Exploring the Guitar for Songwriters
A Weekend Intensive with Mark Simos
July 9-11, 2010
(Only 5 seats left for Intermediate to Advanced Guitar players)
Muses Muse members - save $50 - Book now!
Retreat Instructor
Mark Simos, an Assistant Professor in the Songwriting department at Berklee College of Music, has built a reputation as one of the premiere "new traditionalist" songwriters, reinvigorating and reshaping progressive acoustic music. Mark's signature style, combining finely crafted lyrics with surprising turns of melody, harmony, and phrasing, has caught the ear of respected artists in bluegrass, Americana, Celtic, and contemporary folk genres, with more than 60 cover recordings of his songs to date. Four of Mark's songs have been recorded by Alison Krauss and Union Station.
Workshop Description
Songwriters who write on guitar reach “plateaus” where they find themselves limited by their technical ability on the instrument: we write what we can play. This weekend workshop offers a hands-on introduction to guitar techniques tailored to songwriters’ distinctive ways of working. We approach the guitar as creative sounding-board, playground, scratchpad—connecting fuller understanding of the fingerboard and right-hand techniques with songwriting processes and skills.
Drawing on elements of Mark’s Net of Jewels method (see the description below), and including extensive handouts for your continuing self-paced work, this workshop encourages fearless exploration—a “virtuous spiral” where improving your guitar knowledge and skills inspires your writing, while writing just “beyond your hands” motivates further development of your technique. Topics include the following:
- Exercises for immediately discovering new guitar sounds and resources and using them in your songwriting.
- Unlocking the power and versatility of simple three-note (triadic) shapes—the Jewels—in taking your songwriting to a new level.
- Principles for “shape-shifting” chords across a visual map of the fingerboard—the Net—the key to an empowered, exploratory approach to songwriting on guitar.
- Ways to build simple chord combinations into solid yet intriguing progressions, enriched by alternate inversions, voicings, and tunings.
- Extending your songwriting using the varied emotional colors of modal melodies and chord progressions.
- Finger-picking and flat-picking patterns that get you past clichéd strumming to a broader palette of rhythmic textures for your songs.
Level and Preparation
This workshop is paced for the early-intermediate level guitar player: you know your basic “campfire chords,” some barre chords (though we will avoid them!) and right-hand strumming patterns; ideally you write songs on guitar. More experienced players will also benefit from the workshop, and can work through all materials and exercises in more advanced positions; some ‘master class’ time will be scheduled to apply techniques and principles to students’ own songs. Bring an acoustic steel-string guitar, notebook, a recording device if you wish, a capo, flatpicks (medium and heavy)—and an “A” tuning fork!More About Mark Simos
Mark Simos is a 'new traditionalist' songwriter, composer, and tunesmith, whose music combines a lifetime's exploration of varied traditions with continued willingness to stretch forms and take musical risks. Mark’s signature style, combining finely crafted lyrics with surprising turns of melody and modal harmonies, has yielded four songs recorded by ‘Americana super-group’ Alison Krauss and Union Station, and more than 100 song and instrumental cuts overall with artists including Del McCoury, the Infamous Stringdusters, Laurie Lewis, and Doyle Lawson among others.Alison Krauss calls Mark “… a remarkable songwriter. He's one of those rare people who knows what words sound good together, and his lyrics are just as unique as his melodies. I never stop being amazed at his songs, and I'm never surprised that I love another one.” Mark is also a respected guitar and piano accompanist for traditional Celtic music, a prizewinning old-time fiddler, and a composer known for his original fiddle tunes or “traditional music from imaginary countries.” He’s featured on over a dozen albums, has appeared in concerts and at festivals throughout the US and Europe, and has released four albums of original and traditional fiddle music as well as an acclaimed solo album of songs, Crazy Faith. Fellow songwriter Bob Franke calls Mark: “… an artist who has spent enough time with traditional music to learn its spiritual as well as its musical lessons, and to use that learning to forge an art at once timeless and utterly contemporary.”
As a professor in the Songwriting Department at Berklee College of Music, Mark has introduced new curriculum for guitar techniques for songwriters, songwriting collaboration, and traditional and contemporary fiddle ensembles. For more than three decades he has also been a staff musician, teacher and workshop leader at numerous summer music and dance camps including Pinewoods, Ashokan, Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Puget Sound Guitar Workshop (PSGW), California Coast Music Camp (CCMC), The Summer Acoustic Music Week (SAMW), Augusta Old-Time Week, NewSongs Festival, and many others.
About the Net of Jewels™
Songwriters who write on guitar reach “plateaus,” where they find themselves limited by their technical ability on the instrument: we write what we can play. Yet much guitar teaching is targeted towards performance, technique, and existing repertoire rather than addressing songwriters’ distinct concerns, learning styles, and creative ways of working. Music theory is too often presented abstractly or in terms of the piano keyboard, without clear visual linkage to the guitar fingerboard. As a result, many songwriters remain frustrated, writing to the same familiar progressions and riffs, yet intimidated when trying to advance their technique or knowledge on guitar; while conversely, many proficient technicians on guitar struggle with their songwriting. Yet the most creative songwriters do not necessarily begin with the most technical knowledge; rather, they explore and experiment to find fresh sounds that inspire their writing. Drawing on his own practice as songwriter, guitar accompanist, and teacher, Mark Simos has developed this secret songwriter’s tradition of “creative messing around” into a systematic, progressive approach—the Net of Jewels™ (NOJ) method.
The name, a reference to Indra’s Net in Indian spiritual philosophy, suggests an intriguing and empowering metaphor for the “guitar fingerboard as universe”: a web of small chord forms (the Jewels) that magically interweave, overlap, mirror and transmute (the Net). The NOJ method incorporates explorations of the fingerboard, movable shapes and alternate tunings through which Mark developed his innovative style of modal accompaniment for traditional Celtic music, and the unique harmonic language of his own songwriting. But the approach captures an intuitive, visual approach to the “geography” of the guitar shared by great players in styles ranging from bluegrass, Motown and rock to the pioneering contemporary acoustic songwriters. It can transform the way you write songs on guitar, as well as providing new tools for arrangement and performance, accompaniment, adding complementary second guitar parts, or playing leads and fills.
The NOJ student develops an intuitive sense for chord morphology or “shape-shifting”: attending to visual shapes chords of different qualities make; learning how to transform those shapes and qualities across and along the fingerboard, in alternate tunings and even on other fretted string instruments. In the NOJ sequence, each new musical structure is introduced by ear, eye, and hand, as a transformation of previous patterns. Each new resource sparks active discoveries and creative work through composition of small “etudes” and writing challenges. This intuitive, step-by-step approach reclaims the guitar as a laboratory for self-directed experimenting—the time-honored ways that great songwriters have always written on guitar, with just a dash more structure!
Mark has presented elements of NOJ in a wide variety of settings, and documented it with an extensive library of handouts. NOJ has proved particularly effective with adult intermediate guitar players, many of whom learned guitar basics (“campfire chords” and basic barre chords) early on, but were never given a way to conceptually put it all together. Some students previously frustrated by other approaches such as the CAGED method have reported breakthroughs with NOJ (“A lightbulb went off in my head!” is a comment often made by students). In recent years he has introduced elements of the method into new curriculum at Berklee College of Music.
Testimonials - "I highly recommend Mark Simos' Net of Jewels guitar classes to anyone who loves the guitar and writing songs. The class is an illuminating and creatively inspiring journey, Mark its uniquely qualified and insightful guide. I was amazed as I watched my fellow students and myself begin to relate to the guitar in a whole new way: Mark's shape-based approach. Mark has developed the class in such a way that students at very different levels of experience with the instrument were able to be engaged, challenged, and inspired.
I watched and experienced the delight in a newfound freedom to move up and down the neck, to extract new sounds, ideas, and possibilities. As students challenged themselves to think of the instrument in new and at times disorienting ways, exquisitely beautiful songs suddenly emerged—generally speaking, a huge creative leap from their previous work. Each class session set me spinning out the door with exciting discoveries and the desire to steal away with my guitar - and it had been so long since I had felt that way.
It is a rare thing to learn from a professional who is so accomplished as a songwriter and a guitarist and who is also such a phenomenal teacher. Mark not only has vast expertise and top notch musicianship to share; he is also an open, perceptive, inspiring, sensitive, generous and totally fun teacher who creates a unique environment in which to create and learn. I would jump at the chance to take this class. "
- Victoria Rios (Spring '10 Guitar Techniques for Songwriting, Berklee College of Music)
Itinerary
Friday, July 95:00 pm Arrive/check-in
6:00 pm Announcements/Introductions
6:30 pm Social Hour
7:30 pm Dinner
9:00 pm Concert/Demonstration by instructor Mark Simos
10:00 pm Campfire fun
Saturday, July 10
8:30 Breakfast
9:30-11:00 am: Net of Jewels session #1. Workbook review.
11:30-1:00 pm: Net of Jewels session #2. Creative exploration.
1:30 pm: Lunch and free time with some creative 'alone work' to do
3:00-4:30 pm: Net of Jewels session #3. Present creative work.
5:00-6:30 pm: Master class format - selected students present songs, receive guitar-oriented feedback and suggestions
7:30 pm Dinner
9:00 pm Participant 'song circle'; Instructor and advanced students accompany on 2nd guitar (demonstrating techniques in use)
Sunday, July 11
8:30 Breakfast
9:30-11:00 am: Net of Jewels Session #4. Open tunings and select advanced topics.
11:30-1:00 pm: Workbook tour; tips for practice and further exploration on your own.
1:30 pm: Lunch
2:15 pm: Depart (or optional rafting trip)
Course Fees, Lodging and Upgrades
2010 All-inclusive Prices
Mini-retreat includes 6 meals, snacks, beverages, resort amenities, 2 full days of workshops, critiques & evening sessions. Deduct 5% for payments in $US. All-inclusive rates ($CDN):| All-Inclusive | $CDN |
| Camping (own tent): | $469 |
| Shared Cabin Tents (3-4 sharing) | $499 |
| Standard Cabin Tent (double occupancy) | $550 |
| Rivers Edge Cabin Tent (queen bed, single) | $650 |
| Non-Retreat (spouses, family etc.) — Deduct $150 CDN from above fee |
Note: 12% HST and 3% Land and Water Access fee must be added to pricing above. Seats are limited. Call for single occupancy rates. Prices subject to change without notice.
Adventure Add-ons
- 2 whitewater rafting trips OR 1 whitewater rafting trip + 2 mini adventures (rock climbing, rock rappelling or canyon hike) - $200 pp + tax
- 1 whitewater rafting trip OR 2 mini adventures - $100 pp + tax
For more details or to enroll, please call 800-736-7238
Workshop Organizer: Bryan Fogelman
bryan@bluecrushmusic.com