious like blues turnarounds, and when practiced out of context, memorizing licks can’t help you figure out how to modify and apply them in a real-world situation.

Conclusion

The guitar world is filled with lessons and materials focusing on licks. It’s an easy place to focus on, both from a student’s and a teacher’s point of view. But I challenge everyone to go a step further and construct etudes — put a real, functioning piece of music, centered around a particular technique. Sure, it may not be a real interesting piece of music, though even the simplest etude has a lot more room for musical expression/interpretation than just a single lick. And when a certain technique stumps you, then use an exercise to make the hands learn that move.

This is one of the reasons why I appreciate Tomo Fujita’s material so much, because most everything he does is made up of etudes. They are fun to play and I don’t get tired of repeating them, because a real piece of music has an infinite room for interpretation and expression.

Guitar teachers and publishers, please do us a favor and publish more books of etudes — the world has enough licks and exercises books. And for students, try to see if you can write your own etudes, perhaps by focusing on a particular technique or even a lick. You’ll learn a lot about how to write and put together a piece of music, on top of learning how to pull off a technique and apply it in a musical context.  Build your guitar practice routines around it, and you’ll see a big impact on being able to play what you hear in your head.

by Ari Koinuma Posted on September 3, 2011
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Gear Review: Damage Control Timeline

Damage Control Timeline

 

In my last post I talked about how I was going about deciding which delay pedal to buy.  After securing some money, I went ahead and bought a Damage Control Timeline — found one decently priced on eBay — and have been testing it extensively the last few weeks.

The reason I went with a Timeline instead of others is because I felt that having a stand-alone feature to be able to store a few presets would be nice.  I don’t need dozens of spots or menus to navigate, just a handful.  So DC Timeline fits the bill.

Features

First of all, you probably already know that the pedal is huge.  It has its own power supply, too, so you can’t power it up with something like Voodoo Labs Pedal Power.  Another missing feature I only realized upon receiving it is an on/off switch.  The lights light up as soon as you plug the pedal in, even in bypass — and there’s no way to turn the pedal “off” without unplugging or using a switch on a power strip.  A minor niggle, but I usually leave my pedals plugged in all the time in my studio, and I don’t like the idea of anything drawing unnecessary current.

There are many knobs, but for general delay purposes, they are fairly intuitive.  I appreciate that it has 3 ways to set delay time — with the time knob, tap tempo and strum tempo (hold down tap tempo and strum/play something rhythmically).  It would have been even nicer if holding down the tap tempo muted the sound, but that can easily be done with a tuner pedal inline.  It has three lights (two lighting up the tubes and one “Magic Eye” — the tubes don’t glow on their own like they do in tube amps) and their colors and blinking can indicate different settings, but so far I find this overwhelming and distracting.  And when the pedal’s in bypass, they all go green — it would have been nice if something indicated the tempo even when in bypass.

Storing presets is fairly easy, but the mode selector doubles as bank selector (2 per spot, 8 total) so that means if you want to go select a different preset, you have to crouch down and manually twist the knob.  And here’s an important detail — in preset mode, the delay time gets recorded with the patch, and you can’t use the tap tempo then to set the delay time, because the tap tempo switch acts as the patch selector.  The bypass switch selects the patch A, while the tap tempo switch selects the patch B.  Stomping on each turns the pedal on with that preset, or bypasses the pedal.  Another detail, this time a nice one, is that delay persist mode (the delay trails remain even after the pedal’s put on bypass) does get stored along in presets.  Personally I’d have it on all the time, but if some patches called for persisting and others didn’t, that’s a nice detail.

There’s much more to this pedal — it has a simple looper that works as advertised, and it can act as a modulation pedal, too.  Multi-head (an ability to create rhythmic patterns) and reverse delays both are quite usable.  I haven’t been able to test ping pong, as I don’t have a stereo setup.

But, since they try to cram in a lot of features and tweakability into this pedal, I find that it has a rather steep learning curve.  Knobs do different things in different modes, so it’s definitely not a pedal for those folks who don’t want to sit down with a manual and learn a new instrument.

Sound

As far as delays go, this one sounds very nice.  I quickly dialed in the delay sound I heard in my head — clear but warm digital delay, with a hint of modulation to sweeten it up.  The filter knob goes from digital to analog to tape simulation seamlessly — much better than just straight tone knob, though the effect is not too drastic, it feels just right.  The tweakability means that you can tailor it to sound the way you want.  I’ve tested delays from TC Electronics (various models, including the new Flashback delay) and Electro-Harmonix (Deluxe Memory Man from 90s) and Timeline just sounds perfect to me, neither too hi-fi nor muddy, though it can approach both those extremes if that’s what you want.  It just sounds organic to me, or simply that it has the delay tone I had in my mind.  Other pedals I’ve tried/owned in the past include DigiTech DigiDelay, Korg 301 delay, MXR Carbon Copy, Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man, and Subdecay Echo Box.  Of all, this one definitely has my sound.

My Verdict

It’s not as complex as some of the mega delays of today, but Timeline does have a learning curve, plus it’s big and quirky.  It’s an overkill if you use delays as an ambiance mainly, but if you look to play a delay pedal as an instrument, this one offers both versatility and limitation/quirkiness that may inspire creativity — I can see myself really growing with the pedal and doing things with it that are hard to do with others.  It’s not as quirky as like some of Electro-Harmonix’s offerings, but Timeline definitely has its own personality as a machine.  It can sound like many things but you have to operate it in a way it wants to be operated.

I’m loving how it sounds, but I am actually still on the fence about this one.  After playing with it for a while, I realized that despite my intention to the contrary, I may be a delay-is-an-ambiance guy, as I am just not inspired to write music that takes advantage of some of its distinct features like Multi-Head and Reverse delays.  Even the modulation, I am still trying to figure out whether I’m going to use it at all — the only kind of modulation I like being a rotating-speaker effect — so so far I am just using it as a simple delay machine, without any presets.

Even then, the value of finding my sound is worth a lot, especially since I’ve been looking for it for years.   But I can’t help but wonder if I’m better off getting the other choice I was considering, Strymon El Capistan — as my favorite sound out of Timeline is a tape simulation (though a fairly clean one at that).  It’s cheaper, simpler and smaller, though I’m sure it’s tweakable enough to make it sound the way I want.  I think the decision I have to make is not so as much that of which pedal to buy and keep but about whether I’m looking for delay as an instrument or just an ambiance effect.  I may be the latter, because so far I haven’t felt inspired to play it as an instrument, despite this being a superb one at that.

In any case, I hope this review gives insights that other resources don’t, to those of you who are considering hunting down this discontinued pedal.  I’m going to keep it for now until I have some excess cash to try it side-by-side with the Strymon.  We’ll see which way the wind blows then.

by Ari Koinuma Posted on August 31, 2011
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How to Research & Choose a Piece of Gear: Ari’s Take on Features vs. Simplicity

I’ve been saving money to buy much needed gear for my rig, and while I have many of the pieces picked out, there are many others where I am still open as to what I’m going to get.  The researching and wondering about what to get is perhaps the funnest part of buying gear, because the possibility is wide open.  Today I’m going to run through how I think through these things by dirt and delay pedals as an example.

I used to think that the more feature-rich, the more versatile a piece of gear is, the better.  I’m turned on by the Swiss-Army-ness of gear, one piece that can meet many needs.  I used to own a Line 6 Flextone (remember those?) amp, and it was exactly that — a digital modeling amp that can sound like many different amps.

The problem I found, though, was that while I was happy with its versatility — I could call up sounds that were needed in most situations — I also spent a lot of time fiddling.  In fact, fiddling was addicting, and it distracted me from practicing.  That’s when I realized that more choices don’t always mean better.

The System Is the Instrument

When you are an electric guitarist, the first thing you must realize is that your instrument is, actually, not the only thing you play.  The electric guitar “system” — the whole signal chain from the guitar to the amp/speaker is the instrument you play. So, every piece in your system should be “playable” — meaning, you can learn to use it, you can wield the power it bestows on you to make music with it.  That means usability is just as important as the sounds it can create. Otherwise, how do you “play” something you have a hard time getting command of?  If it’s so complex that you cant coax a good sound out of it quickly enough, when it derails you in your creative process because you have to pause and figure out how to do something — then features, options and choices only get in your way, the more the worse.

Hitting the Right Balance

There’s something to be said about minimalist approach: won’t it be awesome, if you just stepped on a guitar pedal and it just gave you the tone of your dreams?  Some builders do build from this approach.  For example, if your compressor’s attack time is already set to the perfect amount, the one setting you need already, then you don’t want a knob for that.  The problem, of course, is that you may need more than one setting or the factory-default setting isn’t right for your needs.  Adjustability is there so that the player can set it to suit his/her needs. It should be intuitive, and the range of choices/adjustments should be enough to coax different sounds, but not so wide that at extreme range the sound becomes unusable.

The Classic 3-knob Dirt Pedals: Beautifully Simple

Perhaps because Tube Screamer originally only had 3 knobs, it’s kind of become the standard for dirt pedals to sport 3 knobs.  Volume, Gain, and Tone, which usually affects the treble.  These knobs usually don’t change the fundamental sonic signature of the pedal — so if you like the basic sound, then you can probably find a setting that works for you.  Set it and forget it, you get one sound out of a pedal.  (That’s all you can really get out of an analog dirt pedal for live use anyway.  Do you really bend down and fiddle at knobs between songs?)

Lovepedal Gold Dragon

My current go-to choice, LovePedal Gold Dragon, has a pre-gain bass roll-off knob instead of a traditional tone control.  More and more builders are realizing that adjusting that gives their pedals more range.   My opinion is that a 4-knob setup, with pre-gain bass roll-off and post-gain treble roll-off (cut) controls, gives a dirt pedal the most range-for-the-number-of-knobs.  Nowadays, dirt pedals with more options than that gives me a mixed feeling.  On one hand more range sounds exciting, but I can easily picture myself twiddling knobs and playing with switches for a long time.  When it comes to dirt pedals, I don’t want too many choices.  I just want to get my sound out of it, fast.

Delay: Taming the Beast

The high-priority item on my list is a delay pedal.  I can’t believe I lived without one for so long.  I used to have delay on all the time, as the Edge is one of my heros and turning it on gives me the comfort of wet sound that allows me to noodle more freely.  Then I got rid of it because I thought I was being over-reliant.  The last pedal I had was DigiTech DigiDelay, which was a very versatile and well-built pedal, but I was never that thrilled with that sound.  Oh actually, I did briefly own a Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man.  It made a beautiful, old-fashioned sound, but I realized that I needed a longer delay time, and also — I’m a digital delay guy.  The warm, fuzzy repeats of analog delay sounded good on paper, but actually trying to apply it to my music, I really missed the clarity of a digital delay.

Modulation on delay is all the rage now, but first and foremost, I need clear yet warm delay.  Tap tempo is nice but I also want a knob for delay time, too.  That’s the basics.   For a while I thought I also wanted a looper built-in, but I think I’m going to get a dedicated, simple looper pedal instead, as my primary need for a looper is for practicing (recording rhythm track to practice soloing over) and usually loopers built into delays don’t have much capacity.

But a good delay pedal, more than a dirt pedal, is like an instrument on its own — if I get a feature-rich one, I can see myself learning how to “play” the delay.  Delay can be a compositional tool, interacting with delay can yield a huge range of interesting guitar parts.  A lot can be done with just a basic delay, but having more choices in this case may mean more range of expression.  I’ve seen people do some great things with Line6 Delay Modeler.

So — should I go simple or versatile?  I don’t know yet, but I think I narrowed down my choices to just a couple:

Strymon El Capistan

Strymon El Capistan

I thought I wanted a digital delay, and it is, but it’s a tape delay simulator.  And well-done demos.  What a sound!  It’s highly tweakable but I imagine I’ll just figure out the setting I like and will never touch any knobs except time and mix.  This is my current “simple” option.  3dB boost is nice.

Damage Control Timeline

Damage Control Timeline

This one, I’ve been wanting for a  long time, and it seems to strike a good balance between range and simplicity.  No menus to scroll through and the stacked knobs make it seem less overwhelming, though that’s still a lot of knobs.  This pedal’s discontinued and replaced by their child brand Strymon’s version — which is a completely different pedal, with even more options.

Either way, I think I’ll end up being Strymon/Damage Control’s customer.  ;-)

Which Will Work for Me?

It’s still going to be 2-3 months before I’ll probably get a delay pedal, as there are other, higher priorities — but if you asked me to be honest today, I’m leaning toward the simplicity of El Capistan.  My primary needs for delay are just ambiance over solos and simple repeats to play off of.  Timeline is definitely getting into the “delay being an instrument on its own” territory.  I’m sure I’ll grow to love and use the Timeline, but it has many things I’m not sure I’ll use, too.

We’ll see how it goes.  When I get one, I’ll report here for sure.

Summary

To sum up, here are some insights I can pass on to fellow tone seekers:

  • As an electric guitarist, you should consider your whole system to be your instrument.
  • Playability is just as important as the sound.
  • Too many choices are more distracting than productive.
  • Consider your intended usage/application, and don’t acquire gear that has a much bigger range.  Having a little wider range, however, can possibly help you broaden your horizon.

Happy hunting!

by Ari Koinuma Posted on July 27, 2011
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Cheap Acoustic Guitars: What I’d look for in an Under-$300 Range

A friend just asked me for a suggestion about what to look for in a cheap acoustic guitar under $300 — a starter guitar for a beginner.  My first thought was “boy, it’s tough to get anything decent at that price point” but after doing some digging I did think of a few things to recommend.  So I thought I’d share.

Used Guitars Sound Better Than New

Generally speaking, of course, but to my ears new guitars alway sound so bland — it just doesn’t have any character to the tone.  I’ll leave detailed explanation of how wood has to mature and settle to experts, but I just think you’ll get a better value all around in a guitar by shopping used.  It’s tough, of course, when you don’t know anything about guitars and don’t know what to look for — but find someone who does and have him shop for a decent used instrument.

Seagull

Seagull Guitars

The Canadian-made Seagull guitars have been around for a few decades and have built a very solid reputation for making high-value, affordable instruments.  I have never owned them but have heard and played a few and so far my experience has been consistent with the word on the streets.

Taylor Big Baby

Taylor Big Baby

Once I had a friend, a good guitar player, tell me that he walked into a Guitar Center with cash in his hand and demanded that they bring out every Big Baby they have in stock, and he’ll buy the best one.  He played them all and picked one, and by golly I thought it sounded amazing. A new Big Baby is more costly than $300 but a used one can be had for that.

Old Japanese-Made Guitars

I may be biased ;-) but you can find some gems among guitars that are made in Japan.  Aria is one brand that come to mind, but there are others.  I’m not talking about Japanese brand names, real “Made in Japan” guitars, back from the days when Japan used to be what China, Malaysia and Philippines are today.  Another acquaintance of mine had picked up an old Aria classical guitar for $100 at a garage sale and he said it was the best $100 he ever spent.  I tried it and I agreed, it was a nice guitar.

Enjoy the Hunt!

I’m turned on by the idea of finding deals and great values, so once I got into the thought of finding the best bang-for-buck cheap acoustic guitar I had some fun thinking of ideas.  The fun part of shopping, to me, is always the initial research and fantasizing — because anything is possible then.  Enjoy the search, and if you come across other brands/tips to look for in a cheap guitar, please do share in the comments below.

(Photo credits: Seagull – Jason OX4 Taylor – Martin Cathrae )

by Ari Koinuma Posted on July 1, 2011
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Doing the Simple Things Well

Last weekend I accompanied my wife on an acoustic guitar while she thumbed through a few children’s songbook, singing to my tired-and-needed-to-wind-down children.  And this little family event reminded me of the importance of doing the simple things well.

Finding the Challenge in Simple Things

From a guitar player’s point of view, it can seem rather boring — songs after songs with simple I-IV-V chord progressions.  I’d sometimes try to get creative with how I play my part, but usually I stuck to the basics.  Maybe because I’m not so skilled, but attempts to add colorful notes, walking bass lines or little fill-ins came across to me as distracting.  When you’re the sole accompaniment to a singer, you just get out of the way. Don’t draw attention to yourself by trying to pull off something fancy.  Be rock solid on rhythm, stick to the basic and predictable chords, just be an invisible background.

Saying it that way makes the ordeal seem even more restrictive and uninteresting, but in order to serve the greater needs — providing what the song needs — a guitarist should learn to find worthy challenges in doing the simple things well.

Pros Demand Simplicity

Once I had a chance to sit and talk to an established record producer/engineer, and he told me of how many guitar players tend to overplay.  They are trying to be impressive or satisfy their own muse and not paying as much attention to what the song needs.  Another time, I was working as a translator to a Japanese pop duo Puffy AmiYumi’s managers and backing band.  They are not a household name in US but in Japan they were huge at one point, so these were some of the highest-paid rock musicians in the industry.  Knowing how hard Japanese people practice, I was expecting them all to be wiz on their instruments — but throughout the rehearsals and sound checks I witnessed, I never once saw any of them play some flashy, complicated parts.  The music was retro-tinged pop rock and they all just did basic things.  I came away from the experience thinking: I can do that.

But if this weekend was any indication, I really can’t do it.  First of all, my fingers quickly got raw because I don’t practice enough on acoustics, and you can’t produce good, well-defined tone with soft fingertips.  Secondly, my poor attempts to “spice up” my accompaniments always sounded distracting to my own ears.  And I missed some of the chord changes over and over, often because they were slight twists to what was expected.  Some folk songs employ simple chords yet the changes come at unexpected times.  My brain shouldn’t have checked out, thinking it was an easy song.

In his books and forum posts, Berklee College of Music professor Tomo Fujita emphasizes the need to keep things simple, and not make mistakes.  Slow down and contain your playing to the minimal notes required, and instead focus on playing them well — with good tone and timing and appropriate articulation.  You see, it’s one thing if you’re playing the guitar just to satisfy your personal fetish — but out in the real world, someone who can do many simple things perfectly is the most useful one.  Simple arpeggios, simple chords, simple rhythm, simple leads.  All executed without a fuss.

Improving on Simplicity

In my experience, the ability to do the simple things well is best cultivated where they are needed: real-world situations.  As I’ve said previously, I think an ideal practice should be split into exercising and performing, and it’s the latter that focuses on simple executions.

Strumming is one of my strengths and it was developed by night after night of accompanying camp fire songs in a Bible camp where I worked at during summers as a teenager.  An in-demand keyboard player I knew in Austin, Texas, told me of how he got his start in Nashville, being in a house band of a club six nights a week, having to play everything that was thrown at him.  Having to perform forces you to do simple things over and over, because that’s what is needed in 90% of situations.

If you are not in a place where you can perform regularly, the next best thing is to record regularly.  It’s because when you’re recording, you have to contain your mistakes to minimum — and if you thought you played well, a recording can quickly reveal otherwise.  Unstable rhythm, errant finger noises, unsustained notes — those kinds of mistakes aren’t very obvious when you’re just practicing, but in recordings they reveal themselves as obvious flaws.  It forces you to keep things simple so you can instead focus on playing each note perfectly.

Conclusion

Among guitarists, it’s easy to focus on flashy and technical playing.  It’s not inherently wrong, but in real-world situations, it’s infinitely more practical to focus on doing the simple things well.  When you realize this, you’ll start seeing that developing that ability still takes loads of practice, though perhaps in a different way than acquiring advanced technique.  If your goal is to make yourself a useful musician, I highly recommend that you acquire the skill of doing the simple things well.

 

 

by Ari Koinuma Posted on June 28, 2011
Posted in Ari's Manifesto, Practice, Technique | Tagged | Leave a comment

Technique Is Just One of the Three Important Skills. What Are the Other Two?

I was reading an interview of Joan Vilà, a famed soccer educator from Spain, one who had a hand in training many players at FC Barcelona, one of the best club teams in the world.  He had observed some Japanese youth players and said that while they were technically very advanced, they were lacking in the mental aspect of the game.  As I read his insights, I realized that this very much applies to a guitarist’s develoment.

He mentioned that there were three critical skills for a footballer:

  1. Perception
  2. Decision
  3. Execution

Now, everybody practices the #3.  Hard.  Some kids learn to do some amazing things with the ball.  Acquiring of technique is easy to understand and practice.

But the other two are equally important.  With perception, one has to understand the situation s/he is in, accurately.  Which is followed by picking out the best play in that circumstance, one most appropriate or impactful.  Of course, nothing good happens if one doesn’t possess the technique to execute the great move s/he just picked out.  But no great technique will serve a player or a team if not used in the right context.  Mr. Vilà’s point was that the mental aspects were equally important and they can be, and need to be, taught from young age.

So, how does this apply to a guitar player?

  1. Perception: understanding the situation/context.  From the obvious like the genre — are you playing jazz, country or metal — to the chord progression, applicable notes, what’s going on with other instruments, etc.
  2. Decision: figuring out what to play.  What’s the music missing?  What is the music trying to say?  Which notes, and how they are played, are appropriate and/or impactful?
  3. Execution

So, a player not only must possess the technique to execute — but s/he must be able to figure out what to play in that context.  And while this may seem more obviously applicable to genres that involve improvisation — it applies to any and all styles of music.  Even in classical, where all notes are often dictated for you, you still have to consider the #1 and #2 to make the most out of music.  Just playing the notes on the music is the beginning — you have to understand the context and decide what’s the best way to play those notes.

In my practicing, I myself spend most, if not all, of my time practicing technique.  But I am aware that in the context of performance, I must also improve my Perception and Decision, as I often don’t know what to play.  For example, I often play notes that don’t fit very well with the chords in the music.  I play them not because I understand what’s going on but just because that phrase has become a habit for my fingers, and/or for my brain.

So, how do you learn understanding the context and figuring out what to play?

If this was soccer, I’d start with a simple situation, something easy to understand, and then role play through them slowly.  A ball comes rolling down close to your own goal, and the opponent players are dashing in.  What do you do?  You kick the ball away from the goal.  The farther the better.

With rock guitar, slow 12-bar blues is perhaps the greatest starting point.  Here are the chords — the pattern’s rigid, you know what’s going on and what’s coming up next.  And the scale, too, is simple (at least you can start out with basic pentatonic).  Play it slowly and see if you can make a phrase that fits the music out of the notes available to you.

Make a recording, listen back and see where you fall short in terms of the three areas:

  1. Are you understanding the context correctly?
  2. Are you picking an appropriate phrase to play?
  3. Are you able to actually play what you chose to?

I can tell you that I fall short on all three.  ;-)  But acquiring more technique will not solve this problem — I have to practice playing in context.

Of the three areas, which one is most underdeveloped in your playing?  Analyzing that may lead to new ways to practice, and to improve your guitar playing.

by Ari Koinuma Posted on June 22, 2011
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Why Is Single-Coil Pickup Better for Developing Your Picking Dynamics?

Well, thank you for asking.  :-)  What follows is my own theory about why single-coil pickups have a greater dynamics range and thus forces you to develop better control over your dynamics.  I’m not an expert on electric engineering — so correct me if I’m wrong anywhere.

Traditional single-coil pickups have weaker outputs, probably weaker than most, if not all, type of magnetic pickups.  With most electric guitar amps, there is a threshold of distortion — when the input signal is stronger/louder than a certain level, the sound starts to distort.  And you know what happens when the signal reaches the distortion point: instead of getting louder, it distorts.  Which is a good thing when you’re playing rock music.  Not as good, if you want to develop a good picking dynamics.

When the input signal is weak by default, then there is a greater range between the weakest input level and the point of distortion:

 

Single-Coil Pickup Dynamic Range

With high-output pickups, like many of the modern humbuckers, the default output level is much hotter.  This results in a reduced range:

High-Output Pickup Dynamics Range

When you practice on high-output pickups all the time, it becomes harder to develop one of the most powerful tools in musical expression — dynamics.  The difference between soft and loud.  If you were playing classical music, this is not good at all, as classical music demands that you develop a good control over dynamics.  A master of instrument can produce good tone across the whole range — from the quietest to loudest, and is able to play at any loudness at any given point.

But popular music is a style where we kill dynamic range.  Recordings we hear are compressed — there really isn’t much difference in actual volume between the quietest and loudest part.  This is so that you can hear all parts clearly over background noise (like in a car or airplane) and the whole thing gives a “loud” impression, even when it isn’t actually.  This is neither good nor bad, I’m just stating the facts.

That said, if you want to become an expressive guitarist, dynamics is a range that you’d hate to ignore.  Practicing on high-output pickup makes it harder for you to develop good picking dynamics, whereby your technique is quite rough but when played through highly distorted amp/tone you just can’t hear that level of details. On a mildly overdriven tone, you can use picking dynamics to control the amount of dirt on each note, giving each note more expressive characters.

Simply put, if you want to develop this control over picking dynamics, single-coil pickups are better at forcing you to do so. Then, when you’re performing, you can turn on your dirt pedals and switch to higher-output pickups.  It feels easier to play, and little imperfections in dynamics will get covered up — more forgiving and thus more cohesive performance.

And final rant: popular music’s disregard for dynamics is one of my pet peeves.  It is the root cause of the current Loudness War in mastering and much creative opportunity is lost as the result.  How can you make loud and heavy parts feel that way, if you were robbed the ability to contrast it with soft and quiet parts? I love heavy music and I want my pounding and thrashing to hit my audience with full impact.  I am not saying pop music has to be the same as classical, but I do want to retain my dynamic range.  Thank you very much. :-)

by Ari Koinuma Posted on June 13, 2011
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Right-Hand Development for Jazz Guitar

I recently checked out a bunch of guitar instruction books from the library.  This book, by Renard D. Hoover, was one of them.  I’m not a jazz guitarist, but this book is really for any and all guitarist devoted to develop their lead playing.

Make that seriously devoted.  This is a thin book but densely populated by nothing but right-hand exercises.  No tabs, just musical scores, listing endless rows of EADGBE, with symbols specifying down and up strokes. Wow!

What this book made me think of is the idea of practicing the two hands separately.  I started on the piano before guitar so this is not a foreign concept to me.  But I’ve never approached guitar this way — since it takes two hands to produce a note (except open strings, of course) I always felt that synchronizing the two hands was the key.  But it makes sense to separate each part, work on it, and put them back together.

My picking hand is definitely the weaker of two when it comes to guitar playing.  I’ve always struggled with making this one more nimble, even though it seems that there’s so much less of what we’re asking it to do, compared to the fretting hand, where we have to mobilize each digit, sometimes stretching them out in a most unnatural manner and next cramming them into tiny frets.  But unless you’re playing legato exclusively, right hand is where the magic is, where the tone is produced.  I can see the benefit of this book.

This book seems to be out of print.  While I have this checked out, I’m going to try incorporating it to my routines and see how it feels.

by Ari Koinuma Posted on June 2, 2011
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What’s Your One Sentence, Guitarist?

One of many things that stuck out of Drive by Daniel Pink (a great book about business and motivation) was the bit about One Sentence.

In 1962, Clare Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy.  ”A great man,” she told him, “is one sentence.”  Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was: “He preserved the union and freed the slaves.” Franklin Roosevelt’s was: “He lifted us out of a great depression and helped us win a world war.”

I got to be thinking about this in terms of great guitarists.  I think it applies here.  Let me take a few stabs:

Jimi Hendrix: He combined blues, psychedelia, and mysticism into a single most expressive fire that burned fast and bright.

Eric Clapton: He demonstrated how blues can achieve mass appeal by incorporating licks of Black Americans into songs White Englishmen can appreciate.

Jeff Beck: He knows more ways to get sounds out of an electric guitar than anyone else.

Eddie Van Halen: He epitomized the youthful decadence, indulgence and unabashed outpouring of creativity through his unrestrained gush of notes that revolutionized what tapping can do on an electric guitar.

Santana: He proved that Latin beats can marry rock guitar.

Ahem.  Mind you, those I made up really quickly and they are quite reaching…. but you get the point.  Great guitarists can be described in a single Twitter-sized sentence, because their playing had a focus.  They knew where their strength was, and pushed that aspect to extreme.

What’s my single sentence as a guitarist?  Hmmm. I don’t know, it still feels like a moving target….  I do have a few strengths (and countless weaknesses) but I feel like I’m still holding back, still afraid to let go of some conventional rock guitar ideals (like being able to play fast) which is distracting me from realizing my potential.  (I’m not saying I’ll be a guitar great, but I do feel that I have more potential.)

But I’m gonna give it a try: as of May 2011, this is my One Sentence as a guitarist:

Ari Koinuma: He knew how to sing with wide intervals on his electric guitar.

Wow!  Having written that, it surprises me.  Admittedly, it only focuses on me as a lead guitarist –I was thinking it may be about use of weird chords in my songs, but I suppose that applies more to Ari the Songwriter — but somehow that feels right.  A good friend of mine once pointed out how I sing with my guitar, that guitar is my voice, and that struck a chord with me.  (pan very intended)  And I’ve been drawn to incorporating triads and wider intervals, rather than step-wise motions, into my lead playing.   Going from one note to the next note in scale seems so expected, conventional, and boring.  When I skip a note, but still make it fit within the chords/harmony — that’s when it sounds fresh and interesting.

But that’s hard to pull off, too, because wide intervals can sound unnatural and mechanical, jagged and forced.  I’m practicing right-hand tapping, because I see the potential in how easily I can pull off big intervals, yet with smooth and pure tone. (String-skipping can sound so harsh — it just seems impossible for my pick to travel that far, that fast, and still produce smooth tone.  Maybe chicken-picking)  But I’m still in the elementary stage, where I’m just learning the basic mechanics of how to do it, rather than how to use it creatively.  Most lessons about tapping seem to focus on some fast arpeggios and yes, they tend to sound mechanical to my ears.  I am after a different feel — slow, melodic, smooth, expressive.  If I knew how to sing with wide intervals, I can really play something that’s perhaps uncommon.

Hmmm, this has been an interesting exercise.  I feel a renewed sense of purpose and focus — I can’t wait to pick up my guitar and see if my One Sentence really fits me.  I feel fired up to practice, which is a good thing!

What is your One Sentence as a guitarist?  Think about it, and let me know, by commenting below.

by Ari Koinuma Posted on May 24, 2011
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Finally, More Options Among Pitch-Bending Effects: A Big Brother to Digitech Whammy

I’ve always been interested in pitch bending effects.  What can I say — I came of age in 90′s!  Pitch bending is a new type of effect only made available by advance in digital technology, and to my ears they offer fresh sound.

Electro-Harmonix Ring Thing has been on my list of must-try ever since it came out, but I just learned that Digitech finally released a more feature-rich big brother to Whammy 4: Whammy DT.

Digitech Whammy DT

Electro-Harmonix Ring Thing

Now, feature-wise, Whammy DT isn’t as rich as Ring Thing — though that momentary switch is nice.  And the $450 price tag (probably $399 street?) is a bit steep.  On the plus side, of course compared to Ring Thing it already has an expression pedal built in, so it’d take up less space on the ‘board.  The demos I heard of Ring Thing offer astonishing tracking, I’ll be curious to see how Whammy DT compares to that.

I’d love to do a shootout some time.  :-)

Source: Premier Guitar

by Ari Koinuma Posted on May 24, 2011
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