String Love Guitar Lessons

Now we’re starting to get someplace interesting!

First came the basics of Travis-style thumb technique.

Next, we looked at basic ways of incorporating the index and middle fingers into the Travis-style alternating bass. However, in that lesson, we were focusing on using either the index or middle finger rather than incorporating both fingers in the same accompaniment pattern.

Today, then, let’s begin working some basic Travis-style patterns that call on both the index and middle finger to play in between the steady alternating Travis bass.

Here is a video to illustrate the patterns we’re going to be looking at today:

Make sense?

I’m going to refer to these two patterns as:

1) PIPM

1 ———————————————————————————————–
2 ——————M——————-M——————M———————M———
3 ——–I———–———I———–———I———–-———I———–-———–
4 ————-P——————-P——————-P——————–P—————-
5 –P—————————————-P————————————————–
6 ———————–P—————————————–P—————————-

and

2) PMPI

1 ————————————————————————————————
2 ——-M——–-———-M——————-M———–——–M————————-
3 ——————-I———————I——————-I————————I———
4 ————-P——————-P——————-P——————–P—————-
5 –P—————————————-P————————————————–
6 ———————-–P—————————————–P—————————-

(remember: P refers to the thumb, I refers to the index finger and M refers to the middle finger)

For now, always keep your index finger on the 3rd string while your middle finger remains on the 2nd string.

When you play the first pattern (PIPM), the index finger plays after the first bass note, and the middle finger plays after the second. This creates a tight 4-note pattern with two alternating bass notes against two treble notes.

The key here is to make sure your treble notes ring out exactly in between the two bass notes. This pattern won’t sound right if your timing is off. To figure out how to get the timing right-on, use a metronome. Work slowly at first by putting the metronome to 60 beats per minute. Try playing one note per click, and once you have the feel for each of the notes occupying its proper amount of space, you can increase the speed.

As is usually the case with practicing at slow speeds, this pattern won’t really sound like music until you get it moving at a certain clip (say, 80 beats per minute playing 1/8th notes…). However, the slow, patient practice you put in to master the fundamentals of the PIPM pattern will absolutely carry you forward far faster than simply stumbling over yourself trying to play fast without actually being able to.

For the second pattern (PMPI), you simply switch the order you played your middle and index fingers. Otherwise, the same keys apply: go slowly, pay close attention to the rhythm and use a metronome.

Some Important Details Regarding these Patterns

If you want to increase the effectiveness of these patterns, practice them at very high volume. Force yourself to push for loudness, particularly if you are prone to playing quietly. The more power you have at your disposal as you play these patterns, the more you’ll be able to use them for powerful musical effect.

As you’re just beginning, really work on having good movement in all your fingers. Refer to my previous lessons if you’re not sure what good finger movement feels like.

To recap: the thumb should remain relatively firm and straight as it plays through its notes. Don’t let it float all over the place. Instead, move it powerfully and efficiently from one note to the next and back again. Pull from high up in the thumb toward the palm where you have a lot of power.

For the index and middle fingers, take care not to claw at the strings with most of the movement coming from the knuckle closest to the fingertip. Instead, use a waving motion with both fingers pulling from the middle knuckle and the knuckle closest to the palm.

Pay attention to the sound you get as you play these patterns. Strive for clean, crisp and powerful notes. Developing these things takes time, but every bit of attention and focus you can bring in at the beginning will absolutely pay off hugely for you down the road.

Between the video and these instructions, I hope that sets you up for success with these Travis-style patterns. As always, let me know what you think in the comments and I’ll do everything I can to help you master these foundations of fingerstyle guitar.

Arpeggios are like the building blocks of great fingerstyle guitar playing.

Fingerstylists often jump from arpeggio to arpeggio across a piece. Mastering a wide variety of arpeggios helps you in so many ways as a guitarist. You build your hand’s strength and dexterity. You develop an easy fluency that allows you to enter any musical situation with plenty to say. You get to focus intensely on the micro-movements your fingers make as they play.

And out of all the arpeggios you can play on the guitar, one arpeggio above all others stands as the foundation for everything else you will play: the PIMA Arpeggio.

Check out this video for an introduction to the PIMA Arpeggio–what it is and some important things you need to keep in mind as you work on it:

To summarize the video:

It is absolutely worth taking the time to really master the PIMA Arpeggio since so much of what you’ll do in the future on the guitar rests on this sequence.

Work carefully and slowly, and pay close attention to the way the thumb and fingers move.

One of the key ideas to keep in mind as you learn the PIMA Arpeggio is “Preparations.” Preparations involve placing your fingers back on the strings after they play at the beginning of the next arpeggio sequence.

So, as your thumb returns to its bass string, bring your I, M and A fingers into contact with their respective strings as well.

Preparing is something I’ll hit on again and again. For now, just note that as you return to the top of the arpeggio and get ready to play with your thumb, bring your other fingers to rest on the strings they will play.

Finally, work this arpeggio at a slow speed with a metronome so that there’s no yawning space between the end of the arpeggio (when A plays) and the beginning of the arpeggio (when P starts off the next round).

If you work slowly and methodically with a metronome, you will quickly make the arpeggio sound like a continuous stream of notes, which is exactly what we’re after.

I would say I’m currently somewhere in the middle of the process of going after my dreams.

I am certainly not at the beginning–that was some years ago, perhaps well before I had built up the courage to recognize just how badly I wanted to make beautiful music and serve the world through words and harmonies and teaching and creating beauty.

But I am certainly not at the end, either–there is still a long road ahead to the place where I can say that I have brought my dreams fully into reality.

And so, I wanted to share a little bit with you about how this process has gone and how this process is going. This process of going after my dreams.

Good God, This is Terrifying

My take on going after dreams is colored completely by my specifics–my background, my upbringing, my experiences, my choices.

I have read that, for some, dreams come true easily and effortlessly.

That hasn’t been my experience, though.

In my case, even getting to the point where I could see my dreams took years and years.

I began playing the guitar when I was 16. I had wanted to play the guitar for several years previous. But I hadn’t yet surrendered to my desire to make music on the guitar because I carried around some beliefs about how my family wasn’t musical and I probably wouldn’t have the talent for it.

The love I felt for music eventually grew loud enough that I couldn’t ignore it anymore, so I got my first beater guitar and started learning how to make music with it.

Tentative but Steady

Looking back, I can see that the first three or four years as I was learning to play the guitar, I was constantly torn between excitement and joy over learning to play, on the one hand, and embarrassment and discouragement that I would never really be able to play much of anything.

The brakes were on, and how.

I kept at it, though. Friends who showed me things along the way encouraged me, and I made slow but steady progress.

When the Dreams Become Too Loud to Ignore

This is all to say that I wasn’t raised playing the guitar from birth. Music wasn’t a major part of my home growing up.

It took me a while to listen to the inner urge to learn how to make music on the guitar.

And even after I started playing, it took me some years before I released the brakes and really started pouring everything I had into making music.

I am very grateful that I eventually did set aside all the doubts and considerations. I stopped rationalizing why I could never play the guitar as well as I wanted to and instead started really working hard and learning more and more new music.

The Dream Journey Is Chock-Full of Surprises

I’m now 15 years into this adventure of learning to play the guitar.

And I wouldn’t trade this adventure for anything.

Just last week, I returned from Rio de Janeiro, where I was finishing up my new recording. 10 songs, full professional quality studio recordings, fully arranged with incredible intertwining flute, cello and viola parts swirling all around my guitar work and the vocals.

The experience of being in a professional studio recording a full-power album was a major dream come true–one I don’t even know if I ever actually dreamed would come true.

And then it did.

Now that I have the songs in hand, I can listen to the tangible results of all the work that went into creating this music (at least three full years of intensive guitar practice plus many discarded songs that didn’t make the final 10-song cut plus 18 months of actual planning and detail-handling leading up to the 10-month process that began with me in the studio in Rio last April and concluded with the mastering of the completed album last Friday).

It is unbelievable–one of the most amazing experiences of my life, this journey from deciding to give up everything and an entire life in Brooklyn, New York in order to return to Nashville and dive deep into my playing in order to take it to a whole new level and then receiving songs from out of the silence of my deep practice stretches and then, now, having a finished recording that is more beautiful than I ever dreamed it would be (and I dreamed big).

What the Dream Encouragers Don’t Tell You

Historically, there are a lot more dreamers than doers.

Recently, I think more and more people are really going after their dreams. The Internet allows the stories to spread, and everyone who reads the accounts of dreamers-made-doers receives encouragement to then go out and make their dreams reality.

Chris Guillebeau inspired me through his work and writing on his website about traveling to every country on Earth.

So did Derek Sivers with his intense perspective on how you can actually achieve your dreams through complete surrender and flat-out busting ass.

But by and large, it’s the starry-eyed encouragement that gets transmitted the loudest by those who would have more people go after their dreams.

And being well into the process of really going for it, I have a perspective I’ve never had before on this whole “going after your dreams” thing.

Failure Staring You Right In the Face

If you don’t like feeling uncomfortable, I really don’t recommend going after your dreams.

Three years of full-time dream-chasing into this (and, really, it’s been longer than that), I don’t even remember what comfortable feels like. My dreams have (almost diabolically) required me to leap continually out of my comfort zone.

Maybe my comfort zone was particularly small and my realized dream zone is particularly huge, which translates as me being continually uncomfortable. But I don’t think so.

I think discomfort is part of the deal of going after your dreams.

I think, as scary as it is to slip slowly into a “comfortable” life where you haven’t really put your dreams on the line, going after your dreams is way scarier–because the prospect of failure is real. Because the risks are genuine–you won’t have any excuses if you really go after your dreams and you come up with sand.

As far as social perceptions and the definitions of success and failure as agreed upon by the human collective, I am very much right on the edge. What I’ve done in putting this recording together is absolutely insane relative to a conservative perspective on how people should live their lives.

The Success Stories Make a Whole Lot More Sense From Here

Have you ever heard about a successful author who received continual rejection letters from publishers until finally, after being on the verge of completely giving up, a publisher came along who decided to give the author a chance on the whim? And then the author went on to be a huge success, which makes all the rejecting publishers look foolish?

There are tons of these kinds of stories around–the underdog who fought against the odds and emerged victorious.

I have a whole lot more respect for the humans who actually pushed through and made those successes happen.

Again, speaking from somewhere in the long middle passage from deciding to go after your dreams to actually realizing them, I’m amazed by just how tough this whole “going after your dreams” thing really is.

And that’s why actually pushing through into realizing a dream fully is actually worth something.

Because it isn’t easy.
Because it’s damn hard.
Because it’s often against all odds.
And because it forges the dream-chasers into seasoned, humbled, grateful human beings.

Gladly Paying the Price

I have read plenty of successful people writing after the fact, from the vantage point of having achieved their dreams, about the struggle they had to go through to get to their success.

And I have read, over and over again, that they would gladly pay the price required (and more, even) if they had to do it all over again.

So I keep those exhortations in mind as I wend my way through this journey from dream to reality.

Are You On the Edge?

Through my early- to mid-twenties, I lived close to the edge but not completely on it.

When I was 28, I decided to jump thoroughly and completely out into the unknown in pursuit of the realization of a gnawing urge that lit my heart aglow.

And here’s what I have to show for all this three and a half years into that wild leap:

I have one of the most beautiful recordings you will ever hear in my possession and will be releasing it in March 2011.

I have this blog, which attracts more and more visitors interested in the guitar each day.

I have a group of amazing students who I love teaching and whose progress brings me incredible joy.

I have an extraordinary and beautiful fiancee who loves me even through my many growing pains.

I have great friends, fantastic family and incredible opportunities all around.

In fact, in virtually every way, I could easily conclude that I am, in fact, a big success. Except for the financial question, which holds so much weight in our modern world.

I say none of this to brag. I share it only to say that much of this came about only because I fully and completely dove off the comfortable platform of my former life and advanced right to the edge in pursuit of my wildest dreams.

Are you there? Are you on the edge?

While I don’t want to take on the responsibility of being one of those shysters that encourages folks to leap into the unknown willy-nilly only to watch them flounder in the overwhelming reality of the struggle that invariably intercedes between going after your dreams and actually realizing them…the fact remains that I hadn’t really come alive until I went ahead and surrendered to my dreams and passions.

And now that I have, I would never go back.

The water’s better over here even if it’s often choppy, frequently freezing and seemingly never-ending.

Can Everyone Realize Their Dreams?

I don’t know, honestly.

Deciding to become a masterful musician and share my music with the world in a mighty way has been unbelievably difficult. And I’m still just at the beginning of this process in so many ways.

Going after your dreams isn’t for the faint of heart.

On the other hand, I have also come to believe that our deepest urges exist within our hearts because we have the ability to realize them. Their existence means that their realization is absolutely possible. IF we fight hard enough and want it badly enough to push through every obstacle that falls in our way.

And all of that is just, like, my opinion, man.

Since so much of this “go after your dreams” stuff is offered up by those who have already made it, I thought it’d be useful to share these words with you from my current location where I have decidedly not yet made it.

Will You or Won’t You?

If you’ve read this far, then you’re clearly someone who is interested in this whole “going after your dreams” topic.

So let me ask you a question: will you go after them, or won’t you?

Dreams often feel like a curse. They scratch at us and refuse to let us rest easy in our current status quo. They laugh at us and draw us forward into struggle and challenge and confrontation with our perceived limitations.

I had a friend recently lash out at me for what I’m doing with music. He decried my insistence on going after a “pipe dream.”

So, yes, I am an unabashed dreamer. And I’m putting all my effort and energy into realizing those dreams.

How about you?

(This post was inspired by Ethan Winer’s article Learning the Cello as an Adult. Definitely an interesting resource if you are interested in the topic of music learning in adulthood.)

If you’re an adult and you’re currently fighting a battle between wanting to learn to play the guitar and not believing that you can actually pull playing the guitar off, then here’s the quick guide to this post:

1. You absolutely can learn to play the guitar. Believe it and go for it (then believe it some more).
2. All it takes is a ton of diligent (FUN!) hard work over a decent stretch of time.

You really can learn to play the guitar no matter what age you are.

But if you’d like to read more about just how possible it is for you to learn to play the guitar, then please–follow right along:

The Best Time to Learn to Play the Guitar is Right Now

Allow me to tie this post into the experiences that have me thinking about being too old (or not) to learn how to play an instrument.

I’m currently writing this from Rio de Janeiro, where I’m mixing my next CD (quick question–what in the world do we call our recording projects in order to keep pace with the digital revolution and the evaporation of tangible storage media? Is what I’m working on an album? a record? a CD? a song cycle? I suppose the word “record” might be the best descriptor out of that bunch…).

The creation of this recording project has been an incredible roller coaster, and it turns out that mixing the songs on the new recording is probably the most fun part of the ride.

Just today, we mixed three songs that I’d never previously heard with the full arrangements incorporated in with my guitar work and the vocals. In addition to my regular and soprano guitar and the male and female vocals, the arrangement includes multiple cello parts, a viola part and several intertwining flute parts.

So, basically, hearing the cellos wailing away on the tracks today cemented it for me: I am completely, hopelessly, intensely in love with the cello. It is the awesomest instrument of all time.

Although I am committed to pushing the envelope and constantly improving on the guitar, the cello is calling to me bad right now. What a voice! What timbre! What range! What variety–from plucked bass runs to pizzicato exclamations to the full range of bowed possibilities…the cello is a beast!

So, naturally, I want to learn how to play it.

But guess what–I’M TOO OLD.

That’s right. As soon as I heard that inner urge tugging at me to figure out how to start learning to play the cello, the loudest objector (though there are definitely others, such as “not enough time!” and “you’ve got your hands full with the guitar!” and “it’s too hard!”), anyway, the loudest objector of all the thoughts in my brain was, “I’m too old.”

So I looked around at how one might possibly go about learning to play the cello and ran into Mr. Winer’s aforementioned article (dated from 1997 no less!!) on learning to play the cello as an adult.

Fun Fact: Mr. Winer began learning to play the cello at age 43!

Follow Your Bliss

For the moment, I’m not actually going to dive headlong into the project of learning to play the cello from scratch.

I actually do have a lot going on, and I’m currently having to be very disciplined and diligent just to stay on top of my guitar development.

And, what with a brand new full-power album, erm, CD, erm, recording coming out sometime in the next few months, now probably isn’t the time to take on another huge project. Better to finish the one I’m working on first, right?

But still–I really took umbrage at the idea that I’m too old to learn to play the cello.

And I want you to know, in case you’re suffering from similar negative thinking, that you’re neither too old to learn to play the cello (though Mr. Winer is really the expert in that topic), nor are you too old to learn to play the guitar.

You CAN learn to play the guitar. No matter what age you are. Even if you only have a couple fingers. Even if you have the longest litany of reasons/excuses ever.

You can learn to play the guitar.

Particularly if your primary reason not to even start trying to learn to play the guitar is because you’re too old.

A Damn Helpful Belief

Here’s a belief that I have adopted that has really helped me in my journey of learning to play the guitar and share my music with the world.

Ready? Here goes: “The passion I feel within is a clear signal that I am capable of realizing my dreams. I am passionate BECAUSE I wield the capacity to make my dreams come true.”

This belief has helped me massively as I have fought tooth and nail to learn to play the guitar at the highest level possible over the course of the past fifteen years.

If you really feel drawn to do something, I believe that powerful attraction you’re feeling is a clear signal that you can indeed make that dream a reality if you’re willing to pay the price.

How to Pay the Price and Learn to Play the Guitar

Instruments are hard.

As compared with, say, watching television or going on a lazy stroll or eating an apple, learning to play an instrument is extremely hard.

To learn to play an instrument, you need to focus your intent and pour your heart and soul into learning a bunch of new movements, theories and repertoire. It takes a long time to learn to play an instrument well–longer than a few hours. Longer than a few days or weeks or months, even.

(Though learning an instrument might actually take less time than you think if you just get off your butt and get started…)

So, first thing, if you want to learn to play the guitar: Resolve to put in the effort over a long enough span of time to see some results.

As I consider my desire to learn to play the cello, I’m thinking that I might just wait a bit and then, if I still really feel compelled to learn to play it, I’ll get started and give myself a good ten years of diligent effort.

If you adopt a long-range perspective on the project of learning to play an instrument, then age flies out the window.

Age is irrelevant to whether you will be able to play an instrument or not. What actually matters is getting started and continuing to pour your energy and attention into the process of learning to play an instrument over a long stretch of time.

If you were to take guitar lessons with me for ten years, I guarantee you I could have you playing some mean guitar a decade from now. No matter your age, no matter how non-musical or uncoordinated you feel you may be.

Find a Compelling Reason and Take Action

The vast majority of my guitar development has happened in the last five years. While I’ve technically been playing the guitar since I was 16, I didn’t actually buckle down and decide to figure out how to play the six-string NO MATTER WHAT until I was 26.

That was five years ago.

What happened to me five years ago that turned the switch on and blasted me past my excuse-making?

First off, I was finally sick and tired (and I mean COMPLETELY SICK AND TIRED) of not being able to make great music that I wanted to be able to make on the guitar.

I’d been striving to learn to play the guitar well, but many different technical challenges bested me. That was annoying.

After having my pride handed to me nonstop for ten years, I finally decided to do something drastic–I was going to commit full-out to learning to play the guitar.

Also, however, I fell completely in love with fingerstyle guitar. All kinds of songs and styles suddenly beckoned to me to learn how to play them.

Where before I had been primarily a pickstyle player, I became primarily a fingerstyle player.

I resolved to take a different approach to my guitar development.

I sold my steel string and bought a nylon string.

I started practicing for hours each day.

I started listening to more and more music from more and more places. I opened up to the world of great music and listened with new ears–the ears of someone absolutely determined to become the best musician possible.

Things quickly started happening after I resolved IN A MOMENT to learn how to play the guitar for real.

Within a year, I was studying classical guitar with one teacher and Brazilian jazz guitar with another teacher. Two lessons a week, two or more hours of practice each day, total commitment.

Within two years, I had moved back to Nashville to go deep into the Woodshed and focus everything I could on learning to play the guitar as well as possible. This was the most pivotal decision I have made in my entire life up to this point–and I am only today realizing how true that is as I round the final bend in completing this new album, which would never have even existed had I not decided to throw in completely with my desire to learn to play the guitar at a high level.

And here I am, five years on from that pivotal decision to completely commit to learning to play the guitar. In Rio de Janeiro working with a producer who has been a huge musical influence on me. With a batch of songs that are more beautiful than I even realized thanks to the arrangements that have come together today. And with a clear vision that the sky’s the limit from here on out–I can continue to take massive quantum leaps in my guitar playing for the rest of my life. Because I know the drill:

1. It’s possible. You can learn to play the guitar no matter your age or anything else.

and

2. All it takes is unbelievable amounts of ridiculously hard work.

If I’d Have Known How Hard It Would Be, Would I Have…?

The quick short answer: YES. ABSOLUTELY. ARE YOU EVEN SERIOUS IN ASKING THIS QUESTION?

The slightly more robust answer:

I believe we are on this planet to find out what we’re made of.

We find out what we’re made of when we push hard into the places where we feel the most fear and resistance.

When it’s really hard, that’s often when it’s really good.

If there’s passion there, then that’s all the feedback you need. You’re supposed to lean into every last difficulty that arises in an area in which you’re passionate.

Because as you do so, you will find out who you actually are and what you’re actually made of.

Music as a Quantum Leap Adventure

If you’ve read this far, then you are uber-committed. That’s a for-sure signal that you should just go ahead and get a guitar and start learning how to play it.

The beautiful thing I’ve discovered about music is the fact that it will absolutely demand more of you than you can imagine until you’ve pushed past your old selves and become your new ever more musical selves.

If you’re at all drawn to make your own music, then I can’t encourage you enough. Please heed that inner call that beckons you to pick up an instrument and learn how to generate harmony.

Learning to play music is all about growing. Becoming a musician puts you on a clear and mighty path of continual, lifelong expansion and transformation.

The creative journey that music opens up is worth ten years of challenge and difficulty and making mistakes and wondering if you’ll ever be able to make the music you love most.

If you’re in need of a more pedagogical perspective on what you can do as an adult to streamline your musical learning process so that you make the most progress in the shortest amount of time, then I highly and heartily recommend Ethan Winer’s post on Learning the Cello as an Adult.

But if you needed a swift kick in the pants to get you off the fence and onto your very own Musical Quantum Leap Adventure, then I hope this post has been able to serve as said swift butt kick.

The world needs your music no matter what age you are, so get on with figuring out how to make it.