Why You Should Not Major in Music Performance

In my sophomore year of college I started taking classical guitar lessons and briefly considered switching my major to Music Performance (I was a Business Administration major). However, my college guitar instructor gave me what I believe was sage advice: don’t. I was more than a little surprised when my primary interface with the Music department was steering me away from majoring in Music Performance. He went on to explain why.

First a little background. The university I attended had three music degrees: Performance, Theory and Composition, and Education. My career goals at the time were fairly simplistic: I wanted to play guitar for a living. The logical major, then, was Music Performance, the major that would allow me to spend the most time playing guitar in school. Classical guitarists have essentially three career paths. A select few classical guitarists become concert guitarists touring the world playing solo or with an ensemble. If that doesn’t work out, you can make a pretty good living playing weddings and other special events. Or, you can become a music educator and teach future musicians. Each of these are respectable career paths. Many guitarists do a combination of the last two and are music educators and perform at special events.

What my guitar instructor illuminated was that neither of the career paths available to performing guitarists (concert touring or special events) require a college degree. That is, if you’re an elite guitarist, you’ll be able to get gigs regardless of whether you have a college degree. Instead, my guitar teacher recommended that if I want to major in music, I should major in Theory and Composition or Music Education. Note that some schools offer additional music majors, such as a major in Music Business. As an aside, I ended up not changing my major for various reasons, but, in hindsight, I feel like my guitar teacher’s advice was sound. Majoring in one of these other majors provides a “fall-back plan” if you aren’t able to make a career out of performing music. In his book Practicing, Glenn Kurtz illustrates how he spent all of his college career preparing to become a concert guitarist only to find out that the career didn’t work out as he had hoped. What a discouraging realization that must have been!

I certainly don’t want to discourage anyone who has a dream of being a concert guitarist. Go for it! However, I would encourage you to be pragmatic in your college major selection and choose a music major that is not entirely focused on musical performances. I think that doing so will reap rewards in your career and will provide you with additional options in the event that your dream career turns out to be a nightmare.

February 14, 2008 | Filed Under Beginners, General | 5 Comments 

Should you learn to play classical guitar?

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One of the questions that I’ve heard many guitarists ask is whether they should learn how to play classical guitar. I’ve stated often on my blog that I studied classical guitar for a few years in college, and I can state unequivocally that those two years made me a better guitar player. However, learning to play the classical guitar is not for everyone.

Learning to play classical guitar music will not make immediately make you a better rock, blues or metal guitar player. It will, however, make you a better technical player, which often translates to a better command of the instrument. This in turn will help you get better at other musical styles. During the first year or so of learning to play classical guitar music, you primarily focus on technique, rather than on making music. This lays the foundation that you can then build upon.

When I started playing the classical guitar, my guitar teacher at the time indicated that the classical guitar is a different instrument than the standard acoustic guitar, and he was right. A classical guitar is not simply an acoustic guitar with nylon strings. The classical guitar contains different dimensions and has a wider neck that allows for more precise finger picking. If you’re familiar with playing a standard acoustic dreadnought guitar, then playing a classical guitar will feel awkward at first. However, I found the classical guitar to be quite comfortable after getting used to it.

Additionally, classical guitar music is very different from modern rock, blues and metal music. With classical music, you should attempt to play the music as it is written; there’s not a lot of room for improvisation when playing classical music. This isn’t always true, but more often than not it is. Thus, learning to play classical music will not directly help you improvise when playing rock or jazz music, but the music theory foundation that is often built in correlation with learning the classical guitar will help you learn the instrument in detail so that you can improvise when playing other styles of music.

Although more rigid than other playing styles, I love playing classical music and the classical guitar. As I stated earlier, I believe that the technique I built while learning to play the classical guitar has ultimately translated to other styles, but it wasn’t a direct translation. If you want to get a better command of the instrument, I’d recommend attempting to learn to play the classical guitar. To truly gain any benefits for other playing styles, you should be willing to commit to spending the time to build the technical foundation, and I believe doing so will reap rewards in the future.

* Photo from Yuen-Hui (Flickr)

September 18, 2007 | Filed Under Beginners, General | 7 Comments 

It’s the Song, Stupid

Many of us have heard of the KISS principle: “Keep it simple, stupid.” It’s an old principle that reminds us that simplicity should be our goal. In many ways, the KISS principle applies to music, but I would modify it to say “It’s the song, stupid.”

For example, I was listening to some music the other day, and while the guitarist was playing great licks, there wasn’t a whole lot of music being played. There was no real song to back up the guitar playing; it was just a lot of wanking around. As a guitarist, it’s easy to get caught up in trying to master all of the scales and chords and playing fast licks, but our job is generally to play and support songs. That’s right. Songs, those pesky interludes between guitar solos.

Jimmy Page was an excellent guitarist, but he’s more well known to the general listening audience for creating and playing great songs. The same is true for Eric Clapton, one of the greatest guitarists to ever pick up the instrument. But, Clapton is also a great songwriter. In fact, I would argue that most of the best known guitarists are well known not only because of their guitar playing skills, but their songwriting skills, as well.

So, this weekend when you’re greasing up your frets so that you can play that legato lick at 160 BPM instead of 150, don’t forget to work on your compositional skills, too. You’ll gain a better understanding of the instrument, and you’ll probably become a better musician as a result. If you ever forget why you’re playing the guitar, remember “It’s the song, stupid.”

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September 7, 2007 | Filed Under Beginners, General | 1 Comment 

Warming Up

As a follow up to my Perfect Practice post, I thought I’d talk a little about warming up. Warming up should be included in your practice routine.

It’s important to warm up prior to practicing or playing so that the muscles in your hands are loose. It’s possible to strain or damage the muscles in the hand if they’re not properly stretched prior to playing at full speed. Another advantage to warming up prior to playing is that you’re more likely to play accurately and with more ease if your hands are loose and stretched.

What should be included in a warm-up routine? I personally like to run through a few scales and licks; typically I’ll spend a few minutes running through a few chromatic scale sequences and then play some blues licks I’ve been playing for years. However, you might want to play a few chords as a way to stretch your hands. For instance, playing a G chord-D chord-C chord combination sequence provides several different fingerings and stretches.

When warming up, it’s important to focus on stretching the muscles in the hand and not necessarily playing the notes at full speed. Concentrate on technique, not speed.

In summary, a good practice routine consists of about 5-10 minutes of warming up prior to practicing or performing.

March 1, 2006 | Filed Under Beginners, General | Leave a Comment 

Perfect Practice

Have you been playing your guitar on a regular basis and still not achieved any significant results? In this post, I want to talk a bit about practicing; specifically, finding the best way to practice based on your goals. With the term practicing, I don’t mean grabbing your guitar and sitting in front of the tv and noodling around. I don’t consider that practicing; it’s fun, sure, but this type of playing doesn’t get you any further towards any goal. I mean actually sitting down with some sheet music in front of you or some other technical goal in mind and working towards that goal.

Consider for a moment that you’re training for a marathon. You wouldn’t grab a pair of sneakers and just start jogging around every once in a while, would you? You’d create a plan of action and methodically work a little each day towards that goal. Similarly, weight lifters spend hours on end training their muscles with a structured plan for how to accomplish their goals. The same rules apply to practicing an instrument.

First, you need to figure out what you want to accomplish in a particular practice session. Sometimes it might be working on a technique, while other times you might want to work on a particular piece of music. Either way, knowing what you want to accomplish in a particular practice session will allow you to better prepare for that session and make the best use of your time.

Once you’ve figured out what you want to accomplish, you need to plan how to reach your goals. Sometimes this is as simple as planning to work on a particular piece of music during your practice time. Other times, you might have several techniques you want to work on. For technique practice, I like to work with small etudes that emphasize that technique. However, you could also simply map out a few exercises and work on those exercises. The key is knowing what you want to accomplish and working towards that end.

Most of what I’ve talked about so far is for solo guitar playing. However, similar rules apply to playing in a band. Getting together every once in a while will be fun and worthwhile, but if you’re serious about playing together in a band, nothing beats practicing together on a regular basis with a plan of action, such as a list of songs to perfect for an upcoming show.

In summary, it is as important to prepare to practice as it is to practice and to create measurable goals so that you can determine your progress. Additionally, you’ll get better results from practicing on a regular basis rather than from sporadic all-day marathons.

Practicing doesn’t always make perfect, but perfect practice typically does.

February 27, 2006 | Filed Under Beginners, General | Leave a Comment 

In a Rut?

A recent forum post on GuitarGeek.com essentially asked the question “How do you get out of a rut in guitar playing?” In particular, this user was in a rut in guitar lessons and was having difficulty incorporating new techniques. This is something that every guitar player experiences at one point or another, but it’s something that can be extremely frustrating to someone who is new to the instrument. I’d thought I’d describe some of the things I do to overcome the feeling of being in a rut in my guitar playing.

First, let’s define the phrase “being in a rut” in relation to guitar playing. The feeling of being in a rut can occur for various reasons. Perhaps you’ve been trying to learn a song with no visible progress. Or maybe you’re trying to learn a specific technique and are not able to incorporate it into your playing or master the technique. Another example might simply be becoming bored with the music that you’re playing. There are other examples, but I think the examples I’ve given help describe some of the situations that lead to the feeling of being in a rut. Essentially, I equate being in a rut with becoming frustrated with playing the guitar, which saps my desire to pick up the instrument and play.

So, how to go about getting out of the rut? I will usually completely drop whatever it is I was working on, be it a technique, a song, or just a riff, and I’ll start up something completely different. For example, I took two years of classical guitar when I was in college. As anyone who has studied classical guitar knows, classical guitar playing is very difficult, and technique is extremely important. In fact, technique-building pieces comprise most of an early classical guitar curriculum. As a result, for someone coming from a rock background, classical guitar playing can at times seem too rigid and it’s easy to become frustrated. So, when those moments would occur, I would stop playing classical guitar and move back to learning a rock, blues or jazz song or technique. I might not pick up the classical guitar again for a few days or even weeks. Sometimes, I might completely put aside the guitar for weeks at a time. Consequently, when I went back to the classical guitar, I was rejuvenated again and ready to tackle the task that seemed so daunting before. It might still be a daunting task, but at least I was able to come back to it with a renewed excitement.

Another technique I’ve used with some success in the past is to break down whatever is I’m trying to learn into smaller pieces. For example, if I’m trying to learn a song and am having difficulty with a portion of it, I might focus entirely on that portion of the music until I’ve mastered it. Or, if there are multiple bars of music that I’m having difficulty with, I might focus on one bar at a time until I’ve mastered that bar and then move to the next bar.

Sometimes, it’s just important to realize that what you’re trying to learn is difficult, may at times feel tedious, but continue to work through it. If you’re trying to learn a song for a recital or concert, then you can’t always push the difficult parts to the side for later. Instead, you just have to persevere through the difficult parts and really focus your attention on those parts until you’ve sufficiently mastered them. Again, I’ll emphasize that breaking down these difficult parts into smaller tasks may help you work through them and give you confidence as you tackle the next part.

I hope that some of the techniques that I use to overcome the feeling of being in a rut help you when you get into a rut with your playing. What do you do to get past a rut in your playing?

January 28, 2006 | Filed Under Beginners | 1 Comment