Action Plan

Goal one: Learning more about the theory of guitar music.

I want to learn more about guitar theory because I think it will make me a better player in session and as a performer. I feel that moving away from basic open chords such as C, G, D, A etc and barre forms will make playing guitar more interesting to me as well as challenging me. Also, I would like to be able to improvise in more keys with different scales rather than just pentatonics.

Ways I can achieve this goal:

• Studying different genres of music. Music such as pop, rock and indie that I listen to tends to follow similar, repetitive structures and simpler chords however genres such as jazz and blues use more interesting chords. These are chord types such as major and minor 7ths, dominant and diminished. Despite the shapes of these chords being quite difficult compared to open and barre chords, this goal is still attainable because diminished chords for example can be moved up in intervals and you will still be playing in the same key. This makes these chords ideal for improvising, and improvising is something I also want to improve. I would make up a chord progression and practice it everyday for a week for about 10 minutes. This is realistic because I could use this exercise to warm up for playing because the new chords shapes would help stretch my hands and make them loose enough to play solos smoothly. I would keep the goal specific by switching keys and uses new chords once I've mastered the transition between them.

• Another way I can achieve this goal would be by listening to jazz and blues players such as John Mayer and B.B King. John Mayer I would find particularly helpful because of how many songs he has written. The way he plays guitar and the amount of chords he knows means he is always writing new songs. Similarly for becoming more skilled in playing rock music I would listen to Steve Vai and Joe Satriani to learn about solos and arpeggios. Funk music is also something I'd like to study because I do like that style of music, so artists such as Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind & Fire would be ideal to listen to. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a band that I already like to listen to so their earlier funk records would be useful to listen to more closely.

• There are also a lot of guitar teaching videos on YouTube that I could watch. For example, Marty Schwartz has a lot of videos about blues and jazz improvisation of which I could watch one every few days and practice what I've learned. This way of achieving my goal is realistic and attainable because YouTube is easily accessed and Marty is still active on YouTube so there will be new videos in the future that I can learn from.

• Learning the notes on the fretboard is important in guitar theory. I know that I won't always be given tab in the future so it is vital in my career that I can be adaptable in rehearsals and while writing. To do this I will draw up a fretboard and write out the notes on it as I am a visual learner. I could time myself doing it and fill in the gaps of different strings rather than doing one string at at time because then that would simply be writing out the alphabet repeatedly which won't help me learn. Another way of doing this would be to get someone to ask me a note and I'd play it. I would again time it and see if I can find 10 notes in 20 seconds for instance. To make this more difficult I could add more notes or decrease the time. This target is measurable because I know the quicker I am able to recall the notes, I will know I've improved.

Goal Two: Putting that theory in to practice.

Putting this theory in to practice will make me a more adaptable musician. I want to be able to play any style of music because I think being open to all genres and being diverse is very important in music. If I played the same type of music for my whole life, it wouldn't be very inspiring to me and that isn't what music is about.

• Aside from chords, I think that learning scales and arpeggios will be beneficial. I could practice a scale based on the chords I would have learned previously to a particular bpm each week. For example, if I had learned chords in the key of B, I would make up my progression and record it at say 60bpm and improvise the scale of B over it. I would start by just going up and down the scale and then when I am comfortable and confident with it I would begin to improvise around it. This target is specific and measurable because I would repeat this exercise as part of a warm up technique every time I practiced. When I can easily keep in time, I would increase the bpm by 5 and repeat the process and moving on to a different key. Learning arpeggios would also help me in learning the notes on the guitar. Previously I have used tabs and so struggle with reading sheet music but I think that moving away from tab will help me become a better session musician because not everything will be given to me in tab in my career.

• When playing in a band I would love to be able to make up a counter melody or solo on top of songs that we are rehearsing so by learning about scales and styles I feel I would be bringing more to a band and making our performance better and more interesting for an audience. So when I learn songs for performance I will look in to the scales and key used so that I can incorporate them in to band practice. I think that by doing this my confidence as a guitarist would improve too and again that would help the band's performance as a whole.