Links to my MUSIC and Other Stuff

my band is on iTunes
so, if you're feeling generous, pick a song, spend a buck and send some love.

i've got a MySpace website - www.myspace.com/themccools


if you'd like to see a couple videos of me performing live, there's....
with "Latham"....

with "Grandville"

with "Analog In"

i sometimes put charts of songs i've figured out online, it's also got some lesson type of stuff...
i call it Charting Addict.

and more in-depth instruction can be found at my piczo site

and i love the site azChords.com, they usually have the most accurate chord charts, for free!

Frequently Asked Questions

• WHAT KIND OF GUITAR SHOULD I BUY/HOW MUCH DO I NEED TO SPEND TO GET STARTED?
  

it depends on what style you want to play:
i say go with what inspires you,
if you want to start economically, (most people do),
for $150-$250, you can get a good
acoustic guitar -or- electric guitar/amp combo package.
[see my recommendations, based on what style you want to play]....

based on styles;
classical - nylon string acoustic
folk - Yamaha/Epiphone steel string acoustic
rock - Epiphone lesPaul combo package (amp and guitar)
funk/blues - Fender Stratocaster combo package (amp and guitar)
metal - Ibanez combo package (amp and guitar)
pop - depends on what kind of pop, see "folk" or "rock", or "funk/blues"

also, if a standard sized guitar seems too big, there are junior sized guitars, which work great!

where ?
go to your local music shop and check into this or go to www.musiciansfriend.com
if you're in sherman oaks, ca @ guitar center, ask for David Castagne and tell him i sent you :)

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also, get some picks,
they are really cheap (you can get a bag of 10-20 or so for under $5).
"what size" you might ask?
classical players use their finger nails, folk players use their fingers or light to medium picks, metal players use heavy.
if you get medium, you're prepared for most anything and you can judge from there if you want to go heavier or lighter. picks are very cheap...like 10 cents per pick, i recommend getting a pack of them for a couple of dollars because picks are easy to lose and wear out.

• HOW LONG UNTIL I CAN PLAY GUITAR?

this is totally up to you. i taught one of my students a song the 1st lesson and he came back and played it 7 days later! another student took close to 6 months to learn the 1st song.
it's all a matter of understanding the BASICS and practicing consistently...
if you practice every day for 15 minutes a day, you can be playing a songs in a matter of weeks. give it a few weeks though. at 1st it may seem impossible, but if you keep practicing, on a daily basis, your learning will have a snowball effect and things will get progressively easier to understand and play.

won't i get calluses? will it hurt?
it's been a long time since i went through it, but i can tell you this...it will get easier if you practice consistently.

oh, yea, and if you are wondering about being too young to learn (or feeling that you can't do it), check out this video!!!

• SHOULD I LEARN HOW TO READ MUSIC?

this depends. if i had to say "should" i would say yes, learn how to read "standard notation". especially if you want to make it a full-time job. Because if you're the guitarist in the American Idol Band or in the LA Symphony, you're not going to get to "learn" the song on the spot; you'll be given music and expected to sight-read, so you better know how to read!
but, if you're auditioning for a rock band, they'll send you an mp3 of their tunes.
if it's a jazz gig, you'll read 'chord charts' and show up and play without a rehearsal.

if it's just a hobby or even part-time, i'd say, it's not necessary to learn standard notation, but it wouldn't hurt. you do have to learn some form of reading and writing music though, unless you've got a photographic memory or want to take 40 years to learn how to play a song.
so, a popular method for guitar is chord charts and tablature (TAB). if you look at a sight like AZChords, you will see a list of songs, if you click on a song it will show you what a chord chart, or some TAB will look like.

when i teach, i start with chord charts and tab because it emphasizes the patterns and relativeness of the guitar. then reading standard notation becomes a little easier to grasp onto. and MEL BAY makes some great books that make learning to read music enjoyable.

• WHAT DO I LEARN IN GUITAR LESSONS?

the main thing to get out of guitar lessons is how to achieve YOUR musical goals.
there is no one sure fire way to do this in my opinion;
but, learning the BASICS (another blog on this site) will get you up and running.
Learning how to apply those basics and adding knowledge to those basics can take you to the moon and back.

in my lessons, in addition to teaching the BASICS, i teach people songs that they bring in via CD or iPod. i then show the student how to play the song and some theory behind it so that it (and other songs like it) become easier to comprehend and play.
Then you can begin to write your own songs, if you like. or you will get better at learning and understanding songs independently. i will also introduce you to a variety of styles, so that you can appreciate and utilize other types of music in your own playing. i have chord charts to thousands of songs, 300 of which i personally created (edited), and i've learned that there are many recurring themes in popular music. so the more songs you learn, the quicker you can use that knowledge to learn other songs. typically, by the end of the 1st listen of a song, i've got it down so i can teach it to you right then and there.

the Basics

in my experience, in order to de-Mystify the whole process of playing guitar,
so that playing becomes enjoyable and understandable,
here's what you've got to know...

the way to approach guitar is to find similarities and patterns in everything that you play.
I've been playing for a couple of decades, so i can show you what those similarities and patterns are and how they apply to the music that you want to play. here's the basics; use this as a check list for when you take lessons. you can get more in-depth info about these basics on my Piczo site as well.

• the Musical Alpahabet - like the regular alphabet, except it starts over after G, and you've got sharps (#) and flats (b) in between these notes

• where these notes are on the guitar - easy patterns to learn this - the strings are Eat A Darn Good Breakfast Everyday. the 3rd -5th-7th frets of the E and A strings are
  [E]-->G, A, B, and [A]---> C, D, E (corn Dog Extravegazna) --- from there you can use disco Octaves and other fun-sounding strategies to find the notes on the guitar, until you just know them like the back of your hand.
  

• the Major Scale - it's the backbone of all music in the western hemisphere; it's the tools you use to build a song, whether it be pop, rock, jazz, country, blues, funk, classical, wutever, and weirdly enuff, it's the same as the Minor Scale (but just starts on a different note). it's the do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do scale. [enjoy that link :-D]
  

i can show you 5 different ways to play this scale (and it works in every key), so that, if you memorize just 5 patterns, you can play every major and minor and many more scales all the way up and down the neck of the guitar; pretty useful for composing, solo-ing, improvising, and understanding.

• Chords - start with open chords C-A-G-E-D

learn those "open" chords as Majors, Minors, and Dominant
(in other words, learn C major, C minor, C dominant (a.k.a. C7).,
A major, A minor, A dominant, etc..etc...)
-then you can learn to "transfer" those chords using "bar" chords. if you can play C, A, G, E, and D as majors, minors, and dominants, you've got the key to playing along with virtually any song on the radio, iTunes, youTube, etc... because they are based on Harmonized Major Scales.

• Harmonized Major Scale - this is playing a Major Scale with chords

so now there are lots of other things to learn on the guitar, like arpeggios, pentatonic scales (which are just simpler versions of the major scale), how to use modes, other types of scales (the only other scale that is popular in our culture is the HarmonicMinorScale, and it will remind you of an Egyptian or Spanish style anyway.

you can get more in-depth info about these basics on my Piczo site as well.

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but the most important thing is to enjoy playing and to learn songs/styles that inspire you and play these songs with people and entertain other people with them.

a good teacher can patiently help you do this.

i've seen someone take a week to learn his very 1st song, and i've also seen it take close to a year for others, it depends on your understanding of music and how consistently you practice.

i recommend taking lessons once or twice per week and practicing about 15 minutes per day. if you get inspired and want to go longer, great. but as long as you are going at least 15 minutes, every day and it becomes a habit, you'll build some muscle memory and before long you'll be playing for hours at a time without even wondering where the time went.