Guitar Players & Students - Need Opinions

[Gato 0]

I'm about to start shooting an instructional guitar DVD, and I'd like some opinions from those of you who play lead, or want to.

It's going to be geared toward the beginner to intermediate player, or those seeking to escape a "rut." There will be a theory section, and a breakdown of fundamental soloing techniques, as well as some cool stuff I've developed over the years to save players time and pain. I have about 80% of the script written.

So here's my question: What would you most like to see in an instructional DVD for electric guitar?

Notice I didn't ask for what kind of porn you'd like to see - that's going to be on the second volume.

T.I.N.S.

[AggieDave 6]

I'd love to see how to play cool technical sections of songs based on scales and fundamental note play. That's what I'm missing in my guitar playing that I've been half-assed working on for a bit over a year now. I don't care how good you are on the guitar. Playing stuff that is too technical won't impress me, it'll just make me think you're an asshole who made a DVD.

Sort of like people who take the opportunity as instructors in skydiving to tell their students how cool they are. Then try to prove how much better they are when jumping with their student.

I am that guy with a guitar that is stuck in a rut.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[shermanator 3]

scrap the edeo, pick up one of them plastic guitars used for the game guitar hero, make video with that, and you'll be a millionair before you know it. .. people don't want to learn the real thing these days!

CLICK HERE! new blog posted 9/21/08
CSA #720

[Zenister 0]

that its free
seriously youtube has changed the way i learn songs now... there is an obscene amount of 'how to' and jamming videos up there.. i've found a few new ways to play things i thought i knew very well just by seeing other people's vids..

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Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[siddacious 0]

Warm up techniques and drills are useful. I still use one I learned from a Kirk Hammett article in GW to this day.

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[Gato 0]

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scrap the edeo.....people don't want to learn the real thing.

Huh? What is an edeo? Guitar Hero won't win you a Grammy.

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Playing stuff that is too technical won't impress me, it'll just make me think you're an asshole who made a DVD.

I couldn't agree more. You are the kind of player I'm doing this for, Dave.

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seriously youtube has changed the way i learn songs now

This will not be a DVD that teaches you how to play songs. It's going to be a tool you can use to improve your skills, should you choose to. And no, it's not going to be free.

T.I.N.S.

[Zenister 0]

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This will not be a DVD that teaches you how to play songs. It's going to be a tool you can use to improve your skills, should you choose to. And no, it's not going to be free.

there is quite a bit of that too on youtube.. tbh it is going to take alot to convince me that I should pay for it a DVD (vs paying for private instruction) with all those resource available for free, particularly since you have no idea 'what you are getting' till it is too late...(you have already bought it)

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[Gato 0]

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there is quite a bit of that too on youtube.. tbh it is going to take alot to convince me that I should pay for it a DVD (vs paying for private instruction) with all those resource available for free, particularly since you have no idea 'what you are getting' till it is too late...(you have already bought it)

That's why I'll be launching a website at the same time the DVD is released, and excerpts from it will be available for preview. Owners of the DVD will be able to contact me directly with questions, as well.

I do get where you're coming from, but I charge $17.50 for a half hour of private instruction, and the cost of the DVD will be around 25 bucks. Well worth it, I assure you.

I did not start this thread to convince you to buy my stuff - and I don't have time to refute everyone who thinks things like this should be free. If you have ideas about what would work well, I'm listening, but all you seem to be saying is why it won't work.

You have to pay for good instruction, no matter what field you're talking about (Hello, packing videos.)

If you like learning on YouTube, go for it. If history is any indication, someone will hack the anti-copy encryption, and it will end up there anyway in a year or so.

T.I.N.S.

[JackC 0]

Yeah, the tapping lick about 1 min into this.

More seriously though, being more creative during improv is something I could do with working on.

...and that damn tapping lick.

[Gato 0]

Good suggestion - thanks!

And yeah, Guthrie is a complete bad ass. Like John Petrucci with a bit more blues sensibility.

T.I.N.S.

[JackC 0]

By shear coincidence, I'm actually listening to Petrucci's Suspended Animation CD right now. That boy can seriously play. I reckon Suspended Animation and Guthrie's Erotic Cakes CD are the best intrumental guitar albums to come out in a very, very long time.

Anyway, some more stuff I would like to be better at: strict alternate picking, hybrid picking, octave displaced licks...

...and that damn tapping lick.

[Gato 0]

Tell you what, Jack - as soon as I'm able, I'll figure it out and hook you up.

We will kill that damn tapping lick.

T.I.N.S.

[JackC 0]

Wow, that's a very generous offer. Thank you.

I tabbed about 3/4 of it out last night but the fingering is as mad as a box of frogs, which means I might have to work it into a more usable form and I'm not 100% sure it's right anyway.

[AlexCrowley 0]

I've been playing for around 20 years and being self taught have fallen into plenty of ruts and traps along the way.

Personally I think beginner and intermediate lead players would find the following invaluable and are underserved with the current products:

1. How to practice: a full regular breakdown from warm-ups to the need to use a metronome to how to learn an entire song (in pieces with lots of repetition)
2. Fret hand technique, economy of movement, THUMB POSITION!
3. Picking technique

Boring? Perhaps but if you're teaching lead they will become essential foundations for later.
3a. Basic harmonic theory of chords and scales (really light)
4. Playing the unitar - scales on a single string
5. Playing the bi-tar - scales on two strings, note boxes, horizontal and vetical movement on the strings
6. playing the guitar - building on previous concepts for full mobility on the neck.
7. more complex harmonic theory, chord/scale relationships, modes (probably best at this point to stick to major, minor and lydian - which would cover most bases)

I think the biggest rut I found myself falling into was pattern and box playing, if those concepts can be nuked at the beginning it'll make it easier to not create those fallback positions.

Oh, and most recently I realized that if you subvocalize each note it will severely hamper the ability to play fast. Playing fast requires a metronome, patience, muscle memory and no conscious thought.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[Gato 0]

Thanks for the ideas, Alex. As a matter of fact, the first volume will include all that "boring" stuff, and basic intro to chord theory.

The second volume will be advanced lead techniques and advanced chord theory. Per your suggestion, I'll include more creativity-boosting stuff.

This is really helpful, as I'm getting perspectives of players at all levels. I can promise you all this won't look like a homemade video - the production quality is very important to me. It will not look like the vids most of us saw in our FJC!!

T.I.N.S.

[lawrocket 3]

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Personally I think beginner and intermediate lead players would find the following invaluable and are underserved with the current products:

1. How to practice: a full regular breakdown from warm-ups to the need to use a metronome to how to learn an entire song (in pieces with lots of repetition)
2. Fret hand technique, economy of movement, THUMB POSITION!
3. Picking technique

Boring? Perhaps but if you're teaching lead they will become essential foundations for later.
3a. Basic harmonic theory of chords and scales (really light)
4. Playing the unitar - scales on a single string
5. Playing the bi-tar - scales on two strings, note boxes, horizontal and vetical movement on the strings
6. playing the guitar - building on previous concepts for full mobility on the neck.
7. more complex harmonic theory, chord/scale relationships, modes (probably best at this point to stick to major, minor and lydian - which would cover most bases)

I agree mostly with what he said. Being a self-taught guitarist myself, I fell into some ruts until I took music theory and applied it to the instrument.

Since you are looking at beginning to intermediate players, I would think that certain things should be left out:
1) Tapping (at last we don't see the type of tap abuse we saw in the early 90's)
2) Complex Modes - They've got to get their diatonic and pentatonic scales down first.


Some stuff that should DEFINITELY be taught at that level:

1) Inversions - when I was giving some lessons, I found that barre chords, etc., were best demonstrated by teaching chords and inversions. It opens up the instrument and explains so much.

2) Show the interplay between scales and chords. It helps explain more fully how it works together

3) Picking technique. Being self taught, my technique and sound was always regarded as "unique." I had people ask me to show them how I did it, and I can't.

4) Relate these concepts to well-known sogns so they understand it. Wanna describe lydian? SHow how the ascending section of "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" by the Police is Lydian, and how it sounds.

5) Left and right hand muting (these kids on electrics (I used to be one of them) that just didn't get it

6) Legato phrasing - not just helpful in playing but great finger exercises.

7) Box playing. Like it or not, these are what forms the foundation. At the intermediate level, there should be some degree of mastery of the box playing. Get them to master the box, and then open it up for more advanced playing techniques.

Just my opinion...

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Nightingale 0]

The only suggestion I have is that when you're shooting your fingers on the guitar to demonstrate, shoot it from your own perspective. Shooting it straight on requires the student to flip the image 180 degrees in their head in order to copy you. I always had trouble with sign language, music, and dance videos for this reason.

[JackC 0]

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Box playing. Like it or not, these are what forms the foundation. At the intermediate level, there should be some degree of mastery of the box playing. Get them to master the box, and then open it up for more advanced playing techniques..

I agree with most of what you said but I could never see the benefit of learning boxes. As soon as you've learned to play in the box, you're ready to start playing outside of the box which is the ultimate goal anyway. Why put yourself in the box to begin with?

[AlexCrowley 0]

That's a really interesting thought. I had been watching some youtube tutorials based on the conversation here and feel the same way. It's incredibly unnatural to watch it, even when some of them do the close-ups on the hands.

On that subject, Gato - have you given a lot of thought to the overall presentation of the information? (tabs on screen, musical notation, other visual aids?)

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[AlexCrowley 0]

I think naturally people tend to gravitate towards pattern playing due to the ability to quickly intellectualize it and retain the information. The downside being that it becomes habit forming and limiting.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[JackC 0]

Oh I can see how box systems like CAGED can be useful, I just never bothered with it. So long as you're having fun, who cares, right?

[lawrocket 3]

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Box playing. Like it or not, these are what forms the foundation. At the intermediate level, there should be some degree of mastery of the box playing. Get them to master the box, and then open it up for more advanced playing techniques..

I agree with most of what you said but I could never see the benefit of learning boxes. As soon as you've learned to play in the box, you're ready to start playing outside of the box which is the ultimate goal anyway. Why put yourself in the box to begin with?

It's the walk, crawl run method. And admittedly, it doesn't work for everyone. There are some cats out there like Satriani who are technically demanding but had no problem telling a student to play the wrong note and see if he/she can make it work.

I guess it's a "to each his own." I like the fundamentals, and then try to do something new. Teaching people "outside the box" techniques can really make a person's head spin. The "box" is, in a sense, cohesiveness.

Then again, I've never really thought like anyone else about anything...

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Nightingale 0]

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That's a really interesting thought. I had been watching some youtube tutorials based on the conversation here and feel the same way. It's incredibly unnatural to watch it, even when some of them do the close-ups on the hands.

Yeah... I guess it's a lot easier for the brain to copy a mirror image than it is to flip it around.

[JackC 0]

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I guess it's a "to each his own."

That's what I love about playing, it's not a competition. If it sounds right, it is right.