Doper Musicians of All Stripes; what are your most useful instructional aids?

Cafe Society
1

A thread inspired in the midst of packing - in addition to GAS, I have a bad habit of acquiring books, DVDs, CDs and Videos. Some of them are books of transcriptions, some focus on playing in a certain style or like a certain musician. Some are really useful and some are not. So as I sent off 4 or 5 boxes to storage, and kept the box I’ll be working through over the summer, I thought of you, my doper friends, and wanted to share some of the ones I think are particularly useful.

Number One with a bullet for me is the DVD "The Guitar of Chet Atkins " which comes with all of the songs transcribed by John Knowles. It features CA playing each song once, and then taking you through it slowly, with a split screen showing his right and left hands clearly. Utterly Fantastic. There are Lenny Breau techniques that are better explained here than in any other source, including the Lenny Breau/John Knowles book…

For piano, the best thing I’ve found so far is The Jazz Piano Book . There’s nothing fancy here, it’s just a book to work through and build your whole approach on. I’ve been cutting my way through it for the last 3 months, and it’s improved my playing immensely.

Just to be clear, I’m still a big believer in one on one teachers, but I’ve also had a blast taking some of the Chet Atkins to my teacher and working on it with him. In fact, the piano book was given to me by my piano teacher as something for us to work from.

So what about the rest of you? Anything at all, any instrument - book, DVD, website, CDs, have you run across anything that inspired and taught you new things? Please, tell us about it.

2

Jack Daniels and Sam Adams. Both very helpful

3

For me, on guitar, just iTunes + sometimes some of the online Tab sites when I get stuck trying to learn something. The quality on the tablature sites is very spotty, but sometimes an author will do an outstanding job. But mostly its spotty. I do feel that I could get another boost up if I could find an advanced teacher and work on a specific style for a while; its easy to get in a rut when you’re teaching yourself and not playing out.

When I was playing piano, I took lessons for about three years, then just started teaching myself using regular sheet music or collection books of a composer’s work.

4

Guitar, bottleneck slide and Dobro (lap steel) player here.

For bottleneck slide, I recommend the series taught by Bob Brozman, and another taught by Mike Dowling. Both incredibly accomplished musicians, and excellent teachers, with orthogonal approaches to slide guitar.

For lap-style slide, I recommend Cindy Cashdollar’s DVDs (she’s both electric and acoustic) and Rob Ickes’ ‘Essential Techniques for Dobro’. The aforementioned and versatile Bob Brozman also has a lesson on lap guitar, and another dedicated to Hawaiian-style playing, which is where lap steel and Dobro originated.

More basics: Earl Scruggs’ book on banjo, which will help any guitar or Dobro player who picks with the fingers. And Mike Seeger’s DVD on Carter Family guitar techniques.

And to pull it all together, a bottle of whiskey and a couple days in a cheap motel room.

5

I play Indian tabla, and I have to say that the only two things that have ever improved my playing were spending time with a teacher and listening to great tabla players (live or recorded). So far I have not found any books / dvds etc. that has improved my playing in any way. Perhaps it has to do with the extreme importance of technique when playing tabla - these matters can only be internalized and corrected when learning with a teacher.

ETA: Practice helps, too…

6

In my 30 years of playing I have never found a book or video I used for much more than getting the basic sense of a song or technique.

My most useful instructional aids have always been musicians who were better than me. I would talk my way into jamming with them and get them to show me stuff.

I took lessons once in my life - for a few months around 10 years ago - about the only thing I remember about them, other than the instructor was really cool, was that he showed me the correct way to play a Stevie Ray Vaughn-style Texas Shuffle, like on Pride and Joy - which everyone gets wrong…but he showed it to me when he was just messing around after a practice when he was showing me the '65 Strat Jimmie Vaughn had given him…

7

[ul][li]Nothing beats the Fiddle Time (and Viola Time!) books. Even the beginner pieces can be listenable, and there’s accompaniment CDs which just about succeed in not driving parents insane.[/li]
[li]A piano. I don’t understand how non-pianists manage to instill any sense of harmony, or cope without the variety the extra instrument can offer. Nor how they can teach kids to work with a piano accompaniment, especially once they’re progressing further :confused: [/li]
[li]Youtube, iTunes, and sometimes MySpace. Infuriatinly, however, the two websites are blocked on most school networks, even on teachers’ accounts.[/li]
[li]Beethoven. Bach. Vivaldi. Handel. Mozart. We may keep quiet about it sometimes, but these are the real reasons for learning to play the violin.[/li]
[li]If they really deserve it, chocolate. One string group has definitely earned some from their concert this week - stealing the show from the jazz band isn’t easy :D[/li]
[*]Last but most certainly not least, smilie face stickers. Lots of stickers. Especially glittery ones.[/ul]

8

I play guitar. Mostly just rhythm.

I don’t mean this to sound flippant, but my ears are my most instructive tools.

I find that if something interests me enough to learn to play it, I listen to it in a sort of hyperfocused mode, then figure out how to play it on my own, sometimes with a bit of help from online sites, although I hate tabs and so few of them show actual chords, etc.

I rarely try to do anything all that tricky, though.

9

Ex-bassist here. The best instructional tool for me was a reel-to-reel tape recorder that allowed speed changes. I was able to record a solo or passage at 15 IPS, then playback the passage at 7.5 IPS. This dropped the pitch one octave, but also slowed the passage down enough to get every note.

10

Listening to music is the most important thing for me. I play all styles of blues guitar, and I play old time and bluegrass fiddle. Yeah, I know, the combination makes no sense. Anyway, I don’t read music and have never had any lessons, but I’ve been playing for (gulp) over 40 years. I listen to ALOT of music and play ALOT.

Hawk

11

A tuner. First and foremost. I can quickly tell when my instrument (usually guitar, but sometimes bass, mandolin, or app. dulcimer) is off. I’ve got a couple, but I’ve preferred the Intellitouch tuner. It clips on to the instrument and can tune even in noisy environments.

The next most valuable to me is a program now called Digital Music Mentor. This is the best polyphonic recognizing bit of software ever. This program is about 75% accurate with figuring out what chords are in the song and then playing the song back with a line going through which chords are being played. It won’t help with jazz/classical music as much, but I’ve found it to be really helpful in quickly deconstructing folk and pop music. The extra bonus is that it can also detect the key and the pitch too. Robyn Hitchcock has a beautiful song called “One Long Pair of Eyes” that I always tried to figure out. I tried playing along with it so many times and no chord ever sounded right. With the program I found out that in this song A/=440 which is the standard, A=426 (IIRC). I tuned down my guitar a bit and lo & behold I could play along with the CD.

A couple other things for me are websites. Gootar is great for figuring out chord names. Chordie has become the new OLGA. This website transposes chords quickly from one key to another.

12

Like WordMan, the most important instructional aid for me has always been playing with other guitar players. I would add to his answer that I have often learned useful things from guitar players who were not “better” than me overall.

After I had been playing for about twenty years, I found that taking lessons for a couple of years from Carl Filipiak increased my knowledge of what I was doing while raising my technique several levels.

My Tascam CD-GT1 helps a lot for learning fast passages.

13

Word, man. As long as they have a cool trick that you don’t know that you can snag off them. I always try to have “goods” to barter - a new song, a new technique, *something *- so I can rationalize how blatently I am ripping them off… :wink:

And yeah, I had a borrowed copy of a slow-down program on my PC for a few months. It was useful - but I lost it when my hard drive crashed and I’ve never gotten around to replacing it - but learning stuff note-for-note has never been my bag - as long as I can sell the feel, I’m good to go.

What is it with guitarists like you and me, Crotalus? How come some folks are well-equipped to access learning methods and take advantage of them and some folks muddle along with bursts of self-taught/observed growth? I have no complaints - I play what I like and like what I play - but it sure is different…

14

Interesting question, so at the risk of creating a hijack, here goes. I have always been more interested in playing music with others at whatever level I was capable of than in achieving some independent level of virtuosity. My urge to learn new things has been driven by the needs of the band I was in at the time, and was never aimed at raising the level of my overall ability, but more at learning a particular song. Whatever increase in my overall ability has occurred has been a side-effect rather than an aim. When I finally took lessons after twenty-odd years of playing, I was a competent part-time professional. When I went to my first lesson, I showed Carl a few of the things I was capable of, the harder stuff, and said “Now tell me what the hell I’m doing.” Most of our lessons dealt with relating my practical knowledge to the theoretical underpinnings of it. Most of what I learned in my lessons helped with note choice rather than technique.

I guess the bottom line for me is that I got pretty good at playing guitar only because it was fun even when I was lousy at it. My preferred method of learning is learning from playing with others because I like to play with others. The learning is a by-product.

15

I play handbells. I’ve played with at least a half dozen different directors in different churches (and thus obviously with a wide variety of fellow ringers). Because of my singing experience in a variety of choirs, and because of my 10 years or so of piano lessons, I’ve got a decent grasp of practical music theory. I’ve never taken a formal class on music theory, but I know about the circle of Flats, and am perfectly capable of marking my own music.

The nature of handbells is such that one needn’t be able to read music to play, but certainly playing handbells can help build one’s ability to read music–especially one’s ability to count complicated rhythms. I’ve played with people who label each note with it’s name, or with L or R. I’ve also played with people who take pride in NOT marking their music. Personally, I like marked music–doesn’t have to be marked in technicolor, but I like not having to stare at my line and space to make sure I play each note.

There is definitely for me a “sweet spot” of enjoyment where I stretch myself learning the song, but I don’t still struggle to get it right in performance. Learning new stuff is fun, playing multiple bells is fun, but I also like playing it correctly, mostly, and I don’t much like it when the music is too hard. I’ve been in audiences before with other bell choirs, and I enjoy listening to simple music played well more than complicated music played poorly–the “see what fancy things we can do” syndrome.

Answering the thread title, then, in this context, my most useful instructional aids are a pencil, a person who is less knowledgeable about music than I am and a person who is more knowledgeable. The less knowledgeable person asks me questions which make me think about why music is written the way it is, and the more knowledgeable person fills in the details that I don’t know.

(For example, we had this song which had D.S. (in fancy music notation) written at the end. Less knowledgeable person “What does D.S. mean?” Me: " Go back to the sign, at measure 30" " LKP “But what does D.S. stand for ?” Me: I don’t know. More Knowledgable person: “Dal Signe” (which may be spelled wrong). )

16

The most useful instructional aids have changed over the years. When I first started (the first 3 months or so) it was lessons. I had a great teacher for the first three months who taught me how to hold the guitar, notes and all the very simple stuff.

After that it was playing various stuff out of Guitar Player magazine, picking up stuff by ear and playing in front of a mirror*. Once I got a little older and started to play with other players, which improved my playing by a huge amount, I found that playing in front of a mirror allowed me to easily pickup what the other players were doing.

The next step was some targeted studies. I read a lot about various techniques and would figure out areas I had problems with, go find studies/songs that used those techniques and go learn them.

These days I am trying (though not succeeding all that well) to learn styles that I haven’t really bothered with yet. Presently I can make my fingers move pretty well but there are certain areas where the feel isn’t quite there. I suck at Blues/Country/Jazz so I am trying to pickup on that stuff by finding songs I dig and learning the feel. Basically I pick up the structure/key and get so I can run through it without a problem then I work on improvising on top of the song trying to get the right feel.

Slee

*In my bedroom when I was a kid I sat on the bed to play guitar. The bed was directly across from closet which had mirrored doors so whenever I played it was easier to look in the mirror than to look down. I got really good at being able to follow other guitarists from this.

17

Plainchant for everyone: An introduction to plainsong, by the sadly recently deceased Augustinian canoness Mary Berry, is a little gem for anyone wanting to learn how to sing chant.

18

People. Lots and lots of people.

I first fell into the djembe on tour with the Dead, and caught hold of that groove. Have to hold Mickey and Bill responsible for the initial intro and sound.

Out of respect for the instrument, I started tracking down teachers, and found my way into a Tam Tam Mandingue school for a few years. Thank you Mahiri. He taught not only the traditional sounds, rhythms, and dances, but also the songs’ history and context.

The three other core members of the Biosphere 2 Percussion Ensemble, kind of mock name we gave ourselves. Four earnest friends and drummers playing our way through school – we found our way into an empty greenhouse sitting on top of a fifteen story building in Manhattan for night and winter playing. Summertime playing was on the great lawn with a slew of transient players—a lot of them came from the Manhattan School of Music next door, so you can imagine the influences that came out of that scene.

My current teacher is from Ghana, and while not as formalistic and structured as Mahiri, he has an utter joy that infuses everything. Since he comes from a slightly different tradition, the overall feel is new, invigorating, and expansive. Kind of like going from a teacher steeped in classical music to one brought up on baroque. Thanks Kofi!

Drum circles, from Dupont to Central Park to the middle of nowhere Texas, the trading and mixing of rhythms traditional and impromptu, complex and simple, advanced and beginner, all meld into the subconscious and come out in the strangest of ways. Thanks everyone.

And of course, there’s Mrs. Dvl. Her grandmother was a concert pianist in the Soviet Union, and taught her at a young age. From that background (and Russky pop), she’s since fallen in love with the djembe (er, and me too), takes lessons with me, and we spend many a night in the parlor practicing, expanding, and exploring.

I know the above may sound corny, but when I first started thinking metronome or A Life for the Djembe, they kind of paled in comparison to all the people who have taught me over the years.

19

First of all, a teacher is essential.

Second, I think a metronome is an essential tool.

A new bit of technology is SmartMusic. This is an amazing bit of software intended for school music teachers and students. I can make an assignment and the student can perform it with SmartMusic. For some assignments, SmartMusic will display the written music on the screen and the student follows along. The program can mark the notes missed, assign a grade, and email the results (including a recording) to me. It also does wonderful things with practicing, including making loops, changing tempo, changing key, etc. It is a fantastic program. Check it out.

20

While I give props to my teachers and to my ears, Guitar Pro 5 was a seriously good investment, with Band In A Box a close second.

BIAB lets me jam with a groove for hours - change the style, key, speed, whatever. I can spend hours just noodling along to the chord sequence.

GP5 has tab, notation and sounds ok with sampled guitars and VST amp sim built in. I slow the riff right down till I have the fingering right, then I can loop it and speed it up till I have the pace. Practicing some Blues and Rock riffs that came with BIAB (with video tutorials) in GP5 has improved my playing no end. And the huge library of material that I got with GP5 means that I can expose myself to a wide variety of techniques and styles that I probably would not have otherwise.

At the end of the day I often am not slavish in my devotion to the written lick, but giving it a go in GP5 lets me pick up on the feel just a little better. Then I lay the backing chords in BIAB and go for it till I am happy.

Si