Guitar Lesson – July 15th, 2008

After a week off I’m now back into the swing of things with my guitar lessons. Today’s lesson was in two parts.

The first part was reinforcing what I had learnt from the previous lesson and secondly I was introduced to the concept of shifting lead melodies from one scale type to another.

I tell you, I’m finding all of this lead guitar work a bit daunting at times.

When I started teaching myself guitar I never set out to be a lead guitarist, just to become really good at chords and strumming different rhythms.

I wanted my guitar playing to be focused on writing songs and being able to jam with others at any level. However, by focusing more on my lead playing I’m finding that it’s helping me with harnessing melodic ideas.

The way I see it, is that a song is made of three distinct parts

1. Lyric – What is sung
2. Melody – How it’s sung
3. Arrangement – The rest of it

Over the years of playing guitar I’ve spent most of my time working on the skills needed to produce great arrangements for songs but not enough of that time was spent gaining skills in coming up with good lyrical and melodic ideas.

For a long time I was under the assumption that you have to have a good chord progression for a melody to present itself.

While at the end of day there are no rules to writing a song, one of the things that needs to be avoided at all costs is thinking of your songwriting in terms of “absolutes”.

There is no one way to write a song.

Sure, there are some ways that work for a particular individual more than others but no one way to do it.

My guitar lessons are an exercise in unlearning some bad habits I’ve picked up along the way. This is what happens when you start knowing what it is you don’t know about your craft.

How can you do your process differently? What facets of your songwriting can you unlearn?

Those are the questions you need to ask yourself. Sometimes what you unlearn is just as beneficial as what you do learn.

Until next time, happy writing,

Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician

Keywords: guitar lesson, songwriting, songwriter, writing, songwriting zen, songwriting tip, songwriting idea, songwriting help, songwriting blog, corey stewart

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