The Fifth Fret

Using Alternate Picking for Rhythm

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:09:00 +0000

Wow, I haven't posted in awhile, still trying to get things back to normal after an insane holiday season.

I'm sure almost everyone has heard the benefits of alternate picking over straight down strokes when it comes to speed, however fewer people know the reasoning for alternate picking when it comes to rhythm.

The idea behind alternate picking is to down stroke the on the beats and upstroke off the beats (the “and” when counting.) This obviously will allow you to play faster but it will also greatly improve your rhythm if you get it instinctual.

If your right hand learns to “feel” the beat when you down pick, and “feel” offbeats when you up pick, then your need to count will actually diminish, at faster speeds, especially when improvising, you can heavily syncopate a line by doing it in mainly upstrokes, your hands will do the rest without thinking.

However there are a couple exceptions to the rules of down stroked beats and up stroked offbeats.

Sixteenth notes through a wrench into the system, therefore when dealing with sixteenth note rhythms you have to change the rules, down stroke the beats and the offbeats (the “ands”, upstroke the sixteenth notes (the “e”s and “a”s). Apply these rules to any phrase with sixteenth notes in them, then switch back when you're not dealing with them.

Sweep picking is done all in one direction, this technique is still perfectly valid when playing notes on parallel strings that are in such fast succession that they are impossible for you to alternate pick.

Analyzing Chord Progressions

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:10:00 +0000

I hope everyone had a great holiday. Mine was insane, regular posting will resume as of today, with another post about chord substitution, this should be the last one for awhile.

This time I'm going to take the opposite approach I took in my blues discussion, and take a previously written song and pick apart the chords involved.

I'm going to use Gershwin's “summertime” here, this tune has been done by a pile of Jazz Musicians, this version is in the key of A minor.


Am     |Bb7    |Am   E7|Am   A7|

Dm7    |F7     |F#m7 B7|E7     |

Am     |Bb7    |Am     |G7     |

C    Am|B7   E7|Am     |Bm7  E7|

First we're going to go through and name all the diatonic chords – that is chords that fall within the harmonized scale.

A quick note, all chord symbols will be written with upper case roman numerals, and the chord qualities will be shown, the reasoning for this is because in more complex progressions, and minor keys, it becomes more and more bizarre to use uppercase for major and lower case for minor – I'm also going to relate the chords back to the A major scale, this is so that we don't get caught up in which minor scale we're using, since none of them are more important then any others.


Im              Im   V7 Im
Am     |Bb7    |Am   E7|Am   A7|

Vmim7                    V7
Dm7    |F7     |F#m7 B7|E7     |

Im              Im  
Am     |Bb7    |Am     |G7     |

bIII Im      V7 Im      IIm7 V7
C    Am|B7   E7|Am     |Bm7  E7:||

Now let's go through it again and analyze for secondary dominance.


Im              Im   V7 Im   V7/IV
Am     |Bb7    |Am   E7|Am   A7|

VIm7          IIm7/V V7/V V7
Dm7    |F7     |F#m7 B7|E7     |

Im              Im      V7/bIII
Am     |Bb7    |Am     |G7     |

bIII Im V7/V V7 Im      IIm7 V7
C    Am|B7   E7|Am     |Bm7  E7:||

Now let's find the tritone subs, an easy way to look for these is to find dominate 7 chords not yet analyzed with the next root a semi-tone away.


Im      subV7   Im   V7 Im   V7/IV
Am     |Bb7    |Am   E7|Am   A7|

VIm7   subV7/V  IIm7/V V7/V V7
Dm7    |F7     |F#m7 B7|E7     |

Im      subV7   Im      V7/bIII
Am     |Bb7    |Am     |G7     |

bIII Im V7/V V7 Im      IIm7 V7
C    Am|B7   E7|Am     |Bm7  E7:||

The reason it's subV7/VI and not subV7/II/V/V, is simply because the latter is incredibly difficult to read, avoid multiple /s whenever possible.

This is also a delayed resolution - meaning it doesn't resolve to where it should (E7) right away, it has some other chords before.

And there you have it, using that method you can pick apart almost all if not all chord progressions you've heard. There's some stuff I haven't gotten into here, but those are LONG explanations.

Musical New Years Resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:39:00 +0000

My posting has been irregular for the holidays everything should be back to normal after new years.

Everyone has made resolutions before, very few people keep them, I gave up on making them quite a few years ago, however, this year I'm going to attempt them again, and hopefully making them public will be extra motivation.

#1 Log Practicing

I've attempted to do this regularly before but always fail, I start and my practicing is much more efficient but then something happens – like leaving my journal at home and practicing in studio, or vice versa. My log is a small $2 notebook that simply lists what I practice then a dot next to that for every 15 minutes spent working on that thing.

#2 That extra hour

I've said before that I pull myself out of bed at 10am to start practicing (except Saturdays I don't start work until 4). I'm going to push that back to 9am to get that extra hour of practice time in.

#3 School

This one I've been planning for awhile, but I've attempted post secondary education before, and failed – mainly due to a total lack of motivation to do the work. So this year – come September I will try going back – this time as a music major instead of a psychology, or computer science student. If I wasn't going to school before so I could play guitar, hopefully going to school to play guitar will work out, and I'll finally get my BA.

#4 Redesign this Blog

Yes sometime soon I'll be overhauling the entire Blog to a nicer design.

So all my loyal readers – if there are any of you out there, what musical resolutions have you made for this coming year?

Guitar Instruction Books

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 04:32:00 +0000

Everyone who has taken formal guitar lessons has probably worked out of an instructional book, these books tend to be boring, but the teachers give them to you for a reason, you learn specific skills and practice the skills you have in them. Even if you're not in lessons they give your playing structure. However, some of these books should never have been published, they're awful. Here's the books I use, note,that I am not earning commission from any of these sales.

Basic Skills:

I love the Zerofret series, they're written locally, and I know the author, the great thing about these books, is not only the complete lack of tab is that you are NOT playing yankee doddle, aura lee, mary had a little lamb, etc. for the duration Almost every tune in the book was written by the author, often specifically for the book, making things far more interesting.

All these books are available in E-book form, quite cheaply.

If you're a beginner obviously start with book one.

If you can't read music but have become a decent player from tabs, skip right on into book two, and deal with second position playing right away.

Book three tends to finish off the basic skills of playing, and book four is focused on getting your chops up there, it's new though, so none of my students have finished zerofret three since book four came out.

Positional Playing:

One of my few disagreements with the zerofret method is that it sticks to second position, so therefore I supplement zerofret three, with Mel Bay's Deluxe Guitar Position Studies book, as soon as they finish the A major exercises, this book moves through all the positions one at a time, (Personally I start in fifth, which is not the beginning).

Past That:

William Leavitt has some great books out, the problem is that they are fast moving, (they were used as testbooks at Berklee.) Traditionally I've started book two after zerofret three is done, I might wait until book four now that it's out, I've taught out of book one before but it moves WAY too fast for any beginner. There is a book three, and if you're past this level you probably have little reason to be reading this blog - although please continue to read, and post opinions if you are.

That being said, anyone who can read music decently can get through these books quickly the trick is playing them fast, about half way through zerofret two, everything is being done with a metronome. The first major exercise in William Leavitt – two pages of straight eight notes in C major all the way up the fretboard my students are doing at 120bpm before they get passed it.

There's More then One Way to Play the Blues

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:45:00 +0000

I was sitting in a bar the other day with a blues band on stage, at first I thought “hey this is pretty cool.” but after an hour, I wasn't convinced they had ever changed songs, they just took dramatic pauses every five minutes or so.

Playing the blues doesn't mean you're limited to one twelve bar progression and six notes for lead, chord tones will still give a very strong blues sound if played over that twelve bar progression, however using what we know about chord substitution we can make that twelve bar pattern very different and much more interesting.

Let's do it in C.


C7 | C7 | C7 | C7 |
F7  | F7 | C7 | C7 |
G7 | F7 | C7 |  G7|

Let's start with common substitutions, firstly the IV7 chord (F7) if often placed in the second measure. That IV7 – I7 progression is very dominant in the blues and can be brought out more.

Secondly #IVdim7 is often placed in the second measure of the second line, the only difference between F7 and F#dim7 is the root, and the root is the b5 of C, otherwise known as the “blue note.”


C7      | F7     | C7      | C7      |
F7      | F#d7   | C7      | C7      |
G7      | F7     | C7      | G7      |

Now let's throw in some secondary dominance at the end of all the phrases.


C7      | F7     | C7  G7  | C7      |
F7      | F#d7   | C7  G7  | C7  D7  |
G7      | F7     | C7  D7  | G7      |

Now let's change around some of these chords with some like function substitutions, every 7 chord can operate as a five chord, the F#d7 will operate as a VII chord off the minor scale, so we'll get something like this.


C7      | Am7b5  | C7  G7  | C7      |
F7      | F#d7   | C7  G7  |C7 F#m7b5|
G7      | Ad7    | C7  D7  |G7       |

Now lastly let's add some tritone subs into the mix.


C7      | Am7b5  | C7  G7  | F#7      |
F7      | F#d7   | C7  G7  |F#7 F#m7b5|
G7      | Ad7    | C7  Ab7 |G7        |

And we now have a VERY different progression however, you can still here the progression in there, even though this is an extreme example, now I'll list another example, without going through the process, cookie to the first one to get it right.


C7 Em7b5|F7         | C7  C#7   | C7      |
F7 Bm7b5|F#d7 Dm7 G7| C7  Ed7   | C7  Ab7 |
G7 F7   |Dd7  Bm7b5 | C7  Fmaj7 | G7      |

Again an extreme example, that is probably a little too far gone to be used, but the essence of the blues is still there.

I'm not saying all Blues should look like this, just throw in some variation if you have a lot of blues on your set list, it will keep the audience awake.

Preventing Carpal Tunnel

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 03:26:00 +0000

Today at work I had a cancellation, so like always I went into my room and started practicing, and got a sudden sharp pain down my left wrist, I stopped immediately, and was unable to play much for the rest of the night without a dull throbbing pain – it didn't hurt but I knew what it was. My younger days of practicing for hours without a break were coming to bite me in the ass.

In an attempt to get as many people as possible to not make the same mistakes I made when I was young here are some basic guidelines for preventing carpal tunnel.

Proper Technique is key, sit up straight on a chair – not on your couch don't lean on the back either., elevate the neck of the guitar and your right leg (either cross your legs, put one foot on top of the other or use a foot rest). and don't wrap your thumb over top of the neck, all these things minimize the amount of stretching you need to do to play.

If you do stand keep your guitar in the same place it would be if you were sitting, lower positions again lead to more strain on the wrist then necessary.

Warm up before you play, stretch your fingers and message them, this will go a long way, and also improve your playing.

Also, when practicing try not to go over 30minutes or so in one sitting, get up and do something else for a bit, let your hand rest. Gigging is obviously another story though.

If you do experience any pain in your wrist stop playing and give it a couple hours, better be safe then sorry here.

And unfortunately a lot of it comes down to luck, if you follow these guidelines from the start your odds of getting it are low. However some people that take all the care in the world will get it, and someone who breaks all the rules might not get it, luck is a big factor.

The illusion of "Style"

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:58:00 +0000

I expect a ton of disagreement on this article, and encourage anyone to voice their disagreements below.

Style doesn't exist.

The building blocks to Jazz are the same building blocks of Punk, and country, and rock, with only a little variation.

Jazz is built on using the full chords – any regular reader has seen that I always use four note chords to explain something – because it's easier to visualize and understand that way, therefore you should learn how these work anyway.

Rock music is based on a simplified version of that, usually triad or dyad chords, but the progressions are the same, and believe it or not the way you should approach improvisation is the same (the Internet is filled with shortcuts that should be ignored.)

Country is built on the same foundation as rock, only without the dyads, and the distortion, the rhythm and bass line is what drives country.

Blues is formed in the way the chord progressions happen, based around the dom7 chords.

So to truly understand music you should be able to play all style, and if you have aspirations of professionalism you'll want to know it all.

A studio guitar player won't be hired if they can only play one style – whoever is hiring you would then have to hire a pile of different musicians depending on the song, they want someone who can play everything.

A freelance guitar player will find way more work if they can be hired for any type of gig.

I tell my students you need four things to become a good guitar player.

Technique/Chops
Music Theory
The ability to read music
Good Ears

All four of these things can be learned forever – with the possible exception of reading music, until your reading can keep up to your chops (ie you can sight read anything you'll ever be able to play.) It can be improved.

The illusion of style is given by how the notes are approached, learn the notes, then learn to approach them from all the angles.

The only exception in this article comes with classical, which is a very different beast from Modern Guitar.

Chord Substitution

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 06:16:00 +0000

Remember harmonizing scales both major and minor? If not review them.

What I didn't mention before is that those chords can also substitute cleanly for each other, therefore if you see an Dmin7 in the key of C you can easily put an Fmaj7 there (this applies to both comping and soloing aspects) since these chords are so similar. This can completely alter a lot of chord progressions, let's take a three chord rock.

C | C | F | G

Change that to:

C | Em | Dm | G

or

Am | C | Dm | Bdim7

the possibilities are huge, your soloing will be coloured up as well by super imposing these chords over top of the base progression.

However it's only one note difference right? Not that big a deal? Now let's combine that with tritone subs and secondary dominance. I'll begin using 4 note chords just to visualize this better, the seventh can easily be stripped to give a more rock based sound.

Cmaj7 | Cmaj7 | Fmaj7 | G7

Now let's put a iii chord into the second measure using like function.

Cmaj7 | Em7 | Fmaj7 | G7

Now let's add ii-V based off that Em7 using secondary dominance.

Cmaj7 / F#m7 B7 | Em7 | Fmaj7 | G7

Now let's use a tritone sub over that new B7

Cmaj7 / F#m7 F7 | Em7 | Fmaj7 | G7

Now let's use a like function sub from that F#m7 – it's currently the ii chord, so let's make it the IV chord of E.

Cmaj7 / Amaj7 F7 | Fmaj7 | G7

Now let's use a like function sub over that Fmaj7 chord

Cmaj7 / Amaj7 F7 | Emin7 | Dm7 | G7

The same type of ideas can turn this simple progression into some really bizarre harmonies, the possibilities are near endless, any attempt to list them all would be pointless, it's necessary to understand the concepts.

Two picking exercises

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 04:53:00 +0000

Click to enlarge images.

For something new today I'm going to give a couple technical exercises, these should be done with a metronome and gradually speed up unless stated otherwise.

The first begins as a simple technique to start cross picking, play the C major scale in open position ascending but hit the high e string between every note. (downstroke scale note, upstroke open e string). The descending version of this exercise changes, downstroke the open note, and upstroke the scale note (putting the open e on the beat and the scale note off the beat.)

Once that's comfortable at a good speed (at least 160), time to make it harder, this time hit that e string twice, changing your picking each time:

And the same thing going down.

The second one is the major seventh stretch, this one is tougher and focuses on finger stretching more then picking, but is good for both, it's hard to explain so I'll just show you, for this one it's really important to sustain every note until it's picked the next time (or you move your finger to a different fret.

Then continue doing that pattern (shifting one finger down at a time all the way done the neck). As you get closer to the first fret the frets become bigger making the exercise harder. Again, get this one up to a good speed (at least 120, preferably more like 180) in small increments. Straight up down picking is critical.

Ear Training Basics

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 04:12:00 +0000

Ear training is something that does develop as you play, however, it's rarely enough.

Put yourself in this situation, you're hired for a gig with a band you've never worked with, a song is called out by request that you've never heard, you don't have charts, you're told the key, style and counted in, what do you do?

Play that major scale? Nope, think of all the possible chord substitutions possible, we've shown that Db7 is a perfectly valid substitute for G7 in the key of C (yet if you played a D natural over that Db7 chord and didn't resolve it properly it would sound awful). This is just one example, there are tons.

I've been in this situation, as have many other freelance musicians I know, this is where ear training is critical, you need to hear how a note sounds against a chord and quickly find a note you can you to resolve that note if it's tense.

Believe it or not ear training requires singing, even if you're a bad singer.

I'm sure most of you sang Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Do in elementary school – this is a major scale, Do being the root, Re being the second, Mi being the third, etc. This technique is called Solfege, and very useful to learn to hear. Sing it slowly, the full duration of a breath for every note with your instrument (electronic keyboard is preferable.) And learn to hit those notes dead on, once your confident, only play every other note, then only play the Do's and check yourself there after singing, you should have landed dead on.

Sing sequences:

Do-Mi-Re-Fa-Mi-Sol etc.
Do-Re-Mi-Re-Mi-Fa etc.

and tons more.

Some people have a great natural ability to hear notes, I wasn't one of them, it took a lot of singing to get to the point I was when I started teaching, and I would still have students with further developed ears then mine come in for their first music lesson outside of elementary school. It's possible to learn, even if you think you are tone deaf, and it will help every aspect of your playing.

Studying Jazz II - Lenny Breau

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 03:45:00 +0000

Part one

Sound and picture quality isn't great, you'll have to turn your speakers up, here's Winnipeg guitar player Lenny Breau at a workshop quite awhile ago.

Lenny got into jazz learning Chet Atkins songs by ear, what he didn't realize is that Chet would dub over a couple times to get those effects, because it was “impossible” to do it yourself. Lenny did it, often creating the illusion of two, sometimes three guitar players at once by himself. Lenny was also the one who conceptualized the chord shell ideas I talked about last month. As well as the cascading harmonics technique he does at about 1:05. Lenny laid the groundwork for the chord melody style of modern jazz guitar, his album “live at bourbon street” is often referred to as the greatest jazz guitar album ever recorded.

Lenny's style was unheard of in Jazz guitar, he borrowed a lot of techniques from country and flamenco and applied it to jazz, a style that few even today are able to pull off.

Unfortunately Lenny was one of the many great musicians that did way too many drugs, he was flaky and unreliable. And again, like so many others died young (at the age of 43), found strangled to death face down in a swimming pool. Too old to be recognized for dying young, but too young to have made a name for himself in the industry, other jazz guitar players became known for doing the same things, but Lenny is relatively unknown, often even in the jazz community, although his influence is seen in the majority of jazz guitarists coming after him, often without realizing where that styling comes from.

Harmonizing Scales III: Minor Pentatonic

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 05:16:00 +0000

Now that we've harmonized major and the melodic minor scale, let's talk about some other scales, namely the one that every rock player is extremely familiar with: the minor pentatonic scale, I'll use A so I don't have to deal with any sharps or flats.

A C D E G

Now let's go through the same process as before building triad chords by skipping every other note (ie the 1 3 5 of a pentatonic scale).

A D G

This ends up being the root, fourth and minor seventh of the minor scale, which will function as an A7sus4(omit 5).

C E A

This will function as a C6, again without the fifth.

D G C

D7sus4 Another 7sus4 chord, without the fifth.

E A D

E7sus4 – once more without the fifth.

G C E

G6sus4 – without the fifth.

So we get

I – A7sus4
II – C6
III – D7sus4
IV – E7sus4
V – G6sus4

Move up in fourths changes because this is only a 5 note scale:

I IV II V III I

This progression will sound pretty cool, however it's fairly dissonant, you can use the notes within the scale to pull other extensions, forming different chords, for example, A C E G are all in there, meaning your i chord could also be an Amin7.

The chord substations also change:

I and III
II and IV
III and V would form your substitutions. Therefore, using this information:

Gsus4 Dsus4 Amin

Actually forms a pretty interesting progression, and it's pulled completely off the minor pentatonic, this can really expand your vocabulary of progressions, and substitutions.

Related:
New ways to use pentatonic scales

Developing Practice Habits

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 04:17:00 +0000

No matter what level you are it's critical to get into a regular practice habit to make your best progress. This routine should be done at the same time every day if at all possible so it becomes habitual.

First determine the length that you are able to and willing to practice – obviously the further along you are the longer you'll need to practice in order to get better. And as lame as it sounds, use a clock and time yourself, don't allow yourself to get away with practicing less then normal unless a situation you cannot control arises – keep a practice journal for this purpose.

I generally don't recommend practicing any more then 30 minutes in one sitting, generally your hands need a break, even if it's to get up – stretch then sit right back down, personally I practice in 15 minute chunks.

What to Practice

Now there are quite a few aspects to, depending on your levels and goals what you need to practice changes, but basically what you need to practice falls into a few categories.

Tunes
Chords
Scales
Arpeggios
Chops
Ear Training
Theory

Tunes:

This one is fairly obvious, but even it can be broken up into two categories: Tunes you can play and tunes you can't play.

Work on some stuff you can't play: break things down work through it by section slowly, expand your repertoire.

Work on stuff you can play: This is what breaks up intense practice sessions, and helps you enjoy your playing, smooth things out, get it faster, change some notes and add your own spin.

Chords:

“I know all the chords” I've heard this a lot, if you think you do – you don't.

A chord is formed by any 3 or more notes, there are 12 notes, do the math, there's a lot of chords. And there are always different voicings you can learn for them (My old teacher had math showing that there were about 36 000 different ways to play a C major chord if my memory serves correctly).

Scales/Arpeggios:

Memorize, learn with a metronome, play faster, in different positions, in different sequences, etc.

Chops:

This one is pretty vague, Scales and Arpeggios tie in with this one, as well as things like right hand tapping, pinch harmonics, basically any technique developing exercise you have.

Ear Training:

For the most part people do this playing and tuning their instruments, however, if you really want to develop your ears, you have to learn to sing. Don't worry about tone, just hit the notes, sing scales, sing intervals, don't worry if you can't sing, anyone can learn to hit the notes. Also try transcribing some songs that you don't know, be patient with it, I'll post an article on the process soon.

Theory:

This is the only one not completely done with your guitar, learn something new theory wise and experiment. For example take Tri-tone subs and work with them over a progression you already know with a lot of dominant 7 chords. If you're not at that level theory wise, then there are resources such as musictheory.net that you can use to learn the basics.

My typical day looks like this:

I get up around 10am, after breakfast and showering it's usually around 10:30, and I practice until one. I then eat lunch and head to my studio, I then practice there until I start teaching (usually four). I go to work early so that I don't have all the stuff at home to distract me, I generally have a really short attention span. If I sleep past 10, I won't practice nearly as much, most of the time trying to practice in the evening fails for me, simply because I currently don't have the habit of doing that in place.

That's over five hours of practice “time” but generally I only get 3.5-4 hours done during that. I then try to spend some time transcribing something, write something for here, or even screw around a bit before bed.

Why study jazz?

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 04:59:00 +0000

I hate Kenny G

The understanding of Jazz theory, harmony, structure and rhythms will improve your playing no matter what genre you play. The reasoning is simple, jazz is far more complex then other genres of music (except for possibly classical).

Now the average person would say jazz is slow and boring, this is where people like Kenny G come into play, the guy doesn't play jazz, he plays what is in essence instrumental pop-music but because of his popularity people tend to think all jazz is like that. In reality, a lot of jazz is way faster then any rock song (listen to Parker's Anthropology or Coltrane's Giant Steps). Anthropology sits around 240bpm, Giant Steps is around 300bpm.

Understanding the fundamentals of jazz will improve your rock playing and most of the great rock players know how to handle jazz – Steve Vai studied at Berklee afterall.

The main problem is that good jazz is hard to find, it doesn't have the wide range appeal (ask any jazz musician and they will tell you they mainly play for other musicians).

Now as I said before, learning the structures and harmonies will help you with other playing – I'm not attempting to say other styles have no merit.

So what I'll begin to do is introduce a few jazz artists a little about them and the tune they're playing. I'll be sticking primarily to guitar players (although I tend to forget this is a guitar based Blog), although throwing in a few of the more important players on other instruments.

Firstly I'll deal with Wes Montgomery, one of the better known names in jazz guitar. He was a self taught player – and like most self-taught players had a lot of bad habits, just looking at the way he sits will tell you that. He also played with with his thumb rather then ever using a pick, mainly because he didn't like the sound of a pick. Wes also was one of the first to play in octaves (as seen at 2:12 and 5:45 as well as some others). This is him playing one of Thelonious Monk's tunes “Round Midnight.”

Round Midnight is a ballad with some odd harmonies (usually played in Eb minor to boot), it's one of the jazz standards – and been done a lot (off hand I can think of Miles Davis, Joe Pass, and obviously Wes all doing covers of it, I could probably name a few more if I thought about it more). This is about as slow as Jazz can get, but even then he played a lot of really fast runs starting at around 3:13 and extending to around 4:30

Jazz is generally structured in the following manner:

Play the Head (or theme or melody).

Solo over the chord progression, using the head as your basis.

Play the head again (doesn't always happen).

So yes, take into account everything that isn't that base melody played at the beginning and end is completely improvised.

Harmonizing Scales II: Minor Keys

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 03:51:00 +0000

Harmonizing scales part one.

As requested by Jason, I'll talk about the second most common scale for chord progressions to be written off which is the melodic minor scale, things here change however because the scale is different going up then it is coming back down. Upwards it's the same as the natural minor scale (or sixth mode of the major scale), with a sharp sixth and seventh note, downwards those notes revert back to the natural minor scale, looking like this:

This means we'll have two choices for notes when dealing with the sixth or seventh, I'll give the more common options.

i – Amin7
ii – Bmin7b5
iii – Cmaj7
iv – Dmin7
V – E7 (the third here is the #7 of the natural minor scale, this is primarily used due to the strength of the progression moving from a V7 down to a i chord)
VI – Fmaj7
VII – G7/Gmaj7 (Gmaj7 is often as to not to sound like it's leading to a i chord, VII7 usually leads to a i chord)

Now, if you're paying attention we have two notes that we haven't harmonized off yet, and that's the F# and G# giving us:

#vi – Fmin7b5
#vii – Gdim7

As far as progressions go the substitutions are the same as major keys, moving up in fourths is still the most common motion, you also begin to deal with the #vii and #vi chords being treated the same as the VI and VII chords – remember they're the same chords with a different root so they function exactly the same.

This style of creating chord progressions is far more common to be used over minor keys then it would be to use the A natural minor scale, especially when dealing with the V chord.

The Guitar Blog Discovery Project

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:44:00 +0000

Using Tritone Substitutions in Comping and Soloing

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:23:00 +0000

The tritone is the only interval invertible on itself – that is, the inverse of a tritone is also a tritone. This interval is also the flat fifth, or augmented forth (which is also the distance between the third and flat seventh of a dominant seven chord.)

The concept of a tritone substitution is simple and very easy to visualize using the chord shells I taught a while back.

The basic idea says that

C7: C E G Bb

can sub for

F#7: F# A#(Bb) C# E

The reasoning is, that the third and the seventh provide the most important tones of the given chords, and C7 and F#7 contain the same third and seventh (only inversed).

Also notice that the roots end up being a tritone apart.

Application for Comping

Let's take autumn leaves for example, and add some substitutions in

Am7 | D7 | Gmaj7 | Cmaj7

Create the first line, however lets substitute D7 with the dominant seven chord a tritone away, which would be Ab7.

Am7 | Ab7 | Gmaj7 | Cmaj7

We now have some cool chromaticism happening in the first three measures.

We can also take the last line of a standard twelve bar blues and create chromaticism: (in C, sub the C chord for it's tritone F#)

G7 | F7 | F#7 | G7 |

Application for Soloing

Let's take a generic line for a ii-V-I progression

Now let's move the notes over the G7 up a tritone, implying a C#7 chord in it's place (I've changed the last note of the bar to make it fit into the line better.

This adds a good chunk of dissonance to your soloing, and can be used any time you see a dominate seven chord (meaning you can go crazy with it during a 12 bar blues.

Melodic Phrasing (video)

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 03:04:00 +0000

I talked about controlling phrases yesterday now as much as I tend to dislike most guitar instructional videos (nothing against the concept I just don't like very many of them), Scott Henderson (of Tribal Tech, and early Chick Corea Electric band), has one on Phrasing that I did like, unfortunately I haven't seen the whole video but this clip of it alone says a lot.

If nothing else you can laugh at the faces he makes when playing.

Soloing Exercises II: Control

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:06:00 +0000

Link to soloing exercises 1

After being able to play a long stream of chord tones, it becomes a matter of being able to make everything sound musical. For this we need to worry about rhythms, and specifically the phrasing (a phrase is one musical idea, which 90% of the time is 4 measures long) – more information on what a phrase is here.

The first exercise here is actually harder then it sounds, and that is to put three and only three notes into each phrase. The trick here it to use different rhythms each time, if you play 3 sixteenth notes and rest for the rest, this is perfectly fine, but don't do it every time. (note there does not have to be a note on the first beat of the phrase, or even the first measure for that matter.)

Continue doing this exercise using different amounts, such as 4, 5, 6 and 7 notes per phrase. This will force you to think in terms of phrases and really control how you place your notes.

The second group of exercises forces you to control where you put the notes within the measure, to begin play only on beats one and three (this does not mean you have to play on EVERY first and third beat.) Then only beat two and four. Then play only the offbeats.

This exercise can actually be made incredibly complex (try playing only on the third note of every quintuplet, using exactly three notes per phrase). And the more complex you make it the more ability to control your notes you can show.

Bossa Novas and Latin Style Rhythms

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 04:09:00 +0000

Bossa Novas are a subject that gets talked about a lot and everyone has a different opinion on how to play them, I'm going to tell you mine:

Firstly the reason I think this is the correct way is that if you talk to anyone who grew up with this style of music, like a native Brazilian they will simply tell you to "just feel it." Rather then give you a specific way to count the rhythm. However, those of us who grew up with Western style music find it impossible to not think in numbers and counting, therefore we're going to train ourselves to count differently. Here's a Bossa rhythm, there are a number of variations of it, but this seems to feel like the base:

Now most of us would count this 1 (2) + (3) (4) + | (1) 2 3 (4). And to begin you should do that, spend about a week counting and clapping the hell out of that rhythm, know it inside and out. Once you can do that we want to change the counting for it, simply count 1 2 3, 1 2. This will completely change the pulse of the music.

Why this is significant

With the new way of counting try playing straight triplets:

This is a drastic change from the conventional western way of thinking of rhythms.

The bass line:

The conventional thing for the bass player to do is to just play beats 1 and 3 (with western counting) in straight half notes, I tend to prefer my bass players to play the and of 2 and the and of 4 as well, adds a bit more Latin feel to it.

New Ways to use Pentatonic Scales

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 03:25:00 +0000

Firstly if you're a guitar player who uses the minor pentatonic scale almost exclusively the first thing you need to do is break that habit. Go through my Soloing Exercises And focus on chord tones, once that habit is broken; read on.

A minor pentatonic scale is the natural minor scale, or Aeolian Mode without the sixth or the second.

A major pentatonic scale is the major scale without the fourth or the seventh.

I once heard someone with his BA in music claim that pentatonic scales are the invention of the devil, and for a long time I agreed, however if you know how to work them they can produce some really cool sounds. To understand how these ideas will work you will need to understand Thirteenth Chords so read my article if you don't know what they are.

We're going to start by using a minor pentatonic scale over the Amin7 chord.


Amin7:           A  C     E  G
Amin pentatonic: A  C  D  E  G

Notice there's only a one know difference between the scale and the arpeggio, that note is actually the 4th, or 11th of the chord, so by playing the A minor pentatonic scale over the Amin7 chord we are actually implying a Amin11 chord. Now let's try something else, let's build a minor pentatonic scale off the ninth of the chord.


Amin7:            A    C  E       G
Bmin Pentatonic:  A  B    E  D F#

A little more difference here, the root and the fifth are still there, but we're also adding B (the ninth), D (the 11th) and F# (the 13th.) So we're actually implying a Amin13 chord here, omitting the third and the seventh.

We can also build of the fifth of the chord, giving us the root, fifth, minor seventh, ninth and eleventh, again implying an Amin11 chord, with an omitted third.

Major Pentatonic scales work the same way with maj7 chords.

Building off the root gives you: root, third, fifth, ninth, thirteenth.

Building off the fifth gives you: third, fifth, seventh, ninth, thirteenth

Building off the ninth gives you: third, seventh, ninth, sharp eleventh, thirteenth

Now the Application:

Let's use Black Orpheus as an example, the first line goes as follows:


Am7      |Bm7b5  E7  |Am7      |Bm7b5  E7  |

If we use the C#minor/E major (same notes) pentatonic scale over the second and forth measures, it will work nicely, (C# is the ninth of B minor) and the major pentatonic can be built off the root of a dominant seven chord easily (it contains no seventh).

However for the first and third measures we have a couple options, the most obvious being to change scales, perhaps move a whole tone down and build off the ninth, or move it somewhere else: however let's try keeping it right where it is:

E – The fifth of A
F# - the thirteenth of A
G# - the major seventh of A
B – the ninth of A
C# - the Major third of A

So the only two notes not within the Amin13 chord are the G# and the C#, now if you know this tune well enough, you can easily change the Am7 into a Am/maj7 (1. b3, 5, 7) since the G is never played over the Amin7 chord, provided you let the rest of the band know you're doing this you're golden. However that leaves us with the C# this isn't a particularly great sounding note over the chord, however it really isn't that horrible, and can easily be used provided you resolve in the a nearby strong note, (the fifth is probably best in most situations here.)

On tabs

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:48:00 +0000

I despise tabs, past the first few weeks of picking up their guitar my students never see them with me, many who use tab assume we don't like it because they have no rhythmic indications, however there are a number of reasons beyond that which lead me to dislike using it.

”You don't have a clue what you're doing”

Look at a piece of tabulature, and pick a random note, you should be able to tell me what that note is, tell me what chord it's over top of and what degree of the chord that is, when I see sheet music I can do that instantly, tabs however don't give you nearly enough information, the reasoning for knowing this comes in improvisation and decorating the melody.

”It's WAY easier to play like this”

I've yet to see any reasonably complicated song tabbed out in the way that I'd play it, most tabbers do what's known as “searching” moving up and down the fretboard trying to find the right note, they then skip the step of rewriting it into a more sensible position. Most tabbers break positional playing ideas constantly (I've seen it as bad as changing positions every few measures,) making your playing incredibly inefficient. And usually when tabbers DO follow positional rules they choose a position that isn't the most efficient place.

”It promotes 'parroting'”

Parroting is what some of my colleagues call playing everything note for note exactly the way it was shown to you, this is a style of learning that doesn't get you very far in the long run, this goes back to improvisation and melody decoration, but it also goes back to moving the same ideas across different songs, I've met a few people who learnt off tab that have learnt 8 different ways to play a ii-V-I progression without realizing they were relearning the same idea until I played it with my back to them, this won't happen with standard notation.

The Alternatives

Unfortunately there aren't many, it's hard to find notation for most rock songs. Transcribing the song your self is the most beatifically, but far from practical for beginner students, Powertab is a free alternative, however tab is written underneath you have to learn to ignore it, Guitar Pro is a similar (and in my opinion better) program, with the option to hide tab, however it runs about $60.

Conclusion

I generally recommend my students to learn a few tunes off tab or powertab when they start, this way when someone asks them to play something they can do something people can recognize, however, I get them to rewrite notes outside position into an easier place, then transcribe what they're doing into standard notation, creating, although a longer process, the student will gain MUCH more benefit in the long run. As soon as they have enough fretboard and theory knowledge to figure these things out themselves, they learn that way.

Soloing Exercises

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 03:39:00 +0000

I'm not going to attempt to get into “what is improvising” I'm going to assume you know some basics, if Grand Weepers wrote a great essay on it if you need a refresher, I'm simply going to deal with some exercises that help your abilities.

Single Chord Tones

The strongest notes to use over any chord are the notes in the arpeggio (or notes actually within the chord). The root and the third being the strongest of these. (refer back to Harmonizing Scales. So for the first exercise play through the tune in question playing only the roots of every chord in straight quarter notes.

After you're comfortable with the roots, play only the thirds. Then play only the fifths, then play only the sevenths (if applicable).

Try to stick with the highest of each note in the position you're playing, then only the lowest.

Multiple Chord Tones

Do exactly the same thing as the single chord tone exercise, however this time change notes every beat, for example, play root, third, fifth seventh every measure, play around with different patterns.

Continuous Chord Tone Exercise

This one is tough, but defiantly the most beneficial of the bunch. You want to be able to start on any note within the arpeggio, and play the next note within it ascending, when you get to a chord change play the next highest note in that arpeggio. When you're as high as you can go in your current position, switch directions and do it ascending. For example, if I were to play a C blues in straight quarter notes, in second position I might play:

Bb (on the fifth string), C, E, G for the first measure.

Bb (on the third string), C, E, G in the second

E, C, Bb, G in the third.

E, C, Bb, G switch to F7 for the second line.

F, A, C, Eb

etc.

Then try straight 8th notes, or even different rhythmic ideas such as, quarter, quarter, eighth, eighth, quarter

In addition to getting you used to where the arpeggio notes are for each chord all these exercises will get you used to how the progression sounds, the continuous chord tone exercise specifically will really help you break habits.

I had one student that when playing the blues would always play the root note of the one chord each time he switched to it, this exercise broke that habit.

How to practice scales

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:20:00 +0000

Practicing scales are a necessary part of learning any instrument: They get your hands used to playing faster and finding the notes you need for composing and improvising, they also get you used to the sound of the scale. Here are some exercises I give my students for practicing scales.

Start on the root note and go as high as you can in the position you're playing in, then as low as you can, then back to the root.

Now start on the root again and go up in thirds, then back down.

Then start on the root again and play the IM7 arpeggio up and down, then ii7, iii7, etc. And you'll get this:

Speed this up with a metronome, then work on G major, then C major, then A major, then F major. Once you're comfortable with them practice the same ideas in different positions across the neck.

Secondary Dominance

noreply@blogger.com (Dustin) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 04:54:00 +0000

The idea of secondary dominance comes from the idea of using the strong V-I progression (refer back to Harmonizing Scales from another key signature to add movement to your chords. Let's take a standard twelve-bar blues to start.


 |C7      |F7      |C7      |C7      |
|I       |IV      |I       |I       |

|F7      |F7      |C7      |C7      |
|IV      |IV      |I       |I       | |G7      |F7      |C7      |F7      |
|V       |IV      |I       |IV      |

*The IV chord in measure two is a fairly common substitution.

Now what we're going to do in measure eight is take the V chord of G major, (D7) and call this the V/V. Add the V/IV (C7) into the end of measure 9, and the V into measure two.


|C7      |F7  G7  |C7      |C7      |
|I       |IV  V   |I       |I       | |F7      |F7      |C7      |C7  D7  | 
|IV      |IV      |I       |I   V/V |
|G7 C7   |F7      |C7      |F7      |
|V  V/IV |IV      |I       |IV      |

Already this progression has much more movement in it. However, we can also do the same thing with the ii chord, creating a ii-V-I progression.


|C7        |F7  Dm7 G7|C7        |C7  Gm7 C7|
|F7        |F7  Dm7 G7|C7        |C7  Am7 D7|

|G7  Gm7 C7|F7  Dm7 G7|C7  Gm7 C7|F7        |

Play through this progression, the constant ii-V-I change is pretty common in Jazz, however used a little more selectively can be applied to any style of music, spice up your standard I – IV – V progression in C by playing:

C Gm C F Am D G
I ii/IV V/IV IV ii/V V/V V