Merry Christmas everybody !

What an exciting few weeks I’ve just had! I’ve been in Savalas Sound Studios in Film City Glasgow recording my new guitar course. These studios have played host in the past to such names as Ewan Mcregor (Obi-wan Kenobi in the Star Wars trilogy), Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid in the Harry Potter Films), Franz Ferdinand (the band not the Austro-Hungarian Royal Prince)…and now me! No wonder I’m smiling (sometimes) in this promotional video.

One of the best ways to keep bringing you’re playing on is to memorise chord progressions. Once you’ve started to build up a library you’ll start to see the similarities and differences between the different progressions of different songs. The important thing is always to try and analyse so that you’ll be able to recognise similarities in progressions even though they may be in different keys. In the songbook section of the website I’ve listed some songs, done some analysis of the progressions and recommended some listening. One of my favourite songs in there is Georgia. I’ve arranged in the key of D which is a good key for the guitar as it lets us use open strings. There’s all sorts of chords in here with altered notes such as  b9, b5. These are great bluesy notes to start getting you’re fingers round. One of my favourite versions of this tune is that by Martin Taylor. You can hear a clip in the songbook page for Georgia.

On setting off on my holidays recently I decided to take some reading material. Rather than going for the usual crime thriller I went for “Music and Communication” by Terence McLaughlin.  Ok, not everbody’s first choice but it’s been lying on the shelf staring at me for a while so I thought, now’s the time. It’s a pretty heavy read but it certainly did get me thinking. One of the first questions it addresses is  “Why Music?” What are it’s origins, why as listener’s do we gain so much satisfaction from it. From a players perspective have you ever asked yourself the question “ Why is it that I want to learn the guitar? ”.  Some obvious answers might be along the lines of : I heard Joe Pass playing (I’m sure you’ll have your own guitar hero) and thought, I want to do that; or, I remember my Grandfather playing that tune, I’d love to learn it; or, I’d love to be able to play some songs at parties!  It strikes me that generally all of these reasons will have some type of emotional response attached to them. Why is it that you want to play like you’re guitar hero?  Is it for reasons of admiration or is it because of the way the music makes you feel. I would suggest that more often than not it’s due to the latter, the way it makes you feel, the emotional response that the music triggers.

Differing from other art forms, music effects our emotions without there being an obvious external influence. The example given by Terence McLaughlin in his book is that of King Lear from Shakespeare’s famous play raving on the stage. Even if we understand not a word of the old English prose we can still identify him as an old man who has been left out in some extremely bad weather and a resulting emotional response is stimulated. Music often has no such footing in the real world. It is very much a shifting art form, always changing, moving and growing with these subtleties of composition not being linked to an external source as in many other art forms but none the less capable of prompting outbursts of emotion in both listener and player…..…yes, my playing has on occasion driven me to tears !

While having no obvious roots in the real world, most people would agree that music is often capable of expressing something deep and valuable. So the question is, why is it that music can affect us in such a manner that we are prompted to feel deep emotions of sadness, happiness and excitement.

I think to answer this question we have to look at the different elements music embraces to be expressive: the elements of dynamics, tempo, rhythm, harmony, melody and, underpinning all music the use of tension and resolution. There is also a more physiological question needing addressed as to how our brains process musical information. Maybe a question for my next holiday break !!

And here it is……..Misty

I’m currently working an arrangement of the song Misty. It was written in 1954 by the pianist Errol Garner, originally as an instrumental. However, it’s always good to get familiar with a vocal version of a song before starting an arrangement and I particularly like the version by Ella Fitzgerald in the songbook pages. As for a guitar instrumental version, Joe Pass’s version on his album Vituoso #2 in the songbook is great.

When working through the chords of the tune I decided to use the key of E rather than the most common key of Eb as it seemed to fit well with the melody and give me plenty of sustaining open strings. The first three notes of the melody for Misty are particularly recognisable, the first two forming a minor third. In fact I always use these two starting notes of this tune as a way of remembering the sound of the minor 3^rd interval descending.

In the chord progression extensive use is made of the II-V movement

‘                Emaj7         Bm7            E7                     Amaj7

Walk my way, and a thousand violins begin to play

In the above example the Bm7 to E7 is a II-V movement. Once you’re familiar with this type of chord movement you’ll start to hear it in lots of different parts of the songs you play and listen to.

I’ll be covering this in more detail in the forthcoming guitar lessons. Sign up to the mailer on the right hand side of the screen to receive further information.

I’ll post my arrangement of Misty up shortly…..watch this space!!

I thought I’d share with you an article I wrote on the colourstrings teaching method as I think it helps explain my views on ear training and guitar teaching in general. As I explain in the article, I’ve used the method in the past for teaching children from ages 6 upwards and I do believe that some of the basic principles apply to learning a musical instrument no matter what age you are.

The Colourstrings Teaching Method

The colourstrings teaching method was developed in Finland from the Kodaly philosophy where learning starts with singing and developing the inner ear. For very young children, 18 months onward, the lessons are presented in such a way that play and imagination are encouraged. The children sing, clap and march to a carefully constructed musical program built from basic principles of rhythm, pitch, melody, dynamics, tempo, character, form and style.

Initially the children learn by repeating back the actions of the teacher, the teacher sings a song, the children repeat, the teacher claps a rhythm, the children repeat. As they get slightly older this imitation is backed up with hand signs that correspond to the sol-fa system.  One of the first intervals they learn is the minor 3^rd interval, so – me. I’m not sure in about the rest of the world, maybe somebody could confirm, but certainly in Scotland this interval appears regularly in children’s playground songs and is a very natural interval for the children to sing. Gradually through the repetition of songs and clapping of rhythms and then the use of stick notation, the children move onto recognizing the notes on the stave. At the age of 6 the children learn to play instruments, the same method of singing and imitation being used. The children learn to sing the piece being taught and then they learn how to play it on their instrument.

Originally the colourstrings technique was developed for Violin by its founder Geza Szilvay. Each string on the violin is given a colour to aid recognition, hence the name colourstrings.  Musical notation is kept to a minimum with the children only being shown notation that is necessary for them to play. For instance, the child is not initially shown the full 5 lines of the stave, but only the lines that the notes being taught use. The method is very obviously applicable to the violin due to the need for good intonation. If the child can sing the note, then they will know if they are playing out of tune. While this intonation problem is not applicable to a fretted instrument like the guitar, the methodology of developing the ear to instruct the hand is, in my opinion, the best way to teach the guitar. For a number of years I encompassed the colourstrings guitar method, developed by Jussipekka Rannanmaki, into my teaching of children from age 6 upwards and I found the results to be amazing. Fortunately a lot of the children I was teaching had participated in colourstrings singing classes from an early age so were used to the idea of singing. Teaching the child to sing the melody first and then showing them how to play it on the guitar invariably resulted in the music just flowing. While only partially developed as a guitar method, the underlying principles of the colourstrings methodology and the kodaly teachings from which the method was developed resonate strongly with me. When teaching I always check back to the musical principles of developing the inner ear and learning to sing what is being played.

A wee tune for our national bard on his birthday….Ae fond kiss