by Mike Errico | Aug 27, 2013 | Lessons, Video
Extend your lines by jumping up positions and using open strings for cover. Enjoy, and see if it sparks something in your own playing. As always, the official site updates regularly with any news/changes: http://www.errico.com. More iTunes || Bandcamp || Facebook || Twitter || YouTube || Tumblr || Tallboy 7, Inc. Box 20463 NY NY...
by Mike Errico | Aug 20, 2013 | Lessons, Uncategorized, Video
I do whatever I can to put a song across, even if it means making a band out of the acoustic guitar. You can see/hear “1000 Miles” live here: http://youtu.be/YfSoNEH6e9I or hear the studio version here: http://mikeerrico.bandcamp.com/track/1000-miles Enjoy, and see if it sparks something in your own playing. As always, the official site updates regularly with any news/changes: http://www.errico.com. More iTunes || Bandcamp || Facebook || Twitter || YouTube || Tumblr || Tallboy 7, Inc. Box 20463 NY NY...
by Mike Errico | Aug 13, 2013 | Lessons, Video
Tom Waits did it on piano – I had to figure out a guitar version. You can hear my cover of “Johnsburg, Illinois” here: http://youtu.be/O4iyxCUwVxM Enjoy, and see if it sparks something in your own playing. As always, the official site updates regularly with any news/changes: http://www.errico.com. More iTunes || Bandcamp || Facebook || Twitter || YouTube || Tumblr || Tallboy 7, Inc. Box 20463 NY NY...
by Mike Errico | Aug 6, 2013 | Uncategorized, Video
The point of this lick is that the guitar is fun. Just TRY to play it without smiling. Enjoy it, and see if it sparks something in your own playing. iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/mike-errico/id3567281 | As always, the official site updates regularly with any news/changes: http://www.errico.com. More iTunes || Bandcamp || Facebook || Twitter || YouTube || Tumblr || Tallboy 7, Inc. Box 20463 NY NY...
by Mike Errico | Aug 6, 2013 | Stories
Addressing eternal pop music questions at two very different universities By Mike Errico I’d wanted to teach for decades, but I waited, because I felt I had to deserve it. There’s a good reason Gandalf, Dumbledore, Yoda and Miyagi are years — centuries? — beyond us, and it’s because older teachers teach time. So I went out to earn the holes in the elbows of my metaphorical cardigan sweater. I learned the craft of songwriting, lived the business of music, and, last semester, put my findings into “The Art and Business of Songwriting,” a class I taught at Yale. Yale has never focused on popular music, and as I walked into the classroom for the first time, students literally shook my hand and thanked me for showing up. Everyone seemed to be on a different page: There were rank amateurs, people who’d already walked away from publishing deals, EDM remixers, bluegrass ukulele ringers and minimalist prodigies who needed paper extensions so they could tour conservatories. What do you teach students like this? What do you teach Caitlin Pequignot, a sophomore in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology who’s learning Chinese, has a YA novel just kinda sitting on her hard drive, and, when asked to write a song to a pre-existing video clip, turns in something as brilliantly heart-wrenching as this? (After screening it in class, a fellow student summed up the mood: “Whoever’s going next? Good luck following that.”) What you teach (besides “do more of that”) is context. There’s no understanding songwriting without it: that song intros existed so the DJ could tell you the time, weather and...
