Fretscapes

Greetings. I'm bunkered down here at Tamborine Mountain, all is well... so far, so good. I've been playing my beautiful little Dobro the last few days. I can turn my brain off to this lunatic world, just listening to its croaky sound. I have it sitting on a stand beside my desk, so I can swivel around and grab it in one motion, which I do often.

By the time you've been playing guitar for 43 years, as I have, you never wind up playing any real songs, unless you're performing of course. It's all just a big doodle -- once you know the trick to having the whole fretboard at your disposal, at all times, and the trick to keeping up with and UNDERSTANDING the music as it moves through time -- then the challenge is to find new and novel ways through it all.

To get to this point, where each moment of music is laid out on the fretboard, was my primary goal from the day I started playing. My father was as musical as they come, although he never took up playing, and from a very early age I was aware of the art of improvisation. The music my dad listened to -- big bands like Glenn Miller, the Dorsey Brothers, Benny Goodman -- always featured improvised passages and the idea of being able to make it up as you go, and have it come out sounding right, was the target I set my sights on right from the beginning.

Being self taught made it that much more of a challenge, of course, but I've always found that the learning sinks in deeper when you've figured it out yourself. For many years, I had no idea where to even begin looking for the trick to having instant access to the whole fretboard. I wasted a lot of time learning where all the notes were. I was constantly hearing about scales and modes from my fellow musicians, and I did my best to tune my brain to that kind of sequential approach to music. Chromatic, diatonic, major, minor, melodic minor, harmonic, mixolydian, ionian and on and on... the truth is, it never clicked with me. I really couldn't believe that Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton or any of my other heroes were thinking along those lines when they were playing -- back then, they always seemed too out of it to be thinking anything at all.

A turning point for me came one afternoon in London in about 1971. I was at a recording studio waiting for another session to finish off so that I could start my demo session. The band, might have been the Grease Band, wanted to quickly overdub a guitar solo on one of their tracks, so I sat there in the back of the control room while they finished off. It's so long ago that I can't remember if it was Neil Hubbard or Henry McCullough, but whoever the guitarist was, he sure knew the trick. It was the first time I'd ever really seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears a musician, who had never heard the track before, come up with solo after solo, all of them perfectly right. I was transfixed. I was still at the stage of having to commit to memory an arrangement, rather than have the freedom to explore like this guy was doing. The only thing he asked about was the identity of one chord in the progression, other than that, he just knew.

After that day, it it slowly began to dawn on me that the "chord of the moment" was the setter of rules, so I set about mapping out the fretboard thinking chords rather than notes. I have written many columns about the chord of the moment, because when it all boils down, that's all there is. A piece of music may extend itself through several minutes of time, but it comes moment by moment. Know the chord of each moment, and you'll the parameters of what is allowable. Know where to find that chord (in all its positions), from nut to soundhole, and you'll have the whole fretboard at your disposal. All possible riffs, harmonies, phrases, double stops, solos, patterns, shapes -- in other words, all music -- will fit in and around the chord of the moment.

I know what you're thinking: there are so many kinds of chords, how can you keep track of all of them? What kind of a trick is that? You may as well go back to remembering a dozen or so scales. I'm sorry to say that I can't reveal the last little bit of the trick. I wrote a book about it and spent six months putting the video together describing it in great detail, so I can't blurt it out. All I can say is, it is a simple (so simple) visualization technique that crystallizes all music on the fretboard for all moments. If you're interested in reading more about PlaneTallk -- The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book and video, go to http://www.lorange.kirk.net . I have a pretty appealing "special" on offer there now, and the Australian dollar is at a new all time low, so now is a great time to buy. USA customers can more than half the prices shown, UK customers pay one third.

In other news, http://www.guitarforbeginners.com gets more popular by the day. I keep adding information, graphics, sound files etc., mostly in response to the feedback I get. I have also turned the site into an inexpensive spiral bound book, for those who like a hard copy. If you have any guitar questions you like to ask me (except to define 'the trick'!), there is a discussion forum there which acts as a Q/A page.

All the best, and remember to keep your guitar out of its case and in full view. That way, you'll be tempted to pick it up often and play it often. The only way to progress is to play daily, even if only for a few minutes. And if you're wondering what to practice, concentrate on chords and where to find them... quit worrying about scales. They'll fall into place if you know chords.

Until next time,

Kirk
http://www.lorange.kirk.net