My good friend and Stellar Ego frontman Guy Prandstatter is on a mission to write 100 songs in 100 days to inspire others to make a difference.

Few people I know have pulled themselves through adversity the way Guy has, and every day he tries to inspire positive change in the world. Lucky for us, we get to watch him work for 100 days.

Writing a song is pretty hard, it sometimes takes me weeks, so to knock one out day after day is incredibly tough. To help keep the creative juices flowing, Guy has recruited some of his friends along the way to accompany him. Yesterday, for song #26, Stellar Ego got together and came up with “The Skin I’m In.” Guy is on guitar and vocals, accompanied by Danny (the drummer) on electric ukulele, Russ (the bassist) on piano, and yours truly on mandolin. Here it is:

I’m working with guy on another song today, and will hopefully be involved more over the next 72 days. Learn more and follow along by taking any of these links:

Website: iamthedifference.org
I Am The Difference YouTube Channel
I Am The Difference Facebook Page
Stellar Ego Facebook Page
Guy Prandstatter on Facebook

I first used this technique when studying J.S. Bach’s Suite No. 1 for cello (BWV 1007), which is also a popular piece for classical guitar. Two-thirds of the way through the Prelude of Suite No. 1, there are a few measures of scales, starting with Examples 1 and 2 below. These are simply D Major scales, starting on G.

Click on any of the images for larger, easier to read notation. You may also download all four examples on a single PDF.

In Ex. 1, we play the scale in a traditional, linear fashion.

In Ex. 2, we play the same scale but play only one note per string (use the TAB for proper fingering). Pay attention to the 3 note groupings.

To get the best harp-like effect, hold down each note as long as you can. Use the open strings to position your hand for the next two fretted notes. I think of the open strings as pivot points between each grouping of notes, allowing me to shift my left hand up and down the neck to the best place to play the next group of notes.

Open strings are very important when using this technique, but sometimes the right notes aren’t available as an open string. This is especially true once you start using scales with several accidentals. The first two examples utilized the open E, B, and G strings. What happens when the scale allows for fewer open strings?

In Ex. 3 we look at an E Major scale that uses natural harmonics to add open strings to our scale. Ex. 3a is a little easier to play. The harmonic for A can easily be played with your left hand. Ex. 3b rings out a bit more, but it trickier to execute. By moving your left hand down to first position to play the G# and F# you allow the A to ring out longer, and playing the final E harmonic with your right hand creates a rich, ringing cluster chord.

Finally, Ex. 4 is a more complex use of the technique as I used in an arrangement of Elliott Smith’s “Everything Means Nothing To Me.” The original recording is done on piano with a sustain pedal, allowing each note to ring out. I wanted to recreate that on the guitar. Here’s the opening line:

First, notice that there are actually two voices in this line. On piano you might play one voice per hand. Guitarists, however, have to figure out how to allow one voice to ring while the other is being played, otherwise it will just sound like a single line. This is another reason the harp technique is handy.

Example 4 is perhaps more tricky on the right hand, requiring some odd finger picking patterns that are anything but intuitive.

Here’s a video of me playing “Everything Means Nothing To Me” by Elliott Smith. Throughout the entire arrangement, I tried to sustain chords and play open strings whenever possible to create a harp-like effect.

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If you found this lesson helpful, please see my other guitar related posts, and check back occasionally for more Woodshed Wednesday free guitar lessons. I am also available for private guitar lessons in NYC or via Skype.

Calley Bliss and I will be performing a last minute show this Saturday, January 14, at Brooklyn’s Goodbye Blue Monday.

We’ll be playing music we’ve been writing for our latest project, When We Were Six. Our last show was in July, just before Calley took an opportunity that pulled her out of the city. Chances are, this will be our last show until we organize a summer tour. If you’re free, we’d love to see you!

We’ll be joined by Russ Flynn on bass and Dan Cray on piano.

Directions to Goodbye Blue Monday
RSVP on Facebook

Happy New Year!

I’m excited about 2012. Jill and I visited family and friends in St. Louis over the holidays and had a wonderfully exhausting time. We capped off the trip with a 17 hour drive with our cats, Grandma’s piano, and Grandpa’s rocking chair in tow, all successfully unloaded at 4am in chilly Brooklyn.

The pipeline is already pretty full for the beginning of the year…

In December I started playing with Shotcafe, a Spanish rock band that performs at least once a week way uptown, and I’ll continue to work with them well into 2012.

Collaborations! I’ve started some long distance co-writing with drummer Travis Whitmore for what we hope will be a new album this year. Additionally, Calley Bliss and I continue working on the project we started last Summer before she moved to Boise. We’re working on a tour for this summer.

Finally, I continue working with Dave Hahn on MusicianWages and a myriad of related projects. A couple of my articles will even be published in books this year. Once they’re in print, I’ll let you know!

Thanks for stopping by and for all your support in 2011. I wish you the best for 2012.

- Cameron

Like the rest of the music I sell, all of these albums were independently produced and distributed. When you pay for this music, most of the money goes directly to the musicians involved. The little bump in Christmas album sales helps us travel home for the holidays and spend time with our families. It’s sort of our way of earning a paid vacation.

Closer to Christmas by Montgomery Bruce (2009)
Available for download at:
iTunes / Amazon

Jazz fans will probably enjoy the jazz and bossa nova style of Montgomery Bruce. Closer to Christmas built upon the style of the Bruce’s debut, Bossa Noel, and created a wider variety of arrangements. Highlights include “The Christmas Song,” “O Tannenbaum,” and “Good King Wenceslas.”

Bossa Noel by Montgomery Bruce (2007)
Available for download at:
iTunes / Amazon

The first Christmas album I recorded, Bossa Noel found a good deal of success on iTunes when it was first released. It quickly made its way up the jazz charts before being the only independently released album in 2007s jazz Christmas feature. That same year the opening track, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” was added to iTunes’ Essentials Instrumental Christmas playlist.

Christmas from the Heartland by Dunham Van Durham (2008)
Available for download at:
Bandcamp / iTunes / Amazon

If you’re a fan of Americana or folk music, give this one a try. It’s entirely instrumental, with a chorus of guitars, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, and more playing familiar melodies over rich reharmonized accompaniment. My personal favorite is “Hark, The Herald Angles Sing,” and I think you’ll also like “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and a very nostalgic take on “Auld Lang Syne.”

Sounds Like Snow by Be Still (2009)
Available for download at:
iTunes / Amazon

Be Still was a side project for myself and Lauren Zettler, aka Lightyear. The first track we recorded, and possibly my favorite, was “Silent Night.” That set the tone for the rest of the arrangements, all a little melancholy and nostalgic. Along with the classics we recorded one of Lauren’s originals, the title track “Sounds Like Snow,” and Ray Charles’ “That Spirit of Christmas” which we all know from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy your holiday!

For this week’s Woodshed Wednesday, we’re going to talk about the about the absolute best way to learn music: Transcription.

Transcription is the act of learning a recording note for note. Through transcription, musicians learn not only the right notes on a recording, but also to emulate the time feel, articulation, and tone of the masters.

Here are 10 songs that make excellent transcriptions for beginning and intermediate guitarists. Some of these are fairly popular, others are not, but there’s something to learn from all of them.

10 Easy Guitar Transcriptions:

“Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream from Disraeli Gears

“Cissy Strut” by The Meters from The Meters

“Runnin’ Down a Dream” by Tom Petty from Full Moon Fever

“Oh, Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison off Roy Orbison – 16 Biggest Hits

“Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash off The Best Of The Sun Years

“Something” by The Beatles from Abbey Road

“Dig a Pony” by The Beatles from Let It Be

“Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses from Appetite For Destruction

“New Slang” by The Shins from Oh, Inverted World

“Pet Sounds” by The Beach Boys from Pet Sounds

To get the most out of transcription, first learn a passage by ear, then write it down. Both of these steps are very important for guitarists because more often than not, we learn music by simply being shown where to put our fingers. When we do that, we memorize physical movements on the instrument that produce sound. I believe this turns the guitar into a physical barrier between the music in our head and the music that we actually play.

Through transcription, we learn to break down that barrier. When we have to figure out a guitar part by ear, we must first really hear the notes being played, then find them on the guitar. By the time we can physically play the passage fluidly, we’ve already internalized the music mentally. Eventually we’ll be able to play our own musical ideas more immediately. Improvising becomes less about the licks your hand is able to play and more about playing the melodies in your head.

Writing the transcription down is also very important, for two reasons. First, you’ll learn every note on the guitar and start to recognize common melodic and rhythmic patterns. This helps tremendously with reading music. Second, it’ll be easier to learn the relationships between the melody and chords. This relationship is the foundation for improvisation in all styles of music. If you want to be a lead guitarist, you have to know what scales to play over each chord.

All along we learn to play like our favorite guitarists, adapt some of their style, and gradually create our own sound. Every great musician that has ever lived began by transcribing their favorite musicians. If all you do is transcribe, you will have everything you need to be a great musician. With the help of a good teacher, you can connect the dots a little faster and understand why guitarists play what they play.

If this is your first time transcribing, here’s a tip: Pause the recording immediately after the note you’re trying to figure out. Sing the note back, then find it on the guitar. You may have to go one note at a time for a while, but eventually you’ll be able to hear 2, 3, or 8 notes and play them back. It’s just a matter of honing your ear.

Whatever you do, avoid searching for the TABs online–not only will that defeat the purpose of transcribing, but they are often incorrect. It’s ok to make mistakes as long as you try to do it all yourself!

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If you found this lesson helpful, please see my other guitar related posts, and check back occasionally for more Woodshed Wednesday free guitar lessons. I am also available for private guitar lessons in NYC or via Skype.

This past week I got a nice surprise–my good friend, bassist Andrew Wilkins, was stopping by Brooklyn while on tour! It was one of those last minute bookings, but I gladly rearranged my schedule to spend some time with him.

Andy and I go way back. We actually went to preschool together, then middle school, high school, and college. We played music together in high school, supported each other as we tried to figure out how to play jazz, and both went to the University of North Texas in the fall of 1999.

I think the last time I saw Andy was at my wedding, 6 years ago! But like true kindred spirits, it didn’t feel like any time had passed at all.

Andy was playing with Trevor McSpadden and Western Automatic Music, a country/western swing band from Chicago.

Also at the show to see Andy was Danny Sher (pictured above), a fellow St. Louisan turned Brooklynite who played drums in the high school jazz band with us; Russell Holland, a guitarist that went to college with us; and my wife Jill, who needs no introduction.

Jill said it best when she leaned over to me part way through the set and whispered, “It’s so good to see Andy on bass again!” Yeah, it sure was. It’s really inspiring to see old friends doing what you always knew they were going to do.

Be sure it check out Andy’s new website and if you’re in the Chicago area, go hear him play some time: http://www.andrewdurandmusic.com

Last week I returned from a 19 day trip to Boise, Idaho, where I was teaching guitar classes at a private arts school.

Wait, let me back up for a moment…

Over the past year I’d been working with the lovely Calley Bliss, a talented vocalist and songwriter in Brooklyn. We’d been co-writing material for a new collaborative project, and generally just getting along as like-minded creative types.

This past June, the day after our first show together, Calley flew to Boise to interview for a job as the head of the Contemporary Music department at ArtsWest School. A couple days later I got an email from her letting me know she’d be moving to Boise. Oh no! I had mixed emotions–I was happy for her, but also sad that we wouldn’t be able to hang out and write together anymore.

A few weeks later I got an email from her titled, “I had to ask…”

ArtsWest needed a new guitar teacher. I couldn’t take the position, but after a little discussion I was hired to go to Boise and be a short-term (or long-term, depending on your perspective) sub. At the beginning of October I packed up my guitar and hopped a plane to Boise.

The experience was great. Teaching is one of my favorite ways to learn. Every student has his or her own way of approaching music, and you have to know your subject matter from all angles to be an effective teacher.

In my guitar classes we learned how to warm up with proper technique and used scales to learn every note on the guitar. We talked about what skills you have to learn to be a musician and the corresponding skills on the guitar. Whenever somebody would play an interesting sounding chord, we’d break it down and learn the name of the chord, and eventually learned how to find our own interesting chord voicings. Hopefully they were able to retain some of that information!

In addition to teaching the guitar classes, I subbed for jazz combo, drum, and bass classes when other teachers were on the road. On my last day I taught a masterclass on musician careers, drawing from the information Dave Hahn and I have been compiling on MusicianWages. All said and done, I had many opportunities to work with the students on all aspects of music.

Between all the teaching and lesson planning, Calley and I found a few opportunities to pick up where we left off and work on our own music. Over the next few months we plan on recording some of our new material, sending files back and forth across the country, continuing our collaboration online. I’ll be writing more about that as it happens.

I was even able to join Calley on stage for a performance at the school’s fundraiser. The band was comprised of other ArtsWest music faculty, including the great Kobie Watkins on drums. The headliner that evening was Ben Sollee, an amazingly unique and talented singer/songwriter/cellist. Ben sat in with us on a few tunes, and later performed a captivating solo set.

Now, I’m happy to be back in Brooklyn. It’s been a busy week catching up on practicing, scheduling rehearsals, and making sure everyone knows I’m back (I still want to play guitar for you!!). I’ve also been doing a lot of work on MusicianWages, which has some exciting things happening behind the scenes.

Time for more practice, thanks for reading!

The first, How To Find Work as a Gigging Musician walks through everything I know about developing professional skills as a musician and then finding work. It’s not an easy career by any means, but if you work hard and have a little bit of luck, it’s very rewarding way to make a living. That’s basically what MusicianWages is all about, so I’ve dropped many links in that article to help you find helpful resources from many other musicians that have contributed to the site.

The next article, Spotify From a Musician’s Perspective shares some of my thoughts on a new music service that allows you to listen to as much music as you’d like for very little money. As a result, the royalties paid to the artists and labels that own the music is very, very low. This is somewhat of a concern for me, not so much because of my own finances, but because it can potentially change the way our culture values music.

If you’re interested in either of those articles, please stop by MusicianWages to read them and check out the rest of the site while you’re over there. Dave and I have been putting a lot of work into it and are proud of the growing community of working musicians that stop by and discuss their own careers in music.

Here’s a video from last month’s performance at the Tea Lounge, featuring “Tributary” segueing into “The Bottoms” (@ 3:00). If you don’t recognize them by now, that’s Kenneth Salters on drums and Brad Whiteley on keys.