At one place I teach at, there’s a class where the students have to perform a new tune every week and improvise on it. I…

Sometimes, it’s good to get lost in the land of Nerd. To do things for no reason other than that it might be interesting. To…

The immersion I like is the kind that seems pointless. You don’t know if what you’re doing will result in anything. Probably not, but you…

Use three guitars: The guitar you normally play. A guitar with very heavy strings, high action. A guitar with very light strings, low action. Switch…

Years ago, I wrote myself a little chord book to find some new chords. I wrote out all the possible combinations of 4 different notes…

A pedal point is a simple harmonic device which can add tension to your chord progressions and arrangements. Here are four examples: You can feature the pedal…

Don’t listen to things too much. Don’t go over and over it. Don’t prepare too much. It’s like when you take a bite of some…

Here’s a polyrhythm of 9 over 6, or crotchet triplets in 3/4. Try singing Someday My Prince Will Come whilst tapping the polyrhythm somehow. Once…

Here’s a classic 5s rhythmic lick, but in 7/8. The second line is the same as the first but it’s just a different way of…

In this lesson, I’m going to show you an easy way to keep track of your ideas. In my old music notebooks, I used to write…

I do Omnifocus and GTD, I write these blog posts in Markdown with nvALT, which is synced via Simplenote to Dropbox, enabling me to freely…

Two notions for you to entertain: Painting is adding. Sculpting is subtracting. Adding means bringing things together. Perhaps there’s a sense of starting from nothing….

Here’s a polychord of E and Eb major that I’m particularly fond of. RE writing: I use a diagonal line to indicate a slash chord…

Think of your job as taking the audience on a little tour of the piece you’re playing. Point out interesting bits. Tell tall stories. You…

Pong, if you remember, was that awesome game on the Atari that simulated table tennis. Here’s a little musical exercise where you use the edges…

A bar full of 16th notes in 3/4 can be grouped two ways: Three groups of four Four groups of three This post deals with…

Stop whinging. Put some glue on your chair. Sit down. And get to work. Every day. For years.

This is a simple idea that will help you play with clarity. You improvise an idea over two bars of Gm7 and then transpose the…

Should I do A or B? It doesn’t matter. Do either. Then you’ll know which you should’ve done.

Yesterday’s post was born out of thinking about leaving space. I was going to write ‘Leave more space’ in the book but ended up just…

          Now you see it, now you don’t

The players are set up in a semi-circle. A woman sits alone at a desk at the front. Still. She says nothing for the first…

I Loooooove reading about the mindset of sportspeople. I especially like the reading about the preparation, practice, focus, psychology, and so on in one-on-one sport. Boxing,…

There are several ways to transform motifs: Repetition Sequence Displacement Inversion Diminution Augmentation Retrograde Extension Fragmentation Transposition And you could combine any number of these…

There are schools of thought that use smatterings of Eastern philosophy, diagrams of the 7 buckets, blooming flowers, paths, routines, approaches, methods, long term goals,…

I love artists’ sketchbooks. The quick explosion of an idea. Captured on a page.

Maybe you have a boss. Lucky you. You can give over that part of your purpose to someone else. They’ll give you the answers to,…

Creative things happen quickly. You get an idea, it’s got energy, you need to act. Now! Do it, finish it. Put it out. Move on….

You get to notice things about people through teaching. One interesting thing is how people respond to a challenge that’s beyond them at that moment….

Kthxbye

Do you have problems with timing? Count yourself in. Usually the people that have issues with rhythm, timing and so on, just launch into playing…

Lurking within the tunes that you already play are ideas waiting to be used. Take the standard Night and Day for example. A common way…

In the key of C major, the primary dominant is G7 Secondary dominants are dominant chords that resolve to all the other chords in the…

Have an element of randomness to a part of your practice. This can take the form of just saying yes to any gig that comes…

Three layers: Bass note Guide tones Colour tones. E.g., this G13 voicing: 3 X 3 4 5 5, or this one: X 10 9 10…

Here’s an idea using the Harmonic Major scale’s third mode. The formula for that is: 1 b2 b3 b4 5 b6 b7, which might be…

The scene is the people. It is not 52nd Street or music college. Those are places. Usually there will be lots of like-minded people there….

To everything. ‘Please stab yourself repeatedly in the eye with this courgette’. Apart from that. Here’s an example: Cliff Richard calls you for an audition….

Here’s a little exercise with triplets and eighth-notes. The idea is to play this polyrhythm of 3 over 2, and 2 over 3, but I…

Do more daydreaming. It’s good for you.