Welcome to Six String Sage

Let me introduce myself and what I’m doing

Hey there. Thanks for stopping by. I’m well aware that there are a lot of guitar players out there writing articles and recording videos, and many of them are better and more qualified than me. So join me for a few minutes and I’ll share my story of falling in love with the six-stringed lump of wood, why I created Six String Sage, and my method for helping you become a better guitar player.

I’ve been playing the guitar since I was 8 years old.

But I haven’t been learning the guitar since I was 8 years old.

I learned everything you’re supposed to as a beginner: open chords, strumming patterns, some basic songs. I took the early exams and got proficient with the techniques that make beginners feel accomplished - sliding, bending to pitch, that sort of thing.

Eventually I got good enough to play with other people. We were 13 years old playing barre chords and having fun doing it.

Somewhere along the way, though, I stopped learning. Or at least, learning with purpose.

If I heard a riff or solo I liked, I’d learn it.

But I made that classic guitar player mistake of being scared of theory. If I learn theory I won’t be creative anymore! Anyway, if you know all the scales then it’s just every note on the fretboard, so forget it and just play whatever sounds good.

This is grade A bullshit, by the way. Just in case you’re thinking similar things.

A lot of this was laziness and fear on my behalf. Laziness because it takes time and effort to improve. Fear because I’d reached a point where I could play the guitar, which makes you feel comfortable, but then learning something new is uncomfortable. So fuck it, close that tab and run through shape 1 of the pentatonic scale again. Much better.

Part of it was also because there weren’t as many resources available to me at the time. This excuse only gets me so far, because I had more resources available than Hendrix and Clapton and Tommy Emmanuel, but they got pretty good anyway.

Fast forward to recent years though and the ability to learn guitar has exploded. YouTube has been a game changer. Not only in the sense that there are people giving lessons on everything from beginner chords to advanced theory, but also because you can find exceptional players in any genre who make your insides move with emotion.

Tommy Emmanuel was one, for me. Justin Johnson was another. Hearing those guys made me want to learn the craft of being a guitarist. And that made me enjoy those moments of feeling like a beginner again.

I’ll make a long story short(ish) and cut to the chase. I fell back in love with the guitar as an instrument and a tool of musical expression. I hired teachers to increase my knowledge, and suddenly I was learning theory, shapes, principles, and techniques that I’d never learned before.

But here’s the really interesting bit:

A lot of what I learned should have been taught to me as a beginner, but wasn’t.

This is a major problem with guitar tuition. Guitarists are taught to be guitarists, rather than musicians. What I mean by that is, other musicians learn how to communicate in a common language. Guitarists? We don’t read music, we read tab, which is a shortcut available to us because it’s a stringed instrument. And we learn chords as shapes.

So when you’re a guitar player who’s learned in this style and you try to jam with a saxophonist or even a keyboard player, well, good luck.

There’s nothing wrong with learning shapes, except that they can limit us if we don’t know how they work. For many years, I saw the open chord shapes of D and E and A and C and G as set in stone. I didn’t realise you could move them around - oh yes, move that D shape up two frets and you’ve got E, my friend. Not in my head back then, though. To that guy, if you wanted to play E, you had to play the E shape - or, a barre chord.

And this brings me to…

My philosophy behind Six String Sage

I have come to see the guitar as an instrument of intervals.

Before, I saw shapes. Today, I still see shapes but I understand what’s inside those shapes.

I know that a major chord is comprised of the 1, 3, 5 intervals from the major scale, for example.

Not only that, I learned where these notes can be found on the fretboard, in relation to one another.

This was a eureka moment.

Wherever you are on the neck, you’re surrounded by every interval you need. This knowledge is partly what makes jazz players so phenomenal - it’s deep understanding of, and respect for, their instrument and craft.

Here’s another exciting element to this: by knowing the intervals, you break free of scale shapes because you just know where to go. Arpeggios leap out at you, too.

Instead of fumbling and thinking “What’s the shape for a 7th chord?” you can just play it, because you know where the intervals are from your current position and which intervals are in chords.

This stuff is usually taught to guitarists way later in their playing journey. On the surface, it makes sense - learn the chords and scales first so you can play things. Sure. But what you lack is the knowledge that underpins it.

This doesn’t happen with other subjects. When we learn maths in school, they explain why adding certain numbers will result in other numbers. When we learn English, we learn the alphabet and vowels and consonants alongside how to spell words.

Learning guitar? It’s less common. So you can play and string chords together but my journey hit a wall: as I learned more theory, it confused me because I had to unlearn a lot of what I’d been taught.

It’s like building a house but starting with the roof instead of the foundation.

So with Six String Sage, I’m helping you lay the foundation first.

If you’re not a beginner, cool. You’ll hopefully learn a few things fill in some gaps, and we can have fun talking about guitars, music, our favourite players, and I have plans for a podcast on here too.

I’m still no guitar guru, and this channel isn’t about that. Which reminds me:

My other purpose with Six String Sage

Have you noticed that a lot of guitar players use YouTube and social media to show off their phenomenal skills?

Good for them, it took countless hours of practice to get there. But for us viewers, it can get intimidating.

Learning guitar can be intimidating enough, without thinking we’re the only people who can’t like Van Halen.

And hey, not everyone wants to. I don’t.

So over here, it’s a humble guitar player space. Shred if you want to, don’t if you don’t.

You don’t have to shred to be great, and you don’t have to be great to enjoy playing.

So let’s enjoy it, together.