The EAR-BASED MUSIC/GUITAR Course

Please refer to the concept page to know more of my approach: Concept

I call the course music/guitar because it is around 70% about music in practical terms and because I play guitar, I can show you how to put the material that you’ve just learnt to hear on the guitar with a minimal guitar technique. I am convinced that the lack of understanding about how music works is the main reason why people get stuck or gave up playing guitar (or any instrument). That’s why the focus is on music and not the guitar. Furthermore, rhythm is the foundation of pop (or jazz-based) music and needs to be dealt with thoroughly.

This course will develop your skills in guitar accompaniment. Accompaniment means “something that complements something else”. Singers or instrumentalists can be accompanied by a whole orchestra and the accompaniment gives them the basic foundation of music. With that in mind, as an accompanist, you need to know how music works to be able to provide that musical foundation to the singer or instrumentalist. Guitar is an outstanding instrument for accompaniment thanks to the warmth, intimacy of its sound and its percussive quality to deal with different rhythmic styles.

If you always wanted to play the guitar your own way, are from 30 years of age and have an appreciation for Vietnamese and English oldies, you might want to take up this course. For you as a person with other commitments than music, the main advantage of the course is:

• Help you to understand how music works in practical terms and set you up for further musical journey.
• Exercises are in 5-minute chunks and deal mostly with developing your musical ear so that they can be practiced anywhere without the guitar and don’t take you 1 hour at a piece every day.

Other benefits of the course for you are:

• Set you up in thinking as a musician, not only as a guitarist.
• You work on simple but deep principles.
• You hear as much as possible and play as little as necessary (play the essentials).
• You look at 100 song examples at different music perspectives, learn to ingrain the sound of standard chord progressions through pop hits so that you can comfortably apply them and develop a sense of rhythmic complexity

• You can provide guitar accompaniment your own way because you're equipped with various harmonic and rhythmic concepts that you can pick and put them together to your taste to create interesting accompaniment. Guitar is foremost a rhythmic instrument and rhythm is the foundation of all great playing. The deeper you understand rhythmic concepts, the better you play. Another key for an effective accompanist is a great knowledge of chord movements. Hence the focus is on rhythm and harmony.
• You will have a musical knowledge and ear at an upper-intermediate level and be completely able to efficiently study music further by yourself to find your own musical voice.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

You’ll know,

• what makes a song major or minor
• what is a song key, key signature, how to transpose keys and the relationship between a major key and its relative minor key
• how to construct chords built on those major and minor tonalities (scales)
• how to read basic chord symbols and rhythm in a lead sheet

HOME PRACTICE

Listening practice

• Listen to major and minor scales to clearly differentiate the tonal quality.
• Listen to song examples to see whether you’ll know it’s in major or minor key.

Guitar practice

• Play grip triad shapes and hear the chord quality while playing.
• Play only the bass note and another note which defines the quality of the chord. Try to hear this interval.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

It’s important to be aware of the song forms from the beginning. This will help you to capture the whole picture, draft the harmonic movements and control your playing better later on, to name a few benefits. Then, harmonically, at the beginning stage as this, go along with the song and try to capture the release and tension points. Those are the turning points harmonically, the blacks and whites. You need to able to recognize them clearly before applying other harmonic colors on the song. This lesson will help you to

• understand the common song forms and listen to songs while keeping track of their form
• familiarize yourself in hearing songs in (4-bar) phrases, which will be very helpful later on in many ways including creating harmonic movement
• outline basic harmonic tension and release by using three chords in each tonality to accompany singing

HOME PRACTICE

Listening practice

• Listen to song examples while keeping the general song form in mind.
• Listen to song examples while keeping track of 4-bar phrases, trying to recognize whether the song is moving toward tension or release.

Guitar practice

• Play only 3 main chords for one song example. Take 4-bar passages and pay attention only to the release and tension points (ignore the rhythm). Trying to hear and decide whether to stay or move from the moment release and tension points.
• Play each song in at least 3 different keys.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

Rhythm is the soul of jazz-based music (jazz, pop, rock, jazz etc.). That’s why the drum set that we’re so familiar with is called jazz drum. And yet, rhythm is often taught in a very shallow manner which aim is apparently makes the students count and play correctly but not feel and play interestingly.

The purpose of learning different rhythm feel from this lesson on is to make you think rhythmically and understand how to make your rhythm playing more interesting. It is NOT about learning to play a particular rhythm, although you’ll be able to play the most popular rhythms. Being able to play is just a result of your understanding of rhythm.

We’ll also start by dealing with the 6/8 Slow Rock rhythm which are used in songs such as When a man loves a woman, House of a rising sun, What a wonderful world, We are the champions etc. It is often taught in the first guitar lessons as it is considered to be easy and used in countless Vietnamese love songs. The problem with “easy” in this case is it can easily become boring. This lesson will help you

• understand why rhythm is essential in jazz-based (pop) music and focus on rhythm will change your playing significantly in a better way
• know the essence of the 6/8 Slow Rock rhythm, the drawbacks of the common way it is taught and the basic ways to play this rhythm (listen to the drum: hi-hat and snare)

HOME PRACTICE

Listening practice

• Listen to the song examples while feeling the rhythm very strongly inside (if the drummer doesn’t lay out clear rhythm feel, imagine the rhythm accents and amplify them in your head and body).
• Play the rhythm in your head.
• Mouth drum the rhythm.

Guitar practice

• Play the rhythm the basic ways and change chords, slowly but smoothly so as to feel the steady rhythm inside. If you miss a chord at the first beat of a bar, it doesn’t matter, keep the rhythm going.
• Pick a few songs in this rhythm style, accompany your singing, use only three basic chords and transpose to other keys.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

We cannot talk about rhythm in jazz-based music without dealing with syncopation. Without syncopation, your playing can easily become repetitive and boring. Through this lesson, you’ll know

• what syncopation is, why it is important and can make your playing much more interesting
• how to play the 6/8 Slow Blues as an option for the Slow Rock
• how to play the 6/8 Bass lines to make your accompaniment more interesting
• how to syncopate the 6/8 Slow Rock feel

HOME PRACTICE

Listening practice

• Listen to song examples with elaborate bass line. Hear how this busy bass line is actually derived from the basics of the rhythm.
• Hear Vietnamese songs applying the slow blues feel. Listen to the bass pattern as anchor point.

Guitar practice

• Play only the bass in 6/8 Blues. Accompany your singing playing only the bass.
• Accompany your singing with syncopated 6/8 slow rock rhythm.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

Now that (hopefully) you’ve nailed down in your ear the 3 basic chords reflecting clear tension and release within a tonality, you’re ready to deal with the remaining 4 diatonic chords.

• You’ll extend your chord vocabulary and learn about the remaining diatonic tension and release chords.
• You’ll learn about general chord movements according to functional harmony and start to use all seven diatonic chords in a key.

HOME PRACTICE

Listening practice

• Listen to song examples and see whether you recognize other tension and release chords in a key.

Guitar practice

• Use the song examples in the previous weeks, now try to make your guitar accompaniment more interesting by injecting other diatonic chords.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

Now, it’s diatonic chords in real action. You’ll learn how these chords have been used in pop hits, creating nice movements between harmonic tension and release points and have become very common chord progressions. You’ll learn to nail down their sound through songs such as Let it be, Time after time, Blue moon, Stand by me, Hello, Autumn leaves, etc.

HOME PRACTICE

Listening practice

• Listen to song examples and try to identify passages with the common chord progressions
• Visualize the chord progressions (in chord symbols and guitar grips) while you’re hearing these passages.

Guitar practice

• Learn to accompany those songs with the common chord progressions.
• Play the songs in your head and try to hear and visualize the common chord progressions.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

If you accompany Vietnamese songs, sooner or later you’ve got to do the Bolero/Rumba rhythm. Songs such as Besame mucho, And I love her, Love me with all your heart etc. are also popular and used this rhythm. In learning to play rhythm, it’s much more important to learn how you hear and internalize the rhythm than just learn how to move your fingers up and down to save you through that rhythm. In this lesson, you’ll

• understand why the common way the Boléro rhythm is taught in fact brings an disadvantage
• learn the essence of this rhythm and use minimal guitar technique to express it
• learn how to syncopate this rhythm

HOME PRACTICE

Listening practice

• Listen to song examples in general and then pay attention only to the bass or the drum at a time.
• Hum a Boléro/Rumba song and hum the bass and snare drum sound along.
• Listen to song examples with syncopated Bolero passages.

Guitar practice

• Play only the bass. Play only the snare drum beat.
• Practice accompanying Boléro/Rumba songs with minimal guitar techniques.
• Practice syncopating the rhythm.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

Now that you’ve learnt about all 7 diatonic chords and how they function as tension and release points in a tonality. Through a dozen of pop hits, you’ve got into your ear nice and typical chord progressions within that framework. You’re now ready for another tool to connect those points more smoothly:

• Dominants and their functions.
• Creating harmonic movements using dominants.

HOME PRACTICE

Listening practice

• Listen to song passages until you can clearly nail down the “switch” points with dominants.

Guitar practice

• Introduce dominants into your playing while hearing them as switch points in your head clearly.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

I call this rhythm “Careless Whisper groove” so that you can have an idea of what I mean. You can find it in many pop ballads such as Every time you go away, It must have been love, Hey Jude, Let it be, Hello, Knife, Endless love etc. and also apply it to many Vietnamese love songs. You’ll learn

• the essence of the groove and see how it is varied and applied in many songs
• a few ways to play it on the guitar
• a few ways to syncopate it

HOME PRACTICE

Listening practice

• Listen to the song examples and pay attention to how the musicians make them groove and syncopate the rhythm.

Guitar practice

• Play only the syncopated bass to accompany your singing and feel the rest of the rhythm elements in your body.

This is another rhythmic feel found in many Vietnamese songs. It’s rather easy to execute the rhythm on the guitar but being able to play it in a relaxed manner and put in some syncopation to make it more interesting will require some study and practice.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

Now you’re going to stack one more diatonic note on the triads (3-note chords) that you know. You’ll see the chords within a key coming closer to each other when they become seventh chords and their sound becoming a bit hipper.

• The 7^th chords.
• Chord inversions.
• Combining chord inversions and dominants to connect chords, creating harmonic movements.

HOME PRACTICE

Listening practice

• Listen to songs using those transit dominants and familiarize yourself with the sound and the harmonic movement.

Guitar practice

• Try to apply chord inversions and dominants to a few Vietnamese songs and see whether you can create more interesting harmonic movements.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

Here you’re dealing with a 3/4 time signature. From time to time, you’ll come across a waltz and you need to build a firm ear and feel for this particular groove.

• The basics of the Waltz
• Syncopating the Waltz (Jazz Waltz)

HOME PRACTICE

Listening practice

• Listen to a couple of Vietnamese songs in Waltz which are usually not syncopated and try to sing along with a syncopated phrasing.

Guitar practice

• Practise syncopated Waltz songs and sing along.

In this week, we'll come back to the song form lesson and recap that a song is built up by melodic phrases. Those melodic phrases are not unrelated but they are questions & answers phrases, variations from a melodic idea etc. Now, we can look at harmony of a song not through separate chords but through harmonic movements. A harmonic movement comprises of several chords and we can "see" a whole song through only a few harmonic meovements.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

Most pop songs don’t change key. When it changes, an average listener might notice something (hopefully interesting) has just happened but can’t relate it to a key change in music. Key change is used to create structure and add interest to a song and you need to deal with it.

• Step-up key change
• Step-down key change
• Relative major/minor key change
• Modulating to the subdominant and dominant key
• Key change in a section (section B)

HOME PRACTICE

Listen to the song examples to get yourself familiar with sudden harmonic moves by a key change.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

The Bossa Nova has recently become popular in Vietnam when young musicians started to play 6/8 Slow Rock Vietnamese love oldies in this rhythm. You certainly have heard a few Brazilian songs without knowing it’s the Samba/Bossa Nova rhythm. It has a seductive groove, is often played in a “cool” manner but the harmony is more evolved (closer to jazz standards) and all of these together give the songs played in this style a romantic flavor suitable to Vietnamese love oldies. You’ll learn:

• the syncopated rhythm in the Bossa Nova feel
• the types of chords often used in this rhythm style
• ways to play it on the guitar

HOME PRACTICE

• Listen to selected jazz samba songs to get the general feel and flavor of this genre.
• Play a few Vietnamese love songs in this rhythm.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

You can employ a couple of techniques to create interesting surprise in the harmonic movement. Just as the listener is expecting the harmony to go to a certain place, you will make a twist in its direction as if you’re going to another key but just shortly, enough to surprise the listener, and then go back to the key.

• Borrowed chords (Modal interchange)
• Deceptive cadence

HOME PRACTICE: Try these harmonic techniques on the songs that you often play.

In this lesson you’ll learn how to listen to a groove of a song as a unique rhythm of that song. You’ll learn to identify the main sounds of the basic rhythm session (drum, bass, guitar or piano) and how they work together to make a unique groove for the song. Then, you’ll learn to find ways to emulate the rhythmic sound you hear on the guitar.

CLASSROOM DELIVERY

Now you’re dealing with the most flexible chord of all: the diminished seventh chord (Dim7 chord). In fact, you can derive major, minor and dominant chords easily from a Dim7 chord. It has a kind of “vague” sound, can be interpreted as different chords and thus, has a very flexible function. You’ll learn:

• How a Dim7 is built and why it is very flexible
• Different ways to use it to connect your harmonic tension and release points

HOME PRACTICE

Try to apply Dim7 chords in the songs that you often play. Use your ear and your taste to decide how much you want to put Dim7 chords in your songs because often, the problem is overuse of the Dim7 chord.

In the last two weeks, we’ll summarize all the things that you’ve learnt so far and show you how you can approach a new song that you want to play. It doesn’t matter how much you know but how well you can apply the things that you know. It’s better if you know one thing and find ten ways to apply it rather than know ten things but only one way to apply those things. We’ll also show you things you need to solidify in your hearing and playing and things you might want to explore next in your future musical journey.