Monday, June 21, 2010
Raising Awareness/Twinkle Twinkle
If I had to boil down the job description of a teacher to one brief statement it would probably be: to raise awareness in others. I can think of two recent examples which will help to explain what I mean.
One student I have was learning the song Blackbird by the Beatles. It was a song he had already learnt long ago with another teacher well before he was ready to play it. He thought it would be a breeze to learn because he’d already learnt it before. He already knew where to place his fingers for the most part and the basic structure of the song. This was perfect because it allowed me to focus from the beginning on awareness, not having to deal with issues of notes and rhythm and memorization, and helped me isolate the concept with the student. He needed to become more aware of tempo, of the sound of his attack, the consistency of his right hand to pluck the notes and his left hand to apply the exact right amount of pressure. He needed to become more aware of all the things that made the recorded song sound so good and to hear the difference between what he was doing and what Paul McCartney was doing. Otherwise he could never fix it.
But what I really want to point out in terms of awareness is the following experience. I had taught this student a small portion of the song that he had forgotten where it modulated to G Dorian. Not that he knows what that means but that’s alright. The story of how to grow patience as a teacher for what must be told to a student you know you’re going to have for a long time is another story. Anyhow, before teaching the boy the section in question I asked him to sit at his computer and see if he could figure it out by ear. I gave him many clues. I told him only to listen to the lower note and that he could play it entirely on the A string. But he could not here the note. He could literally not distinguish the sound of the lowest note on the guitar from the rest of the sounds that were happening on the recording. He couldn’t isolate the low guitar note from the vocals. So I taught him the line and he played it a few times and then I made him listen again. And still he could not here the line even once he know what he was listening for. So this is what awareness is. One way to help someone make leaps in awareness is to let them return to something they thought they understood after a period where they had not thought about it for a long time and then show them what they had missed the first time, assuming that you as a teacher are aware of something that they were not. Once they see that they missed something, they are open to further suggestions. The shock of realizing that they had failed to understand something that they thought they were sure of beforehand is often a very useful tool to gain the trust of a student and help them evolve.
There is an eight year old girl I started teaching a few months ago. She is a very energetic and positive child and she was taking up guitar after giving up a few other instruments. So I sit down with this young lady who has not had good experiences with music teachers and who wants to be entertained and who has no preconceptions about what is cool or interesting or childish in regards to guitar playing. She can’t hold the guitar straight. It sits flat on her lap with the sound hole facing up. But she can sing a note back to me that I play and she is very enthusiastic.
I’d like to point out to anybody teaching a student how much about her I had sized up within the span of 2 minutes. The guitar kept slipping down, chords were out of the question, good attitude, no musical knowledge, relatively strong but completely untrained ear, no technical ease whatsoever. I walked in without a lesson plan, noticed these qualities, and then reacted instinctively. I think this is a strong way to approach any private lesson.
So we played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the high E string. It took two weeks to learn. I never wrote anything down, never told her the names of any notes, never asked her to hold her guitar upright. I only asked her to remember what I showed her. And I did show her using visual information. It was enough for her to be able to look at my hand and discern what fret I was playing and then to confirm what her eyes taught her with the confirmation of the sound of the note.
Next came Happy Birthday. Although we played in a different key, still on the E string but in A major instead of E major, there was only one note different and for the most part all the notes were the same as in the other song. I tried to explain this to her but she obviously didn’t understand so I let it drop. Where progress was being made was in the fact that this song contains larger leaps, forcing her to increase her spatial awareness of the fretboard and the fact that it was a longer song and therefore a greater test of memory. This song took almost a month to learn and still there were no note names, no chords, no scales, only the sounds and her gradual and mostly unconscious heightening of awareness and development of a methodology to figure out the sounds. I was allowing her to look at my hand less and forcing her to use her ear to find the sound and her own brain to discover where it was located on the guitar. It was slow and to many people perhaps she could have learned it better or faster. They might also say of many of my students that their comprehension of theory is surprisingly limited considering my own obsession. But I would say that to train a horse the best way you have to let it learn at its own pace and come to you when it feels ready. And so it also is with guitar players. And when they are ready they excel because they have been taught how to think for themselves, how to solve a problem, how to use their ear, how to be confident.
The third song was the Itsy Bitsy Spider. In some respects an easier song, but still tricky. For people starting to learn how to listen and recognize notes, repeated notes are very hard to recognize. They sing the song with the words in their head and hear and feel slight differences in intonation and imagine that the note has changed when in fact it didn’t or only did so very slightly but they were fooled by their perception. So this was a good exercise for the recognition of repeated notes. More importantly, since it was easier and shorter than Happy Birthday, it allowed for this young student to learn the notes almost entirely by ear and to memorize it with noticeably more ease. Still there was no concept of a scale, no names for notes, only a relationship developing with the sounds and their relative location on the neck of the guitar on a single string. But was that entirely true?
We are now about two months into lessons and it is time to learn Oh Canada. But first, this young student had to learn what a scale was. She learned very fast. All I had to do was play it for her once and she played it back to me perfectly. It was clear that our two months of building fundamentals, even if she still didn’t even hold the guitar properly, which I was about to finally address as well, had payed off. Then I had her sing the scale degrees while she played the scale. Then I had her go back and play the Itsy Bitsy Spider and Twinkle Twinkle while also singing the song in scale degrees at the same time. And then I sung to her our Canadian National Anthem in scale degrees and she played it back to me perfectly and had no trouble remembering it. And because I had waited for the right moment I was able to do all of this in a half hour. And this little girl was able to feel as if she discovered the scale and therefore understood it and appreciated it on a level which many adults I meet don’t necessarily possess, let alone 8 year old girls. Undoubtedly when I return she will be worse off then that during our one extremely lucid session. But we will build back up to that moment where she caught sight of all that she was unaware of and then surpass it many times over on the way to the next breaking of the dam of her awareness.
One student I have was learning the song Blackbird by the Beatles. It was a song he had already learnt long ago with another teacher well before he was ready to play it. He thought it would be a breeze to learn because he’d already learnt it before. He already knew where to place his fingers for the most part and the basic structure of the song. This was perfect because it allowed me to focus from the beginning on awareness, not having to deal with issues of notes and rhythm and memorization, and helped me isolate the concept with the student. He needed to become more aware of tempo, of the sound of his attack, the consistency of his right hand to pluck the notes and his left hand to apply the exact right amount of pressure. He needed to become more aware of all the things that made the recorded song sound so good and to hear the difference between what he was doing and what Paul McCartney was doing. Otherwise he could never fix it.
But what I really want to point out in terms of awareness is the following experience. I had taught this student a small portion of the song that he had forgotten where it modulated to G Dorian. Not that he knows what that means but that’s alright. The story of how to grow patience as a teacher for what must be told to a student you know you’re going to have for a long time is another story. Anyhow, before teaching the boy the section in question I asked him to sit at his computer and see if he could figure it out by ear. I gave him many clues. I told him only to listen to the lower note and that he could play it entirely on the A string. But he could not here the note. He could literally not distinguish the sound of the lowest note on the guitar from the rest of the sounds that were happening on the recording. He couldn’t isolate the low guitar note from the vocals. So I taught him the line and he played it a few times and then I made him listen again. And still he could not here the line even once he know what he was listening for. So this is what awareness is. One way to help someone make leaps in awareness is to let them return to something they thought they understood after a period where they had not thought about it for a long time and then show them what they had missed the first time, assuming that you as a teacher are aware of something that they were not. Once they see that they missed something, they are open to further suggestions. The shock of realizing that they had failed to understand something that they thought they were sure of beforehand is often a very useful tool to gain the trust of a student and help them evolve.
There is an eight year old girl I started teaching a few months ago. She is a very energetic and positive child and she was taking up guitar after giving up a few other instruments. So I sit down with this young lady who has not had good experiences with music teachers and who wants to be entertained and who has no preconceptions about what is cool or interesting or childish in regards to guitar playing. She can’t hold the guitar straight. It sits flat on her lap with the sound hole facing up. But she can sing a note back to me that I play and she is very enthusiastic.
I’d like to point out to anybody teaching a student how much about her I had sized up within the span of 2 minutes. The guitar kept slipping down, chords were out of the question, good attitude, no musical knowledge, relatively strong but completely untrained ear, no technical ease whatsoever. I walked in without a lesson plan, noticed these qualities, and then reacted instinctively. I think this is a strong way to approach any private lesson.
So we played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the high E string. It took two weeks to learn. I never wrote anything down, never told her the names of any notes, never asked her to hold her guitar upright. I only asked her to remember what I showed her. And I did show her using visual information. It was enough for her to be able to look at my hand and discern what fret I was playing and then to confirm what her eyes taught her with the confirmation of the sound of the note.
Next came Happy Birthday. Although we played in a different key, still on the E string but in A major instead of E major, there was only one note different and for the most part all the notes were the same as in the other song. I tried to explain this to her but she obviously didn’t understand so I let it drop. Where progress was being made was in the fact that this song contains larger leaps, forcing her to increase her spatial awareness of the fretboard and the fact that it was a longer song and therefore a greater test of memory. This song took almost a month to learn and still there were no note names, no chords, no scales, only the sounds and her gradual and mostly unconscious heightening of awareness and development of a methodology to figure out the sounds. I was allowing her to look at my hand less and forcing her to use her ear to find the sound and her own brain to discover where it was located on the guitar. It was slow and to many people perhaps she could have learned it better or faster. They might also say of many of my students that their comprehension of theory is surprisingly limited considering my own obsession. But I would say that to train a horse the best way you have to let it learn at its own pace and come to you when it feels ready. And so it also is with guitar players. And when they are ready they excel because they have been taught how to think for themselves, how to solve a problem, how to use their ear, how to be confident.
The third song was the Itsy Bitsy Spider. In some respects an easier song, but still tricky. For people starting to learn how to listen and recognize notes, repeated notes are very hard to recognize. They sing the song with the words in their head and hear and feel slight differences in intonation and imagine that the note has changed when in fact it didn’t or only did so very slightly but they were fooled by their perception. So this was a good exercise for the recognition of repeated notes. More importantly, since it was easier and shorter than Happy Birthday, it allowed for this young student to learn the notes almost entirely by ear and to memorize it with noticeably more ease. Still there was no concept of a scale, no names for notes, only a relationship developing with the sounds and their relative location on the neck of the guitar on a single string. But was that entirely true?
We are now about two months into lessons and it is time to learn Oh Canada. But first, this young student had to learn what a scale was. She learned very fast. All I had to do was play it for her once and she played it back to me perfectly. It was clear that our two months of building fundamentals, even if she still didn’t even hold the guitar properly, which I was about to finally address as well, had payed off. Then I had her sing the scale degrees while she played the scale. Then I had her go back and play the Itsy Bitsy Spider and Twinkle Twinkle while also singing the song in scale degrees at the same time. And then I sung to her our Canadian National Anthem in scale degrees and she played it back to me perfectly and had no trouble remembering it. And because I had waited for the right moment I was able to do all of this in a half hour. And this little girl was able to feel as if she discovered the scale and therefore understood it and appreciated it on a level which many adults I meet don’t necessarily possess, let alone 8 year old girls. Undoubtedly when I return she will be worse off then that during our one extremely lucid session. But we will build back up to that moment where she caught sight of all that she was unaware of and then surpass it many times over on the way to the next breaking of the dam of her awareness.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Feeling Good
Here's a list which I think is really important, especially for us jazz musicians who can tend to be a pretty negative and self critical bunch. It comes directly and exactly from the book Feeling Good by David D. Burns.
Definitions of Cognitive Distortions
1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolours the entire beaker of water.
4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
a. Mind Reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don't bother to check this out.
b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.
6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else's achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow's imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick."
7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."
8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements towards others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
9. LABELLING AND MISLABELLING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." When someone else's behaviour rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: "He's a goddamn louse." Mislabelling involves describing an event with language that is highly coloured and emotionally loaded.
10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.
Definitions of Cognitive Distortions
1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolours the entire beaker of water.
4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
a. Mind Reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don't bother to check this out.
b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.
6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else's achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow's imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick."
7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."
8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements towards others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
9. LABELLING AND MISLABELLING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." When someone else's behaviour rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: "He's a goddamn louse." Mislabelling involves describing an event with language that is highly coloured and emotionally loaded.
10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.
Monday, April 12, 2010
A Certain Slash Chord on Stella
The chord Gaug/A makes a great A7 substitute, implying Lydian #5. The chord itself implies Gmaj7#5.
But wait, that mode, the third mode of melodic minor, can be transposed to numerous places to imply an A7 chord, because the 4th 5th and 7th modes of melodic minor are all dominant scales.
So Gmaj7#5, Fmaj7#5, Dbmaj7#5 (or Gaug/A, Faug/G, Dbaug/Eb) all very cool sounding chords, all imply some kind of A7 chord.
And as for the ii chord? Em7b5? We're going to use the sixth mode of melodic minor, but play the chord of the 3rd or 5th mode: Bbmaj7#5 or D9b13 (or related slash chords).
I'm going to start out for now by being very strict about chord tones because if I start using substitutions for the substitutions things get too far out too fast. Except of course for the aforementioned TBNII.
Here's a chorus on Stella
But wait, that mode, the third mode of melodic minor, can be transposed to numerous places to imply an A7 chord, because the 4th 5th and 7th modes of melodic minor are all dominant scales.
So Gmaj7#5, Fmaj7#5, Dbmaj7#5 (or Gaug/A, Faug/G, Dbaug/Eb) all very cool sounding chords, all imply some kind of A7 chord.
And as for the ii chord? Em7b5? We're going to use the sixth mode of melodic minor, but play the chord of the 3rd or 5th mode: Bbmaj7#5 or D9b13 (or related slash chords).
I'm going to start out for now by being very strict about chord tones because if I start using substitutions for the substitutions things get too far out too fast. Except of course for the aforementioned TBNII.
Here's a chorus on Stella
The Importance of Lists
At the moment, it is not possible to buy the Mr. Goodchord Voice Leading Almanacs. I would like to propose that, although I do find them useful (especially vol. iii), this can be viewed as an opportunity rather than a calamity.
What are the almanacs? They are lists. If you've read through the Advancing Guitarist or any of Mick Goodrick's magazine articles, then you know might be familiar with the following kind of proposition.
First take a look at pages 57-61 of the Advancing Guitarist. Nice list, right? The Goodchord Almanac Vol. I consists almost entirely of writing out all those chord voicings note by note and in every possible inversion and chord type (1st inversion, drop 3 etc). More nice lists.
Why would a person bother to do all that work? Well to help us out. But maybe we could make our own lists to help ourselves out. Maybe the most important lesson Mick Goodrick teaches us through all his books is not to use his lists, but the value in creating our own. There are an infinite amount of ways to present this kind of information.
Let's take a look at an excerpt from pages 41-42 of the Advancing Guitarist. Mick is suggesting we create random sequences of the 48 triads and then voice lead through them. But wait. Don't stop there.
***
Things To Do:
1. Now go back to the "triad row" and voice-lead through the entire progression.
2. Now play it backwards.
3. Start with a different inversion of the very first chord and go through the sequence again.
4. Play it backwards.
5. Start the sequence with a spread triad voicing.
6. Guess what now?
7. Can you see other things to do?
***
So, like you, upon reading that, I think alright let's rock and roll. Maybe I get through it once, maybe I start on number 5, maybe I will read them in columns instead of rows, or read every second or third triad etc.
There are lots of possibilities. Now here's a little experiment. Try doing it without the list or "triad row". WTF? is the proper reaction. It can't be done. There's no way you could retain all 48 triads and which one's you'd already played, let alone systematically juggle their order or anything like that.
Mentally writing and maintaining the triad row while you do the exercise is way too complicated. Without the list, it becomes impossible to do this kind of work thoroughly.
So let's make our own custom lists, tailored to our own needs, in addition to whatever other ones we might have in the Advancing Guitarist, Chord Chemistry, Voice Leading Almanacs, Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony etc. (All great books full of many lists worth considering).
In fact, I just made a list of books which I might open up when I start practicing.
Making a list of all the songs you know is also a great idea. Arranging them into a binder, your own custom fake book, is an even better idea.
Mick talks about the Chinese Menu approach to practising. When there are simply too many things to do, arrange them in a numbered list, and in categories: Warm-ups (appetizers), Theory (soup), Application in Songs (entrée). Every time you sit down to a meal... I mean to practice, order the dishes that you feel like eating. And try to order every dish at least once a week or every few days or whatever makes the most sense to you.
Recently with a saxophonist, I made a list of everything he knew how to do while soloing, the point being that when you see how huge it is, and then consider how many tunes and keys and changes there are, there is never an excuse to run out of work.
What are the almanacs? They are lists. If you've read through the Advancing Guitarist or any of Mick Goodrick's magazine articles, then you know might be familiar with the following kind of proposition.
First take a look at pages 57-61 of the Advancing Guitarist. Nice list, right? The Goodchord Almanac Vol. I consists almost entirely of writing out all those chord voicings note by note and in every possible inversion and chord type (1st inversion, drop 3 etc). More nice lists.
Why would a person bother to do all that work? Well to help us out. But maybe we could make our own lists to help ourselves out. Maybe the most important lesson Mick Goodrick teaches us through all his books is not to use his lists, but the value in creating our own. There are an infinite amount of ways to present this kind of information.
Let's take a look at an excerpt from pages 41-42 of the Advancing Guitarist. Mick is suggesting we create random sequences of the 48 triads and then voice lead through them. But wait. Don't stop there.
***
Things To Do:
1. Now go back to the "triad row" and voice-lead through the entire progression.
2. Now play it backwards.
3. Start with a different inversion of the very first chord and go through the sequence again.
4. Play it backwards.
5. Start the sequence with a spread triad voicing.
6. Guess what now?
7. Can you see other things to do?
***
So, like you, upon reading that, I think alright let's rock and roll. Maybe I get through it once, maybe I start on number 5, maybe I will read them in columns instead of rows, or read every second or third triad etc.
There are lots of possibilities. Now here's a little experiment. Try doing it without the list or "triad row". WTF? is the proper reaction. It can't be done. There's no way you could retain all 48 triads and which one's you'd already played, let alone systematically juggle their order or anything like that.
Mentally writing and maintaining the triad row while you do the exercise is way too complicated. Without the list, it becomes impossible to do this kind of work thoroughly.
So let's make our own custom lists, tailored to our own needs, in addition to whatever other ones we might have in the Advancing Guitarist, Chord Chemistry, Voice Leading Almanacs, Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony etc. (All great books full of many lists worth considering).
In fact, I just made a list of books which I might open up when I start practicing.
Making a list of all the songs you know is also a great idea. Arranging them into a binder, your own custom fake book, is an even better idea.
Mick talks about the Chinese Menu approach to practising. When there are simply too many things to do, arrange them in a numbered list, and in categories: Warm-ups (appetizers), Theory (soup), Application in Songs (entrée). Every time you sit down to a meal... I mean to practice, order the dishes that you feel like eating. And try to order every dish at least once a week or every few days or whatever makes the most sense to you.
Recently with a saxophonist, I made a list of everything he knew how to do while soloing, the point being that when you see how huge it is, and then consider how many tunes and keys and changes there are, there is never an excuse to run out of work.
Friday, March 19, 2010
More Things On All The Things
Bars 1-8: A=3, B=5, C=7
***
Bars 9-16: A=1,B=5,C=7
hmm... interesting how the arrow from A to B turns out to be a common tone.
***
17-24: A=1 B=2 C=3
***
24-28: A=1 B=3 C=7
surprisingly normal
***
29-32: A=1 B=3 C=7
why did I switch so soon besides trying to fit all the circles into one chorus?
why would the last circle be hard to finger with the chromatic movement of the bass line harmony?
***
33-36: A= 1 B=4 C=7
Does this break the pattern? Or is there voice crossing? Wouldn’t these voicings sound great sung by a choir?
What's the lesson about following directions (especially your own)?
Sunday, March 14, 2010
All The Things (3 notes)
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