Know Your Neighborhoods, and function in the real world
As a professional guitarist, songwriter and instructor here in Nashville, I’ve spent years functioning in the real world performance and creative scenarios…recording studios and rehearsals, performances and songwriting sessions. And as a guitar and songwriting instructor, seeing exactly where and how people get stuck or confused, and then helping them gain clarity, skill and confidence in their playing and creating.
Inaccurate or incomplete maps (misinformation, biases) lead to poor decisions in the real world. In other words, hope is not a good plan. Ignoring the problem, again, isn’t a good plan. It’s not a plan at all.
The goal here is to help you begin to see and understand how and why songwriters and guitarists make the choices they make on guitar. It’s not random. When you realize this, you hear these choices being made by other creators as well. Remember, we are talking about harmony, tonal centers and chord progressions. This is the framework we must learn to understand, and work within!
Recognizing & Removing Our Blind Spots
Most songwriters, and guitarists—from beginners to intermediates—have the same “blind spots.” They feel like they’re randomly memorizing the neck, and then soon forgetting what they tried to memorize. Oftentimes, people will panic and start grabbing for common shapes or guessing at chords in a key, and it stalls their creativity and hampers their performance, affecting their confidence.
Because of this, I have created several courses to help resolve these specific frustrations. We can not settle into old habits of hoping it works out. It won’t, What has to happen is a fundamental shift in the way you approach learning these skills. I enjoy sharing the practical lessons I’ve learned over the years to help you get to the next level. This is important, straight-ahead, foundational info that you can begin applying to your playing and songwriting immediately.
Volume 1: Know Your Neighborhoods
This course is Volume 1 of a 4-volume series designed to give you a complete working knowledge of triads, chords, and progressions across the entire guitar neck.
In this first volume, we focus on strings 3, 2, and 1 in Root Position, 1st Inversion, and 2nd Inversion. These techniques are commonly used as the “bread and butter” of professional playing across Country, Pop, Blues, Soul, and R&B.
- Connecting the Dots: If you started with my Absolute Beginners Guitar Course, this is where those open-position chords finally expand up the neck. You’ll see how the basics you already know open up into entirely new possibilities and understanding.
- The Pro Connection: This is the key to the “liquid” rhythm fills and melodic chordal playing and arranging found in the music of Jimi Hendrix, Steve Cropper, and John Mayer. It is the same foundational approach used to craft the timeless arrangements of The Beatles, the melodic guitar layers of Mike Campbell, and the iconic songwriting of Tom Petty and many others. This is the first floor of Principles of Guitar Proficiency. It’s that important, and that useful!
- The CAGED Connection: These triads are the “DNA” inside the larger shapes from my CAGED System course. But here, in Vol.1 of Know Your Neighborhoods, we will focus on the top 3 strings of the guitar, in 3 different positions, what I call “the neighborhoods,” of the neck.
- The Nashville Standard: These inversions allow you to apply the Nashville Number System anywhere on the neck. By working through the primary chords in major keys, we encounter the push and pull of how these chords work together in a key. You will begin to see and hear how these inversions create important layers, parts and arrangements to the underlying progression. This is an incredibly functional way to play, learn the neck and function like a pro. This was the foundation of my course on the guitar style of Jimi Hendrix – Hey Joe, the Complete Guitar Lesson.
What You’ll Work On
- 10 Key-Centered Exercises: We work in different keys with strong tonal centers using the 1, -2, -3, 4, 5, and -6 chords. You’ll learn how these major and minor examples work together and resolve, which naturally builds your ear training. This prepares you to know what chords to expect in a key and gives you the options to find them instantly, instead of guessing and stumbling around the neck.
- Transcription Mastery: This key-centered approach drastically improves your ability to find the correct key and chords when you are transcribing music on your own and playing along with others.
- 20 Professional Backing Tracks: You’ll have 10 tracks in 4/4 and 10 in 12/8 featuring bass, drums, and keys. These provide the different grooves and stylistic variations you need to learn how to play with a band, not just by yourself.
- You’ll get: all PDFS, diagrams and backing tracks, along with videos and instruction, tips and performances by me. I will demonstrate several rhythms and techniques you will hear and find in many songs. This will ensure you have a solid foundation in your playing.
- Move at your own pace: I have designed the course to guide you through all of this information with confidence and understanding. With the backing tracks, you will be able to spend more time on the exercises if you need to. This is intentional. I believe instructors wait too long to introduce this method of learning the guitar neck and basic music theory. Whether you are a recent beginner or an intermediate player, the goal of this course is to provide you with a very useful, and understudied, approach when learning guitar. This is very important for songwriters and guitarists alike.
- Real-World Application: Once you learn these concepts and begin utilizing them, you will hear this approach everywhere. It will be an exciting connection to the music you love, and also an understanding of other artists and styles. It is a common thread.
- These skills are vital to every guitarist: Whether you are in recording studios, songwriting rooms, and rehearsals, or just playing along with others. You’ll learn how pro players see the neck and approach chord progressions and parts. You will gain the confidence to function as a musician by understanding how to arrange and create guitar parts and play alongside others, in any genre. As a songwriter, this performance confidence will also be a huge boost to your creativity because you will be more free to explore the neck and create.
The Goal
“A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness” – Alfred Korzybski
No more guessing. Instead, opt for more skill, more understanding, resulting in confidence. This series is about moving from being stuck and “just practicing exercises” to having a functional toolkit for songwriting and performance. Volume 1 gets you started on the right foot, in the right neighborhood, so you can create and communicate confidently, in any musical situation.
Let’s get started!
Shane
