Dear Guitarists,

 Isn't it time we stopped having a bad conscience when we use tabulature? During the golden age of lute music nearly everything was written down in tabulature. Why feel like a busker just because you're using the same notation system as John Dowland?

Standard musical notation has its advantages, with extensive practice you can hear a piece of music in your mind just by looking at the music so standard notation is better for people who need to sight read. However, if you want to memorise a repertoire of solo guitar pieces I would recommend Guitar Pro files combined with a video seminar.

And another thing, when we play with Celtic tuning or Hawaian slack tuning then standard notation isn't going to do you any good at all, there's only tabulature for it.

Here's my recipe for learning one of your favourite guitar pieces:

Firstly: Chose a piece that you really want to play. It's like embarking on a strenuous adventure with a new friend, it would be a shame to invest all that work in a piece that you don't really like. I must admit that I've started pieces in the past just because they were in a book that I'd bought, only to find that I didn't really want to play them. It's good for your character to learn pieces that you don't like just for the sake of the practice, but if you're happy with your character as it is, then take more time choosing your new pieces. If you don't know weather or not your technique is advanced enough for the new piece, make a video of your playing and send it either to me or to another guitarist whom you can trust.

Secondly: Write down your reasons for wanting to play it. There will be stages in your practising when your fingers hurt, when your friends phone to entice you out of the practise room, when the TV programme looks great etc. It's good to have a reminder why you got the guitar out of the case in the first place.

Thirdly: Before you start to work on a piece- let the piece work on you. Play it as back-ground music while you're doing other things. Listen to different versions of it. You'll be surprised how many good ideas you develop subconsciously.

Fourthly: Don't bite off more than you can chew. The seminars are planned for you to learn a bit at a time, don't be in a hurry. I know that this is cliché, but it's a good cliché. When you feel that a new section is nearly in your grasp, the trick is to attain the right level of concentration. I call it “The John Williams” zone, or “being pleasantly obsessive”. The fabulous thing is this; you can leave a new section alone for a while, subconsciously get your brain round it, even sleep on it, rest the muscles in your hands and “nail it” next time. There's no way that a section can get more difficult while you're not looking, even though you get better all the time so you're bound to win in the end. Pepé Romero says: “There are no difficult passages, there are only passages that need more time”.

Fifthly: Be nice to yourself while you're practising. There's a famous guitarist whose father used to shut him in a chicken coup on a hot day and only let him him out when he'd learned his daily quota. He's a fabulous guitarist but I can help thinking that his music reminds me of chicken coups on a hot day.

I like to polish the table, make myself a pot of tea and lay out a plate of biscuits. When you reach the point when you're sick of it ( and believe me, it will come) do something else for a while. Don't tell yourself that you've no business playing the guitar just because there are moments when it wears you down. (Imagine how full the divorce courts would be if we used the same criteria on our marriages.) Being worn down just means that you need a rest, nothing more.

Dear Guitarists,

Isn't it time we stopped having a bad conscience when we use tabulature? During the golden age of lute music nearly everything was written down in tabulature. Why feel like a busker just because you're using the same notation system as John Dowland?

Standard musical notation has its advantages, with extensive practice you can hear a piece of music in your mind just by looking at the music so standard notation is better for people who need to sight read. However, if you want to memorise a repertoire of solo guitar pieces I would recommend Guitar Pro files combined with a video seminar.

And another thing, when we play with Celtic tuning or Hawaian slack tuning then standard notation isn't going to do you any good at all, there's only tabulature for it.

Here's my recipe for learning one of your favourite guitar pieces:

Firstly: Chose a piece that you really want to play. It's like embarking on a strenuous adventure with a new friend, it would be a shame to invest all that work in a piece that you don't really like. I must admit that I've started pieces in the past just because they were in a book that I'd bought, only to find that I didn't really want to play them. It's good for your character to learn pieces that you don't like just for the sake of the practice, but if you're happy with your character as it is, then take more time choosing your new pieces. If you don't know weather or not your technique is advanced enough for the new piece, make a video of your playing and send it either to me or to another guitarist whom you can trust.

Secondly: Write down your reasons for wanting to play it. There will be stages in your practising when your fingers hurt, when your friends phone to entice you out of the practise room, when the TV programme looks great etc. It's good to have a reminder why you got the guitar out of the case in the first place.

Thirdly: Before you start to work on a piece- let the piece work on you. Play it as back-ground music while you're doing other things. Listen to different versions of it. You'll be surprised how many good ideas you develop subconsciously.

Fourthly: Don't bite off more than you can chew. The seminars are planned for you to learn a bit at a time, don't be in a hurry. I know that this is cliché, but it's a good cliché. When you feel that a new section is nearly in your grasp, the trick is to attain the right level of concentration. I call it “The John Williams” zone, or “being pleasantly obsessive”. The fabulous thing is this; you can leave a new section alone for a while, subconsciously get your brain round it, even sleep on it, rest the muscles in your hands and “nail it” next time. There's no way that a section can get more difficult while you're not looking, even though you get better all the time so you're bound to win in the end. Pepé Romero says: “There are no difficult passages, there are only passages that need more time”.

Fifthly: Be nice to yourself while you're practising. There's a famous guitarist whose father used to shut him in a chicken coup on a hot day and only let him him out when he'd learned his daily quota. He's a fabulous guitarist but I can help thinking that his music reminds me of chicken coups on a hot day.

I like to polish the table, make myself a pot of tea and lay out a plate of biscuits. When you reach the point when you're sick of it ( and believe me, it will come) do something else for a while. Don't tell yourself that you've no business playing the guitar just because there are moments when it wears you down. (Imagine how full the divorce courts would be if we used the same criteria on our marriages.) Being worn down just means that you need a rest, nothing more.

Here's what I can offer you:

Must-play classical music.

Please have a look at the music in the video section. I like to play with the natural acoustics of the room I'm in so I don't edit mistakes out (I can't really be bothered). However I'm sure you'll agree, there are classical guitar pieces that we all just have to play.

Flamenco for non-Spaniards.

There are flamenco artists in Huelva who say that the people in Cadis shouldn't really be playing and the other way round. There used to be Romas and Sintis throughout Spain who claimed that flamenco was there to protest the fact that they were denied Spanish citizenship and basic civil rights and that nobody else had any business playing flamenco. However Spanish Romas and Sintis have enjoyed full citizenship for the last thirty years so I suppose that means that nobody is allowed to play flamenco any more.

There are areas of flamenco that are better left alone. However classical flamenco music ( The music of Sabicas, Ramon Montoya, Pedro Soler and many others) is fair game. When I'm allowed to go through Spain confiscating guitars from people who I catch playing Beatles songs , then I'll stop playing flamenco. There are, of course, a lot of fair minded Spaniards who enjoy listening to classical flamenco music regardless of who's playing it.

I've not posted any flamenco on Youtube because you have to wait for a composer to be dead for 75 years before you're allowed to do that. Fortunately Pedro Soler, Pepé Habichuela, Paco Peña and Paco de Lucia are all alive and kicking, even the first master of the flamenco guitar (Ramon Montoya) hasn't been departed from us for more than 63 years.

Thanks to the work of brilliant people like Michael Haas in Berlin and Alain Fauchner in France we now have flamenco music in standard notation and tabulature, so there's loads of material for us to work on.

British Music

Let's talk about the English music of the 16^th century. Many musical scholars agree that at that time English music was the best in the world, and the main instrument was the guitar's grandfather , the lute. I can't decide if I prefer 16^th century lute music on nylon strings or steel strings, so I do both.

Our main man John Dowland even got a mention from William Shakespeare in a sonnet. How cool is that?!

Celtic Music

This is a chance to take a breather, most of the Celtic guitar music is transposed from the harp. In order to play a Celtic harp you had to have long nails, in order to grow your nails long you had to be excused from agricultural work, so most of the “harpers” had impaired vision. They made up for the simplicity of their music with haunting aetherial sounds.

John Renbourn, Bert Jansch Davy Graham, Martin Carthy and friends.

These are people who took their inspiration from 16^th century music and created a wonderful body of modern music. John Renbourn's “Lady Nothyng's Toye Puffe”, Davy Graham's “Angie” and Bert Jansch's interpretation of “The first Time ever” are must-play modern classics.

Rag time guitar.

If I hear more than two rag time guitar pieces on the same day then it gets on my nerves so much that I start to tear the wallpaper off with my fingernails. However “Weeping Willow Rag” and “Silver Swan Rag” by Scott Joplin are fabulous.

Beatles for Classical Guitar.

Rock musician's have a saying that if a song's any good then it works with one guitar. This was never truer than with Beatles' songs. You can play a tremulo to substitute the flute on “Hide your love away” or you can borrow the techniques of Narciso Yepes to pull off “While my Guitar gently weeps” and you can can get in to Fernando Sor's “Mozarty feeling” for the solo in “In my Life”. Isaac Stern says that to pull music off, you have to sing it in your head. I say that in order to sing music in your head you first have to sing it with your vocal chords. Here's your chance to break out of that “I'm-too-talented-to-sing” big-headed guitarist's image.







This is what we do:

First you choose a piece that you want to play. Then we make sure that we both have copies of the piece in question, bought and paid for, above-board and legal. (This is the best idea since nylon strings so we don't want anyone to torpedo it with copyright issues). Then I send you a guitar tutorial and a Guitar pro file. (There's a demonstration of a guitar tutorial in the video section and you can download the related Guitar Pro file.) Then we have video conferences together on Skype. You only pay for what you're satisfied with, so if you don't like how things worked out after our first piece of music then you don't pay anything and part as friends. If you want a second piece then you give me 20,00 € for the first piece, if you want a third piece you give me 20,00 € for the second piece an so on.