String Love Guitar Lessons

I’ve been rereading Andrew Cohen’s Embracing Heaven & Earth recently. There’s a long backstory there if you want to learn more about who Andrew Cohen is and what he’s about.

As a musician, you know two things better than most: sound and silence.

Sound and silence aren’t two separate things–and as a musician, again, you know this better than most, too.

A note emerges suddenly from silence and then fades and fades and fades until it finally subsides as silence.

Without silence, there could be no sounds.

And without sounds, we are hard-pressed to realize there’s silence.

The Mission of Play

Language sometimes results in more confusion than clarity. We use words for things without understanding or agreeing collectively on what those things we’re talking about actually are. My version of “freedom” or “love” or “music” differs from yours. To the extent that we forget that, we miscommunicate and lots of unpleasantness can result.

But one word for which I feel extremely grateful is the verb “play” as it applies to creating music on instruments.

This is a fortunate linguistic occurrence–that we are guitar players, that our practice always leads to playing, that when we work we actually play.

The Two Enlightenments

Mr. Cohen teaches about awakening. His teaching is aligned with no other tradition or path, though it definitely springs from the teachings of others.

One of the best-known aspects of his teaching is what he calls “evolutionary enlightenment.”

Evolutionary enlightenment is a new distinction borne from the realization that there are two aspects of the All.

First, there is the silence, repose, stillness. Enlightenment that comes from the deep quiet of meditation.

This is the enlightenment that people usually think of and refer to when enlightenment comes up. The vast silence. The profound stillness. God as the entire universe and beyond, hanging in infinity for eternity.

However, there is something else going on in addition to stillness here on Earth. Maybe you’ve noticed (it’s pretty hard not to, no?).

Everywhere I look in the world, I see the explosive power of creativity. Whether I’m looking at the plants, animals, landscapes and weather patterns of nature, or whether I’m looking at the tools, structures, languages and monuments of humanity, all I see is creativity expressed and ever expressing.

There is a driving creative power at the heart of creation, and this is another aspect of the Divine that gets lost in the traditional one-pointed focus on the stillness aspect of Enlightenment.

Andrew Cohen calls this active, evolutionary aspect of creation “Evolutionary Enlightenment,” and while I’m in no position to speak on behalf of his teaching, the basic idea is that there is an equally powerful, equally important experience of Enlightenment that aligns with the forward movement of creative evolution and serves that drive toward impregnating every nook and cranny of the Universe with full awareness.

Wait a Minute–I’m Just Trying to Play the Guitar

So, where does that leave us, we players of the guitar?

I am attempting to bring this awareness of the two styles of Enlightenment (the two aspects of the Whole) into my guitar playing and practicing. And it is yielding some profound fruits.

In guitar terms, we can bring awareness of the two Enlightenments into our movement between Silence and Sound.

Silence embodies the Enlightenment of Stillness. Sound embodies Evolutionary Enlightenment.

As musicians, we are always weaving between those two great states. Their interplay is our music.

I just want to offer up this perspective to you to take into your play with the guitar.

It is helping me a lot to remember why we bother going to the trouble of learning to play the guitar in the first place. Our mission as musicians is the same as the overall mission of All Life–to awaken, and to permeate all the Universe with awareness.

Let our harmonies fly into this world to serve the awakening process we’re all going through, whether we like it or not.

If you’re playing fingerstyle guitar in 3/4 time, then one arpeggio shines brighter than all the rest as the most accessible accompaniment option.

Our powerful six-note arpeggio: P, I, M, A, M, I

Or, expressed in tab form:

e ————————–
B ————–A———
G ———-M—-M——
D ——-I————–I—
A —P——————–
E ————————-

Whenever you’re playing a song in 3/4, this arpeggio can serve as your accompaniment “home base.”

When in doubt, when in 3/4, head to P,I,M,A,M,I and hang tight until you have your wits about you.

This is Simple, and I am Bored

Whoa!! Hold on there, partner.

To quote Jamie Andreas: “When you see the complexity of what appears simple, you will see the simplicity of what appears complex.”

This arpeggio definitely falls under the heading of “see the complexity of what appears simple.”

At first glance, the P,I,M,A,M,I arpeggio might seem simple, easy and straightforward, but there is a lot to dig into here.

Let’s take the fingers in turn.

Spring-Load That Thumb

Many guitar players allow their thumb to float up and away from the strings after they play a thumbstroke.

It’s an understandable thing to do–by the time the thumb finishes playing, all the other fingers are getting busy with their respective notes, so the thumb gets lost in the mix.

However, a spring-loaded thumb that returns to the string it is set to play next will tighten up your playing and improve the power you can put into your thumb strokes.

So, as soon as you play through the first note of this PIMAMI arpeggio with your thumb, quickly return your thumb to a low hover just behind the 5th string. From there, it will be able to play its next note on the 5th string when the time comes.

In order to control your thumb and drill the spring-loaded habit into it, you’ll probably have to slow down quite a bit. For most of the students I’ve worked with, the moment they take their attention away from the thumb, it returns to its old floaty tricks.

Otherwise, as far as the thumb is concerned, just work on getting a strong, powerful stroke that produces a solid, pure tone in the bass.

The Easy Index Finger

Thank goodness we have an index finger–what if all our fingers were as obtuse and intractable as the ring and pinky?

The index finger’s job in this arpeggio is very straightforward–play the note with a clean attack and be ready to return for the final note of the arpeggio.

In case you aren’t clear about how to move the fingers, the basic movement for each of the fingers comes from the joints higher up toward the palm. The mid-joint and the joint right next to the hand at the base of the finger should produce the movement of each finger.

If you’re making the cat’s claw by moving from the joint closest to the fingertip, you’re going to be very limited by your technique. So as best you can, work to get the movement to come fro those joints that are closer to the base of the finger where it connects with the rest of the hand.

The basic motion is a lot like waving. You wave the finger back toward the palm.

This is a little tricky to describe solely through text, but just these basic ideas should orient you in a good way toward proper finger movement.

Middle Finger, Much Like the Index

When the middle finger plays to follow the index finger, your main concern is watching for good finger movement from the middle finger, first off, and then keeping the ring finger relaxed as the middle finger plays.

The ring and middle are a little codependent. The ring wants to go where the middle finger goes and vice versa.

Keep an eye on the ring as you play it and try to relax any excess tension that crops up in it.

The Moment of Truth: Play the Ring Finger

When the ring finger plays its note, this arpeggio requires extreme attention.

If you work this moment very carefully and deliberately, you’ll set yourself up for high speed, power and fluidity in this arpeggio and all its derivatives.

So, when the ring finger goes to play, the index and middle have already played and are back toward the palm of the hand (not too far, but relatively speaking, they’re in that direction).

Now, as you play with the ring finger, you need to simultaneously kick the index and middle fingers back out so they’ll be ready to play their notes in succession following the ring finger’s note.

It takes some time and relaxed easy practice to build this switch smoothly into your hand. Take time and really respect this moment–it will either derail you and leave you frustrated when you hit a speed ceiling with this arpeggio that you can’t get past, or you’ll develop a supernatural speed thanks to your ability to easily make this switch without building up unnecessary extra tension in your picking hand.

The Return to Middle and Index

After the ring finger plays and the middle and index kick back out in front of their respective strings, it’s all downhill.

Just first play the middle finger, and allow the middle finger’s return stroke to bring the index finger along through its string.

If you work gently and persistently, this two-finger movement can feel like a single smooth motion.

Instead of feeling like the middle finger moves and then the index finger moves, work at making the movement feel likes two fingers, two notes, one stroke.

Heavyweight Help for the P,I,M,A,M,I Arpeggio

Mastering this arpeggio will put you in a great place for accompanying many different 3/4 songs.

If you perfect the simple (but complex!) movements of this arpeggio and work them steadily with a metronome to keep you rhythmically honest, you’ll have a very sweet, simple and beautiful accompaniment option that can serve as a solid base for all sorts of other picking hand improvisations.

In the even that you don’t have a piece of music in 3/4 that you’re already working on, I highly recommend Mauro Giuliani’s 5th Guitar Study from his Opus 48. It uses this arpeggio throughout and helped me a lot as I was working on developing the fluid finger movements for power and speed.

Arpeggio Consulting Available Right Here at String Love

If you haven’t checked out my Online Guitar Lessons section and received some benefit from this lesson, then you’ll definitely want to delve into the free guitar lessons I’ve created and posted there.

If you would like to get some advice on how to master this arpeggio or all kinds of other fingerstyle guitar techniques, I do teach guitar lessons in Nashville or via Skype.

Finally, if you’d like to hear how I employ this arpeggio alongside many others in my own music, then please check out my first album Spirited. You can grab it in digital form right here, right now, and you’ll be set up with some fantastic new music.

As always, please ask any questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to help you out!

NOTE: This technical discussion applies only to fingerstyle guitar players. It won’t apply to you if you’re exclusively a pick-style player.

When you are practicing the guitar, you continually have choices about how to move your fingers.

In my personal journey of learning to play guitar, I fumbled around in the dark for quite a while (we’re talking years) before I found a teacher who was able to instruct me in an effective, powerful technique. Up until I met this teacher, I was making more or less haphazard attempts to divine a way of using my fingers on the guitar that enabled me to make great music. Sometimes I succeeded, and sometimes I was heading in the opposite direction of good technique.

As I began learning a better way of playing the guitar (and better here refers specifically to being able to play more intricate music more expressively with fewer mistakes), there were a few major corrections that had huge payoffs without requiring painful amounts of time and effort.

Learning to play using Preparations was one of the most potent additions to my technique.

In this conversation on Preparations, I’m referring primarily to the picking hand rather than the fretting hand.

A preparation involves placing your fingers on the string they will next play well before they’re actually needed for the next note.

Instead of leaving your fingers to float around and above the strings, you prepare those fingers–you bring them to rest on the strings they’ll next play and keep them there until it’s their turn to pluck the note.

What Your Fingers Do If They Don’t Prepare

When I watch most untrained guitarists’ fingers move on the strings of the guitar, I usually see quite a bit of space between the fingers and the strings.

The fingers float off of the strings and lash out to strike the strings at the last possible moment.

Playing this way increases the likelihood of mistakes. The further away from the strings your fingers float, the more distance they have to travel. The expanded distance between fingers and strings introduces all kinds of possible errors into the playing.

Now, I’m not saying you should always only play with full preparations. I am saying that you should endeavor to keep your fingers as close to the strings as possible and eliminate any unnecessary movements from your playing hand in order to have the greatest possible command over the guitar.

How to Prepare

This is simply an introduction to the idea of preparing to get you thinking about it as you play your music on the guitar. I am in no way trying to be comprehensive here.

However, here’s how preparations work:

Let’s take a simple arpeggio like P I M A played across four different strings. So my thumb (P) plays the fifth string, my index finger (I) plays the fourth string, my middle finger (M) plays the third string and my ring finger (A) plays the second string.

I start out the first round of this arpeggio with each finger placed on the string it will play as we move through the arpeggio sequence.

Then, as I move successively through the arpeggio, each finger plays through the note. The thumb moves out while the fingers all move toward the palm of my picking hand.

Now, the preparation comes in when we play the ring finger and return to the top of the arpeggio with the thumb about to play.

As you get your thumb in position to play its note again, go ahead and bring all of your fingers to touch the strings they will be playing.

So, as your thumb plays, your index, middle and ring fingers are all already on their respective strings ready to play.

This is called preparing, and it is a subtle but powerful way for you to train your fingers to remain very close to the strings ready to perform their next musical movement.

These things can be difficult to explain just in text, but hopefully even the simple idea of placing your fingers on the strings ahead of time can get your mind moving and churning around how you can apply this powerful approach to your playing.

The intricacies of preparations come in as you begin playing more complex music. Instead of preparing all of your fingers at one time, you’ll be preparing a finger at a time as the other fingers perform their movements. But the basic concept of Preparing continues to apply.

In Need of Some One-on-One Instruction?

If you would like to get some one-on-one instruction on how to apply preparations directly to your playing, I teach in-person Nashville guitar lessons and webcam guitar lessons.

And if you haven’t heard my first album of original music, then definitely please consider picking up a copy of Spirited today. You’ll be supporting the mission of String Love Guitar and enabling me to continue providing these free guitar learning resources. Thanks!

Last week, I looked at how playing the guitar can help heal depression.

That, alas, was only one side of the story.

The other side of the story involves how the guitar can actually tip human beings over the edge into frustration, despair and madness.

If you want to cultivate your guitar playing as an avenue for feeling worse about yourself, here’s how:

1. Compare Yourself to Others

Your journey with the guitar is unique and distinct. Never before in all of human history has someone exactly like you tried to learn to play the guitar exactly like you’re playing it.

But if you want to forget all that and, instead, compare yourself to all those who are playing better than you, then welcome to a world of continual disappointment.

Comparisons are odious, and guitar comparisons in particular trip up many a would-be guitar player.

So many factors contribute to a person’s experience in learning to play the guitar. From the amount of time available for practice to how to use that practice time, the many factors that influence a person’s guitar playing ability render comparisons not only ineffective, but downright destructive.

To some extent, we’re all in this together. But we’re also all in this alone.

There’s a fine line between looking to the greater players for inspiration and comparing yourself to them and quitting the guitar because you’ll never be like them.

Discard comparisons and get on with your own particular journey of guitar development.

Unless, that is, you feel like feeling depressed.

2. Neglect Your Progress and Focus on Guitar Perfection Instead

I’m pulling from Dan Sullivan’s amazing work with this point.

When it comes to your own development on and off the guitar, you have a clear choice: do you compare yourself relative to some ideal of guitar playing way out there ahead of you, or do you notice where you started and appreciate how far you’ve come to get where you are now?

If you are intellectually honest with yourself, you will be able to see all kinds of things that you can now make happen on the guitar that you couldn’t do just a few short months or years ago.

Appreciate the leap that took you from rank beginner to everything you’re now able to do on the guitar.

Or, if you’re in the mood for misery, continually hold your current playing up against an ideal version of your guitar playing self that you may never actually be able to match.

Your happiness is a direct result of how you choose to think of the things that make up your life.

Focus on how far you’ve come, and you’ll likely feel energized, excited and bolstered to keep at it and see how far you can still go.

Focus on how far you have to go in order to reach your illusory ideal, and you’ll be more likely to collapse back into frustration and quitting.

3. Don’t Believe In Your Ability to Learn How to Play Guitar

In the personal development sphere, there’s a lot of discussion of beliefs.

The experts say our beliefs play a major role in the lives we create.

If we believe we can do something, our chances of actually doing it rise.

And if you don’t believe you can do something, you won’t put out the same level of effort, and your likelihood of success will fall.

I know many of the least helpful beliefs you can hold regarding learning to play the guitar intimately.

There’s the fact that I was too old when I started to play—16 instead of 12 or 8 or 3.

So, I carried around a belief that I wouldn’t be able to play the guitar as well as I’d like because I started too late.

Then there’s the fact that I didn’t study music formally in any sort of university program.

So, since I didn’t have an early formal education in music, I wouldn’t be able to create incredible music.

What about the fact that when I really got serious about leaping massively forward in my guitar playing, I was in my late 20’s?

Too old! Too late! Too bad!

I’ve encountered tons of beliefs holding me back from full expression of my talents on the guitar, and I’ve noticed many friends, students and family members held down by the ridiculous weight of negative beliefs around learning to play the guitar.

Do yourself a favor—lighten your load, discard the negative beliefs and get on with the adventure of finding out just what you’re capable of on the guitar.

…

Those are just three excellent ways you can sabotage your guitar playing progress.

There are others, of course, but I’ve found those to be the most effective.

So, what do you do when the frustration and despair about ever being able to actually play the guitar sets in?

Here are a few pointers that have helped me when I’ve wanted to give up and forget I ever tried to play the guitar:

1. Get back to basics.

Listen to the music that inspired you to play the guitar in the first place. Play through the simple songs that still make you smile.

Set aside the psychological potholes that keep tripping you up and just be a body strumming a guitar. Folk music is great for reconnecting us with the simple pleasure of being alive and having a guitar in hand.

2. Slow down.

I am a broken record. Why resist it?

S-L-O-W D-O-W-N.

A few days of slow practice will precipitate a leap in playing ability. If you’re still bent on ignoring the progress you’re making, no amount of progress will help you.

But if you actually want to reach the space where you feel like you can actually play some stuff on the guitar, slow practice is your ticket.

3. Take a break.

Maybe you’re going about learning to play the guitar the wrong way. Maybe your thinking has gotten so twisted and confused that you’re actually heading in the opposite direction of your heart as you force yourself to master the physical demands of guitar playing.

So, chill out. Take a breather. Go on a hike. Play with dogs and children. Have a good time.

The guitar isn’t a race. Enjoy the march up Guitar Mountain, and know that it’s okay to set the guitar down and take in some wide open vistas every now and again.

…

Respect the Six-String

If you treat music with respect, it can teach you things that might take a million years to learn otherwise. It can help you learn to feel and share and express and live with courage and confidence in the world.

If you disrespect music by indulging in all manner of mental confusions and attempting to force music to reveal its secrets, get ready for a brutal ride.

Ultimately, I don’t know what Music is. But after 15 years of fighting tooth and nail to learn how to play it, I’m quite clear that Music is still just patiently waiting for humanity to mature a bit so that it can reveal the full force of its hidden treasures.

Enjoy your musical ride, and if you ever find yourself plateauing and in need of a coach to help you cross a current guitar obstacle, I do indeed teach Nashville guitar lessons and guitar webcam lessons via Skype.