The Maximum Musician Newsletter for 4/10/2002

By Darrin Koltow

Hi, this is Darrin Koltow from Maximum Musician.com. Today I'm bringing you new tips on achieving musical success. But first, I want to thank you again for signing up for the Maximum Musician Newsletter at www.MaximumMusician.com. You can unsubscribe at any time using instructions at the end of this email.

In this issue, a Chord melody tip and how to Stay or Get Motivated

=== Chord melody tip ===

Although the new chord ebook available at MaximumMusician.com doesn't go into chord melody playing, the chords you learn from the book can be applied to chord melody arrangements. And what's so great about chord melody playing? If you're asking that, you haven't played CM yet, or haven't played the right tune in CM yet. You never had so much fun, believe me. Here are some quick tips on learning to play chord melody arrangements:

- pick a tune you love
- get a chart that shows all the chords
- figure out the tune's melody.
- learn extended chord voicings
- apply the appropriate voicing to at least the first beat of each bar of the tune

Let's expand briefly on that "extended chord voicings" item. To play chord melody, you'll want to be able to play 3 different chord qualities, and for each chord quality, play all notes diatonic to the corresponding major scale. Let me rephrase this. To get a good start playing CM, learn these chords with root C.

C major with melody notes from C major: C, D, E, and on up through B. That's 7 C major chords.

C minor (7) with melody notes from Bb major (C Dorian mode): C, D, Eb, and so on

C dom7 with melody notes from F major (C Myxolydian mode)

Once you learn these voicings, you'll transpose them as needed to the key called for by your favorite tune. For example, if you need to hit an Aminor, you'll slide your C minor chord shape up until its root is A.

There's a LOT more to chord melody, but its essence is pretty simple when you approach it with a song or songs you love. Take the CM plunge.

=== Guitar info buyer's guide ===

What steps do you take to find the information you want and need to improve your guitar skills? I'm writing this piece for guitarists, but the info applies to all musicians.

What's called for is a guitarist's "buyer's guide." This title isn't totally accurate, though, because it applies to guitarists who are seeking information without necessarily buying that info. I'm going to offer some tips for getting the information you want to help you improve as a player. Here are possible areas that these tips will cover:

- how to determine *exactly* what you info you need and want

- how to find out what resources exist to supply that info

- how to extract that info from these resources. How to do it for free or for minimal cost.

Let's go into the details of getting the guitar info you want.

How do you determine exactly what you need? This feels like a tough question. How do you measure your skills to be able to confidently label yourself as a "beginner," or "intermediate," or "advanced" guitarist? There are so many variables here, because playing guitar is not one skill, but a tapestry of interrelated skills. There are guitarists that many consider great, but who have minimal skill in particular areas. For instance, I believe B.B. King was being called great years ago, even though he could only play single note lines -- he knew no chords. (I don't know if this is still true or not.)

So, before you go hunting down the guitar information to help you grow as a player, how do you find out exactly what you need?

There are many ways. Go check out some books from your library. Get the Guitar for Dummies book, which every library probably has. Your library can also probably get books they don't have in their system, through interlibrary loan. I've requested and received books that looked that they were from another planet through interlibrary loan: in other words, books on a precise, narrowly defined subject may be available through interlibrary loan.

Once you get the book, play through it, and list your weak areas. When you match a list of your weak areas with the areas you're most interested in, you're ready to request information on more focused, particular skill sets that you're interested in building. For instance, after reading and playing through the Dummies book, you discovered that fingerpicking was especially challenging for you, and you've wanted to learn tunes from Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits. You now know you need to dig up fingerpicking books, articles, sites and other resources.

Taking some lessons from a teacher is another way of becoming aware of your weak spots. Getting an objective perspective on your chops is always a good thing.

Now for the juicy stuff: you know exactly what skills you want to get more info on. We'll use improvisation as the example skill, because that's one of my favorites. How do you get more info on improvising from cheap, reliable sources that will maximize your effectiveness in improvising?

Check sites, newsgroups, and books to see what others are using. Although it may seem like there's way too much info out there to sort through, you don't need to go through all of it. There are only a few sites and resources that you'll want to check out, because they are the most reliable and generous sources of information:

Amazon is a good place to start. To get the most popular book on improvising at Amazon, here are the steps I take: I search for "music improvise" in the search box, and I get back my search results. I then sort the results I get back. I bet a lot of book buyers don't realize they can sort the result list in different ways: by average customer review, by how well the book sells, and alphabetically.

I can also search on newsgroups for the improvisation book or resource. Go to groups.google.com, and clicked 'Advanced groups search. Enter "best book improvisation guitar." (Darn: it's taking me so long to write this because I'm getting such great results and ideas from these searches.) Enter this phrase, without quotes, in the text box marked "with all of the words." This is a *great* way to find out the best resources for improvisation: you're getting honest opinions from real people, many of whom are pro players.

But, as good as they are, reading wholenote's articles on improvising has a couple of drawbacks: you can't always figure out the quality of the article or the quality of the skill of its author: just about anyone can self-publish on Wholenote. You may have to sort through lots of garbage to get to the gold. Also, their search engine doesn't allow refined searching. You can't specify, for example, that you want search results that search results must have your search term in the title.

Okay, next resource for finding books and other materials on improvising: wholenote.com. Wholenote has so many articles from so many real players on real, practical playing situations, that calling them the best guitar resource on the web is probably justified.

The last resource we'll go into here is for software. Again, there's only one rooster in this particular roost, and that's Download.com. Enter your improvisation query in their search box, and then filter the results to find downloads that meet your price, size, and system requirements.

=== How to Stay or Get Motivated ===

Here are some tips on staying motivated to practice and perform. Asking, "How do I stay motivated?" is the same as asking, "How do I create goals that compel me to take action to achieve them?" In other words, compelling, juicy, lusty, fabulous goals are all you need to motivate and energize yourself to play scales, learn new chords, and do all the pleasant and unpleasant things needed to become a skilled musician.

Let's make this formula for staying motivated more tuned to musicians. To stay motivated, musicians might ask, "What songs, artists, sounds, theoretical concepts would I walk through fire for?"

For a lot of musicians, that boils down simply to this: What's on my short list of absolute favorite tunes whose distinctive sounds I want to inject in all my playing? For me, I could ask How do I get that finger-snapping groove from Jimmy Bruno's or Frank Sinatra's arrangement of Witchcraft into other tunes I play. How do I replace the "I love, love, love you so much I want to throw up" one-night-stand, Madison Avenue song with the eerie and timeless melancholy of Stardust.

Asking and answering questions like these are what give you motivation. Making a *habit" of applying these questions is vital to your success as a musician.

How do you build this habit if you don't already have it? Start today, before you practice. Ask the questions when you're in a good mood, so you link the questioning with the good mood. "Ask motivation question, feel good, answer motivation question, feel good," is the message we want to teach to the primitive parts of our minds.

Now, before you get back to practicing, ask your motivation-making questions and put your favorite tunes back in you mind and your heart.