Don’t Let the Guitar Play You!

At the risk of offending somebody, I’ve characterized the guitar as a “whorish instrument.” It makes you think you know something:

“Oooh…listen to those power chords! You sound great! You’re the best I ever had!”

Yes, I know; plenty of guys have made millions of dollars playing power chords - but that’s not my point.

Did you know that power chords did not become prominant in popular music until the 1950’s? As a matter of fact, one of the rules of the 4-part Bach Chorale Style (early 1700’s) is, “No parallel 5ths.”

Power chords are parallel 5ths.

Do you think that power chords becoming popular just happened to coincide for no reason with the era (1950’s) in which pop music became guitar-centric? It was not a coincidence. It is an illustration of the instrument playing the musician.

Parallel voice-leading is embedded in the nature of the instrument, and a power chord is one of the easiest intervals to play due to the way the guitar is tuned. Again, I’m not disrespecting power chords; I use them often because I play a lot of pop music. What I’m talking about is how the instrument can dictate to the musician, rather than the musician USE the instrument. The instrument should be a tool used to express the music, not the source or the creator of the music.

Let me give you another, more complicated example:

I was giving a lesson to a guy and the song chart went from a Bbmaj7 to an A-7(b5). He was playing the Bb chord with the root on the 6th string, 6th fret. Upon seeing the A-7(b5) he immediately jumped to A on the 5th string at the 12th fret.

Dude! There’s an A on the 6th string ONE fret away from Bb! But you jumped across a string set and moved SIX frets up the neck!

Why? Because that 5th-string A-7(b5) chord shape is easier to play ON THE GUITAR, and so is used more often.

So your mind subconsciously processes that data almost instantly and you wind up making a very inefficient move, which dramatically increases the potential for error, and you put two chords together that are in completely different registers resulting in a really jarring sound. There are so many things wrong with it that I’m not going to take the time to expound, but you know what I told him?

“The guitar is playing you!”

He was not in control; the guitar was dictating what he played.

So how can you avoid being played by the guitar?

That's a good question. All instruments have their limitations. The trick is to not let the limitations limit the music, let the music push the limits of the instrument.

I think the well-known Charlie Parker maxim is relevant to this issue:

"Master your instrument, master the music, and then forget all that bullshit and just play."

Most people focus in on the latter half of the statement and use it to negate the first half of the statement. I would like to point out that you can't "forget" something you haven't learned. I would quarrel with the word, "forget." What really happens is you know the instrument and the music so well and are so familiar with it that the knowledge becomes subliminal.

“Subliminal: a stimulus or mental process below the threshold of sensation or consciousness; perceived by or affecting someone's mind without their being aware of it.”

So...I want to focus on the first half - the things you have to master before you can "forget" them.

Master Your Instrument

Simplistically speaking, there are two dimensions to this:

1. Physical (technique)

2. Intellectual (note names)

Physical: I'm keeping it simple here - you gotta have the physical facility to actually play. Knowing what to play (2%) and actually being able to play it (98%) are two different things. It's the actual playing that takes countless hours of training. Playing is 98% physical; hand-eye coordination, fine motor control, optimized technique, repetition, repetition, repetition. It's athletic. Daily physical training and practice. It helps to optimize the time if you have a method.

Intellectual: this is the other 2%. Again, oversimplified; do you know every note on the guitar neck? If you don't, you don't know your instrument. Simple as that! Yes, I know it's confusing (wah! 😫). The guitar is a non-linear instrument. There are multiple places to play the same thing. But it is mathematically limited. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Even less of a genius if you have a method.

Master the Music

Simplistically speaking, there are two dimensions to this:

1. General

2. Specific

General: I'm speaking here about roughly 1100 years of music theory. Understanding the math, how the math relates to sound and how that has evolved over the last 1100 years. ALL genres of western music use the same theory. G major is the same chord whether it's in "Amazing Grace" or some satanic death metal song. Learn G. Then you can use it how you choose. G is morally neutral. It’s the intention behind its use that has the potential for good or evil. It helps to minimize the time it takes to learn the theory by following a method.

Specific: there are two aspects to this. The first is the application of the theory specifically to the guitar. Scales, how scales are used to create chords, keys, common diatonic progressions and so on - as applied to the guitar. Again, having a method helps.

Secondly, the specific song or piece of music that you want to play. Remember, the music must be mastered. What key do you want or need it to be in? In order to answer that question you need to be able to play it in every key, don’t you? If you can only play it in one key, well… that’s the guitar playing you. How to learn a song in every key? It helps to have a method.

By necessity I have presented all this as linear. But that's not how the process works. It all happens concurrently; as you work on technique, mastering more music becomes doable. And as you master more and more music, you have to evolve the technique needed to play it.

If you have mastered your instrument, and you have mastered the music, then focusing on the performance - that shifting matrix of color, feeling, texture, sound and how you want to manipulate or express all that - is what you are conscious of when playing/performing. Your command of the instrument (technique and fretboard knowledge) and your knowledge of the math, keys, note and chord names, progressions, i.e. the theory of music, has moved to the subconscious and is subliminal.

So how do you know if you've arrived?

Well, in one sense you never arrive because there's always room for further progress. But from a practical standpoint I have some ideas about that.

How about composing a song that you can't play?

How about writing a song that you can play but that you have trouble improvising over?

In both these cases you are NOT allowing the instrument to dictate the music.

You may ask, "Well what's the point of that? If I can't play the song, why write it in the first place?"

Ah…but you see what you’ve done? You've reversed the priorities! You are saying in so many words,

"If the instrument doesn't dictate the music, what's the point?"

You are right back to being played by the guitar. You are only writing what you already play.

How about writing a song you can't play, and then figuring out how to play it, and practicing that until you can!

The history of guitar playing is full of players raising the bar; doing something that was considered physically impossible to play until someone came along and did it! Andres Segovia, Wes Montgomery, Django Reinhardt, Jimi Hendrix and Allan Holdsworth come to mind just off the top of my head.

I've done it for myself many times. I wrote a song I couldn't play. I practiced it til I could, then realized I couldn't solo over it. So I figured out how to solo over it, and practiced that until I could. The guitar was not playing me; I was playing it - and through that process I became a better guitarist and musician.

Don’t let the guitar play you!

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I have alluded several times to "a method." See the rest of this post below:

How About 5 Lessons?

The 5-Lesson Foundational Series teaches the Circle of Keys as an organizational mechanism by which you ensure that whatever you learn is drilled in every key in all possible positions. It also gives you a method to find any note, anywhere, without memorizing note names on every string. That is a beautiful thing!

Almost every lesson I teach presupposes these 5 lessons.

You can download the 5-Lesson Foundational Series right here with no further obligation or commitment:

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