I want to help you start on the right path, so you can play with freedom, joy, and creativity. Everyone has natural creative abilities and talents, yet sometimes we need another person to show us our true potential.
Every hero starts meets the mentor to accelerate the process to their goal. You can get a “Guitar Hero Action Plan” below.
Strengths: Song Birds are salt of the earth and happy go lucky people. They enjoy playing songs for friends and family at parties, campfires, and on social media. They have a huge musical library spanning lots of genres. They are walking discographies, loyal fans, and can tell you 10 weird facts about their favorite musicians. They have great musical phrasing and are strong at ear training. They tend to be interested in learning all parts of the song, not just the guitar parts.
Challenges: Things that Song Birds struggle with is follow through, isolation, developing an authentic feel with the instrument, and G.A.S (gear acquisition syndrome). Song birds usually learn the hooks or run into a challenge in a song and stop there. They picked up the guitar to add joy, ambience, and fun to their life but more importantly to others life, so having a campfire or showcase venue is important to them. They tend to learn the right notes yet their dynamics and technique can seem a little stiff or forced. To compensate for some of these set backs they look for new pedals, guitars, or quick educational programs like “25 Awesome Rock Licks You Must Know”
Solutions: You got to pick 10 of your favorite guitar players and write a guitar riff that sounds like them. “Like attracts Like”. So what you like about other guitar players must be within you to be able to recognize it. You should try to find backing tracks of songs that you like and instead of playing the solo exactly, find out the key and then use the scales to improvise. You should ask your friends, family, or romantic partner which song they would like to hear. Try to find a couple friends or an online group where you can post your playing and share your love for your favorite bands with other die hard fans.
After a couple months of these exercises this is Brandon at age 12 performing Purple Rain:
Gifts and Talents: Shredders are passionate players that always seek to excel no matter the genre. They love their instrument and enjoy the competition with other players. Their virtuosity inspires them to innovate and experiment constantly. They can play and create on the guitar for hours at a time and leave the audience amazed and wowed. They can play for a sold out arena or in their bedroom with the same inspiration and enthusiasm. They have great technique, legato, dexterity, and muting that show how colorful and spontaneous the instrument and their soul is.
Challenges: Shredders tend to use standard guitar shapes in their scales and find that not all the notes in the scale work with chords being played. Sight reading and music theory are major drains on their attention span because they can’t keep their hands still. Sometimes their hands move faster than the speed of sound so their discipline with scales can falter in an out of key. They can also show all their best licks in the first 10 seconds and then not know what to play next.
Solutions: Shredders need to learn harmonious guitar shapes- called arpeggios which help them put their natural impulses into a contextual structure that fits with the chords. The music theory they learn must be hands on and interactive. Writing the note names and rhythmic subdivisions with a pencil helps internalize the material. Getting a free notation software like Musescore or a paid version like Guitarpro helps them create and try new ideas using different musical notation. They have to learn how to sequence scales so they can get more notes per square inch of the fretboard. When soloing they should put rules on each section such as only one thing accentuated at a time: pentatonics, single string, legato or stacatto, bending or sliding, or apeggios. Practicing can feel insulting because they are already so great, so a large library of backing tracks to record or improvise over will help keep them engaged in their own awesomeness.
Her'e’s Viswa shredding over his backing track we recorded. We started it off with speed and aggressive picking, then used an arpeggio with long notes, then fast diatonics to slow arpeggios again.
Gifts and Talents: Musical theorists are magicians at heart. They love learning the spells, sleights, and construction of the fundamental elements. All their questions start with why and end with why. Their never ending curiosity makes them lifelong learnings and great composers. They are happy to learn exercises and feel a great sense of accomplishment finishing their homework. They like to play for loved ones and aspire to be in school band or get a music degree. They see every chord as an opportunity to be substituted and want to play with all the colors.
Lex is understanding harmony and intervals in different keys. Color coding the 1, 4, 5, of the 12 bar blues and discovering that they can use this to find all the major and minor chords in any key within minutes.
Challenges: Musical Theorists are have perfectionistic tendencies. When learning the guitar the strumming pattern has to be exactly right or nothing at all. Their curiosity can get the better of them as they take a more cerebral path to the guitar; so other people who just play first ask questions later tend to progress faster. They also need a reason to play things rather than a feeling to play things which means without a regimented practice routine or set goals, the guitar starts collecting dust.
Solutions: Having a one on one connection with someone who you can always ask questions, reminders, tablature, sheet music, or exercises to work on during the week is pertinent. You’ll want to have a couple books on music theory and a sheet reading book. I like the Hal Leonard Classical Guitar Book, Vaideology by Steve Vai, and The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten as a good start. You are going to want to develop a daily routine that’s about 10 minutes long and at a consistent time of the day. This will help you set manageable tasks for each day to reinforce the ideas you are learning. These students are sentimental with knowledge so when you forget something it really bothers you. Reviewing and completing something new and with the No Bars Held Course each day helps solidify concepts and keep you playing instead of thinking. Improvisation for you is more of the jazz method. Learning the chords ahead of time and making sure you feel prepared enough to get into the game.
Gifts and Talents: Songwriters come in all types of demeanors from humble to eccentric, often a mix of both. They are honest, empathetic, hardworking, and have a utilitarian approach to life and music. They can see the big picture and get others inspired about their vision. They can translate life experiences into musical notes and don’t mind bending the rules to do it. They have a natural ability to find hooks and catchy rhythms. They can be musical shapeshifters, being a combination of the songbird, shredder, and musical theorist in varying degrees.
Challenges: Songwriters feel most alive when they are creating and inspired. They need personal space to get into the dream like state of composing. They have so many ideas that sometimes it’s hard to organize them all together. Each part of a song is like their pet or child, so letting something go or changing it can feel personal. If you know about David Gilmour and any of the Beatles drama you’ll know sometimes the Songwriter can be stubborn and domineering, even if they are selling the most records.
Solutions: A designated solo space, a recording program, and allowing others to write their own “Octopus Garden” once in a while is the key to developing their collaborative and creative spirit. Often times your grand visions are greater than you can do alone so collaborating with others is fruitful for you. The solo space makes sure they can keep the creativity going without fear of interruption. It’s like waking up from a dream, you can’t go back into the dream once you’re awake. The recording program allows them to take those ideas and move them to the end of the track, save it for later or come back to it. It’s not gone, just put aside for a little bit. It also allows for sections of songs to rearranged much easier and for more layers and instruments to be added.
Ethan captivates and encapsulates the atmosphere of "Halloween Eve". He did the Song Writer Lesson Classes for one month. We worked out different sections using the diminished and harmonic scales, then manifested them into a song.
Ryan is a guitar student, yet also produces trap beats, plays the piano, and the drums. We translated a piano part he wrote into a guitar in order to sound more like Travis Scott. Here he is leading the jam band class through one of his songs.
If you discover your guitar student identity, you will learn, create, and play with joyous freedom forever. The Song Bird, Shredder, Music Theorist, and Songwriter all need to learn the same concepts but acquire and use them very different ways. Your guitar student personality type is the fire that kicks in your “Make Music Not Excuses” response. Each section will go over your strengths, challenges, solutions, and how we will make music to reinforce the concepts.
If you’re going to play a musical instrument you should make music. Music’s unique ability is it allows for a message to be repeated pleasurably. So if you can create music pleasurable to you, you will remember the musical concepts. Unlike every other instrument, the guitar offers the most musical paths and is easiest to create with.
Instead of focusing on weaknesses, in private lessons, I work on your strengths. I believe “A rising tide lifts all ships”. When we develop your strengths, you gain greater happiness and confidence and your weaker concepts will strengthen effortlessly
I love to identify student’s natural tendencies and abilities then give them the material to build their musical kingdom. From Archetype to Musical Architect.
1 Hr Guitar Hero Action Plan: “Using the 8 Steps to Guitar Nirvana”
Maximize Enjoyment in practice- We will turn practice time into play time. Based on your personality and style we’ll develop the most enjoyable way to practice the lessons in “8 Steps to Guitar Nirvana”.
Identify and Grow your Musical Gifts using timeless guitar concepts and techniques. You will be surprised how much you can do with what you have at hand already.
Discover your Inner Creator and write your own riff using the concepts. The beautiful part about music is that it allows for an idea to be repeated pleasurably. We’ll use the concepts in the course to develop riff and solo ideas that you will remember and love playing.
Manifest New Skills and Knowledge- Decide how you want to play and sound in 30 days. We will create a plan with drum beats, backing tracks, song tabs, or videos that will get you there.
A Lesson that can last a lifetime- record your lesson for later review so you can keep the knowledge and ideas at hand forever.
Since you took action to know yourself and know your instrument; i.e decided to make music rather than excuses.
My promise:
If you follow the strategy we develop, take lessons, and are unsatisfied with your results after 30 days. You can get another video response lesson on the challenges. Plus You can keep both “Dragon Scales” and “8 Steps to Guitar Nirvana” a $149 value!
SongWriter in action
Ryan leading the band in one of his songs he wrote. We took the notes and principles from the piano and transformed them into guitar for a mix of electronic and realistic sounds.
