Free guitar tips from Scott of Birdsong Guitars

Free Guitar Tips
By Scott Beckwith
Designer / builder / teacher

Wipe the strings down after every use. It's a sure fire way to keep your strings alive a bit longer! I like the sound of older, mellowed strings, and this helps me keep the finger cheese from accumulating along them like so many tiny gross stalactites.
Know the Chromatic Scale and how it lays out on the different strings of your instrument. This will help you build chords, play leads out of scales in the right key, and hook it all together. As a bass player, this knowledge is crucial - you'll then be able to play through new songs just by knowing what the chord progression of the song is. Play the root notes and form your part from there.
Learn about your guitar. As a musician, you choose an instrument to serve as your voice - it should be a deep process, not just "Well, Johnny Meathead from Weensack plays one, so I'll go buy one!" Once you find an instrument that speaks to you, learn what all the controls do. Learn about the woods its made of. Learn how it was built. Learn why it sounds like it does. Admire the grain in the wood. This is your voice, a tool of creation. Create with it and do not be afraid of a ding or scratch - like you, it should spend itself on what it creates. Get into it. Live it & breathe it. Love it.
Quest for the "sweet spot." Every guitar & amp combo, no matter how humble, has a point when everything is "dialed in" - the guitar's pickups and controls are set just right and the amplifier is too. What could best be described as Tone Alchemy happens, where suddenly certain chords grind a certain way or sustain floats into feedback... and all is right. Subtle changes when layered on top of other subtle changes add up to exponential results. Spend some time getting to know your combo and dialing it in. You'll know when the magic happens!
Think "outside the box." Use notes a half-step out of scale like they were spices in a soup; a spice soup would be inedible. But a little blast of seasoning here and there is great. Take a familiar chord shape and modify it by using additional fingers or lifting something up... what is it called? Who cares. Figure that out later. Don't use the presets on your effects. Painting by numbers and coloring in the lines is highly overrated and should only be considered beginning approaches while you learn how to use the tools and tonal colors. After that invent new colors of tone, new textural approaches to playing, and do your own thing. Find some wierd guitar everyone else isn't playing; a good guitar is one that speaks to you. It has nothing to do with what it says on the headstock or whether Rich Lather from Spastic 151 endorses it or not. Remember this, no matter HOW many times you find yourself going "whole-whole-half, whole-whole-whole-half", it is ART not SCIENCE. There are no rules and if it sounds good to you it's valid whether it sounds appealing to me (or anyone else) or not.
Play with people who are better than you are. I don't care how much of a pro you are or how great you think you may be. Unless you're Johnny Hyland, Red Volkaert or Yngwie Malmsteen, there's always somebody that can hand your ass back to you on a platter - go find that person and jam with them. Learn something. The day you're "too good" to learn something more is the day your creative soul begins to die. You become what you surround yourself with. That goes whether you're 5 or 50. So surround yourself with good, alive people and try to get in where you'll have to rise to the challenge. If you find people seeking YOU out then share what you know in bite-sized morsels and assume the role of teacher that the universe has blessed you with.
Invest yourself into what you do. Don't do it half-assed or half-heartedly and wonder why it isn't working. Do what you feel and feel what you do; if our actions are our footprints then our creations are our planted seed.
Separate the art from the craft; then balance them. To me, music is an art first and a science second. There is the head knowledge and the understanding of shapes and forms, patterns and names. And of how songs are constructed. How the tiny notes make scales which make chords which make progressions which make parts of tunes, how these are arranged into songs, how these are arranged in a set list or tracks on a release. BUT none of this means a damn thing if you can't make sound that moves you, or that moves you to move others. This is art - you have paints of tone, colors of sound, and a blank canvas of the air around you. This is not like becoming a concert pianist. It can be, but it can also be self-expression, and most of our guitar heroes were artists first and technicians second.
Hot rod your stock Fender-style guitar. Leo was a genius but we've evolved a bit since the 40s and there's a hell of a lot more interference floating around in the air with cell phones & monitors than he ever dreamed of. Take your Fender (especially the single coil models), and shield it. Play with the value of the tone control caps. Get those other pickup combos. A Strat isn't a Ming vase - take it apart, it's an old Ford. Have fun with it. I'm working on a book with my favorite Strat mods, with a CD and diagrams. Hopefully before the fall of the first world as we know it, I'll get it done and you'll see it on this site! :)
View scales as vocabulary lists. We learn how to speak through memorization and use of words in patterns. Learning to speak through your instrument is no different. Moveable forms, in other words scale patterns on the fretboard that have no "open" (unfretted) notes are great - if you know the Chromatic scale and know a "form", you can put that form in any key. It's a great start. Now, how well do you want to speak? Conversational players like myself know probably a handful of basic scales in a variety of positions. We work in, out and around them, at any given moment following the chordal movement underneath us or staying in the main key. If you choose to be more studied and fluent in your new language, learn more scales but by the notes and intervals that make them. When playing, don't recite your vocabulary list in order - treat the notes as individual words. Mix and match them - make sentences and phrases. Speak to me.
Fix stripped screw holes. Remove the screw, maybe the others & get the part out of the way. Put wood glue on a wooden toothpick and stick it into the hole. Break it off level to the surface. Put the screw in again. Done deal.
Tweak the Les Paul wiring. LPs, when both pickups are on, won't blend the pickups. If you turn one down, they both go down. To be able to blend the pickups together in varying colors, look at the volume pots. There are three lugs. One grounds the pot to itself. The other two are the "in" lug (from the pickup) and the "out" lug (to the switch). Swap these wires (do it on both volume pots) and it changes the signal path through the pot, giving you individual control of each pickup's vol. and tone when they're both on. While you're in there, replace the tone caps with .01s and see what cool stuff that does - neck p/u with the tone rolled back gets jazzy, bridge p/u gets a half-wah "Santana" tone. No more mud. Nifty. Thank me by moving people with your music.
Play from the heart. Mean it. Mean every note. This is not your birthright to have sentience, fingers that work, and music in your heart. Don't waste your time at the podium mumbling about stupid crap. SAY something. That's a Jazz thing - "Saw Coltrane play." "Aw yeah? What'd he have to say?" Music is prayer and even the sludgiest of stoner rock riffs is high art considering it was created from nothing. That's a good trick, try it sometime. Especially all you scientists with all the answers. Create something. When you can get that channel going between what you feel and that combination of note selection, voice, inflection, and the bigger picture of painting & layering tonal textures & colors, you got it man - put your art out to the world and be above whether anyone else thinks it's cool. Be TRUE to yourself and to your inspiration. Make it mean something. Don't just masturbate or pose or get all into an ego frenzy. Humbly offer all you are and everything you have to the muse, become a tool, and play your heart through the strings.
Don't Worry if People Don't Like Your Style. If you stick your neck out higher than the herd, you're bound to take a few spitballs in the head. It's the way of the world... not everyone plays fair. Sometimes if you're a little different or coloring outside society's lines, or God forbid bucking a few traditions, someone will come along and try to put you back in your place. But spit washes off easy - so you gotta go with your gut and soul - and if it means your stuff has no commercial potential, there are worse stigmas to bear. Create, create what you feel, create because you are called to, create for the ones that get it, create for art's sake... do your own thing, and don't ever let the critics piss away your rainbow. If you're not causing ripples, you're not getting anywhere. They can all line up behind you and pucker up.

Advice for novice builders
I'll be writing this over the next month or two, based on lots of questions I get.
I'm no master of anything but I do run a guitar company, and this is what I do know:

Spend time in repair
Play and examine every instrument you can get your hands on
Read everything
Live it and breathe it
Think "outside the box" it is ART along with SCIENCE. There are no "one ways" and if it sounds good to you it's valid whether it sounds appealing to me (or anyone else) or not.
Ask lots of questions
Invest yourself into what you do Don't do it half-assed or half-heartedly and wonder why it isn't working. Do what you feel and feel what you do; if our actions are our footprints then our creations are our planted seed.
Understand the art vs. lifestyle equation
Zig where they zag
Don't compete with the Chinese
Don't do anything half-assed
Have a code of ethics
Build in good spirit
Let others talk, you DO
Be prolific & productive
Don't read your own press
Upgrade your tools but build however you can
Prepare for the thinning of the herd

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