I Sucked. So I CHANGED My Thinking | Guitar Psychology

[Music] now [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] [Music] hey everybody happy new years uh this is from a master class and youtube kind of pairing that i did three years ago i did a video on youtube called guitar psychology that was in may 2018 and this piece of music was from that moment and then i did an accompanying master class expanded lesson with tabs in a jam track and i just wanted to revisit it because the idea of thinking about what you do is so important and even beyond that what is the music asking for and i don't want that to sound lofty but really every piece of music asks for something different every section of every piece of music might ask for something different this one as i revisited it over the last few days and i redid the track i redid the bass i redid the drums uh well nigel redid at the drums um and it asks me for simplicity but i have to remember to play simple anyway i'd like you to see a clip before we get started of this thing i did three years ago it's like 30 seconds and this is the original version on youtube with the you know the expanded lesson in the master class from three years ago just check it out for a second [Music] so there's lots of stuff in the master class with the word psychology attached to it and i really think it's important to revisit and this year i think i'm going to talk about it a little more what this song asks me for is simplicity and i'll tell you the main reason for that because there's so much going on in the track the chords are changing fast there's a lot of syncopation in the drums and so let me try again and play more simple because my default and you might be like this too my default is to play more and play more and play more but if i play simple over this it seems to serve the track better so simple i'm going to force myself to play simple here we [Music] go uh [Music] [Applause] okay i watched myself get complicated especially here on the there's a little place where you have to change keys now but i tried to keep it simple and to me it serves the song better i think i'm doing a better job the less i play on this particular piece of music so i always write the chords down so that i can kind of turn my mind off and if i ever get lost in my mind i just glance over at the chart and i can pick it back up again now that particular time i wasn't looking at the chords but they're there just to keep me on track if i need to now if you're playing with a band and you're rehearsing with a band and you're learning songs you really need to wean yourself off of this at a certain point but if you're creating and improvising and recording nothing better than to have a chart sitting there that you can just look over and go where oh that's where i am but here's the key right here this b flat chord right here i have to go from c major to c mixolydian and i love to put one twist in every piece of music i write because it's just nice it's just a nice thing for the brain nice for the listener too to break out of you know most of the stuff i do is very diatonic and i love that i love simple music but it's nice to have to go you know if i'm in c major for all of this a minor when it comes to that b flat i have to switch to c mixolydian and that's where i got a little complex then i simplified again so the idea is if you forget your simplicity and you find yourself kind of just over playing then just dial it back and the combination can be really really good the other thing i really like to do in this over the a minor section is the prince minor six chord so you might have noticed me going now let me just turn off the delays to demonstrate this this is an a minor six chord with a sixteenth note push and i did it up here too i love to do that over the a minor and it kind of changes the key also but because there's no tonality on the a minor i can get away with it but that's a 16th note push let me show you that upstroke happens on the last 16th note before the downbeat and that's a if you if you haven't experienced that there's some lessons in the master class on that it's a really a key to funk guitar and great rhythm guitar is the 16th note push drummers on this understand this you know they totally understand this but a guitarist you know if you understand this you immediately your rhythm playing will get better so before we move on there is a special offer on the master class just for the next 48 hours and a lot of my videos are not monetized because like last week's i used a tears for fear song they earn all the money from that video so if you want to support the channel just check out the master class and and see if it's right for you and then opt out if it's not you know we have a two week free trial so so check it out so uh before we move on to questions i just want to talk about a couple more things one way to really play simple is to do single string playing and there's nothing wrong with that let me demonstrate that and then i'm going to show you some different kinds of rhythm and then we'll move on to questions okay i just like to start out with a really firm concept i want to teach something before we do q a here we go [Music] so single note single mom not single note single string playing [Music] forces you to be melodic and it also sounds really good i mean just the tone the connection between notes and then all of a sudden you're doing a melody you repeat that melody bury the end of it and you have sort of a tune you have something to remember so single note there we go again string playing is really valuable for staying melodic and staying simple [Music] okay but never overdo anything do it for a little while and then change up and do something maybe rhythmic so i found some really good rhythm parts over this and some that i didn't like as much one of the things really works well over this now if we can talk about single notes is single note kind of percolating rhythm [Music] that little thing right there that was a 16th note push happened again so single note kind of percolating rhythm [Music] looking at the chart [Music] a minor d minor f now we go to the b flat where it has to be mixolydian and now let's do that a6 the prince thing [Music] i love that [Music] another thing i discovered is over the other section the c major section is double stop now i'm going to turn off my drive pedal make it cleaner [Music] so this is kind of low in the range to me this is one of my favorite if i had to choose one rhythm part i would do this this kind of double stop thing low here we go [Music] and just keep repeating it it took me a second to find the right version of it so once again what is the music asking for and that takes a while sometimes it could take me a few days to figure out what a piece of music really is asking for and i i don't mean to sound esoteric but really it's it's really true you should try stuff that doesn't work try stuff that you don't like and eventually you'll find stuff that you like and in this particular case it's playing simply [Music] playing double stops single note [Music] single string [Music] and then this prints thing so over the course of working this up those are the things i found that i liked the most and that i think the music is asking for once more there's a special offer on the master class just click click below if you want to check it out before i start answering questions i did see something earlier there was a question in rick's live stream last night i was talking about how i had done five carlos santana records and never met him and somebody this morning a few minutes ago was asking how that's possible how why would somebody at carlos santana's level need a session player and that's a really really good question in fact i think it was at marky the sharky who asked the question that's a pretty cool name anyway the way the music business works a superstar like carlos santana the way it works for him is all the painstaking time-consuming weeks of work on building up a song are done by other people and then he gets the song and he plays his lead guitar over it carlos i don't think at this point in his life really cares much about record production or playing rhythm guitar uh he's busy he's successful he he knows exactly what he wants to do he does what's essential and business people will tell you this there are books about this that i love to read at a certain point in life you only do what's essential and what's essential for him is being delivered great songs by great players and great producers and then playing over the songs and his voice is the lead guitar that plays over the song so it's not that he can't do the parts but we're all coming up with little parts and little things that we're agonizing over and spending days doing and hours and weeks and helping create something that he can create over so that's how it works you know at a certain point when you do this your whole life you don't want to spend every hour doing every job there is and so i hope that makes sense to you it's it's a very normal thing i love to tell the story because oh it's slacker deluxe that axe asked about carlos okay good that's sort of close to sharky the marquee or whatever that was anyway this is very commonplace and it's it's really kind of crazy that i never met him but i love to tell the story because it's the it's the you know i did five or six joe cocker records and he was there all the time on all of them but in carlos's case he doesn't live here and a lot of the producers i know who did his records they all lived here we all worked here and we all got it done and it was sent to him and then he did his work or he came down later and did his work so it's a really common thing but i love to tell the story because it sounds ridiculous and but it's true you know i'd love to meet him someday i don't don't have to but you know you're really wonderful uh same for paul mccartney leaving others to play i think paul is more involved i i know his band members and they they're they're a bit of a family that that band it's pretty great you know it's kind of a dream come true for those guys bit of a family so yeah prs's are are total great oh here's a question how to ben bar vibrato struggling it's from the wrist guys okay so my guitar teacher who was like the best guitar teacher in the world who taught me for two years from age 12 to 14. that's my only training it's it's from the wrist that's where the power is so if you turn the just exaggerate it by turning you know shake your guitar if you have to don't make it from the fingers that's not where the strength is all the strength comes from the wrist just it's just like tennis or golf or anything like that and then exaggerate it like that and then bring it bring it you know closer to a smaller movement but all the strength comes from back here on the wrist whether you're pulling a string or just hitting a note and then also if you're pulling a string or you know using your third finger you can always back up with strength from these two two fingers you know you always when you pull a string i always at least use my second finger to help pull it but even when you vibrato if you want you can you know put all three fingers down and make your vibrato slow and musical that's the other thing i'm not a fan of fast vibrato i mean this is that's cool i i need to do that more sometimes that's more bb king i think but generally i like the slow i just default to kind of one vibrato and it's on the slow side it's uh i don't think it's clapton i think and clapton did do it from his fingers for a little while so hey to each his own to each his own but for me it was always from the rest but i looked at these old films of clapton and he did use his fingers for some things [Music] so everybody you need to check out keith's video 5 watt world his video on the guitars of the beatles i was fortunate enough to actually participate in and it's a really great video his videos are legit documentaries and they're all great to watch you also i told you about corey's channel corey congillio and then also jeff mackerlin these guys are all really good friends and they all have helped me greatly with ideas and advice and support and uh you know it's it's great to be friends with these guys they're they're really wonderful people and they need to be supported too uh thank you so much uh mild-mannered guy telling the truth yeah if you knew what was going on inside me it's not nothing mild going on inside me i'll tell you that oh the 16th note up technique you talked about so one two three four so one two three four one two three four one two three four one two three it's that last four you know some people count one e and a one e end up but right now i'll count one two three four one two three four one two three four one two three four one two three four it's that last four so if your hand is going like this if you're going it's that last upbeat before the last downbeat and it can happen a lot more often of course i always try and and blend opposites like if i do something pretty i try and do something ugly if i do something fast i try and do something slow if i do something melodic i balance that with something bluesy so i consider this to be pretty sweet and pretty you know i'm tracing an a minor chord so then i would play a blues like right so i'm combining an a minor shape right here with a blues look [Music] but seeing the chord shapes everywhere is really the key and if you start simple if you can see a minor everywhere and i swear to you that it's not hard then you're off to the races so if you see a triad here [Music] there's another triad here just gonna try it here here's an a minor seven triad here's an a minor triad here here here and then all the extensions like the the a minor that i was doing here was a minor seven a minor sixth amen our sixth is the prince thing i mean he didn't invent it but it's a great way of describing what he did a lot so see the chord shapes everywhere and then go look this is an a minor triad this is a minor 7 triad [Music] here's one it's just recombining the notes so i think it's your responsibility to actually start seeing the map that is basically every chord in every position on the neck and once you take that responsibility it'll start to open all this up for you i mean uh something that that a word i don't use with students as much you know because i'd be careful with it but you do have a responsibility to study and learn where everything is on the neck i mean you need to learn where an a minor scale a c major scale is on every string [Music] once you see the chords and the scales everywhere on the neck you you'll be pretty free you'll be pretty free and i i maintain that it's not that hard because you know if you took a couple of years in your spare time to learn this stuff it's yours forever you never forget it you never do it's like riding a bike hey jeremy from the uk thanks for checking in i'm doing great i love i love the holidays it's my favorite time and we had an amazing december of rain which we really really needed okay so i'm gonna play a little and then take a few more questions uh here we go i think i'll turn on my you know what nigel let's switch to the other camera and i'll just show you this this crazy amount of stuff that's sitting here um and i promise you i'm gonna clean it up soon but it's not very organized right now i mean everything's plugged in where it should be this is so i'm gonna turn the camera okay let me just get this right there okay press that so that's called the enhancer they sent that to me and it's i'm checking it out i'll get back to you on that and then i've got look at how disorganized this looks now these pedals are all plugged in but you know when you make videos sometimes you let everything go by the wayside so there's my little zoom recorder there's my mouse that i use all the time vermiram shanks vintage most torsion vintage odr one there is a super sweet buried behind that then i've got my even tied eclipses that i'm not really using much right now i've got my very ancient tuner i saw tom bukovac doing a intonation job with this tuner the other day on his channel i was very pleased with that uh jason what what pic thickness do i use for soloing i use a very heavy sharp pick i'll show you in a second okay so now we go to my keyboard which is lighted up which i love and then there that's what i'm seeing i see pro tools and then i see my echoboy plugin which is bypassed and then i see the chat for questions and there's the chart sitting there and then another very disorganized cacophony of pedals but that's that's the boost i'm using right now the boost line driver i mean look at that it's like

Channel: Tim Pierce Guitar

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Length: 23min 9sec (1389 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 01 2022