Amazing Chord-Melody Guitar Playing & Tone With Tim Lerch

[Music] foreign [Music] thank you hey everyone welcome to that pedal show Dan here Mick here Tim here hello amazing uh joined by the wonderful Mr Tim Lurch today who is over here with uh doing a guitar breaks so um lucky lucky people get to hang out with Tim for a whole weekend and pick his brains on all of this amazing stuff mate thank you so much for coming this is awesome it's my pleasure I just can't believe how fun it's going to be it's great for those of you don't know we do a live q a every Monday or most Mondays in fact and Tim's quite often in the comments and always offers a little bit of wisdom uh in those comments so we will mine that a little further indeed today and Dan I believe you've also heard a lesson with Tim yeah I have I I so I saw Tim on that this YouTube clip came up and I'm like it was just beautiful and uh and I reached out and he said yeah yeah I can you know I'll do lessons anyway oh awesome and it was amazing I'm still I'm still going through it because you know Tim was uh kind enough to um if you get a lesson with Tim Tim actually records at his end and sends it through and stuff which is really great oh nice um we will put links in the description below to all of Tim's stuff so um if you're wanting to get to that stuff the links will be below yeah but yeah so yeah I first saw you on the tube well first you said something about me and someone said a bunch of people said hey they're talking about you on that show that's what it is okay that would have been on because I yeah right because it would have been I saw that I saw the clip and just gone man this guy's just blowing my mind the Telly show um yeah we'll cover a bunch of stuff today um I think definitely we'll do some playing stuff we want to talk about tone Tim as well and that kind of thing you're into but let's start with a bit of biography a bit of biographical stuff um we know as you as an educator um briefly on how we get here oh okay um I heard country music on the radio and I was a little boy right one of my earliest memories is um on the the bunk beds with a transistor radio listening to something uh on the am radios probably the Rolling Stones or something like that but maybe a little early for Rolling Stones it's probably about 60 two or three because I was born in 59. so music has always been uh really important basically I've been cooked since day one wow and your parents like heavily into music no um interesting my mom played sort of gospel or churchy piano in the key of f after dinner it's very specific yeah yeah well the key of f was the only key that all the notes worked in oh okay right um and half the keys didn't have the ivory on them they were just wood all right but my father uh was completely on musical I don't think he ever really listened to music he didn't listen to music in the car or or anything and sang badly in church but he gave me the best bit of musical advice that I've ever gotten from anybody which I'll get to in a moment so uh so growing up like that and wanting to play music I swear to you guys I don't know if you're into sort of any of this kind of idea about uh previous lives or anything like that sometimes there's a fair amount of poo-pooing about that but I swear to you when I was three years old I wanted to do this when I first got my hands on a guitar it was a nylon string guitar and I was in about third grade and it wasn't my guitar I didn't get my own for a little while but I got that guitar put it in my lap and I went wow at three years old well no by the time I got it I wanted to do that I heard that sound you know and my mom was listening to um California country radio and so that had you know the twangier side of country music perhaps uh the Bakersfield yeah right but I knew I wanted to do something like that and I and I first time I picked up a Guitar I did that don't know and my mom says I'm in the back seat of the car in the station wagon I do that and she goes Timmy that sounds like something and then I didn't know what to do after that so it took me quite a few years to get to the rest of it you know like the turnaround or whatever but anyway that's so that's kind of like my karmic sort of uh I don't know Duty or something is that music has has always been there but you felt like as soon as you picked up a Guitar you felt connected oh I mean as soon as I picked up a Guitar I was a professional musician awesome which which plays into something I talked uh with uh Keith Williams about just the other day on on his show five what world if you're not familiar with Keith's show please check him out World on YouTube we're talking about this balance between learning as a student and enjoying it and finding joy in it and I talked about how we always have to remind ourselves no matter how deep we are into learning that we're a musician and I said something like on day two you're a musician you have a lot of work to do but you're still a musician right and I think that's easy to forget that like I suck I can't do the thing I'm working on so I'm no good but what about all the things you can do right right so we just that that's just sort of a thing that maybe it comes from that when I was just a little kid and I I I just pretended until I got better at it did you ever have a proper job or have you uh did you go straight into being a pro player um may I had a proper job that's the I washed cars for two days [Music] um that's enough to know I mean I did stuff I hurt my back really bad climbing in and out um I had you know neighborhood jobs I did I learned you know how to pour concrete for a neighbor and take care of the lady's dog down the street when they went on vacation and mowed some Lawns and stuff uh then I got odd job at the hospital and I was in the kitchen at the hospital this was by the time I was 16 and could legally work and I had the evidence of it right there you might even see still see that oh my goodness I bought a copy Les Paul with my Hospital money all right put her payments on it and paid it off it was I believe it must have been an Ibanez or a or a Fuji gen yeah there was no name up here though and it was not a bolt-on neck it was a very good Les Paul and I paid off paid off paid off picked it up one night got home played it all night went to school went to my job cut the almost the entire tip of my first finger off on a tomato and I and so I had to play for about three months with just these three fingers or maybe maybe not maybe a month and change so I got good with that with the tail end then finally this one came back and I have a pretty decent scar there and it to this day I have nerve damage in this finger no way so when you see me playing I might say right I played with the with that with that part of my finger wow because it's more economical and the tip of my finger hurts so I don't go to me it's a bigger tone [Music] alive um dude no he means for talking over oh sorry yeah so so I have now I have arthritis in this finger which is another old man problem talk about that sometimes but yeah so I carved this one up pretty good um that's fascinating because I think there's a lot of people uh myself included who will come up with every excuse Under the Sun why we're not a better guitar player my hands are too small my finger hurts whatever it might be you've gone actually no I've nearly cut my finger off and it hurts so I'll find another way to do it and presumably that then leads into how you sound that becomes part of your sound and your intonation and everything else yeah I thank you for noticing uh yeah I don't I never had any trouble with like something like that where are you you know are these big whoops Mr buy one but but this hurts wow especially on a guitar with a high net with a two high nut yeah yeah you know so then I'll book it well it hurts because it's I don't know if anybody has neuropathy but it kind of just hurts in a very special way uh because it's not ah it's not it's but it's just the weirdest hurt you know nerve pain that you know anyway so was that the moment you thought right working is for losing well yeah I did that job for a while and I actually um but then I didn't do it and then then I work in record stores and music stores that was the way I kind of got through my learning days when I was not good enough to really make a living at playing but so I was in the musical environment and I would get it go in and out I was kind of itinerant I had some you know friends in the music store and music uh record business you know who were there and they liked me so I could go wandering and then come back and you know that kind of thing so what are we we're mid 70s now are we yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and in terms of what were you listening to then what what music was was okay I loved radio I listened and memorized and could recognize pop songs on the radio Me and You and a Dog Named Boo and all this sort of like 70s pop music you know good bad and indifferent some of it was very good some of it was very bad when you say you listen to it and recognize that you're saying you could listen to it analyze it know what the chords were well no no not maybe at first uh just the sound so they had a contest on the on the radio when I was you know 11 or 12. they play a song and who if you can guess it in the first three seconds or something like that you won a prize or something like that so I could always hear the first few notes of a song and know what song of us so that's that first kind of recognition right so you recognize Rhythm and Tone beats not necessarily chords and stuff um but yeah it Melody really came easy for me and so I would do this thing where I still kind of do it sort of my first improvising I think um where I'd sing a song that I heard on the radio or I'd be listening to it on the radio and then I would play a little Lick in between the phrases I would sing a little a little Lick in between the phrases just to fill into the space I'm just sorry to confirm that you would sing it rather than play it on the guitar I couldn't play the guitar on the guitar yet so you went yeah before I was really I didn't start playing Guitar till I was around 13 or 12. but even before that like there would be a song um I'm trying to think of a good one here uh okay a bad one okay um [Music] I was doing that and you're just filling in yeah I'll just fill it in and you know because it always drove me crazy when people would sing a song and just leave out the empty parts you know like you either accompanied this person right right I did it my way you know what I mean just leave out the empty parts right and those empty parts are very important so I would fill them in with little duties still do that's still what I'm doing [Music] I believe I'm playing Taya yellow groovin [Music] you can pour it out so let's get into when you knew that this was it yep and you started taking it seriously because it seems to me that uh you've been an educator of like you know conversation we had before for over 50 years now or close to close to 50 years what was those early things like with you know guitar teaching and things and what did you find was effective and worked I'd say that if I won the lottery I would find all of my first say 100 students and give them all their money back [Music] um because I didn't know what to do well I I learned you know I learned by doing I would often times be one page ahead and um but I got this I was in this situation This was later a little later um I think I am personality wise I love sharing and I love and that means teaching is something I really love oh that's awesome I had this thing hey let me show you this cool thing yeah you know I mean so we're just doing it before well we're having a chat and uh you remember yeah I do um but it was mind-blowing and Tim was like is that thing I was like have you have you tried this and I'm like no show me and I got so excited then it comes over and I'm like just give me a minute you know but damn you see this in scrunched up piece of paper here yeah yes it's amazing it's amazing but but I but there is that thing because you are so passionate about it there is that thing that I I want what you've got you know what I mean I I and it because you know I'm really serious about trying to learn this stuff and and there's a very different way of communicating when you're genuinely passionate and you're generally you genuinely want to help people learn this stuff because I've had some awful teachers you know who just really couldn't is like this is what I have to teach you to get this grade and if you can't do it it's not like it's on it's not on you it's not a mess on you I'm going to quote some philosophy here to you here Dan which I think might have come from Tim on one of our vcqs and I think tell me if I'm wrong here the student and the teacher together create the learning okay that's very good all right I don't think you can always blame the team no no no no I'm just saying my heart goes out to guitar teachers because there's a very different experience learning from a teacher who genuinely wants you to learn yeah yeah sure you know what I mean sure rather than God can you teach my kid how to play a rock and roll song please because I need to go to the bar for an hour it's a different thing isn't it well you know most of us from our generation I can include us in a certain generation although I may be making a big mistake um is is the the guy down the street knows one thing and you you know one thing and you get together and now you both know two things right right that's right that's like the they say there's you know uh this is a spiritual illusion as well if you have a candle and you light another candle with it your candle doesn't go away your flame doesn't go away but the new one there goes yeah right it doesn't take anything away from this candle to light that candle if only perhaps momentarily but then it recovers um I try in all of my teaching and I do a lot of it in different Fashions like I'm going to be doing this coming weekend with a group of people so somehow you got to make a connection with the individuals you know and find out where they're at and what how they learn and what they want to learn and all those kinds of things but I try and keep it a little bit like that right I got this cool thing I'm gonna give it to you and you can do it with it what you want I think that's a an organic and wonderful way to keep it alive sure keep it joyful learning can turn into drudgery and I it makes me sad when that happens when we're on a schedule when we're on a timeline when we're on you know a curriculum that's been developed so that you can get a passing grade and fulfill whatever whatever I just I just don't think people learn that way very well and they learn or they learn in a certain way which doesn't stay with them and so I try and honor that and so I'm not in a hurry I try not to put my own agenda on anybody although sometimes my excitement in my excitement I might um but uh sometimes I just feel like they want a guitar friend a musical friend that they can relate to for an hour and that's especially with adult adult Learners who don't necessarily want to march in and get an hour's worth of information yeah however often once a week or twice to be fair we find that on our experience days as well it's Dan's quote is it's a lot to have in common with somebody and it's a very you know to use a modern term it's a safe space and it's a great deal to have in common with someone to to share that to share it isn't it absolutely because I think when you're passionate about music and you play If you experience being connected to an instrument and and you experience that connection in a group with you know when you play music together there is nothing in the world like it like my my closest friends are still the guys I was in my first bandwidth right and you can't explain that to people you can't explain what it's like to pick up a guitar and go and the feeling of that chord yeah the only people you can talk to about it is guitar players everyone else goes I don't get it man yeah yeah exactly yeah speaking of bands Tim how over the years how has the proportion of kind of pro professional playing and educating worked out for you depend I think generally speaking um it was an even mix yeah different there were ups and downs more of this or more or less of that if I'm on the road of course I'm not doing teaching um in the in the old days you know you had to do one or the other you couldn't there weren't any online venues but um I like a blend of it I find if I do too much of too much teaching I get a little dry I need it to be fresh and if I do too much playing I get a little grumpy too like too much hassling I love the play I play 10 hours a day but but um you play 10 hours a day no no but I will oh I'm happy too you know what I mean yeah and if you know uh not too long ago I was teaching just kind of getting my feet back on the ground in terms of my finances and stuff because I'd taken a lengthy break and I didn't have any income at all during that lengthy break so when I came back to this land um the land of people I was teaching you know sometimes eight hours a day so I'd have a guitar in my hand then I'd go home and before I left I'd write curriculum before and I'd come home and I'd you know play for my own enjoyment or whatever so it was a lot and these days I have to moderate that because the machine is falling apart a little bit but I was talking to my wife this morning about something I can't remember how we start but just this idea of practicing and having it be fulfilling because I said you know it can take two hours of practicing to get one good 10 minutes of beautiful music wow you know and and she said oh that's a good one I'm gonna remember that one and and so it's a you have to love the practicing because it it facilitates the the what the eventual Joy of playing something beautiful right you know that's very good and and I think if we have it if we have it in that perspective um we can learn happily we can do the repetitions that are necessary to take the thing you've learned and make it into something you can use and then we can play and be confident and be adventurous with it yeah we've talked about that a lot on the show actually that idea of to simplify you know removing the middleman so all that work you do is building the foundation [Music] exactly what you were just saying the hours and the hours of work but then when it comes time to play that thought process is different and it flows yeah I I feel like there's three things briefly three kind of kind of things we can call practicing and we don't always make a distinction and as I think it's helpful to make a distinction when is the learning part and I my opinion is you learn a small thing you learn it well and you don't learn too much of it right right little bite-sized chunks bite-sized chunks so I say maybe I make a little joke about it say take small bites chew them well and then you can die then you'll be able to digest okay good that's very good so so then the next thing probably the most important thing is the repetitions that I call the practicing so you learn and then you practice you have to practice the thing you learned efficiently um and enough so that you can actually use that thing particularly in an improvisational capacity but even in a playing a fixed piece um so you learn something small bit practice maybe you learned three things practice them maybe you learned three things the other day or the week before you have to keep practicing them so the middle of the three is the really where you live much I think sometimes we get a little greedy and we look around and we see this that human beings have uh an essentially acquisitive uh kind of mind we want to get get so we don't know what you're talking about we like the getting yeah right and we're get sometimes we get too much too soon especially these days yeah you know and so um and we forget about the part where the payoff comes where we can actually use the tool that we yeah you know so the tools aren't out in the shed getting rusty but you can't get to them you need them like in your breast pocket or in your nose or you know behind your ear and really close to the deal yeah that's where the tools have to live right and then the third thing which I think is also very important is what I call the performance which is when you actually play music and that's when you turn into turn back into a musician you're not a student anymore you're playing right you're and all three of those things have to be in a balance and it's very valuable when they are they might sometimes be out of balance like if you're shedding for a gig or something you might have to learn a whole bunch of things really quick and you can't honor that to say I'm sorry Bob I can't make the gig tonight because I I follow Tim's advice and I just haven't learned all the songs you know so you might have to make some shortcuts and you might trust your instincts and perhaps by the time you get a level of skill that you can learn more quickly learn more efficiently your musical memory might be stronger and the practicing part can be a little less um and the final thing is there's a there are three different kinds of mindsets for those three things and all the gray that flows in between the first the learning part the mind is very active very judgmental very articulate and and we want to make it right we want to learn without mistakes slowly we want to control environment right and that might only last 10 minutes or 15 minutes but it's very much the mind is running ruling the roost right the repetition part I mean you know like I say you can watch golf and do that you know and it's a relaxed mind that still has some attention on the details but it's relaxed right it's not a it's not a sweatshop okay okay and then the third mind is almost nothing I love her that is is the most eloquent way I've ever put it I think of all the fabulous people we've had in here they've said a version of the same thing I've never heard it broken down like that and I may have broken it down in too large of chunks that so that it might not be as relatable but look at if you look at your daily practicing I think all three of the things those things need to happen if you're going to give up one give up the learning a new thing and just do the repetition but always do the playing every single day of your life when you have this thing in your lap you have to be remember and remind yourself I am a musician all right you know like I said on day two you have to remind yourself yeah yeah and without getting too caught up in it if you find that your your progress is impeded or you're unhappy with what you're doing chances are you're either at the wrong stage or in the wrong mindset for the situation exactly currently yeah that's right right yeah the biggest killer to the the second I'll just go through them the biggest killer to the first one is wanting too much the biggest killer for the second one is wanting too soon and the biggest killer for the third one is wanting anything excuse my ignorance you must have written this in a book no I I I decided that my contribution to Zen literature is to be to abstain from writing a book although I'm breaking that rule sorry well I've got I've got your latest book yes um the chord Harmony what's it called Luke melodic jazz guitar chord dictionary Luke and Ian are with us today who are both involved in Tim's uh course this weekend so on guitar Vivo a book that I made exactly almost exactly a year ago that Luke links below um is is called the melodic jazz guitar chord dictionary a book I was reluctant to write until Luke um asked a really wonderful question he said because I turned him down uh politely I hope and he said well if you were to write a chord dictionary what kind would you write what would it have to be for you to be on board with it and I said well I think that if there was a chord dictionary that was organized by the melody note of the chord rather than the name of the chord so if you're looking for an a major chord with a third on top you could find it like that just boom beep can you exactly okay so let's say I'm trying I'm going to use the something from my world I don't want to limit it to to anybody else's world but let's say I'm trying to play a song The Days of Wine and Roses the Days of Wine and Roses starts with um a fifth on top of a major chord once I lived a life of Wine and Roses yes and it's the saddest song ever my dad is a massive country fan Dad if you're watching this thank you for the education [Music] okay so here I have an F chord that's what the sheet music tells me the fake book or whatever c a well if I if I don't I can say well that's okay that's okay that's kind of it all right so I decided to fill in the blanks a little bit you need an F with a c on top or maybe you don't need an F with the c on top you certainly do an F with an A on top if you want to go because it could be argued that this C is from a c seventh chord so how do I make an a sorry an F with an A on top and there's so many possibilities I don't know [Music] you know I don't know which one to pick right well the book has got them all next to each other and you can look them up in the index you can even search on the PDF f with the third you know the the third in the melody right and um so then it gives it gives all the F chords that have that attribute are together that's really good but then how on Earth do you organize that because then there are all the other notes yes well what happens is it's a phenomenal thing it's a really phenomenal thing because the stuff is always in the same place every time so once you learn that this one's here well then you can go on to uh and this one and this one and then this one um I do a thing it's it's a fun little can I you please okay please please please please okay let's say you've got what we want to do is we want to develop uh the ability to create fluid Harmony rather than a bunch of fixed I call them fixed grips we want to take the concrete and we want to make it fluid so the fixed grip being I know this picture yeah yeah yeah not so much scale although scale could sorry I mean because the scale is fluid by its nature of Courts tend to be concrete by their nature and the way we learn songs is we learn you know it ain't no yes you know we learn a fixed way like Bob Dylan played it or whatever sorry that was horrible um actually actually really good it was good impressionable yeah I'll play it yeah [Music] oh [Music] my guitar sufficiently Out Of Tune now so let's say I want to make an exercise that that um facilitates and encourages breaking down the edges of these fixed cores that we're so proud of learning because we learn let's say you learned how to play a Bad Company song in 1970 yep six played in the band and in order to play that song and sound correct you played it the same way as you perceived it to be on the record with the same grips and the same Rhythm the well then we come to wanting to learn how to play jazz yes and we kind of have the same mindset yeah right so then we have this complaint like well I'm playing I'm playing Rhythm changes one six two five at on you know like 180 beats per minute but I only know one way to get through that and it goes by in about 30 seconds and then the song is five minutes long I'm just gonna supposed to go around and around it gets boring and also if I'm accompanying somebody it's not accompanying by the way it's more improvisational than improvising solo yeah in jazz in in that kind of music I I have to be able to re react and relate and encourage and support and back off and push and pull all that stuff is spontaneous so we we kind of work on something that allows for that so if I just have a two five one six [Music] a minor E7 G major E7 sharp 9 or something what if I had a different note on top of every chord but in a systematic way so I'm going to take the scale of G major and I'm going to go to a new node on top of every chord going up so the rule is of this game is I'm going to ascend the melody one chord one note per chord I'm going to start on this one just because it makes for a fun situation oh I'm going to play that note which isn't in the key because it's helping it becomes the leading time for them yeah yeah right okay and that then I learned because I went like this I'd have a C note on top of my G chord and it starts to sound proper so so we put in a the occasional chromatic no so you do that enough and pretty soon this the visualizing of the basic grips is strong enough so that you can play this instead of this and then put that Melody no not and then there are variations on the theme two notes per chord [Music] all right and I'm just going up the key just once again I want to say that I've heard people explain this stuff to me many times Dan gets it I don't I have never ever ever heard it broken down like that to the point where I go I get I can do that yeah I can't I'm gonna need to learn the chords and the and to get some right but it's all memory yeah I understand what you're doing for the first time oh nice and the trick is not thinking this is somehow a new one thing to memorize yeah this is just part of that yeah a little bit of a thingy on top okay so now the third thing after you've done uh diatonic movement of one to one or two to one or whatever you like what does diatonic mean diatonic means using only notes that are in a particular key the seven notes in a major key would be um that we would use that word diatonic to describe um a song or or a passage that didn't leave the key non-diatonic is something that that leaves the key or introduces a non-diatonic note okay so what we're going to do now is we're going to take the same things a minor to d to g to E7 is of some kind and we're going to do a chromatic upper passage so that means that the notes are going up but they're going up stepwise unless it's going to be a train wreck and then I'll maybe do a whole step or something so a minor 11 a minor seven flat five D nine D minus seven sharp nine G Major seven with this okay that leads very nicely to this and then I'm gonna make a minor into a seven flat 9 because the melody node is B flat and it would be a little clunky on top of a minor yeah but now let's check this out that is the chord that if you go to Music School they'll say don't do that young man so it's a D7 with a C sharp in the melody right in this context it's beautiful it's perfectly fine [Music] foreign now there are all kinds of other things you can do to that you can add I'm sorry I'm making squeaking sounds again you can say now what I just did there is I went up with the Melody and I went sort of down with the bass that's just a little trick that so the game the reason I call it a game is it what you know we want a game to be fun and we want learning to be fun we want to enjoy ourselves and I can do this for two or three hours and never really feel like I've had a long session you know what I mean just it's because it's just musing about it the rules are simple things go up things go down you know just briefly I can take the same idea and say [Music] oh this can be funny because it's a flat third on top of a major chord so I'm going to make it dominant and then I'm going to change key all right so you can play the game any way you like yeah you can do it with Blues you can do it with any chord progression learning a song like I played that song Don't Think Twice as all right a minute ago [Music] right so I can do it with that I can say [Music] you know and that becomes my temp that's sort of my my palette or that you know so I I have to ask just backing up a little bit I'm gonna say most of us which is a ridiculous phrase it's it's too reductive but certainly a lot of guitar players I know anyway you hear AC DC on the radio or you hear whatever it is in my case it was it was Blues playing but straight ahead 145 type Blues you get your head around a few chords and that's what you do for the next 45 years and there's no shame in that by the way that's why that's awesome um at what point did you say actually I can hear something different here there's something more harmonically interesting again it's I don't want to use I don't want to suggests that simplistic guitar playing is somehow worse or because by saying more interesting it implies the other thing is less interesting but more complex more harmonically involved what made you go that's more interesting to me I think what might have happened is that I had a pretty good knack for Melody Melody didn't slow me down at all and what I didn't feel like I could really hear was the inner voices my own and Nelson riddles uh but you know if I hear a piano player I'd hear the low note and the high note but that that beautiful stuff in the middle I couldn't always hear so I started listening to orchestras and I started finding that I could pick it out better or if I listened to a a well a well arranged Ensemble of any kind uh brass ensembles are really fun for that because there's each voice is unique and they blend to make a beautiful thing but you can follow any of them right so the notion that Harmony is nothing but Melody swimming together and to control the voices really captured me as an intellectual game as an as a thing that melted my ears and my heart and all of those things combined for me in harmony um and then I also uh love music I love ballads I love Lush music I'm not really big on like super fast or super aggressive or super loud or super you know angry or anything like that um and so there's a kind of I feel like the world we live in is perhaps lacking Beauty okay or probably wouldn't wouldn't be worse if there were more of it um and and in music and in personal interactions and in uh you know architecture you know um and uh so I feel like well that's an area maybe I can help you know and um but to me to say this interesting question because you you asked it in a way that said that was based on kind of where I was going with that exercise and getting caught up in these multiple voice things but lately I'm fascinated with um the same kind of information but you know how in a like a Japanese Sumi painting they make one line and then two little lines and all sudden it's a bamboos you know I mean it's like you know what I mean okay yeah yeah there's sort of minimalism of line that creates shape in the absence of in our case sound right so this instead of this which is very big and fluffy and full I like this all right so I say [Music] all right so I'm trying to to let the boy the voices separate a little bit and swim a little more independently uh [Music] so those are they're all there but they're each one of them is giving its own its own room for you know to be beautiful it really it yeah it's so effective it really the emotion behind it jumps out you know it means yeah very very effective that's beautiful it's upside down from where or at again not the right term it's a very different way of approaching the electric guitar to bring it back to the original question in that when you hear Angus Young what you hear is a d chord A G chord and an a chord and that's the structure of it and then the melody is provided by the singer maybe a counter Melody is provided by Malcolm the bass player is doing another Melody and to be able to I thought the orchestral example was fantastic because I've I've find it borderline impossible to hear that Harmony stuff I just can't my my my own mind is attuned to root notes and to maybe the biggest flavor note in the chord so yeah the major or minor third or a very obvious seven or something like that in hot in in an orchestra exactly as you say listen to the oboe player then listen follow yeah follow somebody yeah right even in a Piano Trio that's a great way to unfold it yeah like it like for instance try this you go to Piano Trio like Oscar Peterson or Bill Evans or or let's start with Oscar Peterson no I'm not playing it playing a you know a medium Tempo thing that's yeah yeah and then listen to it once just listen to the whole thing like you might normally listen to it yeah then listen to it again and only listen to the kick drum oh wow yeah yeah you know and it's not going to be it's going to be in that kind of music the kick drum if you can first you learn to hear what a kick drum sounds like in that context yeah and then maybe listen to it again and listen to how the kick drum the hi-hat and the snare are living together and and interacting is it brushes in the snare then listen to it again and listen to the ride symbol just the right symbol ignore everything else if you can then the next time listen to the bass player right stay with the bass player all the way through then the next time listen to the drummer and the bass player and how they're interacting yeah by the time you've listened to it probably seven or eight times and you haven't even bothered with the pillow yeah wow and then you listen to the left hand of the piano if you can discern it yeah and then you listen to the right hand of the piano and then you listen to it one more time to where you just let it flow over you what does that give you as a musician going through at that level well you know how the other day you had a a famous guy named Rick piado right and Rick could um tell you a lot about how to mic stuff up and how to put things in a mix and how to mix and how to do it because he's an orchestrator I mean he's he he's he may not in the particular venue that he was talking about which is sort of rock music and think of himself as an orchestrator but he really is and so in order to orchestrate you have to be familiar with the instruments so Nelson riddle my favorite orchestrator and and uh composer of orchestrations um he knew he was intimate with all of the instruments what their ranges were what their strengths and weaknesses were which ones liked to live together sure I mean if you want to hear some some really brilliant listen to uh Nelson riddle behind Frank Sinatra yeah right and that's the hippest stuff ever harmonically yeah and you would never think of that if you're just listening to you know even great guitarists or pianist I mean it's just mind-boggling and the stuff that Quincy did with Frank as well exactly and Billy May mind blind yeah and I think that is one thing as guitar players we do get sort of Television because I think they just look so cool and there's a romantic notion you know what I mean hooked into the iconography long before you are the man absolutely yeah yeah you know yeah it's such a thing but also let's check this out I'm going to do this badly because I I didn't cut my teeth on it like you did but [Music] right but now listen to this laughs and listen to this [Music] and listen to this [Music] you put them all together and it's just this foreign but inside of these basic chords there's nothing primitive or or wrong or simplistic about those cars they're just the courts that live down there yeah right okay and they have all the same voice leading potential as as any other fancy schmancy Court you know so I don't know 2016 DB and ACDC is a good example because they're voice leading is what makes a lot of their songs sound as catchy and and listenable as they as they sound because they're used they're willing to use the occasional inversion the base the base movement in the chord progression is just as important as the melodic movement yeah and it you know so it's almost tricking you into to digging good voice leading by listening to that amazing is though because when you're playing um when you played what you just played uh Georgia yeah Georgia on My Mind all of a sudden you hear I'm just hearing a whole shed load of songs from the 50s to 60s and 70s um and those those Melodies and the way it moves starts to feel familiar because you have heard it behind your rank you have heard it behind all that amazing American Songbook I know that's a overused term but all those songs that have been played on the radio forever and I've never understood the harmony I listened to Frank singing and I can understand the melody for sure or at least the vocal Melody but then it's like oh God yeah that's what the whole rest of everyone else is doing right and if you take even that I'll do the same thing though with a little bit so we have this [Music] all right Georgia [Music] Georgia I'll do it here [Music] where'd it go somebody else's guitar I'm not that bad right yeah and and so if you can start to hear those things I went in and sorted it out I went in there and found them and listened hard [Music] that's the internal line I call them logic lines right and they're the essential note that sort of um the line of notes that live inside of this organism we call a song and there could be a lot of them I used to recommend taking if you're playing a chord progression you really want to go into it see what happens on a single string as the chord progression moves yeah we were playing Sunny earlier let's do the D string so this note [Music] stays there and then it goes up there right so and then it goes when it goes from B minor 755 to E7 and that's the whole thing right then let's take this one let's do this [Music] so you can make you can play these games where you live on where you bring out a voice bring and don't be afraid to go down below the G string and live down so what's happening in this thing yeah and if you do it all in one string through a chord progression you're going to hear something essential it it Loops back absolutely to what you said at the top of this chat which was you could hear those Melodies you could hit and you started to sing them yeah yeah that's got to be essential hasn't it because again sorry to label the point but when we learn those fixed positions what did you call them concrete fixed grips you fix grips yeah when you learn those fixed grips you hear it as a whole and you're not singing it you're just hearing it as a chord underneath a bit of singing or whatever you're not hearing the individual parts and it is it's fascinating yeah yeah you have to hear the most important thing is not one thing or the next thing or the next thing or the next thing the most important part to hear is the Journey of any individual Voice through those four things yeah that prompts quite an interesting question because one of the one of the things I think a lot of people find very hard about learning is they'll take a chord book or a whole bunch of stuff that's written down and and they get caught up in I don't know if it's a g flat sharp 713 or whatever it is or or whatever the equivalent might be and you get your brain gets so caught on that how do you feel about learning that stuff versus just listening to where the melody goes because presumably at some point it it starts to meld right um I think let's see if I can say what I mean um first of all probably the best place to start is understand your current harmonic vocabulary anything you can play you should understand where it's going and where it's heading where it likes to go I always say this word you know D7 likes to go to G major or G minor yeah because of what in D has an affinity for what's in G major or G minor and let's find out and let's find out what okay so what let's find out why this wants to go to here well that likes to go to there and this likes to go to there you know that there's these affinities right so if you play it spend some time with it even if you don't know the names I'm not crazy about making everybody like be able to spell it out I do it because I teach it right but a player who isn't trying to teach anybody doesn't need to have a bunch of language in their mind for this it sounds it's I have a shirt that says exists in a world of sound all right it's one of my things right is that it's all about sound we don't have no one's listening to you talk about this when you're playing right uh never went to a show and you know people are leaving out the hall and hear the husband talking to the wife and she he says honey that was a pretty good show but man he didn't explain anything no nobody says that you know so first of all take what you know you know a lot I've seen you play and heard you play you know a lot of beautiful harmonic movements just spend a little bit of time you know parsing it out to find out why in your for in your on your own terms why does it work then why does that sound good maybe you give a name for it maybe you have something that a name a theory name or something that you didn't understand before well you now you may find out that the thing you already do has a name yeah and that'll help you understand what the name is all about um and I don't recommend um starting with looking in a book and trying to find some musical inspiration from it I actually would prefer to flip it around so particularly with core dictionaries is you know you don't want to say oh a page of a chords okay wow I like that one that one's pretty good well that's a really neat well that's too hard and then and then you know that's not the that's not how we're going to assess that right that's why I think that core dictionaries that are randomly organized or relatively overwhelming and practically useless not to to my own horn but I think that we definitely got a new mousetrap with this organizational method in in the court dictionary that I made um so verify what you already know right and then the next thing is I think the chord progressions themselves aren't too complicated usually in music that most people like but the melodic implication yeah in the court can be make a difference right so if I say this [Music] I've got like every song in the 50s but if I say this [Music] foreign [Music] exact thing all right man right so if you sing Le walk around the park late last night okay I can say took a walk around the park late last night same Melody works over this over though that's just a and it's a little I wouldn't play that but it's all there it's all there and it's you know and stylistically it might be a little off the mark but but it's you know the moment at F major is happening in both instances F major was happening yeah yeah that's beautiful so anyway do your homework kids play a lot yeah so I don't want to labor on this because there's a you know I think it's been talked about before but when I first heard you play it reminded me one of the favorite things I've ever seen on YouTube was uh a seminar by Ted green yes and I think he's just warming up before he even starts talking and then I was looking at him he goes oh are you ready but like the 10 minutes before that the stuff he's been playing which just blew my mind and when I heard you play the first time I'm like wow this there there's Ted Green in there and then when I first talked to you you said oh yeah um I was a student of his I had literally had no idea and yeah right um there's some evidence I'd say yeah so I mean how did that come about and what did what did Ted impart on you that is still very valuable today oh my gosh okay I became aware of Ted he'd written a couple of books and had a record out uh that I worked in record stores and booked in music stores so I would you know find these things and look in a catalog maybe ask my boss if I could order it or something I knew who he was I'd uh modern chord progressions is my favorite book by Ted green by the way he made four of them um four books chord chemistry which he jokingly referred to as chord catastrophe it's the kind of the quintessential chord dictionary with too way too much information organized poorly there's a but about halfway through the book on page 56 there's a bunch of really good educational material but nobody got there because they look at the first page and there would be you know there are literally two pages of eight chords A major trial I'm so glad you said that because I've yeah as much as I love Ted yeah I cannot get through this yeah you have to know Ted in order to do the work that he did he was rather compulsive okay and so and he was a completist I'm also a completist but I'm learning not to get bogged down in it um so but he wrote this other book called modern chord progressions which similarly is a bunch of grids page after page after page of grids but they're these four uh grid phrases right and they're organized in some way by Melody so you'd see something like this [Music] the next one might be [Music] same chord progression and same voicings underneath but a different Melody that was probably about two-thirds way through the book um not that particular example but something like that yeah so he starts out relatively you know and then goes from there I love that book and learned a lot from it love the record many of you have probably heard bits and pieces if not the whole thing of this famous record uh by Ted green called the solo guitar and it's it's incredible if you haven't listened to it and you are intrigued by this kind of thing please do listen to it it's on YouTube most of it's been written down partially accurately he does a lot of stuff that's very hard to write down um and so he he opened my ears to a world of sound that I'd never heard anybody do I heard uh jazz guitar solo guitar and heard Joe Pass I'd heard um older you know these kind of the banjo players that would play you know [Music] no that thing which is appealing but but Ted would do this Lush orchestral thing I don't think it's like even Jazz really it's sort of like orchestral inspired guitar then I was working at a music store the boss said you want to go to The NAMM Show and I said yes and my shoe squeaked again sorry um and I walked in The NAMM Show building and an elderly man walked up to me and shook my hand said hello how you doing young man melbay and so it gives you an idea of the of the time frame yes so the first person was like oh goody you know so anyway we were wandering around I met herbalist that day I played a guitar again which don't exist anymore it's a guitar was rigged up for activating organ sounds pre-synthesizer it was buttons or something um I I I I it was fantastic but then I walked by the Dale said Nick Booth little booth and there was this man I recognized playing a Telecaster with his head down and I just stood there like like a a very happy and he was he didn't stop playing he was shy and he didn't stop and notice the boy uh 16 at the time you know and and he didn't notice that I was there maybe he didn't keep his head down but I I just stood there and I didn't care about anything else I just stood there and watched him play he was playing until I cast her all of his books were behind him you know um and uh so then that's the first time I saw him in person and pretty much that stamped me that I was done I was just done you know I may have had a few side trips along the way many more than a few but that that right there was the core of it and his love of or orchestra and voice leading and orchestrating on the guitar influenced me greatly to continue to pursue it as well um fast forward four years later or I was maybe 19 years old living near Sacramento and I went to a jam session and a man said uh guy he's a man now but he was a probably a year older than me uh said hey you play pretty good man and I played this uh I had made an arrangement of [Music] Fly Me to the Moon with it you know a million cards and I it was bad but it was a million chords and he said well you ought to give Ted green a call and I said you know and he said yeah I've got his number here and so he wrote his number down and handed it to me and I the next day I went home and I called Ted green he lived in Los Angeles Northern north of Los Angeles in in the valley they call it uh he was living in his parents house in Woodland Hills at the time and um which I think he did a few times you know in his life as things unfolded um and uh so I would I had a girlfriend at the time whose parents lived in the same area so we'd go down for Thanksgiving and and uh after I talked to Ted on the phone a couple of times oh by the way I skipped that I called him on the phone and he actually answered it and here's it's perfect I I said um oh blah blah you know introduce myself and and uh he was talking to me very very nice uh he said hey Tim can I I want to hear what you have to say but could you hold on for just a second I gotta flip a tape over and then I hear him go away I heard a little wrestling and then comes back he said yeah I'm I'm uh making a VHS recording of a Jimmy Cagney movie because I love the music and and I wanted to make sure I flipped it over at the right time so then we talked a little bit more and I said well you know I really want to know how to play Walking bass lines oh okay well how about this have you ever tried this you send me five dollars and I'll write out some things I'll think I'll look for what I've got to make and I'll send it to you in the mail so we did that for about a year like and he was really bad at it he did I would you know and it was slow he was good at it but he was slow he would write me a beautiful handwritten letter every time you know and I think I learned how to do you know thing things like this [Music] from those sheets and then he would send me one quart per beat foreign [Music] and all that and there are inversions and approaches and those kinds of things and that stuff translated pretty well because it what was on the page if you played it it was it would say it would sound a little bit and I could I could hear him his sound in my mind and so I could I got pretty good at sort of going for that long note like a lot of people would play [Music] and then I say okay you got the fingerings now make the law make the nose longer um so no seams unless you want to see right yeah right right so we did that for a while then I would go down I went down once the first time I met him they did the day after Thanksgiving me a Thanksgiving at girlfriend's parents house and uh borrowed a car and drove down to Ted's parents house where he was staying and we had a long afternoon lesson that I taped then someone's hiding somewhere in my boxes of stuff um and then I would do that do that maybe three or four times finally we I moved down there to go to git and and lived in Hollywood and would borrow a car because you can't you can't not have a car yeah yeah L.A and the buses wouldn't get from point A to point B very effectively so I'd borrow somebody's car and drive up in the evening to apartment number nine and usually I'd ride way too early and because I was afraid of being too late and uh but then he would start at nine o'clock and sometimes I wouldn't leave until 11 30. you know and he was kind to me Kinder probably than any adult male had ever been to me and that took me you know sort of worn my heart he was strong with me though because I was full of piss and vinegar and that was a little more than a little arrogant because I could play a little bit you know and so he settled me down and and uh helped me it was a very very wonderful thing and then I end up with you know a stack of paper because he wouldn't give me like literally a Year's worth of work every time I went there and I didn't go every week like some guys did because I feel like that would be excessive I just he'd give me something I'd work on it and come back when you know call them and book another lesson when I had something to show for and I did that for you know four or five years and then I got a road gig and I and I uh left town and then I didn't see him after that I think the last time I saw him I went to his place was in 86 or no no before that sorry yeah 86 um and uh and lost lost contact with him because then he didn't really answer his phone I was surprised that he answered his phone when I called him the first time because it was really unusual you know right anyway that's the Ted green thing I have pages and Pages then they released all that stuff after he died it's it's in you know the the Ted green.com I'm fortunate to be you know associated with that group of people a little bit and I made some um uh I was asked to make um sort of explanation videos for some of his Arrangements because you get an arrangement it's like you know yeah and so I thought it would be helpful if somebody could actually hear it yeah and so I took there's probably about 20 or 23 or four of them um I have them on a playlist playlist on YouTube and you know I don't there's I don't put ads on them and I did them for free and it's just my duty in a fulfillment it's a beautiful day man it really is it's um yeah so that was too long of a story no no you know honestly it's amazing I think anyone with um a personal connection to Ted uh I mean hey it's very it's rare that you know you'd sit there and have a conversation but also anyone that is affected by the way Ted would play it's a it's wonderful to hear about it so thank you very much for that that's great I and I did want to um I wanted to ask sort of you know coming to where we are now that because I discovered you through YouTube so how has that changed things for you because you've been very busy as a teacher you've been you know full-time professional musician now you post a few things on YouTube and everyone's it's sort of external from your world is now also discovering you on what you do how has that impacted you well I have a kind of there was a little kink in here as I took a break right and I lived off the grid for 13 years wow didn't own a guitar didn't play wow um I heard that Ted died some other things happened uh we're leading up to and so I decided to come back to the world and um that was in 2006. all right I very quickly sort of got my fingers to comply renewed some old acquaintances and and started playing um and I made my first YouTube video I think in 2008 maybe so relatively early yeah not not the Primal years but relatively kind of ramping up I had at that time I had and people were making videos with flip phones and it was all compressed to Nikki sounding and I had a I had a pretty good primitive way primitive by today's standards but even by what I use which is way primitive compared to what you have but um uh anyway it looked goodness sounded good compared to what else was out there and I think I was playing in a way that that um I played a my first one was why do piano players get all the fun have all the fun and it was uh something it was improvised performance so something like I played at the beginning of there foreign [Music] and I put that on and people like comment her on and say do this they do that and I thought oh that might be neat then I made a couple of gear related I made a very uh well-watched video about this pickup and as bad as the sound quality was I think it still maybe holds some water today and I just started I like I like to think of myself as an accidental YouTuber right I just did it because I wanted to share I have the sharing thing yeah and I wanted to share and I felt like oh here's a way to get you know people who like the silly thing that I do you know get them to hear it and share it I didn't have a plan I didn't have an overarching you know kind of take over the world in three you know three years or you know get to there's a number of views or this number of likes and blah blah I was just doing that because I like doing it yeah then suddenly people started um why did you take lessons and I figured out that this new thing called Skype would allow me to give lessons to people who lived in Singapore or wherever so I started using Skype also a very early adopter and it was oh so funny though I mean sometimes I'd have to turn the thing on and off five or six times during a one hour lesson because the signal would go bad or whatever I would say oh I think we need to get into a better tube let me call you right back you know and um all sorts of fun stuff like that and along with you know a fairly rigorous um uh personal one-on-one teaching schedule and gigging so I was talking to my wife the other day maybe Luke was there and she said well you've been together for 17 years yeah but for the first six years I didn't even see him because he was out all the time working you know because I needed to make up for lost time I had yeah sure no I had to make you know I never retirement I didn't have any money I needed to you know work and I was okay with that you know I could sit and teach for eight hours I was you know a little more interesting than sitting and staring at the floor for eight hours which I was what I was doing before so so anyway so YouTube sort of embraced me right and then at some point I didn't want to um I didn't want to uh put ads on but I realized if I didn't YouTube would yeah and so I began monetizing about five or six years after that um and then uh started understanding a little bit people kind-hearted people good good people who cared about me would say you know if you do this it might be better or if you do that it might get more views or whatever and then YouTube keeps changing seems like the algorithm maybe the sizes different things every time so it's it's a moving Target and if it went away you know if I became obsolete or inconsequential to what YouTube wants to be perhaps there might be another venue uh that you know because I did Myspace for about 10 minutes and that was neat you know of course it's on true fire and yeah I think I don't you know YouTube is really wonderful though because I believe in community I believe in in um like-minded people getting support from each other and this business of like you said we're sitting here and it's just so you know it's amazing it's it's beautiful right yeah so I like that I think it's important to do that yeah um some kind of acting together and being together so live music is part of that teaching is part of that making things that are maybe once or twice removed via video and all that um I heard something on the radio once that really helps me with YouTube and you guys this you guys do this too um but I sort of studied on it real hard this was well before YouTube I heard some on the radio say when you're talking on the radio it's a mistake to think that you're talking to hundreds or thousands of people because you're only talking to one person because when someone listens to the radio they're by themselves listening to the radio so when I'm on YouTube I'm I'm I'm imagining that I'm talking to one person who's looking at their screen and maybe has a guitar in their lap or maybe they're looking at their phone at a bus stop or whatever it is right so I kind of try and remember that I don't say I might say at the beginning oh hey guys but then from then on it seems best and it seemed most natural for me to to talk about um talk to somebody sure you know or show or play for somebody you know and I think that's maybe part of my brand if you want to call it that you know kind of folksy demeanor soft voice and and um you know self-effacing humor and all those kinds of things which might be in somewhat short supply an actual human being yeah that's right we try it imagine we try our best to at least create the illusion but so I think that that means that I don't have 50 million that clicked once on that thing because they were they saw the headline that says yeah yeah you know this is the only scale you need to learn how to play Bebop um everybody knows you need three um but but I feel like I'm you know 50 000 subscribers who would actually maybe support me in some ways yeah yeah they're engaged yeah we have that conversation yeah it's far far better to have a smaller audience that's engaged with you and that you all share something rather than have this huge disparate yeah right who don't Simon Neal said on the show he'd rather have a hundred fans and that they were his favorite band yeah then a million fans who they kind of liked yeah and that's yeah I think that goes for playing live too I I get we play large you know halls and large venues and I I get disconcerted because I can't see past the first row and I don't know you know what I mean so I mean you can get used to that of course but I really love it when there's I mean I'd love it just plain right here for you this yeah yeah this group would be wonderful you know um we could talk uh for a week about all of this stuff and more please check Tim out there will be loads and loads of links in the uh description below we should finish up talking a little bit about tone okay indeed just hearing you here with a Telecaster into Deluxe Reverb in a Princeton obviously it's that pedal shows there has to be two amps um it's just the most beautiful I mean for a start in order to pull out all that Harmony Melody internet your intonation is just oh thank you I fight with it it really well my ears are very very sensitive yeah and sometimes I just feel like I can't quite get it into so then then the neck wiggling helps and yeah bending a note up a little bit or whatever that's for you guy who always says why the hell do you uh bend the neck all the time it's really stupid yeah it's not really stupid the guitar is never in tune so what we do is we do I do the like check it out [Music] that's a lovely modulation effect if I do this [Music] put some angels in there and and it's not harder earlier or this it's just a little gentle yeah and in fact if I'm doing too much over here I don't wiggle it I just play this [Music] sometimes people see this when they see Ted what does he have a palsy or something no he's milking it over here with his forearm that is gold and then down here you got to be careful because it'll go you know but you might want that maybe do you do and I also pin the guitar here yeah thank you [Music] so so that's that part of it if you heard a crackle there one of the amps isn't very happy oh it's not sorry um I think it's the Princeton because they've got a really good hammer in the other day um so it's the button yeah it's guitar um a bit of Reverb right and this question let's pick up Charlie Christian by Lawler okay here here's the recipe I'll give you as best as I can yeah um that of course now you're in here in the home which goes away at about seven yeah but and I've been keeping it about there because we're talking but I'll get it up where it where it really wants to be um full up is a little bit strident for me so I take it back and that's my favorite tone control the volume knob is my favorite Duncan volume knob is up all the way by the way and the amp uh there's The Trebles are set around around two or three maybe less I'm not afraid to put the treble on zero yeah yeah right I mean I prefer to have the amp which is more gifted at sculpting bass and treble and mids than this knob is sure all right okay so I'll pick just went so that's okay um so volume knob a little bit so there's a little bit left oh no that's okay I don't need that um more if you need now of course on a blues gig it's a different recipe but for this thing yeah okay then I'll turn it down a little bit more so I can talk and play because that's too hard to stop and do either one so what I do is I don't have I have very very short nails on my right hand the little finger has a little bit more because this finger is shorter and I use that for the Melody I used because it's about an inch closer to the bridge and it has a little nail on it so then I say you know [Music] um the these three fingers the only thing the nail is there for is so that it slides off the string I'm not using the nail to pluck yeah I'm using the nail like a backstop so that wow so that the string doesn't go too far into the Flesh and cause you know snaggity problems the the fingernails need to be polished with an emery board so that they're smooth we don't want grit we don't want yeah yeah okay so that's part of the nail isn't here's the nail producing a note here's the finger with the nail as the backstop producing that same note all right so then I thought Wes Montgomery had my favorite tone especially like on tequila That was another Ted green influence he really loved West and you wanted me to hear these beautiful tones well Wes used you know the the left side of his right thumb and maybe some people contend and I think it's true that he mostly played with the whole thumb yeah in fact even picked up Strokes with it as well if you've never seen any video of Westmont watching please watch it it's Blaze his hand out like this on a big L5 and then instead of doing this sort of style with for instance octaves The Familiar sound most people play it like that he played it fat fleshy thing going on well I discovered that the fattest part of my first finger wasn't wasn't this part of it it was this part of it [Music] yeah okay and and you can see on my hand it sort of resembles a little tiny there's a little blurb there right yeah and that's from having my right so just single notes I pull the string down and in and then release it [Music] I discovered that right you know what that reminds me of not the same thing at all but Alan Hines only upstrokes oh yeah I know Alan and I noticed that about him when we were both little boys at git you only have strokes yeah and he has a very unique sound so every note gets that same business all right I got into an Albert Collins phase and I and I um thought oh that I don't play like him but it's just a big fat sound right so then I thought well when I play this [Music] I want all I want that on everybody right so the thumb is although I have a nail on my thumb that's for plucking the harmonics all right so I need something when I tip my thumb straight in to the harmonics need the thumb to be pointing down so I grow a little nail it's a little long right now it's longer than usual so the Little Nail here a little nail here mostly no Nails there and don't touch the string with the nail but I with all my fingers I pull in and release [Music] and all sacrifice speed and and whatnot for tone yeah yeah right I don't like scratchy I don't like thin I like it fat and Lush and I fear I realized this is the source of that heavy strings these are a little light for me although lately my hands are kind of falling apart a little bit so I would go from 12 to 54 on wound G to 11 to 50. balance tension these adario balances these are just these are okay and also for me a straight neck and low action yeah yeah and that's just that's a compromise but for me to do the business over here yeah I can't I can't have a lot of you know muting and you know like on this guitar is good the other one that I played earlier maybe the action for me was a little high because you know so I like it to be glassy that's another thing I got from Ted is a real straight neck heavier strings sometimes quite heavy and maybe tuned down we'll talk about that too separately um and then and then a light touch but a firm touch right you have to be able on this thin string up here [Music] so you say [Music] no we want that so we want that note to sound as good as that though yeah yeah it's the difference at harmonics yeah yeah it really is it really is I I've got to say Tim that's my favorite ever explanation When someone tells me about their tone we say go on and tell us about your tone they spend 25 minutes talking about their pedals you spent 10 minutes talking about your right hand hey this the you know what it is the lesson yeah it's it's the first game stage yeah it really is it really is come on come on I love that it's brilliant and then the other part of the sound it's I don't know if it's tone or not because the really the tone production I believe is you draw the note out of the guitar you don't whack at it from a distance you draw it out and that okay for me this this physical effect foreign [Music] I have to be careful sometimes you want to reach for something and if you don't attack it nicely it sounds thin and Scratchy you know so so you work but then this hand over here holds things down so there's an articulation of the right hand again how loud do you pluck the string so that it rings and it sings over the top of whatever else is ringing so I love this effective that it stays it's still going you know they like it too yeah um so that's another Another Part another part for me is the what I do with my left hand to get the the swimming effect yes of the notes um the the length yeah and so for me you know uh es175 with flower on strings High action because that's what they said in the magazines you need and a polytone lamp everything every note is going to be short and if it starts getting too long it's because of feedback right so it's just not a it's like and every note then has a sameness there's a it's a lacking not that everybody does this of course there's brilliant um examples to the contrary of this but typically you know the big guitar with thyron strings High action and a dead sounding amplifier um means that there's gonna be a lot of short notes even to the extent that there's this thing I'll take that pick now there's this thing style of playing where you say [Music] and and it's because the guitar is so dead they need to hit that Melody node three times in order to get it to ring because it rings yeah and it always seems like it's three times better did you just play it with your without the pick just the same thing just for the contrast what I don't remember whatever [Laughter] [Music] I wish you could be in the room I wish you could be in the room to to ex like feel that it's amazing it's uh what I love is you recognizing that for you to be able to connect the way that you want to connect and say what you want to say you've understood the importance like down to that level like my nail needs to be this long to get that right that's it's I love that it's really beautiful um yeah thank you really really great really great thank you for noticing that I noticed that yeah yeah well this whole business about length of node and whatnot I think the melody should sing I would never want to hear a singer that said um just friends lovers no more still friends it's emojas you know but when we play we play like that yeah we play like a singer that we don't want to hear so I say we play like a singer we don't want to hear that's brilliant I might say something like this [Music] all right whatever it is so I want to play so the melody just friends lovers no more still friends friend but not like before [Music] you know and so I want it to sound like the guitar player knows the song yeah right no really knows the song listen know how a singer would sing it and that doesn't mean that you hit the note over and over and over to get it to ring you hit it and let it ring yeah I've said a vision of Dan in the corner of a pub somewhere that's my future that is absolutely my future I'm not getting paid just alone facing the corner going that Hat's gonna be on the floor yeah by the way that's another way to get the neighborhoods maybe we'll talk about this in the in the Vlog but but um to sing [Music] so in my little my little singing voice you know it's like make sure you can sing all this melody stuff yeah right just I hope the camera's picking up the economy of what just happened there it's so much harmonic and melodic knowledge in a small space without having to dive all over the place and beat yourself up with six finger stretches yeah stretches yeah those are okay too but there but most of the notes are right there yeah so like we're never here Oscar Peterson you can always hear him again you know and even though what he's singing is completely a title he's Hearing in his head yeah I noticed that as you were warming up that you were singing as you go and Grumble I I made a um I was looking at some making video with Jim Mullen once and uh hmm because of the nature of the way the guitar was Mike's I couldn't get rid of it so yeah pretty much over the whole video I'm hearing him going well I have had to learn so here's here's the evolution about you know um right to this foreign [Music] I got I'm playing silent trumpet because I I want I want that I want the nose to be embodied and and the breath you know is it's all part of that like a saxophone player they're blowing into that thing you know and that's why we try that's why we are compelled to do it I did it unconsciously uh you know for a while you know singing you know if I was anywhere near Mike you'd hear it um when I realized this I got a I'm starting to record with pearl Django uh about seven years ago and I was playing uh our Top guitar with an amplifier but also a mic on the guitar and I ruined a couple of good really good takes okay the good solos were ruined by my moaning and groaning I still do it a little bit live but um I had to learn how to do something besides vocalizing audibly okay so actually a thing then yeah yeah I do it on purpose and I tried to learn how to do it because I wanted to again embody every note but something that was you know happening and then and you know you can't play run-on phrases if you can't you know you gotta stop to breathe there's a really important point in there about what you're hearing and experiencing as the player because I think most of us are completely focused on sticking these on the guitar and a note comes out and that's your entire Focus but you're beyond that you're thinking about The Ensemble you're thinking about the whole experience and I think as a result and this might be a bit of a stretch it almost frees what you're doing on the guitar because you're thinking about something else other than only playing the guitar is that well you're not thinking about anything mostly yeah yeah I'm here's what I'm thinking about it you know it's so good that's bad that is mad and and then you know to to slim it down like I was talking about before it doesn't have to be you know you know that business it can just be this [Music] [Music] this is foreign [Music] you know I don't have to worry about keeping time or stressing out about it the cords are there when they want to be there the Melody's flowing and and that's it's it's kind of this conversational you know gives it that gives it spaces yeah yeah because you might assume if you're not into listening or playing to that kind of that style of music that it is overly complex and always rushed and I'm just getting the absolute opposite right the same musical yeah yeah it's yeah that's really beautiful flipping hike we could do this um yeah we didn't even touch on oh we we'll do that next time we'll do this yeah yeah that was more and more uh smoking mirrors anyway I want to say thank you um on behalf of everyone that's ever watched you your videos because you know that's the way I was turned on to you I want to thank you for coming today and just sharing all the stuff with this has been really wonderful thank you thank you to Luke and Ian for making it happen thank you for this guitar as well should we yeah John Green yeah uh local boy who lives nearby uh contacted me when he found out I was coming and I he said I've got a guitar for you if you need it and I was thinking about not bringing the guitar for obvious reasons I'm very I'm very devoted to me couple of my guitars number one and number two are just like they just they I live in them you know yeah and I said well what have you got he said well I got a guitar that's just like yours and I said okay that'll do it yeah and it turns out that he that he got it's really close so um no Caster from the customer shop and it has the right pickup in it and so thank you very much John Green beautiful very good well we'll get um Tim to play us out but you know thanks for watching subscribe to all that stuff all the information in the description below if you want to find out more about Tim and what he does and uh it's all there massive thank you to anyone that's gone to that pedalshowstore.com and grab some merch um all the t-shirts and hats and shenanigans jazz guitar playing uh hat for tips and yeah very good yes um tip kid take up the trombone uh thank you to our patrons on patreon thank you yeah thank you so much for your support and also our preferred retailers all the stuff in the description details below yeah brilliant uh so we're gonna get Tim to play us out but uh step on that Monk [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you [Applause]

Channel: That Pedal Show

Views: 143,718

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Id: _qxmEqmGo64

Length: 99min 4sec (5944 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2023