An efficiently moving right hand is the key to producing relaxed yet grooving lines and chords on guitar. While the left hand, of course, plays its own indispensible role in producing notes, the right hand demands far more careful attention and diligent training than its partner. Though, in certain cases, I’d dissuade a player from a complete reinvention of his ...READ MORE »
Strength constitutes the essential, and widely unrecognized, key to effective guitar technique. For the guitarist who has never addressed this principle in his playing, newly trained arms, wrists and hands will produce his musical ideas with a precision and effortlessness that astonish. Locking in on the groove becomes inevitable.
Just as strength is the key to technique, overtraining is the key ...READ MORE »
Making music, whether with one’s voice or with an instrument, demands total physical engagement. If the goal of musical expression is indeed making real the sounds that emanate mysteriously from within oneself (i.e. from “mind,” “heart”, or “spirit”), then the means of producing these sounds must become so facile as to be imperceptible to the player, a gesture as simple ...READ MORE »
The computer has changed the ways that we endeavor to acquire both information and skills, and guitar playing is surely no exception. While the tools that the internet offers are quite diverse, the two main instructional services provided seem to fall into two general categories, namely, pre-recorded guitar lessons and live online guitar lessons.
Pre-recorded lessons tend to focus on ...READ MORE »
“We learn an art or craft by doing the things that we shall have to do when we have learnt it: for instance, men become builders by building houses, harpers by playing on the harp.” – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II.1
The ultimate end of studying jazz music on any instrument is the act of performance, whether solo or in a ...READ MORE »