Paul | Guitar Lessons and Performance - Paul Elwood

Counting for guitar players

Counting- musically speaking- is harder for some folks than others, for sure. You hear the term “natural rhythm” and what that really refers to is a person’s innate ability to count, if you get right down to it. Some people have more natural rhythmic ability that others but anybody can improve their ability to count a rhythm!

Tap Your Foot

It amazes me how often students have to be reminded to tap their foot while playing. When you play guitar, you play with your whole body, right? Your hands, your head, your heart and your feet are- or should be- engaged. Tapping your foot while playing is a simple way to start thinking (and playing) more rhythmically.

Consider tapping and hand or foot to music any time you can! In the car (please be safe), while you’re watching Netflix (a great exercise, tapping to the rhythm of commercial music) and really, any time you hear any music. Try to find the beat!

Find Rhythms in the world

There are there natural rhythms you can count to as well. This may seem a bit weird but for example, let’s say you are in the airport, strolling towards your gate. Your walking pace has a natural rhythm to it and you can start counting 1/2/3/4 in your head as you […]

Paul2026-03-18T20:40:29-04:00

play better- by thinking about movies?

Want to play better guitar?

It might seem odd, but you can play better guitar by thinking about movies. Let’s step away from music for a minute and consider the “Kuleshov Effect”:

Film theorist and director Lev Kuleshov—who helped create the first ever film school—often had his students re-edit D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation to learn how meaning was created. Kuleshov and his people even went so far as to re-edit pre-revolution Russian films in order to rid them of the “bourgeoisie” messages of the past. As a result, Kuleshov developed one of the most important concepts in montage theory; this came to be known as the “Kuleshov effect.” Kuleshov cut together several identical shots of an actor named Ivan Mozzhukhin with different shots including those of a bowl of soup, a dead child, and a beautiful woman. Although the shot of Ivan is the same, over and over, his expression seems to change because of the image following it.

This proved to Kuleshov that in cinema, it is the way images relate to each other that creates meaning—not the images themselves. This concept is one of the most important pillars of filmmaking. It is very natural for audiences to relate two sequential images to each other to create anything from an ideological meaning to even […]

Paul2026-03-09T15:49:37-04:00

World on a String!

Download sheet music for “World on a String”

World On A String

Another great American songbook tune: “I’ve Got The World on a String”. World on a String is a 1932 popular jazz song composed by Harold Arlen, with lyrics written by Ted Koehler. It was written for the twenty-first edition of the Cotton Club series which opened on October 23, 1932, the first of the Cotton Club Parades.

The song was recorded and popularized by Cab Calloway who had a #18 hit in 1932.

Bing Crosby recorded the song on January 26, 1933, with the Dorsey Brothers and their Orchestra.

The song was one of the first recorded by Frank Sinatra when he transferred to Capitol Records in 1953. His recording on April 30, 1953, with an orchestra conducted by Nelson Riddle reached #14 on Billboard’s most played list.

“Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.” – Sergei Rachmaninoff

Paul2026-04-30T08:58:06-04:00

travel guitars

Travel guitars are pretty interesting, and if you travel and can’t bring your guitar with, there are a few “travel guitar’ solutions. Typically these shorter-scale guitars have a neck without a headstock, the tuners being built into the butt of the guitar. The guitars are meant to be played through headphones and although they may be suitable for performance, I suspect they are used mostly for just what the name implies, a substitute instrument you can use to practice while away from home. Some of them do sound pretty good though, judging by recorded travel guitar video on their various websites.

The tradeoff for travel guitars portability is tonality. The tone of the guitar comes entirely from the pickups so in the case of nylon-stringed guitars specifically (what I would be interested in) that pickup is a ‘piezo’ style. Piezo-electric pickups convert the physical movement of the guitar top into an electrical signal, and they can sound thin and ’tinny’. Some classical/electric guitars have both an internal microphone and a pixel-electric pickup; using onboard controls, the player is able to blend the sound between the two sources (plus EQ) for a more ’natural’ amplified sound. “EQ”, btw just short for ‘equalization’. You would use EQ controls to balance the sound of your guitar in the way that sounds best to you.

https://travelerguitar.com/collections/acoustic-guitars

I’ve always […]

Paul2026-04-25T19:23:04-04:00

blues in Am

Paul2026-03-10T15:46:46-04:00

Nutshell

nutshell

“Nutshell” is a song by American rock band Alice in Chains that originally appeared on the band’s 1994 EP Jar of Flies. The band played it on MTV Unplugged in 1996, and this rendition of the song was included on both the box set Music Bank (1999) and the compilation album The Essential Alice in Chains (2006). Since 2011, guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell dedicates “Nutshell” to Alice in Chains’ late original members Layne Staley and Mike Starr during the band’s concerts.

Lyrics

The lyrics were written by vocalist Layne Staley, and the music was written by bassist Mike Inez, guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell, and drummer Sean Kinney.

Bassist Mike Inez said of “Nutshell”, when asked what song makes him think of Layne Staley the most:

I think the No. 1 for me is “Nutshell.” Layne was very honest with his songwriting. And in “Nutshell,” he really put everything in a nutshell for everybody. That song still gets me choked up whenever I play it. I get a little teary-eyed, and sometimes when we’re doing the arena runs especially, they’ll have some video footage of Layne. And I look and see me and Jerry [Cantrell, vocals and guitar] and Sean [Kinney, drums] looking the wrong way. We’re not looking at the audience, we’re looking back at Layne, and it’s pretty cool that there’s still that song for us. Yeah, it’s just a sad thing.

Paul2026-04-23T15:18:38-04:00

monkey gets in the way

…well day and night,
I wanna do right but the
monkey gets in the way.
I try to walk to walk the walk
I try to talk the talk
but the monkey gets in the way.
Well try as I can to get control
He’s got a hairy-toed death grip on my very soul.
I’m startin’ to suspect that this is never gonna stop
he’s gonna ride me around until the day I drop!

Know what I mean? Download the lead sheet with chords and lyrics:

Monkey gets in the Way

Look up for inspiration, look down on nobody –

Paul2026-04-30T08:11:39-04:00

jingle bells

Jingle_Bells in G music and lyrics

“Jingle Bells” is an American song and one of the most commonly sung Christmas songs in the world. It was written by James Lord Pierpont. It is an unsettled question where and when Pierpont originally composed the song that would become known as “Jingle Bells”. It was published under the title “The One Horse Open Sleigh” in September 1857. Although it has no original connection to Christmas, it became associated with winter and Christmas in the 1860s and 1870s, and it was featured in a variety of parlor song and college anthologies in the 1880s. It was first recorded in 1889 on an Edison cylinder; this recording, believed to be the first Christmas record, is lost, but an 1898 recording—also from Edison Records—survives.

James Lord Pierpont originally copyrighted the song with the name “The One Horse Open Sleigh” on September 16, 1857. The songwriting credit given was “Song and Chorus written and composed by J. Pierpont.” Possibly intended as a drinking song, it did not become a Christmas song until decades after it was first performed. Pierpont dedicated the song to John P. Ordway, Esq., an organizer of a troupe called “Ordway’s Aeolians”.

Paul2026-04-20T08:24:23-04:00

let it be part 1

“Let It Be” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, released on 6 March 1970 as a single, and (in an alternative mix) as the title track of their album Let It Be. It was written and sung by Paul McCartney, and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. The single version of the song, produced by George Martin, features a softer guitar solo and the orchestral section mixed low, compared with the album version, produced by Phil Spector, featuring a more aggressive guitar solo and the orchestral sections mixed higher.

At the time, it had the highest debut on the Billboard Hot 100, beginning its chart run at number 6 and eventually reaching the top. It was the Beatles’ final single before McCartney announced his departure from the band. Both the Let It Be album and the US single “The Long and Winding Road” were released after McCartney’s announced departure from and the subsequent break-up of the group.

“I adore art… when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear.” – Guiseppe Verdi

Paul2026-05-02T10:37:30-04:00

hands on the wheel

“Hands on the Wheel” is a celebrated country song written by Billy Callery and famously recorded by Willie Nelson for his landmark 1975 concept album, Red Headed Stranger. It is a melancholy yet grounding song about finding peace amidst life’s chaos, often noted for its themes of staying centered.

Album: Originally released on the 1975 album Red Headed Stranger.
Writer: Written by Billy Callery.
Theme: Focuses on finding tranquility and control (“hands on the wheel”) when the world feels chaotic.
Covers & Features: The song was notably covered by Jerry Jeff Walker (1979) and has appeared in films like

Paul2026-05-26T20:54:11-04:00

About Paul

Tap Your Foot

Find Rhythms in the world

Want to play better guitar?

World On A String

Lyrics