Play like a falling leaf…

Today, we'll talk about something very important. I call it Flexing Time!

It means we'll manipulate dynamics and speed to add movement to your guitar playing. It adds contrast and a kind of an emotional connection with the things that you play.

Now, this is primarily something for when you're playing on your own. It works great when playing chord melodies, or maybe just you and a singer too. But it doesn't work so well in a band scenario because everyone would have to be flexing the time at the same moment.

💡 This can happen with a band is really super tight! Rolling Stones & Led Zeppelin are great examples of bands who used to manipulate time organically, as a whole group.

But that's a lot harder to do and requires loads of listening. The band will really need to be in sync!

The Story :)

I have a bit of a story for you. I learned it from a particular teacher back in the day! If you've seen the video in this lesson, you might notice I'm holding a classical guitar. It's because the first time I encountered this idea, I'd been studying classical guitar at the Tasmanian Conservatory of Music.

I was probably in my third year, and there was some problem with the teachers. I think a new teacher took over as the director of the Conservatorium. He changed the entire board, and he got his wife a gig teaching guitar!

The head of the strings department, Christian Vidovich, an incredible cellist, reassured me that this lady who was about to take over was really, really good. He told me I'd learn a lot from her!

The first lesson arrived, and I was a little bit apprehensive. The teacher sat down and said: "you haven't done any Bach Lute Suite. You should have a go at doing this." Then she plopped down this Bach Lute Suite in E minor, which was really difficult.

She said I should learn it before coming back the following week. So, I tried to get it under my fingers, which was very challenging! In fact, this was like 25 years ago, and it's still really difficult to play!

😅 I'm struggling with it a bit! But hopefully, I can play just the very first bit well enough to demonstrate what I'm talking about. Let me have a go at playing it for you. Check out the video lesson to see how that goes! :)

When I played it back for my teacher Amanda Dahan after having that one week to practice, she just looked at me and said: "Yeah, well. You've got the notes mostly right." I was a bit disappointed. What did she mean? I've got the notes right, so what else was left to do?

At that point, I didn't even know I trusted her as my teacher. I wasn't sure how that would work, but then she picked up her guitar. She played that same thing, and it was beautiful - so much better than what I'd done! Ok, so there was something really missing in my playing! What was it?

She explained that I needed to think about the dynamics and the speed. Amanda told me that I needed to put some feeling into my playing. Not just trying to play mechanically what's written on a page!

💡 Today, I think I understand this with classical guitar. It's your interpretation of the song that really matters!

You have to really learn to find your feeling and put it into the music. Otherwise, you won't have the chance to express yourself within the music. And I think now is the time to start dabbling with classical music if you haven't!

As we wrap up our beginner lessons, it becomes essential to start exploring your musicianship. That's how you'll become a great guitarist!

The Lesson!

Ok - so, I asked my teacher exactly what she was doing there! She mentioned the falling leaf: "think about when the leaf falls. There's this little moment where the leaf stops before it kind of accelerates! So, it's really quiet, and then it goes down and gets louder and faster. Then, it goes back up and soft, and it goes down, it gets louder, it gets softer."

Wow, eh? :) Thing is - when you apply that to music, it suddenly gives it this real dynamic sense. Particularly going faster and louder, and then slower and softer! It really is a powerful thing.

This falling leaf metaphor is really beautiful for thinking about expression in music. It works great for classical guitar, but not only!

💙 I really want to give a shout-out to Amanda Dahan! She's the teacher who taught me this idea and lots of other stuff. She turned out to be a really great teacher, and I learned an awful lot from her!

Music = Expression!

Part of the game of playing guitar, and probably any other instrument, is to manipulate the way you express that to allow yourself to get through any particularly tricky passages.

💡 Most Baroque music is really difficult to play, but you can experiment with this trick with other styles as well. In this video lesson, I demonstrated it to you using my arrangement for Yesterday by The Beatles. Can you spot how it sounds different?

Using this dynamic movement doesn't have to be super obvious or extreme! You don't want to go from very quiet to very loud, or you can end up sounding a bit awkward.

The point here is to find ways of expressing yourself through music. When you can get in touch with that sort of thing, your musical game will step up hugely!

Following Grade 3? Next, we'll learn all about your guitar amp!