Cool Gool Music
Music & Guitar Blog
Thoughts on learning, practice, tone and the guitar life — from London tutor Malcolm Callus.
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10 (or more?) red hot benefits why learning with a tutor is better than learning alone
We’ve all at some point asked: “Should I learn music alone & save money (or at least that’s what who decide to learn alone think) OR should I contact someone more experienced to show me the shortcuts?” Certainly, it’s a dilemma between the stairway to heaven or the highway to hell? Or was it a…
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Let your mistakes be your light!
One thing I notice both as a musician jamming with others, and as a music tutor, is the fear of mistakes. While I understand the concern when playing in front of a crowd, there’s NO excuse when one is learning, as the only critic is your 4 walls. Yet, sometimes when one is learning an…
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What does playing a music instrument mean to you?
Update 2020: I asked the same questions to different students a few years later. Enjoy their video. Original article from October 2016: For the last few months, I’ve been asking all my students this very question in view of later compiling it into this blog, an exercise meant both to drive them to want to…
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If you can feel it, you might as well try it!
To quote a great inspiration to most of us (more about him later): “If you can feel it, might as well try it”. But first, a story from when I shared lyric duties for 1 of my bands. Our vocalist had better English than mine, yet wondered how I wrote better lyrics than his. My…
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If you forget your dreams, you die! So hold on to your dream that is music!
“If you forget your dreams you die” is a line a friend once quoted me from “Run to the Light” by metal band Trouble. Basically I was having a bit of a bad day as despite all the efforts my band was not going anywhere. Or at least I thought. The restless teenager I was,…
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The 1st time it’s a mistake, the 2nd time it’s jazz
“The 1st time it’s a mistake, the 2nd time it’s jazz” is a saying that goes around among musicians, mostly among soloists. What’s this about, and why is it so important? As a musician, I constantly improvise. As a tutor, I constantly showcase how to improvise. Why? It all boils down to one thing –…
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Enough burgers! You need a fit body to let healthy music flow out of you!
What is it with some players who despite their solid understanding of music’s “right” notes, they still get tired (or even feel pain) when playing for a long stretch of time? The answer is simply that musical performance is an athletic discipline like any other sport, and that effortless playing depends on the body’s fitness.…
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Change your Burger Sauce
Onto breaking rules, this article does not follow along the lines of any of my previous threads, but is my music business contribution one can get by signing up for the teachmusic.co.uk mailing list….. now onto our burger sauce! It’s safe to assume that a good 9 of 10 players started out hearing some other…
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The fingerboard – the be all, maybe even end all!
Speak! Wherever we live, that’s the very act we do daily. Even if we spend a day alone at home, we still end up speaking to ourselves. The very skill of associating pronunciations to single letters, and how their sound varies according to their placement in words of our mother tongue, became innate with ourselves…
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The discourse of musicology and timbre
How was it possible for Beethoven to create music well after he turned deaf? What was the very fact that made the rumble of bass-guitar-voice-drums that was The Sex Pistols appeal so highly to music researchers from a scientific point of view? What makes an experienced journalist write about music without being a musician the…