Introduction


OK, it’s time. For years students, friends and professional acquaintances have been asking me to write down some of the principles of my teaching and for that matter I have thought of doing it for a long time, well…. that moment is at hand, I have procrastinated long enough.

I believe that my approach to guitar technique came about simply because I’ve always had a need not just to know how things work but why they work the way that they do. Teachers have always been generous with their instructions and have provided me with so much knowledge and food for thought that I will forever in their debt. The fact remains however that for me to function in the most efficient way was to understand the process of playing, not only the physical aspect but also and perhaps most importantly the mental aspect.

As young children we tend to learn things in a very direct way, the teacher instructs us to do things in a particular way and if we are good students we do it. If we follow those instructions carefully and consistently they become as natural to us as breathing. Hopefully these instructions are sound and will provide us with a very strong foundation for our ultimate goal, that being of course, the creation of beautiful and thoughtful music.

Unfortunately the ways in which we acquire knowledge and skills seem to change rather dramatically as we become older, even under the guidance of a good teacher. All of a sudden, we will be inclined to interpret what the teacher says and even worse, we tend to let emotion dictate our reason, thereby diluting the instructions of our teachers. Emotion is the essential ingredient of music and without that component music would become analogous to a candy without any flavor. However emotion has no place in the technical aspect of playing any instrument.

My goal in writing this document is to provide the means for identifying the emotional hindrances to sound technique (my readers might be quite surprised to find out where some of these traps exist), and hopefully the means to get out of the traps when you find yourself in one. In doing this perhaps you can free up the bulk of your conscious thought and put it to it’s most vital use “playing the music”.

This book is not primarily intended for beginning guitarists, nor is it intended to be a step-by-step instruction manual; there are many excellent talented and very thoughtful teachers who provide that service. Rather my goal is to hopefully give some insight into the relationship between our brains and our hands. More importantly possibly is the relationship that exists between our brains and the music that we are trying to produce on our instruments.

Jacob Salomons
August 2008
Calgary

Stay tuned ...........