I always have all kinds of random thoughts about improving musicianship, and I never know where to put them. So I made this page. This list goes to show you that there aren't enough hours in a day, or days in a week, or weeks in a year, or years in a lifetime. As I write these ideas down, I also realize that a common theme through most of them involves working on your ears, and learning to recognize what you are hearing.

By the way, this list is 100% subjective. There are lots of avenues to becoming a good musician, these are just a few things that I have found helpful. These thoughts are in no particular order. If I had the time, I could probably devote a whole page to each of these topics, but I wanted to get the ideas out there so here's the abridged version:

Listen a lot, and listen to everything. I repeat, there are not enough hours in the day...There is more music in this world than you could ever listen to in your lifetime. Never rest; always expand your collection, always seek out new things to listen to. Also, go out of your way to find music that is outside of your usual listening comfort zone. Probably the #1 way that I have learned about most of the music I listen to is by reading about the musicians I already loved. I liked Eric Clapton, which led me to Buddy Guy, BB King, etc. I liked Jerry Garcia, which led me to bluegrass, and guys like Tony Rice. If you like Trey Anastasio, google a few interviews with him and find out who his influences are, and check them out. I also discover a lot of music on National Public Radio shows like The World Cafe, All Songs Considered, etc. Just remember that you have to be proactive about it. Nobody will spoon-feed you new music (certainly not the radio or other mainstream sources); you have to seek it out yourself.

Listen to jazz. Jazz is one of the few musical styles that we can consider to be almost 100% American. And, while this a pretty subjective statement, it could be said that jazz is one of the highest musical art forms in the world. The complexity of the music, and the players' mastery of their instruments, really do put jazz on a whole different level from any other kind of popular (ie., non-classical) American music. Those of us who are part of the "jamband" scene are part of another truly and uniquely American scene that, in some ways, is very much a descendent of jazz. Again, it's all about knowing your roots (just like with the blues). It is also about elevating your musicianship--there is a standard of excellence in the jazz community that we rock and roll players can really learn something from. When I got to music school (at the U. of Denver), I was absolutely amazed at how just plain good these people were. I didn't even know musicans could get that good. While most of us may never reach that level of musicianship, we can still gain a lot by striving for it.

Study jazz. Learn jazz standards. I can't emphasize this enough. Part of it is about knowing your roots, as I said above. But it's more than that. It would be impossible to place a value on the musical understanding that can be gained from studying jazz. The chord progressions are fascinating, and the way they operate is very sophisticated at times. By studying the tunes, you learn to really hear how the chords are functioning. And many of the tunes have some of the most beautiful melodies known to man. If you learn jazz tunes, even if you never play them in public, I guarantee you'll become a better musician.

Study (and play) Bach. The music of J.S. Bach can be considered a pinnacle of traditional Western music theory. Every Bach piece I have ever played has been a virtual self-contained music theory clinic. It is absolutely fascinating to observe the way he changed keys throughout his pieces; you see how you can get from just about any chord to just about any other chord in just a couple of steps, and how you can change keys seamlessly within a piece of music. Even as later composers began to break away from conventional music theory, especially in the 20th century, it could still be said that those composers were well aware of the rules that they were breaking. While Bach didn't exactly invent those rules, he really refined most of the "rules" that had evolved throughout music history up until his time. I particularly recommend Bach's Lute Suites (the "Bouree in Em" being the most famous piece from that group, played by everyone from Jimmy Page to Jethro Tull to Leo Kottke), but any Bach that is arranged for guitar is worth checking out. His fugues are incredible as well, although they are pretty difficult to play on guitar.

Play the blues. If you want to play rock and roll, you HAVE to check out some blues. Even if you have no interest in being a blues musician, I don't see how anybody could become a particularly accomplished rock (or jazz or country) player without at least a little bit of background in the blues. It is a cliche, in a sense, to say that the blues had a baby and named it rock and roll, but I really think that this is something that is being forgotten in a lot of contemporary rock. Some things that the blues players have mastered that we can learn from: Tone, Vibrato, Phrasing, Dynamics, Attitude. All of these things are ingredients in good guitar playing, no matter what the style. I am working on a whole section of this website devoted to the blues--hope to get it done by Jan. '06.

Practice with a metronome. There is no possible way I could emphasize this enough. Good rhythm is as important to good musicianship as anything else I can think of, even good ears. Practice your materials at various speeds, and especially go out of your way to practice things extremely slowly. You will be surprised what you can learn by doing this.

Train your ears. Looking back, I can easily say that the #1 most important skill I gained in music school was the ear training. Combined with a solid understanding of theory, you can learn to instantly recognize exactly what you are hearing in all kinds of different contexts. It is important to learn to recognize intervals so that you can pick out melodies, and it is equally important to be able to recognize chord types and chord progressions. There are lots of reasons why this helps: 1. You can learn to recognize a chord progression instantly, just by listening to it. 2. You can tell exactly what notes and chords the other people in your band are playing when you are improvising, which allows you to feed off of their ideas (an ESSENTIAL part of good group improv). 3. It helps you memorize music because your understanding goes beyond a theoretical level--your hands are guided by your ears, and 4. Your compositional ideas will become more refined and better-articulated. There are probably other reasons too, but these three strike me as the most important. On the HCG links page, you will find a link to a great (and free) ear training program.

Transpose music. To transpose a song means to change its key. If you don't know how to do this, check out my page on chord scales (will be linked soon). The real benefit of doing this is that it forces you to think of each chord in the song in terms of its function and its relationship to the other chords, instead of just its name. To me, this goes hand-in-hand with ear training.

Listen to (and play) Bluegrass. Bluegrass is another very American style of music that we can all learn a lot from. First of all, you need a fair amount of technical ability to play as fast as these people do. If you practice bluegrass tunes, your technique (and especially your picking technique) is guaranteed to improve. Also (and I think this is very important), bluegrass improv is very much melody-based, as opposed to scale- or mode-based. The best bluegrass players don't just play scales and lines over a chord progression; their improv's could be better described as variations on the melody of the tune they are playing. This is not to say that scales and modes aren't involved, but that they are secondary to the melody of the song. As I seem to be mentioning frequently on this site, melody is one of the most important aspects of making good music.

Learn another instrument. I spent a couple years studying the flute, and it was one of the best things I ever did for my musicianship. The grid-like nature of the guitar's fretboard makes it a very patternistic instrument, and because of this, many of us get stuck in a rut of playing the same patterns all the time, instead of truly making melodies and following our ears (which is what good improvisation should really be). When you learn another instrument (and learn to improvise on it), you do not have those same patterns to fall back on, and it forces you to think melodically. It also forces you to really learn your scales, not just the patterns that they form on the neck of the guitar.

Learn to read music. You know how to get the guitar player to shut up? Sheet music. Let's face it, MOST musicians know how to read music...except guitar players (and drummers too, I guess). Every kid that learns any other instrument, from piano to tuba, learns to read music in the process. In our defense, I will say that standard musical notation is not necessarily all that guitar-friendly--for example, 'middle C' (second string, first fret) can be played in no less than five different spots on the neck of the guitar. This makes it excruciatingly difficult to come up with fingerings on the fly. However, a lot can be gained from a solid knowledge of how to read standard notation. It can help you learn to "hear" a melody in terms of its intervals, it can help you figure out difficult rhythmic figures, and it can generally solidify your understanding of music and how it works. It is also obviously a huge help when you need to communicate your musical ideas to other musicians. Also, if you know how to read music, it will set you apart from the other 99% of the guitarists in the world who can't. This can get you a lot of work--before I got busy with Phix, I used to get hired occasionally by a corporate band. I would show up an hour before showtime, not have to move any gear except my own, I'd usually be out of there by 11 pm, and at the end of the gig the bandleader would hand me a check for $300. Easy money (and a helluva lot more than I make at a typical Phix show!). But I only got the gig because I could read music.

Return to the HCG Articles Home Page