Black Dog (PDF file)

Here’s Guitar Pedagogy’s master list of one-chord songs, as mentioned in a previous article. It’s as exhaustive a list as we could come up with, alphabetized (ooh!) and complete with links to the lyrics (aah!). While compiling the list, our editor Dave Garlitz briefly became obsessed with one-chord songs, and is sure that there are more of them out there - please leave a comment if you’ve got any to add to the list!

(thanks to shane butler for letting us know that our list had gone missing - ed.)

1. Bad to the Bone
   by George Thorogood
2. Bullet the Blue Sky by U2
3. Catch a Falling Star as sung by Perry Cuomo
4. Chain of Fools by Aretha Franklin
5. Coconut by Harry Nillson
6. Electric Avenue by Eddie Grant
7. Exodus by Bob Marley
8. Hey, Bo Diddley by Bo Diddley
9. On the Road Again by Canned Heat
10. Run Through the Jungle by Creedence Clearwater Revival
11. Showbiz Kids by Steely Dan
12. Tomorrow Never Knows* by The Beatles
13. We Will Rock You by Queen

*Of course, Tomorrow Never Knows does have a Bb/C chord, which makes it arguably a two-chorder, but what’s a Bb/C among friends?

Californication (pdf)

What about scales and chord theory?

It’s true that a thorough knowledge of music theory can only help an improvisor, but this is no reason to hold off on improvising until a student knows a certain number of scales or chords structures. At its most fundamental level, musical improvisation is merely a spontaneous creation of sound. I try to start working with improvisation as soon as students have learned a handful of notes, usually the notes of the first two or three strings in first position (which should be pretty early on: see “The First Lesson“). I feel that some free creative activity serves as a nice complement to note-reading and learning correct hand position, which can feel very strict and dry to a new student.

Learning by example

While a student might have a perfectly good sense of rhythm, a nice ear, and know their notes by heart, handing them a scale pattern and saying “Go ahead, I’ll play the chords, you take a solo!” can be confusing or just overwhelming. Faced with so many notes to choose from, and without the intuitive understanding of scales and dissonance/consonance developed after years of experimentation, a first-time improvisor will often either freeze up, playing one note and then saying “oops..,” or merely shrug and start playing notes at random. This is because we as teachers often take for granted that a student will already have an understanding of musical style: we assume that they’ll know what a guitar solo is supposed to sound like, and try to imitate it.

This also reveals a very common misconception about improvisation: that an improvisation is “pure” spontaneity. Even at very basic level, using only a handful of notes, there is a logic, or, even more precisely, a set of rules to follow when improvising. This is dictated by the musical style, and by the surrounding sounds. And it is subtle enough that it is difficult to describe verbally in any way that will be helpful to a new improvisor. Otherwise, our job would be simple: “OK, start on A and play three quarter-notes and two eighth-notes, following the scale pattern - you’re improvising!” Yeah, right. So what a student needs at this early stage is a real practical example. They need to hear what the notes they have learned can do! And that’s what you’re there for.

Keep it simple

This brings us to my little excercise. The basic idea, to begin with, is that you improvise a short phrase, and ask the student to “respond” with their own notes. Before we get there, however, I find that the student gets the most out of it if you do a round of strict imitation, where you ask the student to play back the notes that you play, in a the same rhythm. The most important rule: keep it simple. Use only the notes that your student has learned (duh!), and also try to show them clearly which finger and which string you are playing. Don’t confuse this with an aural exam - sometimes I’ll even say the note-names as I go. You want the student to feel as comfortable as possible so that they can concentrate on the musical phrase and not worry about having to figure out notes. Keep the rhythms clear and simple, and also stylistically appropriate. For example, I’ll often use this excercise in conjunction with an introduction to the blues. When we do the call and response I try to use phrases that would logically fit over, say, “Hoochie Coochie Man.”

role reversal

Once the student seems to get the hang of the kinds of things you’re throwing at them, ask them to create phrases that you will then imitate. Explain that, like you’ve been doing, the rules are that they stick to the notes that they’ve learned (no grabbing notes at random way up the neck) and that the rhythm be very clear. Sometimes I’ll even accompany them with a simple blues shuffle lick, and then jump in with my repetition of their line, so that they get a clearer idea of the context.

Most of the time even the shyest of students will have gotten the idea and be able to play back a few phrases in the correct “style.” If they get frustrated, try to be encouraging, showing them that there are no wrong notes, and that even playing one note in a good rhythm can work. If they start to feel like they’ve exhausted all the possibilities, call it a day and move on to something else - you’ll come back to this later.

have a conversation

The main goal is to give students a little taste of improvising that’s not intimidating. It works best in small doses, maybe at the end of a lesson after you’ve spent some time on notes and rhythms. I come back to it every couple of weeks, and my students are often pleased to get to do it again. After we’ve done it a few times, I’ll ask them to actually improvise a real “response” to the line that I play - maybe keeping the same notes and changing the rhythm, or vice versa. If they get that idea, than they’re really on the right track.

And the great thing about this excercise is that it can be as simple or as complex as you make it. As a student progresses, turn away and ask them to find the notes that you play just by ear. Use whole scales instead of just the first couple of strings. Use trickier rhythms and phrases. Try it over a blues progression, or something even more advanced. At each level it’s useful because there is always a direct exchange between the teacher and the student - you’re working on listening to other musicians while improvising, staying in a given rhythmic and harmonic context, and learnin to play in a given style in a way that’s hands on and intuitive rather than theoretical.

other applications

I’ve also found that this can be a good excercise for beginning students who seem to be a bit slower at getting their chops together. If they’re a bit sluggish at playing a little melody, or can’t seem to get the mechanics of right- and left-hand coordination just right, sometimes having to follow a piece of music can be too much of a distraction. This excercise can really help them to start really “playing.”

Know any other ways to use this excercise? What about other variations? Other approaches to teaching improvisation? Guitar Pedagogy would love your feedback - leave us a comment or send us an email.

Norwegian Wood

• Yellow Submarine (pdf)

• Boulevard of Broken Dreams (pdf)

• Guitar Knowledge Checklist (pdf)

Note: for students younger than about 10, I usually break this up into two separate lessons, ending the first lesson with quarter-notes and half-notes, and picking up with single-string notes in the second lesson.

Posture

I myself can’t boast the best posture in the world, but it’s amazing the way I’ve seen some of my students sit and think that they are going to play the guitar in that position. Wanting to be “mellow,” and not too closely resemble my high school guitar teacher, I’ve occasionally let it slide - and I’ve always regretted it. As they say, old habits die hard, and as soon as a student has gotten used to a certain way of holding the guitar or themselves, the harder it will be to fix the problem down the line.

For this reason, I spend the first 3 to 4 minutes of the first lesson carefully showing the student how to comfortably and effectively hold the guitar. It doesn’t have to be the classical model - there is a correct way to hold the guitar even in folk position. The key is make sure that the student keeps the body of the guitar straight and close to the torso (young students will often want to turn the guitar up toward their face - nip this in the bud right away!), the right arm slung comfortably over the front (hooked at the elbow), and the left arm relaxed, with the left hand thumb low behind the neck and fingers out in front of the fretboard.

The Hands

We then proceed directly to the techniques of both hands. I make sure that the left thumb stays low and flat (not cocked) against the back of the neck, and I have the student try pushing down a note with their index finger, curled so that they touch the string with the tip. Then, before learning any notes, I go to the right hand, leaving the left hand in a playing position but leaving the strings open. I’ve recently decided to try to using a pick even with my younger students, as I find that trying to incorporate one later on can be frustrating. So we’ll go right away to the picking technique. I make sure that they hold a large amount of the pick between their index and thumb, letting just the tip stick out (more than this and they will frequently drop the pick or get stuck between strings). For the time being, we’ll be doing only down-strokes, so I’ll ask them first to just raise their hand and drop it down across the strings - they don’t need to be putting any more pressure than this on the strings at the beginning - and then we’ll try some single strings. Even when working single strings, I try to make sure that the right hand movement begins at the elbow, not at the wrist.

Rhythm

As I mention in One-Chord Songs, I like to focus on rhythmic playing from the very first. So before we bring in the left hand, I’ll start up some strumming patterns and have the student try to follow along. I like to bring in rhythmic counting as well, as I find that students who have gotten used to counting along with their playing are much less intimidated by complicated rhythms later on. For the younger kids, we’ll strum these rhythms without any chord at all, just using the right hand. For kids older than 12 or 13, I might show them an Am chord if they seem to be able to grab it easily (you can tell this by the technique part of the lesson - if pushing down the strings seems a bit tricky, hold off chords for a while).
One rhythm that I love to start with, because it’s so easily recognizable, is “We Will Rock You.” I usually count it out in cut-time, “1-2-3-(4).” I like to point out the difference between “tempo” and “rhythm” - it’s important to remember that students need to learn the associated vocabulary as well as the technique. To illustrate this, we’ll try counting through the “We Will Rock You” rhythm at different tempos. Then I’ll show them quarter-notes and half-notes, and we’ll try writing some different rhythms using only those notes. For homework, I’ll ask them to listen to some songs that they like and try to make a rhythm that goes with the song. Can they count along to the song the same way that we’ve been counting? Even better.

Single-string notes

At this point, we should be just over half-way through our first half-hour lesson. Here’s where I’ll bring in some single notes. Rather than starting with an Em pentatonic scale, or a full-octave C scale, I start all students, young and old, on the notes of the first three strings, starting with C.
For younger kids, who for a while will be learning songs like “When the Saints Go Marching In,” I’ll limit this to the first two strings in this lesson, starting them on C and going up to G. They’ll recognize the sound of the major scale (”Do Re Mi Fa Sol”). We’ll take a look at how each note is written on the staff (talk about lines and spaces, high and low, etc), and then we’ll find them on the neck of the guitar, and learn which finger to use for each note. To finish the lesson, I’ll show the opening phrase of “When the Saints,” which they can take home with them to practice for next time.
I find that young kids will take to written music without much hassle, whereas older kids tend to be a bit more wary of it. For these types, from age 12 or so, I try to ease them into it a bit. Already after doing the rhythms of the right hand, we saw quarter-notes and half-notes, so rather than dive right into written notes again, I’ll first show them the melody of “We Will Rock You,” starting on C. That will get us half of the notes on the third string, which I’ll then show them on the staff, and then we’ll talk about the scale going down (”C B A G”) and the scale going up (”C D E F G”). I’ll have them play first through both, so that they recognize the sounds, then show them the remaining notes on the staff. For homework, I’ll give them the opening phrase to Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” in Am, but without telling them what it is. They’ll have to follow the rhythms and the notes and guess the song for the next lesson.

Recap: Posture, Technique, Rhythm, Single notes

So in the very first lesson we’ve actually covered quite a bit of material: how to hold the guitar and the pick, how to strum the strings together or separately, how to count rhythms, how to read quarter-notes and half-notes, and a few notes on the staff. We’ve also given the student some “real music” to play from the very beginning, be it “We Will Rock You” or “When the Saints Come In.” If you’ve done all of this, then you’ll really find out what kind of student you have when they come back next time: if they’ve been practicing like they should, you’ll be ready to move on to the next step with a bit of review, but if they seem to be back at square one, you need to let them know right away that they won’t be able to continue if they don’t take the time to practice at home. However, reviewing the information is essential, even if the student seems to have everything down cold. Start the next lesson with a recap of the first, making sure to go over everything clearly in case some details were forgotten. If the student has been practicing this should still leave a good 20 to 25 minutes for new material.