13 Steps to Musical Integration
The 13 steps to musical integration are a dynamic and changing list of guidelines but it gives an idea by which we might identify and self-identify where we are along the journey of creators on the guitar.
Because the materials within the Goodrick almanacs is so broad in scope and so far reaching in application, and useful from a teaching and learning perspective, that it’s important to have some form of metric and guideline by which you can loosely gauge your musical abilities.
The 13 steps to musical integration should be helpful in addressing how any particular piece of information can be presented.
This is somewhat loosely progressive and not really linear, by which we mean, these are all things we work on collectively throughout our lives, but personalize through time and practice.
1) Having Some Idea of Purpose
Knowing why we are making the effort to learn something, no less something that demands time and concentration, and dedication to train our hands, ears, mind, is really important if you want to stay the course.
Improvisational composition can be for fun, to find an engaging application for your abilities, or something through which you find a connection with life and the world. Establishing your level of commitment lets you follow through without disappointment.
2) Manual Dexterity
Kinesthetics. Teaching your hands to move confidently with control to get the best sound from right and left coordination.
3) Knowledge of aural patterns
Scales, intervals, chordal elements, all need to be internalized in a way that allows recognition and a visualization-in the abstract and on the fingerboard.
4) Hands, Sound and Time
Time feel and solidity in movement. One way to keep your thinking and moving with a beat is to practice with a metronome during some part of your routine. You need to be able to THINK in time to play true in time. Overcoming hesitation and taming the effects of indecision to work with time… really great asset in playing.
5) Manual Dexterity and Hearing/Seeing in Larger Blocks
Once you can control the flow of play, and awareness of what you’re playing, the imagination combined with an aural memory allows us to work with larger blocks. We can make words into sentences. This is the art of the phrase. Phrases are the personalization of sound, and this level of playing will continue to define your artistry for life.
-SONG STRUCTURE AND DEVELOPING THE SHAPING FORCES-
6) Knowing Where to Go and Why
Using the above knowledge to avoid chaos. This is sometimes called theory.
7) Aural shaping
This is the ability to make decisions that elevate one’s playing from reactionary reflexive hand initiated playing and into the realm of hearing the future. It’s a respect for sound and where it can take you. Building a lexicon of sound starts from here.
8) Syntax
There is an order that binds sound, and there are guidelines from which we respect conventions, break them and re-write them on our own terms. Syntax and how firmly and expansively we apply it allows strong growth from solid roots.
9) Ear Training
Knowing intervals, rhythmic space, pitch and harmonic chordal movement in a quantifiable way provides us not only with an instantaneous confidence of the moment but the solidity by which we move into the future.
A solid ear must be carefully and very personally informed. It’s a non linear process and there’s never too early to begin hearing. It adds nuance with time and practice and it becomes more articulate in tandem with one’s ability to play.
Training your ear puts the language of sound in the driver’s seat.
10) Song Segments
Each aspect from the micro to the macro adds to the totality of effect and utility.
Knowledge of silence forms the basis of knowledge of a sound. Knowledge of a note informs the interval. Knowledge of the interval leads to the phrase. Phrases become systems. Systems contribute to sections. Sections are part of Choruses. Choruses have distinct characters which make up a solo through multiple choruses and so on.
Each step has considerations an informed player can find options to play with.
11) The Lexicon
Our bag of options. You make yours. You shape it and add to it for as long as you play. The longer you play the more you have to work with. They are the materials and tools of the craft.
They include Motif, Direction, Articulation, Dynamics. Space, Contrast, Texture, Cells, Consistency, Note choices that make phrases, licks, quotes, …
These are the stuff of seasoned players that allow them to create fresh, seemingly limitless, articulate and expressive solos. It’s your language and it’s always kept close to your creative process.
12) Semantic Content
This means after all the notes you CAN play, what are you actually saying? This is what makes a mature player.
13) Composition and Free Improvisations
Freedom and Order. Inspiration and Communication.
These 13 steps to musical integration can be helpful when playing and presenting any new concept from the Almanacs, from how to finger them (#2) to how to use them in making an etude or composition (13).
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