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www.beyondbedroomguitar.com
The book that will change the way you think about and play guitar forever
By Spencer Westwood
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CONTENTS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 INTRODUCTION........................................................................... 3 LEARNING HOW TO LEARN..................................................... 13 RELAXED AM I RELAXED ENOUGH?................................... 52 POSTURE ................................................................................... 65 FINGER STRENGTHENING....................................................... 68 TENSION AM I REALLY THAT TENSE? ................................ 77 PRACTICE, ADJUSTMENTS AND LESSONS .......................... 82 PRACTICING FOR 24 HRS ........................................................ 99 READING MUSIC/TAB ............................................................. 108 TECHNIQUES ....................................................................... 144 UNLEARNING BAD HABITS................................................ 170
12 USING BACKING TAPES; ABERSOLD, BAND-IN-A-BOX AND HOMEBREWED ...................................................................... 184 13 14 15 DEEP TRANCE IDENTIFICATION ....................................... 185 PERFECT PITCH .................................................................. 193 CONCLUSION....................................................................... 215
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1 Introduction
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step - LAO-TZU.
Welcome to Beyond Bedroom Guitar. The book that will literally change the way you think about and play guitar. This book contains a collection of hints and techniques that will improve your playing skills and your musical ability. In the book you will find a collection of NLP and DHE techniques Accelerated learning techniques Practical techniques (i.e. physical routines) Hypnosis techniques All of which have been specifically tailored for guitar playing and musical applications.
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Its not full of pages and pages of music and diagrams that give you exercises to practice in the vain hope that you will learn to play better. Yes you can go and buy those and follow them to the letter if you want. Some of them are worth reading while your mastering the skills in this book. A lot more are not! Its not biased towards one particular type of music or style. A common occurrence with guitar tutorials , in general, is that they are targeted towards a specific musical genre even if they pretend not to be. I have purposely avoided doing that. There are some techniques that are specifically for Heavy Metal guitarists, Country/Pop players, Fingerstyle Steel string, Jazz and Classical, but most of the techniques apply equally well to all styles. It will be self-revealing I knew that when I started this project it was going to be a long slog. Some of the techniques, as I tried and refined them, were going to personally challenge me to the max. Some of them are going to challenge you too. Some of them will highlight your weaknesses even though you have managed to hide them away .Be honest with yourself - quite often it really is worth taking one step back in order to take two forward.
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Ive played on stages in the UK and USA and Ive recorded and produced demo tapes, roadied for other bands, and all that fun stuff All as a hobby. At the beginning of my working career I had a choice either the music business or the computer business via computer animation. I chose the computer graphics and animation business and the music stayed a hobby albeit an important one. Since then Ive had a variety of jobs, mostly IT related. When I started playing, I had help. My dad played guitar in a band in the sixties - a shadows clone called the Palamino's. He taught me how to hold the guitar, how to strum, some basic chords and how to hold a plectrum (wrongly so I later found out). He taught me how to read basic music and charts. I had a head start About four years ago, quite by accident, I got into the whole self-help and personal development thing that was sweeping through corporate cultures like a virus. Not content with skimming the surface that the few compulsory courses I attended taught, I got more and more interested. Especially on things that would increase my learning speed. Anyway to cut a long story short, I ended up taking some courses on Neuro Linguistic Programming, which allowed me to discover what was stopping me from being my best in all sorts of pursuits. During one of the courses, I chose musical applications for most of the self-help exercises. I learnt some very useful techniques that have helped improve my guitar playing and musical abilities generally. After that I spent quite a while searching for articles, books, tapes etc. that would allow me to find out even more musical applications of this mind stuff. There wasnt one book out there that specifically covered guitarists. Yes there was one about using this stuff for music in general. There was one written for guitar teachers to help their students but no book specifically for guitarists, especially one written by a primarily self taught guitar player. Thats when it struck me Ill write a book. Ill learn even more in the process, Im sure there are some other people out there that would want to know how to use this mental stuff , specifically for guitar playing.
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I selected or invented as many useful techniques as I could. I tried them out, adjusted them and then finally wrote them down for others to follow this book is the result! I welcome you aboard this journey of self-discovery that will radically improving your playing.
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thats why the tab is repeated so you can print just those pages out full size. Exercises are marked out using this shaded box.
TIPS AND KEY POINTS ARE MARKED OUT IN BOLD CENTRED AND UPPERCASE
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If you are a total beginner, the techniques presented in the book will give you a head start once you have got the basic mechanics of playing mastered. When I was writing the book, I made the assumption that the baseline was that youve been playing for at least a couple of months, can strum a few chords and play single note lines without the frets buzzing. Of course some of you will have been playing for years, and be very accomplished there are still plenty of things in the book for you too.
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and useful but if you want to play along with records, other instruments etc. a tuner is the only way to go. Ill cover tuning again briefly in a later chapter A recording device a cassette recorder, minidisk or direct recording via microphone on your computer. A Practice Journal a notebook of some kind that is specifically used for recording information about your practice sessions, your thoughts and comments, results from the exercises etc. especially as you read the rest of the book. Download and install a copy of Powertab - its free, easy to use and its fantastic. The powertab .ptb files for all the exercises are included in the download. http://www.power-tab.net
These are optional although you might find them useful. Some fast fret this is a type of gel that you rub onto the strings. I guess its got a silicone base because it makes the strings slippy again like when they are first put on the guitar the rust and grime on metal strings makes your fingers stick and not slide about. I love that stuff. A headphone amp unit for electric guitar players allows you to hear the sound in a noisy environment. There are some really great ones like the Rockman box, and some very poor quality ones. Its your choice but you wont need one with lots of special effects for practicing the routines in here. There will be other tools and software that I will mention along the way.
Acknowledgements
Id like to first thank my wife Nicola for her support and patience, putting up with me spending hours and hours in front of the computer instead of with her whilst re-writing this book.
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Secondly a big thank you to Jim Oram for proofreading the first version of the book and picking up all the typos, spelling mistakes etc that are easy to miss. Keep practicing Jim.
Id also like to thank Dr. Richard Bandler, Paul McKenna and Michael Breen for opening my eyes to the possibilities of change. Win Wenger for his permission to include some of his many varied accelerated learning techniques. www.winwenger.com Steve Manning for his brilliant writing tools this guy is a genius. Ive been using his techniques for a lot of different projects over the last two years. His writing course has been my best buy on writing so far. Jim Edwards for his ebook that finally sparked me off writing this one www.beyondbedroomguitar.com/7dayebook.html Finally Id like to thank my late father for buying me my first acoustic guitar and teaching me the basics, and then buying me my first electric guitar. I miss you Dad.
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I cannot be held responsible for the misuse of any of the techniques in the book. If I gave you a hammer you could use it to bang nails into wood or use it to brain someone. The choice on how you use the tools and techniques is yours alone to make. I would hope that you choose to use them wisely and for the benefit of yourself and others. When using any technique which uses visualisation, hypnosis or changing your mental state do not drive or operate any heavy machinery. You should be sat in a comfortable chair or lying down resting whilst doing any of these types of techniques. When practicing any of the practical techniques, if you feel any pain in your hands, wrists, shoulders etc. STOP PLAYING and rest. If the pain continues when you start to practice seek medical advice before continuing.
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Always do this before any other exercises, and before beginning practicing. It gets the blood moving in your hands, heightens your finger sensitivity and thus touch - and reduces the possibility of injury. First shake both your hands vigorously for a count of 20, using a backwards and forwards flapping motion
Hand warm-up twist This loosens the wrist and gets blood pumping through your hands Twist your hands backwards and forwards in a circular motion vigorously for a count of 20.
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Finger independence Bend each finger down in turn. Try to do each finger independently and use your other hand to correct the movement or go the full path. To build some stamina and strength, when youve mastered doing each finger independently then hold a stress ball (or orange) against your palm with your right hand and press into the ball lightly with each bending finger. Do this 10 times with each hand. (Yes both hands we want them to remain balanced)
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Finger side stretches Using your right hand fingers, separate and stretch out the gaps between your fingers. Do this ten times. The first time through be gentle and only use one or two fingers as a spacer. Widen the gap a little more each time. Repeat the exercise, without using your right hand as a guide (just move the fingers to make the gap on your left hand).
Massage the gaps between each knuckle. Top and sides. Start on first finger near the tip and work inwards. Then do the second finger, third finger etc. Finally shake your hands again with the flapping motion and then rest.
The beauty of this set of exercises is that it only takes a couple of minutes to do, and can be done anywhere.
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For the first week you should do it 4 or 5 times over each day, increasing to 10 times daily for a month. Then back to 3-4 times a day. After a month your hands will be naturally more supple and stronger and just need a little movement to keep them in form. It should also be done before and after your daily practice session.
There are lots of exercises that improve speed, accuracy etc. out on the Internet. Some of them are very good, but most of them are very boring and repetitive. Pianists use some practice exercises to warm their hands and extend their playing ability; one of the most popular is the set of Hanon exercises. Good but very boring after a while. Problem with boring is that the repetition becomes the norm and your mind shuts off concentrating on what youre doing pretty quickly. If you dont get it right at the beginning bad habits and poor playing set in. The alternative is to make it so complex that your conscious mind is focused on the complexity and your unconscious does all the muscle memory learning etc. yet still have the desired benefit.
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Place your fingers, one fret apart, anywhere on the neck on any string. If youre just starting use the G-string with your first finger on the 8th fret. Now press your first finger down on the fret and apply more pressure. More pressure and even more. Hold for a count of two and release the finger from the string. Do the same for each of the other fingers. Now repeat except this time whilst applying the pressure, rock the first knuckle backwards and forwards.
Figure 5-5 First knuckle bending backwards and forwards - Finger pumps
1-2-3-4-3-2-1-1-4-3-4-2-4- single string 1st fret to 12th fret each string This was the first exercise I ever learned, and it still proves useful even after 25 years. It Improves your 4th finger strength and it gets the muscles all working. Start slowly at first and dont be afraid to stop if you get tired. If you do stop, count four beats and begin again. Set your metronome between 40-60 bpm. Play the following pattern using alternative picking and then move the whole pattern up one fret and play again. Keep going up until you reach the 12th fret and then go back down again.
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Shift onto the B string and repeat 1st to 12th fret to 1st and then the other four remaining strings. Stop and shake out your hands. The stretcher (1-3-5-7-5-3-1 starting at 9th fret) Simple to explain, more and more difficult to do at first. Start with your first finger on the B string 8th fret and place fingers with a 1 fret gap in-between each one (so 8th 10th 12th 14th frets). If your guitar does not have a cutaway (steel string for example) then start lower say 5th fret Now play a 123432114342434 pattern keeping fingers in the same fret position. Slide down a fret and repeat
The wasp 6 string One of the most common exercises Ive seen on the net is to play a repeating finger movement such as 1st fret, 2nd, 3rd 4th on each string with alternative picking then move up a fret and repeat. Now this will build up speed and muscle memory slowly but it takes a long time.
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What happens is that after a while the finger movement becomes boring and unconscious. Something we want but it also becomes programmed in and its all we want to play not useful. The awareness goes to the wrong place. I developed the wasp exercise that overloads the conscious mind and forces you to keep track of whats going on rather than it becoming a mindless repetitive (read boring!) exercise. There are 24 ways you can order your four fingers.
1234 1243 1324 1342 1423 1432 2134 2143 2341 2314 2413 2431 3124 3142 3214 3241 3412 3421 4123 4132 4213 4231 4312 4321
The exercise cycles through every one of these starting on the top E string and doing one pattern per string down to the low E. Then it moves up a fret and starts again with the second column, then the third and finally the fourth column. Practice this mentally first one column at a time at a very slow 40 bpm playing one note per beat of the metronome. Hint: Each column starts with the column number finger Then do the physical practice for the first column. Repeat for each column Then combine columns 1 and 2 Then combine columns 3 and 4 Then combine columns 2 and 3 The whole lot 1,2,3 & 4 And rest it for a day.
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Lets try a little experiment. I want you to pick up your guitar and play a simple single note line below.
Now I want you to start to speed up each time you repeat the phrase. Get faster, and faster, and faster. Keep trying to play it even faster. Faster still dont worry if you start to make mistakes. Go faster.
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Verse Chorus Middle 8/Breakdown Verse Chorus Outro Now if you were to write that down without using repeats or any use of DC or Coda it would both get very long, and also would have a lot of the music looking exactly the same. Our brain is forever trying to simplify things so by just writing out the Intro, Verse, Chorus, Middle and Outro, we can then specify which bits to repeat, how many times and what leads on. So our music would look like Intro | : Verse Chorus : | % (repeat once notice the de capo symbol) Middle 8/Breakdown Chorus DC al Coda Outro Youll find great examples of all of these in nearly every guitar instruction magazine out there. Work at your own pace to remember each one. Typically the structure comes first, then the dynamics, followed by the others.
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|-3-2-0--------|-!2----| |-3---3--0-1-3-|-!3----| |-0---0--------|-!2----| |-0---2--------|-!0----| |-2---3--------|-------| |-3------------|-------| This format is mostly seen in email, text files or newsgroup posts. Printed versions, using a tablature editor or printed books usually have the music line as well as the tablature, thus:-
Instead of the lines representing note names like the clefs on ordinary music, the lines represent the strings of the guitar the lowest note being at the bottom. A number is placed on each line showing which fret needs to be pressed (nothing on the string line means dont play, 0 is an open string and X is a muted string if necessary). The spacing along the tab represents where in time that particular fretted note or notes are to be played. Some tab is quite accurate in this, using extra dashes to represent the space between the notes but I dont always trust it especially things posted in newsgroups.
There are other symbols, which are shown in the table below. Again some of these are more common or important than others.
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Text
Action
hammer-on
pull-off
bend
Pb
pre-bend
/\
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Text
Action
legato slide
shift slide
~ |----------| |----------| |-7--------| |----------| |----------| |----------| |-------------| |-------------| |-7tr8--------| |-------------| |-------------| |-------------|
vibrato
tr
trill
Most guitar magazines that feature pieces, give their own list of the way the tablature is notated. This is worth studying at length, and Ive written them out several times (its a good way of memorising them
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especially when I imagine playing them at the same time and imagine doing them and imagine the sound. Kind of re-enforces the symbol. Also because there are loads of different special techniques that can be done whilst playing (whammy bar tricks, harmonics etc.) it gives you a unique list of the techniques even if you dont know them at the moment. It wont cover every possible thing, but its 99% there. One of my trademark licks is to bend the G string down towards the floor then release and bend it up towards the ceiling before playing a note using my pinkie on the B string a double bend that sounds completely different if you just bend the string down to the floor twice Ive never seen that notated anywhere.
Then try playing them on your guitar, and then keep thinking about them during the day.
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For the more advanced players Still do it. Take four a day, learn them play them and then think about them at odd times during the day. I usually do this mini reminder thing when Im waiting for something like coffee to filter, or a can to drop out of the machine. The intention is that youll have at least 30 50 times during the day to specifically think about the three steps (Im a busy person and I have at least that many interruptions over the whole day). On the second day, after learning the second four and thinking about them etc., remind yourself of the first 4, write them down, play them and imagine them just one more time. Continue this way reviewing the previous days stuff until youve got to the end of the table and then Review them all. Write them down one by one. Check them. Play them all one by one in your head and then physically. By now you might even have a few new techniques to add to your playing. Ok after a few days of working on the tab symbol stuff some of it will be UC, some CC. Go out and buy another edition of a guitar magazine and look at one of the pieces. Take out a piece of paper and write down each notation item that you can find on one page- for example if its a slide, imagine you doing that slide. Go through the whole of one page looking at each notation item in turn. Can you imagine your fingers actually doing those things? Cool huh And your almost there. Its a funny thing but when someone buys a new car, they notice more other cars that are similar on the road. For example if the car is metallic blue, they notice more metallic blue cars on the road. If its a Van or MPV as we call it over here in the UK, then you notice more of them on the road. Its not that suddenly more people have bought the same as you its just that your awareness has changed.
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