Here’s a short excerpt from my arrangement of Silent Night, a tune you will no doubt be familiar with and hear countless times over the next month or so.

First note, the arrangement calls for the guitar to be tuned to an open chord, I prefer D (DAD F#AD) given it’s so close to standard but any will do as long as from low to high you have (6)Root- (5)5 th -(4)Root 8ve – (3) 3 rd / 10th- (2) 5 th /12 th – (1) Root 2 8ve.

Play the melody very espressivo, the dynamic contour should move in waves, avoid playing at a fixed tempo as this will make the performance sound a bit starchy and uninspired. The powertab software is a bit limited when it comes to dynamic indications and specifics of standard notation (for example, the F# in bar two should be a dotted half note) so much of which would otherwise be included has been left out; just use your best musical judgment. Be sure to let all the notes ring together like a piano with the pedal depressed.

The melody, of course, should be the most prominent voice with the arpeggiations and counterpoint being played just a degree or two lower in volume.

I hope you have a great time playing through the tune. I plan on having a full book of holiday tune arrangements available for next year, if you’d like to know when it’s all ready to go feel free to contact me at myodice@excite.com and I’ll send you a notification letter specifically for that project.

Be well and happy.

Silent Night composed by Josef Mohr and Franz Gruber. Arrangement copyright 2004 Mark Yodice

While I cannot overstate the importance of learning your scales, arpeggios, and all things theory related, as a guitar teacher, my priority is to get students playing music as soon as possible. Knowing the geography of the guitar neck is imperative to successful playing. The prospect of learning even a couple of fingerings for any given scale can be a tad daunting and time consuming for both novices and some experienced players. I like to use the following approach to get budding improvisers into the musical element quickly, all the while helping to reinforce the learning and visualizations of scales and arpeggios.

Let’s use the key of C for the purpose of simplicity. Play the following common barre chord voicings. They are all 7th chord voicings with the root note on the A string and the fifth on the low E string: Cmaj7, Dm7, Em7, Fmaj7, G7, Am7, and Bm7b5. (The 3rd inversion of the m7b5 is nearly impossible to play without discomfort, so just visualize the 5th on the E strings.) See Example 1.

These chords are all derived from the C major scale. If we use a fretboard diagram to draw in all of these chord shapes, what do we see? All of the notes of the C major scale from the third position to the thirteenth position. If we continue up into the next octave, we’ve covered the entire guitar neck with C major scale tones; don’t forget to cover the first position with the 3rd inversion Bm7b5 chord.

What we’re doing here is making available all of the notes of a major scale over the entire length of the fretboard by using chord shapes instead of scale patterns. This makes the process of learning the fretboard and making musical use of it much easier.

I recommend taking small steps. For example, take the Imaj7 and IIm7 and make up lines using only tones from those two positions. See Example 2.

Once you are comfortable visualizing the two chords, add the IIIm7 and so forth. You will be gradually increasing your comfort zone, chord by chord. See Example 3.

I use these particular chord voicings because of their ease and relative ubiquity in music, but any voicing spanning six strings will work provided you move them across the neck diatonically, keeping the intervallic construct consistent. For example, we can construct a chord using this intervallic design: 1 4 7 3 6 9 (from low E to high E)

These voicings are relatively uncommon and much more dense and rich than the previous ones, but they are diatonic to the key of C and can be used to serve the same purpose.

Once you’ve got this cold in the key of C, proceed to the eleven remaining major keys. In the future we’ll take a look at applying this process to the melodic and harmonic minor scales.

Any questions, comments or suggestions can be sent to myodice@excite.com. See ya.

In this article we’ll be discovering ways to add some color to the most popular of open chords, G major.

Now, you may just ask “Why? I mean, no disrespect intended, as I appreciate the kind gesture. But, I’ve written scores of tunes based on a simple G chord…” Well then, here we go. Now, you may be a superb lyricist, the most exquisite poetry may pour forth from your pen. You may just be a stunningly gifted singer, or a fleet-fingered guitar picker; and I sincerely hope that you are. Bottom line is, if you’re showcasing your skill with a limited harmonic palette, your music will eventually become redundant and dare I say it, boring. Yes, it’s a hard truth, but one that will hopefully lead us to some exciting chordal possibilities.

I cannot begin to count the number of times I have been audience to musicians who are otherwise extremely talented, no doubt, but set their melodies on the same harmonic bed song after song after song. Yawn…

Let’s look at a simple way of remedying this situation.

The G is a great place to begin. It falls comfortably under the fingers and is in itself a beautiful sound. Here are 4 common variations on our garden variety G:

Now, let’s have a look at what we can add to these voicings. We’ll be deriving additional chord tones from the G major scale, of which we’ll use two patterns:

In keep with Guitar Noise tradition, I’ve put these in both tablature and standard notation, and for good measure the name of the notes (the pitch that is sounded at that particulat fret) is right in between. I hope this covers everyone!

Our process is to replace one or more notes of any of the open G variations with G major scale tones. Below is an example of variation 3 with an A note (the 2nd degree of the G major scale) in place of an open G string.

What we have here is a Gsus2 chord.

Here is another example. This one has two added scale tones:

These changes create a G major9 chord. The F# and open G create a sweet dissonance balanced out nicely by the high A and open B.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Ok, the rest is all about you. See what you can come up with and add to your material. There is a world of color and life in this simple little scale. Delve in there and take advantage of what is right under your fingertips…

Remember to slap on that capo and play these new chords in different keys, you’ll notice subtle variations in warmth and resonance as you move around the guitar neck.

Once you’ve exhausted the possibilities of the G major scale, find some other scales to add tones from. The G major chord is found in the keys of D major and C major, so both of these scales can offer further harmonic enlightenment.

In addition there are whole tone scales, diminished scales, melodic and harmonic minor… go where your curiosity takes you. See you next time…