Jeb Sherrill Interview

1:56 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? Welcome back to Love Music More. I am Scoobert Doobert, and I am joined by Jeb Sherrill, who's going to talk about his revelations with learning guitar, the chair system, and we're just going to talk about musical journey and ways that educators think about the instrument and just kind of grow as well as players. It's going to be fun.

2:18 Jeb Sherrill Thanks for having me, man.

2:19 Luke F. Walton Yeah, no, it's a pleasure. So I'd love to just kind of step back. What was it you said like seven-ish years ago when you first kind of started digging into the chair system and what was that revelation like how did that kind of light bulb moment click and then let's get into what the chair system actually is.

2:37 Jeb Sherrill Well, it's kind of a wild story, Cool, you know. right on. I got really into guitar probably about 30 years ago,

2:44 Luke F. Walton Okay,

2:44 Jeb Sherrill which

2:44 Luke F. Walton wow.

2:45 Jeb Sherrill probably ages me a bit. But and I wanted to do everything, you know, I wanted to strum, I wanted to lead, I want to do all kinds of stuff and nothing worked for me. I mean, I learned all the basic stuff, all the chords and boxes and yeah, which were just, you know, different ways of approaching the fretboard. And I just couldn't make it work. You

3:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

3:07 Jeb Sherrill know, for some reason, it didn't work for my brain. So I put the guitar down for 20 something years.

3:14 Luke F. Walton Whoa, yes. That's a real departure.

3:16 Jeb Sherrill And about seven years ago, I was trying to get into it again. I was really, I was like, well, actually, it was because I'd finally bought a new guitar.

3:27 Luke F. Walton Cool.

3:27 Jeb Sherrill And unfortunately, the guitar was so nice that I realized I didn't deserve it.

3:33 Luke F. Walton Yes.

3:33 Jeb Sherrill I mean, yeah,

3:34 Luke F. Walton No, I've heard that before. Yeah.

3:37 Jeb Sherrill it was almost the epiphany, you know, it was like, oh my gosh, I can't, I cannot own this guitar and sit here, you know, plinking around

3:44 Luke F. Walton Good

3:44 Jeb Sherrill on

3:44 Luke F. Walton on

3:45 Jeb Sherrill the porch.

3:45 Luke F. Walton you. Good on you.

3:47 Jeb Sherrill So. I got into YouTube and I was watching all kinds of videos and I got into, what's his name? Marty Schwartz. I'm sure you've heard of him.

3:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah, uh-huh, definitely.

3:59 Jeb Sherrill And he had this one video where he showed a pentatonic scale that it was an extended scale, basically.

4:06 Luke F. Walton So a five-note scale, the scale that most blues guitarists and rock guitarists kind of reach into, five-note scale, it's like the scale. Yeah, go for

4:16 Jeb Sherrill Right.

4:16 Luke F. Walton it.

4:16 Jeb Sherrill Kind of the, you know, just the beginning for all of us.

4:20 Luke F. Walton Yes. Yep. Totally.

4:20 Jeb Sherrill And for some reason, because it was it was a repeat, it was a repeating pattern. It wasn't like the boxes I'd always done that were, you know, you have five different boxes and they're all different.

4:31 Luke F. Walton Right.

4:32 Jeb Sherrill And for some reason that clicked with me and it was just working.

4:36 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

4:37 Jeb Sherrill And so. I was getting into all these, I'm a diagram nut.

4:43 Luke F. Walton Okay, yeah.

4:44 Jeb Sherrill So I was getting into all these diagrams and I was noticing that this pattern was identical for both major and minor. You just switched where the root was.

4:54 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

4:55 Jeb Sherrill And so late at night, I was probably a little sleep deprived and my brain was going weird places.

5:02 Jeb Sherrill And it just kind of hit me that this pattern was made up of three identical patterns.

5:08 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yep. Mm

5:09 Jeb Sherrill And

5:09 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

5:10 Jeb Sherrill so it's kind of a funny story. I whipped out my phone. I couldn't find a notepad, which

5:14 Luke F. Walton Okay.

5:15 Jeb Sherrill was what I would usually use.

5:16 Luke F. Walton Mm

5:16 Jeb Sherrill So

5:16 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

5:16 Jeb Sherrill I pulled out my phone and I got on note and I actually marked this little chair pattern, what I now call a chair.

5:23 Luke F. Walton Cool.

5:24 Jeb Sherrill And that was it. Suddenly, ever since I found that, I started getting into diagrams and I just got. weird you know

5:34 Jeb Sherrill Mm almost -hmm. like a sacred sacred geometry type Totally. thing into Yes. it you

5:38 Jeb Sherrill Yes. know really really weird and started extending it uh you know now now i use uh what i call thrones which are the diatonic version and i expanded it so that you so that now i use it to understand the structure of the whole fretboard

5:59 Luke F. Walton Cool. I

6:00 Jeb Sherrill And

6:00 Luke F. Walton like that.

6:01 Jeb Sherrill for me, it's kind of

6:02 Luke F. Walton Go for it. No, please, please continue.

6:05 Jeb Sherrill become like music, like you're actually deconstructing, like I start seeing music on

6:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

6:12 Jeb Sherrill the fretboard,

6:13 Luke F. Walton Yes.

6:13 Jeb Sherrill especially at night. I mean, I do this in my head and I just see the music on the fretboard and it's. It's kind of spiritual it's weird, but it's kind of you know No, yes,

6:23 Luke F. Walton it's good. It's good. There's a lot to unpack there. And I want to just try and translate a little bit of that for the non-guitar

6:29 Jeb Sherrill please

6:30 Luke F. Walton player.

6:30 Jeb Sherrill because I know that sounded like mumbo-jumbo

6:31 Luke F. Walton No, but that's fun. And I think that one of my favorite things about this podcast is that this comes up a lot of like kind of the spiritualism and the mysticism of music where you, yeah, you identify these patterns, you see these things and you go, wow, okay, I need to share this. I need to. to codify this, I need to turn this into something. And so I really appreciate that and I resonate with that deeply.

6:53 Luke F. Walton So the fretboard, one of the things that I think is really interesting about the guitar is you can play notes in so many different places. It's the same note, but it's on a different string. And it allows you to think in ways that are different, I think just fundamentally musically, than a linear instrument where

7:11 Jeb Sherrill Yeah.

7:11 Luke F. Walton it's like you have a keyboard and you're going to play up and down. linear. I

7:17 Jeb Sherrill There's

7:18 Luke F. Walton actually think

7:18 Jeb Sherrill one key

7:18 Luke F. Walton that one

7:18 Jeb Sherrill for every note.

7:19 Luke F. Walton key for every note. You just go up and down. But in the guitar, you can play that same note in a bunch of different places. And depending on where you're playing that note, the next things might be more or less convenient, therefore influencing the next things that you would play.

7:35 Luke F. Walton So like positioning, your hand placement, your mentality, the patterns that you are leaning into, all of that ends up culminating in just different genre choices different phrasing choices just different note choices and i think that's a really cool part and part of the reason why i love fretboard based instruments absolutely

7:52 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, yeah, me too. I, I think it's interesting that when people first get into guitar, it's probably the biggest hindrance.

8:00 Luke F. Walton totally

8:00 Jeb Sherrill I mean,

8:01 Luke F. Walton because

8:01 Jeb Sherrill it right.

8:01 Luke F. Walton there's so it's like infinite options like how do i it's part of the reason why it's so hard to read music and play guitar

8:08 Jeb Sherrill Yes, exactly, which I'll admit is why I don't.

8:11 Luke F. Walton right totally totally we

8:12 Jeb Sherrill Yeah,

8:13 Luke F. Walton got tabs man yeah

8:15 Jeb Sherrill because it's made, well, you know, original notation is made for piano, which is perfect.

8:19 Luke F. Walton yeah

8:19 Jeb Sherrill It works great for piano. But you try to translate that onto guitar and you just, you have so many options and your brain just doesn't approach it the same way.

8:29 Luke F. Walton or you can find out halfway through a phrase like crap i should have played this somewhere else like

8:33 Jeb Sherrill Right, right, right.

8:34 Luke F. Walton my

8:34 Jeb Sherrill Oh,

8:34 Luke F. Walton head should

8:34 Jeb Sherrill shoot,

8:34 Luke F. Walton be over

8:34 Jeb Sherrill I went off.

8:34 Luke F. Walton here

8:35 Jeb Sherrill went off the edge yeah

8:36 Luke F. Walton exactly

8:36 Jeb Sherrill i fell off the edge of the world here you know you

8:39 Luke F. Walton totally because

8:39 Jeb Sherrill know yes

8:40 Luke F. Walton the notes the it's like the stairs in harry potter like they like to change it's like things shift yeah cool

8:46 Jeb Sherrill that's a really good yeah that's a really good analogy yes

8:49 Luke F. Walton awesome yeah and and so um i i kind of think that a little bit uh similar on like saxophone like there are different fingerings and different ways to achieve different notes and that creates slightly different intonation

9:02 Luke F. Walton um and allows you to yeah pass through phrases differently but i think that the guitar is nice because it's so visual and it's it is what allows the guitar to be a forever challenge like something i could think

9:14 Jeb Sherrill Yes.

9:14 Luke F. Walton you could dig into for the rest of your life yeah

9:16 Jeb Sherrill You can spiral forever.

9:18 Luke F. Walton yes

9:18 Jeb Sherrill You know, and I know people who could spiral forever just replicating, which I don't do much. I don't really replicate much. But for me, it's all about. About improvising and just kind of sliding down that rabbit hole infinitely. It's kind of kind of beautiful

9:35 Luke F. Walton I agree. And the improvisation is a, I think a critical part of anybody that wants to compose. I've

9:42 Jeb Sherrill Yeah.

9:42 Luke F. Walton talked to a bunch of songwriters on here that, you know, have written like Beyonce and these big, you know, songs and they over and over and over again, they talk about the value of improvisation and how that's kind of the root of all songwriting and you kind of like flex that muscle and develop that muscle by improvising on a guitar or just singing or whistling or whatever, but it's just like.

10:02 Luke F. Walton The act of fluidly just coming up with the next note from the note before coming up with a phrase from the phrase before and stringing them together in a logical coherent fun musical way That flexes the part of your brain that end up ends up composing. It's the same It's the same sauce cool.

10:19 Jeb Sherrill Right. To me, it's very much like bringing order out of chaos.

10:24 Luke F. Walton I like that sure

10:25 Jeb Sherrill You know, when I start playing over a backing track or something, I'll know what key I'm in. And I'll actually just play random notes all over the pattern until

10:35 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

10:36 Jeb Sherrill stuff starts coming out to me. And then it's like it's like you it's like you find these channels, you find these channels in the fretboard and these channels are the music and they solidify here and there and you find themes and then you take that theme and you vary it and you vary it and you do this and that with it until you come up with a song.

10:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah, that's a great way to put it too. And I do the same thing, especially like, yeah, if I'm trying to kind of sculpt out a guitar solo or a guitar part, one of the best things you can do right in the beginning is just find your notes, find the colors.

11:10 Luke F. Walton Don't think too hard about like, okay, I'm going to come right out the gate and just write the best guitar solo. I'm going to write the best thing. It's like, yeah, find those channels, allow that to speak through you. Just, you know, start by playing a scale or by playing some patterns and then you're going to start to naturally gravitate towards something more musical.

11:28 Jeb Sherrill Right, right.

11:29 Luke F. Walton Yeah. And I like to, I feel the exact same way about the boxes. So for those that don't ever play guitar or have never seen these things, one of the ways that as you were speaking to the guitar teachers try to simplify is to shrink the fretboard.

11:45 Luke F. Walton So it's like you're only seeing instead of the whole fretboard, you're only going to see five frets and we're going to teach you how to play the scale within only those five frets. That's the way that I started to learn as well and

11:57 Jeb Sherrill Wow.

11:57 Luke F. Walton it didn't work for me either because that's not the way the guitar actually works and It took me playing in a band and seeing someone not play that way.

12:06 Luke F. Walton It was like, you know 15 14 or 15 i was playing bass in a band subbing for somebody i didn't know how to play bass but like close enough right um uh which ended up making me love bass forever and ever um but i i was they had to play like a parade and they were going to be on san diego local news i'm like i'm on it my first like live tv spot playing bass and i look over and the guitarist takes a solo and he's playing diagonally

12:32 Luke F. Walton I

12:32 Jeb Sherrill Mm

12:32 Luke F. Walton never seen anybody like sliding instead of just playing in the box and then going high playing in the box he was connecting all the boxes and

12:40 Jeb Sherrill Right.

12:41 Luke F. Walton I was like I never even knew that I could think of it that way and it took me literally sitting next or standing next to somebody playing live for it to like for me to have that light bulb moment I didn't have like a system or anything like that but for it to like

12:54 Jeb Sherrill Help me get, you know, color outside the box. Right. Well, and it's so bizarre to me because, you know, ever since I came up with the system, I've talked with a lot of different musicians and the ones that have been doing it for years, the pros will often tell me, you know, that's how I play.

13:13 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, yeah. You know, that's how I see the fretboard. But they all start out with a box and then they do two boxes and then eventually. They start linking the boxes together and they start finding that diagonal pattern.

13:25 Luke F. Walton Yes.

13:27 Jeb Sherrill And for me, it was like. Well, if I see that diagonal pattern in the beginning, that actually works a whole lot better for me because I feel like I understand the actual structure of the fretboard and it turns it into a little more of a piano,

13:42 Jeb Sherrill type of type of a structure.

13:45 Luke F. Walton I've got some big news, everybody. My vinyl record is out. We didn't make a ton of these. So these guys are going to sell out. And I'd love for you to get your hands on one of them because they're so dope.

13:55 Luke F. Walton they're so dope and it comes with a whole bunch of like liner notes and pictures and you know special stuff the things that really went into making this record and i want you to get your hands on it so go to scoobertdoobert.pizza or check out my instagram for a link or click the link in the show notes or the bio or wherever you're watching this to pick up your copy you know they're gonna sell out we really did not make very many of these and i want you to have it it's it's like a collector's item so

14:23 Luke F. Walton Thank you. Thank you for supporting my music, and I can't wait for you to hear it actually on physical vinyl. Enjoy the rest of the episode.

14:30 Luke F. Walton the way you were putting it like streams because like i think of that too of like i yeah at first i was thinking connect box to box um but and i still know a lot of pro players that play that way where

14:42 Jeb Sherrill Right.

14:43 Luke F. Walton it's like i i have got my moves to connect from this position to that position i kind of do my move to flow from there to there and now i'm like comfortable uncomfortable comfortable again you know and i never wanted to be that player either so That's

14:56 Jeb Sherrill Yeah

14:57 Luke F. Walton part of the reason why I really, and I'm curious about this in your system. One of the things that helped break me out of it was playing on a single string.

15:04 Jeb Sherrill Yes.

15:05 Luke F. Walton um that was that was like game changing i think i got it from i was reading through a core schedule at berkeley which i did not go to berkeley but i was i just like you know i was 16 and i'm singing how cool would it be to go to college and like have a class called single string guitar solo there's something like single single string theory and it was literally just from that i was like i should learn how to play guitar just like with a single string and man did that change my playing

15:29 Jeb Sherrill It will.

15:30 Luke F. Walton It's crazy. It's amazing.

15:32 Jeb Sherrill It's because, you know, everyone starts out horizontally and because

15:37 Luke F. Walton Yes.

15:37 Jeb Sherrill the patterns are different in every position, it causes you to think that the fretboard is a bunch of chunks.

15:46 Luke F. Walton Right. Right. Totally.

15:47 Jeb Sherrill Whereas if you look at it vertically,

15:50 Luke F. Walton Yes.

15:50 Jeb Sherrill you start realizing, OK, there's really just one pattern. And

15:54 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

15:55 Jeb Sherrill when you and when you. uh when you go to diagonal it's

15:59 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

16:00 Jeb Sherrill this place that's right in between the horizontal and and the vertical and

16:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

16:05 Jeb Sherrill it just kind it kind of blooms you

16:08 Luke F. Walton Yeah, I agree.

16:09 Jeb Sherrill know because

16:09 Luke F. Walton I

16:09 Jeb Sherrill at

16:09 Luke F. Walton agree.

16:09 Jeb Sherrill first you have that you know like the chair patterns but you don't actually play along the chair patterns you

16:15 Luke F. Walton Okay.

16:15 Jeb Sherrill you figure out where all the notes are around that and then you're actually you're playing what I call three-dimensionally because

16:24 Luke F. Walton Okay,

16:25 Jeb Sherrill you're playing

16:25 Luke F. Walton cool.

16:25 Jeb Sherrill horizontally vertically and diagonally at the same time and

16:28 Luke F. Walton Yes, that's a it good just way to put opens it.

16:30 Jeb Sherrill it yeah

16:31 Luke F. Walton It does. That's a great phrase for it, three-dimensionally, because I agree with that where it helps you really feel like a musician, not just like a guitar player.

16:42 Jeb Sherrill it well it makes it feel like you're not playing according to a pattern because

16:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

16:48 Jeb Sherrill I really even

16:48 Luke F. Walton yeah.

16:49 Jeb Sherrill though I know all of this is pattern based the whole point to me is to get away from patterns and get away from notes because You just want your mind to

16:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:00 Jeb Sherrill translate sound.

17:01 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:01 Jeb Sherrill It's all about

17:01 Luke F. Walton Right.

17:02 Jeb Sherrill sound.

17:02 Luke F. Walton Good.

17:03 Jeb Sherrill And the notes and the patterns are just these, you know, kind of amorphous things that link you to the sounds, but they're not the sounds.

17:11 Luke F. Walton And that reminds me of Frank Zappa said something along the lines of like, I have a basic understanding of the fundamentals of the instrument and I have an imagination. That's all I need.

17:23 Jeb Sherrill Yes. And he really used it.

17:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah, he did. He did. But that's... like okay a good example is uh early on in my playing career i learned like some of the top 100 guitar licks or like i learned this entire solo to free bird note for note and i learned the entire solo to eric clapton with cream's live crossroads note for note and um then every solo that i did it was just kind of like here's here's free bird again you know it's

17:57 Jeb Sherrill Right, right.

17:58 Luke F. Walton like here's some There's some cool licks and that's natural. I think that's a natural thing. You're trying to learn the vocabulary

18:04 Luke F. Walton But eventually you want to play something new and interesting and you want to inject yourself And

18:09 Jeb Sherrill Right.

18:10 Luke F. Walton licks, just by definition, they're not yours. They're

18:14 Jeb Sherrill Yeah,

18:15 Luke F. Walton quote-unquote.

18:15 Jeb Sherrill because you've learned a stream. You've learned a particular channel on the fretboard and then your brain expands on that a little bit, but it's still following that same channel and you're not really free.

18:32 Luke F. Walton I like that. That's a good use of free. I was made not free by Freebird.

18:38 Jeb Sherrill i like that i

18:41 Luke F. Walton It's still an awesome solo. I love Freebird.

18:43 Jeb Sherrill oh me too it's well it's one of the greatest guitar solos of all time i mean it just is i um Alan Holdsworth really influenced me a lot, not necessarily with his playing itself, but the way he looked at the fretboard.

19:00 Jeb Sherrill Because I remember him talking about how he saw a scale as beginning on the very first note of the guitar and ending on the last note.

19:10 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yeah. Yeah.

19:11 Jeb Sherrill He didn't look at it like, okay, the scale starts here.

19:14 Luke F. Walton Right. The scale starts with the root. It's the key of C. So it begins and end with. And with sea,

19:18 Jeb Sherrill Right.

19:19 Luke F. Walton yeah.

19:19 Jeb Sherrill And so that I think that's why like when I would play stuff, I would have friends of mine look at it and go, what? What weird scale are you using?

19:31 Luke F. Walton Ah,

19:31 Jeb Sherrill You're using

19:32 Luke F. Walton yes.

19:32 Jeb Sherrill some weird mode.

19:33 Luke F. Walton Mm

19:34 Jeb Sherrill And to me, I wasn't. I was just playing in minor or alien or whatever. To me, that's what I was doing. But because I looked at it so three-dimensionally, I didn't play it the way other people did. And so it actually took me a while to figure out how to stay in a mode.

19:56 Luke F. Walton Yeah, totally. Totally.

19:57 Jeb Sherrill And

19:57 Luke F. Walton I

19:57 Jeb Sherrill that

19:57 Luke F. Walton understand

19:57 Jeb Sherrill that was

19:58 Luke F. Walton that.

19:58 Jeb Sherrill hard for me. It was hard for me to even follow a theme like I would play and I would just keep coming up with another musical idea and another musical idea and I couldn't. But that was that was my challenge. I was almost too free at some point and had to kind of. You know,

20:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

20:12 Jeb Sherrill give it guardrails

20:13 Luke F. Walton Right. Totally. Power of repetition.

20:15 Jeb Sherrill Yeah

20:16 Luke F. Walton And I get that. And I also like the some of the best complexity comes out of actual simplicity.

20:25 Jeb Sherrill Yes

20:25 Luke F. Walton Like there was there was a really cool thing when I actually so I did end up at music school and I was way out of my depth because I did not know music like everybody else there when I came in. And there was a discussion that I walked in on. with a bunch of professors and they were talking about i don't remember the song i think it was a radiohead song talking about what time signature the song was in and

20:46 Jeb Sherrill Mm hmm.

20:46 Luke F. Walton my buddy walked up confidently he's 18 year old jazz drummer walked up it's in four four it's in common time they're like no that's ridiculous so that night he notated it out and he's like here it is and he showed the music professors who were you know they were trained to think complex they're

21:03 Jeb Sherrill Yes.

21:04 Luke F. Walton trained to think this is radiohead they're serious music they're doing some serious music stuff and he was just like no no no they're just

21:11 Luke F. Walton tricking you. It's actually really simple, but they're tricking you by what they're accenting, where they're beginning and ending, how they are phrasing things. So they are doing a complex thing within a simple sandbox, just like you were doing with those scales.

21:27 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, it gets interesting. I mean,

21:30 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

21:30 Jeb Sherrill it can get wild.

21:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

21:32 Jeb Sherrill I mean, it can be as wild or simple as you want. That's

21:34 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

21:34 Jeb Sherrill the beautiful thing about music.

21:36 Luke F. Walton I agree.

21:37 Jeb Sherrill You

21:37 Luke F. Walton I agree.

21:37 Jeb Sherrill don't

21:37 Luke F. Walton And there's,

21:38 Jeb Sherrill have to follow it down the weird channels, but you can.

21:40 Luke F. Walton you can, you can. And I, that, that's funny because I think about when I'm doing solos, I'm primarily pentatonic still. because I generally don't get that weird so I'm usually in like a pop-ish context I don't play a ton of jazz but I like yeah but I like getting yeah

22:00 Jeb Sherrill expect it but i can't do it no

22:02 Luke F. Walton yeah right I understand I also think the jazz guitar is surprisingly difficult for just tonally and in a lot of ways like I think it's really easy to end up sounding like Steely Dan not that that's a bad thing that's a great thing

22:15 Jeb Sherrill no i know what you mean

22:16 Luke F. Walton it's just very very it's easy to end up on that lane rather than like sounding like john coltrane um

22:21 Jeb Sherrill Right.

22:21 Luke F. Walton part part of it i think is just the instrument and the way that it's taught in the way that we think about it uh

22:26 Jeb Sherrill I

22:26 Luke F. Walton the think way

22:26 Jeb Sherrill that's

22:26 Luke F. Walton that we true, articulate

22:27 Jeb Sherrill yeah.

22:27 Luke F. Walton it all that kind of stuff but anyway um i i one of the other dawning moments for me was thinking about diminished stuff and like that's one of the things i took from jazz like tritone substitution and so for listeners we're getting way deep in here but what what that is is it's The thing that makes you want to resolve music, the push resolution, that 5-1, that song is over kind of thing.

22:56 Jeb Sherrill buried within that is dissonance buried within that is a thing called the tritone the most like dissonant frequency one of the most dissonant frequencies and dissonance wants to resolve to consonants but that those dissonance things you can move them up and down the fretboard because they're actually symmetrical and

23:13 Jeb Sherrill Mm-hmm. that was like a moment for me to be like oh I can just do this over here and for whatever reason it works over

23:22 Jeb Sherrill Right, this this chord it shouldn't but like you can literally just move that thing up a minor third move that thing up a minor third move that thing up a minor third and all of those notes are cool it's like a bizarro scale that i ended up double diminished or octotonic like it's

23:37 Jeb Sherrill right. just dope and it's dope because you can inject those moments of dissonance you can inject those moments of weird and you can pick like where do i want people to feel uncomfortable to

23:47 Jeb Sherrill Right. make the comfortable thing right after it feel that much better it's like where do i want to scramble their brain a little bit and then give them the candy you know yeah

23:55 Jeb Sherrill And to me, that's the great thing about guitar, because like on piano, everything is a slightly different shape, everything,

24:02 Jeb Sherrill yeah every yeah right chord that you try to do on guitar, you just sort of, you know, once you understand the structure, you can break the structure.

24:11 Jeb Sherrill And it's obvious and not only can you break the structure, but you can break it in. perfect ways if that makes

24:17 Jeb Sherrill Yes, any sense you yeah, it makes know exactly sense. where you can break it and you know how much you can break it you know

24:22 Jeb Sherrill Yeah. And I like the guitar, like you're saying, the patterns and stuff you can think in terms of shapes. And another light bulb moment for me was... I learned arpeggios, but

24:36 Jeb Sherrill Mm I-hmm. learned arpeggios distinct from chords and like two distinct from chords where

24:41 Jeb Sherrill Right. when it really started to make sense for me was playing little mini chords, not the full on like here's a big bar chord, just like a little chunk of a chord and then playing the arpeggio around them, little chunk of a chord, playing the arpeggio around it and then connecting those little things throughout the scales. So this is probably very similar the way that you think, but like

24:58 Jeb Sherrill Yes. that allowed me to play, interact with chord progressions, interact with rhythm. rhythm guitar and pull that into my lead guitar in a like very i just felt like natural musical open you up so you're not just thinking i'm only playing one note or i'm only playing chords it's like Whole thing. Whole buffet is open me any moment.

25:18 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, it brings it together. Yeah, right. I remember a very similar lightbulb moment I had was when I realized that I could arpeggiate on two strings instead of three.

25:28 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, right. Yes. Yes. And the moment that clicked, Uh it was like, -huh. oh, I don't have to look at this as chords. I mean, yeah, it's a chord,

25:36 Jeb Sherrill Yeah but I'm not playing it as a chord. Right. And and it just it, you know, once you realize, OK, I can play this note here and I can play this note here so I can play that chord, but then I can stretch it out on two strings and play it there and everything, you know, it just opens up more.

25:53 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, it Like does. you said, because because you're moving vertically instead of horizontally.

25:57 Jeb Sherrill Right. Right. That's a good way to put it because it's vertical. And then it also allows you to associate different. I guess patterns with the chord patterns that are adjacent. So like there's like a little A minor shape and I know that I've got my A minor arpeggio. I know that I got my little A minor shaped pentatonic and then I also know how to like get in and out of it.

26:19 Jeb Sherrill It allows you to think like blocky and then not blocky depending on situation or what you're doing genre or feelings. Yeah, it's good. That's really cool. What did, what do you think about right hand technique?

26:33 Jeb Sherrill technique so i know we've been talking pretty much Oh exclusively the left hand of like finding the notes that are you know if you're a left-handed guitarist which this is actually something that i've always thought is weird if you're left-handed why do you play the hard stuff with your right hand why don't you just play the guitar wouldn't you be better like why don't i why don't right-handed guitarists play

26:55 Jeb Sherrill With the right hand, I don't understand that. Right. That is a really interesting question. And I think it just depends. It's because of the way the left and right side of the brain work.

27:06 Jeb Sherrill Really? Okay. Um, like if you notice game controllers, your Yeah. Okay. movement, you control with your left hand, which is less, less dexterous, but you just push a button with your right hand.

27:18 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, Why? that's a good point. Why? Yeah. You know, it's Right. because there's some things that your left hand is just better at, even though your right hand is dominant.

27:27 Luke F. Walton that's so interesting yeah because i i get like yeah this this hand's doing a lot and i i switch positions and stuff during when i pick uh depending on what i'm doing but like it's not as much as the work i got

27:39 Jeb Sherrill Oh,

27:39 Luke F. Walton going on

27:40 Jeb Sherrill I mean, your right hand is doing, you know, is doing acrobatics and your left hand's kind of going to going to going.

27:45 Luke F. Walton yeah totally totally yeah

27:47 Jeb Sherrill Now,

27:48 Luke F. Walton but

27:48 Jeb Sherrill my,

27:48 Luke F. Walton doing all the hammer-ons like barely touching it yeah

27:50 Jeb Sherrill yeah, yeah, no, really, you do so much more with the left hand and, and, and it is bizarre to me. Sometimes I've almost wondered if maybe because it's less dominant, you're How do I put this like like your brain allows it to do more like

28:07 Luke F. Walton okay it's like more of a blank canvas kind of it's yeah

28:09 Jeb Sherrill more of a blank canvas and so your your brain kind of goes Okay, well, I don't know how to use this thing. So I'll just let it do what it does where

28:16 Luke F. Walton cool

28:16 Jeb Sherrill your right hand is very your brain knows what to do with this hand And so it makes it more more stagnant

28:24 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah that's interesting and like maybe yeah maybe it is like a fine tooth thing too like like throwing feels so much more natural with my right hand like the big motion like a football or a baseball

28:36 Jeb Sherrill Right, right.

28:38 Luke F. Walton Right. But yeah, I guess writing, I don't know. It's an interesting question. I think about it a lot. Yeah.

28:43 Jeb Sherrill Well, I mean, like, how is it that you can put your guitar in your lap and I can be looking straight at you and I'll take my pick this thing way out here in space and I'll put it right here and it'll go right to the string.

28:55 Luke F. Walton Right. Yeah.

28:56 Jeb Sherrill I mean, how does it do that?

28:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

28:57 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, I don't know.

28:58 Luke F. Walton Uh-huh.

28:59 Jeb Sherrill It's bizarre that your brain is capable of that kind of spatial relationship.

29:04 Luke F. Walton Totally. do

29:04 Jeb Sherrill And

29:05 Luke F. Walton i

29:05 Jeb Sherrill not

29:05 Luke F. Walton was just

29:05 Jeb Sherrill that but it links it up with your left hand too.

29:07 Luke F. Walton exactly

29:07 Jeb Sherrill It automatically it goes to where this finger is and

29:10 Luke F. Walton i

29:10 Jeb Sherrill it's just no

29:11 Luke F. Walton watched uh olympic skateboarding yesterday i was thinking the exact same thing i was actually thinking of guitar too it's like it's amazing because a lot one of like the the winningest tricks are the ones that you

29:23 Luke F. Walton spin around in reverse so you don't actually know where you're going to land and

29:27 Jeb Sherrill Right.

29:27 Luke F. Walton so there's complete blind trust and spatial awareness that that rail is going to be right there and if it's not you're just flying off the stairs like extraordinary

29:35 Jeb Sherrill Yeah.

29:36 Luke F. Walton high risk and these dudes no problem land that thing do some fancy kick flick flip or whatever off of the rail and it's just like the amount of yeah just your brain knows where things are and knows how to get to get there with enough training um yeah i feel the same way on guitar yeah it's like you don't need your eyes you don't you don't really need to think about it it just is it's built in with enough repetition

30:00 Jeb Sherrill And what's weird is you wind up finding that you do better when you don't think about it.

30:05 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah yeah totally

30:07 Jeb Sherrill Like one of the things. I found was really good for playing

30:12 Luke F. Walton was Yeah.

30:12 Jeb Sherrill closing your eyes, not to show off, but simply because when I wasn't looking at the fretboard and the pattern was no longer a visual thing, my fingers just knew where to go. I would do different things.

30:28 Luke F. Walton Cool.

30:29 Jeb Sherrill I

30:29 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

30:29 Jeb Sherrill wasn't, you know, I wasn't tied into my brain looking and going, okay, I need to play that next. I need to play that next. Yeah. It just made you free.

30:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah. That's a good point. That's a really good point. I also think that there's a there's a like mistake recovery skill that

30:50 Jeb Sherrill Yes.

30:50 Luke F. Walton thinking outside of the box kind of. helps helps you and i think that that's one of the defining features of a pro um is you'll go to a concert be like they didn't make any mistakes it's like they did they did they just knew how to make it cool yeah

31:06 Jeb Sherrill yeah yeah and i mean for me that is one of the coolest things in music is when you make a mistake and you have to make it work you're

31:15 Luke F. Walton right yeah

31:17 Jeb Sherrill like well that wasn't in the scale what am i going to do with that How

31:22 Luke F. Walton right

31:22 Jeb Sherrill am I going to repeat that? How am I going to make that make sense?

31:24 Luke F. Walton totally

31:24 Jeb Sherrill And that winds up being some of your coolest moments, right?

31:27 Luke F. Walton totally or if you're just you accidentally shifted the thing you were going to play like up or down slightly it's like some of the coolest jazz stuff is literally just that of like you take a normal idea and you put it in the wrong place it's that's cool and that creates its own dissonance too is that um like

31:48 Luke F. Walton a lot of really cool guitarists will do the kind of like shifting up modal kind of thing so you'll just like play a little pattern you go up a perfect fourth play a little pattern go up perfect fourth play a little pattern and it puts your mind in a blender but it is fundamentally a very simple thing to do on the instrument but it allows you to create that like lift that dissonance that feeling of like whoa what's coming next and you can pay it off

32:10 Jeb Sherrill I

32:10 Luke F. Walton puppy

32:10 Jeb Sherrill love watching

32:10 Luke F. Walton shooting

32:11 Jeb Sherrill people

32:11 Luke F. Walton right

32:11 Jeb Sherrill do that.

32:11 Luke F. Walton oh it's great it's a great feeling

32:13 Jeb Sherrill It

32:13 Luke F. Walton yeah

32:13 Jeb Sherrill is.

32:14 Luke F. Walton uh

32:14 Jeb Sherrill It's like, it's like, wow, how, how did you think to do that? And you realize they probably didn't, you know, but

32:19 Luke F. Walton -huh yeah yeah

32:20 Jeb Sherrill they did it. They did it. You know, it's, it's, it's where you, you, you know, to me in a lot of ways, music is like trying to contact your subconscious, trying to move things over to your subconscious so that your conscious brain isn't making those decisions.

32:35 Luke F. Walton That's

32:35 Jeb Sherrill But

32:36 Luke F. Walton a cool

32:36 Jeb Sherrill you

32:36 Luke F. Walton idea.

32:36 Jeb Sherrill have to build enough foundation that you can do that.

32:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right. I mean, I think it's very similar to language where being able to gather the next words that you want to say and string together things, it's a combination of understanding the vocabulary, the idioms, the shared cultural context, and then yeah, just

32:58 Luke F. Walton knowing how people speak but when you talk to somebody who's learning english or if you're speaking a different language the pitfalls of oh crap how do i put this or what's that vocab word those can cut off your ability to really communicate what you're trying to go for and the best language learners are the ones that just plow through they're like i don't understand i don't remember this word but it's kind of like this it's the opposite of that and it goes like

33:24 Luke F. Walton goes like this and they just like keep going um that's a really powerful thing and and then they'll then they'll gather that fundamental knowledge but yeah i like that that communing with your subconscious is a really cool way to put it

33:35 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, and I think that's an interesting way to put it too, because I think, you know, both music and language are both, they're kind of the two ways that we as humans translate emotion and meaning into sound.

33:51 Luke F. Walton Yes.

33:51 Jeb Sherrill And, and of course music is really, especially singing music, which I don't do, I can't sing for anything. But something cool about that is that you are using both, you're using language and you're using sound in order to, to, to translate emotion, to, you know, transfer meaning into somebody else.

34:09 Luke F. Walton Right. Right. And try and capture the things that are like out in the air. Like what, that's

34:14 Jeb Sherrill Yes.

34:14 Luke F. Walton one of the reasons why I think that. There's a lot going on right now of catalog music. There's a lot of investment going into old

34:22 Jeb Sherrill Mm-hmm.

34:23 Luke F. Walton music, which is perfectly reasonable. It's a proven

34:25 Jeb Sherrill Sure.

34:26 Luke F. Walton thing. And I understand that hedge funds and whatnot, they want to get their money in, so they're going to buy the Bob Dylan catalog and they're going to milk it for all it's worth.

34:33 Jeb Sherrill Right.

34:33 Luke F. Walton That's understandable and that's fine. But nobody really understands how valuable it is to distill this current moment. Everything about it. into sound be it

34:44 Jeb Sherrill Right.

34:44 Luke F. Walton instrumental or vocal whatever and it's not about a protest song it's not about any of that it's about like what does it feel like to be alive in 2024

34:54 Luke F. Walton there are going to be similarities there are going to be nostalgic effects of the past and all that kind of stuff but these those channels the subconscious subconscious

35:03 Luke F. Walton kind of like pathways you're you can only get that from a current musician no one else

35:08 Jeb Sherrill Yes, yes. Because like you said, they are translating the moment. I mean, when we, I mean, I think, you know, when we make music, I really do feel like, I mean, yes, there's that the whole collective unconscious aspect.

35:24 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah

35:27 Jeb Sherrill However you want to look at it, we are pulling stuff from around us, either

35:31 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

35:32 Jeb Sherrill from our own present experience or just from what's going on or just from whatever weird stuff is floating through the ether and it goes into our fingers and it comes out as music.

35:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah.

35:46 Jeb Sherrill And that's beautiful. I mean, that's because I think it blows my mind that you can play a piece and someone on the other side of the world that's never met you. can listen to that and gain meaning from it.

36:04 Luke F. Walton Sorry to interrupt this very important broadcast, but it's time for one more advertisement for myself for this podcast. What I'm asking for is for you to rate it five stars, share it with your friends. This is like the most important thing for this podcast to grow. So if you want to do this, you go into the podcast screen, right? You click on the dot dot dot on Spotify.

36:23 Luke F. Walton Under there, it says rate show and you go and you click it. Five stars. If you could do that for me, that's the best way for the algorithms and all this stuff to share it out with the world.

36:32 Luke F. Walton I know that it's a lot to ask, but if you could please, please, please just please just hit those three dots and then a five star would really help us out and helps us, you know, get the get the word out and spread the love of music. So thank you. If you're listening on YouTube, you know what to do, like, subscribe, all that good stuff. Thank you so much. And here's the rest of the episode.

36:48 Luke F. Walton And it's it's so true with the global nature of it and I love singing songs that I know the people in the world probably don't know all of those words,

36:58 Jeb Sherrill Right,

36:59 Luke F. Walton but

36:59 Jeb Sherrill right,

36:59 Luke F. Walton they'll know about sunshine and they'll know about feeling good or whatever and the music will be about that and overcoming and when they want to tap into that emotion, they'll reach for that song too.

37:12 Luke F. Walton Even if they might not get all the nuance of the reasons why you're feeling bad and you want

37:16 Jeb Sherrill right.

37:16 Luke F. Walton to overcome it. they'll feel it too yeah language

37:23 Jeb Sherrill And,

37:23 Luke F. Walton or not cool

37:23 Jeb Sherrill and I love the way it evolves. I mean, I love the way you can look at any bit of music now and see all the influences, all the people from all the countries that have all come together and maybe not together physically, but together in the music.

37:41 Luke F. Walton Definitely.

37:41 Jeb Sherrill you know we because we're all influenced by everything we hear and

37:45 Luke F. Walton Yes.

37:45 Jeb Sherrill we and and we somehow pack that together and create something new out of it which is just cool you

37:50 Luke F. Walton I

37:50 Jeb Sherrill know agree. yes

37:50 Luke F. Walton I agree. And I'm hearing more now than most people in all of human history, which is amazing. The access is just absurd.

38:00 Jeb Sherrill it's it's ridiculous i mean it's cool but it's it's it's something that's certainly growing up i mean you know because i grew up before the internet and

38:09 Jeb Sherrill You know, life is so different now, just the way something can happen and everyone in the world immediately experiences it.

38:15 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, the internet that I grew up with was not like that, but it is interesting to think about.

38:26 Luke F. Walton taking things for granted or or appreciating them or seeing those things be kind of integrated and and grow up like i remember the where i couldn't just go to youtube and like learn how to play guitar when i was first starting like i

38:40 Jeb Sherrill Mm-hmm.

38:40 Luke F. Walton don't know if that really existed but i could go to like sketchy tab websites i

38:43 Jeb Sherrill Right, right, right.

38:45 Luke F. Walton sure could get some uh malware on my parents computer that

38:49 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, yeah.

38:50 Luke F. Walton i could do

38:52 Jeb Sherrill Now, I mean, it's crazy to me that, you know, 30 years ago, if someone had come up with a system like mine, they could have put it in a book and it would have gotten to a few people. And over 30, 40, 50 years, it might, you

39:11 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right. Reach a

39:12 Jeb Sherrill know,

39:12 Luke F. Walton critical

39:12 Jeb Sherrill get to mass. everybody.

39:13 Luke F. Walton And yes.

39:14 Jeb Sherrill But. You know, when I was first trying to release this, there

39:19 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

39:19 Jeb Sherrill were a number of people I ran into on the Internet who were releasing single shape systems.

39:27 Luke F. Walton Yep.

39:27 Jeb Sherrill And I still don't know what they are because they all charge $30 to see them. And maybe they're fantastic. I have no idea. Like I said, I haven't seen them. But I thought, you know, I just need to give this away for free because how is anyone ever going to know whether. whether it's any good if I don't see it and

39:46 Luke F. Walton Yes.

39:48 Jeb Sherrill you know to me it was to me it's a lot more important for people to use the system than than for me to make money off it I want to make money off it I try you know I I sell diagrams and I sell fretboard stickers and all kinds of stuff but for the most part I you know it's just it's it's really cool to me that I get emails and stuff from people all the time who are like music never worked for me i never

40:14 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

40:14 Jeb Sherrill could figure it out and now it works

40:16 Luke F. Walton Cool.

40:16 Jeb Sherrill because i thought i was a little crazy at first i really did when i first started releasing the system i was like i'm going to release this and everyone is going to go what the hell is this doesn't make any sense go away and there were people who did that but uh but

40:34 Jeb Sherrill an awful lot of people connected to it and it's just it's really cool to me just that anyone that wasn't able to play music before can now play music because

40:44 Luke F. Walton That's

40:44 Jeb Sherrill that's

40:45 Luke F. Walton cool.

40:45 Jeb Sherrill that's

40:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

40:45 Jeb Sherrill amazing to me yes

40:47 Luke F. Walton Yes. Totally. And that it unlocks a different fan base too, I think for musicians like myself, like I'm, I want more musicians in the world because then I can, I can do some.

41:01 Luke F. Walton out there stuff too you know because i want to i wanted i love making straight head pop that's like it's a passion of mine and so that's why i do it i don't do it for any other reason other than i really really like it but i also you know i got a little bit of a dark side to me too of like i want to reach into the bag every once in a while and blow some minds or play some dissonant stuff so it's good to have more musicians in the world so

41:23 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, it is. And there's so many. Like particularly, it seems like the neurodivergence, the engineers, the people who are really overly analytical who I think are probably like me and they think way too much and it's part of their problem.

41:41 Jeb Sherrill Those people know, you know, because I've talked to other music teachers about this and they're like, yeah, we get those guys in all the time and

41:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

41:48 Jeb Sherrill they just don't get it.

41:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Right.

41:49 Jeb Sherrill They can't connect to it and it doesn't work.

41:51 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

41:52 Jeb Sherrill And I'm like, I think to myself, man, there's all kinds of people who are probably very passionate out there about music that never get to play because

42:02 Luke F. Walton Right.

42:03 Jeb Sherrill they didn't find a way to connect to the instrument.

42:05 Luke F. Walton I like that. No, that's a very good point. And it's also. There can be personality, for sure, personality quirks of who goes in and is a full-time music teacher. They're usually probably a very creative person and very passionate in a certain way, and they're probably pretty distinct from a software engineer, just personality-wise, outlook-wise, etc.

42:27 Luke F. Walton And so yeah, breaking down some of those barriers, allowing a friendlier approach to work for a different kind of brain.

42:35 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, because we're all I mean, you know, all our brains work a little differently and

42:39 Luke F. Walton Totally.

42:40 Jeb Sherrill we're all going to work better with different systems. You know, I think I'm just getting a particular niche of them.

42:46 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also one of the beautiful things about systems is I don't hate that I learned the boxed stuff, the cage systems and whatnot.

42:57 Jeb Sherrill Oh, yeah.

42:57 Luke F. Walton It's cool. It's part of my bag, but I would hate to have been stuck in it. And so it's great to learn a system that works for you, that makes sense, that gets you off the ground, and then naturally you're going to develop your own flavor to it.

43:11 Jeb Sherrill Right. Well,

43:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:13 Jeb Sherrill and I've got a few students now who have told me, you know, they have, you know, because I have a few videos laying the boxes and the cage over chairs

43:23 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:23 Jeb Sherrill and they use it all.

43:25 Luke F. Walton Cool. Cool.

43:26 Jeb Sherrill And I think, wow, they must really, I mean, I wish I could see it in that many different ways.

43:31 Luke F. Walton Right. Yeah.

43:32 Jeb Sherrill But. they're doing some pretty amazing stuff with it

43:36 Luke F. Walton Cool.

43:36 Jeb Sherrill which is which is what's cool to me because i know you know right now guitar is going through this weird you know the tim henson the the uh the mechanical shredders and all this kind of stuff

43:47 Luke F. Walton God.

43:47 Jeb Sherrill which

43:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:48 Jeb Sherrill is i mean it's mind-blowing It i can't i wouldn't

43:50 Luke F. Walton is.

43:51 Jeb Sherrill i wouldn't even try but

43:52 Luke F. Walton Totally.

43:53 Jeb Sherrill it's mind-blowing to watch

43:54 Luke F. Walton I don't know if I could. I just don't know. I know that I wouldn't have the patience to because I don't like it enough. enough that's no hate

44:01 Jeb Sherrill Exactly.

44:01 Luke F. Walton i just

44:02 Jeb Sherrill No,

44:02 Luke F. Walton i

44:02 Jeb Sherrill no, no. I know exactly what

44:03 Luke F. Walton you have

44:03 Jeb Sherrill you mean.

44:03 Luke F. Walton to practice so much to be able to do it and it's cool it's like it's cool it's not enough for me to be like i must you know like when i first heard funk music i was like i must right

44:14 Jeb Sherrill Yes, yes.

44:15 Luke F. Walton yeah

44:16 Jeb Sherrill Well, you know, that's something you can sink into. You

44:20 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah

44:21 Jeb Sherrill know, for me, you know, for me, guitar is more about expression. It's not about playing perfectly. I

44:28 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

44:28 Jeb Sherrill want to play perfectly, but it's not about playing perfectly. And those guys who just I mean, it's like they get this one skill and they do just. insane with it

44:40 Luke F. Walton yeah

44:40 Jeb Sherrill and I

44:40 Luke F. Walton great

44:40 Jeb Sherrill love watching it I mean I watch it like yes

44:43 Luke F. Walton totally no it's awesome it's awesome i don't know it feels kind of like uh like a phd degree like a you know like a phd they they are not generalists they are specialists by definition like they extend out that bubble of human understanding this much and they are experts in this little thing they wrote their thesis on and they're gonna go down that rabbit hole forever um that kind of music feels like uh the guitar stuff like phd guitar

45:05 Luke F. Walton sorry which

45:05 Jeb Sherrill Yes.

45:05 Luke F. Walton is cool and

45:06 Jeb Sherrill Yes.

45:06 Luke F. Walton i'm glad it exists yeah but

45:07 Jeb Sherrill Yeah,

45:07 Luke F. Walton yeah it's

45:08 Jeb Sherrill yeah. No,

45:08 Luke F. Walton not

45:08 Jeb Sherrill I mean,

45:08 Luke F. Walton for me

45:08 Jeb Sherrill I can't wait for these young guys to get a hold of the chair system and do that kind of stuff.

45:13 Luke F. Walton yeah heck

45:13 Jeb Sherrill And

45:13 Luke F. Walton yeah

45:13 Jeb Sherrill I'll watch it and I'll go, wow, that's cool. I, you know, because there's stuff you can do with the system that I can't, there's a lot you can do with the system I can't do it because it makes it so easy to. It makes it easy to change key. It makes it easy to just jump between arpeggios.

45:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

45:33 Jeb Sherrill It there's so many. I mean, that's one of the weirdest things for me was figuring out how much I could do on it that I can't do.

45:42 Luke F. Walton Cool. I like that. I

45:43 Jeb Sherrill And

45:43 Luke F. Walton like that.

45:43 Jeb Sherrill just like, Yeah. I'm like, well, someone's going to have fun with this,

45:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

45:47 Jeb Sherrill you

45:47 Luke F. Walton right. Right.

45:49 Jeb Sherrill know.

45:49 Luke F. Walton Totally. Yeah, it's interesting. That reminds me of this one guitar solo that I did. It's still one of my favorites. It's really short. But what I basically did is I stacked all of I was practicing all of the different pentatonic shapes.

46:03 Jeb Sherrill um like the cage system pentatonic shapes all in one hand position so Mm-hmm. it was it was a

46:09 Jeb Sherrill Yes. bunch of different keys it's a bunch of different keys but it was all the different shapes um and i was able to play super fast because they were all like super familiar pentatonic shapes and

46:17 Jeb Sherrill Right. so i just went it's like that was so cool um it was so shreddy but um yeah i don't know like doses right like i i just couldn't make a i couldn't make it be my thing

46:31 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, yeah. I have a lot of stuff. Like I remember this one time I figured out a way that, you know, part of the way I use the chair, especially when I extend it to the throne, is that I use it to be the circle of fifths. Because

46:47 Jeb Sherrill Mm-hmm. if you put a throne on the low E string, you can automatically know all the chords associated with that throne. So

46:55 Jeb Sherrill Got it. in other words, all the thrones associated with that key. And. Okay. So what I figured out was I have a shape that I use to play the first, second, third, lower fifth and higher fifth of every key associated with that key.

47:15 Jeb Sherrill Okay. So, you know, if I'm moving from chord to chord, I know all the notes I can play, but I just move around the chair shape instead of. instead

47:26 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, of switching positions exactly. and and so I learned how to really compact like you were saying how I could play first second third fifth of all the different chords associated with that key just in this one little area and I was like well that's cool I don't know what I'll do with it but cool you know and I let them have it I do a video on it and I'm like okay enjoy this you know do whatever you want

47:53 Jeb Sherrill I love that. I love that. No, and that's like, that's part of the way that I think guitar gets moved forward. I was talking with my guitar teacher when I was, you know, 15 or 16, and I learned a part and I didn't realize that it was delay.

48:09 Luke F. Walton i just learned how to play it and he's like dude that was super fast like that's crazy and i'm like yeah it was like learning the part he's like no he just has a delay pedal he's playing like every fourth note and he just decided to play all of them i'm like oh but like that's the way i feel like that's part of the way that you know some of these like newer shredders kind of get there is that effects and digital editing unlocks a different part of the instrument and somebody learns how to actually play it

48:36 Jeb Sherrill Yeah. And I think that's cool. I mean, Yeah. some people are, you know, they kind of denounce all the people who, all the players who are basically sitting in their studio. They don't have a whole lot to do with other musicians. They just sit there and they play and they get better and better and better. And I'm like, well, you know what? They're figuring out stuff nobody else does.

48:59 Jeb Sherrill Totally. Exactly. Right. It's cool. I Exactly. mean, I'm and let's face it for a lot of introverts like myself who don't have a whole lot of energy to hang out with other people. You know, it's how we do stuff and

49:14 Jeb Sherrill Yeah, we go yeah. down weird rabbit holes, Yeah, but, right. you know, it just expands music.

49:19 Jeb Sherrill Exactly. And that's a beautiful thing. Music deserves to be expanded and it deserves to be shared. And I appreciate that. That

49:28 Jeb Sherrill And too. now we can share it, Exactly. which is what's so cool, Now we have the you tools to share it. Yes.

49:32 Jeb Sherrill know. Yeah.

49:35 Luke F. Walton So I have one final question that I ask all of my guests. But before I do, is there anything else you'd like to talk about with the chair system, these thrones or anything else like digging any deeper? Or should we turn the page onto our last question? It's a biggie.

49:49 Jeb Sherrill Oh, gosh, I could probably take half an hour,

49:51 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

49:51 Jeb Sherrill but,

49:51 Luke F. Walton right

49:51 Jeb Sherrill you

49:52 Luke F. Walton on.

49:52 Jeb Sherrill know, fortunately or unfortunately, I could talk about it forever. I don't know. If anyone is interested in that, please, you know, check out Musical Chair System on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok or just go to my website, musicalchairsystem.com.

50:11 Jeb Sherrill And, you know, if whatever method you're presently using for guitar isn't working for you, it might. I'm not saying it will, but it might. And

50:22 Jeb Sherrill Gotcha. it will allow you to do weird things on guitar that you probably couldn't do otherwise.

50:28 Luke F. Walton Now I'm sold.

50:29 Jeb Sherrill Okay. And on with your question.

50:35 Luke F. Walton So the final question that I like to ask every guest of this show is called Love Music More. This final question is love music why. Why do you love music? What animates you so much about it? What makes you passionate to dedicate so much of your life with all those guitars in the background, making the website, making the system, what animates you to just keep at it for so long? What brought you back to it?

50:55 Jeb Sherrill And what keeps you waking up the next morning doing it again? You know, because ever since I was probably four or five years old and my mother probably first taught me how to put a record into a phonograph and on my father, you know, he was teaching me all about bread beetles, bee gees, Gordon Lightfoot, all that kind of stuff.

51:23 Jeb Sherrill And on my mother's side, it was more the classical and folk of the 60s, that kind of stuff. And, you know, I could listen to those songs over and over and over again. And I still don't think anything has ever affected me more powerfully than, you know, Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind.

51:49 Jeb Sherrill Yeah. You know, what music does, what it's capable of, what it does to me, and the ability to do it is just, it's godlike.

52:05 Jeb Sherrill You know, growing up, the idea of actually being able to play my own stuff was unrealistic. I mean, I didn't think it was possible. It probably wasn't until I was 19 or 20 that I even convinced myself that I could really do it.

52:22 Jeb Sherrill Because I thought that people that created music just had something I didn't, you know, and maybe they did, but I think it's something that we all actually have. I think we're all actually capable of. And the idea of being able to make something like that, make something that affects people.

52:44 Jeb Sherrill emotionally is just there's there's there's nothing more incredible it just isn't yeah

52:51 Jeb Sherrill I love that. I wholeheartedly agree. The act of making music is readily accessible actually to all. It is a steep learning curve to get the fundamentals. But it's just like with music production, a good chunk of it is just learning how the program works.

53:11 Jeb Sherrill Yeah. Just like when you had to learn how to use Microsoft Word or Excel. And I will say another shameless plug, but

53:19 Jeb Sherrill Please. something that a lot of people have said about my system is that because it's more intuitive, it does get you playing a lot faster.

53:28 Jeb Sherrill Love that. And That's that really special. was what Yes. I found for myself. It's like, okay, before I even massively got into the music theory, which I have. But with that or not, if you just understand the structure, it's amazing how much of the music is just in that structure and you can just do it. It's not as hard as you think.

53:51 Jeb Sherrill So true. That's so true. And you're actually getting playing is the hardest. Yeah. Yeah, because I, you know, when I when they were first trying to teach me piano when I was a kid, the worst thing about it to me was they taught me everything about it.

54:07 Jeb Sherrill Hmm. But they didn't teach me how to play. Mm-hmm. And if you don't play first, you don't connect with it.

54:15 Jeb Sherrill Yes. A bunch of rules and concepts that are going to be useful later, they're great, but they don't get you playing, they don't get you connected, and you don't feel the music. And if you don't feel the music, you can't play.

54:28 Luke F. Walton On that job, thank you so much for joining the show. MusicalChairSystem.com, check it out and I really appreciated this conversation. It's great to geek out a little bit on guitar stuff.

54:39 Jeb Sherrill Well, man, thank you so much for having me. It's been a blast.

54:42 Luke F. Walton My pleasure. Thank you.