Guitar
Some years ago, I was in a touring band that ranged all over Canada and the mid-western states for three months at a go, twice a year. We did some long drives...I'm talking eighteen, twenty hours not unusual in the slightest. I never drove back then, but I always sat up front in the passenger seat and kept an extra eye on the highway. After we were all sick of listening to tunes on the stereo and the fellas started to fall asleep, I would often play guitar in my head for hours. We were playing so much, and so engaged with the process, that I could pretty accurately tune a restrung guitar by tension alone. My ear for pitch and intonation was sharpened to a great degree. I could sit and imagine playing and encounter the same physical limitations I experienced in the real world. My mistakes happened just as frequently, were based on the same faulty math, and sounded just as bad. Sometimes I'd try to figure out complex or tricky melodies I'd never played before, then see how good my guesses were on the gig. Sometimes I fooled myself, sometimes not.
- Re-stringing A Floyd Rose Bridge
I often get asked to re-string Floyd Rose equipped guitars. Although it is a little bit harder than a 'Strat' or Les Paul bridge it's not beyond most folks. There's just one little tool you need to make it quicker and easier -...
- Peavey T-40 And T-60 Users And Literature. .
Peavey were keen to let it be known that their guitars were being used by major artists, at the time - perhaps the most famous, was Ross Valory of the band, Journey. There was also Leon Medica of Le Roux and Banner Thomas from Molly...
- A Little Heads-up For Jammers
You guys play nice or you're going to separate rooms... Whilst visiting a jam session as the special guest of a friend of mine last night, I noticed a couple of the greener jammers causing some common faux-pas. As a long time jam host...
- Solo (you Can't Hear It)
One is the loneliest number... I just landed a steady solo gig, the first in about two years since I had a serious falling out with the proprietor of the last joint (where I had cooked for eight years and performed for three-and-half). This...
- Adventures In Co-writing
My very-busy-of-late, crowded-as-hell workspace. I've recently embarked on a singularly ambitious composing project with a couple of dear friends of mine, Joe and Glynis Burke. Glynis has a stack of lyrics dating back twenty years or so,...
Guitar
Look Ma, No Hands!
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| Just gotta' photoshop out the guitar... |
I don't play quite as much these days, and I'm the full time parent of a toddler, so the time to write or practice is rare indeed. Once again the hands off approach has seen me through...I like the bath tub, washing dishes, taking walks- that's when daddy gets to "practice". Mellow or repetitive scenarios where I can concentrate deeply. I don't really mind; the melodies have to come from my head, not my hands. I'm not getting any younger, so binge practicing is dangerous, particularly when you're gigging anywhere from two to four nights a week. You don't want the tendonitis/carpal tunnel gremlin entering your life, trust me (and some of my dearest friends).
Most pro athletes will talk about the importance of visualizing your best performance. I think in any artistic realm, visualizing is vastly more important- we're in the imagination business, so why not rehearse your imagination?
So how do we rehearse our imaginations? I have a few mental games I like to play.
First, and simplest, is to run through a song I plan to play soon. Minutes before updating this post, I came up with the idea to do a key change for the solo portion of tune I do, and was able to think up the transition between keys, improvise over the keychange and return to the home pitch whilst enjoying a coffee and cigarette in the back garden without an instrument in sight. The trick is being able to hear the exact pitch of the song I'm contemplating, then using my knowledge of intervals and a stage-honed sense of relative pitch to stay within the harmonic framework and see the notes as I think of them. If I lose my place in either the pitch or the visualization of it, I return to the top of the tune and begin over, re-establishing the framework.
If I'm in more of an analytical frame of mind, I might do as exercise like going around the cycle of 5ths, then back in 4ths, or naming a random pitch in every key (ie. the 6th in every key). Sometimes I'll just dissect chords, considering each note in a particular grip's value, then re-evaluating the pitch value over the other chords in the changes. Which tones are common to all the chords in the change? Are half step approaches to the other chords available? What's the relative minor?
At some point I'll try to let go of all of the visual/analytical thought and just dream up some straight-up blowing, not worrying too much about how it's played, just trying to hear past what I know. If I come across a particularly interesting bit, I'll replay it in my head till I clearly remember it, then start puzzling through how it might be played. Often, when I finally do get an instrument in hand, I find I was way off the money, or I was close but playing a harmony- I don't find this discouraging; its just part of my ear-training and that's a life-long journey.
This sort of mental training has endless practical uses beyond the ability to geek-out and wail when your wife is talking to you about your taxes. Several years ago, whilst touring my long-out-of-print album, I was scheduled to perform on a morning TV show. The producer asked me how long my songs would be, I asked him for ten minutes to figure it out- after deciding on truncated arrangements and performing the songs through in my head, I was able to give him predictions accurate to within three seconds (I checked). The producer was blown away. We were invited back.
So how do we rehearse our imaginations? I have a few mental games I like to play.
First, and simplest, is to run through a song I plan to play soon. Minutes before updating this post, I came up with the idea to do a key change for the solo portion of tune I do, and was able to think up the transition between keys, improvise over the keychange and return to the home pitch whilst enjoying a coffee and cigarette in the back garden without an instrument in sight. The trick is being able to hear the exact pitch of the song I'm contemplating, then using my knowledge of intervals and a stage-honed sense of relative pitch to stay within the harmonic framework and see the notes as I think of them. If I lose my place in either the pitch or the visualization of it, I return to the top of the tune and begin over, re-establishing the framework.
If I'm in more of an analytical frame of mind, I might do as exercise like going around the cycle of 5ths, then back in 4ths, or naming a random pitch in every key (ie. the 6th in every key). Sometimes I'll just dissect chords, considering each note in a particular grip's value, then re-evaluating the pitch value over the other chords in the changes. Which tones are common to all the chords in the change? Are half step approaches to the other chords available? What's the relative minor?
At some point I'll try to let go of all of the visual/analytical thought and just dream up some straight-up blowing, not worrying too much about how it's played, just trying to hear past what I know. If I come across a particularly interesting bit, I'll replay it in my head till I clearly remember it, then start puzzling through how it might be played. Often, when I finally do get an instrument in hand, I find I was way off the money, or I was close but playing a harmony- I don't find this discouraging; its just part of my ear-training and that's a life-long journey.
This sort of mental training has endless practical uses beyond the ability to geek-out and wail when your wife is talking to you about your taxes. Several years ago, whilst touring my long-out-of-print album, I was scheduled to perform on a morning TV show. The producer asked me how long my songs would be, I asked him for ten minutes to figure it out- after deciding on truncated arrangements and performing the songs through in my head, I was able to give him predictions accurate to within three seconds (I checked). The producer was blown away. We were invited back.
- Re-stringing A Floyd Rose Bridge
I often get asked to re-string Floyd Rose equipped guitars. Although it is a little bit harder than a 'Strat' or Les Paul bridge it's not beyond most folks. There's just one little tool you need to make it quicker and easier -...
- Peavey T-40 And T-60 Users And Literature. .
Peavey were keen to let it be known that their guitars were being used by major artists, at the time - perhaps the most famous, was Ross Valory of the band, Journey. There was also Leon Medica of Le Roux and Banner Thomas from Molly...
- A Little Heads-up For Jammers
You guys play nice or you're going to separate rooms... Whilst visiting a jam session as the special guest of a friend of mine last night, I noticed a couple of the greener jammers causing some common faux-pas. As a long time jam host...
- Solo (you Can't Hear It)
One is the loneliest number... I just landed a steady solo gig, the first in about two years since I had a serious falling out with the proprietor of the last joint (where I had cooked for eight years and performed for three-and-half). This...
- Adventures In Co-writing
My very-busy-of-late, crowded-as-hell workspace. I've recently embarked on a singularly ambitious composing project with a couple of dear friends of mine, Joe and Glynis Burke. Glynis has a stack of lyrics dating back twenty years or so,...