"Am I too old to learn guitar?"

I recently received an inquiry from a guy in his 40's asking if he was too old to learn guitar and if he was kidding himself. I am sure we all know the answer is you are never too old but I think it is a valid question. Ageing is a process we all go through. Determining whether spending 30 minutes or more a day is worth it if you are say 45yo is probably something you would want to know before you spend thousands of dollars on a guitar and lessons. So here goes.

Reality check.

I am not going to give the typical response you would expect from a teacher who will obviously benefit financially from you enrolling for lessons so lets start with a reality check. As you age the body changes and we cannot deny that motor skills are slower to respond. Muscles memory is also slower to learn and studies show our brains begin to slow down their ability to learn around our late 30's. I would say almost all great athletes reached their peak before age 35 and many of the great scientists, philosophers etc did their best work in the first half of their life. There are exceptions of course but the reality is our body and brains are simply in a stronger healthier state in the first 30 to 40 years.

What's the good news?

Well we are talking about guitar here. It is not an Olympic event (as far I know). I have helped many older adults learn guitar even into their 80's and in many cases the process is easier. Ironically as we age we tend to be in less of a rush. My older students often have more time for themselves and because of their life experience understand that learning a new skill takes time. Older students seem to enjoy the process of learning more as well. On average younger students want results now. They don't want to learn they just want to be able to do it.  Older students often have more time to practice. Their children are old enough to take care of themselves and they don't have to work so much as they are more likely to be financially secure.

The benefits of learning music as we age

I have come across various studies being conducted on the brain. These effects are evident at all stages of life. Evidence shows that learning music improves memory and can slow down diseases like dementia and alzheimer's. Dr Patel Ph.D a neurobiologist who focuses specifically on the effects of learning music points out that we are affected in many ways. He lists emotion, memory, learning & plasticity, attention, motor control, pattern perception, imagery and more. Learning music to the brain is like physical exercise to the body. As you age learning a musical instrument may be the best thing you can do for your brain. One experiment I saw a few years back showed elderly people learning piano for 30 minutes a day. Six weeks later they had very obvious improvements in memory and certain cognitive abilities. When we learn music our brain literally carves out new neural pathways. Anyone who learns music knows that with practice things begin to change. For example your awareness of music changes and your hands (fingers) begin to take on a life of their own. There is this point where you realise your body can do things it once found impossible.

An example of learning later in life

My father inspired me to listen to the guitar greats as a child. Many of my fondest memories were with my father listening to the latest releases from the guitar legends. Clapton, Santana, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and so on. So naturally when I was old enough I really wanted play guitar. My father on the other hand did not play guitar. His parents wanted him to play piano but he was not interested. As happens as an adult life gets busy and my father found himself later in life wanting to play guitar. By then I was a teacher and so I fully encouraged him to learn. Today whenever we get together instead of just listening to guitar legends we jam on our favourites. And I should add that he is getting very good. In fact in some areas he is probably more advanced than I. After all he has been listing to music for many more years. So you can see its not only never too late it is highly recommended.

If you want to see Dr Patel's presentation follow this link.

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Memorise the keys easily Part 1 - Sharp keys

As a teen I decided to devise an easy way to memorise the key signatures. It seemed to me that knowing every note in every key was going to be helpful because it was so central to music. When I began teaching I found the system I had devised worked quickly and easily for most students. It took a little practice but in only a few short lessons they could recite the notes of any key without hesitation. Remember this is the first step in understanding scales, arpeggios, chords etc. So here goes.

Introducing the 15 keys. (There are theoretically more keys but that's for a more advanced lesson).

All keys are made up of 7 notes with each note being represented by the first 7 letters of the alphabet. A, B, C, D, E, F and G. Every key will have these 7 alphabetic letters but they will differ based on the combination of either sharps # or flats b. If you are confused at this point please don't be too concerned. Just follow the steps below and it should make sense once you are able to see the full picture.

The key of C.

The key of C is the only key that does not possess a sharp # or a flat b note. The remaining 14 keys will include at least one sharp or one flat. The notes in the key of C are simple and are as follows;

C, D, E, F, G, A, B

The 7 sharp keys

A sharp key will have at least one sharp note. We are going to learn the 7 sharp keys in a two step process. In Step 1 we will work out how many sharps are in a given key. In Step 2 we will work out which notes are sharp.

Step 1 - How many sharps? Memorise G, D, A, E, B, F#, C#.  To make it easy try using the following mnemonic. Go Down And Eat Bananas Freddy (and) Charlie. (I know it sounds silly but it works). The first sharp key is G. This means it has one sharp. We know this simply because G is the first letter of the sequence. That means that D will have 2 sharps, A will have 3 sharps, E will have 4 sharps, B 5 sharps, F# 6 sharps and C# 7 sharps.

Step 2 - Which notes are sharp? Put Freddy and Charlie at the beginning so it reads Freddy (and) Charlie Go Down And Eat Bananas. 

In the case of the key of G we know from Step 1 it has one sharp and Step 2 tells us the note will be F#. The 7 notes in the key of G are as follows; G, A, B, C, D, E, F#.

Practice

To get familiar with the process lets apply the two steps to a few more sharp keys.

Key of D. - Step 1. Go Down. D has 2 sharps. Step 2. Freddy Charlie. The 2 sharps are F# and C#. The 7 notes in the key of D therefore are D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#.

Key of B. - Step 1. Go Down And Eat Bananas. B has 5 sharps. Step 2. Freddy Charlie Go Down And. The 5 sharp notes are F#, C#, G#, D# and A#. The 7 notes in the key of B are B, C#, D#, E, F#, G# and A#.

Exercise

Work out the notes in the following keys. A, E, F# and C#.

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Music Theory Basics

Theory Basics 

Music is essentially a language. Understanding the language of music will help you to learn musical concepts and will also allow you to communicate with other musicians. The basics of music theory are not difficult and do not require a lot of time. As little as 20 minutes a week will give you a solid grounding in music theory within 12 months. I suggest you also find a teacher to assist you as this will accelerate your learning and ensure you are not misunderstanding or getting stuck.

To begin please refer to the G4 GUITAR Chords and Reading for an introduction to the basics of music theory and music notation before preceding.  

Musical alphabet

There are 7 alphabetic letter names. 

A B C D E F and G

Musical note names (Chromatic scale)

There are 12 notes used in music based on the 7 alphabetic letter names.

1) A  2) A#/Bb  3) B 4) C  5) C#/Db  6) D  7) D#/Eb  8) E  9) F  10) F#/Gb  11) G  12) G#/Ab

The 12 notes are know as the chromatic scale.

An easy way to remember the chromatic scale is to simply note that B & E have no sharps.

On the guitar you can work out any note simply by starting on an open note and using the chromatic scale.

Exercise

The open notes on the guitar are E, B, G, D, A, E. Try applying the above chromatic scale to each string to work out where the C note is on each string.

Try matching the notes on your guitar to the notes on a piano (keyboard).

This lesson has been taken from the G4 Guitar Theory book. For your free copy please email g4guitar1@gmail.com

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Improving your guitar skills. Start with what you are good at.

When I ask people the question 'What are you good at?' the answer is almost always related to a hobby (E.g. painting tennis, golf or writing poems or repairing cars etc.) Rarely do they mention the little things like cleaning their teeth, driving a car, getting dressed, taking a shower, speaking, writing or using a computer. We often over look these daily tasks because we are so good at them that no effort is required. In fact very little conscious thought is needed to execute them.

So why are we so good at these things? 
There was a time long ago when you had to learn these skills. Each day you would struggle but gradually you mastered them. It was the daily attention you gave these tasks that resulted in your current level of mastery. That's right Daily Practice. Almost anything you do on a daily basis will become natural and second nature over time. In contrast if you were to do something only occasionally it will likely always take concentration and effort.


Is daily practice enough?
It is enough to reach a certain level but if you want to improve beyond that point we need to be continuously challenged. Without this continuous challenge improvement is unlikely. We see this with language. Most people reach a point where their vocabulary for instance begins to plateau out. Without a conscious effort to increase your vocabulary through reading along with a dictionary and perhaps a thesaurus you are unlikely to improve much beyond your current level despite the fact that you use language everyday. The daily practice helps you to maintain your level but improvement comes through stretching yourself.  


Conclusion
Begin with daily practice and once you have locked yourself into a routine focus on making every minute of your practice count. Make sure you are being challenged and pushing yourself to the next level.

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Guitar and child brain development

Playing guitar to your child can be both beneficial and soothing. The video is an example of my own daughter who could be relaxed simply by playing guitar. It seemed to work every time except if she was in pain or in need of something. We knew when the guitar playing didn't work something was really wrong. I found it fascinating that babies were naturally curious about music so I did a little research. Apparently researchers have found infants respond more to rhythm than speech. This is obvious in the video as my daughter is both entranced and physically engaged in the music.

Are we naturally musical?

In an experiment carried out by British and Finnish researchers (see the Exam Health website) they tested the responses of babies between 5 months and 2 years of age. The result was babies were more responsive to music opposed to speech which may suggest that musical awareness is encoded in our DNA. Listening to music may very well be an important part of the human experience which therefore means playing and creating music may just be a natural part of life like language. It may not be a case of whether to play a musical instrument or not but more a case of which instrument to play.

Does music make you smarter?

The idea that music makes us smarter is still open for debate although many music teachers believe the evidence is undeniable. The Mozart effect was popular throughout the 80's and 90's but was based on an experiment which when replicated some years later showed very different results. True science is about replicating results.  What is true though is the correlation between music students and better grades at school. One study published on the Science Daily website claims that learning music helps improve reading skills.  There are many theories as to why but from my own evaluation I concluded that confidence probably plays a role. Music students build confidence usually via music lessons with a supportive teacher and this transfers across to other subjects. Perhaps this is partly my own personal experience as well.

Expose your children to all kinds of music.

There is no doubt that our brains benefit from music and in years to come I am confident more and more evidence will come to light. It is therefore well worth taking time to introduce your child to music and expose them on a daily basis. Don't be too concerned about whether it's rock, jazz, classical etc. Just play the music you enjoy and that way it will be a pleasure. Your child will discover their own musical preferences in time. I also question what we have come to know as children's music. Sure children respond to simple songs about dinosaurs but this doesn't mean its all they should be listening to. Exposing children from an early age to different styles of music is important. My daughter who is now three years old sings all the standard children's songs but also loves to rock out, tap along to jazz and even relaxes to classical music. Her tastes are wide and varied mostly due to early exposure.

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Group Guitar lessons v Private Guitar Lessons

Let me premise this blog by saying I believe both group and private lessons are important its just that group lessons tend to be viewed as less important and this is just not the case. I guess when the average person imagines a guitar lesson they think of a private scenario. We see ourselves sitting one on one with our guitar teacher in a small dark room with a music stand, a lap top,  sheet music and guitar posters on the surrounding walls. I know this is what we expect and private lessons have their place but many guitar students miss out on the benefits of group work.

Guitar is personal

Many school bands surprisingly do not include guitar despite its enormous popularity. Instruments like saxophone, clarinet, tuba, trumpet etc are usually offered at school along with an opportunity to participate in group learning. Many of these students have private lessons plus group band rehearsals several times a week which gives them a great all round learning experience. Guitar students on the other hand rarely get this opportunity at school and find themselves learning privately after school with no real opportunity to participate in group learning.

Discovering the group learning advantage

It was not until I started teaching groups after almost 10 years of doing exclusively private teaching that I came to truly appreciate the advantages of group work. I was already aware from my own experience with bands but I had not really made the connection when it came to my own students. As a young teen I would get together with classmates but it was often a frustrating process. We were all too loud, out of sync and none of us really had any idea how to make it work. My guitar teacher eventually put together a Rockschool program and with his guidance the magic appeared. What had been lacking was an understanding of how to work together as a group. The teacher was able to show us how to work together as a team. Teamwork is probably the most important element of a successful band. There are many great guitarists who simply never learn to play with anyone else. In fact there are thousands of bedroom guitar heroes all around the world. Just look at Youtube and you will see them shredding along to their own backing tracks somehow hoping to be discovered.

Keeping up with the pack

Another big advantages of group learning is it can prevent many students from becoming lazy. Some students are fortunate in they are highly motivated and work hard no matter what but they are the exception. Most of us need external motivators. One of the best motivators which has been shown in study after to study is group influence. This is apparently embedded into our species because throughout our evolution it meant survival. We will work harder to stay with the group. I have seen it many times. My group students almost always out perform private students.

The importance of friends

Another big plus to group learning are the friendships we make. Friendships mean support and encouragement. Learning guitar is not easy and having a friend or two learning with you will give you the support you need when it seems all too hard. Students tend to see the teacher as someone who is accomplished who may not understand how they feel whereas another student is able to relate. Their words of encouragement can make the difference. Students who learn in groups we have found are less likely to drop out as well because of this support factor. If they drop out of lessons they are not just leaving their teacher behind but often good friends. You can see this in team sports or when children have to change schools.

Combine private with group for best results

Now group lessons are definitely worth considering for the above reasons but this doesn't mean that private lessons are not beneficial. The best guitarists know that they need both. If you are truly serious about becoming a great guitar player you need to be spending time in both camps. If you visit a place like the Guitar Institute in Hollywood you will see exactly this. Students moving in and out of group classes and private tuition. If there are no group learning opportunities in your area speak to your teacher as they may be able to put something together.

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Teacher or no teacher - What's the difference?

Many people who take up guitar try to teach themselves mostly to save a little money but there are of course other reasons like time and convenience factors. Self teaching is not impossible and there are definitely some examples of great guitar players who are completely self taught so I won't try and convince you that with out a teacher you are doomed. The internet offers students a way of finding many of the resources they need most of which are free and convenient. A teacher on the other hand offers some important advantages that you won't get through self teaching. Most elite sports people, business and political leaders, rockstars, actors etc know this fact. The investment they make in teachers and coaches can run into the millions of dollars in some cases and it is usually money well spent.

Accountability


A guitar teacher is not just about having someone who can show you where to put your fingers. There are a million websites that will do that for you. A teacher offers several advantages. Top of the list is having someone to whom you are accountable. Someone who you have to answer to each week. Someone who will ask the question? Did you practice this week? Usually the more accountable they make you the better.


Focus


The second most valuable role of a good teacher in my opinion is their ability to help you to focus. Life gets in the way as they say. Your teacher will keep you on track and aware of the distractions most students face. Your teacher has an interest in seeing you succeed and can give you an outsiders perspective. When you depend totally on yourself chances are you will justify skipping practice or just throw in the towel.

Get it right the first time

The next benefit of a good coach is a proven strategy. Why reinvent the wheel? If you are teaching yourself you are learning by trial and error. Why not just find out from a pro what works best and do it right the first time?  30 minutes a day doing it the right way is better than 4 hours the wrong way. A good teacher is like a guide. They should know the best path to get you to your goal or at the very least help you to question your chosen strategy.

Faster progress

So if you are not yet a Segovia, Petrucci, Satriani, Gambale or someone of that calibre you may want to reconsider your decision to be a self taught guitarist. I did and in 6 months I progressed more than I had in the previous 3 years.

If you have any questions email me: g4guitar1@gmail.com

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