Teach yourself guitar and piano with tablature and KlavarScript

Originally published in FoT Issue 106: Jan-Mar 2006

Despite being an old dog, I am always ready, willing and able to learn new tricks. As if there wasn’t enough clutter round here already, I even bought a rather nifty electronic keyboard, so for this issue, just to get a bit of a theme going, I thought I would explore the world of online music lessons. My first instrument is the guitar, which I have been playing since I was seven, self-taught except for an enjoyable couple of terms at evening classes back in the Sixties and occasional workshops at festivals. And apart from the version of ‘Anji’ our evening school tutor Stephanie Syers taught us and which has stood me in good stead as a party piece ever since, I have never learned more than when sitting as close to the front as possible in small folk clubs, watching the hands of Davy Graham, Isaac Guillory, Martin Simpson, I could go on but you get the picture. Invariably I was also enjoying myself.

The “Passion For Jazz” website is a bit dry and even a bit daunting when it comes to music theory, especially when you see a page full of chords written in real music notation, but fortunately it has several handy diagrams and charts about harmony, chords, the circle of fifths and so on. And it has very useful virtual guitar and virtual piano chord finders. With these you click on the chord name on the page and you get a graphical display of that chord for guitar or piano. Alternatively you can click on a few notes on the virtual piano keyboard or guitar fretboard and find out what that chord is called. Nice. The “Jazz Guitar” website is even better, because a bit more thorough and dare I say generous in the information it shares. There are highly informative essays about such things as jazz guitar chord theory, blues chord progressions and guitar warm-up techniques. And of course a virtual chord finder. You have to be online for these chord finders to work, but “Piano Chord Helper” is downloadable and free so you just run it on your PC and tell it which chord you want, for example F#min6/9 (!) and it shows you where to put your fingers. If you have a MIDI compatible sound card it even lets you hear what it should sound like.

There are plenty of guitar lessons for the picking (sorry!) at sites such as “Acoustic Guitar”, the online version of a US-based magazine. The lessons from the past year’s issues come in a variety of styles, such as clawhammer, jazz, and so on. I was particularly interested to find a lesson focusing on open tunings. David Hodge, the author of the article, writes “...exploring different chords and chord voicings can help you find new approaches to songwriting and arranging, and trying an alternate tuning, which will immediately make you search for new chords, is a good way to make you think and experiment. And that’s always a good thing.” I entirely agree. The lesson talks you through a very simple tuning, EADF#BE, which is one which I have not unreasonably spent most of my guitar-playing life ignoring, yet which surprisingly has quite a lot of potential. After half an hour with the lesson I was noodling along - teacher’s words, not mine - with ‘Handsome Molly’, trad arr Hodge, and a jolly good time was had by all.

Another good site is the ubiquitous “Mel Bay's Guitar Sessions”, which obviously wants you to buy as many of the zillion Mel Bay books as you can, yet is generous enough to give you a free online edition which again covers a variety of styles, jazz, resonator, classical and so on. Some of the lessons are mere tasters for the books, but more usefully there is a whole series of lessons on guitar scales, positions and shapes, or a complete guide to French polishing for the acoustic guitar, written by a luthier from St Louis, Karl Markl.

Mel Bay’s site has links to numerous other Mel Bay sites - Guitar People, Mel Bay Downloads etc - which are also worth exploration but one section that particularly caught my eye was “Tab Rehab”. This is dedicated to weaning guitarists such as myself off of tablature and on to “proper” music notation. Point of order! A noble sentiment I am sure but I’m afraid there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Now if you can give me something like tablature for the piano... Fortunately help is at hand. “Klavarskribo”, or Klavar Script, notation is a Dutch invention which is much easier to read than standard notation. Just like tablature it gives a graphical display of your instrument and the direction in which you are playing, so you don’t have to make that mental leap from what you see on the page to what you do with your fingers. All very decadent and symbolic of our short attention span age I am sure - except tabs have been going since the Renaissance and Klavarskribo was designed between the last two World Wars, so there is no need to apologise for using them. I have not yet found a free tab writer, although there are plenty of reasonably priced ones out there, but I have found an excellent free program which enables you to open any MIDI file and it appears in Klavar form which you can play on screen or print out. You can even edit it, or write your own pieces from scratch.

Finally, I must give a mention to the “Folk Map”. Jim Lawton, who edits “Filofolk”, a folk music club and event listing for West Yorkshire, has created a highly useful site - as long as everyone keeps it up to date. Basically it is a giant Google map, into which you can stick virtual pins to signify where there is a folk club. You can also add times and contact details. The afternoon I added the Ram Folk Club in there were already quite a few, and they are growing daily, so hopefully by the summer I’ll be able to see where the best clubs in Dorset and Cornwall are. You have to register but it is quite painless and of course free. Now, on with the practice.