You have to be pretty advanced to jam. I mean really jam; with several players improvising off each other, just winging it with no particular goal in mind. It can be a disaster at times, but when things click there is no better feeling. For most beginners jams are more like a self-help group, where they learn how to play songs and improvise with others. Even for beginners, it’s harder than it looks. Most beginner jams involve a lot of pointless back and forth, with everyone playing bits of songs and riffs that almost nobody else knows. Finally, after a 12 bar blues that lasts a half hour, everybody breaks for a beer and that ends the jam. It only takes a few jams like this to convince most people to forget jamming and just drink beer instead. But jamming is too useful to give up! Besides learning how to solo and play songs, jams provide motivation. There is nothing like the fear of sounding like a dork in front of your peers that will make you practice that extra 10 minutes. You can have a better experience at your jams if you define your goals and prepare. As I said above, since most beginners are not capable of true improvisation, jams are more like a self-help group. Besides motivation there are 2 areas even beginner jams can help with:

1. Players can help each other learn how to play songs together.
2. Players can learn how to turn a few riffs into a decent solo.

Now that I’ve defined the main 2 jam goals, the next post will explore ways to prepare for them. (Some people might wonder why “having fun” isn’t listed as a goal. In my experience, fun is the result of a positive & reasonably smoothly run jam, as opposed to a chaotic waste of time. This is why I emphasize preparation.) The next post will list ways to prepare for our 2 main jam goals.

In the last post I referred to a capo. Although the last post was mostly a joke, I was not joking about using a capo, they can be quite useful. A capo is a bar that clamps over the fretboard and is held in place with elastic or a spring clamp in most cases, although I have seen other ways (cams, screws, whatever). I clamp it down as close behind the desired fret as I reasonably can, 1/8-1/4 inch (so I can still make chords). At this time capos cost anywhere from 5$ (elastic) to 50$ and up (the specialty kind I’m not interested in), the average spring clamp capo you see in music stores runs about 10-15$. I like the elastic kind, they’re easy to use and cheap, but they wear out in a few years and most music stores don’t stock them (too cheap to sell). Most guitarists use capos for 3 different tasks;

1. Easy Key Change- It’s easy to make a key higher, just put a capo on 1 to 4 frets higher and play the same chord shapes as before, it changes the actual chord names of course, but who cares? If you do care, or really have to change the key (more than 3 or 4 notes up), I have a table on page 34 of my book, No Fail Guitar, that shows how to play the main 4 chords in all 12 keys using only 6 open chords; G,C,Em,D,Am,and F using a capo. If you need more than this, it’s time for bar chords.
2. Easy Drop Tune- If you like to drop your tuning down to D, do so, and then clamp the capo on the 2nd fret and you’re back in E! Clamp the capo on the 1st fret and you’re in Eb. Handy if you play in multiple tunings and only have one guitar. ( Now the fretboard markings will be wrong, don’t freak out!) This also allows you to change keys down a couple of notes (task 1 above) if you need to, and still get back to normal.
3. Different timbres/tonalities- The reason I limit capo use for key changes to the first 4 frets or so is because the guitars’ tone starts to change and become more like a mandolin (especially with a 12 string) with the capo on the 5th fret or above. You can hear this effect on “Here Comes the Sun” or “Hotel California” which are both played with the capo on the 7th fret. So if you need this tone, and don’t have a mandolin, you know what to do!

As you can see, a capo will allow you play in multiple tunings or sound like a mandolin without purchasing a couple of extra instruments and let you easily change keys without learning a lot of pesky bar chords or theory. Pretty good for 5-20$! I’d get one if I were you.

 

This post is my goof on those too good to be true ” miracle secret to overnight success” courses you see advertised from time to time. Anything works if you lower the bar enough! Consider the following:
– Use the 1st finger to play an open string “power chord”, with the root on the 4th, 5th, and 6th strings. A power chord is a perfect 5th interval, really just a 2 note piece of a chord. It’s used a lot in rock and pop music and abbreviated with a 5 (E5 is a power chord).*

E5                                 A5                            D5

02xxxx                         x02xxx                      xx02xx         – strings/ frets

This will give you the 3 main chords in the key of A; A, D, & E. This is perfect for a 12 bar blues like Johnny B Goode, Crossroads, Tush or about a million more songs. If you don’t limit yourself to a 12 bar blues these three chords will work for even more songs. from oldies like Louie Louie and Wild Thing to punk rock like Blitzkreig Bop or country songs like Your Cheatin heart or Family Tradition. Just type in ” 3 chord guitar songs ” in your search engine.

Bonus! If you have a capo* you can play all 12 keys using the 5th string as the root of the key.  Choose your key, find the root on the 5th string fret and clamp your capo on that fret and play the same 3 power chords. Away you go! True, you will mostly sound like a drunk hamster playing ukulele on the higher frets but you’re playing the guitar with 1 finger in 10 minutes! You’re Welcome!

The next post will be about capos…

*Both power chords and capos are explained in more detail in my beginner book, “No Fail Guitar”, available on Amazon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’re just starting, anything will do the first 3 weeks. Building a habit of regular playing is the first step, so I would make things as easy/fun as possible. Don’t underestimate the challenge of finding a regular time to practice and actually doing it 5 days a week, 10 minutes a day. Do this first, before you conquer the rest of music. After the first 3 weeks (or sooner for you type A’s), you will want to branch out, so what  can you do in just 10 minutes a day? The short answer is not much, obviously, but you can do something ! Try one of the following:

• a part of a song (verse, chorus, etc.).
• for beginners, a new strumming pattern or chord. (maybe for that new song you’re learning)
• a new scale position. (don’t go overboard, as I explain in “Take Control: for guitar”, only 2 positions will cover half of the neck)
• a new riff. ( in the same book, I show that only 6 riffs add up to 100’s of combinations)
• Memorize the 6th and 5th string note names. These are crucial to locating bar chords and the 2 main scale positions in #3.
• a technique exercise. ( I wouldn’t start this until I was up to 20+ minutes a day)

I will be dealing with all of these ideas (and more) in future posts, so have patience! If you are short on patience, everything mentioned above is presented in my 2 books;”No Fail Guitar” (beginner), and “Take Control: for guitar” (advanced). As a bonus, the main elements are condensed to just a few pages (2-4) in the back. Perfect for the guitarist with a 10 minute a day practice schedule! And you really don’t need to learn a ton of stuff. You could play a gig with 12-18 chord forms, 2 scale positions and 6 riffs in your chosen style, (I’ve seen people do it with less). This is why I tell my students that it’s much better to be very good with a few things than suck with a thousand!

 

For most people the demands of a job, family, errands, etc. leave almost no time for any daily practice routine. With zero time during the week and an hour or so on the weekends, it’s easy to resort to playing the same old stuff, and breaking out of this routine can seem impossible. My years of teaching overworked adults have shown me ways to cope with this challenge. It’s challenging, but not impossible!

1. START SMALL: I have no magic bullet; you must lower your expectations, at least for the short term. If you don’t practice 8 hours a day, six days a week you will not be making major changes any time soon! However if you practice 10-20 minutes a day, four or five days a week (plus that hour or two on the weekend) you can make small changes, and small changes add up! I think Bill Gates said ” Most people overestimate what they can do in a year, and underestimate what they can do in ten.” Does ten years sound too long? How many years have you already wasted fooling around? Life is a journey, you might as well relax and enjoy it. Just get started!
2. MAKE A TIME TO PLAY: This is easier if you start small, (10 minutes). If it’s important, you can at least come up with 10 minutes most days at a time when you’re still functional, and can negotiate some peace. The earlier in your day the better, the later it gets the less willpower you have. Try for the same time every day, or schedule it with an event, like around a meal. It doesn’t have to be every day, 4-5 days a week is plenty, (plus that weekend jam).
3. MAKE A PLACE TO PLAY: Most people don’t have separate music studios. Find the quietest corner of the house, maybe the bedroom. Get a small headphone amp and shut the door. Keep your guitar out on a stand if possible,( if you have small kids you may need to keep it in the case under the bed). Make it as easy as possible to start playing, you should be able to start (or stop) in 2-3 minutes.

The reason why I’m starting so small, and emphasizing such basic and obvious points has to do less with becoming an overnight sensation and a lot more with building a habit. The first few weeks it doesn’t matter what  you practice, only that you play. That ten minutes of playing, at the same place and time needs to become a habit, like brushing your teeth. You probably spend 10 minutes a day in total, brushing your teeth, but it’s no big deal, you just do it because it’s a habit. Once a behavior becomes a habit, it’s much less of a hassle. The first few weeks are the hardest and you will probably use every excuse in the book to quit, but keep at it! It’s only 10 minutes, set a timer and you’re done. It will get easier after a few weeks and after a few months, it will just be something you do. (If you are not brushing your teeth, get that down first.)

What can you do with only 10 minutes a day, 4-5 times a week? Not a lot obviously, but something ! Most people don’t realize how learning and applying just a few things can have an exponential effect over time. My next post will give some ideas on what to practice in that 10 minutes.