Guitar Basics, chapter 3

- Breadcrumbs
- A simple blues
- Common problems

By Darrin Koltow

Breadcrumbs

We're here to talk about breadcrumbs in this episode of the Guitar Basics saga. I know you believe that breadcrumbs have absolutely nothing to do with playing guitar, but I'll show you otherwise.

The ideas of using the concept of breadcrumbs in your guitar studies comes from the old fairly tale with Hansel and Gretel. Remember that one? Yes, you got it: the one where the kids almost get eaten by the witch. That's some hungry witch. Anyway, do you remember the role that breadcrumbs played in this story? Unless I'm getting my fairy tales mixed up, Hansel purposely dropped breadcrumbs as he was walking through the forest so that he could find his way back home if he ever got lost. Smart kid.

We, as guitarists, need to do the same thing when we learn to play guitar. We need to drop breadcrumbs with every new thing we learn. Just what does this mean? It means keeping a written record of everything you learn, whether it's from a book or a teacher. The purpose of this is so you can go back and re-examine and question what you learned later. When you re-examine and question what you've learned, you do a number of deeply helpful things for yourself.

A) You strengthen your understanding of the concept. For example, let's say you're learning a jazz-blues lick that seems way too complicated: there are notes outside the key you thought you were working in. Those notes are the flat 3 and the flat 5. Looking for an explanation of these notes, you flip through your journal and see an entry for Blues Scale. You read it and find that the flat 3 and flat 5 are Blues notes. They make what you play sound Bluesey. Now you understand what those "confusing" notes were. Your breadcrumbs helped you.

Two) Leaving breadcrumbs also is useful for tracking where you've been and what you've learned so you can do something *different* the next time you encounter the same situation or opportunity. This helps you move on to learn newer material, or older material in a new way. For example, you look back at your notes (breadcrumbs) you took when you first learned the major scale.

The notes say "Play from C going up to C using this pattern: whole step, whole step, half step, whole, whole, whole, half." Once you see this breadcrumb of text, you can start coming up with ideas like "What if I played this scale starting from D and going to D? Or, E going to E? Or, C going down to C?" Without breadcrumbs, you could spend a lot of time playing material the same way, over and over. This is horribly boring and anti-musical.

So, leaving written breadcrumbs about the musical concepts and techniques you learn helps you question those things, which helps you come up with new choices, which can bring you results you're more happy with. And with all these whiches around, make sure one doesn't eat *you*. That's a bit of fairy tale humor.

Leaving breadcrumbs helps us handle many of our musical problems, which come from habits and beliefs that we don't even realize we have. For example, if we have the belief that we're uncoordinated and lacking in physical grace, we may never learn the pleasures of dancing. If we could read a journal entry showing us the exact point at which we adopted this belief, we'd likely have a much easier time of changing it, so we can enjoy dancing: "Aha! So, it was that sixth grade sock hop when I stepped on Ginny McGillicutty's size 10 feet, and she called me a 'loser,' that I began believing I'm a klutz."

Yes, you can grow as a guitarist without leaving breadcrumbs to mark your supportive and unsupportive beliefs, but you'll grow even faster once you do start dropping breadcrumbs. Keep a journal.

A simple blues

Let's swing the mood a bit and get into a simple blues using chords that are easy to fret. Here's the tab. Remember you may need to set your font to Courier or Courier New to read this.

Gtr I
   Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q
|--------------|-------------|-------------|------------|
|--------------|-------------|-------------|------------|
|--------------|-------------|-------------|------------|
|--------------|-------------|-------------|------------|
|--------0--2--|-------0--2--|-------0--2--|-------0--2-|
|-----2--------|----2--------|----2--------|----2-------|
|--3-----------|-3-----------|-3-----------|-3----------|
|
| Gtr II
|  Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q
|--3--3--3--3--|-3--3--3--3--|-1--1--1--1--|-1--1--1--1-|
|--0--0--0--0--|-0--0--0--0--|-0--0--0--0--|-0--0--0--0-|
|--0--0--0--0--|-0--0--0--0--|-0--0--0--0--|-0--0--0--0-|
|--------------|-------------|-------------|------------|
|--------------|-------------|-------------|------------|
|--------------|-------------|-------------|------------|

  Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------0--2--|-------0--2--|-------------|-------------|
|----2--------|----2--------|-------0--2--|-------0--2--|
|-3-----------|-3-----------|----2--------|----2--------|
|-------------|-------------|-3-----------|-3-----------|
|
| Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q
|-0--0--0--0--|-0--0--0--0--|-1--1--1--1--|-1--1--1--1--|
|-1--1--1--1--|-1--1--1--1--|-0--0--0--0--|-0--0--0--0--|
|-0--0--0--0--|-0--0--0--0--|-0--0--0--0--|-0--0--0--0--|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|

                                                    D.C.
  Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------2--4--|-------0--2--|-------------|-------2--4--|
|----4--------|----2--------|-------0--2--|----4--------|
|-5-----------|-3-----------|----2--------|-5-----------|
|-------------|-------------|-3-----------|-------------|
|
| Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q
|-2--2--2--2--|-0--0--0--0--|-1--1--1--1--|-2--2--2--2--|
|-1--1--1--1--|-1--1--1--1--|-0--0--0--0--|-1--1--1--1--|
|-2--2--2--2--|-0--0--0--0--|-0--0--0--0--|-2--2--2--2--|
|-0--0--0--0--|-------------|-------------|-0--0--0--0--|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|

Duration Legends of the Fall
-----------------------------
W - whole; H - half; Q - quarter; E - 8th

Duration letters will always appear directly above the note/fret number they represent the duration for.

Duration letters with no fret number below them represent rests.
-----------------------------

Get the Power Tab for this here:
http://www.MaximumMusician.com/PairFiles/ezBlues.ptb

Don't have Power Tab? Worry not. Get it here:
http://power-tab.net

Mac users, dig the midi files here:
http://www.MaximumMusician.com/PairFiles/ezBlues.mid

This is a piece for two guitars, chords and melody. But you can play both parts yourself by recording one part on a tape recorder and playing it back while you play the other part. Also, I recommend singing the melody as you strum the chords.

The blues is one of the simplest song forms to play; it's totally "friendly" to beginners, and it can be super easy to play on the guitar. One of the most common types of blues uses only three chords in 12 bars, as you saw in the previous tab. And the great feeling you get from these basic sounds motivates you to learn more difficult material, or at least to keep practicing, and keep playing.

So, if you're ever on the verge of quitting your guitar training, maybe frustrated from a lack of progress or boring material, learn some blues.

Common problems

Problems that show up frequently among beginners include confusion, discomfort, and rashes in in places that normally only your washcloth sees. Well, maybe not the rashes. But let's look at some of the mental blocks we create as we begin learning guitar:

- not seeing progress
- feeling overwhelmed by too much material
- not seeing the purpose of an exercise
- feeling like you're not making music

What do you do when you have an idea or picture of the kind of skill you want to have, but don't see yourself moving quickly enough to that picture? What do you do when you've been working on the same tune for the past several weeks, and your playing of it doesn't sound any better now than it did when you started?

Here are a couple of viewpoints on this problem. One involves the possibility that you truly have not improved your playing. You are somehow blocking yourself from performing the fingerwork needed to make the song sound as it should. Maybe your pinky is getting in the way of your third finger, or maybe the C note never fully sounds when you play the C major chord during one part of a tune.

When you see these errors happening, devote 100% of your attention to watching your fingers move as they come to the trouble parts. Ask yourself questions like, "Are only the fingers that are supposed to be fretting notes doing the fretting, or is there extra, unnecessary movements in here that are getting in the way?" When you study your fingers moving into a problem spot, slow down the movement as much as you can stand it, and then slow it down some more, so you can see exactly what's happening.

You can get past technique blocks by asking similar questions: "what parts of my hand *and* body need to be loose or tense here? Is there unnecessary tension in my shoulder or other area?"

We'll get into other common beginners' problems in the next chapter of Guitar Basics.

Guitar Chords (GC) builds your chops and helps you identify the most important chords by ear. GC shows you how to substitute and combine chords; play Jazz, Rock and Blues progressions; transpose songs; put chords to a melody; apply fingerpicking, alternating bass, arpeggios, and much more.