How To Learn The Guitar Fretboard And Become A More Creative Musician

A common challenge that many musicians face is a lack of ability to be expressive and creative in their guitar playing. To make the problem even more painful, you have no doubt also heard the common prediction that it is impossible to improve your level of musical creativity beyond what your natural talent enables you to do. On the surface, the chances of overcoming this problem may seem very low and I recall myself being very frustrated with my lack of progress in this area years ago.

The good news is that musical creativity is a goal that can be achieved by anyone. If you doubt your own potential to become a creative musician and fear that you “lack musical talent,” think about how only people who are not musicians (or at least are not “great” musicians) make such ignorant claims, and nobody among the world’s top guitar players believes in this myth.

However, despite the fact above, there are still several reasons why so many guitar players have a hard time improving their musical creativity. Here are a few of them:

1. The majority of musicians do not consciously plan or even know what it is they need to work on to become more creative on their instrument.

2. Many musicians approach the process of becoming more creative by looking for a single specific thing they must practice on guitar that will give them the desired result. In reality, guitar playing and musical creativity is a result of combined practicing of multiple skills that, at first glance, may appear to have little to do with each other. This is similar to learning to speak a new language and needing to do many overlapping activities (learning the vocabulary, studying rules of grammar, immersing yourself into a new culture, etc.,) to reach your goal of fluency.

3. Too many guitar players cannot distinguish between being “musically creative” and being an “original” musician. To be original, you must have the ability to come up with musical ideas that nobody has heard or played before. Contrary to that, to be musically “creative”, all that is necessary is for you to play music that makes you happy and fulfilled with, regardless of whether or not you are truly original. It’s important to emphasize the difference between these two terms because clearly understanding your guitar playing goals will help you to reach them much more quickly. To learn more about effective guitar practicing, watch this video about the best guitar practice methods.

The entire list of topics that is needed for becoming a highly creative guitar player is much too broad to be covered in only one article. However, in the points below I will help you to learn how to practice one particular aspect of guitar playing which is highly important for developing musical creativity. This aspect is the ability to visualize the entire guitar fretboard. Of all the skills you need to work on in order to improve your creativity, mastering the guitar neck will help you to see instant progress in your ability to express yourself on guitar, even though (ironically) this element is rarely practiced as much as it should be. Becoming totally fluent in your visualization of the guitar will make it a whole lot easier for you to master other aspects of making more creative music.

As you read the folloing points, consider how these practicing ideas are interconnected to help you develop the same general skill (of fretboard mastery) from a variety of angles.

Here is what you must do in order to completely master your visualization of the guitar neck:

Memorize All Notes On Guitar
To become more creative when playing guitar solos or writing songs, one fundamental thing you must learn is where all the notes on the fretboard are all over the guitar. Most importantly, you need to be able to recall the notes quickly, in the same way you can recall your birthday, your phone number or other facts that you know by heart. Many guitar players make the mistake of stopping to work on learning the notes on the fretboard further once they develop the basic ability to “figure out” what a note is after thinking about it. This is not good enough. In order to have this knowledge be usable in your musical skills, you must speed up your ability to recall where notes are on the guitar neck. To learn more about how to practice to achieve this, watch this free video about memorizing the guitar neck.

Play Scales In Every Position On Guitar Fretboard
When it comes to the skill of fretboard visualization, few things are more common among guitar players than the problem of only knowing how to play scales in one position. Until you learn how to play the scales you know everywhere on the guitar neck, your ability to be creative on guitar will be severely (and needlessly) restricted.

Conversely, when you can play scales all over the guitar, your ability to be free to express yourself in music will go through the roof. If you want to learn how to develop this in your guitar practicing, see this free video lesson on the topic of practicing guitar scales.

Get Used To Identifying What Fretboard “Shapes” Look Like.
In order to fully and fluently visualize everything you play on guitar, you must focus on the ability to see in your mind the fretboard patterns formed by scales, licks, chords and intervals that you play on your instrument. Although this skill is not often talked about or practiced by guitarists, it is very important for learning to be free when playing music. When you develop the skill to identify fretboard shapes, you will find that you can play any note, anywhere on the guitar and know what chord, scale or lick can be played in relation to that pitch. Watch this video about memorizing the guitar neck to learn exactly what this skill means and to understand how you should practice for it.

Become Confident At Playing Guitar In Any Key
Due to the unique nature of the guitar, it is common for guitar players to become locked in to playing in a certain set of keys that are physically easier to play. However, this leaves a significant portion of the instrument unexplored when it comes to playing in unfamiliar keys such as Db major, F minor and others. Although you probably already know how to slide/transpose barre chords and scales to any key, there is a difference between theoretically knowing “how” to do something and actually feeling confident about playing in strange and unfamiliar keys. The good news is that by practicing to play in keys that you aren’t used to yet, it will become much easier to visualize the entire guitar neck and to have your playing feel much easier and more creative as a result.

As you can see from reading the guitar practice advice from this article, you do not need to have lots of natural talent in order to improve your musical creativity. All you need is an understanding of the elements that go into making this skill possible, as well as consistency in applying these points into your guitar practice sessions. Even though there is much more left to be said about the general idea of musical creativity for guitar players, if you follow the advice in this article you will surely see significant growth in your ability to express yourself creatively with your music.

To learn even more about improving your guitar playing and musical creativity, make sure to study the items below:

Guitar Noise Podcast #29 – “Good Riddance Bonus Material”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Hello to all!

And welcome to our first Guitar Noise Podcast for 2013.

This year, we’ll occasionally use our podcasts to supplement our song lessons. This one explores ways of strumming Green Day’s ”Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” using combinations of straight strumming and single note picking and also creates a bit of a bass line.

We hope you enjoy the return of our podcasts and, as always, we welcome your thoughts, questions and suggestions.

Peace

You can download the episode here: mp3

Doc Watson

“I never met a more generous kind of musician. He is more about the musical communication than showing off with hot licks. … He seems to always know what notes to play. They’re always the perfect notes. He helped me learn the space between the notes is as valuable as the ones you play.”  â€" Sam Bush

 ”I’m not a legend. I’m just someone who enjoyed the music and who enjoyed playing music.”  â€" Doc Watson

Arthel Lane Watson was born in March, 1923 in Deep Gap, North Carolina, a small unincorporated community in Watauga County. This same county, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, was also the birthplace of Albert Green Hopkins, considered by many to be one of the pioneers of hillbilly and country music. Before his first birthday, Watson lost his eyesight. His parents taught him to be able to care for himself and he worked hard to do so.

His parents also brought the joy of music to him. His mother sang, as did his father, who also played banjo. Watson himself would be playing the banjo and harmonica by the time he was five years old.

“My real interest in music was the old 78 records and the sound of the music. I loved it and began to realize that one of the main sounds on those old records I loved was the guitar.”

“I just loved the guitar when it came along. I loved it. The banjo was something I really liked, but when the guitar came along, to me that was my first love in music.”   â€" Doc Watson

According to a National Public Radio interview, Watson’s father helped him to get his first guitar, a Stella from Sears for about ten dollars, by suggesting the young Watson (and his brother, David), chop and clear the dead trees along the border of their land and sell the wood. The Carter Family’s song, “When Roses Bloom in Dixieland,” was the first song he learned on his new instrument. He practiced hard and he and his brother Linny could soon be found playing on street corners in nearby Boone, North Carolina.

He took up electric guitar as well. And he got a nickname. Playing a live radio performance before a live audience, it was pointed out that “Arthel” was a little unwieldy and suggested he might go under a stagename or nickname of some sort. Someone in the crowd suggested “Doc” and that was good enough for everyone.

When he was thirty, Doc Watson was playing electric guitar for a western swing band led by Jack Williams. The band often got gigs at square dances, but since they didn’t have a fiddle player, Watson would play the fiddle tunes’ melodies on his Les Paul, often at fantastic speeds. And then he started to do the same on the acoustic guitar.

“And people all over the place were trying to figure out how to do this. But Doc, he set the bar for everyone. He said, ‘This is how it goes.’ And people have been trying for years to match that….”He took it (the guitar) out of the background and brought it upfront as a melody instrument. We’re no longer at the back of the class. He gave the front to us.”  â€" Peter Huttlinger

Seven years later, Watson caught the attention of Ralph Rinzler, who also managed Bill Monroe. Rinzler advised him to ride the growing wave of the folk music revival and to play just the acoustic guitar and banjo exclusively. Three years later, Watson was playing the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. His first recording contract, and the first of the sixty albums he’d record, came the following year.

1964 also marked the beginning of Watson’s touring and recording partnership with his son, Merle â€" Eddy Merle, actually, named after country music legends Eddy Arnold and Merle Travis. Father and son toured and recorded together for fifteen years, picking up Grammy Awards for Best Traditional Recording in 1975 and Best Country Instrumental Performance in 1979.

In 1985, Merle died in a tractor accident, leaving Watson devastated. Although he seriously considered retiring, instead he choose to honor Merle and the music they played together by founding “MerleFest,” held every year on the Wilkes Community College campus in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.

“When Merle and I started out we called our music ‘traditional plus,’ meaning the traditional music of the Appalachian region plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play,” Doc Watson is quoted as saying on the festival’s website. “Since the beginning, the people of the college and I have agreed that the music of MerleFest is ‘traditional plus.”‘ â€" Doc Watson

All told, Watson recorded some sixty albums. He received seven Grammy Awards, including the 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award, and was awarded the National Medal of the Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1997.

But perhaps most telling honor is this, in 2011 a lifesized statue of Doc Watson was erected at the intersection of Depot and King Streets in Boone, North Carolina:

And on the plaque, at Watson’s personal request, it reads simply this:

Just one of the people.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Art of Songwriting

Now newbie songwriters can learn the craft and sing their own praises online. Beginning songwriters can hit the right note by starting out with the basics in this guide, including: How to create melodies, How to create many different harmonies, Techniques using deliberate rhythm and stylistic changes, How to enable one’s songwriting to grow and evolve, How to deal with songwriter’s block, The best places to upload one’s work for maximum exposure and opportunities.

Order The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Art of Songwriting through this link and you will also help support Guitar Noise.

“As a Nashville native, I’ve always been fascinated by music and the music industry. This is one of the few books I’ve found that offers a true insider’s view of the real craft of songwriting. The text is easy to read, and filled with helpful real-world examples. I highly recommend this book if you are serious about becoming a better songwriter.”

“David Hodge’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Art of Songwriting is a keeper, not only for me but also for friends who’ve been involved with the musical end of this art for years.”

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing the Ukulele

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing the Ukulele features our own Nick Torres, providing vocals for many of the song examples. Nick also was kind enough to contribute an original song of his own, for the chapter on how to play ukulele in a traditional band setting. And if that’s not enough, you’ll also get an incredible fingerstyle arrangement of “Over the Rainbow” for ukulele and voice.

Order The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing the Ukulele through this link and you will also help support Guitar Noise.

To get an idea of what this book is like, check out some of the free ukulele lessons on this site.

“Before rushing out to buy a your first uke, invest in this guide first and read the excellent tips in Chapter 21. Then then you’re ready to start enjoying a musical hobby that will fill solitary hours as well as impress your friends!”

“If you’ve been thinking about taking up the ukulele as your next stringed instrument (or maybe your first), I strongly suggest you get this book first because you might never need another one.”

Check out a complete review of the The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing the Ukulele by Guitar Noise founder Paul Hackett.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Bass Guitar

Whether readers have just picked up the bass or are learning to improve their technique, this book provides a strong foundation of all the bass basics. Learn how to create bass lines instead of simply copying them and practice your skills with the many songs and exercises on the accompanying CD.

To get an idea of what this book is like, you can check out the free lesson on this site that teaches you how to play Money by Pink Floyd on bass guitar.

Order The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Bass Guitar through this link and you will also help support Guitar Noise.

“Hodge writes in an easy-to-understand, down-to-earth manner, and it’s almost like having an experienced teacher there with you.”

“Mr. Hodge anticipates questions very well, and his conversational writing style translates superbly to learning an instrument.”

Check out a complete review of the The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Bass Guitar by Mitch Schlesinger.

How to Maximize Your Income from Guitar Teaching

If you are like most guitar teachers, you are struggling to earn enough money in your guitar teaching business. This can cause a lot of frustration because you will often feel as if you are putting out a lot of effort, only to receive very little in return.

This situation often discourages most guitar teachers from doing more to grow their business and they become very pessimistic toward making a lot of money teaching guitar lessons. Fact is, making a great living (over $100k annually) with guitar teaching is a very obtainable goal.

The majority of guitar teachers do not reach this level of success; however everyone, including you, has the potential to do so if you know the right steps to take to expand your own guitar teaching business.

In order to help you get started, I want to show you why most guitar teachers have a hard time making money with guitar lessons. After reading the list below, you will be able to avoid the costly mistakes that other people make while teaching guitar. By knowing what not to do as a guitar teacher, you can make much faster progress toward making a lot more money with guitar lessons.

Most guitar teachers tend to use the same method for attracting new guitar students (whether it works or not). Once this method stops working, they end up running out of guitar students, and do not know how to find new ones. Unfortunately, these guitar teachers generally have poor marketing strategies that do not promote their teaching business very well. The most successful guitar teachers have many different overlapping strategies working for them all at the same time that provide them with a continual stream of new guitar students. To test the effectiveness of your own methods of promoting your guitar teaching business, take this short test to find out how much you know about attracting guitar students.

You aren’t sure how to keep your current guitar students coming back.

Most guitar teachers put all of their efforts into finding prospective guitar students. These teachers neglect learning how to keep their current students coming back for a long time. If your guitar students are not staying with you for a couple years or longer, then you have much work to do.

By learning how to keep your students longer, your guitar teaching business will be much more stable. This is because you will not need to find new guitar students in order to simply ‘make up’ for the loss of those who quit lessons with you. As you become better at retaining students, you will be able to expand your business and make much more money teaching guitar.

You don’t know how to consistently turn your guitar students into really great guitar players.

If you do not know how to help your guitar students achieve everything they want with guitar on a consistent basis, they will not recommend you to other potential guitar students. The most highly successful guitar teachers (who earn six figures-plus) maintain a reputation for getting great results for their guitar students. This is an important component to their success, and is what helps them to quickly expand their guitar teaching business. This is why, in my guitar teacher program I spend a lot of time training members how to help their students progress in the fastest way possible

You don’t make money from guitar lessons for every week of the year.

Most guitar teachers think that they must either get paid while teaching guitar lessons or not get paid whenever they need time off (for vacation, sick days, holidays, etc.). On top of that, these teachers do not get paid whenever a guitar student does not show up to a lesson. The good news is that as a guitar teacher you can get paid for both the time you spend with students, and the time you spend away from teaching guitar lessons. Additionally, you can provide huge value to your guitar students, so that they will be ‘glad’ to pay for days when you are taking time off (you read this right!). To learn how to make money in your guitar teaching business every week of the year while keeping your students happy, get this free guide for earning money in your guitar teaching business.

You do not charge enough for guitar lessons.

Most guitar teachers think that by lowering the price of guitar lessons they will be able to get the attention of more prospective guitar students. In reality they are merely making less money per student. Additionally, this approach is a mistake for the following two reasons:

1. When you charge less for your guitar lessons, your prospective guitar students will perceive your guitar teaching to be lower quality. Fact is, many people would love to pay more money in order to get the best quality guitar instruction.
2. If you are charging a higher price for guitar lessons, your guitar students will naturally feel a need to get the most out of their investment. Your students will feel more motivated to practice, listen during lessons, and become great guitar players. If you charge less for guitar lessons, you are taking away a huge natural advantage from your students that can help them get all they can while working together with you.

The most successful guitar teachers do not lower their teaching rates in order to get the attention of new guitar students. These teachers focus on building ‘higher value’ while working to constantly improve their guitar teaching skills. By doing this, they overwhelm their guitar students with value and benefits that no other guitar teacher can match. This makes their teaching rates seem much ‘lower’ by comparison.

You aren’t using a strong teaching policy.

One of the biggest problems for most guitar teachers is that they do not have a solid teaching policy in place for their guitar teaching business (or they do not enforce the one they have). This has various negative side effects, including the following:

1. It makes you seem as if you do not take your guitar teaching business seriously. Your guitar students will quickly notice this, and will respect you much less as a guitar teacher. Some students will show up late (or not at all) for lessons, re-schedule, or miss payments.
2. Since your guitar students do not respect you as a guitar teacher, they will feel less motivated to practice the things you show them during lessons. As a result, they will make much less progress on guitar.
3. You will experience great frustration while spending your time calling students about missed payments, teaching free make up guitar lessons, and waiting around for students who decide not to show up on time.

You must create and enforce a strict guitar teaching policy in order to get your students to take you seriously as a guitar teacher. This will save you a lot of time and money, and will help you to build a positive reputation in your local area. Find out how to create a good guitar teaching policy with this free guide for earning money in your guitar teaching business.

You are not sure how to fully understand your guitar students’ unique personal needs.

Most guitar teachers do not understand that teaching guitar is based around meeting the emotional needs of your students first. In order to reach high levels of success as a guitar teacher, it is essential that you learn how to directly communicate the following points with your guitar students:

1. You are 100% dedicated to helping them achieve the best results in their guitar playing.
2. You understand the struggles that they are experiencing with guitar and have had to deal with them yourself.
3. You sincerely care about their success with guitar, and are totally committed to helping them succeed.

When you build strong connections with your guitar students (and follow up on giving them the results you promised), your students will become very loyal to you. As a result, they will continue guitar lessons with you for years, and will help you make much more money.

You hold yourself back.

Most guitar teachers only consider three different things when thinking of ways to make more money with guitar lessons:

1. How much they charge per guitar lesson.
2. How many guitar students they give lessons to.
3. How many hours they teach guitar per week.

If you attempt to become a successful guitar teacher using the three points above, you will be massively limiting your potential to grow your guitar teaching business. Although these three points are important, they are only a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to making more money as a guitar teacher. What would you think if I told you that you could make three or four times your current yearly guitar teaching income without charging more per lesson? Believe it or not, this is a reality for most highly successful guitar teachers. Learn how to do this by watching this video on making money as a guitar teacher.

You consider one on one guitar lessons to be the #1 method for teaching guitar.

It is true that one on one guitar lessons can be great in some cases; however it is not true that teaching guitar in this manner is the only way to get great results for your students. Additionally, this approach is very limiting to your potential to make a lot more money teaching guitar. In order to earn a lot of money in your guitar teaching business, you need to combine one on one lessons with group classes and other unique teaching formats. This will not only make you more money, but will also help your guitar students to reach their goals much faster than if they were taking one on one lessons only. To find out more about how to teach guitar lessons in a variety of unique formats, make sure to watch this video on making money as a guitar teacher.

You have not developed an effective strategy to get from your current situation to a six figure yearly income.

The most successful guitar teachers build their guitar teaching business through extensive planning and strategy. These teachers do not rely on any form of luck, instead they work hard to implement new ideas until they manifest their own success. Unfortunately, the majority of guitar teachers simply copy what other teachers are doing in hopes that it might work for them, too. The main problem with this is that most other guitar teachers are unsuccessful, and do not make a lot of money teaching guitar. By doing the same things these teachers do, you will only be working toward mediocre results (if any). If you want to build a highly successful guitar teaching business while making a lot of money, it is necessary to seek the advice of someone who knows what you need to do to become the most successful guitar teacher in your local area.

If you have identified with the points described in this article, then you now know what stands in the way of your progress toward having a highly successful (and profitable) guitar teaching business. Once you use this knowledge, you will quickly notice rapid growth as a guitar teacher, as well as higher interest and motivation for your guitar students.

Check out these free guitar teacher resources in order to be able to quickly begin implementing the ideas in this article:

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, recording artist and the guitar player for the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He helps people from all over the world learn how to teach guitar. Visit his website tomhess.net to get free guitar teacher resources and to read more guitar teaching articles.

Taste, Tone, and Technique – Open for Discussion

You never know what kind of questions and discussions are going to pop up on the Guitar Noise Forum pages. This one was posted over the past weekend:

Tone, Taste, or Technique â€" Which is most important?

I know all three are important… but what is the most important? Maybe a better question would be what is the relative importance of each?. Now I’m not talking jazz but something a like blues.

Well, you can always count on Tom Serb for a thoughtful, and thought-provoking answer:

IMO, none of the above.

Rhythm/timing are the single most important element in music â€" if they’re off, nothing else will save the day.  If you’re dead on in your groove, you could be playing “Row Row Row Your Boat” and most people will dig it.

Once you’ve got that, it depends on who your audience is.  Having great tone and no taste is like reading a novel with great words, but no plot.  It’ll work as background, but it’s not something you pay attention to (or listen to a second time).  So tone is a great focus if you want to be in the background but have nothing to say.

If you’ve got great taste but lousy tone, you can be popular within a niche.  There are fans of old recordings by Leadbelly, etc. where the tone just plain sucks (no doubt due to the technology of the time, but still…. it just sucks).  Great taste with tone will get you a wide audience.

If you’ve got great technique but not much else, you only get fans from folks who play the same instrument.  Go to a concert by Yngwie/Buckethead/Batio/Gilbert/etc. and ask those around you if they play guitar.  I’ll bet at least 90% of them do.  If you want to speak to the masses, they don’t care about technique â€" they care about the music.  Go to a concert by Jeff Beck/Eric Clapton/John Mayer/etc. and you won’t find nearly as many guitarists in the audience â€" it’s just the general listening public.  Their technique doesn’t suck, but it’s not best in class.

So if you’re talking about what the average music fan wants, I’d rank the choices:

Taste
Tone
Technique

If you want to chime in on the discussion, head right on over here!

Looking forward to seeing you on the Guitar Noise Forum pages throughout the upcoming year.

Peace

Making the Least of Resolutions

So, how are your New Year’s resolutions for 2013 coming along?

Since today is just Januaary 2, hopefully the answer will be “great so far!” or “haven’t started yet because yesterday was a holiday!” Depending on which answer is yours, you have either managed to get through one day while keeping your resoluton or are about to start the first day of a “new” you.

Typically, we guitarists make grand resolutions â€" I’m going to practice for an hour every day, learn seven thousands new songs this year, play in front of an audience â€" and, again typically, we usually start out well. For a day or so.

What I’d like to suggest to you is that you take a time-tested practice technique and adapt it to your resolutions and guitar-playing goals for the upcoming year. When you’re learning a song or practicing a new technique, you’re smart enough to know that simply diving in and playing from start to finish isn’t always a great way to practice. Sometimes you might have to focus your energy on a single, small passage of music, maybe even a single measure, in order to work through the difficulties it may pose. Once you’ve done that to satisfaction, then you start integrating this small bit of music into the rest of the piece.

Why not do the same thing with your guitar oriented resolutions? Too many times it’s not that our resolutions aren’t attainable, it’s that we’re making it impossible for us to keep them by starting out with impossible dreams. A good resolution, whether it’s to practice more or to lose weight or to quit smoking, can’t happen overnight. It’s a life change and it’s going to take a lifetime for it to become habit.

So, just as with practice, break the problem into smaller, manageable pieces. Instead of resolving to practice an hour every day, simply practice for some reasonable period of time today. Just today. That’s a resolution you can easily manage.

Then tomorrow, make a similar resolution. Tweak it a bit by setting a specific time allotment or working on a specific technique or piece of music or whatever you’d like. The more specific you can be in your resolution, the better you can measure what you’re accomplishing:   ”Today I resolve to practice my C major pentatonic scale in Root 6 position for twenty minutes.” Then the next day you might tweak it more and resolve to do a half-hour’s worth of jamming that C major scale to a backing track.

The advantage of a day-by-day resolution is that you can take shortfalls into account. Suppose you know you’re not going to be able to get thirty minutes of practice today? Well, then resolve something that you can achieve in the time you have. “Today I resolve to remember forever that an E minor chord is made up of the notes E, G and B.” Or learn where one single note, say the note of the open high E (first) string is on the clef of music notation. Congratulations! Instead of whining about how you weren’t able to make your resolution you managed to learn something that’s going to be useful to you forever in terms of your guitar playing and musicianship.

There’s no end to the things that you can accomplish if you actively avoid setting yourself up for a fall. Make a daily resolution. Keep a log of them! By the time 2014 rolls around you will have accomplished 364 goals instead of one.

That’s a great way to start a new year, no?

Peace

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) – Green Day

A good guitarist varies his or her picking style to fit the music at hand. This simple and fun arrangement of “Time of Your Life (Good Riddance)” will help demonstrate the concept of “convenience picking” and give you a lot of practice improving your flatpicking skills.

I should also mention at this point, though, you can easily fingerpick this song using the same concepts. As you’ll learn, convenience picking shares a lot in common with fingerstyle playing so you’ll be good with this song regardless of whether you choose to play using either a pick or your fingers.

To make matters more interesting, we’ll be running some Guitar Noise Podcasts in a few weeks expanding on the potential playing possibilities of “Good Riddance,” giving you a chance to explore playing in a combination of strumming and single-note cross picking.

For right now, though, we’re going to focus on the basics in order to get a good grasp of how to play this song. The structure of “Good Riddance” is essentially a set of three verses. Each verse consists of six lines:

• The first two lines are two measures of G followed by a measure of C and one of D. This progression is also used as an introduction as well as an interlude between each verse.
• The second two lines are one measure each of Em, D, C and G
• The third line is four measures which alternate between Em and G
• The last line is one measure of Em and one of D and then a repeat of the first two lines serving as an interlude between verses.

Liner Notes:

“Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” was a long time coming as a recorded song. Although Billie Joe Armstrong wrote in in 1990, he didn’t bring it up to the rest of Green Day until 1993, while they were putting together material for their breakout major label release, Dookie. No one really knew what to do with the song, though, as it didn’t really mesh with tunes like “Basket Case,” ”Welcome to Paradise” or “When I Come Around.”

Four years later when Green Day was determined to make Nimrod a serious step-forward in terms of focusing on creating good songs, “Good Riddance” was one of the thirty songs recorded for consideration on the album. Producer Rob Cavallo suggested adding strings and the rest, as they say, is history. The song got as high as #2 on both Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks and the Australian Singles Chart.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

We’re going to examine each of these in turn, but first let’s have a short discussion on picking. Beginners, especially those learning on their own without a teacher, tend to start out by picking in one direction only, that being downstrokes. Later in their musical growth they will learn about alternate picking, where one altenates each stroke of the pick in opposite directions, a downstroke followed by an upstroke followed by a downstroke and so on. Both techniques have their merits and their own places in playing and are essential to know.

But there’s another picking technique that you definitely want to learn (assuming you don’t already know it) if you want to become a better guitarist. It’s called “convenience picking” although some people also call it “economic picking” or even “directional picking.”

Personally, I think of it as “swim meet picking.” When someone participates in a swim meet, he or she heads off in one direction until he or she is just about to run into the wall on the other side of the pool. Does the swimmer stop and then turn around and head back? Of course not! Instead, before hitting the wall, the swimmer ducks under and reverses direction in order to smoothly be heading back where he or she came from.

It’s the same thing with picking, only the “wall,” if you will, is not necessarily in a fixed place. The essence to convenience picking is to be constantly picking in the direction of the next string you want to strike. Let’s take a look at just the G chord segment (the first two measures) of the first line of “Good Riddance” to see both how this is done and why its such a valuable technique to learn:

In this example I have not included any directional notation. But do yourself a favor and try it out first playing every note with a downstroke and see how it goes. Even if you’re used to playing nothing but downstrokes, you’re likely to have some difficulties playing this passage smoothly with any kind of speed.

Things get a little more jumbled with alternate picking. Here is the last example but notated with picking symbols. If you’re not familiar with the symbols for downstrokes and upstrokes (downstrokes look like croquet wickets or staples while upstokes look like upper case “V”s)  I’ve also marked each note with either a “D” for “Down” and a “U” for “Up,” just to be helpful!

One can certainly pick this in the way that it’s notated but, truth be told, it is more than a bit awkward, only because of the second note of the open D string and the third note, being the D at the third fret of the B string. It would be a lot smarter to make that second note a downstroke, which would keep your pick heading in the direction of the B string where the third note will be played. Likewise, it would make perfect sense to play the third note as an upstroke since the fourth note is going to be the open G string. The directional strokes for the last three notes are perfect as is. So let’s try that:

Most players find this method to feel the most comfortable when playing and, again, it’s simply because you’re picking with the flow, so to speak â€" keeping the pick moving in the direction of the next string it will strike.

As a technique, convenience picking is usually a player can, pardon the pun, pick up very quickly with a little practice. If you’re already used to playing fingerstyle, the logic of convenience picking makes a lot of sense. The downstrokes would be played with the thumb while the fingers would provide the upstrokes. In this case you’d probably want to use your middle finger to pick the D note at the third fret of the B string and the index finger to pluck the open G string.

Just one more note before we more onward â€" because the notes played here are just G and D, a lot of transcribers will assign a “G5″ chord to this instead of a full G chord, which consists of the notes G, B and D. Either will work as the overall harmony implies a G major chord if for no other reason than the missing B note is sung as the first two notes of the melody.

Likewise, you’ll also see transcriptions saying “Csus2″ and “D5″ where I’m going to use “Cadd9″ and “D.” Again, if you listen to all the other parts of the song besides just the guitar part, this will make sense.

So let’s move on to the entire first line, which is two measure of G, plus one of Cadd9 and one of D, like this:

And now we come to the “good news / bad news” segment of our lesson! The good news should be obvious â€" the picking pattern you’ve learned is going to essentially be the same throughout the entire song. You’ll pick the chord’s root note and then either the D string or G string (depending on the chord), both on a downstroke, and then the D note (third fret of the B string) and the G string on an upstroke, the D string on a downstroke and end with an upstroke of the G string. Again, with a bit of practice this will become habit very quickly.

The bad news may not be evident yet so let me give it to you now â€" you’re going to have your ring finger on that D note at the third fret of the G string the entire song!  If you haven’t done this before, you’re in for a workout, but it is a great way for the ring finger to build stamina. Using the pinky all the way through works, too.

When playing this, you might find it wise to fret the B note (second fret of the A string) when playing the G chord. In other words, have your ring finger on the third fret of the B string, your index finger on the second fret of the A string and your middle finger on the third fret of the low E (sixth) string. Why? Two basic reasons â€" first, you’re likely to welcome the familiarity of the G chord and then when you change from G to Cadd9 in the third measure it’s just a matter of keeping the ring finger in place on the third fret of the B string while shifting your first two fingers one string closer to the floor. Your index finger will end up on the second fret of the D string and your middle finger will be on the third fret of the A string. That’s a very easy change.

The other reason is that you may accidentally hit the A string while you’re working out the picking and having your finger on the B note at the second fret, which is part of the G chord, won’t sound nearly as badly as hitting the open A string, which is not.

To change from the Cadd9 to the D you lift your middle finger off the strings (but not too far!) and shift your first finger to the second fret of the G string.

Again, with a little bit of concentrated practice, you should find yourself picking this up fairly quickly and easily. Take your time and work on being accurate instead of worrying about being speedy. Speed will come with repetition but if you’re repeatedly missing the notes who’s going to care how fast you play it?

Once you’ve got this first line down, you’ve got more than a third of the song in hand. Let’s more on to the next set of lines, which go from Em to D to C to G. Since we’re keeping a finger on the D note at the third fret of the B string we’re technically playing Em7. And here I’m deliberately playing something different from the original recording. We’ll go into the why in a moment. First let’s look at the line in question:

In the original recording, Billie Joy Armstrong starts out the measure of Em (or Em7 if you will) with a strike of the open low E (sixth) string. We’re using the E an octave higher â€" at the second fret of the D string. There are two reasons for this â€" first to create a nice descending bass line for this section of the song, going from the E note at the second fret of the D string to the note of the open D string (for the D chord) to the C note at the third fret of the A string (for the Cadd9 chord) before hitting the G on the third fret of the low E. Doing so gives these two lines a different feel from the rest of the arrangement (which is a welcome treat to the ears!) while still maintaining the same picking pattern. The second reason is that when we get to the next section we’ll be using that open low E string a lot:

Here, and again keeping to the same picking pattern you’ve used throughout the song, you’ll play Em, G, Em and G again and finally Em to D before going right back into the chord progression of the first two lines. Aside from getting used to the two different versions of Em (in and of itself a great reason to use this arrangement â€" one can always use the practice in switching from one set of strings to another. That’s how we get better after all!), you will find yourself breezing through both these sections with just a little bit of effort.

And now you’re ready to put the whole thing together:

As mentioned, I’m hoping to put together a Guitar Noise Podcast or two demonstrating more ways of playing around with this song. In order to make the most of those, it’s best to have a good feeling for the basics that you learned in this lesson’s arrangement.

And I hope that you’ve enjoyed this version of “Time of Your Life (Good Riddance).” It’s a great way to get started on some basic convenience picking and that will be incredibly helpful to you as you continue to grow and progress as both a guiitarist and a musician.

As always, feel free to post any and all questions, comments and suggestions either right here or on our Forum Pages (we’ve got one dedicated specifically to Guitar Noise Song Lessons, by the bye!) or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

And, again as always, until our next lesson,

Peace