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Did You Know? #1
Did you know that the guitar is a transposing instrument? It is. What’s a transposing instrument? A transposing instrument is an instrument whose written notes are read at a pitch different from concert pitch. What is concert pitch? Concert pitch is a standard set for use in orchestras. In concert pitch the A note above middle C on the piano is 440 Hz.
Guitar is written one octave (the equivalent of 12 frets on the guitar) higher than it sounds in concert pitch. Why? Because the guitar is a midrange instrument. If written in concert pitch (like a piano) guitar notation would fall across both the treble and bass clefs, making it harder to notate and read. So if you ever play music written for a piano (or other concert pitch instruments) you need to play it one octave higher to play it the way it was intended.
Tear Down Those Musical Walls
A common question guitar instructors ask their students is “What kind of music do you like?” Being a guitar instructor I have asked this question myself knowing, sadly, that the answer is usually going to be one particular style of music. It may be metal, or country, or classic rock or blues. It doesn’t really matter. The point is most people have very limited tastes in music. Rarely does a student say “I like all kinds of music”, which would be the best possible reply in my mind.
Sadder still is many guitar instructors use that information to reinforce that stylistic narrow-mindedness by only teaching the student their favorite style of music, when they could be using their influence to broaden the students musical horizons. By introducing the student to styles of music they probably wouldn’t pursue on their own the teacher would be helping the student become a more well-rounded musician.
You could argue that there is nothing wrong with liking only one style of music. Perhaps that is true. But that is like saying you only like action movies, and won’t watch comedies, dramas, documentaries, musicals, adventure movies, horror movies, etc. You are certainly free to feel that way, but you are really missing out on a lot of great stuff. The same thing applies to music. Why limit yourself so severely?
Unfortunately, music culture is very segmented and seems to encourage stylistic single-mindedness and even hostility toward other styles of music. Perhaps it is the strong emotional response music is capable of that makes people say “I hate country music” or “I hate jazz” or similar statements. Yet I find that if the student will give other styles a chance, they usually find that they actually enjoy playing some of the other styles of music. It may not turn them into a lifelong fan, but they may discover that there is good stuff to be found in most styles of music — especially for guitar.
Increasing your stylistic knowledge will also increase your guitar playing abilities and opportunities. Most styles of music have certain playing techniques, chord voicings, and stylistic riffs and fills that are commonly used. Learning these can allow you to play in almost any situation. Obviously, high gain, Drop-D, palm-muted, power chord chugging isn’t going to work for a blues or bluegrass jam, and the alternating bass note/strumming of a country song isn’t going to go over so well at a jazz open mic. But if you know some of the basics of each style of music you increase your opportunities of getting gigs or at least having a good time playing with other people.
I’m not saying you need to love or even learn every style of music, but why not try a few and see what happens. You might even like it.
Who Cares About Creativity?
There was time when originality was one of the most prized things in music. Bands and guitar players wanted to sound different from everyone else. I’m not sure that is the case anymore.
No doubt, part of it is the record companies fault. For decades, all most of them cared about was generating a hit (and the resulting money), and that usually meant copying whatever was popular at the moment. So new bands copied the style of what was currently popular. Which eventually grew stale thanks to over-saturation and the new bands were soon discarded. Bands were not encouraged to be original, only to have a hit.
Perhaps Guitar Hero and Rock Band are to blame. Kids seem to only want to learn songs from the games. There is nothing wrong with copying your heros, especially when you are starting out, but eventually you should want to try to do something original also.
Maybe TABs are to blame. They make it too easy to copy your guitar hero note for note. That is if the TABS are good. Unfortunately, many of the TABs available online are just plain wrong, and since they are copied from one website to another, there are a lot of bad TABs out there. Even you have good TABs, you are still only learning to copy another player by rote. Basically mimicking someone else. Which requires zero creativity, just lots of repetition.
Where are the creative players now? When The Edge (David Evans) of U2 became popular, his playing was totally unique. No one played guitar like he did before him. Now his style of playing has been done to death. Other were much the same: Les Paul, Wes Montgomery, Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Carlos Santana, Brian May, etc. They were all very original voices on guitar in their eras, and they are still prized for their originality.
I am sure there are some creative players out there right now, but none has reached widespread fame, yet. Let’s hope they do. Perhaps they will turn up on YouTube and sweep the nation. Of course that will require people to be open to new music. Another sticky spot. Music is so compartmentalized now and tastes are so narrow (“I only play trash metal in drop C.”) I really hope there are still some young players out there who want to do something creative. How about you?
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