Speak Truth, Play Freely. Songwriting Guitar Lessons

If anyone has learned a card trick before, you already know 10% of the trick is one sleight or misdirection tool . The rest, is the story that you tell to make the illusion. The guitar and making music on it are the same thing. 10% of writing music on the guitar is learning the scales, techniques, and chords and the rest is the experimentation and documenting your life experiences with it.

I teach students the 12 bar blues chord progression because it offers them a template to bend and mold to their personality and style in a principled way. The 12 bar is a reduced form of how a song works so it cultivates the right musical intuition. Such as opening with an intro, a buildup, climax, and resolution.

Music is a constant exploration between rhythm and melody. Learning chords and scales help you make predictably better melodies and more natural rhythms. When they learn the chords and the scales, I show them how to combine them. When you combine two elements of the guitar together there are endless combinations. Finding the combination that is most meaningful to the student is what I love doing best.

Students who want to create on the guitar and be great at the guitar have no problem learning the chords and the scales. They understand that in order to make meaningful music you have to have principles and building blocks as a foundation.

Students who want to replicate cover songs on the guitar usually struggle to learn the scales or chords well enough and often struggle to learn cover songs because these musicians are using principles like, sequencing, palm muting, chord changes, and arpeggios to make their riffs and solos. It’s not impossible to learn these, but it’s so much easier to learn them when you’re prepared. They start to see the commonalities between songs and guitar players and how their favorite guitar players use techniques, scales, and the rhythms they have already mastered.

The main reason I use song writing and riff writing with principles is because music is an awesome memorization tool. The most special thing about music is that it allows ideas to be repeated without being boring. So when students use the scale in the context of improvising over a chord progression or working with me to make a new riff, they tend to remember the scale a lot better and practice more. Practice really becomes creation and exploration time.

Putting the principles such as chord progressions or scales into a creative environment makes the lessons feel a lot more personal. Personally, I don’t think students need a guitar teacher to get the essential knowledge of the guitar which is why I built the No Bars Held Course. However knowing what to do with those principles and how they can relate to their own interests and style is definitely something you want a teacher for. There is no impersonal way to understand and show someone how to express themselves truly. I have students express their truth because they learned the principles of truth on the guitar.

I loved going to guitar lesson with my teacher because he’d help me improve my music or show me how to play what I have inside my head. The path to saying it for myself becomes a lot more meaningful. It does involve using drum beats and practicing scales, and the guitar is not an easy instrument. However, I’m the type of person that likes doing challenging things with my time.

Overall creating music through the guitar is an amazing and open experience. The guitar is so malleable yet concrete that trying new shapes, switching, and experimentation is always possible. And once you’ve mastered the elements of strumming and fretting the string that you want (that’s a lot harder than it sounds) you will pick up the guitar and the music will speak what you can’t say and didn’t know you had to say. Which helps me understand where I’m at emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, the way no other hobby or activity can.

If you’re wondering how you can get to that place, let’s talk about lesson in a consultation and we can map out how you can get there and understand the “Why?” you want to use the guitar for better self- understanding, self- expression, and as a rewarding challenge in your life.