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Improvisation: Part 1
One of the first guitar teachers I ever had was John Tapscott. John was one of the biggest influences on me as far as deciding to make music my profession, and also helping me get a sense of artistic identity. John turned me on to the concept of improvising almost...
Improvisation: Part 2
Repetition is the mother of skill This is something that I mentioned briefly in the previous improvisation article...and also ties in with the “Power of Persistence” section as well. When you are working on improvisation at any level the ultimate goal is to try and...
Feeling Stale?
When I’m feeling like my ideas are a little stale, I have a few things to try. One is to start writing from a different musical place. I used to always start a tune with a chord progression. I would then arrange it into the style I wanted by sketching it on a...
On Composing: Part 1
Composing to me, is very much like telling a story, and I’ve found it really helpful to think of writing in this way. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. Each musical idea might represent a character of the story which may appear and reappear at different...
On Composing: Part 2
The Phoebe Buffet school of composing I would like to expand on something that I briefly touched on in the previous section on composing. While knowledge about the mechanics of music itself are important when writing anything...be it harmonically, melodically,...