Self-Guided Lessons

Essays

Don’t Know What to Play? Put Your Worry Away and Try Dreaming

Musical Dreaming – it’s a practice that I took part in, but had never really considered until some great chats with my old friend John Donahue. I think about John and his musical dreaming a lot when I meet with frustrated students. https://vimeo.com/949795666?share=copy Dreaming with Your Guitar .pdf They wanted to play more. They’re just too busy. They’re frustrated with the pace of their progress. They’re overwhelmed and don’t know what to practice. I get it. I feel that way about music all the time. Thankfully, I’ve developed some strategies to get me out of such a funk and this is one of them. Next time you don’t know what to play, or are bored or frustrated with the same old songs, try some dreaming. The video is the best description I can make of this process. I’ve also made a .pdf that has some drawings that can be useful, but there’s very little instruction on it. I hope you find this useful.

All Offerings

Guest Post – John Mead Teaches the Guitar Solo from Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones

“This is a great solo to start on—it’s simple, clear, and articulate; it will teach you how to hear clear phrases and how to hear bends (which make up a significant part of the solo). It will teach you a couple of fairly sophisticated ideas while being very simple and satisfying to play.” John Mead We’ve been working on Dead Flowers in some recent Guitar Crew meetups and recently a student asked “Do you know how to play the guitar solo?” I thought, I don’t but I know EXACTLY who does. Check out this killer lesson from one of my very closest friends, and a truly gifted educator, John Mead. Sure missing hanging out with this guy! Download the pdf. You’ll notice that John makes the point that, “THERE IS NO SUCH THING as a ‘pentatonic major scale.’ Now, if you know me and my teaching, you’ll know that soloing with the major pentatonic scale is a core skill of my introductory improvising lessons. Ha!But, I totally get where he’s coming from and there’s a lot of truth to it. If you’ve had those introductory lessons from my, I highly recommend digging into this lesson to put some of those concepts into practice and to take you’re playing to a new space. John is an incredible teacher, player and music philospher. Give him a shout if you’re looking to turn up your guitar playing. John’s there to help you make that happen. Contact John

All Offerings

“How do you do THAT!?!?!?” Learn a Song By Ear: An Approach (Free Self-Guided Lesson)

When I was first taking guitar lessons my teacher told me to bring in a cassette of any song that I wanted to play. I was so blown away when he’d hear it, having never heard it before, and by the end of the lesson have written down how to PLAY THE SONG. How did he do that?!?!?!?!?!? He taught me some stuff, but he definitely never taught me how figure how songs for myself. In the years sense, I’ve gleaned a lot about how people learn by ear. And, being on the other side of the teacher/student dynamic I often hear my student bewilderment as to how I can play by ear. And, I found that while many hear me be able to do it, they didn’t have a grasp of WHAT I was doing. At first the task seems quite daunting but once it’s broken down into a few manageable steps, it’s really not so difficult. It does take time and effort, but I am fully convinced that it doesn’t take any special talents or innate abilities. This is a self-lead lesson where I present very short videos that describe the exact process I use to learn a song by ear. Give it a try and listen to how it goes. Drop me a note to let me know how you do, and if you have any questions or concerns. Enjoy! Learn a Song by Ear by Jason McInnes

Goals and Education

Playing By Ear Demo – Hold Music

I have a thurough self-led lesson about playing by ear in the works. For now, I thought I’d leave you with this. My advice on how to learn to play by ear. https://vimeo.com/902038361?share=copy How to Play by Ear First, seek out financial institutions who provide one minute of music on repeat when you’re on hold. Next . . . OK. While that video is just kind of a kidding around, playing by ear is a goal of many of the people I work with. Here is a video I made awhile back demonstrating one of the processes I use to learn a song by ear. Blog Post: How I Learn Old Time Tunes – Learning to Play the Tune, Nancy, from a Recording by Jonas Friddle

Goals and Education

Common Bass Walks for Guitar with Alternating Bass

A student and I were working on finding ways to play these bass walks more naturally, rather than having to think through them. I made these short videos (all under 2 minutes) with that in mind. This is a play list of five videos. Each video features a different duo of chords and their bass walks. A to D and Back to A A to E and Back to A C to F and Back to C G to C and Back to G G to D and Back to G These videos are recorded with a priority of watching my hands and listening to the sound of the music. You can scroll through the videos to find the one you want by clicking the three lines and arrow in the top right corner of the video player. Sometimes it’s important to intellectually examine these concepts. Other times it’s advantageous to concentrate on the sound and let the music come out of our fingers. If you would like a handout component to follow along with, or use to practice with later, download this .pdf which has all the bass runs that are covered in the video. One thing the video does not cover is why you might use these in a song. If you are interested in learning more about that, drop me a note at gettingtoknowtrees@gmail.com and we can set up a time to meet over Zoom. Enjoy!

Chicago

Workshop: Your First Guitar Solo!

'Ukulele

Getting Familiar with Intervals

We measure the distance between two notes using intervals. Here is a worksheet to help you get familiar with some intervals. When you’re done with the worksheet, compare the drawing that you made. What do you notice? Add your question to the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them for you.

'Ukulele

Stuff I Keep Track Of – Totals for 2020

I keep track of the number of times I do certain activities in my life. This comes from a pretty severe case of perfectionism/”fear of the blank page”. Keeping track of this stuff has helped me immensely over the years, and is actually how I developed the Sticker Method: Creating a Habit of Practice. You can read more about the process from last years’ blog post Stuff I Keep Track of – Totals for 2019. Here are the totals for 2020 Background This year saw a lot of change in my life. I moved to Marquette, MI in last November of 2019. Between Jan. 1, 2020 and Dec. 31 of 2020 I lived in five places for at least a month and, including other travel, all total I slept in about 15 different beds. And, then there’s the pandemic. Basically what I’m saying is, that is why my numbers are not as complete as I would like them to be. I know that I kept track of my numbers for all the months, but I can’t find where I wrote them down! I only have numbers for seven months, which is SUCH A BUMMER! Final Numbers We’ll say that there were 215 days available (in the months that I have data for) Music making = 189 days = 88% (This is the first year of collecting this data) Visual Art/Writing = 150 days = 70% (Down 16% from 2019.) Body/Mind Work = 169 days = 80% (Up 53% from 2019). Skateboarding = Well, this is a sad one. I got 30 days in, in the late spring and early summer, BUT, I broke my shoulder on July 10, 2020 and I have retired from skateboarding. In addition, I started collecting some data on how many days I work on my “business” (that is not my actual teaching.) This is a very new category and I’m still not sure how to keep track of it. I hope to have more conclusive data next year. Quarterly Focus Words for 2019 (I got this idea from the Being Boss podcast.) Quarter 1 = Nurture Quarter 2 = Patience Quarter 3 = Prepare Quarter 4 = Clarity Goals for 2021 Music-Making – I’d be happy to maintain these numbers. It was so helpful to re-engage with the Dozen a Day piano books. It’s so helpful to have a concrete set of musical exercises to play in the mornings. Visual Art/Writing – I think that this will be stronger in 2021. I am much more confident with my work as a visual artist. And, I’ve found many ways to “break through” in those moments when I am feeling unsure. Body/Mind Work – I mean, I could actually see myself being able to get to 365 days. That would really be something. I wonder. 312 days would be six times a week. 300 days would be 82%. I wonder. See you next year!

Básquetbol en el Barrio – Theme Song for Basketball in the Barrio Camp

Every year I teach the Music Station at an incredible sports/art/music/community-building camp called Basketball in the Barrio, in Segundo Barrio, El Paso, Texas. We couldn’t hold the camp in 2020, so Coach Denisse Franco and I wrote a theme song which, hopefully, we’ll all be able to sing for camp in 2021. Give it a listen and we’ll sing it at camp next year!

'Ukulele

The Sticker Method: Creating a Habit of Practice

This fall I published my latest zine, The Sticker Method: Creating a Habit of Practice (available in the store). This is a method for taking a lot of the stress that can come with being a learner/do-er out of our lives. I’ve developed the method over my lifetime as both a teacher and a student I am a user of The Sticker Method and one of my favorite aspects of it is that the method can be used for anything. If you’ve heard my music, seen my drawings, watched my skateboard videos, or if we’ve talked about developing a habit of going to the gym, then you’ve seen The Sticker Method in action. What are you going to practice? I’d love to know.

For theCurious & Creative

For the
Curious & Creative