The tao of mad ass guitar how to unlock your potential

Answer – ‘Just stop doing it.’ In order to realise that you’re going into autopilot and plinking aroundaimlessly, you have to have the awareness of what you’re doing.. So, in this chapte

To Prometheus for the knowledge, Thor for the courage and Apollo for

the inspiration

TABLE OF CONTENTS

This is not a book full of lick ideas and exercises It’s not a technical ‘howto’ manual My intention was to give back to people something that weoften lack or something that we once possessed but lost along the way

As you dedicate yourself to learning the guitar, you’ll be beset by doubts,frustration and envy And that’s on the good days The temptation

throughout all the challenges you face is to direct your focus outwardsand to let your gaze fall on to what others are doing If you fixate yourattention on them you might pick up some of that magic for yourself Andit’s true, it does happen We all learn by observing the world around us.But sometimes we forget to come back and recognise what we alreadyhave

Take advice where you can get it Try anything and see if it works Butultimately, there is one thing I’d like to try and give to any guitarist ormusician that is more valuable than any fancy lick or piece of expensivegear Faith in yourself

Your mind, your body, your heart and your soul cannot tell somebodyelse’s story The only story it can tell is yours if you will let it Embraceyour nuances and idiosyncrasies and you’ll discover that, as long as youfollow your own path, there are no wrong notes

Ben Higgins

December 2016

I’m often asked how to do something This can be anything from ‘How do

I write solos?’ to ‘How can I get my hands working in synchronisation?’ Atthe risk of sounding like some smug, self-righteous, guitar playing ZenAsshole, the answer to these questions can be found in the questionsthemselves

flowed naturally, like the clear spring waters of enlightenment over therocky terrain of life Yep, that was something an asshole would say

Anyway, what I’m saying is that I wouldn’t be so mean as to throw you aterse statement masquerading as teaching advice and then bugger offinto the night, cackling like a madman However, do be prepared to

accept some black and white ideas that, in my opinion, help to cut

through the fog of indecision and help you to actually start making someprogress

So, to refer back to the title of this chapter, I want to draw your attention

to the idea that knowing what to stop doing is just as useful as knowingwhat to do Let’s say you have an issue with playing the same licks overand over again You’re bored of the way you sound and you want to startadopting some new licks Every time you pick up your guitar your handssoon start finding those familiar grooves and niches and before you

playing ‘Mustang Sally’ for the five hundredth time

Before we go any further, there’s nothing wrong with being a pub

guitarist and there’s nothing wrong with ‘Mustang Sally’ either But I’mgoing to use ‘humorous’ imagery and analogies throughout so you’dbetter accept it or decide here and now that you’re going to delete mybook, demand a refund and tell everybody you know what a big cockbrain I am and that they shouldn’t ever buy my crappy excuse for a book.That’s fine But you’ll never be able to quell that annoying little voice thatkeeps pestering you at night saying ‘But what if that book had all theanswers? Maybe we were too hasty in deleting it Maybe we’ll never getbetter at guitar now and then we’ll get old and die and it would all havebeen for nothing If only I hadn’t given up on the book!’

Righto So you’ve picked up your guitar and you’ve fallen into your usuallicks and moves How do you stop doing this? You’re beginning to seewhere this is going, right? Guess what the answer is You’ve got it

Answer – ‘Just stop doing it.’

In order to realise that you’re going into autopilot and plinking aroundaimlessly, you have to have the awareness of what you’re doing Self-awareness is absolutely your friend in all of this How can you correctsomething when you don’t know that you’re doing anything ‘wrong’ perse? That’s where self-awareness comes in Once you’re aware that you’renoodling around you can stop yourself

However, stopping yourself can be hard to do Why? Because this takesdiscipline It’s much easier to stay as you are, noodling away into

oblivion Much easier than taking control and redirecting your energiesinto something else But this is where I invite you to exercise some

discipline and physically stop yourself Stop playing Keep your handsstill and take stock of the situation

Done that? Good

Now, tell yourself to play something different I don’t care how you do itbut physically and mentally force yourself to play a combination of notes

if you stray too far away from your usual territory

Now how did that feel? Not so bad was it? You’re still alive All you didwas physically make yourself break out of your usual set patterns

Now you’re going to ask me ‘But how do I link pentatonic box positions

to modes?’ or some variation on that Don’t worry, you’ll get to that

That’s just details The key is making the decision That’s the hard part.That’s the bit that will stop you every time To arrive at that decisiontakes two things, which we’ve already encountered

Self-awareness and discipline

Self awareness is something that we can cultivate by taking more notice

of our actions and surroundings I view discipline as a slightly more

complex virtue that can be hampered by other contributing factors so wewill take a closer look at discipline in the next chapter

So, in this chapter we’ve discovered that it’s just as important to stopyourself doing something as it is to make yourself do something And all

it takes is that decision That’s some black and white thinking right thereisn’t it? Despite the harsh, Zen like approach it actually isn’t that bad.You’re not outside in the freezing rain, trying to catch flies with a pair ofchopsticks, wearing nothing but sandals and a Karate gi It’s just aboutrecognizing habits that keep you in stagnation and then having the mind

to change it there and then

So, when it comes to stopping bad habits, just stop doing it When it

comes to wanting to learn how to do something, just do it

When you cut away the fog of indecision and the analysis paralysis ofreading too many differing opinions, it really is just black and white

It’s all well and good for somebody to tell you to be disciplined but

there’s one thing that gets in the way of us sticking to our guns Thatannoying thing is called fear Now, when I talk about fear I’m not

describing that Fucking hell, why can’t my girlfriend look where she’s

driving - we nearly fucking died again! kind of fear I’m talking about the

silent, lurking phantom that rumbles away in your subconscious andsecretly steers you away from doing certain things without you realising

it You’re not aware of it as fear but fear it most definitely is

I call it the ‘What if?’ fear.

Let me give you an example of how it goes

You’ve come up with this really cool lick You’ve never heard anybodyelse play this lick before and you feel that if you could just nail this lickthen you’re going to sound like a total badass But right now, this lick isbeyond you It involves finger patterns that are totally unfamiliar to youand hell, you can’t even seem to play it through once without losing yourway But hopefully tomorrow it’ll sound better

So you go to it again the next day and it’s still tough There’s no visual oraudible progress yet but you’ll keep at it But by now, the doubt’s alreadybeginning to set in

By the third day, you’ve abandoned this stupid lick because it was ‘nevergoing to work anyway and I could have been spending my time on

something that definitely would advance my skills.’ With a degree ofresignation and maybe even a touch of sadness you go back to stuff thatfeels more familiar and trustworthy

What happened there was that the ‘What if?’ fear come along and wonthe battle Basically it all comes down to a lack of certainty and a lack oftrust in the process

‘What if I spend all this time practising this and it still doesn’t work?’This is the underlying fear that stops us committing to practising certain

The implication that accompanies that statement is ‘I would have wastedloads of time!’

And on it goes, a general buzz of doubt and uncertainty that stops usputting in the effort in case it doesn’t work That fear of wasting time isalso a big hanger-on as well What do we think the race against time isfor, anyway? Do we really think that a week or two spent on trying

something new is going to somehow scupper our chances of ever gettinggood at the guitar? Hell, two weeks is nothing in the grand scheme ofyour life You probably can’t even remember what you were doing twoweeks ago What seems so crucial and important now is just a memory intwo weeks’ time

Believe me, you won’t lose all your skills just because you try somethingnew The ‘What if?’ fear is irrational and it’s a sneaky bastard because itcreeps up on you without you realising it

However, guess what? Your new friend Mr Self Awareness is here toguard against Mr What if? Knowing this means you can acknowledge theexistence of that annoying fear but ignore it and just get on with the act

of practising or playing whatever the hell it is you intended

So, if everyone has been plagued by the ‘What if?’ fear without realising

it, then is it any wonder that people find it hard to exercise disciplinewhen that rumbling, treacherous bastard has been in the background,sapping away at our will? It’s no surprise that we look for safety in the

tried and tested licks and practise routines of our heroes Our sensei – the

ones who have gone before But what about these very heroes

themselves? Didn’t they become who they were precisely because theydid dare to experiment with their own ideas?

A young Dutch kid called Eddie may not have been the very first personever to tap his picking hand finger onto the neck but I’ll bet you dollars todonuts that he probably wasn’t aware of anybody else doing it at thetime so all he had to go on was his own instincts He stumbled onto

something that excited him so he followed it to wherever it led He

brought two handed tapping to the masses and caused millions of

guitarists since then to emulate him But imagine if hadn’t explored his

I think 2) is most likely

If you’re not sure whether you can do something or not, take heed that

no other guitar player ever had any guarantees either They had to

ignore the same doubts and wrestle with the same uncertainty If you’refeeling doubt it’s ok You’re in good company We all deal with the ‘Whatif?’ fear every day, in every aspect of life The thing is, if something

doesn’t work we will just keep going until we find what does

Bruce Lee had a great analogy for this process “One turn of the knobrarely unlocks the safe Each advance and retreat is a step towards one’sgoal.”

That leads us nicely on to our next chapter Read on, brave guitarist

When it comes to learning any musical instrument, or any new

endeavour for that matter, there is a vital component which is often

missing In the era of social media and endless blogs and videos givingaway advice (mine included) there is something which has dwindledaway in the hearts of our species Something which is key to our success

in anything

Trial and error

Trial and error is the willingness to try things out and keep trying untilyou find what works

‘no’, by the way) I really am just talking about applying it to your guitarplaying I’m sure that didn’t need spelling out but you never know thesedays, do you?

Nobody gets everything right first time Shit, who says we even deserve

to get it right straight away? Should we always miraculously hit upon themagic every time after putting in the bare minimum of work?

Hell no

It demeans everything you’ve ever worked for and anything in life worthdoing If it was easy it wouldn’t mean anything to you It’s not good

enough to expect to find all of the answers and apply it straight away.That’s expecting somebody else to do all the spade work for you and thenyou just show up for the last little bit Forget that approach

In the previous chapter we looked at how the ‘What if?’ fear stops peoplefrom putting in effort in case it doesn’t work out This directly affects

It doesn’t matter if you’re attending some prestigious music college andbeing taught how to read theory, how to compose, how to arrange, how

to construct a nuclear weapon I don’t care what you’re being taught orhow well you’re being taught because the real work is done by you It’snot my work or anybody else’s work This is your work This is where yousit your ass down somewhere and put pick to string

And don’t you even dare expect to get it right straight away Don’t youdare give up just because you’ve tried a couple of things for five minutesand didn’t get the result you wanted Ignore the temptation to put yourguitar down and disassociate on PornHub or FaceBollock or whatever it

is you run to as soon as you feel a tiny bit challenged Do the work I don’tcare that you didn’t master it in five minutes Keep doing it and the

answers will come

That’s right Zen Asshole is back again You’re transported to my templehigh up in the mountains and the winds are howling outside The snow isbeing blown through the air in angry swirls of billowing whiteness andthere might even be frost on your nipples Your teeth are chattering andyou’re shaking like a dog having a shit but Zen Asshole has demandedyou to push out a few more reps You do as he says because nobody

wants to refuse Zen Asshole The last guy who refused him was sent out

of the temple, the gates closing behind him, and forced to do push upsuntil his cock froze to the ground during the down phase of his threehundredth rep He’s probably still there Suddenly, working on bending

or hand synchronisation doesn’t seem so bad anymore

Back to the present moment and you realise that when you pick up yourguitar to practise, you’re probably sat on a comfy chair or on the edge ofyour bed, in a room with a roof over your head You realise that it’s not

so bad after all You’ve got time and space to put in some good, honestgraft without worrying about being sent out of the temple like FrozenCock Man If you try something and you’re not a virtuoso at the end of theweek, what’s the worst that’s gonna happen? You’ll practise some more.And some more You might even adjust some tiny little detail The wayyou hold the pick, the angle of your hand, the way you EQ your amp And

moments that you know only happened because you kept going

Remember the Bruce Lee quote from the previous chapter You had to gothrough all the previous steps to get to the step you’re currently standing

on There was no other way The mistakes led to the good stuff And

you’re glad that you didn’t give up like Frozen Cock Man

This next chapter might upset some of you but hell, if you’ve made it thisfar without giving up on me and my wankerish ‘teaching’ methods thenyou’ll probably be ok with this section This chapter is going to deal withconviction

No, I’m not talking about people getting handed a suitable sentence forcriminal acts (although I’m sure you could think of some guitarists whocould be charged with indecent playing…) I’m talking about playing withconviction Putting passion into it Giving as much juice to the tone asyou can with the way you fret the notes, the way you bend the stringsand the way you strike with your picking hand Playing like the guitarbelongs in your hands

One clue that you’re having issues in this regard is what I call ‘polite

playing’ You pick everything at the same, medium velocity as if you’reafraid the pick might protest at you if you dare try to hit any harder I’lltell you now; the pick is not going to jump out of your hand, get in yourface and start a social media campaign about what an abusive owner youare and how you should be hounded out of your job The worst thingthat’s going to happen if you try to pick with a bit more gusto is that youmight drop it on the floor

If, for some reason, your floor is covered with disgusting filth like usedhypodermic needles, human faeces and, God forbid, Kanye West cd’s,then I can understand why dropping your pick might be hazardous toyour health but chances are, the pick slipping away from your delicategrasp is no more than a minor nuisance So, stop being a fairy about itand start hitting the strings with some balls Use that pick and dig in.Unless you want to sound like a flaccid gimp you need to cultivate somedynamics in the way you pick

Pick dynamics come from being able to move from a soft touch to a pinchharmonic to a series of staccato upstrokes and other cool stuff like

raking Don’t be afraid of using your thumb and forefinger to move thepick around for certain tonal effects as well That piece of plastic (or

By the way, everything I’m talking about can apply to you players whoeschew the pick entirely We all know how dynamic the amazing Mr JeffBeck is with just his thumb and fingers So, regardless of whether youpick or whether you finger, read on with equanimity

A big part of our tone comes from where we strike the string Closer tothe bridge will typically sound brighter and thinner Closer to the neckwill be fatter and less distinct In the middle somewhere you’ll find atonal sweet spot that you may want to exploit

The angle of the pick itself will also affect the sound Hitting the stringwith the full side of the pick will yield the biggest, fattest tonal response.Hitting through the string with the edge will produce a brighter ‘chirp’.Combining the effects of the pick angle with the factors mentioned in theprevious paragraph will contribute a whole load to your overall sound as

a player

Most of us will spend the majority of the time playing in a certain placeover the strings, ie; over the middle pickup or closer to the bridge or theneck which will colour the sound How we then hold the pick itself willcolour the sound even further So you can see how the old cliché abouttone being in the player’s fingers actually does have some measurabletruth to it And that’s just one hand we’ve talked about We haven’t evenlooked at the different ways in which the fretting hand manipulates thestrings

So, if you hold your pick with the view that it’s just the tool that makesthe strings ring then you’re totally missing out on why people are able tomake the guitar sound so badass That thing isn’t just a conduit betweenyour hand and string It isn’t merely a necessary but unremarkable

device to replace your fingernails No, it is a passport to tone sculpture.How do you start getting the best out it? This is where the previous

concepts of the ‘What if?’ fear and trial and error come into play

Whenever you try to alter your approach to the guitar you’ll nearly