I discovered I have free will

it blew my mind

Hey friends, happy Monday! Before we jump into today’s topic, I quickly wanted to mention that I’m still having the summer sale on my guitar course, so go ahead and have a look!

Today I wanted to share something with you that helped me a lot not only in composing music, but also affected my mindset for the whole guitar playing thing. And I think for the better.

I discovered free will yesterday lol. 😂

I sat down and wanted to come up with a short composition idea, nothing serious, just a couple of measures that I can use later. It was around midnight, and I wanted to play in E major.

If you are a musician, you know that in E major, our modified notes are F#, C#, G#, D#. If you’re not a musician, I’m sorry for the nerdy talk, please don’t leave.

But the thing was, no matter how hard I was trying, I kept picking open strings by accident, because in my heart I wanted the lush, flowing sound they bring to compositions, however it caused me to slip out of the key accidentally all the time. I’m really not used to improvising in E major. What annoyed me mostly is how I kept playing the open G, which didn’t sound good… so after struggling with this for a while, I realized, wait a minute, I can actually change the tuning of the guitar.

Yeah, this is not a hard rule, it’s just the standard tuning. But we’re living in the era of ✨alternate tunings✨, I could change my guitar to anything. And that’s what I did. I put it into E-A-D#-F#-B-E

After messing with this for a while it turned out to be great because now the open strings gave me notes that fit into my scale, however, the whole guitar became really difficult and weird to navigate.

So then came the next idea: Open E tuning. This is something I just learned that it’s a real thing. I was thinking maybe I can tune my guitar to give me an e major chord on the open strings: E–B–E–G#–B–E (The same way as standard tuning gives you an open e minor chord)

This sure sounded good in my head, but as I started tuning, I was afraid that I’d damage the guitar or the bridge. These tunings are most suitable for acoustic guitars, and those instruments are a lot more durable. And tuning a string a whole step up didn’t seem like a good idea. But let me know if you’ve tried it!

So there I was, it was near 1 am already, I was sitting on the floor trying to figure this out. I finally looked up some suggestions online and a good one was tuning the guitar to D–A–D–F#–A–D with a capo in the 2nd fret, turning it into E–B–E–G#–B–E (Open E). Mindblowing, isn’t it? It sounded soooo good!

By the time I was done with this it was really late and my neighbours already hate me for being a musician, so I had to stop and go to bed. However, I haven’t felt this excitement for a long time. I was laying in my bed and couldn’t sleep for about 2 more hours because I was just thinking about how inspired I felt.

This little experiment pulled me out of my comfort zone, and by that, it kinda threw me back at a semi-beginner level. I couldn’t navigate on the fretboard as I do in standard tuning, all I could do is to listen, to tune into what I hear and how it feels. I haven’t felt this clueless on the guitar for a long time, and it was so refreshing. I did come up with a little something eventually, some nice dreamy chords and a simple melody, and I was eventually able to add the lush open strings I mentioned earlier. That was the whole point.

It was also kinda fun how one thing set me on a whole journey. If I look at it objectively, it almost look like wasted time: I spent over 1,5 hours on finding a way to play open strings in E major because I kept playing G notes by accident and it sounded bad. I could have just worked my way around it. Or I could have just looked up a good tuning immediately on Google. I’m glad I didn’t do it.

Being absolutely clueless on the fretboard put me into this different alertness and engagement, because I couldn’t rely on my commonly used shapes and fingerings anymore. I felt, once again, like a beginner.

I keep bringing this up, this japanese approach called shoshin, meaning “beginner’s mind” and how we should approach everything with the curiosity and humility of a beginner. But when we have our set ways of doing something it’s nearly impossible to force ourselves into that state. We are not beginners. But changing the perspective, taking a big spin on something and using a new method instead of the one we’ve been using for years will inevitably put us into this zone.

This was such a fun experiment, and I can’t wait to pick up the guitar today again!

One more thing before I let you go. I’m publishing a new video on Patreon later today as an early access for my lovely supporters. If you have access, don’t forget to check it out before the rest of the world, and if you haven’t subscribed yet, please consider supporting my work on patreon!

The new video is about how I’m getting back to practicing after 2 sicknesses in 3 weeks. It’s a lighthearted video for everyone who’s looking for motivation :)

Your support helps me keep making new videos, but even more importantly, it helps me to stay in bed when I’m sick, it gives me time to recover, and allows me to take my time to experiment and discover new things about guitar and music, things I can bring into the classical guitar world as I grow. And I’m incredibly thankful for you, for your support!

To end this newsletter, I wanted to leave you with this playlist of some of the most relaxing and lovely pieces I’ve learned over the past few years. Please enjoy!

More resources for guitarists

I offer lots of resources and learning materials for guitarists, let me sum up a few:

1. My Favourite 11 Exercises is an easy to follow booklet including several exercises suitable for advancing beginners to advanced level players.

2. Get my digital Tárrega collection: Each piece comes in sheet music (with and without fingerings) and TAB, with a special tremolo version of the Étude in E Minor also included.

3. Private lessons and my availability can be found on my website.

Hugs, Betti