Alright, admittedly "touring" is stretching it a bit, but moving is a lot like touring in that you really don't know what kind of challenges you'll run into on the road.
Like any major production, you can plan everything down to the last rest stop and nickel, but you still only have a plan. Then you have to deal with what fate or Mother Nature throws at you. Regardless of how well your plan holds up, there will still be curve balls thrown at you.
Sure, contingency plans are great, and I wholeheartedly encourage having a backup (or two!), but most of us would be doing great just having the main plan in place.
What does this have to do with guitar?
Glad you asked!
How many of you have thought about creating a plan to develop your guitar playing skills?
The same thought process you'd use for a trip should go into developing your guitar skills. Just like planning a tour or a move, you should map out the skills you want to learn and create a road map (plan) to master each skill.
Let's look at a simple example. All guitarists need to learn how to play chords. Playing chords for the first time is a real challenge for many people. In fact, I would say guitar chords are probably the reason most people give up guitar.
But let's get back to the example.
There are thousands of guitar chords available to us. Fortunately for the most part we are blissfully unaware of that fact. Otherwise, most of us would be paralyzed, think we'll never learn all those chords.
As I've said before, learning the fundamentals of guitar is all about patterns. Once you've picked up a handful of basic chord shapes, you'll have the tools at your finger tips to play hundreds of chords.
So a good plan in the beginning is to learn the five basic open chord shapes: the C chord, A chord, G chord, E chord and D chord. By "open" I mean chords you'll play within the first three frets.
Once your fingers have memorized those shapes, add the minor chords of each basic shape to your palette. Some will be used all the time, while with others you'll find other shapes to use to make them. For example, the A minor shape will be very simple and you'll use it often. But G minor in the open position is not one you'll see used very often. Typically you would use a barre chord to play G minor.
There are other open shapes you can learn to expand the harmonic range of your chord playing. Shapes like the various 7 chords and suspended chords, which are just fingering variations on the chord shapes..
Which brings me to the next step in your plan to learn chords: barre chords.
Truthfully, if your goal is to be able to strum some chords and play some songs, you can get away with playing open chords and never progressing to barre chords. But to get to the next level, barre chords are a must.
Clearly, barre chords require a bit more strength and dexterity in the fretting hand, so I like to teach my students about power chords. Power chords are played in the same positions as barre chords, but only require fingering two notes of the chord. They help you learn the chord locations and begin training your hand to play the full barre chords.
After you have learned barre chords you can advance to chord inversions and other shapes such as 'add' and diminished chords.
So there's a basic road map to learn the vast array of available chords:
- basic open major shapes
- minor shapes
- other shapes
- power chords/barre chords
- inversions
- advanced chords
Clearly this was a very simple example of creating a plan to learn chords. Obviously along the way you will encounter challenges and difficulties. It may take you longer to master some chord shapes, and you'll have to work at developing your finger and hand flexibility as well as toughening up your finger tips.
Like with any plan, the key is to continue working through each step along the way until you get to your destination. And you don't necessarily need to complete each step before moving on to the next.
Keep moving, adjust to situations as they come up and drive on to the next step and eventually the final destination. Just like a band on tour or making a move across the country, work the plan until you get to the end.
Let me know if you have any questions... Rock on!
Peace~
Dave
P.S - Sorry about the formatting of this email. Something has happened to my formatting and I'm still living in a hotel, so I don't have access to my main computer yet. I'll get it sorted out... |
