Lesson 1 - The 6 Main Areas of Music

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[Music] how's it going hi I'm Scotty West and welcome to

absolutely understand guitar many of you have seen the introductory program that we uh put out before this is actually number one in a series of one hour video

tapes in which we hope to teach you everything about applied Theory to the guitar um you're here to learn how to play the guitar wonderful Choice great instrument a very portable little interesting

little polyphonic instrument has become very popular in the second part of this Century here as we pass into the New Millennium and for very good reasons it's a really terrific little instrument and everybody wants to learn to play the

guitar these days but a lot of people just never really get to where they understand what's going on and and so that's what we're hoping to do here get you to really see how this thing works

it's easier than you think music is a totally knowable and understandable phenomenon interestingly enough it's funny you know a lot of times people don't believe that we look at our great

Muse physical Heroes and we think ah they're these superhuman creatures uh that are doing things that we could never do and the truth is it isn't like that at all there's no reason to suspect that you couldn't be as good a player as

anyone you ever heard um the one thing is you got to kind of know what you're doing and that's what we're going to kind of talk about today about the basic things about how Music Works interestingly enough we're not going to do an awful lot with the

instrument for the first couple of hours here and you'll see why in a couple of minutes um part of that is because see this thing right here in my hands right here this thing isn't really the big issue

anyway this is just what I call the dumb machine it's just a tool with a place that music really comes from is your mind and a lot of people just don't understand that so away we go we got a

lot to cover today let's see how we make out we'll look up here at the board for a second the very first word I always write down for people around here is this word it's the word

satisfaction and isn't that a nice word there's some statistics that you should probably know about um for every 75 people that start off to

play a musical instrument at some point during their lives only one of those people actually survives the initial novelty phase and has it become something that they actually do for the rest of their lives and particularly as

a teacher I've always been kind of interested in why that is why do 74 out of 75 people fail to develop an ongoing relationship with their instrument well some people go well maybe they didn't

have the talent and I go I don't think that's what it is really I'm not a horrendous believer in talent I mean I over the 15 years I've been teaching now I must admit it comes easier to some

people than it does to others but I've seen dedication and motivation win out over talent a thousand times so other people go well maybe they uh failed to develop an ongoing relationship with the instrument because they just didn't work

hard enough maybe they didn't practice enough or something and I go well that could be part of it too but I'm not I don't really think that's what it is either I think it goes right to this word right here right to this word

satisfaction I think the re using that 74 out of 75 people fail to develop a relationship with their instrument is they simply fail to get the payback that they deserve for all the work that they

have to put into something and it's like we don't ever continue doing something if it doesn't bring us any kind of benefit at all um and uh so you know how do you satisfy yourself when you're playing a musical

instrument what we're going to do a lot through this program is we're going to be telling you various things um little pitfalls that you can avoid that you might fall into that would rob you of satisfaction and uh we'll look at

a bunch of those as we go one interesting big thing we're going to talk about is when I look around me at the people uh that I know that are going to play music for the rest of their

lives they all have one thing in common they must be satisfying themselves they all have one thing in common and I guess that means that you're going to have to be able to do that too and it goes like this

uh you gotta be able to learn songs just by listening to them

you got to be able to learn songs by listening particularly when you're playing pop music popular music now I'm sure you're aware that such things are possible you may even be able

to do a bit of that yourself and you may have friends who can just listen to this song on the on the tape or on the disk a couple of times and figure out how to play it um now the reason that this is so significant people go geez isn't this

like an advanced concept why is he talking to me about this right in the beginning well I go interestingly enough if you ever get if you get to the point where you can't do that if you don't get to the point where you can do that you

may never really satisfy yourself enough to actually continue playing music the reason is particularly if you're into any obscure musicians at all the chances

of you actually walking into the music store and finding the sheet music for the stuff is not very good you may be aware also that there are a lot of sites on the internet now where you can go

places like Olga and the harmony Hut where you can go these are websites where you can go and download sheet music for you know thousands of songs

but another problem with uh this is even if you do manage to get your hands on the sheet music what you're going to find out is a huge percentage of the time this stuff

is actually inaccurate in fact it's so bad sometimes that I I don't even have any idea how these people actually even thought that this is how the song Went um fully 70 probably of the stuff that

my students have brought me off the internet has been inaccurate like I say sometimes just totally wrong so how are you ever going to be a satisfied player

if you can't play the music you like and if the sheet music is inaccurate or unavailable how are you going to learn to play the songs other than learning to play them by ear learning to listen to

music and figure out how to play it and a lot of people go isn't that hard and I go well not really it really is a lot simpler than people think the one thing you got to understand now we all have our friends that can do this now and

then and on some songs and stuff but if you'd ever like to get to the point where you can do this with any uh song that you might ever want to play

then you gotta know what you're doing now it seems funny that I should have to point that out to people you gotta know what you're doing

the funny thing is a lot of people are going to try to tell you that you can play music without knowing what you're doing um

uh you know particularly particularly in rock and roll it's like there's almost this anti-intellectual kind of message like oh no you don't have to know what you're doing just come on over to my house on Saturday afternoon and I'll

show you a few chords and we'll be off and rocking in no time and that may keep you interested for a while but I can pretty much guarantee you that it's not really going to keep you playing for the

rest of your life remember um most people um wash out of playing the guitar by like they're 25. you know this is 74 out of 75. how do I know that well for

of 75. how do I know that well for example um you know I'm 45 years old It's 1999 when I was in high school I graduated from high school in 1972 And it's like that was like the Heyday of rock music

all my friends were playing music they're playing guitar and bass and drums we were all in the school band together now here it is 1999 I'm like the only one left what happened to all

those people well that's it again they just couldn't satisfy themselves and they we're able to figure out some songs for a while but and maybe you can figure out Nirvana or maybe you can figure out

uh uh you know simple country music or something like that but how about bands like Steely Dan or how about Dave Matthews or how about uh uh you know

more how about fish you know more complex uh types of modern music if you're ever going to get to the point where you can satisfy yourself by figuring out songs by listening to them

you gotta know what you're doing and uh it's a hard sell for some people they don't want to believe that now the only reason that people ever resist learning about music is for a couple of reasons

both of which I'm very sympathetic to that I think the the first reason that people resist learning about music is very often music is taught like it's a bunch of rules that you have to follow

and you know a lot of times these people are trying to be artists they want to be free they want to express themselves they don't want any rules thank you very much and well you'll find out that's not the way we teach music around here we don't teach music like it's a bunch of

rules that you have to follow we're going to teach music like it's a bunch of observations that you're being let in on you know the human race has been messing around with sound for tens of thousands

of years at this point um we've managed to figure out some pretty cool things along the way and the smart people wrote that down and started showing it to other people you can go over in the corner if you want and flop

around and try to like reinvent western music for yourself but probably all you'll ever do is is just waste a lot of time uh how do I know that uh that's

kind of the way it happened with me I as I said in my introductory uh tape uh that I've been playing music since I was six and I really didn't get it till I

was like 25. and that's when I began to figure out that the problem with the way they usually teach music is they give you the information in the wrong order so you're you know you've got all these

scattered facts about how music works but you don't see how one thing connects to the other to the point where you get what I call the big picture but you won't have that problem here I can

honestly say that that um in my private practice if you you will here on Cape Cod I never have anybody who doesn't get this you know it's that simple and that so the first reason that people resist

learning about music is it's usually taught like it's a bunch of rules and um but we don't teach it there that way this the second reason that people resist learning about music at all is um they are under the mistaken

impression that this stuff is horribly complicated and they're afraid that even after somebody explains it to them they're still not gonna going to understand it and they're just afraid of looking stupid and and they just uh go

oh that's okay no no no I'm not even gonna try now a lot of times this comes along because maybe you've taken some music theory classes somewhere and and

it's like uh or you had private lessons when you were a kid with some guy you know what I mean and it's like uh they they didn't really connect with you and give you the information that you need

and and people often get traumatized about uh about music education it's it's almost like uh the the word music theory strikes Terror into people's hearts

which is really in a sense so sad because music is a pathetically simple subject to understand uh if an idiot like me can understand music then anybody can it's just like I said before

it's a matter of getting the information in the right order you're going to find this stuff absolutely fascinating you're not going to have any trouble understanding any of it at all because I think what I've nailed I think what I've

figured out is how to explain it to people in the right order what that means is the stuff that you're learning today is possibly the most important stuff anyone will ever tell you about music nothing that anyone tells you

beyond this point would ever really make any sense to you if you didn't understand this stuff that we're going to be talking about today and for example right now I you know I'm saying they they teach music they give

you the information in the wrong order here is the first thing that they should have told you about music it's one of the most important things you'll ever learn it goes like this music

is a language music is a language ever heard anything like that before actually there's even this kind of cliche where they say like music is the

universal language well I don't know about that but I'll tell you one thing music is a language it functions in our lives very much like a language don't you feel like you're being communicated with when you hear great music functions

in our our lives like a language interestingly enough the process of learning about music is very much like the process of learning a language we're going to come up with countless analogies as we go through this program

from the the way you use music and your various instruments and the way you use any other language you might speak um English of course or or Spanish or or

whatever and sometimes this makes people nervous too because they go oh my God I hated Spanish class that stuff was hard and I didn't enjoy that at all I go well uh don't worry about that uh

because it isn't like that either one of the main reasons being that uh music is compared to any other language you might speak it's a pathetically simple language it it much less to know about

the musical language if you ask me anyway than there is to know about most of the other ones now remember I said that actually we're not going to do very much with the guitar here for the first lesson

um because you know I'm going to myself well this really isn't all that big a deal the instrument because think about it this way here's your really first big analogy if music is a language

then what is a guitar well if music is a language then I always say a guitar is something like or whatever instrument

you play a guitar is something very much like a typewriter it really isn't the big deal it's just the dumb machine that you pound the

stuff out on so that the audience can partake in the experience but like any language most of what goes on in in the creation of the language goes on up in

your mind here for example think of it this way what if you wanted to be a writer what if you decided that you wanted to be an artist in the English language you wanted to be a novelist or

a journalist well obviously you would need some kind of tool to work with might be as simple as a pencil or a pen or a marker or something um might be a typewriter

might be a big fancy word processor in your computer point is you're going to need some kind of tool but ask yourself this question does the typewriter write the book

no of course not it's just the dumb machine what writes the book you write the book with the command of your language with the command of the language in your own mind and then

hopefully you understand enough about how the machine actually works so that when the stuff comes into your head that you can then turn it into a physical motion on your tool here and get it out so that the broader audience can partake

in the experience um imagine this um let's say uh you know you're trying to figure out how a typewriter works now

imagine walking up and looking at a typewriter and trying to figure out what it does if you don't know anything about how the English language works you'd walk up to this thing and you'd

look at the typewriter and you'd go what the heck are all these funny little symbols on these Keys what do I do with this thing um whereas on the other hand think of it

this way once you understood how the language how the English language worked didn't you pretty much figure out for yourself how a typewriter works I mean how long did it really take them to

basically show you how a typewriter Works didn't you figure out most of that stuff yourself you walked up to the typewriter and you went oh there's that those 26 letters of the alphabet oh I

see how this thing works I bet if I go that's going to spell cat and you were right well imagine getting to the same place on the guitar that whatever musical stuff comes up in your

mind that you're able to figure out how to manipulate the machine there to get it out it's really easier than you think interestingly enough because the really cool thing is the guitar as a machine

here's my guitar here the guitar as a machine is really not even a very complicated object at all but the problem that most people have in playing the guitar is they go right to the

instrument first without understanding any of the basic things about how the language works and for the most part they just become totally they just don't get it and and you can only go on playing without understanding what

you're doing for so long before you start to get bored with yourself I'm like I say most people have given up their instrument by the time they're 25.

you know what the other really exciting thing is do you know how long it's going to take me to tell you everything you need to know about that physical object about the guitar there

once you understood how uh the English language worked how long did it basically take them to describe you how a typewriter works about an hour something like that in our

third lesson here we're going to start talking about the machine in about an hour I'm going to show you everything about how that machine works and more than most people who claim to play the guitar ever know in their entire lives

and you're going to find out it's pathetically simple to understand how's that pretty exciting huh there is just like I said no reason to suspect that that you couldn't be as great as uh any

player you've ever heard uh you just gotta know what you're doing trust me on that now the next thing we're going to write down is it's just a funny little detail again it really goes right to

that word satisfaction again uh um it's it's just a funny little thing that escapes a lot of people and it's one of those things that I think has caused people to bore themselves into giving up music a lot of times uh you might get a

laugh out of this because you might go oh my God I'm surrounded by pretend players or you might even go oh my God I'm a I'm a pretend player myself um you see there's people who really

play music and then there's people who just sort of pretend to play music and it's not their fault most people just pretend to play music because they never had anybody really point out to them what the simple differences so that's

what we're about to find out what do you have to do to be a real player well there's two things so my question goes like this what what two things

do ya Gotta Do to be a real player

instead of a pretend player which is what 99.9 percent of our friends are they're all pretend players well there's a lot of things you could say but I'm sure one

thing you will agree on is that if you're going to be a real player first thing you got to do is you got to be able to get

to the end of the song people go huh but uh do you have any idea how rampant

a problem that is in the way most people approach uh their musical instrument particularly now in the riff-oriented rock and roll World um everybody is seems to be for a while

anyway just content to play little bits and pieces of things it isn't the classic of all times the intro to Stairway to Heaven I mean how many times have people walked up to you and said oh I know how to play Stairway to Heaven

and then they all they do is play that the first 20 seconds of that that little kind of delicate part of the song like that and uh my question is in any kind of real sense at all what good is that

ever gonna do you to actually learn little bits and pieces of songs in the Riff oriented rock and roll world we have things going on like this for example how many times has somebody walked up to you and said oh I know how to play Come As You Are by Nirvana and

they go like this [Music] and then 20 minutes later they're still sitting there going like this

and they're going see I know how to play Come As You Are by Nirvana and I'm going like well that's one part of come as you are about Nirvana but what about the

part that goes enemy [Music] and what about the part that goes

and I swear don't and the truth is if you want to claim that you can actually play this song you've got to know how many times to do

this I have a gun before you go back to this again and then you got to know how many times to do this before you go back to the verse again

[Music] and you know what I mean and and the truth is if you ever want to be in a band you've got to start at the beginning of that song and you got to get to the you got to get

all the way to the end I always say real artists produce real works of art you don't walk into art galleries and see paintings on the wall that are only half finished you know what I mean but it seems to be a lot of people just never

get that message and they just play little riffs and little pieces of things till they're 25 years old going gee how come this music stuff never turned out to be as much fun as I thought it was how come I never got in a band if you

show up for the audition to be in a band they're not going to care how many riffs you can play they want to know how many songs you can play so don't make that mistake a musician is only as good as

their song list and what you need to be able to do is play that song from the beginning to the end and then you're a real player but that's actually only the first thing now another related subject to this is

if you're going to commit to getting to the end of the song another thing you got to make sure you do is you've got to choose doable

material another rampant problem in the way people pursue music as you may know is they insist on playing music

that's so far over their heads that they don't have any chance at all of being able to play the whole tune in a sense a back to Stairway I haven't into heaven against it's the classic example that's

like a nine minute long song you know what I mean and it's got four or five different sections and um you know you'd be nuts to try to play the uh to play Stairway to Heaven until

after you played the guitar for at least a year or a year and a half or maybe with a lot of people it'd be like two years people go really and and I can't tell you how many times I've had students come in first day in the door and I go so what do you want to play and

they go Stairway to Heaven and I wind up going to them like forget it you know what I mean it's like it ain't gonna happen for quite a while I mean in particularly when we get down here to the six main areas of Music you'll see

that there's certain Criterion that you have to actually satisfy to really claim that you're actually playing the tune and uh most people just simply don't get to the level where they they

have that what I call musical maturity until at least after a year or two now the funny thing is does that mean that Stairway to Heaven is an enormously complex and difficult piece of guitar music

nope actually it isn't on a scale of one to ten in terms of what's possible on this instrument how difficult a piece of music is Stairway to Heaven I want to say it's like about a four

how do you like that people go really Jimmy Page I thought he was the greatest guitar player who ever lived I go well he was okay but ultimately in the end he was just a rock and roll Player rock and roll in general is not the most

difficult or complex type of music to play classical music and jazz is a million times harder to play than that and uh people go well I thought like Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page were like

the greatest guitar players in the world I go no no in a way that's just what the record company wants you to believe is so that they you'll go out and buy the records but you probably have 20 people in your town that can play the guitar as

well as those people right there they just I don't know they just didn't get famous for whatever whatever reason they they maybe they didn't want to you know I'm not sure I want to travel over the world all over the world and in airplanes and buses for the rest of my

life um anyway so uh what you want to do when you're picking materials you want to try to pick stuff that's just not so far over your head that you can't do it like

how about Metallica how about heavy metal how about Slayer and thrash metal and stuff like that might be your favorite style of music but you're not going to be able to play that without a

lot of work and uh and like I say you'll see more about this Criterion that we're talking about in a couple of minutes here so get to the end of the song and do that by choosing doable material

that's the first thing you got to do to be a real player but now we said that there's actually two things you got to do to be a real player what's the second

thing well I'm sure you'll agree like anything in life but particularly in art the only way you ever make any progress at something is

by being capable of analyzing where your deficiencies are how do you learn but to figure out what you're doing wrong and then start working working on fixing it and so I always say the first thing you got to do

to real players get to the end of the song second thing is this once you've gotten there stop for a moment and ask yourself gee

how did I do you want to stop and check yourself out each time and um uh

I I don't think any of my friends ever did that for some reason I seem to be the only one who ever did that we'd get to the end of the song back in the garage bands I was in in high school and stuff and and uh everyone would want to go bludgeoning right into the next tune

I was always the one going no no no wait let's stop for a minute that section in the middle there you know we were really ragged we better go back over that again we were falling behind the beat uh uh we

wound up playing some wrong notes and some stuff in there so let's let's get in there and work on that and and um you pretty much have to do that the only way you can make any progress is by

analyzing where your problems are and for example one of the best things you can do for your musical career is try to figure out some way to record yourself whenever you sit down to play

Whenever you sit down to practice um it doesn't have to be a great quality thing could be just some cheesy tape recorder from uh or something like that you don't have to keep the tapes you can

just keep recycling them but whenever you sit down to play your guitar plug the tape recorder in start it rolling and just play when you're done playing and you're putting the guitar away or maybe you're in the kitchen washing the dishes or

something like that roll that tape back and and play it and listen to it listen to it like it's somebody else listen to it like it wasn't you playing we can be awfully critical of other people can't

we but to be an artist you have to learn to be that critical of yourself you need to get outside of your own ego and be able to listen to your playing and it's a real eye-opening experience for some

people they for the first time because you know sometimes when you're playing the instrument you're thinking about your fingers and stuff like that you're not really a hundred percent cognizant of the actual sound that you're putting

out isn't that strange to suggest but it's absolutely true and the tape provides you with a way of now all you get to listen to is is what you actually really played and what you sounded like

I've had some students they come in and I tell them that and they turn white as a ghost and they go I don't want to do that and I I kind of see why that is it's uh secretly they know they're not really

doing too well but they just haven't wanted to face it before then but I mean you got to you got to be realistic about what you're doing you gotta face the music as they say and uh that's just

kind of the way it goes so second thing you got to do to be a real player is you gotta check yourself out first thing is you got to get to the end of the song but the second thing is you gotta um ask

yourself gee how did I do funny thing is though doesn't this kind of beg the question how are you supposed to ask yourself how you did if you don't know what you're doing in the first

place interesting huh well um turns out that you know people go oh yeah geez well I guess in order to be a musician I guess in order to be a

guitarist I would have to know something about you know what I'm supposed to be doing what are the basic parameters what are the basic guidelines that I'm supposed to be doing as a guitar player

um you have to understand the Criterion of the language before you'll be able to figure out how good a job you're doing of actually controlling it well understanding the language of Music the

good news is is very very simple in fact I'm fond of saying there's only six things going on in music and if you understand these six different concepts

then at the end of each song you play you can actually rattle off a checklist to yourself you can go gee did I do that did I do that did I do that did I do that did I do that did I do that and if

you can answer yes to all six of those questions they're going to be clapping and throwing money at you in no time funny thing is if even one of those gets away from you

they're probably going to kick you out of the band and get somebody who can I don't mean that to sound scary I mean you just gotta face it uh you might think you're playing music now but you may not be you won't be unless you're

satisfying these six things and this leads right into our next big concept is which I call the sixth main areas of music

another way of looking at it is music is a language and it has six parts of speech and you have to understand these six different concepts in order to be able to um

to really control the medium now I used to ask people what they thought the big Concepts in music were the nuts and bolts things that you have to know to play music but I actually gave that up quite a while ago because I'll tell

you in the Thousand students I've had at this point I never had one person who was able able to actually walk in and rattle off all these six Concepts isn't that weird it's kind of scary I've had a couple of people that were close but and

so I'm not going to ask you what you think the six main areas of Music are but I'll give them back to you in a sense almost in in order of like popularity what people used to say to me the most often you can just judge for yourself whether these would have been

the same things uh you would have said we're actually going to start down here with number two and for example when I used to ask people what do you think the big nuts and bolts concepts are in music

very often the first thing that would come out of people's mouths is they would say something about the beat

or maybe they would use words like tempo or timing stuff like that uh uh kind of a fairly imprecise musical term there but I knew

what they were talking about particularly here in the rock and roll World it seems that everybody understands that music has something to do with the control of time you know what I

mean all music has a pulse and uh uh this of course is just under the general subheading I mean these are just

subheadings under the um the term I'm sure you also know Rhythm r h y t h m obviously one of the big Concepts in

music is rhythm so now interestingly enough this column over here on our chart as a is going to turn out to be the most important column because this is going to turn out to be that

checklist that I mentioned so obviously at the end of the song you've got to stop and ask yourself gee did I keep with

the beat question mark did I keep with the beat if you did they're going to be clapping and throwing money at you in no time if

you don't the big Hook is going to come and pull you right off the stage you know I always say there's no fooling mother music there's people that can do it and there's people that can't and interestingly enough there ain't a lot

of big gray area in between you have to satisfy these six Criterion or you're not going to satisfy yourself or any of your audience at all good news is music is our rhythm is not

a terribly difficult subject to understand again if it's explained the right way it's pretty simple to see how it works and we'll be talking about that in uh I I think it's like lesson six or something like that we'll be getting

into that um but anyway uh we'll leave that one for right now and go on to the next one number three down here for example oftentimes when I ask people what the six main areas of Music are very often

they would look very confused because no one's ever really forced them to think about this before and they go sound music is about sound

and I go well okay I like that that certainly is true but that's terribly terribly broad isn't it we're going to have to get a little bit more specific about that um as we go and interestingly enough

we're going to leave this one for right now talk about it at the very end because another thing you'll notice is I've actually left out number one up here too that's because number one is

like the largest area of Music this is the one that we have the most to learn about and you'll find that a lot of people actually have kind of a fundamental confusion about the relationship between number one and

number three and it's a little easier to see that once you understand what number one is and we'll get there in a couple of minutes but now let's go down here to number four the fourth main area of Music

um yes music is about sound music is noise pure and simple and as such music has all the same qualities and parameters that any old

sound has like trucks rolling by airplanes falling over uh falling flying overhead uh dogs barking babies crying trash cans falling down the stairs it's

all noise and music is just simply noise too I think it's just fair to say that when we humans play music we take noise

and we very precisely try to control it so music is like controlled noise and if there's one thing you can say about any

old noise you ever heard they all have a particular degree of loudness volume amplitude whatever you want to call it

if you stop and think about it you'll realize that all real musicians are Pro have programmed some little part of the back of their minds that whenever

they're playing they're listening to how loud they're playing you have to balance yourself with the other members of the band that you're in for example nothing will get you kicked out of the band

faster than playing too loud and drowning everyone else out but if you're some of your friends are in like garage bands and stuff go over there next time and check out you'll you'll see the kid with the big amplifier is like drowning

everyone else the singer is over there going and you can't even hear them at all because the guitars are so loud and uh that's amateur night city they're they're not really going to take any

seriously if you insist on playing that way you have to balance yourself to the other players in the band you have to balance yourself to the room you're in if you're in a smaller room you simply

can't play as loud as you can in a larger room or Outdoors for that matter um and uh not only that it isn't just a matter of where your amplifier knob is

set you may be you may find that you're called upon in any given piece of music that you play to play at different volumes right within the same song

um once again take Stairway to Heaven as an example the both the intro to that song and the very end of the song are very quiet and delicate whereas if you remember in the middle of that song

There's deafening drums pounding and electric guitars screaming and everything and when they played that they had to remember that when they were coming back to the end again that they were gonna have to quiet everything down

so now interestingly enough the the official musical term for loudness in music is a word again that you might not have ever heard associated with music

before it's the concept of Dynamics those of you who have had like band instrument lessons and stuff you you might be a bit familiar with that word now I'm not one of these classical teachers that's a stickler for getting

everyone to remember the official proper term for everything but actually it's really not a bad idea because if I do my job right you're going to be doing things like reading Guitar Player magazine and you're going to find out

they use all these official terms in there so one of these days you'll be reading this article in guitar player and uh it'll be about somebody like Dave Matthews or something in the sentence in the article we'll read what are the most

amazing things about Dave Matthews is his incredible control of Dynamics and everybody else will be reading that article going Dynamics Dynamics what the heck is this guy talking about you'll know well they're just saying that Dave

is like really in control of how loud he's playing at any particular point this music has a lot of drama in it because there are parts that are louder and more intense and there are parts that are more delicate it can express

more moods that way and stuff like that so the question that I have everyone asked themselves at the end of the song on the subject of Dynamics is G did I

play whoops did I Ray did I play loud in the loud parts

and soft in the soft parts if you did they're going to be clapping

and throwing money at you in no time if you don't they're probably going to kick you out of the band and get somebody who can it's just that simple okay now the other cool thing is how

much do we actually have to learn about loudness to be musicians I mean are we going to sit here hour after hour studying about loudness now it's just something that you have to be aware of there's not really a lot of

facts to learn about it you you just have to you know get that back part of your mind program that it's always listening to how loud you're playing and uh that's all there is to say about that

one how do you like that now down here to number five the fifth main area of Music much as I try to diminish the importance of what I call the stupid machine over here obviously you can't

take that too far if you want to be a guitarist you have to learn how the machine works and you have to also know how physically to interface with the

device this of course is the whole area in music of technique oops see him running a little too big

for this stuff this is all the stuff about what you do with your fingers how to hold the instrument how to get the thing out of it it's the physical part

of playing the instrument as I mentioned before a lot of people go to that like too early they think that what it is to play the guitar is nothing more than to get the book or go to the teacher and have him show you you know

what you're supposed to do with your fingers but that would be just like tapping on a typewriter without knowing how to spell or anything at all but in the end it is ultimately very important that you know how that machine works

there are you know certain prescribed and more logical ways once you understand how the Machine Works to actually manipulate the thing a lot of this very basic ground work is

people just don't get the message on that subject and uh again just wind up wasting a lot of time if you understand how the machine actually works which very few people do by the way my current

statistic on that is you may have trouble believing this but my current uh my current concept suggests that out of

every 200 people that are walking around claiming to be guitar players only one of those people actually really understands what they're doing

how do you like that one out of 200 I said that to a friend of mine the other day and he went like this boy I think that's about right he said and I go yeah that's what I think too isn't that funny um there's a lot of people around you

right now that you might think are actually pretty good players but I'm even going to wind up through the course of this program I'm going to give you some what I call my play dumb questions it's like you can go up to these people

and play dumb and go gosh how come blah blah blah blah blah and and you'll know the answer of course and and and you what you'll find is most of the other people around you don't actually know much about what they're doing at all and again that's another reason why they get

to be like 25 and it's like it's all over you know they're just not playing anymore they can't satisfy themselves simply because they just don't get it you know which is sad because it's so

easy to get it um do you know how long it's going to take me to show you everything about this machine and about how you need to move around on it it's going to take about an hour as I

said before because it's just like a typewriter and it didn't take you that long to actually figure out how it works and uh it's very compelling you'll actually see that there's nothing to

understanding the guitar okay the rather funny question that I I suggest people ask themselves um about in order to find out whether they're doing well with technique or not

is I always see playing a musical instrument as kind of like a partnership there's you and there's the machine and we all demand things from the machine but what a lot of people don't

understand is the machine demands things from you too and it's like you're looking at the guitar going well you better sound good and play All the Right notes and the funny thing is the guitar is looking right back at you going oh

yeah well then you better figure out how I work and you better learn the right way to hold me and the funny thing is most of the people you've ever seen in your life hold the guitar completely wrong how do you like that you're probably holding

the guitar wrong I'm not going to say there's an absolute right way and wrong way to hold it but very few people ever go back to their old way once I show them the right way we'll be into that in

lesson number three but the rather funny question that I suggest people ask themselves at the end of the song is about this partnership thing gee did I cooperate

with the machine I hate to reduce your nice new guitar you just bought there down to a soulless piece of wood with some wires stuck to

it but the truth of the matter is that's basically all it is and you're the one that's creating the music by how well you can control the language and how well you physically learn to control the

instrument itself and again it's much simpler than most people think you just got to get the information in the right order okay down here number six the last

main area of music down here is that nasty subject of notation this of course is the whole subject of

learning how to read music read sheet music and then ultimately I suppose know how to write it two if you're a songwriter or a composer you're

going to have to know how to uh write this stuff now I leave it up to each one of my students how seriously they want to get involved in in their reading

um the truth is if you ever want to be a number 10 guitar player you're going to have to learn how to read and you're going to have to learn how to read well but uh and people but but who the actual number 10 guitar players are and the

ones that you might be thinking are the number 10 guitar players are probably vastly different um who have you been told or who do you believe are the great guitar players of all times well some of the names I get

all the time are people like Jimi Hendrix of course uh Eddie Van Halen Stevie Ray Vaughan and uh on and on you might have your own personal favorites too the funny thing

is um once you really understand the history of the instrument you find out that all these people are grouped somewhere between like four five six

seven eight they they really aren't and so people go well then who are the number 10 guitar players well most people have never even heard of them they're actually I didn't bring it today but I have a little uh board that I have

with pictures on them they're people like maybe Pat Metheny and Frank gambali and um uh Larry Coryell and John McLaughlin herb Ellis Barney Kessel Joe Pass uh on

and on and on um Mike Stern John Schofield and people go I've never heard of these people and I go well basically they're all jazz players and people go oh well you're just saying

that because you like jazz more than you like rock and roll and I go no that actually isn't it um the thing is what is jazz

well if you ask me Jazz can be summed up in one word jazz is more Jazz guys No More chords Jazz guys no

more scales Jazz guys know more music theory Jazz guys usually go to school and a lot of them have degrees in music and stuff like that they practice more hours a day they learn how to read

because you really can't get to the point where you can control a complex style of music like jazz without knowing how to read so what I'm saying is if you ever want to be a number 10 player you

are going to have to learn how to read music but if you're interested in those people that I talked about before the Jimi hendrix's and the Stevie Ray Vaughan's and the Eric claptons and stuff like that I hate to hear myself

say this but I've over all the experience over the years I've been teaching I I have found that if I beat people over the head too much what they're reading sometimes particularly when all they want to play is rock and

roll that I just wind up boring them because learning how to read music is a relatively difficult thing to do and it takes some work and in fact

um you know a question I get all the time is why is learning to read music so difficult you know couldn't they make it any easier and I go ah probably not

actually it's a very sophisticated and subtle little system which has evolved over the centuries and conveys an awful lot of information with relatively little clutter on the page and I don't

know whether if we had it to do over again we could ever come up with anything better than that it's actually pretty good so people go well then why is it so difficult to learn to read music and it's right back to this thing

again music is a language and it's difficult to learn to read any language you didn't learn to read the English language overnight did you how how long did it take you to learn to

read the English language well you know you might have started watching Sesame Street when you were in preschool and then you went to kindergarten and they started to get you to really nail down the alphabet and then you're in first grade and they're showing you how to

spell words and start to form your first sentences and then you're in second grade and they're sending you home with vocabulary and spelling and grammar stuff like that and then you're in third grade and you're writing book reports

and you're in fourth grade you know for most of us it's like fourth fifth sixth grade before we ever get to the point where we could just read anything you know that we want and and the sad truth

is that's pretty much the way it is with to learn how to read music too you have to realize it's going to take time it might be a little boring the rewards are definitely there if you do it and we will certainly be talking about notation

through this program but uh another thing you'll want to know is you know we're not going to cram that down your throat if that's uh uh you know if you're not interested in playing the

more sophisticated styles of music oh by the way I think I meant to mention earlier is another promise I make all my students is I am not going to fill your head with a bunch of dumb junk that you need to that you don't need to know

anyway I'm not going to try to turn you into a jazz player I'm not going to try to turn you into a classical guitar player this program is simply about the basic stuff you need to do do you need

to understand in order to play popular music so uh you know you've got to know what you're doing as we mentioned right up front but it's not like this is oh God this endless stream of useless

information you're going to find that everything in this program is pertinent to exactly what you want to do so the sixth main area of music is notation and the question we might like to ask

ourselves at the end of the song is G oops how is my reading coming it's not really a song by

song question the way some of the other ones are but um I'm gonna have to make those boxes a little bigger aren't I how is my reading coming not really a song by song

question the way the other ones are but uh very important you should learn how to read another question people have about reading too is they go well my last guitar teacher all he did was he stuck me in an exercise book and made me

play Mary Had a Little Lamb and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star until I was so bored and and sick of it that uh you know that I just couldn't stand it anymore and um

uh and I go yeah in a way that's um that's pretty much the way it has to be remember you didn't start off reading Shakespeare the first stuff you ever

read was stuff like see the cat run you know what I mean so when they stick you in the exercise book and make you play Mary Had a Little Lamb that's because you pretty much have to start there

because playing Mary had a little lamb in the musical language is something kind of like equivalent to see the cat run in the English language and the only way to get there is getting book one and

work your way through book one and then you're into book two and it's a little more complicated then you're into book three and book four you'll probably be in book five book six book Seven of any

uh given uh you know Mel bae or whatever uh learn to play the guitar book series before you can pretty much count on being able to play anything you want and

that may well be three years from the day you start and that's actually if you if you get in there and work on it fairly difficult uh fairly uh in a dedicated kind of fashion like that so

anyway that's the whole subject of notation now up to the top here this is the big one we've been saving this almost for last

um this is the big one this is the one you have the most facts to learn about remember the things that we've talked about so far like Rhythm yeah there's some stuff to know about Rhythm Dynamics we said Gee loudness there's not a lot

to learn about that we said you'll learn everything that you need to know about technique in just um you know an hour or two I mean there's advanced stuff that you can learn later on notation is an

ongoing thing but as I said it remains to be seen how seriously you're going to get involved in that this one up here number one this is the big one this is

the one that you have the most facts to learn about the good news is this is also the most fascinating area of Music this is the one that most people are so

confused about that they don't even understand that this is what they're confused about and um I always uh introduce this one by suggesting that when I used to ask people what the six

big Concepts in music were very often they would start rattling off a whole bunch of words at me thinking they're telling me the six main areas of music but are actually rather surprised to

find out that all they're doing is rattling off a bunch of subheadings under this area up here and many of these things are words that you're going to know many of these things are the

very things that you came here to learn about you didn't necessarily think we were going to talk be talking about loudness did you but these very often are the very things that people come to learn about and so they start saying

things like well okay yeah the six main areas of music you know I'm five sixths of the way through what music is about at this point and I haven't even said

anything yet about what notes you play which is a pretty important concept we all know that when you're playing music what you do is you play notes on your instrument I haven't said anything yet

about chords or scales both of words those you heard about I'm sure you came here wanting to learn

about chords and indeed you will scales I haven't said anything yet about Melody and harmony all four of these words I'm sure you've

heard of before another very important word is the word intervals now we're starting to get into some that um you may not have heard about so well uh interestingly enough uh that's strange

because that is the the most important word that I've written down so far because all these other things like chords and scales and Melody and Harmony they're actually all made up of intervals uh there's a bunch of other

words in here uh the progressions for example chord progressions you probably might be aware of that concept uh some other fancy words like modes and arpeggios and things I could write down

a bunch of other words there but it's not an endless list by any sense at all it's uh a pretty you know that's most of it right there and people go well aren't those the six main areas of music and I

go No actually they're all subheadings under this huge word over here which you're also going to know but you might not have ever seen the you know the relationship this way they might not

have ever quite framed it for you this way if you ask me all this stuff is about pitch now you've heard that word before right

what does the word pitch mean to you well um a lot of times it's hard to put this stuff in words isn't it they you know we've never been really forced to think about this before and sometimes people

are just at a loss for words but it's funny I see their hand begin to move and they start going like and wouldn't you agree that pitch seems to have something to do with like up and

down like high and low there's a high-pitched stuff for example sounds like that and then there's low pitch stuff like this

down at the bottom and then there's like this kind of gradation like that where we go from low to High and um that's all this

pitch stuff high and low so pitch is all about High and low

but high and low what people go well high and low sound and I go well maybe but remember we actually put that word down here I'm not sure that the word sound belongs under the

category of pitch I think it might actually belong better um down here where it is so pitch is about high and low but high and low what well um one word that we're General we're

definitely going to learn to associate with pitch is the concept of frequency next time in our next lesson we're going to get a little bit scientific about what pitch is all about because that's

going to start to point us in the direction of of how these machines actually work and generate these different pitches but I think there's a better word that you can learn to associate with pitch pitch is all about

high and low but high and low what well actually I think it's this word right here it is after all about what notes you play pitch is about high and low but high and

low what well high and low notes I think is the best word that surprises a lot of people sometimes and so um if then Concepts like chords and

scales and Melody and Harmony and intervals and progressions and everything are all subheadings under the subject of pitch that must mean they have something to do with what notes you play and my basic way of thinking of

them is these are just all different sorts of patterns these are patterns of notes a chord is when you take a bunch of notes and you arrange them in a particular pattern and

you play them all at the same time for example like this now a scale on the other hand is like when you take a bunch of individual notes and you arrange them in a different type of pattern and one of the

parameters of that pattern is you play the notes in a sequence instead of simultaneously and another kind of language analogy to this is then if music is a language then

these different patterns are in a sense very much like words and music as a language excuse me music

as a language has an alphabet and we'll be talking about that next time too and all you do just like when in the English language when you want to spell a word you take your 26 unit English alphabet

you select certain units out of it and you arrange them in a pattern in English we call that a word in uh music we call them things like chords and scales and

Melody and Harmony and um all that sort of thing so we've done a lot of talking about Pitch we have a lot more talking to do about Pitch but it all comes down to one simple question

that you have to uh ask yourself at the end of the song particularly if you think that the operative word is it's all about what notes you play then of course at the end of the song you've got

to ask yourself gee did I play yeah I keep doing that turning a p into an R did I play the right notes

question mark So pitch is all about what notes you play and what patterns you arrange them in now we have still quickly have one more area of music to talk about I introduced that one like this I'm going to produce two musical

things right now see if you can tell me if these two things are the same pitch ready here we go foreign [Music]

a note on the piano were those two things the same pitch uh uh what do you think well the answer is yes they were that means in terms of

their highness and lowness they've both occupied the same plane which was pretty much like a medium low kind of plane so those two notes were the same pitch

right however in the totality of the experience of listening to those two things they didn't sound exactly alike did they even

with your eyes closed you'd be able to tell oh that's a piano and uh that's a human voice so even though these two things were alike in Pitch

they were different in something else and what might we call that other thing well we could just say that they sounded different yeah

they had a different sound quality they were both the same highness and lowness they were both the same pitch but they just sounded different they had a

different sound quality shall we say even though they were the same pitch they just sounded different a piano sounds like a piano human voice sounds like a human voice the best I think

over-the-counter word for this is the word tone although tone is a little bit of a confusing word in the musical language sometimes because tone is sometimes used to talk about Pitch we

won't get into that right now but for example you have a tone knob on your electric guitar ask yourself this question when you turn the tone knob on that guitar or how about the tone knob on your stereo at home or in your car

when you turn the tone knob are you changing the highness and lowness of the pitches that the musicians are playing and the answer is no you're not you're

just changing something about how there's sound quality actually is um so Concepts like EQ Equalization tone controls on your instrument

um uh the word instruments belongs in here what after all is the difference between a saxophone and a trumpet do saxophones and trumpets play

different notes No in fact you might as well sort of look at it like all the instruments at least in the Western World all basically play the same notes they're all

typewriters and they all have the same alphabet on the keyboard um so what is the difference between a saxophone and a trumpet they just sound different you can always tell when you're hearing a saxophone you can always hear when you're telling a

trumpet when you're hearing a trumpet what's the difference between an electric guitar and an acoustic guitar they play the same notes you play them the same way they just sound different you can always tell when you're hearing

an electric guitar you can always tell when you're playing an acoustic guitar if you're playing an electric guitar what's very important for a lot of players is the whole concept of effects

you probably know that there are all these electronic effects that you can put on your guitar of course the most uh audible or visual visible one of course these days is the whole subject of

distortion you probably all know the the sound that a guitar makes you know right now I even have a little bit of effects on my guitar right now

a little bit of stereo chorusing and stuff like that but you're probably all familiar with Distortion that's when you get this sound out of the instrument [Music]

that over driven kind of distortion sound associated with rock and roll and the truth of the matter is uh not only do you have to worry about what notes you're going to play you also have to worry about the quality of sound you

produce you have to have a decent instrument you have to have a decent amplifier you have to have the right types of effects um if you show up at the heavy metal band rehearsal with your acoustic guitar

you're probably not going to last too long you you need to be able to generate whatever sound that they ask you to play so the uh the official musical term by the way is another one of those ones

that you might not have heard before it's the whole concept of Timber spelled b-r-e Timber have you ever heard that word before you might have and just

didn't know what it was the um oftentimes you'll hear it pronounced also camber t-a-m-b-r-e when you hear that word you know that

they're actually talking about not the pitch of the highness and lowness of the notes you're playing there it's actually the actual quality of sound you're producing should I play this on an electric guitar should I play it on an

acoustic guitar uh you should change your strings on your guitar every month or two because they just get corroded and they just don't sound very good many of you who haven't changed your strings in months and months and months have

simply forgotten how much better your guitar sounded when you were initially put the strings on because they gradually lose their tone over time and you didn't even necessarily know it

before you change your strings next time if your strings have been on for a while play the guitar for a few minutes before you change them and try to remember what it sounded like then change your strings and you'll go oh my God what a

difference and because lots of times it happens so slowly we don't notice it so our last question that we have to ask ourselves at the end of the song um is uh on timber here it's of course

how did I sound and that's a totally different question than did I play the right notes how did

I sound did I play the right notes these are two completely different questions and a lot of times people have just never been able to really make that distinction for themselves so there you go six main areas of music that's all

there is to it for you to be a real musician for you to be a real player there's only two things you gotta do you gotta get to the end of the song and you got to be able to answer yes to those six questions over there if you do

they'll be clapping and throwing money at you in no time if you don't they're gonna kick you out of the band and get somebody who can and it's not a big deal is it all you should really try to do is spend a little time trying to remember

trying to memorize these six different concepts if you're one of my students um here in person uh when you came back next week one of the first things I would do and I'm not a real high pressure guy but we would just have to

go back over it again I suppose would be okay you tell me what are the six main areas of Music give me the official musical term give me like a a one word kind of descript term that to make sure

that you understand what the concept is and then possibly most importantly tell me what that question is that you have to ask yourself at the end of the song um and uh really that's all there is to

it pretty cool huh okay now we'll just take a minute and set you up for our next lesson there'll be lesson number two and you'll uh want to look at your uh in your booklet there and you'll be looking at sheet number two next time

what next time is going to be about is all about Pitch as I say that's the largest area of music and a lot of facts to learn about it but as I said before the good news is it's absolutely

fascinating and how is that pretty good huh wasn't exactly what you were expecting you thought I was just going to plop that guitar in your lap and then start showing you how to move your fingers but trust me that would have

been just pretty much pointless and um other cool thing is did you have any trouble understanding anything I said today I mean isn't this pretty much like

pretty much like Common Sense really you know is there anything terribly difficult here no and the good news is it doesn't get any harder than this if you understood what I was talking about today you're going to understand

everything that I'm talking about some of the stuff when we get further along is going to be a little dense and a little more complicated and and you may have to go over it a couple of times and and but none of it is really very

difficult at all so hope you enjoyed that and we look forward to seeing you next time and I'm Scotty West and enjoy yourself and uh we'll see you next time on absolutely understand guitar

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