Rick Stone Interviews on Guitarkadia

A couple years back, I spoke with Emon for his blog Guitarkadia.  I gave what I felt was a rather long (and possibly rambling) interview, but he did a fantastic job of editing and distilling it down to the essentials.  The first one deals with my beginnings and development as a player, the second focuses on playing and practicing the guitar.

Interview with Rick Stone - Part 1 from Emon Hassan on Vimeo.

 Interview with Rick Stone Part 2 from Emon Hassan on Vimeo.

Pat Martino - Both Sides Now

I just watched this video this morning and wanted to share it with you.  I've been a fan of Pat Martino's music for many years and more recently have several times had the amazing good fortune to go to his house to play with him and discuss his theories on music and the nature of the guitar, sacred geometry and many other topics.  As well as being a fantastic musician, Pat is an beautiful human being with a deep intellect and and an interesting story to tell.  Hope you enjoy it: 

Pat's autobiography Here and Now is also a great read and highly recommended!  Here are some other Pat Martino related links worth checking out: http://patmartino.com/ http://www.myspace.com/patmartinojazz   http://www.patmartino.com/Articles/GuitarPlayer_April_2004.pdf

Pat Martino and Rick Stone at Pat's house August 2008

Some Useful Ear Training Tools on the Web

Greetings Faithful Readers!

Every once in a while, I stumble upon some great tools on the web, so it would be selfish of me not to share them with you here.  Today we'll take a look at some great tools, mostly free, that when used regularly, will greatly enhance your ability to hear accurately:

IWasDoingAllRight

The ear trainer here plays a series of intervals which you try to play back on your instrument before it gives you the answer.  You can set a variety of parameters including which intervals to include in the test, how long to delay before giving you the next interval, whether to have the name of the first note displayed immediately, and even what transposition to use (for transposing instruments).  Very Cool!

http://www.iwasdoingallright.com/tools/ear_training/main/

MusicTheory.net

This wonderful FREE site by Ricci Adams has all sorts of great information for any aspiring music student, and also a ton of exercises to sharpen your music skills.  One of my favorites is the Interval Ear Trainer which plays inteverals that you must then identify.  If you get one wrong, it displays then displays the correct answer, and also keeps a running tab of how many correct vs. wrong answers and a percentage score.  Also check out his Scale Ear Trainer and Chord Ear Trainer.  He also offers an "app" version of the site which you can purchase for a small fee.  Ricci has made this site available for free for many years (and promises to keep it that way) but he does accept donations, so if you've found this site to be useful, please consider pitching in.

The Zen of Ear Training

Here's a great blog entry on ear-training that's worth the read.  http://blog.discmakers.com/2009/11/the-zen-of-ear-training-part-1/

Interval Madness Guitar Interval Game

Here's a fun little game that plays and shows the intervals on a guitar fingerboard and you have to choose the correct name http://www.hotfrets.com/chords/guitar_interval_game.asp.  Excellent for sharpening your visualization skills on the guitar.

Happy Holidays and I hope you have some fun with these!

Learning to Sight-Read Chords on the Guitar

This question came up on the rec.music.makers.guitar.jazz newsgroup and I realized as I was answering it, that it would be a valuable post for many guitar students.   Here's how I've taught this for years and it works!

1) Start off with REALLY simple material.  The good old Mel Bay Books or the William Leavitt 123 Complete are a good place to start.  After that, try moving up to more advanced material (classical pieces, jazz guitar chord solos, etc.)

2) Go SLOW at first.  Every time you encounter a chord, DON'T start trying to put your fingers on the notes one at a time.  Instead, quickly read ALL the notes bottom to top (or top to bottom) and VISUALIZE how this is going to lay on the fingerboard.  THEN play the WHOLE chord.

3) Another really good way to learn this kind of visualization can be done away from your instrument.  Go through one of the method books and make a flash-card for each new chord you encounter. On the front of the card write just the notes on the staff.  On the back of the card, make a fretboard diagram.  Practicing with these AWAY from your instrument will teach you to quickly see chords on the staff and VISUALIZE them on the guitar.  I've made a handy form you can use for this purpose which you can download as a pdf.  Take it to a Staples or Kinkos and have it printed front and back on a decent card stock, then cut it into cards (it's laid out 9 cards to a page).  Then just fill in the notes on the staff and the diagrams on the back. 

I hope that this takes the mystery out of reading chords.  It's not magic!  Just visual pattern recognition.  To avoid frustration, start SIMPLE.  Master one group of chords (say a half-dozen) so that you can recognize them INSTANTLY when seen on the staff.  Then build on that as you go along.  You can try doing things like writing your own song or solo using the chords you've learned and in a little while, they'll become like familar old friends!

Interview on Guitarkadia

Last year I did a video interview for Guitarkadia.  I had kind of forgotten about these until somebody asked me a question this week about something in one of them.  The interview is broken into two parts; Part One deals with my background and some of my musical influences.  Part Two deals with practice techniques and tips.  I hope that you'll find them useful.

http://guitarkadia.com/emon/jazz/interview-with-rick-stone-jazz-guitarist-part-one/

http://guitarkadia.com/emon/jazz/interview-with-rick-stone-jazz-guitarist-part-2/