Welcome

What IS the Right Brain Guitar Method and why is it important?

The Right Brain Guitar Method is designed to teach you how to play and understand music by way of the right side of your brain using concepts and techniques based on patterns. All music is comprised of patterns and learning to recognize these patterns is the key to understanding how music works, AKA music theory.

Human beings are “hard-wired” to recognize melodic patterns. That’s why children learn to sing so many songs so easily and at such a young age. Music is a language and you have to first learn to speak the language before you can read and write it. Unfortunately too many people are taught to play music by reading it before they know what it is they are reading. I can read from a book written in Italian and I can even sound the words out fairly well but I don’t speak Italian so I have no idea what I’ve read.  Music is the same way. It’s crucial to know what you’re saying with your instrument.
Music is actually quite simple and practically every human on the planet since the beginning of mankind has participated in music to some degree.  Music is a human trait, not some gift that a chosen few are born with. Humans have been singing and dancing for tens of thousands of years.

How the Right Brain Guitar Method came about

Several years ago after growing weary of the politics of the film business, the ever shrinking budgets, and the ever increasing difficulty of landing a gig, I began teaching again.

I taught in high school and I did a bit of it through the years with friends. I also would coach the occaisional “movie star” how to look convincingly like a guitarist for a film but as I started teaching in earnest, I became aware that when I tried to demonstrate something using notation, the student’s eyes would glaze over and I would “lose” them. I soon began to understand why. I, myself, learned music on my own with the help of a great ear (which I attribute to my father) and my endless love for it. I was aware of notation of music but whenever I tried to practice reading it I just couldn’t get it. So I built my own “constructs” to make music make sense to me and that carried me a long way.

It’s important to understand that music is a human trait; everyone has it. Obviously some have more innate ability than others but humans have been musical for tens of thousands of years. The oldest known man-made instrument is a flute made out of a bone and is carbon-dated at 35,000 years old. Singing and dancing has been a ritual with every culture and race since the beginning of modern man. It’s believed by many scientists that melodious”toning” was used as communication even before there was language. Some vestiges of this still linger today. Let’s say a mother wants to call her son Bobby in for dinner. She’ll go to the door and holler “Baah—-bee” with the first syllable being higher in pitch and the second syllable lower, it takes on a sort of “sing-song” sound. The point is music is in our DNA and the truth is we ALL have musical knowledge that we aren’t even aware of. I’m sure anyone reading this can sing a song, and probably more than one, regardless of your ability to read notation. Some of the greatest musicians alive can’t read music but they’re still great musicians.

This book is designed to develop that very innate knowledge of music and its principles. By explaining music through concepts and teaching techniques a player can begin to have a much greater understanding of music, and with that understanding they can play better and in more situations.

Another important thing you should know is that MUSIC IS NOT HARD! It’s vast, but it is not hard and playing it involves two things – technique and theory. Now before you get scared away, raise your left hand and make a peace sign. If you can do that you’ve got the technical ability to play. If you can sing, or ever have sung, the “DO-RE-MI” song you have the theory part covered. We just have to uncover it. That is my mission with this book and with my life now. I want to reveal to as many people as possible  the music that lives inside of them and empower them with the ability to access it through the playing of an instrument. In other words I want to change the way music is taught in the world today.

James McVay