[Newsletter] Which type of guitar learner are you: a hunter or a gatherer?
Essential chord progressions; Play like a singer
As a legendary music teacher, Ivan Galamian’s advice is rich in insight. I’ve summarized his book, Principles of Violin Teaching and Playing, specifically for self-taught guitarists. Give it a read: 5 practice principles self-taught guitarists can learn from a famous violin teacher
Something to think about
Which type of guitar learner are you: a hunter or a gatherer?
There are many ways to categories yourself as a guitar player. This one is fun.
Gatherers spend a lot of time exploring one area. They find a fruit tree here, some grains over there, and they hang out knowing they can eat a little bit each day. They pick the area clean before moving into the next spot. Hunters, on the other hand, move around. They travel large swaths of land to follow and capture their prey. They move more quickly from location to location.
Both groups eat, but knowing which one you fall into makes the planning of your life easier.
If a guitar player is a gatherer, they are happy exploring the same style of music all the time, often returning to the same concepts and ideas.
They will scavenge the genre slowly and learn every nook and cranny of it. They pick the area clean before moving onto the next thing, but they know they can come back to this area because the food will grow again. In the process of gathering, they’ve really stopped to smell the roses - they picked up a lot of small detail that gives them a unique and strong knowledge of that territory.
It’s a meandering, slower way of learning.
If a guitar player is a hunter, they find something they want and get there as fast as possible.
They set their sights on some concept or technique they want to learn and, once they've achieved it, they go to the next concept. They happily jump from one territory to the next to chase their prey. Stop and smell the roses? That’s a waste of time. They may ignore other nourishing food sources in pursuit of the big, delicious game. If you want to learn to sweep pick, why bother fucking around?
The gatherers know more information about less material, while the hunters know less information about more material.
There are pros and cons to both approaches and you probably have a natural bent toward one or the other. It’s worth thinking about to play to your strengths.
Something to watch
Here's a lifetime worth of knowledge in 18 minutes.
While these chord progressions are easy to perform, a mastery of them gives you real access to at least half of the pop, rock, and folk music out there. But what is there to master? If you can play all the open cowboy chords, you can do these progressions in a bunch of different keys, right? True, but that is shallow knowledge which will lead to a shallow application.
Mastery comes from hearing the progressions in the wild, being able to transpose into different keys on the spot, and having the ability to play the same progression a bunch of different ways.
I like the first four progressions the most. These are the foundations of pop, rock, and folk music. I think it's common to feel like you've got a great handle on the basic idea, but without fully examining the possibilities, you're succumbing to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Once you start asking questions, you start to realize how much you haven't figured out yet.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself about these progressions:
Even though I know two songs use the same progression, why do they sound different?
How many ways can I execute the progression? Different strumming patterns? Fingerpicking? Outlining them just with a melody?
What happens if I think like a choir? What "voices" are involved? How can I move through the chord progression while having the bass voice be the focal point? Or the highest voice?
Going from G to Em is the same progression as D to Bm. What can I do in one key that I can't do in the other? What does the guitar let me do in one key that is impossible in the other?
Questions like these are why pop music has similar chord progressions, yet still gets produced all these decades later.
Something to practice
Develop your musicianship by transcribing a vocal line on guitar.
As a vernacular instrument, the guitar makes certain kinds of music really well, but other types of music are more challenging. One thing that takes a lot of practice is making the guitar "sing." The layout of the fretboard lends itself to patterns that become so habitualized, it's hard to play any other patterns. It opens up a whole different part of your musical brain to play like a singer, so try this:
Pick a song you like that sounds easy to figure out by ear. Here's a good example. The vocal line is only major scale notes and it's slow and deliberate.
Take a section and figure out the notes by ear. It doesn't have to be the whole song, just a section that feels manageable.
Learn the vocal line and be able to play along with the recording in its basic form.
Now the fun part:
Go back and listen closely to what the singer is doing. Listen for dynamics, little vibratos, slurring from one note to the next, or any other thing they do to make the notes sound less flat.
Try to imitate these little expressions with the guitar. Don't expect it to be perfect - the guitar has physical limitations the voice doesn't. It will be very difficult if you're not used to it, but if you can match a little vibrato here, or a dynamic change there, you're on the right track.
Play without the recording. Try to hear the singing in your playing in isolation.
An afternoon of doing this will change how you think about the guitar. It's not just about pentatonic, strum patterns, solos, or any of that. It's also about doing something simple, yet well.