Christmas Gift Guitar Amps

  As in my previous post, around this time is when I'm asked not only for "what beginner guitar should I get?" but also "what guitar amp?'".

 Beginner amps - or so to say, "very cheap" amps are a tossup these days.   But (and again, I am not sponsored or compensated by anybody for these reviews) there are 2 answers for "very cheap" beginner amps:

 Brand new, the Boss Katana mini.  small, light, portable (can be battery powered), and covers all of the basic sounds one needs - for $100:

Boss Katana Mini

 

 HOWEVER...

 It is my claim that the number of amps and guitars on the planet is an ever increasing number.  You should be able to find some sort of an amp for $50 on Craigslist, OR alternately, I also claim the Kevin Bacon effect applies to guitars and amps: if you ask around, SOMEBODY you know has one or the other sitting unused in a closet at home.  In others, for FREE.   

 YOU DON'T NEED TO PAY MORE THAN $100 FOR A BEGINNER GUITAR AMP IN THE YEAR 2022.

 Having said that as a second amp, or for just a little bit more at $230, is the full-size

Boss Katana (50 watt combo)

 This is another Amazing Thing in the 21st century.  This amp is loud enough to gig with, has literally all the effects one needs, sounds "almost" as good as a much more expensive tube guitar amp, and (importantly) weighs ~25 lbs.????

 This amp is literally a back saver.  The number of little gigs I've done where I had to bring a 50 lbs. amp, and a suitcase of pedals that this amp could have been used for is ridiculous.  I bought one of these to use in my office (when I had one before covid, I'm now only giving lessons online) and now it sits next to me at home, while my vintage Marshall still remains in disrepair and my finicky VHT Princeton clone is unused.

 Not exactly recommended as a "beginner amp" because it has wayyyy more controls and features than one really needs, and can be very overwhelming, but - not a bad choice, because it's definitely an amp a beginner can grow into.

Reverb is the Starfield of Music?

  This blog isn't always about guitar lessons.   Stand by for a very abstract post.....

 "Reverb is the Starfield of Music"

Or so I claim.

In science fiction movies, the starfield sets the tone.  

 In 2001: a Space Odyssey, it's understated.  The stars are not too bright, colorful or lurid.  They don't move.  You don't see them zooming by out if a porthole.  

Realistic.  

As the backdrop to the 2nd act of the movie, it defines what the movie sets out to do at that point: pull you in by trying not to defeat the illusion of "real".  In less realistic movies, maybe sci-fi shows from before the 90s, you had bright stars flying past a window on a starship: all the same color, same size.  Not as realistic, BUT - perhaps within the "creative universe" of said show.   Both a budget-restricted pragmatic choice, but maybe also a simple, quick way of communicating "you're in a starship traveling in a direction".

 Likewise, reverb on recordings once was based solely on analog gear, not unlike the analog "practical" effects of science fiction movies of yesteryear.   While the gear was primitive - springs, sheet metal plates, empty rooms with tiled walls - there was no Uncanny Valley to cross.   

 But just like the early days of computer graphics in movies, when digital came into recording it wasn't necessarily convincing.  Like early CG science fiction effects, you knew it kind of represented something but wasn't perfectly realistic.   It was good enough, and again, a pragmatic solution to production.

 Some music in the 80s suffers from this, although some just wallows in Artificial Modulated Reverb.  The early Sting recordings come to mind, Queensryche's _Operation Mind Crime_, some others.   Like the starship Enterprise in _Star Trek: the Next Generation_, something BIG was doing SOMETHING in a BIG SPACE.   You knew it wasn't real, but it was its own art form in a sense.   

  Post 80s bands started wanting real drum sounds in actual rooms, and for awhile Big Room Sounds supplanted the artifice of Lexicon digital reverbs.  Similarly, science fiction movies have started to reject the early efforts of George Lucas to use digital technology to "enhance" (ahem..) classic movies.   For some movies the look and feel *was* "computer graphics" (Tron, Terminator 2, the Abyss, et al) but when it was mixed in after the fact, the contrast wrecked the production.

 Recordings, being cheaper and much more common by orders of magnitude, have gone through this iteration already.  The Bricastic hardware digital reverb, digital convolution reverbs, have started pulling recording out of the Uncanny Valley somewhat, but some recordings are still prone to having peculiar combinations of "spaces" that are incongruent.  

 Just as some sci-fi movies feature a lot of exterior special effects, that "place" you in that world, others are more careful and spartan with the use of depicting space.   On recordings, the same thing occurs: the reverb tone, sound, and amount is the backdrop for a recording.   

 

 

Acoustic Guitar Purchasing Dilemmas (circa 2022)

 As a general rule, I think for most people the following made sense for the past 20+ years:

 Buy your first "introductory" guitar.   One takes a chance here, because it's probably not going to be very playable or sound nice.  This is usually without advice from me, and usually takes the form of a guitar that comes in a "pack" deal, somewhere in the $100-150 ball park.

  What I'd advise then would be a "compromise" guitar.  Something better than the above, but not a "real" acoustic guitar.  The advice would be to get the nicest possible with a solid spruce top, with consideration for a pickup system.  Epiphone and Seagull/LasSiDo has been a good choice in this category, .

 Then, I would advise to try not to buy another UNTIL one could afford either a Martin D28, or a 600-700 series Taylor.  Because - in between you're either paying for cosmetics, or another compromise, and these 2 are effectively where "professional, standard issue" acoustic guitars start.  But the main reason was - and I've been saying this for decades now - 

 "there will come a time when it will basically be impossible for you to consider buying a Martin D28.  Try to get one now if you can".

 For a long time $1,000 was the Magical Professional Price Point.  The "nice" guitars started there, or from another perspective, that was how much a Les Paul or D28 would cost.  In the late 90s D28s started creeping up in price; by the 2000s it was going up about $100 a year.  

 A D28 now costs $3,000.  While my perspective may be skewed - my income from teaching guitar has lagged inflation, effectively flat for my whole life, I can no longer advise someone to stretch their second-guitar budget to a D28.  Those days are over; trying to stretch $600,700 or even $800 to that Previously Magical $1,000 landmark was a tough ask, but $3,000 is ridiculous.

 Meanwhile, from what I've seen the sub <$500 price point has gotten better.  EXCEPT:

• Manufacturing quality is sort of all over the place;
• Traditional woods are harder to find.

 

 Which is why my advice is somewhat more ambiguous now:

 Try to get a solid SPRUCE top guitar first and foremost.  The Seagull brand is a cut above quality wise IMO; a less traditional choice of cedar for a top, buy probably a better deal if you're looking to get a guitar to actually use in public.  
 
 Secondly, instead of trying to stretch to get a D28 or Taylor/"?" equivalent,

 Try to find a guitar made of the traditional woods: spruce top; mahogany neck; rosewood or ebony fingerboard; mahogany or rosewood back/sides.  Because this is the formula for what you're used to hearing on recordings as a "standard acoustic guitar".  Scarcity is forcing manufacturers to substitute other woods, some working better than others.  

 What that means is that getting around that $1,000 mark means there are a couple of Epiphone, Yamaha models, and Seagulls that meet that bill.  Those manufacturers still exhibit a fair standard of quality; you're effectively purchasing an "off brand Martin".  They don't have the name cachet, but effectively speaking are still fine guitars.  

 Because where my advice once was "there will be a time when you won't be able to buy a Martin D28", I'm now stating "there will be a time when you can't buy an acoustic guitar made of the traditional acoustic guitar woods".

$.10, YMMV.

Chip is Short... Yeah, but.. No, the Chip Shortage

  A student told me original Boss DS-1 pedals are going for hundreds of dollars on Reverb.  

 So I had to look, it seems ridiculous.  The DS-1 is probably the most ubiquitous, generic distortion pedal there is, at one point I received one as a bonus for buying something else that was only a couple hundred dollars itself; I never used it, but now I've got to go rummage around in the shed to see if I still have it.

 The chip shortage is having a knock-on effect on other things in the guitar gear realm.  The chip in the original DS-1 has gone out of production, and it has nothing to do with the headline news story about the actual "chip shortage".  A lot of integrated chips have gone out of production before the situation occurred with the factory fire + global shut down "chip shortage", but wasn't the cause of any run on pedals except with the Ibanez TS-808 Tube Screamer variants.

  The subtlety of the 4558 variations that were used in Tube Screamers (and clones) are ultra-cork sniffery.  I've got .... 4 Tube Screamers/variations with one inside, and there would be no way I could tell if the chip was a "vintage" one or not, there are too many ancillary things going on with them in the circuit design.  People compare what they say is "identical" pedals, but they haven't examined the resistor values, the input impedance, what things have drifted out of spec within a "vintage" pedal.  It's not actually empirical, and yet, it's still so close that nobody will hear the difference except the cork sniffer doing the A/B test.  

  I guess I need to go see if I can find the pedal.  I think they're ok, good all-purpose distortion pedals that will get someone by in just about any stylistic situation if need be.  They tend to make everything sound similar, which could be a good or bad thing.  For me, the nature of the way they compress combined with the eq makes me play things I start hearing as "Steve Vai", so I don't use them.  That very thing makes them good for "fast technical playing" IMO for that reason, they help you out so to speak, in that they even out your single note playing really well while maintaining articulation.  But to my ears it's Steve's sound, so I look elsewhere.

 "Chip, in the 21st century a USED Boss DS-1 will sell for hundreds of dollars" - I don't know if I would have believed that 30 years ago!

Trends in Guitar Music Circa June 2021

  The last trend I've noticed would be "Polyphia Collage" based music, which just now seems waning.   

 At the moment, for the first time in awhile I would say that trends towards styles has settled down.  I don't see any new ones, but a sort of... kerfluffel...?  Of already established styles.

Wylee is Taking Note of Your Influences

 I would see this as a period of consolidation and reflection (so profound).  I think that without any major things happening, people are going to gravitate back towards their true musical identities.  What I mean by that is that I see a lot of people, and students, getting blown towards the Latest Cool Style, even though it may not reflect the kind of music they would choose to listen to without outside influence. 

 For instance, there was a time everyone wanted to learn the Self-Accompanied Percussion Solo Acoustic Guitar style.  I had a lot of students wanting to learn to sneak ostinato patterns into their strumming.  At other times it was Loose Nirvana Chording, more recently it was Tim Pierce in the Pocket Perfect Soloing, and then there was the Polyphia Phase that happened before covid.  

 Right now I have maybe the most diffuse assortment of interests among students, which sounds like a negative, but I call it a positive.  There doesn't seem to be an overbearing artificial influence happening, and students seem to be interested in nailing down particular things again.  

 YouTube had accelerated the premise of "gotta learn this Cool Happening Thing now!" by promulgating lots of perfectly produced videos, extorting either how easy (never the case) or how cool (subjective) the New Way is.  For the past 5 years, having this constant influx tugging at the *eyes* of students has made people, I think, a bit distraught over whether what they thought they wanted to do on the guitar was cool or not.  

 With no New Major Thing grabbing attention, I think it's leaving room for people to get back to their center, so to speak. A positive phenomenon. 

 

 

 

 

Lead Guitar Tips from.. The Tech Lead?

 Hello, The Guitar Teacher here.

 

(...that's a contextually funny in joke, trust me)

 I believe there is some kinesthetic overlap between typing and guitar playing.  

 When you touch type you're using sublimated muscle memory to press something that represents an alphanumeric character. You don't think about the act of pressing the key, the key representing an alphanumeric character, the character being part of a "word", the word being something you have to consciously spell before your type it out, the word part of a sentence, sentence structure, paragraphs, composition.   

 You touch type (hopefully) from a stream of consciousness, controlling your thinking between the immediate future - your buffer memory, and a more "distant future" of your compositional sense, how what you're typing relates to your overall intent.  

  In my opinion, guitar playing should be this way.  You shouldn't be thinking "I need to put my finger "there" to make the note "D" sound".  "D is part of the D diatonic scale, which is part of a D major triad consisting of D, F# and A, and that's a subset of diatonic harmony," etc. etc. etc..  It should be a reflex if you really want to "speak" when improvising.  You don't speak to other people the way you would write a book, would you?  

In my opinion.  Most people appear to be deciding to consciously do high order math in order to justify their note choices.  That is what I would call an "approach" to process, but different from what I choose to do.  Instinctual choice I think is the point of improvising.  Constructing "sentences" and "paragraphs" from extemporaneous thought, versus pre-planning.  

 Back to typing:

  In the 90s I had my typing speed up over 100 words per minute.  Sometimes I could get it up to a 1:1 or faster speed at an "average speaking voice" tempo, but it's nowhere near that now.  The guy in this video - an ex-Google, ex-Facebook programmer, types at 170 wps - which is very fast, "guitar hero" speed.  I would attribute that to an alpha actinin-3 gene polymorphism (as I've referenced in prior posts), but it mostly down to some simple tips he references within his video.   

 Some of which applies to playing guitar.  Ergonomic positioning, keyboard switches, pitch.  The most important tip being: "don't go faster than you can type perfectly".  I've harped on that before; speed is easy if you're willing to practice something at an optimal tempo perfectly.  You can't do that and not get faster.  Speed is easy. It's very straightforward.

 But watch Techlead's video.  He has a very "technical guitar" approach to typing, that can be motivational I think to practicing guitar (choosing the proper gear, mechanical approach, competitive mindset, etc.), and his videos are "entertaining by an extremely dry wit" as well.

 

 

 

The Mutagenic Influence of Streaming Services on Art Perception

  I use streaming services a lot.

 In guitar lessons I'm constantly referencing music on Spotify for students.  Inevitably I have to look up a song, and most times the following thing happens:

 Spotify chooses to pull up the LIVE version of a song.  Or an alternate version.

 If I tell a student "listen to this song this week" again - most of the time it's not the definitive version, but a live version, a remix, or an alternate take.  Something about their algorithm (and it seems YouTube music is similar, I don't know about Apple Music) makes it pick the least common choice.

 As I'm writing this I'm listening to the tracks on a "deluxe edition" of In Through the Out Door by Led Zeppelin, 7 tracks that are rough mixes - not the original versions found on the record that was originally released.

 

 They have parts that are slightly different or parts that are louder/softer.  It occurred to me a moment ago that for young people that are maybe checking out Led Zepplin for the first time, they're not hearing the optimal, "official" version presented to me when I was a child.  They're hearing a strange version.  They may not even listen to the "real "versions of these songs, much less the album experience in order.

 Curiously, a side effect of this "deluxe edition", or live bias is that it affects the classic bands more than others because they're the ones that have these extra tracks presented to the listener.  Which, don't get me wrong, I love - I'm listening to an alternate mix of my favorite Zeppelin song "Carouselambra" right now - BUT, I remember the first time I heard this album all the way through and thinking about how this song sat in the middle of a record with a lot of songs I didn't care for. Meaning, it told me "these guys have musical influences I don't care for, this percentage maybe", and also that there is a certain breadth and depth to an artist's muse.  

 I fully understood as a pre-teen musicians made music from influences, and the process is not a level, flat plane.  I'm not saying people should have to listen to what they don't want to, I'm just saying this is an aspect that is gone: you don't really know what Led Zeppelin is about just because you listened to "Stairway to Heaven" and "Whole Lotta Love".  And even though you may not like the whole catalog (I don't - and I'd suggest I'm a huge Zeppelin fan) you understand what their CONTEXT is about.

CONTEXT is something that has been thrown away in modern communication.  It's deemed not necessary, inconsequential.  Slows you down, not needed.  Which is fallacious idiocy.

  So, there was a period when Napster took over and IPods were the defacto way people listened to music, and people at that time that considered themselves "fans of music" went to the trouble of seeking out these alternate mixes, or strange music, or niche music.  It wasn't super easy, they had to go online, search on Napster, wait.. maybe one day something would be there and not the next.  BUT - the most common, "accepted" versions for the most part (with some notable exceptions) would rise to the top.

 Not the live version of a Jimi Hendrix song from some oddball show, or an alternate mix.  I believe this is the fault of corporate influence putting newer releases ahead of the queue, thinking it will make sales of physical media happen.  A kid that thinks he likes Led Zeppelin searches for a Zeppelin song and takes the one at the top, and it's a crazy live version, or a mix without the vocal: "I don't like this" maybe he thinks, goes to something else.

 What a horrible experience.  The music industry has been upended so many different ways.  Napster/MP3 technology started it, but at least the people that should be music fans got a proper exposure to the right examples of what they were looking for, for the most part.   Chaos theory is all about initial conditions affecting an outcome; the initial conditions for being a music fan in the 21st century has been damped, if not completely wrecked.  

 

 

 

The Best Joe Walsh Guitar Clinic Isn't Actually a Clinic

 I stumbled upon this video a few weeks ago.  It's not a literal guitar clinic, but Joe speaking at Joint Base Lewis–McChord in Tacoma, Washington.   

 He's not addressing guitar players per se.  Initially, he's just talking about his father's military experience, and his efforts at helping vets.  But then he starts talking about guitar parts in his songs: 

 The thing is, he details almost exactly things I go into in guitar lessons when the topic of "Joe Walsh" comes up, OR when the techniques he references comes up.  The use of the right hand percussively, pendulum strumming - and the notion that some of his licks "drives guitar players nuts".   

 

 It's interesting to know he knows what his trademark licks are, and that he understands why they're clever/brilliant.  And an interesting insight into an artist who superficially may seem on passing to be a bit of an addled persona, but in reality is very thoughtful and together.  

 There is also the element of what I think of as the "70's pop objective sensibility" on display here.  These licks are the result of a mentality that is gone now.  He wasn't thinking about how to play faster, how to play better, but how to play something interesting.  

 Which is a beautiful concept in the 21st century: something that is interesting, without requiring a simple extremism gimmick of "faster", "lower", "more brutal", "slower", "more complex", "choppier", etc..  

 

Covid-19, Guitar and Television Interviews?

  It's been interesting how, out of the blue, the pandemic has changed so many things.

 Guitar sales hit a record this year, while Guitar Center (finally)(after a BILLION $ IN DEBT) goes into bankruptcy.  

 There has been a lot of talk about the state of guitar in the U.S., it's popularity or lack of popularity.  At first this was driven by sales figures being low last year, or assertions about what "popular" music has guitar (or doesn't).  Quasi-valid statistical perspectives.

 I'm quite tired of mediating everything on stats.  It's not perfect, and it's often distorting by initial conditions or cherry picked parameters.  There was a time when humans made these things called "decisions" based on something called "intuition".   It's what makes us better (for the moment) than a.i. machine learning software; our subconscious processing power still vastly exceeds the best of what is available in computer hardware.

 From my Vastly Exceeding Computer Hardware anecdotal extrapolation perspective I noticed a phenomenon that pretty routinely happened:

 Guitar as an at home tv interview backdrop.

 I can't remember the first one I noticed this happening on.  I wish I'd taken screen shots, because I know there have been some curiously notable people (Dr. Fauci I think?) and some suitably interesting choices (Taylors, Suhrs, etc.).   

 Based on this phenomenon of people seemingly wanting you to know they play guitar (I recall one interview with a doctor where a guitar neck seemed poised precariously almost on a doctor .... for "some reason"), I would suggest guitar is as popular as ever.  

 It is also apparently serving a couple of purposes.  Obviously providing character support for people's identity: people are proud of being a guitar player.   It also implies people are looking at the time at home as an excuse to finally learn to play the guitar.  

 Which I of course think is a great idea....

  As I've said many times, "if you're going to listen to music the rest of your life you may as well learn something about how to play and create it".  It's enlivening to see so many having a guitar seemingly playing a role in their lives, and not just passive non-player characters in life!

Toolboxes

 I was listening to the David Gilmour guitar auction podcast today, and heard him play the 12 string he used on "Wish You Were Here".

 He kinda played an excerpt of the beginning, elaborated on it.  What he did kind of illustrated the origins of the riff.  

 Part of what he did invoked a bit of a stylized ragtime piano rhythm.  An old upright piano, of which the never perfectly in tune 12 string somewhat invokes, would be the conduit here.

 Another thing he did was a sort of Lead Belly quasi-stride piano blues, except it wasn't a pure blues but detoured into a post-early 60's U.K. folky chord voicing territory.

 Very informative.  The first thing he did was the rendition of the opening riff to WYWH, but he played on the accents a little differently.  I interpret these accents as being "within the parameters of ragtime proto-jazz embellishment".  I think he perceives it like that as well, the significant part being while it's related to what Lead Belly did, I think Gilmour is not thinking of the parameters he was operating under (while demonstrating on this podcast) as being "Lead Belly" per se, but...

... a tool in the "toolbox" that renders "Wish You Were Here".

 He's got the ragtime rhythm intent, but also the Lead Belly blues shuffle, and Lead Belly melodic embellishment intent.  As well as the folk voicing influence, which I would suggest was a "silent" influence on a lot of the post-60's classic rock guitar players (Jimmy Page...).

 The point of this post is that he had an operating skill and knowledge base of these elements prior to creating WYWH.  It wasn't a linear "learn this chord, then this phrase" but a combination of things from a "tool" standpoint that he liked.  The result is that the gestalt of Wish You Were Here are those things, and in theory one could take the same toolbox and make other "Wish You Were Heres"; not that you should, but one should realize that you've got to have tools in the toolbox to build something.

Vintage That Needs to Go Away: Fender, FIX THE STRAT OUTPUT JACK!

 At least once every 2 weeks or so, I have to give a little speech about how a student needs to make sure they keep the nut tightened on the output jack of their Fender What-ever-Caster.

Pure Evil!

 They put a flat washer under the nut, which is useless and obviously does not work.  For the uninitiated:

 The nut works it's way loose as you plug the cable in/out, and move it around.  I'd guess that after 2 months of  use is when they start to loosen, at which point depending how much and how aggressive you plug the cable into and out of your guitar, the two wires soldered to the jack under the jack plate twist around and around..

 Until one breaks, and the guitar stops working.  Sometimes one is near a music store that can repair it.  Sometimes it's maybe only $35 or so to fix, but closer to a standard bench repair fee of $75 is possible.   At least a week will be lost, maybe more.

 That's presuming the student/Stratocaster owner even knows this has happened and CAN be repaired.  How many people just stopped playing guitar because this happened to their Squire Stratocaster after a few months?  What impact does this have to Fender and other brands for people that end up never staying with it and buying more gear?

 This has been a scourge forever.  The "phono jack" is a design left over from literally 1948 or so, and really can be traced to about 1877.  It's primitive, inelegant, and failure prone.

 I can think of a few better ways of doing it, but I don't have money to patent and manufacture such a thing.  Fender, though - there's no excuses.  Why they continue to use this idiotic part is beyond me, aside from it's sheer cheapness.

 They could easily improve it a lot: simply use a serrated washer, or put a dab of Loctite on the nut.  Or both.  Either nobody at Fender has thought of this as an issue and a fix, or they just don't care.

 Until then, I'll continue to have to waste a student's lesson time explaining they need to keep the stupid nut tight, and that the shorting-noise they're hearing is the result of the jack being loose, and that when it fails they've got to get it fixed.  Ridiculous.

Secret Music Retail Disaster Looms: Peak Guitar?

 After examining many videos of the literally hundreds of guitar factories in China, and seeing thousands of guitars stacked in each, I wonder "where do they all go...?"

My '82 Japanese made Squier Strat bought used in the 80s.  "Entry level" in 1982, now "vintage-quality". 

 Obviously somewhere, the world is a big place.  There are countless "developing country" export markets.  But I'm going to limit this discussion to "here" in the U.S..

 I've referenced "peak guitar" previously, but not in this context. Solid body guitars have been built routinely en masse since the mid-1930s.  I don't have production numbers, but let's say the "modern era" began with the Stratocaster in 1954. 

 There has never been a "guitar shortage" relative to demand.  So consider that demand was met every year since 1954.  Almost 65 years of consumer demand met. That doesn't mean it was 1:1, and exact number built relative to demand, obviously there would be an overrun every year, but let's ignore that.

 Another way of looking at that is that since the population has drastically shot up, and demand for guitars has been more or less a constant thing,

 Relative to 1954 64X consumer demand has been built (at least).  In other words, there are at least 64x as many guitars floating around today than in 1954.

 Yes, I know: all guitars don't make it to retirement behind a glass case in some Yakuza's mansion in Japan one day like a '58 'burst Les Paul.  But I would argue that the surplus not sold greatly outweighs those given to have been "broken", or "lost" somehow to the aether.  In general, there is a t LEAST 64 times as many guitars in the universe today than demand wanted in 1954.

Population in the U.S. in 1954 was about 150 million.  Today it's estimated to be between 350-400 million.  A bit more than 2-3x as much, let's say 3x.  Then, let's say that half of the guitars sold in the U.S. have evaporated into thin air somehow, leaving a 32 year production run versus 1954.

 In this imaginary context let's equate 400 million people today to then, 3X as many.  3 1954's to one 2018.  You still have over 25 years at least of guitars sold beyond human demand today.  These days a million guitars or so a year are sold in the U.S. alone.  But let's say it's half that, not as many sold in the 60's as now.

 That would yield at least 10 million guitars in a category of  "still exists, was wanted by somebody as "consumer demand" at some point".  That's obviously not all the guitars built or sold in the U.S..  Just a very conservative number of  "how many viable guitars are there in the wild, in the personal possession of someone in the U.S.".  I'd say it's much higher, but let's say it's 10 million.  What does that number mean?  It's not exact, it's not even clear what it entails aside from the claim that at any given time floating about I'd say there are at least than many guitars "in circulation".  At least.  I think it's something of a buffer figure: for the 1.5 million sold every year in the U.S., there was probably something like 10 million to be had, easily, used I'm guessing.

 I don't know how many used guitars are sold on Craig's List, Ebay or Reverb.com.  But I'll step out on a limb and say that there must be at least .... 30-40 million viable guitars around in the U.S., if not more.  I'm going to say 50 million.

 I'd like to think that means around 15% of the population plays guitar.  I think it could be higher than that.  I think for the past 10 years we've seen the guitar replace the piano as "the instrument every child has to learn as part of being a well rounded individual, learning a musical instrument".  Cheaper and more portable than a piano, a certainly more relevant these days and motivating.  But it wouldn't be every single child in the U.S.?  On the other hand, the amount of people aging that do play guitar I would claim is increasing year by year for the same reason.  Gen-X and younger, we were the transition era from piano to guitar as the Instrument our Parents Wanted Us To Be Able To Play.

 What am I getting at with all of this?

 Solid body electric guitars in general, don't vanish.  All of the above aside, there is 50+ years of electric guitars around somewhere.  They *accumulate*.  And while the "nice" ones accumulate value, most don't.

 And with 50 years worth of guitars - millions - my question is, "how many more guitars are there in the U.S. relative to consumer demand?".  I think a whopping amount more.  Go on Craig's List, plenty of nice guitars being sold.  Unfortunately, everybody seems to want almost what they paid for their instrument ....

 ... The gist being this:

 At some point it will be Common Consumer Awareness that "guitars are everywhere!".  In reality one should get around half new value for used gear; this will become self evident at some point, and the used guitar prices will reflect this. What is presently maybe a 10:1 margin will grow. 

 In other words, it will become Common Knowledge that you can get a Perfectly Good Electric Guitar for half price, relatively easily, used. As it stands now, just about everybody knows somebody with an unused guitar in a corner of someone's house, somewhere.  At some juncture it will be just "the thing", Prices for cheap guitars used will be even less than half - at some point worthless as people realize....

 guitars are everywhere.

 What does that mean for guitar retail.....?

 

 China is building guitars faster than I can type this sentence.  At some point "soon" low-end guitar sales will fall flat, because of the above phenomenon.  China is speeding the demise by pushing this inevitability closer, flooding the market with hyper-cheap and quite decent guitars.  At some point in the future (presuming there is one...) - maybe 3-5 years from now, music retail will have to reckon with what will be seen as a "sudden loss of demand for guitars".  It will be dramatically, and ignorantly touted as something along the lines of  "guitar losing popularity?" when in reality it will just mean we've met Peak Guitar and the concurrently present population will just be finding guitars to start on in other places.

 In reality it could be a boon; more people will try guitar because "guitars are just laying around everywhere".  More people may end up being life-long players, and in turn buying better gear as they progress.

 ... but it's going to be hyper-annoying to read/hear people talking about guitar retail tanking, and hard for the remaining brick-and-mortar stores.

Entertainment Psychology and Practice

I don't use or recommend a book in the context of teaching guitar.

Because ultimately the trick to learning guitar is maximizing what is entertaining about it to you.

In the late 80's during the height of the hair-band metal technical guitar playing era, I could actually prescribe a pretty exact regimen for about a 1/3rd of my students.  They would follow it, and the following week be considerably better at what that regimen addressed.

 They were very, very motivated.  As in, I haven't seen that motivation since then; "people today" (who are standing on my lawn...) can't emulate that motivation, because it was the only time in recent music history where instrumental technique was high prized and actually commercialized.

 Back in that time on MTV - which for all intents and purposes was the entertainment equivalent of the internet for most people in that era - there was a few years where the dominant thing you saw on MTV at any one point in time was guitar-centric rock.  Not only that, but there would be a guitar solo featured heavily in the middle of the video: the guitar player was the star.  Literally.


 Women can't practice to look "as good as" Taylor Swift, men can try to workout to get that Arnold Swarzenegger physique, but it's not going to be the same.

 Guitar solos, on the other hand, was something you can work at and eventually mimic effectively "exactly".  You COULD be the same as the "star" on MTV.  You could walk around knowing you were special, able to do something that was put on a pedestal and respected on a global scale that made you unique.

 That did wonders for my business.  I started teaching in that era, and for many years I never faced the problem of having to figure out how to keep a student motivated.  I completely took it for granted.  I could do what the Famous Guitar Players Did, I could help the student do the same, it was very straightforward and focused.  Just about every student I had played in bands, and that continued for at least a decade into the 90's.

 Then it went away, although the desire to be in a Rock Band remained a pretty good motivating factor.  About half of my students would be in gigging bands, and some went on to making records and touring the planet.

 That went away as the record industry died in the 2000's.  So what remains now is a curious, diffuse mixture of wanting personal growth, a little bit of a rush of doing something special, and maybe a dash of rock stardom swagger thrown in.  But it's rather abstract and non-specific.  Nothing like "I want to get in a band and pull off guitar solos like the guy in (Insert Favorite Band Here)".

  In the year 2018 everyone has different motivations, different musical preferences, different schedules, different expectations, and an overall jadeness to the process of music.  Does "fun" mean a step above the Guitar Hero video game experience?  Is "fun" playing along with a song, or is "fun" being able to execute a single, stand alone piece of music?  Is "fun" having a professional skill set?  Is "fun" learning about how to make music from scratch and record it, or to be able to analyze it by ear?

 Everyone is a unique case these days, and it's super tricky for me as a teacher to prescribe a routine.  In the 80's it was purely a matter of mechanics.  These days it's a matter of trying to get the mechanical side of technique to move along linearly to expectation - which is tricky when the balance of "fun" and "tedium" is a ratio that's different for everybody.

 I insist that ultimately learning skills within the context of goals set by music recordings ultimately is the best way to go about things.  Nobody today is going to "practice" the mechanics of something for very long at all (particularly relative to the 80's) - but being able to get it out of the way while playing to music is easier.

 It's also informative from a rhythmic standpoint.  Doing something properly along with a recording that addresses a particular aspect of one's ability is really the only way to learn the "invisible" aspect of timing.  Learning the mechanics apart from matching it timing wise to the Real Thing is pointless!

 So the Trick is balancing the "practice" routine with what is at least marginally entertaining to you.  Which gets back to "what music do you really like?  Specifically?" and "what do you REALLY want to be able to do on the guitar?".  I'm not Vulcan, I can't read minds, you have to help me out on those questions!  Sometimes I can help the student out on it from a musicology standpoint, but learning to be honest with yourself is a good thing.  Do you *really* want to learn how to play The Currently Popular Song or do you actually like The Almost Unknown Song by One's Favorite but Unpopular Artist?  You'll learn much more within the framework of "what can be learned from that song?" because the entertainment factor will keep you motivated.







 

What Pick to Pick?

"What pick should I use?" is maybe a Top-10 question I get.  Which kind of has an easy answer:
"medium".  

Raise of hands: who has seen one of their own guitar picks under an electron microscope...?
 (special thanks to student Dave Burke for the electron microscopy!)

 What does that mean?  I presume the person I'm talking to is going to either be looking at the plethora of plectrums (sorry) at the must store.  In which case (sorry again, geez...) I'm sure there will be the ubiquitous Fender medium celluloid pick.

 I may sometimes suggest someone get a thin pick.  From a string collision standpoint, a thinner pick causes the picking hand/arm the least amount of disturbance and resistance, which makes it easier to maintain a steady rhythm.

 There is a lot more to picks than that, though.

 COMPOSITION

 Basically picks are made either of a cellulosic plastic, which is what most people initially think that a guitar pick is - the Fender style pick material.

 The most popular at this time though, is Tortex.  Tortex is a plastic that once had a trade name called "Zytel" if I'm not mistaken (could be).  This is commonly associate now with the Jim Dunlop brand, and are color-coordinated based on their thicknesses.

 Nylon plastic I believe was popular in the 60's and 70's.  There was a brand called Herco that from my Speculative Anthropology (tm) research was the popular brand at the time.  The Herco style had an embossed sand-paper like texture where one holds the pick.

 The remainder are something of a grab bag of outliers.  There was a time when actual tortoise shell was a thing to use as pick material; the Ultex plastic material is meant to replicate that.  Delrin is a thermoset plastic that has some strange properties that would seem to make it a good pick material, but in my experience they wear at really strange rates, and seem to be a bit "dead" response wise.  There are also horrid cheap plastic picks that you don't want to use, you'll be able to figure that out fairly easily. Hard acrylic/ translucent picks have the down sides of celluloid and break sooner, and usually have "flash" on the edges that feels extra-resistant to smooth rhyhm. There are also steel and copper picks, and the curiosity of the Big Felt Pick that it would seem nobody is absolutely 100% sure about.

A thick human hair is about the width of the scale shown at the bottom.  One would think a bomb went off on the pick; does that mean I have "explosive" picking...?  Hah...

SOUND / KINEMATICS

 I'm going to start with the felt picks.  You'll see these at every music store, yet at every music store I've worked at nobody can really give you a straight answer of what they're for.  Typically you'll get one of 2 answers: they're for ukuleles, or for bass.

 You want a soft sound on ukes.  But back in the the nascent days of the electric bass guitar, the notion of accepting the difference in sound from an upright double bass was not embraced.  The felt pick I believe was originally meant to NOT sound like a pick, but more like fingers.

 Which they do in a way.  The problem is that they immediately start shedding felt and make a mess.  For guitar it's a nice soft sound, but in both cases: I've never, ever encountered anyone using a felt pick. I've only seen someone buying one because I think they're not sure if they should have one or not.  In the studio they can be useful if someone plays bass with a pick but is having problems playing softly, without making a lot of...

PICK ATTACK NOISE

 ..is an integral part of guitar sound.

 The standard celluloid/Fender plastic pick almost instantly gets a microscopically jagged edge that creates a raspy high frequency attack sound.

 The angle one puts on the pick can demphasize that, or enhance it.  For certain types of blues playing, exaggerating it adds an more brilliant and cutting initial sound associated with certain guitar players.

 From a playing stand point I hate them with a passion - they're almost getting worse and worse, more and more jagged, raspier and raspier.  They're effectively snagging on the string.  It's something that takes up a little bit of processing power that I don't want there.  But for some, it's part of "their" sound.

 The biggest downside is that THEY BREAK.  They'll split on the tip when you least expect.  You can use a "heavy", but they will still break.  So, snaggy feel, raspy sound, and they break.  BUT...

 ... they're the only pick that makes a proper pick-slide sound - and it's got to be a "medium" or "light" pick.  So, if you want to do those Tom Scholz Boston long pick slides you have to use one of these.  Because a nylon won't really do it, and a Tortex definitely sounds different and less satisfying.

The Tortex material iss great.  They last an order of magnitude longer than a celluloid pick.  Not only that, but as they wear down they basically sound the same, except as the tip gets more blunted you get a more pronounced attack.  They don't break.  They're superior in all ways, except one - they sound silly doing pick slides.

  Nylon picks are kind of halfway between the Tortex and celluloid.  When new they have the least pick attack noise, very smooth feel on the strings.  As they wear in they get a little bit raspy, a little bit less smooth - but nothing like a celluloid pick.

 They have an additional property of being a little bit softer, which for the thinner varieties means some people actually bend them in their grip.  The super thin Tortex picks will do this as well, but with the nylon it facilitates changing the angle of attack which alters the sound - Tortex has a very wide window of "normal sound", it's hard to make them sound excessively raspy even for effect.

 Nylon picks will break, but it's like guitar strings - you don't need to expect it.

Metal of course lasts the longest.  The problem is that the thinner ones cannot sound soft, and all of them have a specific "tinkly" attack sound that some like, some hate.  The biggest downside is that they quite rapidly destroy the wound strings; and you'll get string shavings all over your guitar and into your pickups, and that can be a big problem.  If you have a string endorsement and a roadie to change them constantly, it's maybe not as big of a problem?  Also know that the copper picks will stain your fingers green, and you're probably absorbing a considerable amount of it.

 Delrin, and the outlier plastics - they're a mish-mash of disadvantages over the above.  The Ultex material has a specifically raspy quality that I presume is what tortoise shell sounds like (I've never used one, thankfully that stopped being a thing in the 70's).  It's kind of like Tortex with the snaggy/rasp of celluloid, but a specific high frequency rasp that is a bit more forgiving than celluloid.  If one likes that scratchy pick attack sound, but doesn't want to bother with learning to manipulate it this would be the pick to get.  It's more forgiving, lasts 10x longer than celluloid.

STONE - pretty self explanatory.  Thicker, scratchier, destroys strings, makes strumming feel weird and playing smoothly a more random event.


 SIZE / SHAPE

 The tip determines the sound.  The stereotypical shape is "neutral" sounding.  You can also get pointier tips, which translates less energy into the string, or blunter (pre-worn out?).  Some people will use the side, the "hip" of the pick either for the sound, or because it seems faster (because of the shallower angle of attack).

 There are also all sorts of goofy things, picks with multiple tips, fanned tips, the oddball Dunlop brand "shark" picks that, again, people can't really explain the why of, and the new trend of really odd thicker-at-the-tip picks that some Obscure Metal guys prefer.

 There was also in the 80's a very strange pick, whose name I don't recall, that was nylon but had a diamond-shaped knob on the tip.  It's purpose was to force you to be hyper-careful, otherwise the pick would snag, literally get hooked up on the string.  It worked if you were patient enough to use it - but redundant if you can make yourself practice picking that carefully in the first place!

  Coins: 2 very famous guys are known for using coins.  Brian May of Queen, the British sixpence.  Billy Gibbons of Z.Z. top, a Mexican peso.  Gibbons stopped using a peso a long time ago I believe, but Brian May used one his entire career.  The serrated edge of some picks make a very exaggerated rasp on the attack (listen to any Queen guitar solo for the characteristic squeak), while the round shape has a very specific loose feel.  You can try using a quarter, but remember it's metal: you'll quickly destroy your wound strings.  Gibbons and May are imbued with the magical Endless Supply of Guitar Strings as well as The Guy That Automatically Just Changes the Strings When Needed on Your Guitars.  Imagine that....

 Size.  There is the "regular" traditional Fender/Herco shape.  There is the smaller "Dunlop Jazz II/III" size, usually with a pointy tip.  There is the Oddball 3 Sided Triangle that is awful but apparently popular as "bass picks" in the 70's; maybe for cavemen players that would break celluloid picks so fast they preferred having the convenience of "3 picks in one" over the completely anti-ergonomic shape, and weird string feel?  There are some picks with thicker areas where you hold them, holes in the middle.

It's interesting how the edge has these "gigantic" clumps of abraded material.  I'd guess this is what goes away with the "carpet smoothing trick"?  (Again, thanks to Dave Burke for the electron microscopy!  It's great knowing visually what something *feels* like, and it's interesting how it matches how I imagined it!)

 
 I presently use a medium-ish nylon regular sized pick, which I get in bulk from China.  I prefer something like an .88mm (medium-ish) Tortex in the "jumbo jazz" size/shape (which means a pointy tip but regular size).  The "jazz", pointy tip makes a thicker pick sound like a thinner pick - less attack - if you can control it, and raspier like a celluloid pick if you rotate it slightly.  If you grip tighter it makes the attack more pronounced, which is good when you play "fast" for note definition - if you want that.  I'd prefer a pointy tip in nylon if there was such a thing, and cheap.  I use the nylon picks as a compromise, because they're relatively cheap: when they start getting worn down I'm not in a mind set of  "I can still use this pick, I can't waste".  I ditch them before they get to the "might split" phase.

 I propose a pick with a Tortex jazz-tip encased in celluloid.  As the celluloid rapidly wears away the Tortex pick is "unveiled"; but if you wanted the "scritchy" celluloid sound you'd still have it by digging the pick in deeper or rotating onto what was still there of the celluloid.  It wouldn't break and would still be usable even as the celluloid wore away.  I'm not sure if celluloid plastic can be bonded to Zytel, though... hmm, I need to email a friend in N.C. that is a plastics engineer?

 There are always fingers, and for some reason today I'm getting more people that want to insist on using just their fingers.  Which makes sense if you're going to EXCLUSIVELY play nylon string guitars and classical music.  Otherwise - you've got to use a pick!

I spotted a virion instantly in this image; my germ radar is well tuned, but I guess not enough hand sanitizer that day..?

Sloppiness Pt. 1: For Whom Do You Play, and Pig Skateboards?

 On the planet right now, there are a gazillion different guitar players.  They all feel they slot into a mythical and intangible scale of "sloppy vs. not sloppy".

 

Part of my quiver

 

  A lot of people don't evaluate their outcome goals to meter that.  Worse, I think that the 80's wrecked a lot of people's sensibility regarding the concept and turned it into a overly simplistic, all encompassing unobtanium throne of "Perfect Technique".

 I'm going to digress (because it's easy), to an even earlier time of the mid-70s and tell a story about skateboards.  Then, I'll try to tie that into a useful analogy for guitar playing.  I call this "stunt blogging":

 In the early 70s skateboards were very skinny.  They were undeveloped engineering and design-wise, still mired in a limbo zone of being mostly a "toy".  Then, in the mid -70's skateboarding exploded and suddenly there were companies whose sole purpose was to make not only just skateboards, but skateboard parts.

 One company was Dogtown Skates.  Previously there had been a few companies making skateboards, but the shape and size of the skateboards was never really explored (except in length).  Somewhere along the line, the guys that rode their skateboard decks start noticing them getting bigger and bigger, and suddenly it became apparent that a wider board is more stable.  Boards reached beyond being 6-7" wide.  By the 80s people started using boards averaging 10" wide, or more.

 Since then, things have settled down into the typical popsicle stick board seen today, 7.5"-8.5" wide.  But wider than the early 70s, and some still prefer wider today.

At Dogtown, there was a guy in charge of cutting out the planks of wood for the new decks.  This was pre-CNC milling, computer controlled manufacturing.  What he was doing was taking and old deck, and using it as a template to cut out new boards.  Then for the next run, he'd take one of the new boards... and use it as a template for the even newer run of boards.

 Every time he made a new run of boards, he was gradually making them wider.

 For someone who doesn't have a real artistic mind set, the obvious answer to "what is an acceptable amount of sloppiness?" is "obviously" none at all.  The 80s saw the dawn of people staying at home in their bedrooms practicing for many hours a day with their amplifier probably no further than a few feet from their ear.

 The new urge to play faster and more technical led to countless people sitting in front of their amp - in a sonic-microscopic fashion, playing their favorite technically challenging guitar parts from recordings. 

 The thing is, the people they were copying didn't record in that fashion, with their ear up on their speaker.  They heard it blended in professionally by the recording engineer, or maybe out in the studio room with the rest of the band: a less than optimal way to hear what they were doing.  Unless they deliberately soloed their tracks, to polish what they were doing.

 But that was in a *studio* setting.  When that generation and prior was learning guitar, they were listening to more primitive recordings on more primitive playback gear.  They may or may not have been able to make out most of the detail of what their favorite Chuck Berry lick was.  Which was a good thing: this allowed for mutation and hybrids.

 Practice amps were not that great, nor were guitars for beginners prior to the 80s.  So the process of sitting in the bedroom to copy what one's Favorite Guitar Hero did was a more coarse experience, also not tempered by the social pressures of having to have extraordinary technical skill.

 So what was happening in the 80's was akin to the skateboard deck getting bigger and bigger by default. 

 People were transcribing guitar solos with more accuracy and precision than in some cases the original guitar part was played.

 Not only that, but since in most cases the guitar solo on the record represented the guitarist at his "best, peak performance", the practice of replicating that performance over and over and over in the bedroom meant that the Bedroom Guy's skill set was elevated over the original. 

Was art getting better by that process?

 Most would say "no".  Most became intimidated by the anti-punk philosophy of being not just pragmatically skilled, but highly skilled. Then it became trendy to say "no", and that begat the "alternative music" rebellion in the late 80s/early 90s. I think that was a harsh and moronic herd-mentality reflex, to the countless technically adept guitar players that came out of the 80s  unburdened by an artistic sense. But something else just as bad came out of it:

 The moronic, Dunning-Kruger notion of Attaining "Perfect Technique".

 It became kind of tres-cool to say things like "oh yeah, Hendrix... he was sloppy" in the 90s.  I would hear this from both metal guitar players, and technical blues Stevie Ray Vaughn aficionados.  Which was doubly stupid for the SRV fan to say, given Vaughn wouldn't have existed without being a Hendrix fan.

 That attitude matured into what is now a finely shaded and graded scale of "how perfect is your technique?" by a lot of players.  Finely shaded, because what constitutes "perfect" is different depending on who you ask, and actual reality.

 Here's reality: there is "sloppy", and there is "making mistakes". The question is: what is a pragmatic approach to being a a fallible, imperfect human?


 There are 3 concepts that should be recognized in this context, in order to have a practical, pragmatic and useful philosophical attitude on this subject... (outlined in Part 2):

 

 

Speakers Are As Important as Your Amp or Guitar!

"What kind of amp should I buy?"

 I get asked this a lot.   And I beg out of the question because of the complexity involved in answering it properly.  I'm never asked "what kind of speakers should I buy?" As far as I'm concerned, this is more important than anything else!

 It's fairly easy to put amps into the Basic Food Groups: Fender, Marshall, Vox, solid state. What's harder to do, with less experience, is to understand how different models of speakers affect that selection.   

 Those amps have certain characteristics that one can learn to hear, and guitarists in general tend to be aware of these characteristics.  Speakers are a different story.

 If a guitar player has spent their life as a person that has always used combo amps, they're accustomed to hearing "the amp" as a whole as including  whatever speaker came with the cabinet.  This would tend to be, going out on a limb, more Fender amp players because of the fact that it's fairly rare to encounter a Fender amp as a separate head.  Even when that happens, the player is typically going to have it plugged into the accompanying cabinet the amp came with.

 Marshall players are typically not combo users.  As such there is always the question of what speakers is in one's cabinet, what does it sound like plugged into a buddy's cabinet, the oddball 1x12 with the speaker-in jack, the 2x12 that fits in the car instead of the 4x12, or maybe even what does the bass player's SVT 8x10 cabinet sound like with the Marshall going into it?

 So one tends to hear hard rock/metal players talk about speakers fairly often.  At some point all experienced players start evaluating their speaker preferences, including the Vox aficionado.  I'm writing this to suggest that the reader - if you don't already know what speakers you like, their different characteristics - should educate yourself on the subject before you spend $$$$$ on gear that you are not evaluating properly.   You may buy your Holy Grail favorite amp, only to discard it for something else because you're hearing it through the wrong speaker!

 I'm not going to get into detail about the differences; you can Google that, and there are ample videos where you can HEAR the difference.  Having said that, one should look up one's favorite players and note what speaker they prefer, and use that as a starting point. 

 Effectively speaking you need to learn about the following.  Note that a speaker magnet makes a big difference - alnico versus ceramic versus neodymium, and their relative size.  The cone and dustcap design matters as well.

Celestion (brand)

 "Greenback" style
"Vintage" series
Alnico Blue and Silver
"Generic" Celestions (65,75, 80 watt, etc.)

Jensen

C12 series
P series (alnico)

EV (ElectroVoice)

EVM series

JBL

E and D 120 series

 Note that the company Eminence makes effective clones of all of the above, as do a few other  brands.  You still want to think in terms of the above, though.

 So first, note what your favorite players use (Google!).  Then, rummage on YouTube across the bazillion demos and comparisons of the above speakers.  Try to see if you can think of some common characteristics you hear: dark (less treble), bright, bass-heavy, thin.  Do you hear the pick attack more with one speaker or the other?  Does one sound more percussive?  Does one sound "clearer", or "muddier"?

 Not only should you know this before going out and buying amp after amp and hoping something magically works out, it also increases your listening experience to music: you're educating your sonic sensibilities to these differences.  I can point out these things in a lesson, but unfortunately not "here" in writing.  If you're motivated enough, this is one thing you can learn off of YouTube somewhat.  It's not to say that playing through these speakers isn't it's own thing, because it is - as well as playing through these speakers at actual volume!
 
 But you'll be much closer and have a better idea of what you like and don't like.  It might save you $$$$$ as well...




 






































 

 

 

Music is a LANGUAGE; theory is SCIENCE!

 Music is a language, theory is science. Seems very simple to me, but in reality the misuse of syntax has put a pox on becoming a musician historically.  I'm a heretic, but I can explain myself.

 In my experience as a guitar teacher most people consider "music theory" to be something like a set of rules.  Alternatively, a set of instructions.

 This is partially true, but ONLY within one context:

 To become a classical music composer in the historical style of Bach.

  More specifically, I'd say it's an obtuse scripting language that yields "classical music" when a data set is applied. Another way of putting is, your whim is the data set and if you follow the ascribed rules and instructions, the output will be classical music. Which is fine, if you live in the 1700's, perhaps in Austria.  Some people virtually do, and have a wardrobe of frilly shirts to show for it.

 Sorry to digress into Viking metal.

 People I teach view the intellectual side of learning music to be something they can digest in a month or two, maybe even a few weeks.

 Would they think the same about learning Spanish?  Chinese?

 You're learning labels for subjective human musical experience. 

 Grammar doesn't inform you as to what to say.  It doesn't tell you how to describe what a flower looks like.  You have to have something to say.  Theoretically you don't need to know it, but you'll be limited in communicating.

 You don't have to follow grammar (obviously in the 21st century...).  Grammar allows you to communicate in a traditionally acceptable format.  When you decide to break from grammar, you tend to fall into idiomatic styles.

 You also are subject to being inadvertently comical.
 
  Music as a language is no different.  Music "grammar", when ignored means chances are you'll end up playing in an idiomatic style, and you'll also possibly risk being a cliche.

 Ignore it and you mind end up whimsically playing circus music passages, out of tune, or out of key.  Comical.

 Learning music as a language..... 

is a more appropriate description of what a person does when deciding to pick up an instrument than "reading the instruction manual" or "going over the rules".  I know a lot of people view it as something akin to math.  I also can hear a lot of people doing it as a math process.

   There are grammar, vocabulary, and literature aspects to it. 

How you form a sentence (melody).  What style of phrasing (vocabulary).  What stylistic antecedents you draw from (literature).

   You can watch a video that tells you that "dogs don't drive cars" in order to not know that "Bob the Labrador drove his Tesla to Kroger" is probably not a sensible sentence.  It's not a practical way of learning how to communicate, unless you want to be deliberately comical.  Yet, this is how many/most people think or expects the process of making music to work.  "Thou shalt not play parallel 5ths" is an adage in classical music, yet you'd be hard pressed to write a rock and roll song treating that as a rule or instruction.  

 Instead you use your "literary" experience, what you have listened to and love, as a filter for what you create.  Non-metaphysically you're using your subconscious awareness, the parallel processing ability of a human mind, to effectively handle the math behind the scenes.  That doesn't mean the process isn't super technical, maybe the most technical process humans do; but it is empirical observation that each human makes through experience being utilized that creates good music, not algorithms. 

 That an algorithm can make a result that sounds like music, does not consequently mean that is how all music or arbitrarily good music is made.  Human subjectivity trounces that approach, despite being abstruse and indeterminate.

 Learn music as a language, not a science.  This is maybe the most important difference among musicians in my opinion.  This should not be construed as simply some homily like "play from your soul, man" or some such; it is a very self-introspective awareness of how one does the process.


..... Learn music as a language, not a science.

 

 




 

 

Mainlining Music

 I like music. A lot.

 As a kid I used to make cassettes of a part of the same song looped over and over, just because I loved hearing it that much.

 I continued to do that as a guitar player.  Unlike drugs, there are no detrimental side effects.  Except one.

  Boredom is brain chemistry telling you "you've sucked the good out of this, time to move on".  It's part of the learning process if you can recognize it as boredom of something that was previously stimulating.  It doesn't mean it will always be boring, you'll likely return with a new mindset at a later time - but a more educated one.

 On paper if presented with the following criteria as something I'd find fascinating and visceral, I would bet against it:

 Wind chimes on intro(this alone would make me put my money elsewhere)
 Initial theme based on b5.
 Repetitive 16th note arpeggio throughout.
 Keyboard sampled string sound.
 Simple 2 bar block-chord structure.
 Additional Roland synth string sound.


 I'll leave it to the reader to discern what that was. When I first started writing this post I had been listening to it looped for over half an hour.  Just that first 1 minute 23 seconds.

 What do I gain from this? Aside from the pleasure of just listening to something I like, there are things that are not readily apparent. Mostly in the careful arrangement that has just enough subtle detail to keep it from merely being "just" the formula I outline above.  While it's essentially what I outlined, the beauty of it is in the nature of the dynamics, and the slight variations.  It could easily be banal, but it's not.  That in itself is a big trick.  The balance, the ratio of the sublime to the obvious, basic premise.

 What is really happening is a feedback reward loop is created. 

 I like that bit of music; I listen to it repeatedly for the above aspects.  By doing it over and over there is an almost Pavlovian response in that if I head some that might be similar to the above formula, *I want the same detail/ratio/subtlety present to get the same reward satisfaction*.  It's training to impart these aspects on what you do.  It's positive reinforcement of predilection.

I've done this all of my life, even before I played guitar.  It was easier in a sense as a kid.  Records were expensive, and you were careful with what you bought.  You really liked what you bought, and you listened to it a lot.  You didn't jump about like you can today with Google Music or Spotify.

 5th grade was "Out of the Blue" by ELO.  8th grade was _The Wall_ by Pink Floyd.  Every day.  Had it ringing through my head at school.  At different years in my life I've "mainlined" Jeff Buckley's _Grace_.  Or a John Coltrane Live in Europe bootleg.  2014 was Bach's Well Tempered Clavier played by Glen Gould (first version, book 1).

 I remember when I first started doing this.  I was 4 years old (?) when the Carpenter's "A Song for You" came out. My parents took me to Sky City department store on Wrightsboro road, they had just put up the poster for it since the week before. "A Song for You" was in rotation on the radio.  I would sit in front of my parent's stereo and listen to that 8 track over and over and over until they told me I couldn't anymore.  Later I had no problem in piano lessons at 5 playing "Close to You" by ear because I'd already listened to it a million times. 

 Cassettes were great because they allowed me to loop just the songs I wanted to hear.  Over and over.  Later just sections of a song as I learned guitar.  Then just small snippets of songs.

 I've played to loops of just a part of a guitar solo, or vocal lines. Sucking the marrow from the music.  Just recently I've probably played a section of a run from an Al DiMeola song maybe... a few hundred times, because I want to absorb the curve of his accellerando/decellerando in the run.  I don't like Latin music enough to listen to it enough to absorb that one aspect, but by doing this I get to concentrate *what I like about it*. 

 This is effectively musical gluttony.  I am guilty.  I am a product of doing this!  I think the beauty of this, and why everyone should do it - is that what I create musically is the result of *exactly what I like*. Which is going to be a specifically unique array of things relative to other people!

 In my opinion this is what being a human is about.  Being a unique creature is something not afforded to apes or dolphins.  You shouldn't squander your attention to music, after all it is you.