Acoustic Guitar Lessons For Beginners

1. Acoustic Guitar Lessons For Beginners: Welcome to the Music Coach online guitar program, where you'll learn from scratch How to Play the guitar. My name is Todd Porter, and I'm a professional musician and educator, Canada, where I've been teaching and performing for the last 15 years. Music Coach program has been designed to get you playing with other people as quickly as possible, because the real joy and music is being able to express yourself with other people, listen and interact. And so the whole course curriculum has been designed around this idea of teaching you how to play the instrument, but at the same time teaching how toe have the skills you're gonna need to play. By the end of the course, you're gonna have the confidence to grown up friends and family and other people who play and get a jam session going, because the goal is to get you playing with other people as quickly as possible. The program starts fight, learning how to pick your first instrument. You need to rent it or buy. It helps you move through how to put it together, make your first sound and learn how to play some scales and rhythms and harmony so that you can interact with other musicians as quickly as possible. If you've always dreamed about playing the guitar and just not knowing where to start and you come to the right place, Thank you for your interest in the Music Coach online guitar program, and I hope you're as excited as I am to get started. 2. 4 Essential Elements of Music: What is music? Music is the language of the planet, spoken by every society since the beginning of time. Music is a vibrational language that allows us to convey complex ideas that spoken or written language alone cannot adequately express music gives us an almost unlimited vocabulary for communicating emotional information through sound way. Are all born musicians Theo Idea. That some of us are musicians and some of us are not is so far from the truth. It's laughable. You are made of music. Your heart is beating steadily in your body, keeping the rhythm of your life flowing. Your ears and voice are constantly working together to shape your experience through the sound you make and sounds. You hear it is all music, therefore, essential elements to be able to play music on any instrument. They are rhythm, harmony, melody and your passion for music. To explain these concepts, we're going to use the analogy of a train train itself is you. And the passion that you have for music is the boiler. Inside the train, you were born with the deep passion for music, like every other person whose ever been born and come before you and everyone who will come after you now you might be saying yourself, I have no passion for music or I can't even remember a time when I did thistles just simply because it got extinguished in you. And the good news is it could be reignited and made to burn hot and passionate again. The key to starting any good fire is to start with the right amount of fuel and a little bit of air. This is the same in music. One of the biggest problems people run into is they get overwhelmed. This is like putting too much wood down and trying to light it with one match. A roaring fire always starts out small, and it's helped, along with just the right amount of fuel at the right time and a continuous flow of air fire and the boiler of your train is the single most important part of your musical journey . Now, for a train to go anywhere it needs to go along a track. You can't just have a train in the middle of nowhere, with no track and get a fire burning hot and expected to go somewhere. A railroad track has three main elements. Railroad ties, which are the wooden beams that go along the ground. And two tracks, one on either side with trains. Wheels sit on rhythm is like the railroad ties, which are evenly spaced and allow for the stability for the train to move. Once the tracks are in place, railroad ties air spaced in a way that is even and breaks up the distance between two points so that time can be felt in a consistent way. If you put your train on top of just railroad ties, you're not gonna be going anywhere, so let's have the next piece of track. Harmony is the piece of track that runs alongside the railroad ties. It's fastened securely to them, which allows the rhythm to pass freely underneath harmonies most often expressed as cords. Cords air simply a grouping of three or more notes stacked vertically. The most common use of them, his major and minor. Most people experience major chords, is sounding happy, and minor chords is sounding sad. Almost all music that you've heard on the radio or on television and in movies is made up of major and minor courts. Melody is the piece of track on the other side. Opposite the Harmony, the melody is the most recognizable and distinctive part of any song to songs can have the same rhythmic and harmonic structure, but melodies are completely unique to the song from which they come from. When you think of a famous song in your head, most likely you're thinking about the melody. A melody is just simply a pattern of notes moving up or down involving the rhythm and interacting with the harmony that is connected to once you have these three elements of track of railroad ties, which of rhythm Harmony, which is one of the tracks in the melody, which is the other track your train can now roll along. Then all you have to do is keep adding more pieces of track your train control further and further faster and onward in your musical jury. 3. Notes, and the musical alphabet: throughout the world. There are many different notation systems in music in Western Europe and North America. We use a 12 tone system with the musical alphabet toe. Understand the 12 tone system. We first need to understand how we measure the distance between two notes, their two main distances used in our system. They're tones and semi tones. The easiest way to see and understand tones and semi tones is on a piano. A piano is made up of white keys and Blackie's, and a tone is the distance between two white keys with a black in the middle or between two black keys with a white key in the middle. A semi tone is our smallest unit of distance, which is between a white key in a blackie or between two white keys where there is no black he in the middle. All scales and music are simply a pattern of tones and semi tones that repeats. The most common one is the major scale, which goes tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone on a piano. If you start this pattern on, see, there's no need to use any black keys because the pattern is built right into the keyboard of tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone. If you start the pattern on any other key, however, you need to use the Black Keys to maintain the pattern. This is why we have sharps and flats to make up the 12 different keys inside of the system . 4. Melody: melody is the part of songs that most people identify with, since there are so many harmonic and rhythmic combinations melodious the most distinct part of any song. Close your eyes and think for a moment of your favorite piece of music. Chances are you're hearing the melody in your head. A melody is both rhythmic and harmonic, and if it is well constructed, it could be sung or played on its own and be clearly understood. Simply put, a melody is a string of notes and rests that move up and down in relation to the harmony underneath it. 5. Harmony: harmony like the universe itself, is all about relationships. We're alive right now on Earth because of its relationship to everything else in our solar system. Any two notes played at the same time are considered harmony. Sound travels in waves that are measured in Hertz hurts measures how maney waves per second a note is generating a string on a guitar, for example, vibrates 440 times per second. Lower notes vibrates slower and higher. Notes vibrate faster human ears can hear in a range of approximately 31 hurts. Up to 18,000 hertz dogs, for example, can hear a much larger range. They can hear from 40 hertz all the way up to 60,000 hertz when two or more notes air played. At the same time, the sound waves interact with each other, creating two states of dissonance and continents, more commonly known as tension and release. Imagine the sound waves are like dolphins jumping in and out of the water notes that Aaron dissidents or tension never line up evenly so that the pattern of the dolphins being in and out of the water is never in complete alignment. This is a physical event and why some people experience tension in music as very uncomfortable. This technique is often used in movie soundtracks to enhance the sense of unease. Continents or release is having the dolphins come into a pattern where sometimes or all of the time they're at the top or bottom of their pattern together at the same time, much like our preference for spicy or sweet tastes, we each have a sense of how much tension and release we like in our music. And like a sense of taste, it can evolve over time, depending on what were exposed to the fact that there are no wrong notes is not just a spiritual state of mind. It's a fact. All that exists is tension and release or dissonance and continents and how much you enjoy . He is entirely up to your own sense of personal taste. Cords are organized harmony. Harmony is used most commonly to make up chords that air called triads. They're just simply cords that have three notes in them, cords are built like houses. There is a foundation which we call the route the third, which is like the main floor and the fifth, which is like the second floor of the house. The route is the note that gives Accord its name. For example, in a C chord, the route is see. The third of the note is the third note in the scale, so see is one is to and is three. The fifth is the fifth note in the scale. See is one D is to his three, Fs four and G is five. There are several different types of chords. The two most common are major chords and miners. What makes a cord major or minor is the relationship of the third to the root of the court . When it is closer to the fifth than the route, it is major, which is like moving the main floor of your house up slightly when it is closer to the basement, where the root it's minor. The way you move a note, closer or further away, is with sharps and flats to change a C poured from major to minor, you change the third, which is E. T. Flat. Most people experience major and minor chords by hearing them as happy sounds for major on and sad sounds for minor. It's always good to remember that music is a language that you were built to speak. And even when you're working on something that's a challenging concept, just know that with enough time and practice you'll be able to master it. 6. Rhythm: rhythm is a word that has many meanings in music. This could be the source of unnecessary confusion for students. When they first begin. You may have heard the words time and tempo used in the same way. Let's break this down into the essential elements. Tempo is like a river. Think of a river for a moment. It usually flows at a constant pace, but it's not rigid or mechanical. When humans make music, it is a goal to be as consistent as possible with the tempo. But in reality it's alive, and it has subtle shifts, like the flow of a river Rhythm is how we interact with flow of this river. Imagine sticking your hand in the flow of the river for one second and then pulling it back out. Then imagine doing the same thing for two seconds and half a second. This is the equivalent to playing notes of different lengths. The river is constant, but how long we play the notes for is what makes it in the music. Rhythm is the most mathematical part of music education, but fear not. There is nothing more advanced than simple addition and subtraction involved. Imagine your favorite type of pie for a moment. Now, the size of the pie is constant. No matter how we slice it, the pie represents a bar of music. If you eat the whole pie yourself, it's like playing a whole note, which takes up the entire bar. If you invite a friend over and cut the pie in two, you have to half notes. If you cut it again, you have 4/4 tones. Cut it again and you have 8/8 in music. All time has to be accounted for again. Think of the pie if you have a pie and you cut it into 4/4 and you only want to eat one of the quarters. The other 3/4 still exists because the whole pie was baked. This is the same in music. So wherever there's not a note played, there has to be arrest to take his place. So each of the note values in music of whole half quarter eighths and so on all have rests that last for the same amount of time 7. Guitar Setup and buyers: welcome to the instruments set up and buyers guide for the acoustic guitar. Today I'm gonna help you get started on answering some basic questions about what kind of guitar you should be buying, whether you should rent it first, what kind of strings to put on it and how to get set up so the strap is on properly and how to use a cable and things like that. So to start with, you may be wondering, should I be buying a guitar or renting it? And also, guitars are so common that you may have one in your family that someone has just said, Oh, I have a guitar in my closet And here you should just try this because it's free. First of all, guitars that have been lying around in the closet are not always bad, but sometimes they're not in great shape. And if it was a very cheap guitar to start with, you may end up having to spend more money to get it playable than it is to even just go out and buy a brand new guitar. Because guitars are so commonly made, they're actually one of the least expensive instruments to just buy brand new. So as a general thing, I recommend that people starting out, you just get a brand new guitar unless you have a really good one in your family that you can play. What were you can tell if you're not sure, is just take whatever guitar you have and take it to a music store and have them have a look at it. And usually they'll be pretty honest with you about how much money would cost to get it set up properly and get it playing really well. And then while you're there, you can look around and decide. Well, they're telling me I need to put $100 or $200 into this guitar. And for $150 more, I could just buy a brand new guitar that's already in great shape. Now the question of whether to rent or buy comes up often, and if you live in a major city or near a big city that has different music stores, renting is a great option before you buy, because you can rent a guitar for sometimes seven or $10 for a week. Um, and sometimes about 20 or $30 for a whole month. And if you're going to be spending a couple $100 I always recommend spending a little bit of extra money and just renting it in, getting at home and trying it out on your own before you fully commit to it. Here's some things to think about when you're buying a new guitar at the lowest price point , you're going to find guitars that are in the 150 to $300 range, and in that range, most of them are going to be parlor sized and have no no electron ICS in the middle, which again is fine when you go up one price point above that sort of the 300 to $500 range , you'll get into basic electron ICS and things like cutaways and a little bit higher quality . As a very general rule, I always recommend if you can don't buy right at the bottom I. But I like to buy one or two levels up from the cheapest thing because when any companies trying to cut costs, you're going to really see it the most right at the bottom in it This guitar here, for example, is about $500 and I use it professionally all the time. It sounds really good. Never had any problems with it. Now you can spend all the way up into the thousands of dollars, but I find that, you know, with acoustic guitars you can get a really good guitar for about $500. Now the size of the body of the guitar is the next thing we're gonna look at. I have a couple of guitars with me here. This one here is a full sized guitar, which is a standard size. This one right here is what's called a parlor sized, so the body is a little bit narrower, and it's also a little bit smaller now. This has advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages is, is if you're smaller or if you're a child, it's easier to reach your arm over the body. It'll feel less like a big, bulky instrument, and also the neck is a little bit shorter, so your fingers don't have to stretch quite a Sfar. But one of the downsides is that it's not as loud because it doesn't the inside part of the guitar is not as big. So if you're planning on playing at campfires or outside, especially ah, bigger body guitar will be closer to the level of your singing voice. If you're planning to play in sick now, some guitars come with an electronic tuner and a pickup built right into it, which allows you to plug into a sound system. I find this is a really great feature to have on a guitar, because you just never know where you're gonna end up playing. And if you really get into playing the guitar at some point, you might play at a talent show or a music night somewhere. And it's a lot easier to plug into a sound system using a pickup than it is to get a microphone and mike a guitar, especially if you're dealing with people who are not really experienced with doing it. If you're just playing in some community center or theater space where they're not used to miking, an acoustic guitar can be very hard to get a good sound unless you have some experience with it. It does, however, affect the price. Usually, it's a little bit more money toe have electron ICS in your guitar, but again as a long term thing, then you don't have to buy two guitars, so I often recommend buying one with some kind of electron ICS in it. To begin with, this one has it just a basic volume control E Q and A tuner built right right in, which is also a nice feature. Tohave. And with most guitars, the pickup is just in the end pin, where you plug in your instrument cable. Now how the strap connects to the guitar is also really important. The most standard way that you'll see. I'll demonstrate on this guitar right here. This is a much This is a guitar from the 1930 so it's even got a string strap on it. Almost all guitars will have a pin in the end that with the strap will wrap around. And if it doesn't have a pin in the neck, what happens is is you tie the strap underneath the strings at the top. Now this has some disadvantages, so I don't always recommend this. For starters, the guitar will move a little more like this when you're seated, especially, and also over time, the tension is gonna pull on the neck a little bit, so it's gonna warp the neck faster than it will if it's connected the other way, which I'm gonna show you now. So what I recommend is having some guitars come right away with it, but is having a cleat installed into the neck here, which allows the guitar to sit more like an electric guitar does. So it clips onto the back the same way. And then, like this, it allows the guitar to be a little more stable, and also it doesn't pull on the Net quite as much. And if your guitar doesn't come with one, or even if you have a guitar that doesn't have it, you can easily go to a music store and have this installed, or you can even do it yourself. It's not really that complicated, but I definitely recommend buying an extra set of cleats and putting one in either yourself or having someone else do it. Now the type of strings you have in your guitar will also affect the playability or how easy it is on your fingers. I personally like to use what are called coated strings, which have a synthetic coating on them that allows them to be a little softer on your fingers and also last longer because changing strings on a guitar is time consuming and expensive. So even though coated strings tend to cost a little bit more per pack, they last about twice as long. The other factor with strings is the weight of them or how thick they are. Generally speaking, most companies wait their guitars as media are sorry light, medium and heavy or light, medium and hard. Um, I recommend for beginner players to go with the lightest strings you can because they take the least amount of energy to push down. And they also just over time are a little easier on your fingers. The reason for having heavier strings on an acoustic guitar, especially, is how much volume you can get. If you have really light strings and you have to play loudly, they'll be knocked at a tune easier, and they won't generate quite as much volume. But unless you're having to play outside a lot and you're performing, I don't really recommend getting really heavy strings. Now, the type of picky end up choosing to use is a very personal decision, much like the type of pen you like to write with a pencil. I've had friends who are really amazing guitar players who use very, very thin picks and sound amazing and people who use really hard picks and also sound amazing. But as a general rule, the lighter or the more flexible the pick is, the easier it is to strum really hard and fast without knocking the strings at a tomb. And the harder the pick is, the easier it is to pick the strings fast and cleanly individually. So I personally like to use him sort of somewhere in the middle, a medium sort of like a medium hard pick, because sometimes I'm playing and I have to do a lot of strumming. And other times I have to do soloing, an individual string plane at almost any place that they sell guitars. There'll be probably a whole wall with buckets full of picks, and what I recommend is you just they're usually about 25 or 50 cents each. Just take $5 go by a bunch of them, just one of each a bunch of different ones and then get them home and try them. And when you find one that you really like, then you can go back and for a lot cheaper you could buy a whole bag of them, and then doctor sort of becomes the pick that you choose. Another important piece of equipment for playing the acoustic guitar is a cape. Oh que pose allow you to shorten the length of the neck and play the same chord shapes, but in different keys. So a cape Oh, is just something with a spring in it that clips onto the neck at one of the fret locations and just shortens the neck. You can find very inexpensive ones that are a strap with a thing with a hinge that hinges over. I don't recommend buying them for a couple reasons. One is they have to be readjusted depending on where you are on the neck. And they also they're just not as easy to get a clean sound where all the strings or pushed down these hinged ones air usually about 20 to $30. And I recommend just getting one and keeping it in your case. The other thing you do is you just clip it on to the end of your guitar. It's a little easier to keep from losing it. Having a guitar stand is a really important piece of equipment that you're gonna need. You'll often see guitar players resting their guitars against a table or an amplifier like this, or like this. These air not recommended ways to store your instrument. It's really easy for a guitar to slide and become damaged, chip the neck or even break the neck. So I definitely recommend getting some kind of a proper guitar stands, something that's made for guitars. The other thing that will help you do is it will make your practicing more efficient, and you'll probably practice more often because of the guitar is out and easy to access. Your just gonna grab it and start playing. You'll walk past it and think, Hey, I should pick it up and start playing. If it's in a case and it's in a closet, it's that old saying of It's out of sight, out of mind. So when your guitar is gone out of your vision, you're gonna be less inclined to think to pick it up. Guitar stands air range in price, usually from a little, is about $20 up to about $50. The only main technical differences is some of the more modern ones have these locking mechanisms that allow the guitars wait to close a little bit to keep it from sliding out. These are a little more advanced. They're usually more used for performing musicians, because when you're on a stage, there's more people, things moving around. A very basic Qatar stand like this, which has just got to hooks, is was, well, adequate enough for you at home to get started with, but definitely make sure toe have, ah, good guitar stand. Now, with any instrument, you're going to need some ongoing maintenance. And I recommend that if you live in a major urban area and there are guitar stores or music stores around, they often have a repair department. And for a very low price, you can usually have your guitar have what's called a set up done on it. And usually it's in the sort of 50 to $100 range for a basic set up, and I recommend that about once a year you take your guitar in and have a basic set up done , and in a basic set up, they will take off the old strings. They'll clean everything. They'll straight in the neck. Put on some new strings, fix any other minor problems that are going on on your guitar. And again, it's just more playable and the easier your guitar is to play them or you're actually going to spend time wanting to play it. 8. Learn how to hold the guitar and the names of all the strings: hi and welcome the week one of guitar lessons in the music coach program get started on a really great journey learning how to play the guitar. The guitar is amazing instrument that allows you to both play melodies and chords and sing all the same time. And in this program, you're gonna be learning how to play a group of chords and the melody to our sections of our song as well as starting out improvising. So to get started, we're gonna first talk about the parts of the guitar. So when the lessons were happening, you understand which parts I'm speaking about. So a guitar we talked about it a lot like a person. It has ahead a neck and a body. And inside the neck are frets, which are little metal strips that divide the neck up into different sections and where you place your hands on the neck gives you different notes. Depending on what strings you're on. Now, we're gonna be using the musical alphabet which goes from A to G. And if you're unfamiliar with that, there are some videos of the beginning of the course that are animated that can help you understand the musical alphabet and rhythms and harmony and things like that. This week's practice video is gonna help you get to really know the names of the strings, which is an often overlooked part at the beginning. For people starting out on the guitar, it's really important to know which string you're on also in which direction you're going. So from the largest string to the smallest string and from the smallest ring back of the largest ring, So the names of the strings are E A D G B on E. One thing that's gonna happen in the practice video is that when you're picking down towards the floor, I want you to pick down on the string. So starting with your pick on the top of the string picking down when you're picking up, I want you to do the opposite and put your pick underneath the string and pull up towards your body. This helps you later on. Get used to alternating the direction that your pick is movie in, which helps you to play certain parts faster. Now the pick. I want you to hold it like a pen or a pencil with your fingers right down towards the tip. So your thumb goes on the back and your pointer finger goes on the front and you can let the rest your fingers relax. For now, we're only going to be using the pick to strum chords and play notes later on. There's techniques where we're going to use our fingers as well. All right, great work, and we'll see in the practice video. 9. Guitar Week 1 Practice HD: playing and saying the names of the strings going from the largest string to the smallest string. The string names are a Let's try doing that again and make sure to say them out loud as you play them. E m a g be. And now we're going to do it with the click track. Play each string as a whole note, so each string will get four clicks. 12 ready? Go! 3434343434 e 234 Now we're gonna do the same thing with each string being 1/2 note. So each string will get two clicks. 12 ready? Go. Let's try the same thing again. 12 Ready? Go Now we're gonna play the strings backwards using up picking Starting on the high e now played Be now play G D. Now play a on Now play the low being things time we're going to do again And make sure to say the strings out loud as you play them. The CEO, um, Now we're gonna play them backwards with the click track as whole notes. So four clicks for each string. 12 ready? Go 3434343434 34 Now we're gonna play them backwards as half notes, so two clicks reach string 12 Ready. So now we're gonna play the strings forwards and backwards as half notes. 12 Ready? Go, Theo. Okay, now we're gonna play the notes forwards as quarter notes, so each string will get one click. And remember to keep saying the strings out loud as you play them. 12 Ready? Go. Let's try it again. 12 Ready? Go! One more time. 12 Ready? Go! Now let's try pulling the strings backwards as quarter notes. 12 Ready? Go straight again. 12 Ready? Go! One Last time. 12 Ready? Go. Okay, now let's play them forwards and backwards as quarter notes. 12 ready? Go. Try it again. 12 Ready. Go! Um 10. Learn the four most common chords (G, D, E minor, C): Hi and welcome back. This is Week two of guitar lessons in the music Coach program. This week you're gonna get started on learning before cords that are going to be used in this program. Now, one thing we're going first is talk about how we number the fingers in your left hand. So your left hand, we're gonna number all of the fingers but not include the thumb. So if you played piano before this might be a little bit different. We don't count the thumb. So you're number one. Finger is your pointer. Finger number two is your middle finger. Number three is your ring finger and number four is your pinkie finger. And on the neck, the frets we're gonna use are numbered. Starting with when the string is played open, it's considered zero. And then the first friend is here. The second Fred is here, and the third Fred is here for now, we're only going to be using the 1st 3 frets. So the first court you're gonna make is e minor. And what you're gonna do is take your number one finger and put it on the second fret of the a string. Then you're gonna take your number two finger and put it on the second fret of the D string . And when you're making chord shapes, you want to keep your hand round. I like to think of it is holding like a baseball or an apple or something round so that my thumb is on the back of the neck pushing in, giving me the leverage to push the strings down. Now a lot of beginners air surprised by how hard you have to push the strings into the neck to make them sound. If you're not pushing hard enough, you'll hear this kind of buzzing sound. What we're looking for is a clean sound like this. So you want to push straight into the neck with your thumb on the back, pushing down and gripping hard. And here's what a Niemeyer court sounds like. You're gonna strung all six strings with your right hand like that. That's an e minor chord. Now, the next quarter gonna play is G to make a G chord, take your two smallest fingers, which your fingers three and four, and put them on the two smallest strings, which are E and B on the third fret like this. Then take your middle finger and reach all the way to the biggie. On the third fret. Finally, take your number one finger and put it on the second fret of the A string. This makes it G court. Now, common thing with G cords when you're starting out is to want to have your knuckles bend like this. The trouble with that is that you end up touching the strings underneath where you're trying to hold down and you won't get a clean of a sound on the strength. So try and keep the knuckles rounded. Andi, just be patient. It takes some strength in your hand to be able to hold these courts. Now, the next chord is C, which I like to think of scenes like a staircase. You're going to start by putting your number one finger on the first fret of the B string. Then you're gonna put your number two finger on the second fret of the D string and your number three finger On the third fret of the A string and this cord, you strum everything except for the Big East ring. So you start on the A string and strum down uh, now they play the d chord to start off. Put your number two finger on the second fret of the little e string then but your number one finger on the second fret of the G string and then put your number three finger on the third fret of the B string. For this cord, you're gonna strung everything except for the two largest dreams, which are e and a Oh, there's your d chord. Now work on these slowly and in the practice video, you're going to get a chance to play them on their own and then with different rhythms. And we're gonna work our way towards being able to play these chords in a cycle which makes up the harmonic structure of the song that we're gonna be working on. All right, keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video 11. Guitar Week 2 Practice HD: work on playing the E minor chord and letting it ring for four beats before playing it again. 12 Ready? Go! A miner's 34 e Minor Teoh 34 D minor Teoh for a minor 34 Now trying to the same thing with the G chord 12 Ready? Go, Teoh! 34343434 Now we're gonna do the same thing with C Chord. 12 Ready? Go see 34343434 Now do the same thing with the D chord. 12 Ready? Go 34 Teoh 34 D 234234 Now you're going to strum half notes on each chord, starting with e minor. So you'll strum the E minor for two beats and then strum it again for two beats before the next bar begins. One to ready Go a minor to E minor Teoh Minor E Minor Teoh. Let's try it again. 12 Ready? Go! A minor d minor Teoh d minor Teoh d Minor to now let's try the same thing on the G chord. One two. Ready. Go! G T o g Thio Thio Thio Thio. Try it again. 12 Ready? Go! Gene G Thio Thio. Now let's try the same thing on the C Chord one to Betty. Go C t See Teoh. See Teoh seeing Teoh straight again. 12 Ready? Go see Thio Thio. Now let's try the same thing on the D chord. 12 Ready? Go, Teoh! Right again! 12 Ready! Cool! Thio! Thio! Thio Thio! 12. Learn how to switch between the chords of the song: on Welcome back to Week three of guitar lessons in the Music Coach program. This week you're gonna be working on switching between the courts now on the guitar. A lot of what we're doing is muscle memory. I had a teacher once used to talk about guitar chords, and they were like, Grips there like a way of holding, like the way you hold a tennis racket or a golf club. So getting used to the each grip is one thing, and the next phase of it is learning how to move from one to another. And getting to know these first chords is going to be about learning how to switch between them as well. So, to begin with in the practice video, you're gonna be working on very slowly, moving from one chord to the next. For example, it's going to start by going E minor to G. At first. What I want you to do is as soon as you've played the the cord right away, just start moving to the next court. It doesn't sound as musical as the finished product, which is going to sound like this right now. Our goal isn't to have the thing be totally polished more. What I want you to get used to is switching in the right place rhythmically so that the cords line up with the song that you're playing. So what you're doing right now might sound a bit like this, like a sound and then another sound, and it might sound a little bit off as you get your fingers ready to play the next chord. But that's actually what I'd like you to have happen. More important, that the corps's land in the right place than that they sound perfect. Another thing is, if you're having trouble and sometimes some of the notes are not speaking or their little buzzy, just be patient. It can take some time for everything to get just so so that all of the notes air speaking. If you want to work just on that, you can play. No, it's individually. You make the shape of the court like a C chord and then play each string. And if you're hearing this kind of sound, then you can look and see which string is having trouble and figure out what's touching it or if it's not being pushed in hard enough, and one last thing. When you're working on these in your mind, it helps to think ahead. So when you're on the cord that you're on, I want you to also be thinking about what's coming next and how many strong is. Is it how maney strings or you're gonna be strumming? You sort of have to be always thinking in the present moment and slightly ahead so that everything lines up in real time. All right, keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video. 13. Guitar Week 3 Practice HD: Now you're gonna work on connecting the two ports together. I want you to play E minor to G at first at a time without the click track to go ahead and play an E minor and now slowly move and play a G court. Wait, You try the same thing and play an e minor. And now slowly move your fingers and play G. Now we're gonna do the same thing using the click track and switching every four beats. 12 Ready? Go E minor three. Now move your hands. Change 34 minor 34 g 34 Now let's try the same thing again. Get ready for your e minor. 12 Ready? Go! Minor, Teoh. 3434 Any minor, Teoh. 34 234 Now you're gonna make the same switch, but using half notes. So e minor! We played twice and she will be played twice. 12 Ready? Go! E minor Teoh the minor! Teoh, Try the same thing again. 12 Ready! Go! D Minor Teoh A minor Teoh, Let's try one more time. 12 Ready? Go! De miner Teoh e minor Thio Thio Thio d minor to E minor Thio Thio G two Now we're gonna play quarter notes for each court. At first I want you to switch to the second cord after the third beat of the bar seal, Play E minor three times and move your hands to G while the fourth click is happening. 12 ready? Go A minor Minor Minor now switched to G G G G. Switch back to E minor E minor E minor E Minor switch. Let's try that again. 12 Ready. Go! E minor E minor E Minor switch. G G G switch E minor E minor E minor switch G g G. Now you're gonna work on switching between C and D. First play a C chord now slowly moved to D Try it again. Make your c court now slowly move to D. Now make your C chord on slowly moved to D Now we're gonna move between C and D, using the click track playing whole notes. 12 ready. Go see three. Get ready. Here comes Teoh three back to C three. Forgo Thio. Thio 34 Let's try it one more time. 12 Ready? Go! Seen Teoh three. Get ready go to D three back. Thio Thio 34 and 34 Now you're going to use to half notes for each court. 12 Ready? Go see Teoh Straight again. 12 Ready? Go see Thio. Thio Teoh Two straight again. One to ready. Go sleep, Thio! Thio! Thio! Now we're going to use quarter notes and just like last time, Play three beats, Then on the fourth beat, get ready and switch to the next chord. 12 Ready? Go Seeing Smee. See? Switch switch. Switch straight again. One, two. Ready? Go! See? See. See! Switch switch C c switch teen. 14. Learn how to play the chord structure of the A section of the song: I welcome back to week four of guitar lessons in the music Coach. This week we're gonna work on playing the entire court structure for the a section of our song and our song is gonna two sections We're gonna call this first part working on a we're gonna use the same core has been in a different order to play the B section. So for now, are a section Cords are e minor G C. On Dean on In this week's practice video, you're gonna work on not only switching between those chords in that order, but adding a rhythm elements where sometimes you're gonna be playing them as whole notes. Sometimes it's to half notes, and sometimes it's 4/4 notes and like we've done before, if you need to switch early, just play your cord and then get your fingers ready and try and land in the beginning of the next bar. A little note on rhythm. If you're not sure about how half notes, whole notes and quarter notes work, check out one of the rhythm videos that go in the pre course material. That explains how that works. Each court always takes up an entire bar of four beats, which means if we play a whole note, we're gonna play it. It's gonna go for all four beats in the bar. If we want to play half notes we have to use to because they each get to meets. And if you want 1/4 notes, we have to play for them to make up the four beats of the bar. And lastly, you're gonna work on playing through the structure of the cords for the A section twice, which is how our songs actually gonna sound. We're always gonna play a BB. This gets used to playing them back to back so that when you get to the end, you always have to think about where we're going next, cause music doesn't really go in a straight line. It travels in circles. All right, great work. And we'll see in the practice video 15. Guitar Week 4 Practice HD: work on playing the entire four cordon for the A section Records are going to be e minor G c. And then D first tried out of time. Ready e minor your fingers and play G Now move and play. See on now move and play D E Minor play G. Now move in place on now moving plate. Now let's do the same thing with a click track one two ready? Go for 3/4 right again. 12 Ready? Go! 34 344 three. Now we're gonna try the same thing using half notes. So to Strom's for each chord. 12 Ready? Go. Let's try it again. 12 Ready? Go Now let's try switching using quarter notes and like last time. If you need to switch after the third beat, use that space to get ready for the next chord. 12 Ready? Go minor. Right again. 12 Ready? Go! Minor way. Now let's try going around through the form of the cords two times, both times using half notes. 12 Ready? Go! You minor. Now we're going to go through the form twice again, but this time half notes on the first time through and quarter notes on the second time through 12 Ready go 16. Learn how to play the chord structure of the B section of the song: I am. Welcome back to Week five of guitar lessons in the music Coach Burger. This week you're gonna be learning how to play the court order for the B section of our song. That's a very common thing in popular song to just take the cords from the first section and rearrange them to make up a course or a bridge or another verse. We're going to the same thing in ourselves Now. One of the keys to switching between chords is figuring out which fingers have to change, and sometimes which fingers can stay where they are. Between our 1st 2 cords, which are G and D, your third finger doesn't have to move. It's gonna stay exactly where it ISS let me show you really slowly. Here is a G chord, and my third finger is going to stay right where it is as I switch to the D chord. Now, here's how I like to think of it. I started my G chord, and I'm gonna move my first finger and second finger to make the bottom of my triangle for my d chord. And then I'm gonna lift off my pinky finger on my number four finger to make D. Now we switch from the D chord to the e minor chord. There are no fingers and comments. They all have to come up, make Ari my record. But between E minor and see you're number two, finger can stay exactly where it is showing that again. So your e minor chord on. I like to think of this as pivoting or switching kind of rolling my wrist a little bit to make the C chord. I'm leaving my middle finger where it is stretching out to make my C chord, just like in last week's video. When you're switching, always make sure to land where the cord belongs in the rhythm. Most importantly, and also when you're playing quarter notes. If you need to switch on the last beat of the bar, that's a good place to do it. To make sure you're landing in the right place. Here's what our quarter order sounds like for the B section there. It's gonna be a new melody for that section as well, and it's gonna make the song move in a different emotional direction. All right, great work, and we'll see in the practice video 17. Guitar Week 5 Practice HD: a court order for the B section of our two chords are G D E minor and see. We're going to start by playing G to D as whole notes. 12 ready. Go. 3434 Same thing again. 12 Ready? Go. Three for three for one more time. 12 Ready? Go. Three for 34 Now we're gonna play G to D as to half notes. One to ready. Go again. 12 Ready? Go. One more time. 12 Ready? Go Now we're gonna play G to D as 4/4 notes each And just like last time. If you need to switch on the third beat, go ahead. 12 Ready? Go. We're gonna play E minor to see as whole notes. 12 ready. Go, Miners. Three for four. 33 for e minor. 343434 Now play E minor to see as to half notes each one to ready. Go now . Play e minor to see as 4/4 notes and switch after the third Strum 12 Ready? Go way . We're going to switch between all four chords of the B section using half notes. One to you. Ready? Go. 12 Ready? Go! One Last time. 12 ready? Go 18. Learn how to alternate up and down strumming: Hi and welcome back. This is Week six guitar lessons in the Music Coach program. This week, you're gonna be working on alternating down strums and up strums in both the A sections and the B sections. Now, when you're alternating between up and down on your right and I want you to be thinking about keeping the movement always flowing rather than thinking of it as a damn stroke that stops and then an upstroke that starts and stops. What do you think about moving? Like you're a swinging branch, but never fully stopping its movement? This will allow the sound have ringing. Ah, a little hard to tell or the guitar sometimes is the angle that the pick is striking the strings that if you roll in your wrist, it allows the energy with streams more really that if the pick is going straight and dragging heart strings more harder sound. Most of the time, you're gonna want something a little more so. Everything when you're playing an instrument should feel relaxed and fluid, even if you're playing fast and loud, should always have a fluid feeling to it. So in the practice video this week, you're gonna be working on playing half notes, alternating up and down quarter notes, alternating up and down in different sections. Now in our song in most of the program the Temple were playing out is slow enough that you could play. All of the chord strums as down strokes. But in the jam room, the song could be played at two speeds that are higher than this. So you may end up wanting to alternate down strokes and up strokes just to begin, have more of a fluid feeling less frantic when you get going fast enough, all down strokes could be a little hard to maintain this getting used to the idea how to be a little more economical in your movement. You know what? This tempo, it's not entirely necessary. All right, keep up the great work we'll see in the practice video. 19. Guitar Week 6 Lesson HD 1: Hi and welcome back. This is Week six guitar lessons in the Music Coach program. This week, you're gonna be working on alternating down strums and up strums in both the A sections and the B sections. Now, when you're alternating between up and down on your right and I want you to be thinking about keeping the movement always flowing rather than thinking of it as a damn stroke that stops and then an upstroke that starts and stops. What do you think about moving? Like you're a swinging branch, but never fully stopping its movement? This will allow the sound have ringing. Ah, a little hard to tell or the guitar sometimes is the angle that the pick is striking the strings that if you roll in your wrist, it allows the energy with streams more really that if the pick is going straight and dragging heart strings more harder sound. Most of the time, you're gonna want something a little more so. Everything when you're playing an instrument should feel relaxed and fluid, even if you're playing fast and loud, should always have a fluid feeling to it. So in the practice video this week, you're gonna be working on playing half notes, alternating up and down quarter notes, alternating up and down in different sections. Now in our song in most of the program the Temple were playing out is slow enough that you could play. All of the chord strums as down strokes. But in the jam room, the song could be played at two speeds that are higher than this. So you may end up wanting to alternate down strokes and up strokes just to begin, have more of a fluid feeling less frantic when you get going fast enough, all down strokes could be a little hard to maintain this getting used to the idea how to be a little more economical in your movement. You know what? This tempo, it's not entirely necessary. All right, keep up the great work we'll see in the practice video. 20. Guitar Week 6 Practice HD: Now you're gonna work on playing, alternating down strokes and up strokes in the A section using half notes so e minor will be a down stroke on. Then it will be an up strong. Then she will be a down stroke on. Then an upstroke see will be a down stroke on. Then an upstroke on Dean will be a down stroke on, then an upstroke. Ready? Go minor e Minor trading in one to ready. Go. Minor Now let's try the same thing using quarter notes, alternating down strokes and up strokes so you'll have e minor down, then on down. Then, uh then you'll switch to G and do the same thing. One to ready. Go. Try it again. 12 Ready? Go. Minor, Minor. Minor. Now we're gonna try all trading down strokes and up strokes on half notes in the B section so she will be a down stroke than an upstroke d will be a down stroke on an upstroke and e minor down then on C down that one too. Ready? Go. Minor e Minor trading in 12 Ready? Go! My weight. Let's try the B section Using alternating down strokes and up strokes on quarter Notes 12 ready? Go! Strike again. One to ready. Go! Minor, Minor, Minor, minor 21. Learn how to play the G major scale: Hi. Welcome back. This is Week seven of guitar lessons in the Music Coach. For over this week, you're gonna learn the whole G major scale. Now, Major scales make up most of the music that you hear that's been made in popular song and jazz and rock. And in this program, the entire program is built around the G major scale. Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna learn how to play it both in one hand position, which is between the open strings and the third fret. And then in a later video, you're gonna learn how to play the same skill going up the neck on one string. The guitar is a unique instrument in that way that we can go up and down in one location. But we can also go up and down by going back and forth across the neck. For now, we're going to start with the G string opened way we're gonna play second fret of the G string with your second finger. I want you to use your second finger in the second Fret because your fingers one finger is gonna go in each fret because we're keeping her hand in one location so that you don't have to move your hand position back and forth to play the whole skin, the G string open, then play G string on the second. Fret with your second finger. Way to play the B string. Open Theun number one finger on the B string on the first fret, then number three finger on the B string on the third fret chasing themed High Eastern Open the number two finger on the second fret of the High Eastern What makes Essure on? You know the three finger on the third fret of the High Eastern, and that makes G again G string open Uh, G string on the second fret with second fingers A the street string on the first fret with first finger is see a being string. On the third fret with the third finger is D E string string on second friend with the second finger is F sharp East ring On the third fret. The third finger is G E O. You're also going to be working on playing with scale descending, which is just in the opposite order. Here's unplayed, descending third finger on the third fret of high e string, second finger on the second fret of high e strings After on e string, open third finger On the third fret of the B string is D First finger on the first fret with the string is beast real. A second finger on the second fret the G string A Get uncomfortable with any scale. Take some time, especially moving from string. The string you have to get coordinated between moving your left hand to a smaller sharing at the same time is moving your right hand to the smaller streams. B patients take your time. Try and get this creamy as you can. And remember that, like any other skill, it's gonna take you some time. You're gonna sometimes move the wrong way or play the wrong string, and it's totally okay. Everybody has to take the time to learn something. All right, great work and we'll see you in the practice video 22. Guitar Week 7 Practice HD: you're gonna learn how to play a one octave G major scale. Begin by playing the G string open. Ah, then put your second finger on the second fret of the G string. This makes the no name. Then play the B string open Theun. Place your number one finger on the first fret of the B string to play the notes. See? Then put your third finger on the third fret of the B string to play the note de, then play the high E string open. Then put your second finger on the second fret of the high E string to play F sharp on. Finally, put your third finger on the third fret of the high E string to play G. Let's try that one more time. G string second finger on the G string to play a B string open first finger on the first fret of the B string to play see third finger on the third fret of the B string to play D high e string open second finger on the second fret of the high E string to play F Scher and third finger on the high e string to play G Now let's try the whole scale as whole notes. One to ready. Go! Kerry 0343434 34 34234 34 Now let's try it with each note as 1/2 Note. 12 Ready? Go! Teoh, Let's try that one more time. 12 Ready? Go! Now let's try it With each note is 1/4 note, so one click for each note. 12 Ready? Go again. 12 Ready? Go! 12 Ready? Go! Way Now we're gonna try the scale Descending as whole notes. 12 ready? Go! T! 234 34 three For 34343434 four! Now let's try the scale. Descending as half notes. 12 already Go again. 12 Ready? Go Way we're gonna play A descending is quarter notes. 12 ready? Go! 12 Ready? Go! 12 Ready? Go! We're gonna try it. Ascending and descending as quarter notes. 12 Ready? Go! 12 Ready! Go! 23. Learn how to play the G major scale on the G string: Hi and welcome back. This is Week eight of guitar lessons in the Music Coach program. This week you're gonna work on playing the G major scale, going up and down the neck on Lee on the G string. Like I mentioned last week, The guitar is a unique instrument in that you can travel up and down in terms of pitch in one location like we did last week, and also by going up and down the neck towards your body and away from your body. Here is how to play the G major scale on Lee on the G string. We'll start by playing the G string open. Theun, the number one finger is going to go on the second friend of the G string to play a, then slide up to the fourth fret and play be Theun. Use your second finger on the fifth threat to play. See on then with your number one finger up to the seventh. Fret and play D. Then move your number one finger up to the night, fret and play E. Then move your number one finger up to the 11th. Fret to play F sharp on your second finger on the 12th threat to play G. You're the notes. One more time G is open. Uh, is on the second. Fret is on the fourth fret. See? Is on the fifth threat D is on the seventh Fret e is on the ninth Fret picture is on the 11th threat on high G on the 12th fret. Oh, here the notes descending Hi G is on the 12th Fret f sharp on the 11th on slide your number one finger down to the ninth fret and play e your number one figured down to the seventh Fret and play D Now put your second finger on the fifth Threat play See on and then put your number one finger on the fourth Fret and play Be your number one finger of second fret a on play the G string. All right, excellent work and we'll see you in the practice video 24. Guitar Week 8 Practice HD: this week. You're gonna work on playing G major scale on Lee on the G string going up and down the neck. Now, let's try the whole scale as whole notes. One to ready. Go for 34344 3434 34 Now let's try it with each note as 1/2 note, 12 ready? Go! Let's try that one more time. 12 Ready? Go! Now let's try it With each note is 1/4 note, so one click for each note. 12 ready? Go again. 12 Ready? Go! 12 Ready? Go Way! We're gonna try the scale Descending as whole notes. One, two ready? Go! T 234 Sure. 34 The 03 for 3434 344 Now let's try the scale. Descending as half notes. One to ready. Go. 12 Ready? Go The way we're gonna play a descending is quarter notes. One to ready. Go. 12 Ready? Go! 12 Ready? Go! And now we're gonna try it. Ass ending and descending as quarter notes. 12 ready? Go! 12 Ready? Go! 25. Learn how to play the A section melody: I am. Welcome back. This is week nine of guitar Lessons in the Music Coach program. This week you're gonna be learning Melody for the a section of our song. We're gonna use the first position scale. All the notes are part of the G scale, but we're going to start on the so we're gonna start by playing the B string open. Now a little note about hand position and mostly your thumb. When you're playing individual melodies like this or individual notes, I want you to keep your thumb on the back of the neck close to the center like this so you can get a good pushing on the back. So we start by playing B B again and C d high g Upshur e a and he again Hi g F scher Picture she Asher e d. And then because the melody runs in a circle, your next note is gonna be be which is the beginning of the next part of the A section. Here is the melody one more time. The C Dean G. Asher G. Asher Asher G F shirt and when you were learning the melody at first, worry mostly about getting the right notes in the right place. And as you become more confident with it when you're playing along with the practice video , listen for the phrasing that the saxophone displaying because the melody it moves, it has its own shape and phrasing that is not rigid or stiff. It's flowing again, like we talked about with the strumming hand. Always remember that everything in music is always moving, that nothing is really ever standing still and try and feel the shape of the melody is you're playing it all right, excellent work, and we'll see in the practice video. 26. Guitar Week 9 Practice HD: you're gonna learn notes for the eighth section Melody They are B B C E O after G. Sure, there. One more time being being See Dean G. Sure. Now you're gonna try playing them with the click track. 12 Ready? Go, Theo. 12 Ready? Go! Theo! Theo! Let's try playing the melody along with the track. 12 ready? Go! - Let's try that one more time. 12 ready? Go! 27. Learn how to play the B section melody: I am. Welcome back. This is Week 10 of guitar lessons in the music Coach program. This week you're gonna work on learning the B section melody. Just a za little review. The sections of the song are A a B B so when we're working on a melody, it's going to be played twice Now The notes for the b section melody R E f sharp g g g F Sharp Jean F Sharp D d e Try it again Here Notes. E picture G g g f Scher g f shirt de de e Now one of things that makes the B melody different from the A malady is where it begins. Melody begins in a pickup bar. So at first in the practice video, you're gonna hear account of four than another count of three. And then the melody is gonna begin. We get with the actual track, you're gonna hear 123 Just be the three beat pickup. You can also get ready to start playing in the jam room with the rest of the virtual band and practice playing the chord structures as well as the melodies to both sections. Keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video 28. Guitar Week 10 Practice HD: Now you're gonna learn B section melody notes are we're g g g dio. It's one more time. E sure she g g sure, sure, Dio One of the trickiest parts of the B melody is entering in the right place. The melody begins in a pickup bar so we're going to count four beats and then three more. And then the melody will come in. For example 1234123 e g. Here it is One more time. 1234! 123 Now in the backing track, there's just gonna be the three beat pickup way. Let's try that one more time way. 29. Learn how to connect both melodies and chord sections together: I Welcome back. This is week 11 of guitar lessons in the Music Coach program. This week we're going to start putting together more of our pieces. You're gonna be playing the cords for both the A section and B section and the melody for both the a section of the section. Now the entire form of the song will always be a B B, so they'll always be a a B B. Now there's a little thing in the cords that's a bit different than what we've practised. At the end of the second a you're gonna play three G chords and then a stop. And this is the thing that gives us our space for the pickup melody to go in to be so I'm gonna play the A section twice. With this new parts, you can hear it E minor G, second time minor, G, C G one Teoh and stop Now to do a stop. You can do what's called a palm stop. You take your right hand and you can either play it with your thumb over like this, or you can turn your hand and play with the beefy part of the back of your hand to stop strength. And this space is what allows the melody to take its into the next part. Now, at the end of the second be we're also gonna play a G chord the very last time to end the song. So here's the B section with our new part, The End. Here's the first way Second way Just let that G chord bring out the end. You're also gonna be playing the A section Milady Twice and the B section Melody twice, and this is getting you ready to go to play music with other people were playing the jam room with the virtual band. At first, playing a melody completely on your own can feel a little bit like you're on a high wire with no net. I want you to just stick with it. It's a natural feeling to feel a little bit exposed when you're the only person playing the melody. But it's a really good way to get command over it and have a lot of confidence. I tried many times with the practice video to You feel really comfortable like you can do it. All right, great work and we'll see in the practice video 30. Guitar Week 11 Practice HD: this week, you're gonna work on playing chord structures for the A section and the B section and playing the melodies for the A section in the B section. First, play the chords as quarter notes for a a B B 12 Ready, Go way Now play the melody for a a B B 12 Ready go. 31. Learn how to take a guitar solo: I Welcome back. You made it. This is Week 12 of guitar lessons in the music Coach program. This is the end of the program. I want to really congratulate you on following through and getting all the way to the end of the program. I hope you've really enjoyed your time and have gotten a really great start on your musical journey and laid down some great track and got your train really Room one. In this final week, we're gonna work on one of my favorite parts of music, which is improvising. Improvising or taking a solo is really where your personality gets to shine and you get to take all the language that we've used and start to express it in the moment very much like how you have a conversation with someone you don't exactly know what another person is going to say, and a lot of times you don't even know exactly what you're gonna say. But you use your feelings and the language that you have inside of you to express your feeling. Now, in this song, everything is based around the G major scale, So your language or your vocabulary comes from that scale and because we worked on it in two different ways, one by playing it in first position on different strings and also going up and down just on the G string. You have a couple of different ways that you can express yourself to try out different things. Now the biggest challenge with improvising, especially the beginning, is being too self critical or being worried that you're not sounding good or your ideas aren't good. Do your best to keep your mind calm and just play from your heart. I remember that you're in a beginning stage with improvising your much like when you see a child who's just learning how to speak a language. Their energy is ready to communicate something, but they don't always have all the language yet to really express themselves. So try and be comfortable with that stage of it. We all every musician in the world that has ever played it always has come through that stage. Just be patient and really try and work at the actual art of improvising, which you do by doing. There's no riel theoretical practice improvising. You just have to do it and express yourself in play the other things you're gonna work on in this week's practice video are playing the melodies and the cords in different sections . So playing the court in the first day and then the melody in the second day and then playing the chords in the first B and the melody in the second B and then doing that in reverse order. This is really important skilled to be ableto have when you're playing with other musicians , because depending on the instruments you have, you may want to change up the rules of who is playing what to make your arrangement of the song unique. Just to give you an example. If you have a big full band and you have drums and bass and guitar and piano in a couple of different horns, you may not, as the guitar player need to play. The melody of any point may make most sense for you to play chords the whole time. But if it's just guitar and it might be flute and maybe a clarinet, you may want to switch it up and play the melody with them, or have one of those insurance playing a company in part and you take a solo, so it's good to feel comfortable switching in and out of those different roles. Huge Congratulations again on getting to the end of the program. Great work, and we'll see in the practice video. 32. Guitar Week 12 Practice HD: work on playing different things in different sections of our song. In the first, a play, The Chords is quarter notes. Then play the melody in the second day, then play chords in the first Be part section, Then play the melody in the second. Be part Section 12 Ready Go, - Theo , Theo Now try doing the opposite. Play the melody in the first a, then play chords in the second day. Then Melody and the first Be and chords in the second Be This Time without the melody being played in the track. 12 Ready, Go way, way Now try taking a solo over the whole form. 12 ready, Go. 33. Jam Room 60bpm: 34. Jam Room 80bpm: 35. Jam Room 100bpm: 36. Welcome to the Music Coach Duo Series: either. It's taught the music coach, and I'm so excited to invite in my good friend and colleague Kenny Kirkwood to come into the music coach studio to help with the special duo Siri's. Now. You may not know this. Makeni was one of my first music teachers, and he's been a mentor and I've taught at his music school. He played gigs and recordings together, and I'm so excited to have thanks a lot for having me. And that's Boston to be here. And, you know, I'm really proud of everything you've done. I think music coaches a great program, so so many of the lessons that I've worked on a year over the years. You've already got done here. So, you know, thanks for having me for the duo sessions, especially because for me, I remember starting out practicing solo for a long time. But there's nothing like getting to the duo century, actually making other people. So enjoy the program. Call up a friend, and no matter what levels your you'll be able to work it out 37. Guitar Piano 1: - thing , All right, Thanks for not in your head there in a minute, because I wasn't sure which. No, we're going to stop by my when Todd dropped his head. All right, signal. So when you're just starting out with guitar or piano, it's a great instrument to play in a duet. They're both They both can be accompanying, and they both complaint melody You can sing that offers so many different possibilities. It's one of my favorite duets. Two places like Piano, Just piano guitar. It's really, really fun. So when you're very, very first starting out, what the example we just played. We stuck in one would not just one keep one court just decided to play on a G chord. So a G chord is one of first chord. You're probably gonna learn on the guitar so you could just strum it. Play with your fingers, explore the sound and on the piano you can kind of do the same thing. And then, as you feel a little more confident, you can move to some of the different notes I would recommend on one of the higher strings , like the e string of the B string, just export some of the sounds or something you were thinking about. Well, in this in this song, you know, it's quite easy because I'm just any of g on. I don't have to move to another court. So I started out with two of the notes from the G chord to be in the D. C o running, running pattern. But really, we're just I was focused mostly on being relaxed and staying in aware of my breath so that I'm not holding my breath or that my shoulders aren't stripping up like that. I'm just trying to stay in a calm and confident yoga pose, you know, because really, our bodies air the first instrument that we have. So I know if I'm in a good state, then I'm gonna have the best chance of playing music That's in a good state, s So in this example you started out with playing some notes are some chords, actually. So I was I could focus a bit more on simple melody patterns and explain to me when it comes to making up your own thing and improvising you don't always have to use if you've been taught us particular fingering pattern. You don't always have to stick to that. You know, you can just go to back toe one finger if that's if that's what makes sense for your brain , because I know I would start with playing a note singing it on. Then, from there, I can hear if I want to go higher, lower eso I'm just I'm just really focused on being still breathing and listening to myself and listening to what you're doing as well. So part of what we're creating, something that would be called a soundscape, which you can think of as it's like making a painting that's very abstract. So we're coloring outside the lines or making some shapes for maybe painting with both hands at the same time and just not judging what we're doing. We're making sounds and reacting, and if you think about when really, really little kids are starting to speak. They hear the grown ups talking and they look and they sort of just mouth sounds that match the the emotional tone that's going on, and at this stage, that's kind of what we're doing. We're just we're exploring can. He's making a sound and I'm making sound. We're both listening and reacting back and forth 38. Guitar Piano 2: way, I think. Beautiful. Yeah, the eagles there, I think it was all right. So in this example, we're doing a little bit more of an advanced step, which is creating a predictable pattern of chords and rhythm so that when someone is improvising, you can you can start to rely on what's coming next. So we're stepping away from just staying in one court, and we're moving into using two chords. So maybe Kenny, can you explain what courts were playing and and what how long were playing? Well, we played a bar of G and in another bar of G. So there's a pair of them and then a pair of seize on top of that. And what I like about that is that it gives us the time. By staying on the court for two bars, you've got more time to really feel and hear the sound of the court and find the notes that you want. The great thing to know about improvising when you're making when I made up Melanie's is that most of the melody notes of the scale will sound good on either of the cords. So one of the things that I did when I was playing you, If you listen again to the solo I took was repetition. And to be able to just find a simple notes and repeat, it is one of the best ways to start your story. You start your solo? No, because it is so much like like like telling a story. It's like making an introduction to a character. If you think of the person coming out on stage, you know, and says to be or not to be, you know, they're making a statement on then and then they leave a bit of space for the audience to kind of pick up. What? What? I try to make sense of where this story is going. So I started my solo. I started my soul with simple ways. I think it would be repeated. So s so I left a fair amount of space in between the the, uh this is the second phrase, but I just played something simple enough that I could repeat it myself if I wanted. So yeah, one of the things now I would in this case I was just playing a company accompaniment part . And for most of you starting out, you probably will only know the one voicing of G, which is your basic beginner Gee court. And one thing that piano and guitar to be aware of is that because we occupy a similar range and a similar type of sound, it's different than, for example, if I was playing a flute, our saxophone with piano, they stand out from each other Now one of these, they consider, is like Do we want to be in the same registered? We want to kind of have a unified big sound together? Or do we want to spread out so that I'm in this register, which is kind of sort of middle bottom on the piano way? Want to be making a lot of power like we're just going giving a lot of sound? But now, maybe if Kenny moves to either lower and higher, Theo notes can kind of they can stick out a little bit more. And these are good things to think about, especially between piano players and guitar players. And one other thing is a starting out phase. If keeping the rhythm of the two bars for each chord is a little bit too much to manage. We're gonna do a quick example of kind of a beginner step to this, which is we're going to know that there are only gonna be two chords and they're gonna go back and forth, But we're not gonna count rhythm. So in this example, Kenny is gonna que me when it's time to go from the G chord of the Sikh word and then back and I'm gonna watch him. So I'm doing the job of the melody player in the soloist in terms of the tracks. Okay, Theo, I think this example I'm gonna do the queuing, but we're going to move between the cords more often so that you can get it start to get a sense of when it's going when it's gonna be closer together. I think, Ah, a big part of playing together is just communicating and keeping your eyes and ears open. And also don't be afraid to make mistakes, you know, learning how to q another musician or trust each other. It's It takes time to develop those relationships, and the way you get good at it is actually by making mistakes. So you'll make use and won't be big enough for somebody won't be looking and you'll learn how toe to do it more and more confidently. So in that example, I was exploring the scale patterns, uh, mostly and not doing a lot of the repetition. And, um, there's, ah, way of exploring that's, uh, based on hand position. So if you're a piano player, you'll see I'm in G position here. So as I was watching Todd, I didn't actually need to look at my hand passing the note between different genders on exploring that way. And it all sounds good in this with the chords that he was playing Thea other. If that's a to advance a beginner Step two, that would just be to play the core tones like I'm gonna just repeat a d. I'm gonna pick one note and watch Todd this time for a couple, of course, and see how that what I can do with just one note. It's just a different way of approaching it so that you can practice the I communication. Sometimes you have to simplify what you doing musically just to practice the kind of actor skill communication that has to happen with jamming. Yeah, and the purpose of playing music is not to play complicated. It's to express yourself so there could be a tendency with your mind. Will want to say, Well, it's not fast enough for interesting enough for flashy enough. I'm not using enough notes. All of those voices air not really helping you. So it's more of a feeling based thing when you have. If you can communicate something to another person using words with very few words than that does what it needs to do. You don't have to write a big, huge, long letter to them. If you want to say is like I'm feeling blue today, you know that doesn't need to be much more complicated than that. 39. Guitar Piano 3: - way , Theo Way, - Theo , Theo, Theo. Short, short. Yeah, excellent. So in this video, we're adding in a few more advanced techniques, like playing a four chord pattern instead of suport powder and also trading back and forth . Who's playing the melody? And this presents between guitar and piano, a whole bunch of interesting challenges that are going to make you a much stronger musician once you know how to think about them. So can you want to explain what the core progression was? How long, ladies, For sure we had one bar each of G chord c chord, chord. It's very common core progressions. It really pays off to learn that a lot of songs use it. And when we're getting to the solo in question, uh, you know, I found that because the guitarist quieter when you take your solo you may have noticed from the video that I started up high are kind of quiet sound, and those are the same range of the notes that he's playing so as I started way. Now that I'm down in the lower range, you'll notice that his known started to sparkle a bit more right, and with acoustic guitar there. It can be challenging to improvise with other instruments because it goes from being quite loud. I got all six strings going at the same time, Teoh Just one note at a time, so dynamics and volume are a big part of it. So it's part of reason why knowing the form ahead of time and saying, Well, you're gonna solo first. But when it comes when you Q me, you have to start thinking about how can you play the piano in a way that my notes can come through? If you're playing electric guitar, one of the simplest ways you can do it is just when you're playing your cords don't have your volume turned up all the way. And then when you're gonna take a soul, you can turn the volume up on the guitar and then turn it back down when you go back. But it creates, um, really offered. I mean, I think restrictions create really interesting opportunity. So when I have to play a duet with somebody on another instrument, like maybe I'm playing the drums and I gotta play a duet with a flute player. All of sudden I have to think about playing the drums totally differently because I'm bashing away like I would in a rock band. You can hear it so it gives you a chance to try something different. For sure. Don't be afraid to ask the other players once you get to a band situation if you're playing with electric players, especially or drummers. Ah, lot of us, uh, practice so much on our own that it's hard. It's another skill set. That's why we're putting this in the series together. To talk about how to jam is you have to have the courage, something to say. Hey, could you play a little quieter on my my solo? Or maybe you could switch to mallets on the drum. Zo R You've been laying out, you know, in the jazz tradition, there's lots of examples where the rhythm section players will actually lay out and just let the person do their own completely unaccompanied solo, you know? Then the band comes in, so those are the things that you can look forward to creating lots of drama with, with the use of texture and space, you know, so that I am I gonna play doh, I need to play right now. Or maybe I could just lay out and let that person go on their own and then come back in as long as you keep in your mind. The train tracks and the bars of the form. Do you know when to come back in? Musicians, we always meet on the one, so that's always a good place. If you get lost, just lay out, listen for it and come back when it's ready. If you both get lost in to do it, you can always, you know, stop and have a good laugh and start again. And that's what we call a train wreck. A train wreck, which is not known, get certain musical training. Thea other thing is that is recognizing whether or not a mistake, like if things goes totally off the rails, sometimes you know, we all space out. We miss things. If you're having a problem in the same place every time, though, then it's a good thing to stop and talk about. Go up. I think in the second bar you're paying this court and I'm playing the score. Let's sort it out. And the way in which we talked to each other is really important to just always remember to be. Talk about the music and not about the person so sure, instead of you played that wrong, you can say something like, I think, where that court is. We're not playing the same court, right? Talk about abuse. And then it's about sorting up that thing rather than me going. You're wrong. I'm writes those kinds of. 40. 7 key steps to starting a band: And right now we're going to talk about how to start a band with either your friends or family. Playing music with other people is truly the richest experience you can have in music. So it's a great goal when you're just starting to learn an instrument to try and bring more people in. It's the same. If you play a sport you're gonna wanna do with your friends, you're gonna wanna do with your family and social time, a way to really express yourself. So unfortunately, for a lot of people they have no experience with how to put a band together, how to make it function properly. In a way, a bands no matter who's in it, is like a little mini tribe. And there are dynamics between people and how people communicate to each other that are important. There's also some accountability which is great to learn in terms of if you're deciding on some goals, like we're gonna learn the songs, everybody has to go out on their own and learn their own thing and come back and be accountable to the group that they're in. The first step is to choose what instruments and what kind of banded is you'd like to have. Some big decisions that you're going to want to make right away is, what do you want to have a drum kit, for example, depending on the style you want to play. Now, a drum kit is an amazing instrument, but you may not have the physical space or the ability in terms of volume to play music that loud. And a full drum kit also influences. For example, if you're gonna play an acoustic guitar with a drum kit, it's very limited how loud you can play on the drum kit without having to have the guitar amp through a guitar, through an amplifier. So that's sort of 1 first big decision you have to make. Then beyond that, you might want to think about what kind of style of music you're moved by and what kind of instruments maybe are already in that style of music. So if your favorite band is made up of, you know, electric guitars and bass and drums. And it's big and it's allowed us raucous, and that's what you wanna do. Then you probably want to organize yourself in a way where those instruments are part of the picture. But if on the other hand, you're like, I really like, you know, classical woodwind instruments. You know, I like flute and clarinet and oboe. And so those are things to think about and finding friends and family who can share a common vision of what kind of music you want to do is your first step. Once you're into choosing instruments, it's important to make sure that they're divided up in a way that will allow you to make good music and have everybody's voice be clearly heard. So you may find out that you've got two people who really want to play guitar and you might be able to make that work. What has to happen then is you have to adjust what parts everybody's playing so you can hear each other properly. But you may decide that, you know, somebody else really wants to play the guitar and I kinda wanna play the guitar, but I've always thought about playing the bass or I've always thought about playing the saxophone. And it's a chance to challenge yourself and move into new instruments. The great thing about learning second, third instruments, if you already know one, is that all of the musical knowledge that you've gained on the first instrument comes with you to the second one. So it's never really like starting over. And the more instruments you learn, the easier they get to learn, because you're just taking more and more information with you to the next experience. Just like with your own personal practice habits. Having goals as a band is really important. And every band has different goals, even professional ones. So if you may have a goal where you say, I really want to be able to play at a talent show at my school in a year. Like we, that's our, that's our goal, that's what we wanna do. Or I want to be able to play at this fundraiser or maybe the goal is I just want us to be able to once a month get together and perform just for ourselves and the songs that we really, really like. Or we want to be able to play together on holidays. Or there's certain colony music we really want to be able to play whatever those goals are. It's important to just have them be clear and have everyone understand what they are so that everyone can draw their focus and attention towards getting yourself to those goals. It's also important to make time to reset your goals when you get to where you wanna go, don't just stop. Go. Well, now that we're here, where do we wanna go next? Whether you're in an amateur band or professional band, it doesn't really matter. Scheduling time for your own practice is equally important as scheduling time for the bands practice. One of my teachers has a great saying that I love. He always told me, said, a rehearsal is not where you go to learn your part. It's where you go to learn everyone else's part. So in that sense, when you come into a rehearsal, you should already know the parts that you're going to play, at least to a general level so that you can see how they plug in and go together. And for that to happen, you'll need to schedule time on your own to practice. And generally speaking, the ratio of rehearsal time to practice time is somewhere around two to one. So if you're planning on having a half an hour rehearsal, you're probably going to need a half an hour to an hour of total practice time to make yourself ready for that rehearsal. And change a little bit depending on, you know, you might choose a song that you actually really know. So you don't really need to do too much to get ready. But as a general rule, you want to keep that in mind. Scheduling time for the band to rehearse, and also picking a place for that to happen is the next key step. The location is really important because you're going to want to be in a place where you can make the amount of noise that your band is going to be making comfortably so that you're not disturbing your neighbors or other people who aren't involved in your musical project. So a couple options are, you've heard of the classic ones. You know, garages can be great if you have one because it's usually a separate from the house enough that you can make a little more noise of the bothering people. Basements tend to be pretty good for the same reason because most of it is underground. If you are in an urban area, it can be very challenging because so many apartments and buildings are close together. But there are rehearsal rooms that you can rent by the hour, and they often have everything you need in them to play. They'll have a full drum kit. They'll have guitar amps, base amps, they'll have keyboards, even they'll have a sound system with microphones if you want to sing. And you pay by the hour. So you sometimes pay about $15 an hour and you just walk in and you play as loud as you want. They're usually soundproofed and made in a way that you can play as loud as you want. So it's a good option. And if you have three or four people together, if everybody chips in a little bit of money and you're doing it once a week or once every two weeks. It's not that expensive and it's a nice option. Scheduling the time for rehearsal is similar to scheduling your own practice time. You're going to want to check in with everybody about what their schedules are and when ideal times r. And depending on what stage of life you're in, this is going to have a huge difference if you're planning on starting a band with a bunch of 16 year-olds like year 16 and all your friends are that age. You have different schedules than somebody who's in their forties or fifties. So you want to think about when it's going to make the most sense for everybody and when it can be convenient, where everybody can be present and focused and enjoy the process and not be waking up too early, going to bed too late, trying to rush there in a real hurry. Inevitably, in any kind of tribal situation or band situation, there are gonna be conflicts. People have strong opinions about music and about their own parts, and about how the music should go and should fit together. So it's good to have a plan in place for how to resolve those conflicts. And when he combined this plan with a general sense of an agreement between people about how to communicate in conflict, this can alleviate a lot of unnecessary tension. A really simple example I'll give you is, if you're playing a part that I don't like and I communicate to you in a way that implies that I'm also not liking you at the same time. You're going to feel defensive as soon as I talk, even if my eyes, even if you agree with the idea, you're probably going to defend yourself because you're like, Hey, you're telling me you don't like me. And this is just primal human to human stuff. So learning how to talk about the music without talking about the person is a really important skill. And if you think about the language you're using, you can really become skilled at this and say, I'm feeling like the part that you're playing isn't fitting together with this other part over here. As opposed to, I don't like what you're playing because it's not working with this. So I'm talking about the same thing, but you can probably feel even through the video, there's a different energy to it. And how everyone communicates has to be carefully negotiated so that everyone feels safe and they can really express themselves clearly. Because ultimately you got to remember that making music together as a very vulnerable experience. And people need to feel like they can take chances and that it's safe. And one last thing, also, remember to take the time to really cheer each other on, makes a huge difference if somebody speaks up about something that you're doing in a positive way, this doesn't have to be manufactured or phony. But if you hear someone playing something and you're really digging in and it's like you're feeling it may start to tell them like that's a great, you're like you're playing that amazing and like what you came up with his sounds great. And I'm really digging in. This kind of positive real reinforcement just creates this sense of everybody is rowing the boat together in the same direction, which is part of what makes playing in a band feel so amazing. You feel like you're part of a team and everybody's working together towards the same goal. So learning how to do that is also important. You may come from a cultural background or a family background where there just wasn't a lot of encouragement. So I know you have to use something that sometimes you have to cultivate and learn how to do. But it's really important and it makes a huge difference in the sense of togetherness that you have in a band. 41. General gear guide: Music coach. And this is a bonus feature where I'm going to talk about some general tools that every instrumentalist should have with them. They're not very expensive, but they're gonna make a huge difference to the quality of your practice. And also if you're rehearsing with other musicians, the things I got in front of me are two different music stands and a tuner and a metronome. So first, let's talk about the music stands. There are two basic types. This one is a solid music stand. It does fold up. They're a little bit more expensive, but there are a lot more practical to use, especially if they're just going to live at your house. I'd recommend spending a little more money getting something that's a little more durable. Because the other option are these wire foldable stands, which are great for traveling with. But because they're not solid, things can fall through the screws and everything on them are usually a little bit cheap and it'll sometimes bend easily. So the difference in price, these wire ones are going to be sort of 20 to $30. These are going to be closer to a $100. But in the long run, I recommend getting a good solid music stand. If you're going to be in one location. A chromatic tuner. If you're playing an instrument where pitch is going to be an issue, which is almost every single instrument, with the exception of the drum kit and the piano. You're gonna need to know whether you're playing sharp or flat and how to make adjustments. And the only real way to do that is with a chromatic tuner. These will cost you around $30 and they have basic functionality. They take a AAA battery. One nice thing that's happened in the last few years is most apps stores for smart phones have some kind of a free tuner. And even for like a dollar or two, you can buy a more advanced version. So if you don't feel like having a physical one, I have owned these for a long time, so I've got them. You can download something to your smart phone and make sure to use it to be constantly checking in to see where you're at or you playing sharp or flat and certain registers. And a note for guitar players, you might think that a guitar tuner, which is something that's sold in stores, would be the right thing for a guitar or bass. And in fact, the guitar tuner isn't really useful at all because it's always checking to see what string you're on. It's trying to figure out, are you on the sixth string, on the fourth string. And we actually want us to be able to know is that string I'm playing, playing the right note. The other reason this is important is if your guitar gets really at a tune, a guitar tuner won't really give you a relative sense of where you are. You'll have to get a close before it's even usable. So I don't even recommend ever even buying a guitar tuner. Metronomes track time. And this one looks like the same as the chromatic tuner, but it basically is set, you can set it to how many beats per minute. Which a simple way to think of it as 60 beats per minute is like the second hand on a clock, because it's 60 clicks in a minute. And if you had a 120 beats per minute, you'd have two clicks for every second. A good metronome, we'll have a couple of important features. You want to make sure you get one that has the ability to plug headphones into it. Especially if you're a drummer, because the speaker on this is never going to be loud enough for you to hear it while you're playing drums or even to be honest, playing most instruments. So you want something with a headphone adapter and you also wanna make sure that you have something where you can easily change the tempo. So they all have the ability to change the tempo, but some of them will go up in increments of three or four. Just make sure it's something that you can adjust the tempo evenly. And last but not least, it's important to have one that you can clearly, visually see as well, that it's easy to see the display because sometimes when you're playing, you're going to want to just check and check on visually where you're at in terms of the time. And much like the tuner, you can download these off of most apps stores, there's almost always a free one. Sometimes they're not great. But for a dollar or two, you can upgrade and get a more advanced metronome, which will work great. And this is going to cost you about $30. So a dollar or two on an app store to upgrade the free version is often what I recommend for my students. 42. How to create a furtile musical home: I'm Todd, the music coach, and welcome to this video where we're going to talk about how to create a fertile ground for a musical home to grow. I'm sure that you've had the experience of walking into someone else's house for a party or a holiday. And it seems like everyone is musical, like people picking up guitars and sitting at pianos and singing along. And it just seems like it's all natural and it's happening and it's really beautiful. And you may have wondered like, how does that happen? How do those homes happen? And unfortunately, you might think, well, those people are, that's a musical family. And their, their musical, and I'm not, and that's the reason why we don't have that. And that's a complete and total lie. The truth behind it is that those people found a way to create a fertile ground for people to feel safe and express themselves and challenge themselves and set goals so that they could play music together. And they probably did all of this without even really knowing that that's what they were doing. So I'm going to lay it out free, explain how this actually happens. So in my family home, there were no musicians. My parents loved music, but they didn't play. I didn't grow up watching people play. And both my brother and I ended up being professional musicians. So you might go, How did that happen? And there were a lot of things that my parents did that I think they didn't even realize that they were doing. One really simple thing is we listened to music and we talked about what we liked about it. And hearing them share that with me was really invaluable. And we took long car rides. We would listen to, I know that my parents, there was an oldies stations that they really liked, which was like fifties and sixties rock. And we had dialogues about like who is that artists and when did you first hear that? And they would share stories with me about where they were when they heard that song or what kind of meaning it had to them. So a great way to set this up for yourself is in your own home, you can initiate it. And a great way to do it is to allow everyone a chance, even if you've got little people in your life to share a piece of music that they feel moved by. And feeling moved by music can be all sorts of different feelings. It doesn't have to just make B the song makes me feel happy. It can be this song makes me feel sad or the song makes me feel like agitated, or it's just what you're looking for, something that makes you feel something. And a good forum for that is to go to the living room and decide that we're going to we're going to spend a half an hour doing this and everybody gets to pick one song. You might wanna set some ground rules where, you know there's not gonna be any songs with any swearing editor inappropriate, whatever for your family, you feel as appropriate. And then while you put your song on, everybody agrees to be in silence and really listening. And this just developed so much good ability, not just for music, but just the ability to sit for three to five minutes at a time and really listen to what's going on around you is such an important life skill that will really have a huge impact on everyone. And you might want to set some other very simple ground rules, which is, it's like the everything I learned, I learned in kindergarten, which is if you don't have anything nice to say, you don't have to say anything. It's better not to say something really negative. Because. People are sharing something that means something to them. And learning how to have that dialogue is important to be able to say, it's not to my taste, instead of it's socks or I don't like that song or it's the same way that we teach each other how someone prepares a beautiful meal for you and it's something you don't like to eat. You can talk to them about that in a way that's not going to hurt their feelings in music is the same way. You can then expand on this game by adding in some other artistic elements. One really fun one that I like to do is do the same thing, put on a piece of music. Everyone gets to bring something that they feel moved by. And everybody just takes a piece of paper and during that time, they just draw or sketch something that they feel is connected to their experience of that music. And then everybody can share that with each other and talk about, well, I shaded this thing this way because it made me feel good to think of a cloud, or it made me think of a tree, or it made me think of this or that. And again, it's, it's an exercise in not being critical. It's just expressing yourself through art while listening at the same time. And another variation of it can be to do the same thing of having a listening circle and have everyone write down an idea for a short story. Something that they either through the lyrics, if it has that kind of thing in it or if it's instrumental, just talk about ice. You know, I'm seeing a story about somebody walking their dog in the woods when I hear this. And again, as long as no one is being harsh with each other about it, it's a really neat window into how we all experience music differently. Making time to watch movies that are about famous musicians are famous music is also another great way to help get a really fertile ground for music going in your own home. There are tons of great documentaries about all sorts of things, about the backup musicians in Motown or you know, even about famous composers like Mozart and Johnny Cash and Ray Charles. You can watch and discuss and talk about what their music, the music of that artist, or what the story of that musician, how it, what you thought about it and what it meant to you. The more you share your own experience with other people about how music moves you, the more it grows inside of you and more passion that you have for it with all of us traveling and car so much these days. Another great musical fertilization that you can do is to plan on having music on car trips and really having people listen for a lot of us. Actually, the best stereo that you're going to own is going to be in your car. Car stereos are usually quite high-quality, So it's a great way to experience music. One thing that's happened, unfortunately, as we've gotten into more individual devices of smartphones and mean it started with Walkmans and CD players and things like that is we tend to experience music isolated. Each person will have earphones in and be in their own world experiencing music, which in a way is great. It's nice to have some personal time with music. But one of the things we've really lost is the connection and the sharing of our joy with each other. So trying to set that up on, on travel, times together with your family can be great or with your friends and just talking about and sharing it and letting everybody have a turn with the stereo and okay. 43. How to create a sucessfull practice routine: Hi, I'm Todd, the music coach. And in this video, I'm going to be talking about how to set yourself up for long-term success when you're practicing music and learning an instrument. The biggest challenge I've found, not only for me personally, but for most of my students. It's not the technical requirements of whatever instrument they are playing, or even how much innate ability that they have when they start. The biggest challenge people have with consistently making progress in music has to do with their practice habits. And for most of us, we have a negative reaction to that idea. Even practice habits, discipline these things. We feel like we get tense about it. And adjusting your relationship to those ideas will open you up to being able to fully embrace all of your abilities and really take giant leaps forward in your playing. I know for me personally, I realized early on I had to change my relationship to what I thought practicing meant, how it worked, what I thought discipline meant. And I had to really re-frame in my mind what it meant to play an instrument. This has a lot to do with where the way we're, we're perceive learning a musical instrument and society unfortunately is largely negative. You've probably seen this mostly what you get fed in the outer surroundings is that some people have talent and some people don't have talent. And when you go to a concert and you watch someone play, you think, well, they're just have it. And that's why they sound amazing. And this doesn't in any way reflect reality. It may be that they had some natural ability, but there's thousands of hours that went into what you're seeing when you see someone performing in a professional context. Then the question becomes, well, how did they get from not playing it all to having the discipline and the patients and learning the right things to get all the way through that process. And although musicians will give you a variety of different answers, I think the best way to do it is to find a healthy way that's realistic and is repeatable. So what first key to having real success in your practicing is to set goals. Because like anything else in life, if you have an idea of where you wanna go, It's a lot easier to tell where you are in that journey. Rather than just a loose idea of like, I want to learn how to play this instrument. And if you have that thought and it just sort of dissipates out into the air. When things get difficult, you're more likely to quit because it's like, where am I in the middle of that journey? As opposed to you could say, my goal is I want to, for example, I want to play the piano and I want to learn how to play these three songs in the next year. And he may have no idea how you're gonna do it, but even just having that goal is going to help propel you along. And when you hit rough patches, you can check in with yourself and your goals and you go, Am I doing the things that I need to get to my goal? A good goal to think about when you're playing a musical instrument is how to get to a place where you can make music with other people. Music throughout human history has always been a community event. It's only in the last few 100 years that it's sort of moved into conservatories and into school settings. And we've isolated from each other. And somehow we've lost the idea that the point of it is that you can actually make music with another real life human being. So my suggestion, if you're not quite sure what goal to set, I'd pick a goal that involves eventually playing with other people. Whether that's joining a band or just playing with a friend and going like my friend also plays the guitar and I want to be able to play the same song so we can play together. Another really big key to long-term success with practicing is finding a consistent time of day that you're the best frame of mind and being to practice in. And this is different for everybody and which is why there is no one answer of everyone should practice like at five o'clock or I mean, that's not helpful for anybody. We all have different lives and different schedules and commitments. I suggest you experiment around with it a bit. I found for me personally, I feel the best practicing early in the morning. And for me it's just I find my mind is very clear and relaxed and I haven't been sort of inundated with emails and phone calls and other commitments. And I set aside a small amount of time, not every day of the week, but four or five days a week. Because I'm a professional musician, I have to work on a lot of things, but for you it might be one or two times a week and I block off that time and when I'm there, I'm as present as I can be and I'm working on my goals to get me closer to where I wanna go next. Some things to think about, about when the time of day is going to be, when you're gonna practice, are make sure you have had enough sleep. So waking up too early if you're going to bed too late is not going to be ideal. Make sure that you've had something to eat. If you're really hungry, like if you get home from work or school and you're starving, it's not going to be ideal for your nervous system in your body to be in a calm place. So make sure that you've had something to eat. But you also may find you don't want to play right after you eat something because you might feel a bit full. So these are things to think about about where in your day you're going to plan to have your practice time. When it comes to practicing, quality is so much more important than quantity. Unfortunately, you may have even already heard from other music teachers that you gotta practice for an hour every day or half an hour every day or so many hours per week. And this information isn't really helpful because the quality of the time you're putting in is what's really important. If you were to take the same approach to eating food and say, well, the way you get nourishment and your body is you sit at the dinner table for 45 minutes. It's missing so much of the point. There are so many other factors. Are you eating too much or you are not eating healthy foods? Are united eating at all? Are you just sitting there and practicing music is the same. You can sit down with your instrument for an hour and not only make no progress, you can actually regress because if you're reinforcing bad habits, then you're not actually you actually making your playing worse. So what I like to tell my students is focus on the quality. Five minutes of really focused practice can change your life forever. I know for me it's that way. I had this. I had to start out by getting the routine working first rather than trying to figure out what I was going to even practice. So picking a small thing and being consistent with it. And when you're there, challenging yourself to do a little more of it each time is the best way to go. Now in life, things are gonna come up. You're gonna get sick. You're going to have to travel places. You're going to have holidays, all of these things. And it's important to be flexible with your practice routine and to think a little bit into the future. And so for me, for example, when I'm planning, when I'm going to be practicing, i'm taking into account some of those factors, the ones that I can control anyway. So like if I know that I've got family coming to visit and I'm going to be busy entertaining people and doing things. I will suddenly is put my practice routine on hold to give my full attention to that. Knowing that when the time is right, I'm going to come back and be fully focused rather than trying to ram in practice time when you're distracted with other things. The same can be true of getting sick, having a cold and flu, something like that. I would say it's good to have a break from things. And always when you're practicing, you want to be in a good frame of mind and being. Because you're not just practicing musical information, you're training your body to have a relationship with the gaining of musical language. And if your body is in a frenetic state, every time you do that, when you go to touch your instrument, it literally will reset your brain to feel anxious and upset. Now the other side of that is that if you can train yourself to be calm and presence every time you're with your instrument. Pretty soon after a while, you'll just go over and pick it up and your body will come into a calm place. Before I practice, I like to take a moment and before I even touched the instrument or put it together and just see if I can get myself. I sometimes close my eyes and take a few deep breaths and try and get myself into a very calm place because I want to reinforce that with everything that I'm learning. If you don't have any experience with meditation, I highly recommend that through whatever form you can find, you find a good practice that's small and to the point where you can get yourself into a calm and relaxed place before you start. Another key element to actually getting towards your goals is to make sure to always be challenging yourself. There's this fine line when you're learning new things between going over what you already know and challenging yourself to do something new. And the balance, you might think, well, once I learned how to do a few things, I'm only just going to ever wanna do those things over and over again. But what will happen is you'll start to get bored with what you can already do. And a good thing I like to tell my students is you should always be feeling a little bit uncomfortable when you're practicing. And I don't mean like nervous and agitated, but you should be doing things where you're not getting it right all the time. Because you want to be that's a sign that you are actually working on something that's making you better. It's the whole point of practicing in the first place. I work on things on my own so that when I go play with other people, I can have more things that I can express. Not so that I can just repeat the same things that I already know how to do over and over again.