Avalon Beat

The Avalon Beat Project will be going live this week!
On January 3, 2012 point your browser to www.avalonbeat.com and start rockin’ out!
Where you go with your guitar is your business. What you want to learn is up to you. Where you get it is (to the best of my knowledge) the world’s first and only complete online guitar method.
I’ll start you at the beginning and take you all the way through to expert.
Remember: www.avalonbeat.com
January 3, 2012.
You’re invited. Bring your guitar.
Don’t make excuses – make music!

One day, I sat down and took a long, hard look at my blog and realized two things: Firstly, I was doing the same thing everyone else in guitar blogdom was doing. I was writing random blogs on random subjects. Secondly, quite frankly I wasn’t accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish.
There was simply no point to the overall blog concept. Sure, each individual blog had merit, but they weren’t cohesive.
So I stopped writing.
And I thought about what a guitar should be versus what guitar blogs generally were.
Then it hit me.
We needed a real honest to goodness guitar method in the blogosphere. Something that would take someone from the very beginning stages of picking up a guitar all the way through to expert levels. There are thousands of sites, books and materials that all claim to do just that. But they don’t. These materials focus on rudimentary basics that never really progress or they just jump from subject to subject and technique to technique.
The type of music you want to play doesn’t matter. All techniques are valid in all styles. There is no rule that says you can’t two-hand tap in a country song. I say, “Learn it all!”
And that’s what I aim to do.
Teach you everything I’ve learned in 35 years of playing the guitar.
And I’ll throw in a bonus. If you have a guitar-related question, I’ll answer it. Leave a comment, send an email or leave a voicemail. Once a week, I’ll sort through all the questions and answer them. Try getting that from one of those other sites.
Where: www.avalonbeat.com
When: January 3, 2012
Don’t make excuses – make music!

When you spend so much time adding more shortcuts to the original shortcut that the shortness of the cut gets lost.
I once tried to teach guitar based on the CAGED method with no other preparation. And then I had to add a shortcut to learning notes because the class didn’t know notes. Then I added a shortcut to learning the strings so they could move the CAGED chords. After that, I added a shortcut to learning the scales that went with the chords that formed the CAGED method.
And so it went for the most un-successful week of my musical career.
You see, once I saw the logic behind the CAGED method, I too believed that it was too simple for anyone not to get.
Unfortunately, I forgot something. I forgot that I was playing for well over 20 years at the time and had a bunch of musical knowledge tucked away in my head that my beginning students didn’t have. To me, it was a no-brainer. To my students it was like sticking them in the middle of another country and telling them they had to speak the native language.
Shortcuts are very useful. And quite frankly, I use them a lot. But unless you understand the underlying theory and why the shortcuts work, then you’re just playing a sequence by rote and that makes it hard to take it and apply it to different situations.
So – I’ll extend an invitation to you.
Where: www.avalonbeat.com
When: January 3, 2012
Bring your guitar and we’ll start from the beginning and take you where you want to go. Don’t make excuses – make music!

First – there are licensing issues.
Second – no two students will want to play the same song.
Third – all songs come from the basics.
So – learn the basics and play what you want to play when you want to play it.
I speak from experience. I had a guitar instructor once ask me what “popular” songs I wanted to play. She was not familiar with the Neo-Progressive movement of the 1990s. And most of those Neo-Progressive bands I loved never sold enough to warrant sheet music. The end result? I played a ton of songs I didn’t want to play. Why? Because my instructor felt the compulsive need to teach me something contemporary.
Everyone has different tastes. I have studied classical, jazz, rock and am now attempting Spanish guitar. All of those influences come out when I play. And all of your influences should come out when you play. My friends used to call me Steve Rothery. I listened to a lot of Marillion back then and I tended to sound a lot like Steve.
Now, a symphonic metal idol has replaced the Great Rothers. And while Tarja Turunen isn’t actually a guitarist (she’s actually classically-trained singers), she has given me a renewed appreciation for my classical roots.
Is Steve still in there somewhere? Absolutely.
But it all started with basics. Basics that I could manipulate to emulate a Steve Rothery solo or a Tarja Turunen 2 octave vocal jump.
So I’m sending you a invitation to learn the basics and use them to play what you want to play.
Where: www.avalonbeat.com
When January 3, 2012
Don’t make excuses – make music!

What do you want to play?
Somewhere back in antiquity, a guitar instructor asked his student. That student grew up to be a guitar instructor that asked his student the same question – on and on until my guitar instructors asked me and I asked my students.
Just as there is a common thread in the question, there is a common thread in the answer. Normally, it’s “I want to play ____________” (insert whatever bands / styles are popular.) Any self-disrespecting student will say that the instructor that teaches him or her the songs he or she wants to learn is the world’s greatest instructor.
And a self-respecting student knows the answer is the exact opposite.
Learning songs is a great way to see how music is put together. But only if you see what you’re putting together. Could you imagine going to a lumber yard to buy wood to build a house? Where would you start? How do you know how long or short to cut the wood? How do you read the plans that you are following?
You get the idea. There are basics that go into writing a song. The most complicated song in the world started with basics.
It’s true, kids. You can play a song without learning the basics. For weeks or maybe even months my students argued and fought learning scales and chords. Until I showed them what they could do with scales and chords and how they became songs and solos.
You’re still reading, so I’m going to make the brash assumption that this interests you, too.
So, I’ll make you a deal. On January 3, 2012, go to www.avalonbeat.com and we’ll start with some of those basics and I’ll teach you how to build on them. I’ll even throw in a bonus: You can ask questions by calling a phone number, sending an email or leaving a comment on Avalon Beat. I will answer every guitar-related question.
Don’t forget – January 3, 2012 – www.avalonbeat.com.
Don’t make excuses – make music!

Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: As human beings, we tend to learn through repetition. If we keep repeating mistakes, then we learn to make them with fluency. If we learn from our mistakes, then the next time we do a task, we make slightly different mistakes. This process repeats until we get the hang of it.
On top of that, fingers, hands and arms have to develop “muscle memory” so they know where to go and how to get there.
If we combine the mental and physical, we end up with a ton of repetition to get to accomplish anything.
There are a few tricks that we can use to minimize the learning time – but basically, you still have to do a lot of repetition.
Come on along and I’ll show you all the tricks I’ve learned to minimize the time needed to master the guitar.
Where: www.avalonbeat.com
When: January 3, 2012.
Don’t make excuses – make music!