That may seem like a strange thing to say, but there are many places along one’s journey of learning the guitar where one eyes can actually make learning more difficult. Actually, it’s not really the eyes as much as it is the perceived (and pre-conceived) need to see.

“But,” you say, “what about if you’re a visual learner?” That is something that teachers hear over and over again these days. And while is it true that some people do learn quicker through a visual medium (and it’s exceedingly strange how reading, which is totally visual, seems to have fallen through the cracks and is no longer considered a “visual medium”), most people brains are, fortunately, quite adaptable and can switch gears quicker than one realizes. More on this later as it’s very important.

More to the point, though, is that music is not a visual medium, now matter what kind of spin you try to put on it. Music is heard or even felt as vibrations, but unless you go to concerts carrying a lot of sophisticated scientific equipment with you, you don’t see it. You can see all the peripherals of the show – the set, the lights, the costumes, the seemingly endless visual effects – but that is not the music. It’s the show and it’s important to remember that the two are separate.

When you play your guitar you also do not see the music. You see yourself playing the instrument. And, despite what I initially said, very important to beginners. Playing the guitar requires a bit of coordination. You need to correctly fret a note, which means that you have to be fretting the correct string in a “sweet spot.” You also have to pick the right string, too! Imagine doing that without looking!

But as one learns the guitar, this need to look at what the hands are doing can have some adverse effects. First off, in order to see your fingers on the frets, you have to tilt the neck of the guitar at an angle toward you. This creates two problems: First, with your guitar at that much of an angle, you’ve placed it in such a way that you cannot get the tips of your fingers in an optimal position to fret the notes. The angle dictates that the fingers are more flattened than “on point,” which increases the likelihood that you’re going to blunt some of the adjacent strings even if you do manage to fret the note you want.

Having the guitar tilted so that you can see the neck also places your wrist in a very awkward place. Ideally, you want your wrist to be relatively straight when you’re playing. There’s no way you can get it close to straight when tipping the neck to favor your eyes.

As a beginner, you have a fine line to walk here. Initially you are going to have to see what you’re doing. But you want to develop confidence in your fingers as soon as possible so that you don’t have to rely on your eyes to know they are sitting on the right place on the fretboard. This is why so many teachers first walk students through the many variations of the “one finger one fret” exercises when starting out. It helps to build that confidence and also makes you realize that you don’t have to see where your fingers go all the time.

Just as important, these simple exercises work to start developing your ear as well as your sense of touch. With very little concentrated practice, it’s amazing how quickly one can both hear and feel when a note is wrong. And this becomes more important as you get more serious about your playing.

So if you’re just starting out, make it a habit to try to set your guitar straight, parallel to your upper body, just as soon as you can. Read any of Jamie Andreas’ articles and you’ll understand the importance of proper posture and position. Look at your fingers first and then set your guitar right and try to go by feel. Some people practice sitting in front of a mirror to help with being able to see. That’s okay, too, but again the point is to try to play without looking. After all, if you perform live you’re not going to be playing in front of a mirror! Yes, playing without looking will certainly be difficult at first, make no mistake about it.

But in the long run it will also make your learning easier. Whenever you run into a chord that you’re having difficulty fingering, merely setting yourself in good position, getting the fingers where they can optimally fret the strings can usually make a huge difference in playing a chord well. Not to mention cleanly!

Changing chords is another area where our eyes can slow us down. Not that they mean to do so, but when one watches ones fingers change chords the natural tendency is to slow things down and to have each finger work individually in order to better follow it with the eyes. It’s almost as if the fingers and eyes have a contract between them to make the signal to the brain better – “…first remove index finger and stretch it to the first fret and put in place, then remove ring finger…”

Ultimately, you want your fingers to work together as a unit to change chords (see Tom Hess’ excellent article Teaching Chords to Beginning Guitar Students for some tips on doing so) and not relying on your eyes to supervise your chord changes will make you quicker and also more confident about your abilities. Not to belabor the point again, but you are far more likely to develop both your ear and your sense of touch more quickly once you push yourself to the point of not watching your every move.

And developing both your ear and your confidence in your fingers are two important by-products of getting past using your eyes. Read any interview by any guitarist whose ability and skills you admire. When he or she talks about learning it’s inevitably about how he or she would listen to his or her own idols and then try to play what was heard. The interviews rarely delve into just how much work that involved, it’s almost as if the interviewer has no idea how much time was spent getting things wrong! That’s important to think about, because ear training takes work, and if you never set aside time to practice using your ears, you won’t get a sense of phrasing or rhythm that are essential to being a great lead guitarist.

Speaking of rhythm, how many guitarists do you know who describe beats in terms of “ups and downs?” And how many do you know who count out the beats? Generally speaking, which ones have you found to have a better sense of rhythm? Chances are likely it’s those who count. When you count out rhythms you internalize them. You feel them. You cannot feel “up and down,” you can only copy a motion you’re seeing. It may be that watching someone gets you started, but until you develop the ability to internalize a rhythm you’re always going to need someone to get you started.

Please understand, none of this is to say that I don’t think using your eyes isn’t important or that being a “visual learner” means you’ve no chance of becoming a musician. All that I’m trying to teach you is to not let a convenient label keep you from making real progress on the instrument you love making music that means the world to you.

Our brains are incredibly wonderful and yet intensely dangerous things. They are wonderful in that we ultimately learn about the world using all our senses. And we truly need to use all our brain whenever possible. Most of us can smell something burning long before we see it, just to use an everyday example.

The brain is dangerous when we talk ourselves into a handicap that we don’t necessarily have. Saying “I am a visual learner” or “I need to see my fingers to play” takes all the pressure off, so I don’t have to worry or work harder when I stumble. More importantly, if I say it enough my brain will believe it and I’ll never be able to prove it otherwise, even if I manage to get good in spite of myself. If I say instead, “I prefer to learn visually but this is a musical instrument so I’m going to have to work on being able to use my fingers and my ears as well as my eyes, maybe even instead of my eyes” then I am letting my brain know that I need its help to coordinate all my abilities so that I can make music.

Way too many guitarists end up giving up playing because they don’t use all the abilities their brains have access to. It doesn’t take a genius to see that.

Speaking of seeing, here’s a final thought – as you get more serious about playing and start performing either solo or as part of a group, or even if you simply just jam with some friends, you’re going to need your eyes both to communicate and to catch communications with your band mates and audience. You’ll totally miss out on that if you have to constantly keep watch on your hands.

Until our next Guitar Column…

Peace

This becomes very important when you encounter more complicated rhythms, as you’ll soon see. But I’d like to take a moment to clue you in to something that will also help you immensely when it comes to playing rhythm – written music notation. Notes written in musical notation do double duty. They tell you which note to play and they also tell you how long any given note should last in terms of beats.

Tablature is certainly helpful, but usually only to a point. For example, take a moment and play this for me:

You certainly can handle the notes themselves, but notes are only one part of music. Rhythm is another and it can be very important. How important? Well, suppose I tell you that the example you just played is the first line of the Christmas carol Joy to the World? Did you play it like that the first time? Or did you play it simply, giving each note a single beat? Quite a difference, no?

Since we’re truly only concerned with strumming (for now, anyway), you only have to concern yourself with reading the rhythm aspects of notation. We’ve a number of lessons here at Guitar Noise about this, like Timing is Everything. You might want to take a few moments to look that one over, particularly since it gets into counting and that’s right at the heart of what we’re discussing.

When you count out the beats of the song, you usually do so in terms of quarter notes. We did this in “Example 1″ in Part 1, where you strummed down each quarter note like this:

I’d like to take a moment now to introduce some of you to rhythm notation. Rhythm notation uses just the rhythm part of notation. Instead of writing all the notes of a chord out in notation, a simple slash is stuck at the end of a stem, like this:

These are four quarter notes of the G chord, just as you saw in “Example 2″ a few moments ago. It doesn’t matter in the slightest where on the staff, on whichever line or space, the slash appears. All you’re concerned with is that they are quarter notes. Many music books use rhythm notation without staffs, placing strumming notation above a lyric line.

We’ll use rhythm notation for our next few examples. I’m not going to bother putting a chord in the following examples so you should feel free to use whatever chord you’d like.

Getting back to our quick review of “Part 1,” you also read and saw how when you strum in quarter notes, you’re actually strumming in eighth notes when you take the upstrokes into account:

So far, so good. Now how about if you want to play some more complicated rhythms, maybe something in the style of Jack Johnson, perhaps? He’s actually a great choice because most (if not all) of his music is available in books, which means you don’t have to guess how he strums things, it’s all written down for you!

You may be wondering how that is possible. After all, no one probably went and marked every downstroke or upstroke on the notation. And you’d be perfectly right about that. But if you take a moment and apply your brain, using the information you got in “Part 1,” you’d make some important discoveries.

Suppose you want to play a rhythm where the fastest notes are sixteenth notes? First, you have to think about strumming in eighth notes. Why? Because sixteenth notes are half the value of eighth notes, just like eighth notes are half the value of quarter notes. So if you were to strum a measure of eighth notes with all downstrokes, like this:

That means you’d be strumming in sixteenth notes when you take the upstrokes into account, like this:

Of course, more likely than not, you’re not going to be overly challenged by a rhythm that is either straight eighth notes or straight sixteenth notes. The fun comes when things get a little uneven, such as in strumming something like Jack Johnson’s song, Taylor.  Here’s the riff that gets played pretty much throughout the song:

This looks kind of formidable unless you are able to see it and say, “Hey, that’s all sixteenth notes! Some of them have ties, but they are all sixteenth notes and I can do that!” First, chart all the notes out and ignore the ties. Since the two measures of this riff have the same rhythm, I’m going to just use the first one in the next two examples:

Now, when a note is tied, that means you just play the first of the tied notes and not the second. That means that we miss whatever strum happens to fall on the second of the tied notes, like this:

Instead of the rhythm and the strumming being a total mystery, you’ve got it down perfectly. Let’s try the whole riff:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

That wasn’t hard at all, was it? Not to figure out, anyway! Executing the strumming correctly will take a bit of practice, but nothing you aren’t capable of.

In the chorus sections of Taylor, a second acoustic guitar part comes in playing some open position chords while the first guitar is playing the riff we just worked out. Here is how the strumming of the second guitar looks in notation (rhythm notation this time):

By the way, I’m going to use a regular open position G instead of the “G5″ if that’s okay with you. I just like the sound of it better. Following the same process we just used for the first guitar part, we notice that there is a combination of eighth notes and sixteenth notes here. First, we want to just write out the count, and here’s something very interesting about that – It seems that many notation software programs, particularly those used in guitar books, usually separate out the groups of sixteenth notes or eight notes or dotted eighth and dotted sixteenth notes and what have you, in clusters of single beats. This makes writing out the count a lot easier, as you can see:

Finally, just add in our upstrokes and downstrokes according to where they fall in the count and you’re good to go:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You’ve gotten quite a bit to digest here, so we’ll save going into even more complicated rhythms for next time.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Today we’re going to look at little harder at how we choose a scale to use as a solo. And, hopefully, we’ll see that there can be more than meets the eye.

To make this lesson somewhat practical and useful, why don’t we use a typical rock ‘n’ roll chord progression? How about C to Bb to F to C, say four beats (one measure) each? You can go ahead and give the final MP3 file a listen if you’d like, just to get a handle on what we’ll be working on.

You can hear that C major is definitely what we’d call the tonal center. But is it the key of this progression? We can certainly make an argument for it, and chances are, if you were looking at sheet music for something like this (maybe Bachman Turner Overdrive’s Taking Care of Business, for example) the key signature would indicate C major by having no sharps or flats and adding the Bb to the Bb chord by means of accidentals. You can also find a surprising number of books where a chord progression like this would be written out in the key signature of F, which has one flat (Bb). But C is certainly our center, our sense of “home,” if you will.

Okay, so we have a key. One step down and several decisions to go…

This particular progression, going from the root (I) to the flat seven (bVII) to the four (IV) chord, is very common in rock music. Without batting an eye, you could probably come up more than a dozen songs you know that use it in one form or another. You’ll also find this chord progression in country and folk and even in some guitar studies by the immortal Fernando Sor, which means that people living around 1800 were not strangers to these sounds.

Thinking in terms of the typical rock guitarist, we might automatically reach into our “toolbox” and pull out the C major pentatonic scale. In case you’ve forgotten (even though it’s not been all that long since we used it last!), the notes are C, D, E, G and A.

Looking at the make up of the chords in the chord progression, we find the following:

C major contains the notes C, E and G

Bb major contains the notes Bb, D and F

F major contains the notes F, A and C

While the major pentatonic is not going to cause us a lot of stress, there aren’t a lot of nice target notes from which to choose. By “nice,” in this case, I’m talking about root notes of the chords. There’s C (and E and G, too), but no Bb or F. We do have the D (the third of the Bb chord) and A and C (the third and fifth, respectively, of F). You could use this scale but you will probably find yourself unhappy with how it ultimately sounds. Don’t take my word for it. Since you’ve downloaded the last MP3, give it a try and then come back to the discussion.

Alright, then, the C major pentatonic was a bust, so let’s try the C minor pentatonic. I’m sure you remember this one:

Because we’ve given a very nice rock feeling to this chord progression, using the blues idea of “Minor pentatonic over a major key” works pretty well here. Have a listen:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

We’ve got blue notes Eb (flat third) and Bb (flat seventh) to play over the C chord, and there’s Bb (root) and F (fifth) of the Bb chord and also F (root), C (fifth) and Eb (flat seventh) for the F chord. All and all, this doesn’t do that bad of a job.

Can we do more? Certainly, we can. Take a look at all the notes of our chords again, this time written out as they would appear in a scale:

C D E F G A Bb

Does this look at all familiar? Except for the last note (Bb), everything else is a note of the C major scale. There is, of course, one major scale that has only one flat in it, and that is the F major scale. You’re probably more familiar with it if we start on the root:

F G A Bb C D E

How about that? Of course, you’ve already read A La Modal or any of our other Guitar Noise lessons on modes, so you know that when we use the F scale but start out on the C note, it’s technically the C Mixolydian Mode. And in root six position on our guitar we’ll find it here:

This is an interesting mix because it gives us more target notes, but eliminates many of the “blue notes” because we’re using E instead of the Eb of the C minor pentatonic. Consequently, you get a markedly different feel when using the C Mixolydian, as evidenced here:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Interesting, isn’t it? Even though we’ve got the same progression and I’m using the same style to solo with, this has more of a pop feel and less of the blues edge to it. Many rock guitarists find the Mixolydian mode fits very well into quite a lot of their music.

Of course, you can always decide to “mix and match,” using the C minor pentatonic for a phrase and then switching off to the C Mixolydian for another. But for those of you who enjoy playing one single scale, then I would ask you to think back just two lessons ago in this series and perhaps consider the C Dorian scale, which would be a C scale, only in the key of Bb (which has two flats, Bb and Eb):

Here you’ve got the two blue notes of the C minor pentatonic, plus you’ve got the Eb as a blue note for the F chord, but you still get all three notes of the Bb and F major chords as you did with the C Mixolydian. Here’s what a solo in this scale sounds like:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You might notice on this solo that I went out of my way to use the D note as a target to make things even more interesting. D on top of the C chord makes Cadd9, and over F creates F6. It is, of course, the third in a Bb chord.

And, as always, I cannot stress enough that these are still only a few of the possible choices available to you, not even counting combining scales, as mentioned just a few paragraphs ago.

And, again as always, this is why it’s vital for you to take the time to experiment and noodle and, most important of all, to listen to what you’re doing so that you can get a feel for what you want and when you want it. Here is a backing track so that you can practice the scales we mentioned, plus any other scales or combinations of scales you might find intriguing:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this and I hope that you are starting to get (or getting more of an idea) that there will almost always be a multiple choice answer to the eternal question of “which scale should I play!”

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7

This one came a little while back via email:

Dear David,

I love your site – and your lessons and your arrangements and ideas for changing the keys of songs and different rhythms to try. I was inspired to buy a twelve string by your article “Double Your Pleasure” and I listen to your great podcasts. As experimentation is something that seems to inspire you as it does me, I wondered if I could ask for your input with something I am working on and not many people seem to be able to help me with…

I love the rather simple song “All I Can Do Is Write About It” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. But as I’m Scottish and now living in America, I thought I’d change a few of the words to make the song about Scotland rather than the American south. Then I also thought to make it sound a bit more Celtic, it might be worth putting into DADGAD…

The chord progression is really simple: G D C; G D Em C, G D C C.

Do you think I can just play those chords in DADGAD or if I retune to DADGAD is there an equally good sounding progression or a transposed set of chords that you have experience with that would sound better in that tuning – while obviously keeping the same rhythm and feel as the original…just with a Celtic twang, if you will…

Your thoughts would be gratefully recieved…

Now it’s been ages since I’ve heard this song, which if I remember correctly is the closing number off Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Gimme Back My Bullets album, and the idea not only intrigued me but it seemed like a cool thing to do for Saint Patrick’s Day (although I’m not sure I’m going to make it by then!). So I sat down and worked up some ideas and here is a quick lesson that came out of that bit of brainstorming. Of course, we’ve got to go through the usual formalities:

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

First things first, as mentioned in the email, the song is indeed very simple in terms of structure and chords. Not counting the solo between the second and third verse, there are two different sets of two-measure chord progressions. The first, which we’ll call “Progression A” is two beats each of G, D, Em and C. The second set, “Progression B” if you will, is two beats each of G and D, followed by four beats of C.

Pairing one “Progression A” with one “Progression B” will give you two lines of the first verse, as you can see here:

The introduction of All I Can Do is Write About It is also made up of one pair of these two progressions. Immediately following the first half of the first verse, “Progression B” is then played by itself, serving as a short interlude between the two halves of the first verse (you could technically call these two separate verses – that’s up to you).

The chorus of the song, as well as all the subsequent verses follows a different structure. First you play “Progression B” twice, then “Progression A” and then you tack on one last “Progression B” to finish things off. Here’s the way the chorus parses out:

The very last time the chorus is played, the final line ends with a single Em chord, played once and held instead of playing the full measure of C. And that pretty much takes care of both the chords and the song structure.

And that means it’s time to tackle the chords. I assumed (correctly it turns out, and that’s fortunate because otherwise we’d be having a chat about that word “assume”) that the reader wanted to play and sing this song at the same time, so instead of going for full chords, I went with embellished chords that (a) were relatively easy to finger and (b) allowed access both to open strings as well as potential hammer-ons and pull-offs that would help give the song that “Celtic twang” the reader was looking for.

My thinking was this – in order to sing and play the song at the same time, you’re going to want to have an arrangement that you can play pretty much on auto-pilot. The less you’re worried about the playing, the more you can enjoy the song and also come up with all sorts of other trills and frills.

So here are the chords, displayed both in chord charts and guitar tablature:

Having the chords and the structure, all that was left was to come up with a Celtic feel to playing the chords. If you’ve read A Celtic Air, one of the old Guitar Columns here at Guitar Noise, you know that there are many aspects to giving an arrangement a Celtic feel. Being tuned in DADGAD is one way of doing that, but using a lot of droning notes, not to mention a generous helping of hammer-ons and pull-offs, also can help.

But if you’ve ever listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s original version of this song, or to any song of Skynyrd’s for that matter, you know that their guitarists are constantly using hammer-ons and pull-offs. It’s part of their signature sound.

So we have to come up with something else, and I chose to go with rhythm. Most Celtic pieces have a swing to them; it’s rare for a reel or jig to not have a triplet feel. Yes, this will make our arrangement of the song a little more difficult, but it will also make it feel a lot more Celtic and less Southern Rock Ballad.

In order to do this, I re-arranged the time signature of All I Can Do Is Write About It, going with 6 / 8 timing instead of 4 / 4. This gives us an intrinsic triplet feel. It’s all a matter of the “pulse” of a song. Normally, we think of 4 / 4 timing as having the following sense of pulse:

In 6 / 8 timing, our pulse is gotten by counting the beats in the following manner:

In 6 / 8 time, even though each eighth note technically gets a beat, the convention is to think of the dotted quarter note (which is made up of three eighth notes) as the pulse, giving each measure two pulses that can, in turn, be neatly divided into three. This is why when you see a song in 6 /8 timing, the BPM will usually indicate the dotted quarter note getting the BPM count and not the eighth note or quarter note. In other words, you get one triplet set for each click of the metronome.

And because we’re looking at chord changes that take place every two beats, I want to subdivide the pulse even further, mostly in order to give myself more room in which to play:

Here we’re using three sixteenth notes (and not sixteenth note triplets, as I say on the first MP3 files – good help is so hard to find!) for each half-beat, giving up six sixteenth notes to play around with when we get ‘round to creating our riffs, which should be any moment now…

I hope you’ve followed along with me this far, because now we’re getting to the fun part! Since there are only four chords, all we have to do is come up with a cool, Celtic sounding pattern for each of our chords. For whatever reason, when I was working this out I was using a pick. It just happened that way. So you can definitely play this with a pick (and I do in the MP3 sound files), or use your fingers if you prefer. Here’s what I came up with for the G chord:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

For the fingering, I suggest using your middle finger on the sixth (now low D, as we’re in DADGAD tuning) string, while your ring finger plays the regular D (fourth) string and the index finger handles the chores on the G (third) string.

I came up with this particular pattern after a bit of playing around. Giving it a bit of breathing space, that is, not filling it entirely with sixteenth notes, made this seem, to my ears anyway, as fairly playful and slightly mysterious and also allowed for no end of possible variations (one of which you can see and hear in the last example) should I really get into things. That’s important to me. If I’ve a pattern that has to be played precisely in sequence for the duration of a song, chances are very likely I’m going to botch it at some point. So having a pattern that can be slightly scramble on occasion is a big plus as it allows me freedom to screw up and still carry on with the song.

And having a little bit of space where I could add in more sixteenth notes, again as you hear on the variation, means that the number of possible variations can be quite high.

For the D chord, I could have gone with many other options, but I liked this one best:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Mostly, I enjoyed using the hammer-on of the F# on the D string. There’s a big tendency, when playing in DADGAD, to use D5 chords instead true D chords. Making this one a little more embellished by adding the B and G notes on the G (third) string appealed a lot to me for some reason.

Now let’s look at a pattern for the Em chord;

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

As with the G chord, I added a single variation to this particular pattern, but there are even more possibilities with the Em than with the G, especially with this fingering. You can get many more notes, from the low B at the second fret of the A (fifth) string to the E note at the second fret of the first (now high D) string. You should play around a lot with this pattern, as you should with the C:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Again, I cannot stress enough how you should make the time to experiment and try to come up with your own variations. I choose these particular patterns by thinking, “what could I play and still manage to sing this song at the same time?” and your answer will (hopefully) be a little different than mine.

And you will hear that, when playing this without thinking too much about it, I ended up with even more variations than I’d planned. Please notice that I ended this final MP3 file with a simple G 6 / 9 chord (550000 in DADGAD) simply because, at the time of recording this, I wasn’t even aware that I was going to write a whole lesson around what I came up with! Using Em7 (220020) or even leaving the second (A) string open (220000) will work as well.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

In the original recording, there is a solo before the last verse, played after a brief change to the key of A. The chords are A (two beats), D (two beats) and E (four beats) and this progression is played four times. For our arrangement, I decided to simply leave out the solo. Maybe the next spot of spare time I get I’ll come up with something and then update this lesson!

I hope you had fun with this lesson on arrangements. It’s a lot of fun, not to mention occasionally challenging, to come up with an arrangement that’s different enough from the original yet still pays homage to the sentiment of the song. And it’s always a treat to hear people come up with arrangements because it can be a real eye (and ear) opener that inspires you to get a little more creative.

And, as always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forum page or email me directly at either dhodge@guitarnoise.com or dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

You may not think that lead guitarists have to concern themselves with rhythm, but you’d be dead wrong. Rhythm sets up the whole concept of phrasing and phrasing is what makes a solo sound like a solo and not someone practicing a scale.

And now this bit from the fourth lesson, Combining the Major Scale with the Minor Pentatonic:

…let’s take a brief step sideways to think a moment about what makes music interesting. At its heart, music is a constant shift between disharmony and harmony, what’s generally referred to in terms of “tension and resolution.” Good melodies, for example, don’t simply use notes taken from the chords of the chord progression of a song. It’s the interplay of the melodic notes against the chord progression that creates this give-and-take of tension and resolution.

Solos do this as well. Otherwise all soloing would be nothing but chord arpeggios. And we would be reading a lesson on “Turning Arpeggios into Solos” and not “Turning Scales into Solos!”

Alright then, let’s chat about “target notes.” And to do that, I’m going to quote Guitar Noise Moderator Wes Inman, who recently made a great post about this concept on the Guitar Noise Forum:

I am a big believer in “target notes.” This is when you pick specific notes to play over specific chords in your progression. I don’t like to play notes nilly willy; I like the solo to lead the listener’s ear. This is a method that will help you pull off a good solo every time, but it is not something you want to do every solo. You don’t want to sound like you are using a method. So, think of it as a tool. Once you get familiar with these target notes, you will remember them when you are improvising.

Now I’d like you to do me a favor. You’re going to use the same chord progression that served as our “backing track” in the first two lessons on this series (C to Am to F to G) and improvise a little solo, using the C major pentatonic scale. For those of you who may have forgotten it, here are the notation and tablature to help you out:

Chances are likely that when you’re playing this, you don’t run into a lot of tension or dissonance. That’s one of the reasons why the pentatonic scale is such a popular tool for a soloist. Remember that the notes that make up these chords are as follows:

The notes of the C major pentatonic scale are C, D, E, G and A. That gives you all three notes of the first two chords in our progression – C (C, E and G) and Am (A, C and E), plus two notes each of the F chord (A and C) and G chord (G and D). These notes, when played over the chords which they are a part of, are your safe notes.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg, if you’ll pardon the cliché. And this is also where having either a little chord theory or a lot of listening experience will come in handy. You might know from your own reading or experience, or by availing yourself of the many wonderful articles here at Guitar Noise, that you can add just about any note to a major or minor chord and come up with an embellished chord, such as a sixth or seventh or major seventh. If you want to catch up quickly on this idea, then give Building Additions (and Suspensions) a read.

Now let’s look one more time at our C minor pentatonic notes and examine how they relate to the chords they are not a part of. C, for instance, is part of the C chord (it’s the root), the Am chord (it’s the third) and the F chord (it’s the fifth). It’s not a part of the G chord. In relation to the G chord, C is the eleventh. More important to the soloist, playing a C while the backing personnel are playing a G chord gives the impression of turning the G chord into Gsus4. This is especially true if the backing people are playing G5 (the G power chord, if you will).

So give a listen to what I do in this MP3 example:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Here I’m using C fairly constantly, but I’m especially emphasizing it as my target over the G chord and I hang on to it when the chord then changes to C. This is known as sustaining a note. We’ve talked about this before in respect to chords (check out the article Sustained Tones: An Animated Discussion for more in regard to chords) but here we’re using single notes from the soloist to create the sustained chord. Cool, no?

You can, of course, do this with other notes from the C major pentatonic scale. Let’s look at each and see how it relates to the other chords that they are not already a part of:

• D is the ninth of C, the fourth of Am, and the sixth of F
• E is the major seventh of F and the sixth of G
• G is the seventh of Am and the ninth of F
• A is the sixth of C and the ninth of G

So now I’m going to try another solo over our progression, this time deliberately targeting notes that are not part of chords and then holding those notes out over a chord change. Maybe two…

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

I don’t know about you, but to me this is beginning to sound a little more polished. It’s certainly more interesting than targeting only my “safe notes.” And, obviously, things get even more interesting should you decide to go from using the C major pentatonic scale to playing the full C major scale, which adds the F and B notes:

• F is the fourth of C, the sixth of Am, and the seventh of G
• B is the major seventh of C, the ninth of Am, and the flatted fifth (a blue note) of F. And, as you already know, it’s the third of G

Having all the notes of the C major scale at our disposal will create even more interesting target notes when playing over our chord progression. In case you’ve forgotten where the C major scale is, here’s a reminder:

And here is a brief example of using all these notes over a solo:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This final solo sounds, again to my ears, even better than the last one. There’s a lot of interesting things going on and while I am simply using a basic scale pattern, it doesn’t sound like someone just tossing out a scale and hoping it can masquerade as a solo.

One vital aspect about using sustained notes as part of your soloing technique is that it forces you to hang onto a note, to breathe, to create a phrase instead of simply plastering the allotted space with every note available. The solo becomes something that, as Wes aptly put it, “leads the listener’s ear.” There’s an art to what’s known in music theory as “voice leading,” and good guitarists are always aware of that. It’s part of what can make a solo memorable.

As always, here is a backing track so that you can practice creating your own magic:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Next time out, we get back in step with modes, looking on various ways to spot clues in chord progressions that will help you determine which scale might work best as a choice for soloing.

Also, we’ll get to see firsthand the trap that we’ve led ourselves into by our very practicing of scales. Interested?

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8

Getting these two thoughts into your head is essential if you want to be able to solo over any song. If the point hasn’t been driven home yet then, again hopefully, this latest installment will help you drive the point home.

On the surface, this should seem easy enough. We’re going to use a simple progression of two chords and figure out what will be the best way to solo over it. I should rephrase that, as not all of us are ever going to agree as to what is the “best way” to solo. How about we say instead that we’re going to look at various options, each valid in their own way? Ready?

Okay, our chord progression will be in four-four timing and will consist of one measure (four beats) of Dm and then one measure of G. That’s G major. If you’d like to hear it, skip down to the last MP3 file of this lesson. Be sure to right click it and save it to your computer so that you can play along with it later.

Again, it sounds pretty simple, right? But before we jump right in, let’s take a moment or two and think about what we’re going to do in terms of soloing.

First, we might want to think about what key this progression is in. D minor certainly seems like a good bet as things seems to focus around that D minor chord. But if we look carefully, we should see a flaw in that logic. Have you found it?

Maybe it would be good to back up a step and look at the chords themselves. Dm is made up of the notes D, F and A, while G is made from the notes G, B and D. We should all be agreed on that, right? Let’s take a look at all the notes:

D F G A B

Given this much information, we could just construct a scale from these notes. Because it has five notes, it’s certainly a pentatonic scale, but it doesn’t match any of the two pentatonic scales that we already know. The major pentatonic is the root, second, third, fifth and sixth. So if D is our root, the D major pentatonic is D, E, F#, A and B. The minor pentatonic is made up of the root, minor third, fourth, fifth and flat seventh, and if we again use D as our root, that would mean the D minor pentatonic is D, F, G, A and Bb. Neither of these is a match for what’s going on here.

As much as I hate to say it, this is where even the slightest bit of knowledge of music theory might be a big help. You would know, for instance, that the notes taken from our two chords would have to come from the key of C. Why? The first tip off is that there are no flats or sharps. You might argue that there could be a C# or an Eb, but I would point out to you that both the F and B are natural. The key of C has no flats or sharps. When we move to the key of G, which has one sharp, that sharp is F#. It has to be. There is no key signature that has only a C#. If we go in the other direction, the key that only has one flat is F and that note is Bb.

Another argument I might use is that the key of C is the only key where we’d be able to construct both the Dm and G chords out of the major scale, as you may have read in The Power of Three or in other theory articles we have here at Guitar Noise.

It’s situations like this where we have to make a great leap forward in our thinking. We have to learn that, sometimes, there is a difference between a key or key signature and a tonal center. People often use these two concepts interchangeably, but there will be occasions where you need to separate the two ideas.

So even though we have a progression where the two chords are taken from the key of C, the tonal center we are shooting for is D minor. What does this mean to us? Well, as mentioned earlier, we could create a new pentatonic scale, just for this occasion. Seems like a lot of time and effort though, especially since we’ve already learned our pentatonic scales so well.

How about this? Let’s try using the A minor pentatonic scale, since Am is the relative minor of the key of C. The notes of this scale, which are A, C, D, E and G, will certainly fit the bill because they are all in the key of C. I’m going to do a short solo using the “Root Six” position of the A minor pentatonic:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

How about trying the D minor pentatonic scale, which I’ll write out for you as well in “Root Six” position:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

That certainly sounds a little more like it. But I can’t help thinking that I still might have a better option.

And I do – the C major scale. It has all the notes of both chords of the progression, especially the B note (noticeably absent in both our previous pentatonic scales), which totally makes that G major chord sing out.

The trick, if you want to think of it, is that while we are using the C major scale, we’re actually going to target notes in both these chords, the Dm and G. If it helps (and it certainly helps many people), don’t think of this as the C major scale, but rather as the D Dorian scale. I’ve taken the liberty of writing this out as such:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Now, folks will endlessly argue about whether or not this scale is the C Major or the D Dorian, and you’re certainly welcome to add your two cents. For right now, though, I just want you to take the time to experiment with all three, to compare and contrast sounds, to listen to what aspects of each you like. Or don’t like.

In order to help you do so, here is an “extended” version of our chord progression, just for you to play over:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

One thing you should definitely take away from this lesson, though, is the idea that you can fall back on the Dorian mode whenever you run into this particular type of chord progression, going from a minor root (or tonal center) to the major fourth. Sure, you can certainly fall back on the tried and true minor pentatonic, but your ears may appreciate you adding the extra two notes you get from taking the full scale. Your audience might, too

While you’ve gotten quite a bit of information this time out, I also want to leave you thinking about this puzzle over what to call our last scale. You might want to take a moment or two and read up on modes here at Guitar Noise. The article A La Modal might be a good place to start.

And next time out, we’ll pick right up with this question, because I think that I may have an answer that will work for many of you. Also, we’ll get to see firsthand the trap that we’ve led ourselves into by our very practicing of scales. Interested?

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8

Not surprisingly, if for no other reason than folks like to argue about almost anything, there are often disagreements over what notes, exactly, are used in the blues scale. Even music scholars don’t always see eye to eye on this topic. In their book, Music in Theory and Practice, Volume 1, authors Benward and Saker define the blues scale as the nine-note combination of the major scale and minor pentatonic that we examined in Example 3 of our last lesson, Combining the Major Scale with the Minor Pentatonic. Slightly confusing, no?

Here, we’re going to address what most musicians acknowledge as the “blues scale.” This is as good a place as any to mention that there is no such thing as a “major blues scale” or a “minor blues scale.” Just as we know there is no “major chromatic scale” or “minor whole note scale.” Like other scales, the blues scale follows a specific pattern and, also as with all other scales, we define that pattern in terms of the major scale. We’ll get to that definition in just a minute.

First, though, let’s take a moment and re-read what we know about blue notes, courtesy of Wikipedia:

In jazz and blues, a blue note (also “worried” note) is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres.

As we noted in The Major and The Minor, the third lesson in this series, the Wikipedia definition goes on to add a very important sentence: “The blue notes are usually said to be flattened third, flattened fifth and flattened seventh scale degrees.”

We already know a scale where we’ve made use of two of these three blue notes, and that’s the minor pentatonic. In case you’ve forgotten, here it is in the key of C:

You undoubtedly remember our discussion of how guitarists love to use the minor pentatonic scale over standard blues progressions in major keys because it contains a healthy dose of blue notes for each chord change. Looking at the notes used in our example of the C minor pentatonic scale:

C Eb F G Bb

We can see we have two blue notes of the C major scale, those being Eb (flatted third) and Bb (flatted seventh).

But while Meatloaf may sing, “two out of three ain’t bad,” we can take a moment and add the third blue note, the flatted fifth, to the minor pentatonic with relative ease. You can see in the following example that it doesn’t even involve a change of fingering:

Really nothing to it, is there? This example is how most musicians will define the blues scale. In other words, think of it as:

Root flat 3rd 4th flat 5th 5th flat 7th

Or, in perhaps easier terms, it’s the minor pentatonic with the flat 5th added to it. The real question, though, is “how does it sound when used over a typical twelve bar blues progression?” Well, I’m glad you asked:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

As in our other lessons, I’m deliberately overplaying, not to mention I’m going out of my way to play a lot of the Gb notes in the C Blues scale in order to let you hear the particular flavor of this scale. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, as the saying goes, but it certainly allows you to add some interesting touches.

Just as in our past lessons in this series, it’s a good idea to just sit and play around with this scale, not only to get it into your fingers, but also to get it into your ears and your head. And, also just as in our past lessons, here’s an “extended version” of our blues in C chord progression for you to work with!

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Because this last MP3 is about three minutes long, a good idea would be to try to cycle through the various scales you know – the major pentatonic, the minor pentatonic, the “combination” scale from our last lesson and now this blues scale. Listen to the notes each scale gives you, what type of mood (if any) a particular scale puts you in. The more music that’s in your head, the more color you can bring to your fingers.

Next time out we’re going to leave the blues for a bit, but not the minor pentatonic scale. And we’ll also be taking (yet) another look at the major scale and what a useful thing it is! In the meantime, and as always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8

Hello all,

None of you remember me, surely, but I remember this board. I used to post here regularly about 4 years ago. I was about 14 then, although I don’t remember my old posting name.

I am writing this because I am now 18 and currently pursuing a degree in classical guitar and music composition at a major U.S. conservatory, and recognize that this would not have been possible without the contributions from many different people who helped me along the way. Family, friends, teachers, and… this forum.

This site contained the only guitar instructional material outside of a private lesson that I ever thought was helpful. Also, the people on the forums were very nice to me and also very encouraging. You have all had a role in my development as a player, and I therefore wish to thank every one of you for your help and guidance.

Although guitar will always be a big part of my life, you inspired me to make it my professional pursuit as well. Thank you and good luck!

With sincerest gratitude,

Now, Paul and I get emails, seemingly on a daily basis, thanking us for the Guitar Noise website or for a particular lesson or all the lessons in general. Not surprisingly, these emails are one of the “perks” of being a part of Guitar Noise. But this particular one, and the fact that it was addressed to the entire Guitar Noise community, got me to thinking about how people can connect to one another, especially in this day and age of almost-instant communication.

Tonight, I’m going to be playing in a show call “FODfest.” “FOD” is an acronym for “Friends of Danny.” “Danny” is Daniel Pearl the Wall Street Journal reported who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan in 2002. The show is a unique combination of concert, songwriters’ song-circle and jam session and there will probably be somewhere between twenty to twenty-five musicians participating. This evening’s performance will be the first of seventeen that will be happening all over the country. If you’d like to see the FODFest 2008 schedule, look right here.

I never met Daniel Pearl. My connection to FODFest is through Todd Mack, who played in a band with Danny while they were both living in Atlanta. Danny had moved to the area from Berkshire County in Massachusetts, where both Todd and I now live. While here, Danny worked at two of the local papers and also played music with many folks. He was a classically trained violinist who also played fiddle-style and mandolin and other instruments as well. I’m constantly meeting people who had either played with or heard Danny perform.

I met Todd back when I was writing The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Bass Guitar, back in the winter of 2005-2006. It was at his Off The Beat-N-Track Studio that I recorded the audio CD that goes along with the book. We hit it off and occasionally played and performed together. In October of 2006, Todd invited me to the second FODfest, which was held at the studio. And I’ve been honored to have been asked back twice now.

Even though I never met Danny, I get to witness firsthand every day how his belief that music can bring people together and help them work through whatever differences they might have. The Guitar Noise website is certainly proof of his philosophy. We have people from over a hundred-and-sixty countries who visit here and help each other learn how to play guitar, to make music in their lives and to share their music with the world. Make no mistake, no community is perfect and trouble-free. How could one be? But, despite our disagreements, most of us are willing to communicate, to listen and to learn.

Seasoned musicians from all genres and all walks of life will tell you that listening is probably one of the most important skills a player can have, if not the most important skill.  Way too often, people communicate by saying something and then waiting for a pause in which they can again say something (usually a variation on the same thing said the first time). In true dialogue, it’s listening that provides the growth and momentum to a conversation. You hear what the other person says and then work with that. Even if you don’t agree with what the other person says, you can begin to understand why the other person thinks and feels the way he or she does. But if all one is interested in is one’s own side of the coin, then conversation is stilted and boring. No one learns anything and no one grows.

The parallels between conversation and music, particularly group performance, are markedly vivid. A group of relatively average players can sound stellar as a group if they learn to give each other space, to tailor the arrangements to the strengths of the individual members and be in constant communication with each other while playing. Conversely, a group of gifted individual players can sound downright chaotic if no one of the group is paying attention to anyone but his own playing. Playing in a group where everyone is one the same page and constantly communicating with one another will always transport the individual members to a higher plateau.

As I’m getting ready to get onstage tonight and play backup for two dozen musicians I’ve never met before, to play dobro or ukulele on songs that I’ve never heard before (and which the writers themselves may not be able to tell me the key it’s in!), I can’t help thinking that Daniel Pearl would find this show to be exciting and fun. As Todd says in his recent Guitar Noise Interview, it’s all about connecting with people and connecting people with one another through music. That’s what Danny was all about.

And I’d also like to think that, in their own individual way, this is pretty much the philosophy of every member of the Guitar Noise Community. Music, in its purest form, transcends individuals. The last thing I want to hear after playing any show, or simply playing with friends, is “you were great.” I want to hear “That was great” or “We were great!”  

I can’t help thinking, as I’m writing this, of a going away party we held for one of my friends in Chicago, very shortly before I moved from there myself. It was a backyard barbecue and there were all sorts of musicians there – the typical number of guitarists, a teenager on violin who’d never played in a group like this before, a percussion guy who primarily played washboard, an accordian player who also played in a Neil Diamond tribute trio (accordian, bassoon and some other outrageous instrument I can’t recall), and any number of singers and percussion makers.

We had a blast, playing songs we knew, playing songs we’d never tried before, getting to know one another and sharing music with each other, the other party guests and the neighbors. But the best part, to me anyway, was at the very end when we were winding down and cleaning up and the young man with the violin proclaimed for all the world to hear: “I’ve never had so much fun before in my life!”

I’d like to think Danny would have been proud.

Peace

Sometimes, though, this “guitar-centric” outlook can have less than humorous effects, particularly when it comes to rhythm. People are constantly asking “What’s the strumming pattern of such-and-such a song?” “How do I figure it out?” Maybe because we as a people are being more and more visual, to the point where reading is often eschewed in favor for video or other images, but guitarists nowadays think of rhythm in terms of “up” and “down,” the motions of strumming, instead of thinking of rhythm in much simpler terms – numbers and counting.

In this lesson, the first of several on this topic, we will go over the very basics of strumming and how it applies to notes and rhythm. This lessons ties in almost exactly with two others here at Guitar Noise, so you might want to go over Keeping Time and Strumming for Beginners. Everything that we cover in this lesson is already in these two articles, basically I’m just adding sound files and trying to make sure we start on the same page.

Next time out, we will see that if we can read notation, even only the rhythmic aspect of notation, we will never again have to “wonder what the pattern is.” Simply being able to read how the music is broken up into beats and patterns within the beats, we’ll always be able to come up with a pattern that works. Quite often it will even be the same pattern that’s being played on the recording. Not that doing so should ever be your first concern!

Beyond that, we’ll try to use what we’ve learned in the first two lessons and apply it ear training. That may seem like a stretch to you at this point, but I can guarantee you something – if you are willing to count out loud, there is no rhythm, no strumming pattern that you won’t be able to suss out, pardon the pun, given a little time.

There’s something about counting out loud people don’t seem to like. We teach a lot of music lessons here at my home, both guitar and piano. And we do our best to encourage students to count out loud when they’re having problems with rhythm. You’d think we were asking them to eat slugs or something. Yet as soon as they start counting out loud, their rhythm problems with a tricky passage almost invariably straighten themselves out.

Children hate counting out loud because they think they’re old enough to not have to do that. Adults hate counting out loud for the very same reason. No one wants to look like he or she is a beginner. But what they don’t see (and hear) are professional musicians who, when faced with a tricky rhythm passage, doing exactly that – counting it out loud in order to make certain the timing is understood and played correctly.

If you listened to the first Guitar Noise Podcast on strumming (and if you missed it, or any of the other Guitar Noise Podcasts, which are all about various aspects of strumming, by the way), you can find it on the Guitar Noise Blog, you might have heard me talking about sock puppets. No lie. If you know what sock puppets are, you know that they have a limited vocabulary. They can either nod their heads “yes” or shake them to say “no.” When we’re strumming a guitar, it’s the “sock puppet saying no” motion that gives us smooth and steady strumming.

More important than that, this strumming motion also gives guitar players a built-in metronome. It’s as if you have a string attached between your strumming hand and your foot, provided you’re tapping your foot along with the music (something you should definitely get into the habit of doing). Your toe goes down on the downstroke and up on the upstroke.

Strumming will, of course, get more complicated than this eventually, but for now, you’ll be surprised at how counting, along with the sock puppet / constant motion approach will make strumming easier. Let’s start out very simply and strum four quarter notes (one beat each). Since the vast majority of songs most of you will play are going to be in 4/4 time, it seems like a good place to start:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Now, you can pick any chord you’d like for this exercise. I choose G simply because I play it a lot and it’s a chord I often default to when I’m just goofing around on the guitar.

This is strumming straight quarter notes, and since you’ve read any one of our many fine articles on rhythmic notation, you know that they are one beat each. Hence, we’ve four of them per measure.

Even though we’re strumming down on each chord, we’re also strumming up. You’re just not hitting the strings when you strum up. But you still to go through the “up” motion of skipping upstrokes, otherwise you’d never get the second downstroke, right? Skipping strings on the upstroke comes fairly naturally, even though we never think about it.

If we were to hit the strings on both the up and down, we’d be playing eighth notes, like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

And let’s take a quick note here to mention that when you strum up, don’t hit all the strings. Just catching two or three of the high strings is fine. Again, you might want to refer to our first Guitar Noise Podcast for more on this.

Coming back (and again pardon the pun) to matters at hand, you should note that what I mentioned earlier about using your strumming motion as a steady metronome works. You’re going “down” on the beat while coming “up” on the off-beat, or the half-beat if you will.

The point of these two exercises is to show you that (a) all rhythms pretty much are a matter of keeping time with your “sock puppet” and (b) you are probably already comfortable with skipping the “ups” of the “down and up” of any beat. Once you understand that all beats are already a matter of breaking them into an “up and down” motion and once you discover that all strumming patterns are a matter of skipping the occasional up or down, you’re good to go. Strumming is really that simple!

But it is a matter of getting into the feel of the beat but not letting yourself get so carried away that you forget your sock puppet, which should be set on automatic pilot according to the tempo of the song.

To prove this point, let’s take a look at Exercises 8 and 9, from Tom’ Keeping Time, conveniently re-written in notation and tablature. I’ll keep the count:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You should be discovering that, with a little concentrated effort, these patterns are not all that difficult to play. Occasionally skipping an “up” is usually pretty easy for most beginners. But skipping downstrokes, ah, that’s another kettle of fish.

Let’s tackle this technique by prepping ourselves with the following pattern:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This is just another pattern where we’re hitting each beat with a “down” and occasionally missing an “up.” Take a little time to get it into your system. When you feel ready, we’re going to skip the “down” on the third beat. Set? Here we go:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

What usually happens here is that, for whatever reason, people freak out and forget to keep their “sock puppet” constantly moving. We have to go through the up motion of skipping upstrokes, as mentioned earlier, but many people don’t make a down motion when they are skipping the downstroke. If you get in the habit of having your sock puppet being in perpetual motion, you will never fall off the beat. Guaranteed.

This last example, by the way, is the same as “Exercise 18 in Tom’s article. You’ll also find it used in many of our “Easy Songs for Beginners” lessons, such as Nowhere Man and it gets more than a workout in many of the Guitar Noise Podcasts. Pretty handy little rhythm!

You task for next time is to try out some of the many rhythms in Tom’s article, as well as the Guitar Noise Podcasts. If you can get a handle on this “skipping the downstroke” technique, you are almost there in terms of handling the complex rhythms we’ll be starting in on next time.

As always, I hope that you’ve had fun with this, not to mention that I also hope that you’ve learned a few things.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

In jazz and blues, a blue note (also “worried” note) is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres.

Sort of continuing where we left off, I’d like to introduce you to the idea of combining scales. But before we move on, let’s take a brief step sideways to think a moment about what makes music interesting. At its heart, music is a constant shift between disharmony and harmony, what’s generally referred to in terms of “tension and resolution.” Good melodies, for example, don’t simply use notes taken from the chords of the chord progression of a song. It’s the interplay of the melodic notes against the chord progression that creates this give-and-take of tension and resolution.

Solos do this as well. Otherwise all soloing would be nothing but chord arpeggios. And we would be reading a lesson on “Turning Arpeggios into Solos” and not “Turning Scales into Solos!”

We got a front row seat for this in our last lesson when used the minor pentatonic scale to solo over the major chords of a typical twelve bar blues progression. Since we specifically used the C minor pentatonic scale (C, Eb, F, G and Bb) to solo over a progression with the chords C, F and G, we had blue notes of the C major scale – Eb (flatted third) and Bb (flatted seventh) – as well as a blue note of F scale (Eb being the flatted seventh) and two blue notes of G (Bb, which is the flatted third and F, which is the flatted seventh). Each chord of our blues progression was constantly being played against a number of blue notes that would then resolve into a note of the major chord.

But as interesting as each of these pentatonic scales is by itself, combining them gives you a much deeper palette of colors to work with.

Let’s take another look at the actual notes of the C major pentatonic scale:

C D E G A

And now let’s run through the notes of the C minor pentatonic scale:

C Eb F G Bb

This certainly gives us a lot more options. The playing off of the minor third against the major third (the Eb and E in the key of C) is something that you hear quite often in blues riffs.

Some folks like to go a step further, combining the entire major scale with the minor pentatonic. Doing so adds the major seven, which is the major third of the V chord (the B note of the G chord in our key of C) of our blues progression. Although this may seem like a lot of notes for a scale, it certainly adds a lot to our soloing options.

First, let’s take a look at the notes we’re talking about, still using the key of C major as our example:

C D Eb E F G A Bb B C

Now, let’s see where these would fall if we were using a Root Six based C major scale (plus the two blue notes Eb and Bb). First, we’ll look at the two octave C major scale itself:

So far, so good! Now, let’s add the blue notes taken from our C minor pentatonic scale. Since I’m planning on doing most of my soloing today on the high strings, we’ll add these blue notes only to the second octave:

Finally, let’s extend this scale up to the thirteen fret, which will give us a little more room to play with:

You should know the drill from here. Work through this “combined scale,” using both these last two examples, but focus on Example 3 most of all. This may seem hard to some of you as you’re used to scale patterns and now you’re likely to find yourself thinking in terms of the actual notes themselves. But that’s part of where we’re trying to go, so hang in there!

Then take a listen to the sort of thing you can do:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Yes, I’m still overplaying! But the interweaving of the major scale with the two notes taken from the minor pentatonic certainly does give this a lot of interesting things to say, doesn’t it? Playing both the Eb and E off of the C chord creates tension and release in the same phrase. It’s no wonder this sort of sound is used in so many blues solos.

Okay, your turn! Here’s an “extended version” of our blues in C chord progression for you to work with:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Remember that the whole purpose of this particular series of lessons is to demonstrate that even though we could use a single scale to base a solo on, there are all sorts of other possibilities. Up until this point we’ve examined only the major scale and the pentatonic, the latter in both major and minor forms. Now we’ve opened up a lot more potential by combining two scales.

Next time out, we’ll take a look at the “blues scale,” right after we get done arguing about what, exactly, the “blues scale” is!

And, as always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8

To recap briefly, Choosing Colors, our first lesson in this series, introduced (or re-introduced) us to the Major scale and the Major Pentatonic Scale, which are the two important scales that most guitarists fall back on for soloing. In the sound files accompanying that lesson, we listened to the differences in the two scales when used for soloing over the same chord progression.

The second lesson, One Note at a Time, hopefully demonstrated that as you are learning your scales, you shouldn’t feel the need to cram every single note you’re learning into a solo. Phrasing, which we’ll be getting into big time a few lessons down the road, is more important than speed. That’s not to knock speed. People often mistakenly put speed into the same category as “unemotional” and nothing could be further from the truth. It’s phrasing that makes a solo sound like a solo and not like someone simply practicing his or her scales. And the speed you’re playing at doesn’t enter into it at all.

Well, that’s not totally true, and we’ll also be looking at that aspect of things three lessons from now.

Meanwhile, on with today’s work:

A lot of what we’ll cover today, in terms of the theory at least, we’ve gone over before. The Guitar Column, Scaling the Heights, contains much of the raw information that we’ll be examining, so you might want to take a moment or two and read (hopefully “re-read”) that particular lesson.

It might also be good to have a gentle reminder of what got this whole series of articles going in the first place! As with many lessons at Guitar Noise, an email is usually a good place to start:

Hi David,

I’ve read a few of your articles about constructing solos, and I appreciate the advice (thanks!). I would rate myself as an intermediate guitarist and am trying to branch out into building better solo skills. I have a fair grasp of scales and some modes of play. But I have a few questions on building solos:

It seems matching scales to a key doesn’t always work! For example, I’ve found simply using a G Major Pentatonic scale over a G-Major song doesn’t always sound right. Why doesn’t that always work? What would you say to help me build a better solo pattern?

Let’s examine the example cited:

…using a G Major Pentatonic scale over a G-Major song doesn’t always sound right…

While this statement raises many questions, I’d like to focus our attention on two: First, what do we mean when we talk about a “G-Major song?” and secondly, what do we mean when we say “doesn’t always sound right?”

Knowing a song is in the key of G Major should mean a few things to you. If you’ve read the Guitar Column Five To One, you are thinking that the G major chord is what gives the song is sense of tonality, of “home,” if you will. And, if you’ve read our other theory columns, you might also be thinking that there are certain chords that you are going to run into in the key of G major. The “I,” “IV” and “V” chords, for instance, are G, C and D (all major chords). The “ii,” “iii” and “vi” chords are Am, Bm and Em. These six chords are considered diatonic, which may sound like my beverage of choice, but really means that all the notes of these chords are taken from notes of the major scale in question. In this case, that means the G major scale. If you want to see how to come up with this yourself, take a look at the end of the section titled “Stackables” in the Guitar Column The Power of Three.

Chances are very likely that if you’re playing a song in the key of G, you’re going to run into the G, C and D chords more than anything else. For that matter, in whatever key you may find yourself playing, the “I,” “IV” and “V” chords usually are the ones you’ll find yourself playing most.

So, for the sake of keeping things simple (not to mention maintaining a balance with our past two lessons), let’s switch off to the key of C again. The “I,” “IV” and “V” chords in the key of C are C, F and G. We saw this in our previous lessons as we used the classic “I – vi – IV – V” chord progression (that being C to Am to F to G in the key of C) as an example to solo over. In the first lesson, you’ll remember we used both the C major and the C major pentatonic as our soloing scales, while in the second lesson we stuck strictly with the C major pentatonic. Things didn’t sound too bad, although I’m still getting emails from readers as to which scale they thing sounded better. Some liked the full major scale and some liked the pentatonic.

To me, these emails are fun because they aren’t really about which scale sounds better. They are about the readers and the music that sounds good to their individual pair of ears. Are you ready to try out another sound test and learn some more?

This time out, we’ll take a simpler chord progression, one using just the three primary chords of the C major scale – C, F and G. But in this lesson, we’re going to give the chord progression a bit of a blues feel, using a typical blues shuffle type pattern and a standard “Twelve Bar Blues” format. In case you’re not up to speed with knowing what Twelve Bar Blues is all about, not to worry! Just mosey on over to the Easy Songs for Beginners’ page and take a look at the lesson on Before You Accuse Me and then come right back.

Alright, then! In the key of C, the standard twelve bar blues progression would go like this:

Now, we could have all sorts of things go on in the last measure (also called the “turnaround”), but again, for the sake of simplicity, I’m just going to flip to G in order to get back to the initial C in the first measure.

For our first two sound file examples, I’m going to play this twelve bar blues progression a total of three times, the third time ending on C in measure twelve instead of G in order to give us a sense of finality. In the final MP3 sound file, I’ll play the progression a total of six times.

Let’s start by trying out the C major pentatonic scale as our soloing tool. In the first MP3 sound file, I’ll use the C major pentatonic in “Root 6″ position and stay within the pattern we’ve learned. And if you’ve forgotten the C major pentatonic scale pattern, here it is in music notation and tablature:

Take a few moments and get yourself warmed up by running through the scale a few times. Then, when you’re ready, play along with the final MP3 file (be sure to download it to your computer so you can play it whenever you’d like) and see what you think. Or listen to my take on it (and remember I’m only going through the progression three times here):

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

As in our previous lessons, I feel a need to point out that I’m still overplaying! At this stage, I’m more concerned about hearing the notes and getting a feel for how this scale sounds as a soloing stage for this progression. What do you think? Do you like it? Or do you find it a little, lacking maybe?

Technically, there’s nothing wrong with what we did, so it should sound fine. But, for some of you anyway, you may find it a little lackluster. Perhaps the reason isn’t found in the chord progression or the key of the song, but rather in the style of the song itself? Okay, try to hang onto that thought while we do a lot of hopping around to gather information!

One of the major proponents of playing the blues is the use of what we call “blue notes.” Let’s borrow a definition from Wikipedia here:

In jazz and blues, a blue note (also “worried” note) is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres.

The Wikipedia definition goes on to say “The blue notes are usually said to be flattened third, flattened fifth and flattened seventh scale degrees.” This is another piece of information to set aside for the moment. When playing the blues, it’s the juxtaposition of the blue notes (flattened notes of the major scale) with the major chords that produces the “expressiveness” of the genre. And if the scale that we’re using to solo with contains only diatonic notes, notes found only in the major scale of the key then we’ve got no blue notes to work with. What’s a soloist to do?

The easiest (and most obvious) answer is to use another scale. And here’s where a surprising little bit of music theory magic comes into play. Going back to our Scaling the Heights lesson, we know that every major scale, even the pentatonic one, has a relative minor scale that uses the same notes. The playing pattern is actually the same; it’s just that the notes are different. Here is a generic diagram for the major pentatonic scale, using numbers of the scale degrees instead of notes:

If you compare this to our C major pentatonic example we used earlier, you’ll see it all makes sense. “R” is the “Root” note, C. “2″ is D (the second note of the D major scale). “3″ is E, “5″ is G and “6″ is A (again, E, G and A being the third, fifth and sixth notes of the C major scale, respectively.

Now look at the same pattern, this time using the numbered scale degrees of the minor pentatonic:

If we remember that the notes of the C major scale are C, D, E, F, G, A and B, then we know that the notes of the C minor pentatonic scale are C (“R” or “Root”), Eb (flatted third or “b3″ in the diagram), F (the fourth note or “4″), G ( the fifth note or “5″) and Bb (the flatted seventh or “b7″).

Translating that information to notation and tablature, we now have the C minor pentatonic scale in Root Six form:

So, again take a few moments and get yourself warmed up by running through the scale a few times. It’s simply the same pattern but in a different place on the fretboard of your guitar. That’s not too hard to take, is it?  Again, you can go right to the final MP3 (which is on your computer, right?) or listen to me giving it a run through here:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Now, how does this sound? Some of you may find it a lot more interesting and perhaps more “appropriate” to the music. In other words, it may sound “righter” than using the major pentatonic.

Why is that? Take another look at the actual notes of the C minor pentatonic scale:

C        Eb        F        G        Bb

Now think of the chords involved in our progression. C major is made up of C, E and G. In the C minor pentatonic scale, we have two blue notes of the C major scale – Eb (flatted third) and Bb (flatted seventh). Using these blue notes against the straight major chord sets up the “expressiveness,” or “blues-ness” if you will, that defines the feeling of blues in our ears. The Eb is also a blue note of F (the flatted seventh), while the Bb and F are both blue notes of G (flatted third and flatted seventh), so each chord in the progression is served a dollop of blue notes just by using this one scale.

In other words, if you have a song in a major key but it’s a blues-styled song (or you want to make it sound like a blues song), then you want to use the minor pentatonic scale of the major key in question to achieve that effect! Are you playing blues in A major? Try the A minor pentatonic scale.

Before I forget, here’s an “extended version” of our blues in C chord progression for you to work with!

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Regardless of which scale you think sounds better, the main lesson here, as it has been with our other lessons in this series, is to listen to the differences and to develop a feel for each scale. Because you know what I’m going to say next, don’t you? There are certainly still more choices to make! Next time out we will see what happens when we can’t make a choice!

And, as always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8

As much as I like to joke about being a “deep end” learner, the joke being that once you get out of the canvas bag filled with cement cinder blocks it’s really not all that hard to swim, and as much as I think both methods have merits, there’s a lot to be said about learning at a pace that both suits you and makes sense.

Getting a handle on soloing can be a lot like learning to swim. While there’s a lot to learn, most of us would be happy, at least for starters, to simply not sink to the bottom. This series of lessons here at Guitar Noise is being written with the hopes that we can give you some tools so that you can get started on the wonderful world of soloing.

Hopefully, you’ve already read and worked on Choosing Colors, the first lesson in this series, which introduced us (or re-introduced us) to the Major scale and the Major Pentatonic Scale -two important scales that most guitarists fall back on for soloing. We also listened to the differences in the two scales when used for soloing over the same chord progression. And it’s cool because I’ve gotten email from folks in both camps – some favoring the sound of the pentatonic and some the standard major scale. That’s what makes the world go ‘round!

In this lesson, we’re going to stick with these two scales, not to mention the very same chord progression, but narrow our focus even more. One thing that throws many beginners is the fact that there are so many notes to play! Because of the emphasis on learning scales, we tend to think we need to throw in every note that we know. And nothing could be further from the truth.

So this time out, we’re going to first work with the idea of soloing with only two notes. Sound silly? Well, it can be. But think about this – by limiting the number of notes that you’re using, you can focus on two intertwining aspects of soloing that are far more important than speed and they are rhythm and phrasing.

You may not think that lead guitarists have to concern themselves with rhythm, but you’d be dead wrong. Rhythm sets up the whole concept of phrasing and phrasing is what makes a solo sound like a solo and not someone practicing a scale.

Some guitar teachers think these concepts are so important that when they get into the concept of soloing with their students, they start them out by playing a progression and allowing the student to use only one note for soloing. The idea is to make the note count by playing it in either a variety of rhythmic patterns that fit the mood of the progression example or by letting it ring out over a number of chord changes and create all sorts of interesting tonal moods.

But we’re going to go a little easier on you and let you use two notes for starters. Which two? Well, let’s take a quick look at our chord progression again and make some choices:

Just to get the ball rolling (or maybe just to show how lazy I am), I’m going to pick the notes

C and D for us to use on our solo. Why? Well, because they are the first two notes in both the C major scale (C, D, E, F, G, A, and B) and the C Major Pentatonic Scale (C, D, E, G and A). Told you I was lazy!

Now we can pick any C and D notes anywhere on the fretboard, but I also want to work with getting comfortable up the neck a bit. So let’s use these C and D notes:

Okay, so let’s take these two notes and make up a solo by playing over our chord progression. Here’s an example I whipped up:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

If you’d like, go to the third MP3 file of this lesson and download it to your computer (or use the last MP3 file from the Choosing Colors lesson as it’s the same one!) and then give it a try.

Once again I want to point out that the object here is not to copy what I did. It’s to simply play around and for you to get a feel of what we’re trying to do here. Your sense of rhythm and phrasing is unique and you will undoubtedly come up with something far different than I did. Good!

Also, don’t be afraid of trying two different notes than the ones I chose. Changing even just one note will bring a whole new texture to the exercise, not to mention open up a host of other possibilities in terms of what you can play.

I also want to point out that I’m actually overplaying! Seriously. Just as in our last lesson, I simply want to try to give you a lot of ideas in a short period of time. You should, right now, experiment like crazy. Try to use these two notes as sparingly as possible. Try to use them as many times as you can. Make mental notes (or even write them down!) about what works and what doesn’t.

Most important of all, go out of your way to use different durations of notes – from whole notes to half notes to quarter notes to eighth and sixteenth notes – as well as making use of different durations of rests. Nothing sounds more like scales than playing every note at the same pace. Think of the very word “phrasing” and how it relates to speech. Some words or syllables are drawn out while others are clipped. You can convey a lot of emotion in how you play a single note.

Believe it or not, besides getting comfortable with the concepts of rhythm and phrasing, you are also developing your ears. You are hearing how different phrases sound and how they sound in relationship to the chord progression you’re playing. And, just as important, you are getting practice in expressing yourself. Put your emotion into the notes, even if there are only two of them, and you’ll sound like you have something to say.

After you’ve gone a couple of rounds with two notes (and remember to experiment with different combinations of notes), then try three or four. In our next example, I’m using four: C, D, E and G, in the following location on the fingerboard:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Again, you don’t have to worry about being fancy. The point is to hear what you can do and with how little one can make a solo that sounds like a solo. Don’t have to worry about using tons of notes at blinding speed, worry instead about making every note count.

Here, once again, is an “extended version” of our chord progression:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Download this MP3 file to your computer and use it as a backing track while you play around. Start out with just two notes for the first few passes of the progression. Then add on a third, or a third and a fourth. Again, don’t feel you have to stick with my suggestions. Just pick notes from the C major scale and go to it! But don’t use more than four different notes for now, though!

Finally, you should also take the time to try out your notes at different points along the fingerboard. Stay in position for each set of four notes so that you develop a good sense of where those notes are in relationship to each other at the same area of the fretboard.

Okay, that should keep you more than occupied for this segment of this series of lessons on soloing. Best of luck with it and I look forward to hearing how you’re progressing.

And, as always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8

Hi David,

I’ve read a few of your articles about constructing solos, and I appreciate the advice (thanks!). I would rate myself as an intermediate guitarist and am trying to branch out into building better solo skills. I have a fair grasp of scales and some modes of play. But I have a few questions on building solos:

It seems matching scales to a key doesn’t always work! For example, I’ve found simply using a G Major Pentatonic scale over a G-Major song doesn’t always sound right. Why doesn’t that always work? What would you say to help me build a better solo pattern?

Thanks for the advice,

As I worked on responding to this email, it seemed to make more and more sense to answer it in the way I do in private lessons, which is through listening and participation. And that idea turned into an article, an incredibly dense and cumbersome article by the way, which then turned into this, the first of a series of shorter lessons that will (hopefully) walk everyone through the steps of moving from knowing one’s scales to applying that knowledge to playing solos.

This series of lessons is going to be a little different than the others here at Guitar Noise (at least the others up to this point) in that you, the reader, are going to need to do a lot of listening and also quite a bit of your own experimentation. Soloing, as with many other aspects of music, is highly personal. There’s not so much a “right” or “wrong” as there is convention. And taste and style, not to mention achieving the desired musical effect, should trump convention.

But before you take those statements as a free pass to playing whatever you want to, take a moment and think. Gaining the ability to listen and the ability to take what’s in your mind and put it out through your fingers into the guitar are going to take quite a bit of practice. The key thing is that you don’t have to start totally from scratch. The more you can tell yourself what you’re trying to achieve, the easier it tends to be to achieve it.

So we do need to be able to tell, or at least tell ourselves, something about what we hear and what we want to hear. And that’s where this lesson starts us out. We’re going to listen to the difference between two scales – the major scale and the major pentatonic scale – and to start to appreciate what each scale has to offer.

If you’ve not done so already, you may find it helpful to read an old Guitar Noise Guitar Column entitled Scaling the Heights, as a lot of the basic information we’ll be using is covered there. It also will not hurt you to know how chords are formed, so you might also want to brush up on that with a quick read of The Power of Three. All right, then?

For this lesson, we’re going to use a very basic (and very standard) chord progression, the I, vi, IV, V progression that you can hear in tons of songs (Stand By Me or Last Kiss probably being ones known to many of you). We’ll be playing this in the key of C major, so that means that the chords will be C, Am, F and G.

Since we know the key of the song (C major), many of you may already be ready to play – either using the C major scale or the C major pentatonic scale. But let’s get everyone else up to speed first. The notes of the C major scale are:

Many guitarists automatic abandon the major scale, though, for the basic reason that pentatonic scales are easier to play. In most positions, you rarely need more than a stretch of three frets to play them. And the patterns of the pentatonic scale, especially the “Root 6″ pattern (where the root note is on the low E (sixth) string), are fairly easy to remember.

To make the major pentatonic scale, we take the notes at the Root (“I”), second, third, fifth and sixth positions, so the C major pentatonic scale would consist of C, D, E, G and A.

Looking through Scaling The Heights, we learn that we can play the major pentatonic in the following pattern:

Translating this pattern into notation / guitar tablature, it will look like this:

So let’s take this pattern and see what we can come up with when we play along with the chord progression of C, Am, F and G. Here’s something I did on a quick take:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Two things I want to point out – first, the object here is not to copy what I did. It’s to simply play around and to get used to the position of the scale, not to mention to get used to how the pentatonic scale sounds as a tool for soloing.

And that brings us to the second point – for the sake of this exercise, I’m not worrying about doing anything fancy. There may be a bit of a slide here and there, but no bends, no double stops, nothing remotely requiring any type of technique other than finding the notes of the scale. That’s kind of why it sounds like someone practicing a scale as opposed to a “solo.” Hopefully, not totally so! This is an issue we’ll address in a later lesson in this series.

For now, though, let’s move on to getting our ears and heads working a little more. I can’t say how true this is for all of you, but I find the sound of the C major pentatonic lead a little, shall we say, “lacking.” It’s not that it doesn’t sound okay; rather it just doesn’t seem to live up to its potential.

And when we make a closer examination of what’s going on, it’s not all that hard to see why. Let’s take a look at the notes that make up each chord of the progression, shall we?

Remembering that the C pentatonic scale consists of the notes C, D, E, G and A, we see that, when we’re playing along with the C and Am chords, every note of the chord is accounted for in the pentatonic scale. But when we play the F and G chords, we’re missing a note in each. There’s no F in the C major pentatonic scale, so when we play along with the F chord, there’s no root note (F) to nail the chord down and give it a nice foundation. And when we play the G chord, we’re missing the B note, which determines whether the G chord is major or minor. Plus, the B note is the “leading tone” of the C major scale – the note that pulls our ears to the home tonality of C.

In other words, the notes that we’ve dropped from the C major scale to make the C major pentatonic (F and B) are kind of important in this chord progression. So let’s add them back and see what happens when we try soloing in the C major scale. First off, let’s look at the pattern:

And now let’s translate that into notation and tablature:

And, after practicing the pattern a little to get it into our fingers, let’s play along with the chord progression again. Just for the sake of being dramatic, I’d tried to stress the F and B notes when I played this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Again, I can’t stress enough that this is a matter of personal taste. To my ears, using the entire C major scale sounds a lot more interesting. There are more opportunities to create interesting uses of dissonance (more on that in upcoming lessons!), not to mention using the B note to create chord variations – played over the C you get Cmaj7 and played over the Am you get Am(add9).

Try thinking about it this way: your solo is a painting and your scale is a pallet of colors. In this lesson, we’ve done two paintings, one using five colors (the C major pentatonic scale) and one using seven colors (the C major scale). Both certainly work, but if I were to ask you which scale is the “right” one to use, what would you say? It really depends on what you’re trying to paint.

So the first lesson we need to learn is this – it’s one thing to know our scales; it’s another matter entirely to have an awareness of what they can do. Or to know which one to pick or how to even determine how to know which one to pick. Part of this can be learned – convention dictates that some things just go together well. But part of it is also a matter of taking the time to listen and to experiment with what you know. Not to mention to continue to learn new things in order to have more with which to experiment.

So, to help you get going on this, here’s an “extended version” of our chord progression:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Download this MP3 file to your computer and use it as a backing track while you play around with both the C major and the C major pentatonic scales. Feel free to noodle aimlessly at first, but once you’re comfortable, try to listen seriously to yourself (recording yourself isn’t a bad idea!) and to how you may gravitate towards one of these two scales more than the other.

Also, take the time to get very comfortable with both of these scales! We’ll be using them as examples in the next upcoming lessons in this series, so having them in your fingers can only be a good thing! Extra credit if you know the note names in position!

And, as always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8

As I mentioned, for this lesson we want to focus on the C and Am chords, both of which we know to be “Root 5″ chords. This means the root note for these two chords (C for C and A for Am) can be found on the fifth (A) string. Let’s use our “contrary motion” pattern from the first Travis Picking tutorial and, again just to simplify things for this lesson; we’ll concentrate on our middle four strings, totally ignoring both the high (first) and low (sixth) E strings, like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

In case you’ve forgotten, here’s a guide to the picking fingering symbols:

• “T” will be your thumb
• “i” will be your index finger.
• “m” will be your middle finger.
• “a” will be your ring finger.

You’ll also notice that I’m still counting out the example (and I’m encouraging you to do so as well), because knowing where the beat is supposed to fall is going to be very important in a minute!

Okay, take a few moments and get that into your head. Because now it’s time to get it out of your head! Seriously, one of the things I mentioned last time out was that finger picking is actually not all that hard to get into. Once your fingers have a pattern, it usually takes a small amount of time and practice for them to get so into it that you pick up speed quite easily.

This ease with which one takes to finger style is both a blessing and a bane. It’s good, obviously because we can, again with a bit of time and practice, get to the point where we can play a whole song, chord changes and all, just by using a single pattern, as we did in the first Travis tutorial with Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind.

But it’s also bad because we get so set in a pattern that we can automatically default to it without thinking. And if we want to switch to a different pattern, or even simply to learn a new picking pattern, we often have to start from scratch.

And today we do want to try a new pattern. Or rather, a variation on the “contrary motion” pattern that we’ve already learned. Instead of alternating thumb and finger throughout the measure, we want to pick with both the thumb and finger on the first beat only and then finish the measure out normally, like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Again, you’ll hear me counting in the MP3 here. The reason is that we’ve got absolutely nothing going on in the second half of the first beat because we’ve shifted the first use of the fingers to the initial beat, when we pluck or “pinch” the strings with both thumb (picking the A string) and middle finger (playing the B string). If you’ve practiced using your thumb to keep a steady beat, counting the “one, two, three, four” of any given measure, this shouldn’t be all that big of a step for you. But before we move on, take some time and get this new pattern into your fingers.

This “pinch” pattern is used in countless songs. I often refer to it, jokingly of course, as “generic folk pattern #2.” It’s amazing how easy it is to fall into once you’ve got it down. And it’s also very important because the pinch allows you to add a melody line to your playing. Elizabeth Cotton’s classic song, Freight Train, pretty much uses this pattern throughout, and which notes you fret and subsequently pinch) on the high strings sing out the song’s melody. Perhaps we’ll make a lesson of that at some point.

But for right now, we want to concentrate on getting the pattern down to the point where we can play it and have a conversation while playing. Once we’re there, then we’ll start to do a bit of very simple ornamentation, which will lead us to the introduction of Dust in the Wind.

A brief side trip, though – I made this past point in Guitar Noise Podcast #7 (which should have gone up online by now! Check it out at the Guitar Noise Blog and it bears repeating. If you can get yourself to the point where you can play a pattern – strumming or fingerstyle or a combination of both – and hold a conversation, then you are more than ninety percent of the way there. Just as you saw with Blowin’ in the Wind, making chord changes while playing a fingerstyle song is a lot easier when you’re comfortable with the pattern (or patterns) you’re playing. It may take a little effort to coordinate both hands, but nowhere near as much effort if you decided to not learn the pattern first.

Alright then, now we want to speed things up a bit. Not really, although it’s going to seem like it when you see the music notation. Basically, we want to play two sets of our new “pinch” pattern in one single measure, which means that instead of using quarter notes and eighth notes, we’ll be playing eighth notes and sixteenth notes, like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Don’t let all the sixteenth notes get to you! All we’re doing is taking the pattern that you’ve already got in your fingers and using your thumb to measure out eighth notes instead of quarter notes. That’s all. So now your thumb is playing “one and two and three and four and…” instead of just “one, two, three, four.” Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s more than that.

Now let’s spice things up a bit – first by playing a Cmaj7 chord instead of C and then trying out a Cadd9 chord. To play Cmaj7, as you know, all you have to do is finger a C chord and then remove your index finger, leaving the B string open. For Cadd9, add your pinky to the third fret of the B string, which adds a D note to the C chord. Here’s what they are like:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Again, take each chord separately to start with and practice it until you feel you can play it without thinking. Then, when you’re ready, we’ll put the three chords together in sequence, like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Now, that sound familiar, doesn’t it?

Because of all the work you’ve done up ’til this point, you should find that you’re making these chord changes smoothly and cleanly. Give yourself a pat on the back and then we’ll try the same thing with some Am based chords:

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You know the drill by now, right? Once you’re comfortable with these new chords (and you want to be sure you know their names and fingerings!), we’ve got one more task, and that’s to put them into the correct sequence for our introduction to Dust in the Wind:

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The sticky point here for many is going to be the start of the third line. Switching between the Asus2 at the end of the second line and the Cadd9 that starts the third will take a bit of practice (preferably at a relatively slow tempo!) until you get to the point where you don’t worry about it.

But hang in there! If you’ve followed any of the song lessons at Guitar Noise, you’ll know that this “pinch” method occurs quite frequently. You’ll find simpler variations on it in Bookends and Blackbird as well as more complicated uses in Julia, just to name a few. For now, though, get yourself together with this introduction and you’ll be more than halfway home when our complete lesson on Dust in the Wind gets online later this summer.

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

And when the inevitable question, “should I use my fingers or use a pick?” comes along, again, the answer should be “yes.” Think of it this way: each new technique or idea you have when learning the guitar is like getting a new crayon. Yes, you can certainly create marvelous art with five or six crayons but, being lazy myself, I’d rather have a box of one hundred and eighty-eight crayons to choose from.

Moreover (and pardon the pun), finger style guitar is not all that hard to pick up. In fact, it’s quite easy for most people to get started. And what I’d like to do with this lesson is to get you started. We’ll also toss in an easy song to help you practice your newfound finger picking skills.

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Remember that we’ve done some work on finger picking before. The Guitar Noise Easy Songs for Beginners Lesson on The House of the Rising Sun is an excellent place to start if you’ve not made any previous attempts to play finger style. Those patterns are simple arpeggios and will help you to just get used to the idea of tossing your fingers about on the guitar strings.

In this lesson, we’re going to tackle a style of finger picking called Travis picking. This is named after Merle Travis, one of country music’s enduring legends, whose guitar work gained him fame before he was twenty. Nowadays, people say “Travis picking” in much the same way we use words like “Xerox” to mean all photocopying, or “Coke” to mean all soft drinks. But the specific characteristics of Travis picking is the steady, almost metronome-like use of the thumb to play bass notes while the other fingers dance over the higher strings.

And it’s this use of the thumb that offers most beginning guitarists something besides a fancy way of playing. Travis picking is an excellent way to help one develop a steady sense of rhythm.

So let’s get started! The first thing we want to do is to get comfortable with keeping the beat with our thumb. How about we start with a simple D major chord, open position? Get your full D chord in place even though we’re only going to be playing two strings of it. Using your thumb and keeping a steady beat, pick the open D string on the first beat, the G string (with your finger on the second fret) on the second beat, the D string again on the third beat and (you guessed it!) the G string again on the fourth beat. Should sound (and look) like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

For the sake of this lesson, let’s get on the same page as far as finger labeling. And I mean the fingers of your picking hand, not the one on the neck!

“T” will be your thumb.

“i” will be your index finger.

“m” will be your middle finger.

“a” will be your ring finger.

As I mentioned in the House of the Rising Sun lesson, if I was trying to teach you correct form and function, you’d use your thumb to play notes on the three lowest strings (low E, A and D), your ring finger on the first (high E) string, your middle finger on the B string and your index finger on the G string. But, as you can see in our very first example, we’re not going to go strictly with those guidelines. The goal here is to use the thumb to keep the beat and if that means it’s playing a “forbidden string” for our lesson, so be it.

Okay, back to our thumb. See if you can work Example 1 without looking at your hands. Either hand. A good benchmark to set for yourself with almost anything on the guitar is to try to play a technique without looking at your hands. Then while singing or holding a conversation. If you can get to that point with these simple finger picking exercises in this lesson, then you’re well on your way to becoming fairly proficient at basic finger style guitar.

Once you’re good with Example 1, then it’s time to add the fingers. Let’s first try a “parallel motion” pattern, like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You can see and hear how the notes played by the fingers are coming in on the off-beats, right in between the notes played by the thumb, which are on the beat. The fingers are also moving in the same direction as the thumb, namely one string closer to the floor.

The first time you try this, you want to work slowly. It also helps immensely to count out loud (as I’m doing in the MP3) in order to keep your thumb going with the correct timing. You probably won’t have to do that for long. And you’ll also be surprised that your fingers will get faster and faster before you know it.

While I’m suggesting in Example 2 that you use your middle finger for the high E (first) string and your index for the B. But you could also go the classical route and use your ring finger on the E and middle finger on the B. Or you could go the easy way and use your index finger for both strings,,,

Also, don’t be too concerned about a name for this particular pattern, or any pattern for that matter. We’re calling it “parallel motion;” some teachers call it “inside out,” some call it “Fred” (don’t ask!). Rather, think about this: One of the fascinating things about finger style guitar is how quickly most people’s fingers take to a pattern. But that’s also one of the biggest traps of finger picking. Once your fingers latch on to a pattern, it’s hard to break out of it and you can find yourself sounding a bit robotic.

So let’s change our pattern, shall we? How about reversing how we play the fingers?

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Many of you will find this “contrary motion” (or “outside in,” if you prefer) pattern a little easier. It’s used in many, many songs and, again with some practice, you should find that your hands take to it pretty well.

Again, take your time and try to get to the point where you can perform these patterns without looking at either of your hands. When you get to that point, then you’ll be able to find part of the true beauty of finger style. Listen to what happens when you simply lift your ring finger off the high E (first) string while playing either pattern:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Pretty good for someone who’s just started finger picking, huh? This is why I’m harping on getting to the point where you don’t have to think about it. When you can trust your picking hand to do its job, then you can get fancy with the chord changes and even staying on a single chord offers more musical possibilities than you might imagine.

Alright, back to the task at hand. D, as you already know, is a “root four” chord, meaning that its root note (D) is played on the fourth string. So let’s branch out a bit and add two more chords to our finger picking. Rather, let’s add two new root positions:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

The patterns for the A chord, since A is a “root five” chord, will also work for Am and C, not to mention A7 and C7 or other variations of these chords that you know in open position. Likewise the patterns for G will serve you perfectly fine if you’re playing any other “root six” position chord, such as E or Em.

The other thing to note here is that you also have other options when it comes to which strings you decide to play. I chose these patterns for the A and G chords because I like the sound. For instance, some people might like to play the open G string as the second “thumb” string instead of the open D, as shown in the previous example. And if you play your G with the D note (third fret of the B string) covered, then you’re going to have yet another different sound.

Some people like to stick with the inner strings when playing root five chords, so on the A chord you’d be striking the open A string with the thumb, then (if using parallel motion) the G string with the index finger, then the D (thumb again) and then the B (middle finger). If you want a more ambiguous sound, eliminating the B string when playing the A chord means that you’re just playing A and E notes, which make up the A5 or A “power chord.” And you can also play a pattern for the A chord where you occasionally lift your finger off the B string (temporarily creating an Aadd9 chord), much as we did with the D chord in Example 4.

Telling you all this is not meant to overwhelm you with decisions. Rather, it’s to give you reasons to explore what you can do with even the simplest of patterns such as this. While you’re practicing these particular chords (and others we’ve mentioned), don’t be afraid to experiment and to listen to all the possibilities that you can come up with. Try to get the sounds into your head and be sure to write down all the ideas you especially like.

And because I think it’s a lot more fun to play songs than to simply practice patterns, why don’t we use this easy version of the Bob Dylan classic, Blowin’ In The Wind as a way to work on our picking and chord changing. There are who knows how many versions of this song, so don’t worry about sounding like the “definitive” one. Just have fun practicing your new Travis picking skills! (Oh, a lot of people play this in Eb for some reason. So just slip a capo on the first fret and you’ll be fine!)

Use any of the patterns you’d like for the D, G and A chords that we’ve been working on today in the appropriate places. I marked a chord for each four beats to help you out:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

As you can hear in this example, you don’t really want to just hang on to the same pattern over and over. It feels a lot more organic and real when you sometimes “slip up” or change from one pattern to another. And don’t forget about using the ideas in Example 4 when sitting on the D chord for more than one measure.

I hope this brief introduction to Travis picking has been enjoyable for you. Even more important, I hope that you’ve found that finger picking isn’t truly all that hard. We’re going to do a number of articles in the near future that will build on what you’ve learned here, so if you’re enjoying working on this, please take the time to get your confidence in your picking abilities built up. It’s not all that far a step to go from this lesson to some of our Intermediate lessons, such as Scarborough Fair, Fields of Gold, or Time After Time.

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

The ability to not take words literally, as you probably (and literally) know, is vital in life. Particularly if you teach. Many’s the time a student will say, “I always do this part wrong” or “I practiced a lot this week” and you find out that “always” isn’t even close to always and that “a lot” means the better part of a half hour total.

So, with this in mind, let’s first take a look at some other vague words, such as:

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Or how about these two: strumming pattern…

You can’t imagine how many times the Guitar Noise forum gets the question, “what is the strumming pattern to (fill in the name of whatever song you’d like)?” And while it is a valuable question, it is also a misleading one.

For instance, let’s take the Bob Dylan classic, Blowin’ In The Wind. If someone asked you what “the” strumming pattern was for this song, what would you say? Even Dylan himself has played this song in so many wildly different arrangements that you’d have to think hard about what you wanted to set as “the strumming pattern.” Here’s just a brief example of what’s possible, using only the first line:

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And this isn’t taking into account the different stylistic things you could be doing, such as playing it in a punk, power chord arrangement or perhaps reggae or even a Stevie Wonder-inspired gospel rendition. (By the way, for a look at how you can create different genre-based arrangements, take a few minutes and read this old column on this very topic: Do You Genre Dance?)

For some people, defining “the” strumming pattern of a song is easy. They will cite the original recorded version of the song in question as their strumming pattern. But even this answer is not always so cut and dried.

Do me a favor and strum a chord, whatever chord you chose. Now pick a simple strumming pattern of four beats in length, perhaps something like this, using an Em chord:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Are we good so far? Great! Now play this pattern for the length of an average song, say three-and-a-half minutes, and see if you can flawlessly stick to the pattern. Chances are likely that you can’t, that there’ll be little glitches here and there. Maybe you won’t hit all the strings on a beat somewhere or just catch one or two some place else. This is normal and it’s also good.

Quick aside – you might notice that I’m totally skipping the whole “down / up” debate that usually, pardon the pun, accompanies any talk about strumming pattern. That’s because “down” and “up” are almost always a function of specific rhythms and we’ll be looking at that very soon in an upcoming column.

But, for now, let’s get back to why it’s good to not play one specific pattern for the length of a song. If you did manage to play an entire song using one pattern, then your performance would sound incredibly wooden. Robotic might even be a better choice of words. This is why when you look at “authentic guitar recorded tablature” books, you might find passages that look like these:

By the bye, these patterns come from (1) Neil Young’s Heart of Gold, (2) Welcome To The Machine by Pink Floyd and (3) Jimi Hendrix’s cover of Hey Joe, taken from his Are You Experienced? album. When faced with transcriptions like this, you could (and an incredible number of people do) painstakingly try to hit the “correct” strings. Or you could use a little logic, coupled with a new bit of terminology to help you along.

First off, instead of looking at this as a “strumming pattern,” think of it as a “recorded performance.” This is what happened to get on the recording. Take a close look at each transcription. Heart of Gold is simply a measure of an Em7 chord (voiced as 022030) being strummed, while the second example finds David Gilmour of Pink Floyd strumming a measure (in 6 / 4 time) of Cmaj7 (voiced X32000). Jimi switches between barre chords of D (X5777X) and A (5X7655), with a slight ornamentation on the A chord when he adds the B note at the seventh fret of the high E (first) string.

My question to you would be “why get hung up on hitting specific strings when it’s obvious that they’re not concerned about it?” Remember when you tried to strum the whole chord for a length of time and found yourself sometimes not hitting all the strings you wanted to? That’s precisely what’s happening here, except for one important thing – these guitarists are simply playing chords. They each have their own style of strumming, their own little tics that make them play one string more often than others or to miss the high E string on occasion.

Most transcribers know this and usually won’t bother putting in this much detail. Instead, they’ll post a rhythmic pattern with a chord and leave you to strum the strings in whatever way you might happen to do. The Heart of Gold example would then look something like this:

In many books, you’d find this notation written without the staff, simply floating above the staff containing the melody and lyrics.

Another thing we mentioned earlier was that you didn’t want to sound robotic when playing. It’s hard not to stress this too much. Music is alive and performing music is about being alive. Small catches (or “glitches,” if you want to still want to think of them as mistakes in your patterns) are actually interesting and beneficial to your listeners. As long as you’re keeping the rhythm and have the basic handle on your pattern, few people are going to come up to you and say, “You know, in the original recording, Neil plays three strings and not just two, as you did…” And anyone who does come up to you and say that truly needs a life! Just to prove a point, here are three relatively well known bits of music. See if you can identify them, even though none are played according to the “recorded performance” patterns:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

An interesting sidebar to all this – when I was doing research while writing The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Bass Guitar, I spent a great deal of time going over both bass tutorial books as well as books of transcribed bass parts from recorded songs. A very fascinating observation was that if you looked at music older than about 1985, the bass transcriber often wrote out the entire song. In the Are You Experienced? performance of Hey Joe, for example, Noel Redding’s bass part would certainly repeat itself, but he played all sorts of little variations of the bass line, some adding little rhythm tics, others using grace notes by means of slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs in order to spice things up.

But many, many bass transcriptions of newer songs could have very easily been done via “cut and paste,” which lead me to wonder whether or not the actual recording was also done that way. In this digital age, it’s not unheard of for producers of almost all genres of music to get the segment of music they like and then digitally splice together a bass part or even a rhythm guitar part. And while we’re used to this sort of thing in some genres of music, such as the sampled sections of modern R&B, it’s also done in rock ‘n’ roll.

So when you’re listening to a specific “strumming pattern,” listen hard and see if what you’re listening to isn’t really one pattern at all, but rather a combination of many different patterns. Maybe even one that has single notes and partial chords thrown in for good measure.

One of my reasons for bringing all this up is that our upcoming song lessons are going to exploring how to go about making your playing less “pattern reliant.” One of the important development stages you will face as a guitar player is when you realize that you want to play things in your own style. To step from copying to creating.

And hopefully, this little discussion on patterns will help you to get started!

And, as always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forum page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Let’s wrap up, for the moment at least, our look at walking bass lines with the classic Rolling Stones’ song, As Tears Go By. Marianne Faithfull’s cover of this song, which is how many people came to know it in the first place, was recorded and released before the Stones recorded their own version, and amazingly (not counting their playing it on Ed Sullivan), wasn’t played on a Rolling Stones tour until November 2005.

Be that as it may, let’s take a quick moment to note two things concerning our lesson: First, when I say “wrap up,” I’m lying. Not to mention making a bad, if late, joke concerning Christmas presents. It’s kind of silly to say that we ever wrap up anything in these lessons, because one of the purposes behind them is to give you ideas and tools that you can use no matter what song you’re playing. We’ll be seeing lots of walking bass lies in the future. I’m just hoping I don’t have to explain them from scratch.

The second thing is that we’ll also use this lesson to give us a bit of an introduction into the idea of cross picking. But more on that in a moment…

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

In terms of structure, As Tears Go By is made up of three verses, four if you count an instrumental verse between the second and third verses. Each verse contains four lines and the first two lines have the same chord progression. Have a look:

As you can see here, there’s nothing you can’t handle. So if you’d like, pick a strumming pattern and go. Here’s one that will work nicely:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This is, of course, one of countless patterns that will work for this song. I’ve chosen this particular strumming pattern in order to help us make incorporating a walking bass line a little easier. Also, being sneaky, having both the pattern and the walking bass line will make our look at cross picking a little easier as well.

I should also mention here that, while I’m fairly certain these are the right chords; I’ve heard all sorts of chord substitutions in the numerous arrangements of this song that I’ve heard over the years. Some folks use A7 instead of A. Some like the sound of Am or Am7 instead of A. And, as you’ll see towards the end of the lesson, there’s all sorts of suspended chords and fills and ornamentation you can add when you’re playing.

So let’s use this strumming pattern and chord progression as a template and get going with a walking bass line. At this point, I hope, you’ll see it as nothing more than “connecting the dots” between the root notes of the chords:

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After going through the lessons on You Are My Sunshine and Connecting the Dots, Part 3, this sort of thing will hopefully be old hat to some of you by now. The only somewhat tricky part involves using the open low E (sixth) string for the E and F# notes when you change from the D to the G chords. A lot of people find it easy to hook one’s thumb over the top of the neck to get that F#, but since you’re not playing any chord at that point, just using the index or middle finger should work fine.

If you are comfortable with what we’re doing to this point, that’s cool because that allows you to start trying some other variations. For example, you could stagger the strumming and the bass line on the section where the chords change from G to Em:

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Again, you can use either your thumb or a finger to get the F# note in the bass. Not worrying about hitting the B note (second fret of the A string) of a “normal” G chord does have some advantages!

While this first variation may not seem like that big of a change, it makes a big difference to the listener, if for no other reason that you’ve broken up the strumming / rhythm pattern that you’ve been using for the first two and a half lines of the verse. Little subtleties such as this are how you keep from being robotic, playing the same strumming or rhythm pattern over and over and over again.

The second variation carries the “new” rhythm pattern (which, as you’ve already figured out, is the same rhythm that we used for the original strumming template.

You can likewise tinker around all throughout the song. Here are some suggestions for the very last line, where you change from D to D7:

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The first variation uses notes of the D chord (D and A, of the open D and A strings respectively, and F# at the second fret of the low E string) before going back to the open E and F# to walk back up to G. Here you might definitely find using your thumb an advantage in fretting your bass note of F#.

Things get a little more complicated with the second variation even though, to the ears at least, it’s a simple descending walking bass line. Simple to the ears, but you’ll want to take some time sussing out the fingering. Personally, I find myself using my pinky to get the C note (third fret of the A string) in the bass and then changing my whole fingering around – index finger on the B (second fret of the A string) in the bass while my middle, ring and pinky reform the D chord in the high strings. Some people like forming a “mini-barre” chord, using their index finger to cover the second fret of the high three strings and getting the D at the third fret of the B string with either the ring finger or pinky. This frees up the middle finger for the bass notes. Take you time with this variation and be prepared to do some practicing!

The third variation sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is. One starts out with the normal D chord and then adds a pinky to the third fret of the high E (first) string to get the G note (technically turning the whole thing into Dsus4), then removes it to get the second fret again and then opens up the first string entirely for the E note. While we could spend ages debating that we’ve created a Dsus2, it’s all merely ornamentation.

The second measure of this variation can all be done with pull-offs if you wish. Sounds very cool, in fact!

In and of itself, there’s enough here to mess around with without going any further. But I’d like to take one last step (or two) forward, if for no other reason than to give you more to think about. What we’re going to try to do is to pick individual strings in place of the strumming of chords. Some people call this flat picking, some call it cross picking and I’m not here to debate terminology. To me, it’s just part of playing. Let’s start with the G chord and work through the first line:

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Here, regardless of the chord, we’re starting with the root note on a downstroke and then hitting the high E (first) string with an upstroke, then a downstroke on the D string and finally an upstroke on the B string. You’ll find this a lot easier using alternate picking and you may also simply find playing chords in this manner a good exercise to help you get better at alternate picking. Even if you miss the string you want, you’ll hit another note in the chord as long as you keep the chord in place with your fingers.

And frankly, no one’s going to know if you make a mistake unless you start swearing! I can’t stress enough here that this is, again, one of many patterns that you can play. And I also want you to listen to something – in the MP3, I play the first line exactly as written out and then go and then just play the rest of the verse without worrying about the pattern. To my ears, things sound a lot better when I’m not worried about it. Why? Because then I’m playing and not being a tape recorder is certainly part of it. But as I just mentioned, as long as I keep my chord shapes, there’s not going to be a bad note. Most songs don’t require you to use a single pattern throughout. Doing so, in fact, makes you sound like you’re just a looping device. More importantly, it tires you out as much as it does your listener.

As a guitarist, you’re not going to be playing in front of people and muttering under your breath “…root note, high E string, D string, B string, root note…” Trust me, you don’t want to be! Right now you merely want to be thinking “bass, high, middle, high-ish” and getting yourself comfortable with playing in this manner. Before long, you’ll be able to add in bass notes as well:

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You’ll have to forgive me for only giving you the first two lines as a start. You’re actually getting off better than my private students, who have to come back to me in a week’s time with whatever they’ve dreamed up as an accompaniment for this song. A lot of times, and this is when I know they’ve got the point, they’ll play it slightly differently in each verse and not be totally conscious of what they’re doing. You might end up with something like this:

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Or something totally different. But that’s the whole idea.

As always, I hope that you’ve had fun with this lesson and have learned a few things about walking bass lines in the past few months. In the near future, we’ll be looking at how to combine strumming with picking and will, hopefully, be sounding a lot more like musicians and less like people who panic without patterns!

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Connecting The Dots – Part 1
• Connecting The Dots – Part 2
• Connecting The Dots – Part 3

The “why” behind this approach isn’t too hard to fathom. When I learned to play guitar, my motivation was to play as often as possible and with as many people as possible, so I learned what I needed to learn to play songs. First thing to learn was chords and keeping rhythm so that I could strum along while other people sang or while other instruments played lead. Then I branched out to more complicated chords and strumming patterns and set out to learn more about my instrument so that I could add bass lines, riffs, arpeggios, different chord voicings, or whatever it took to make the song sound its best regardless of whether I was playing it with a single guitar or with a dozen other musicians.

To paraphrase Guitar Noise Forum Moderator Wes Inman, people come to hear you play songs. They don’t come to hear you play scales (unless it’s on a tutorial DVD or YouTube!). This is an important thing to keep in mind when taking up the guitar or re-evaluating your progress. Of course, if all you’re interested in is creating music that will never be heard by someone other than yourself, then you can do what you’d like. But when someone asks you to “play something,” chances are likely that they are expecting to hear a song.

And as I’ve mentioned in a number of the songwriting articles here at Guitar Noise, I started writing songs in earnest very shortly after taking up the guitar. Part of it was simply the whole overwhelming euphoria of discovering a new instrument. And part of it was also a bit of learning on my part. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say it was part of learning to learn.

Seemingly another lifetime ago, if you can remember that far back (although I have to say I truly don’t remember that far back, so you may not want to take my word for it!), we were born not knowing how to read. So somewhere along the way, you were taught the alphabet and from that alphabet you learned words. And then from those words you learned how to read sentences, which became paragraphs and pages and books.

Creative writing was often a part of this learning process. After learning words and seeing how they were used in sentences, you probably were encouraged to write your own sentences. Some of your early prose may have been succinct and possibly exemplary (“See Jane play guitar.”), some of it may have left your readers scratching their heads (“Blue dogs fly south.”). These are steps we all took and still take today.

There’s no reason that this path of learning can’t help you with music as well. We sing songs and play songs all the time, so why not take a moment to figure out exactly what we’re doing. You can make any analysis of song structure as simple or as complicated as you wish, but it’s still a good thing to be able to identify a song in terms of its anatomy. One of our oldest columns here at Guitar Noise, Unearthing The Structure, can help get you started. Even the simplest of blues songs tend to follow specific patterns in terms of measures and chord progressions. And that’s precisely the thing you want to know.

Chord progressions are often the focus when it comes to learning songs. When we start out playing, we’re usually worried about making the chord changes in the first place and it is a while before we start seeing that certain chords seem to be linked together.

Before long, you might even get to the point where you can anticipate what chord is going to follow which one as you’re playing. While chord progressions can (and do) vary wildly, most times they follow very logical patterns. Our article, A Before E (except after C) might help take some of the mystique out of the seeming wizardry of chord progressions.

More important and helpful than any article, though, is simply listening to songs with a critical ear towards piecing together a song’s structure. Then going a step further and listening for chord progressions. Start with songs you already know and that you already have the chords for. This is the sort of practicing that you can do almost any time at all and it can pay off very quickly when it comes to trying to figure out songs from recordings.

Now that you’ve a handle on song structure, try your hand at writing some chord progressions on your own. You don’t have to put together a whole song with both music and lyrics (although many people find it helpful to do so). Simply creating chord patterns over specific rhythmic changes is an excellent way to work your way through your own personal trouble spots. You’re having the devil of a time going from G to F? Well, you can find a song (actually thousands of them) that has a lot of these changes, or you can make up one yourself! Need more practice switching from open position chords to barre chords? Write yourself a song that meets your personal needs. How about Dm (open position – XX0231) to F (barre – 133211) to Bb (barre – 668766) to C (open – X32010) with four beats for each chord?

You might think it’s weird to put all this effort to create a song simply to work out something as basic as changing chords. And you’re right – most people might just practice making the chord changes until they’ve got it down. But when you’re making the changes because it’s your song, there’s a little more at stake. Silly as it sounds, it becomes personal. You want to know that you can play your song for someone and you will hopefully put in an even more focused effort than usual.

Songwriting gets even more personal as you progress with your learning. Songs that may have started out as exercises, such as we discussed at the end of the last section, will then have to evolve as you improve your guitar skills. You’ll find yourself taking all the little techniques you’re picking up and putting them front and center into your songwriting.

In addition to chord changes, you can create song based on rhythms or riffs (which, when you think of it, serve as the foundation for tons of songs of all genres), or even work out songs to help you practice specific techniques such as walking bass lines or hammer-ons and pull-offs.

You can also delve into songwritng as a means to expand your chord vocabulary, both in terms of the chords themselves and of the voicing you may choose to use for said chord. Suppose you have written a simple song, one that goes from A to D to E and then back to A, all in open position. One thing you might try to do then is to work out how to play your song with all barre chords further up the neck. An obvious choice would be trying chords centered on the fifth and seventh frets, using A (557655), D (557775) and E (997779). But now go a step or two further in your thinking, embellishing the chords a bit by using those barre chord positions and combining them with your open strings to create new sounds. So now your A, D and E might become Aadd9 (X07600), Dadd9 (XX0770) and E7 (076700). For more information on this sort of idea, check out Multiple Personality Disorders.

The possibilities of what learning material you can turn into a workable song are, needless to say, limited only by your desire to learn. If you find yourself on a finger picking binge, then why not work up a song that employs a number of patterns so that you’ll have to work at being able to switch from one to another on a dime (much like Paul Simon’s version of Scarborough Fair)? If you’re experimenting with the tone settings of your amplifier, try writing a song that plays well in a particular setting you like. Many a song has certainly started that way!

I hope you’ve enjoyed our little look at how songwriting can benefit you as you learn more and more about your instrument. In case you didn’t know, we have four terrific Forum pages where you can either take part in writing assignments or simply post your songs (or songs in progress) and get feedback from your peers. They are, in no particular order:

• The Guitar Noise Songwriting Club is where you’ll find people posting original songs, mostly in lyric content, but lately more and more are submitting complete words and music, along with links where you can hear the songs online.
• The Sunday Songwriters Group (or “SSG”) is an assignment-oriented writing workshop focusing on the lyric aspect of songs. Each Sunday a new assignment is posted and anyone is welcome to submit a song lyric based on that week’s particular assignment. Currently in its sixth year, all the past assignments are also listed, so you can either join in on the current week or take an old assignment and jump in there.
• Hear Here offers a potpourri of music, from beginners demonstrating their progress to more seasoned players offering their latest recordings. Both original material and cover songs are bound to turn up
• The Sunday Composers Workshop is the latest addition to the Guitar Noise Forums. Here the focus is on the music aspect of songs. Assignments can range from creating a short melody to creating a guitar part for a song based on a rhythm track to reformatting the time-honored twelve bar blues formula.

Until next time, and as always,

Peace

Today we’ll look a little further at walking bass lines, not only how to put them together, but also at how they often define how a song sounds. We’ll use some examples from songs you know and also look at putting them into arrangements for songs that are usually played without them. So, without further ado…

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Descending bass lines, such as the one in Friend of the Devil have long been a staple in music of all styles. They play prominent roles in songs like Mr. Bojangles and Piano Man, where it’s hard not to notice them. But they also pop up in things like Green Day’s Wake Me Up When September Ends:

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Even though we’re working with what is essentially a “power chord” (here a G5 – a chord just containing the G and D notes), the descending bass line in the guitar creates new chords along the way.

As mentioned in our previous Connecting the Dots lessons, many guitarists feel more comfortable labeling each of these chord changes as slash chords. They’d be a lot happier if this snippet of Green Day were tabbed out as G5, G5/F#, G5/E and G5/D.

And, also as mentioned before, it may well be this need to have everything spelled out that keeps some guitarists from making the connection between chord changes. If you think about it, it’s certainly possible to create a bass line on the guitar for each chord change you make in a song. For some songs, and especially if you’re a single guitarist performing on your lonesome, this can be a good thing. But it’s also very easy to overdo it.

For right now, though, overdoing it may be just the trick to help you understand where and when you can work with walking bass lines. Let’s take a look at Bob Dylan’s You Ain’t Going Nowhere (many of you might be more familiar with the Byrds’ classic cover of this song). It’s a very easy piece and will fit our purposes for this lesson very nicely.

The song consists of a four chord pattern – G, Am, C and G – each chord getting four beats. Using a typical strumming pattern like this:

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to get you familiar with the chord changes. When you’re ready, give this arrangement a try:

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This isn’t all that much different than what we did on You Are My Sunshine. The main task is still to get from the root of one chord to another, within a certain time frame. Here we’re strumming the first two beats of any given measure (actually using a “bass / strum” approach, meaning that we’ll play the root on the first beat and strum the chord (up and down) on the second beat) and using the last two beats to walk to our next root.

In the first measure, going from G to Am, we end up overshooting the target and then backtracking. Going from Am to C, we hit the A note (open A string) on the third beat and the B (second fret of the A string) in order to reach the C note at the start of the measure. Because we’re going back down to G in that measure, and because simply for the sake of this exercise I want to keep the rhythm pattern the same, we don’t hit the C to start our descent, but go from B to A and then to G. In the fourth measure, we’re going from this G chord to another G chord when we reach measure one again. So I simply pick a place to start (the open low E (sixth) string) so that I can maintain the same pattern I’ve been using.

Again, and as you’ve heard over and over again by now, this is certainly not the only way of doing this. There are so many others that it’s mind boggling. All we want to do with these particular lessons is to get you in the habit of looking for places where you can place a walking base line yourself. And one of the best ways to develop this skill is to “do it to death” with songs with which you’re already familiar. When you know you can do it anywhere and anytime, then you can pick and choose when you want to use this technique.

As you saw in this last example, it’s possible to create a walking bass line even when you’re staying on the same chord. This is actually an essential skill to have as a bass player. Guitarists, too, may find many places where this “walking while staying in place” might be just the trick to make an arrangement slightly cooler.

Let’s go back to the Green Day catalog once more, using Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) as an example. Here’s a “before and after” snapshot of the main rhythm pattern during the first four measures of the verse:

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Essentially, what we’re going here is changing the second chord from G to G/B, by walking up our bass note from G (first beat of the first measure) to A (fourth beat of the first measure). Just for fun, we’ve added other notes in the bass line, again at the fourth beat in each measure, to create more of a “walking” feel. You can certainly sense the movement. I can almost guarantee that you won’t find any tabbed transcriptions of this song containing these bass notes, but a little touch like this can make your own arrangement stand out from all the carbon copies.

You can also emphasize walking bass lines that are already signature parts of songs by manipulating the bass notes rhythmically to stress the movement. Let’s look at John Denver’s Sunshine on My Shoulders for an example of this:

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In the original, the guitar hits the root note of the chord only on the beat of the chord change (beats one and three). By repeating the root note once more before the change (on the second half of the second and fourth beats), you stress the “walking” part of a walking bass line, which can be very helpful when playing songs that use slow tempos. This is another trick borrowed from the seasoned bass player and yet another small thing that a guitarist can do to give a single-guitar performance more depth and character. Notice that we throw in a small (and quick) descending walk going from C back to G, just to keep the listener on his or her toes!

One final thing to put on your plate with this lesson – you can also add harmonies to your bass lines. Let’s revisit You Are My Sunshine for a moment:

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Here we’re doing a pick of fingerstyle work, playing the walking bass line of G, A, B and C on our low E (sixth) and A strings, while adding the harmony notes of B, C, D and E on the B and high E (first) strings. This is something we’ve touched upon for different reasons in our Easy Songs for Beginners Lesson on Bookends, as well as in Blackbird, Scarborough Fair, Fields of Gold and other of our Songs for Intermediates lessons.

In our past example, the harmony runs parallel to the bass line. You can also run harmony in contrary motion to the bass line, as seen here:

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The bass line in this example is the same as in Example 6, moving from G to A to B and coming to rest at C. The harmony to the bass line starts with the G at the third fret of the high E (first) string and then descends chromatically, pairing F# with A, F with B and E with C. These pairings, even though they are only two notes, create full harmonies in our ears. We hear a D chord with the F# and A, while the F and B pairing call a G7 to our minds. Not a bad bit of work!

I hope these brief introductions to walking bass lines have helped you to start looking through your song repertoire for places where you can use this technique to spice up your own arrangements. We’ll be seeing some more song lessons (both Beginner and Intermediate) that will be highlighting the use of bass lines in the arrangements. And, of course, don’t forget that we’ve already got a lot of lessons already here at Guitar Noise that certainly may inspire you as well. If you’re up for a bit of a challenge, take a look at REM.’s Driver Eight over on the Songs for Intermediates page.

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Connecting The Dots – Part 1
• Connecting The Dots – Part 2
• Connecting The Dots – Part 4

One of the bigger challenges early on is the change between G and C chords. It becomes even bigger when you learn just how many songs contain chord progressions involving G and C. Many beginners manage to get the chord shapes and can play G and C by themselves, meaning out the context of a song, but find switching between these two chords frustrating. It’s not easy to get the change in a timely manner, meaning in the context of playing them in a song. What usually happens is that you’re on one of the two chords and you create a bit of a “hiccup” in the rhythm while you switch chords. Being able to change smoothly, let alone quickly, between these two chords seems a bit like asking too much!

Okay, by now you’re probably wondering what this has to do with walking bass lines…

Take a moment and try this following experiment:

Get set up with a G chord. Chances are that you, like most guitarists, finger the G chord with your middle finger on the third fret of the low E (sixth) string, your index finger on the second fret of the A string and your ring finger on the third fret of the high E (first) string. Even if you play your G differently, still try this out. Strum the G chord slowly, in four steady downstrokes, and then change to C. Simple, right?

Now I want you to do it again, but this time I want you to watch your fretting hand as it makes the switch from the G to the C. Which finger do you move first? More often than not, most beginners will lead with their index fingers, planting that firmly on the first fret of the B string before forming the rest of the C chord.

And here’s why it throws you off: Again more often than not, you will find yourself changing chords on a downstroke, meaning you’re strumming from the bass (lower notes) to the treble. But if you form the chord, like the C chord in this example, from the treble to the bass, you usually find yourself waiting to strum until the chord is formed. This is what causes the rhythmic “hiccup” we spoke of earlier.

It’s similar to the situation Josh Urban describes in his latest article, On The Other Hand, and it’s one reason than some people play the G chord more like the C, with the ring finger on the low E string and the middle finger on the A. Changing to C is then simply a matter of shifting those fingers up to the next string. But for most guitarists, playing a G in this fashion is uncomfortable and we learn to live with moving all our fingers when changing from G to C.

What we want to do is to get in the habit of forming our chords, especially ones like C and G that our fingers have to stretch across five or six strings, from bass to treble. And this is where our song, You Are My Sunshine, comes to the rescue.

Sometimes inspiration comes from the strangest places. Back in the spring of 2001 (and even that seems ages ago now), I was visiting some friends and they had the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? playing in the stereo. And when You Are My Sunshine came on, I found myself thinking two things: first, why had I never noticed what an incredibly depressing song this really was? And second, this song would make a great demonstration of a walking bass line.

So I started using it in my private lessons and, after moving here to the Berkshires, in my group adult classes as well. And that’s when I realized that this song not only was great for teaching walking bass lines, but that this particular walking bass line was the perfect way to help people start forming their C chord in a manner that would be both smoother and faster in the long run. And the bonus was that it was so easy and everyone knows the song so it almost teaches itself.

And now that you know what we’re going to be concentrating on, let’s get down to it and work on making smooth chord changes from G to C (and back again) by means of using walking bass lines, shall we?

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

First off, let’s look at the chord chart. You Are My Sunshine uses three chords, G and C plus the D in the last line. The verses and chorus use the same chord progression:

Seriously, now, aren’t those lyrics some of the most depressing that you’ve ever read? Ranks right up there with Comfortably Numb…

Because the verses and chorus have the same structure and chord progression, and because everyone pretty much knows the chorus without thinking twice about, we’ll focus our attention there for the most part of the lesson.

And, as with many of our Easy Songs for Beginners’ Lessons, you’ve already got what you need to get you playing the song. We could do with a strumming pattern, so how about trying one of these on for size:

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Just to make certain you’re comfortable, run through the chorus (or a few verses or, what the hey, even the whole song) a few times so that you know the timing. Here’s the first verse and chorus for your listening/learning pleasure:

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Another reason for getting familiar with this particular pattern, indeed for choosing a strumming pattern that emphasizes the root notes in the bass like this, is to get used to hearing those root notes. They’re going to be your targets, so it’s a good idea to have them in your ears. You, of course, should feel free to play whatever pattern you feel comfortable with, even if that’s just one downstroke per beat. But I’d like to suggest you try even the simplest of “bass/strum” patterns, if you can, such as playing the root note on the first beat of any measure and then three simple downstrums of chord for the last three beats.

Okay, now the fun starts. We’re going to walk up from G to C on the “you make me happy” line of the chorus, like this:

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This bass line follows the melody line directly, so there should be absolutely no problems with the timing. It’s all simple quarter notes.

You start with your G chord (and I’m assuming here that you’re using the typical way of playing, that is, with your middle finger on the third fret of your low E (sixth) string) and proceed with the basic strumming pattern for three measures (twelve beats). Notice I’m using the “alternating bass” pattern here in the example.

On the fourth measure, right with the first beat, which has no sung note on it, we’re going to switch to all single notes for our bass line. We start out with the G on the third fret of the low E (sixth) string and hit it for both of the first two beats (the aforementioned rest and “you”). Then we hit the open A string for the third beat (“make”) and then finger the B note at the second fret of the A string for the fourth beat (“me”). This will lead us to the C (third fret of the A string), which starts off the next measure (the “hap” of “happy”).

It’s important to note here that you might want to totally disengage your fretting hand when hitting the open A string. We’re going to use that beat to reset ourselves so that we can get the C note (third fret of the A string) with our ring finger. That is the ultimate goal of this entire lesson, remember? So when you’re playing this, start with the G chord played your normal way, then use whatever finger’s on that G note, then free up your hand when hitting the open A string, then use your middle finger to play the B note (second fret on the A string) and then your ring finger to fret the C. When you do this, your hand should then fall into the rest of the C chord as you’re hitting the root note in the bass.

And here’s the very cool thing: if you practice making the G to C chord change in this manner, deliberately and purposefully using the alternating bass line during the switch, you’ll soon find yourself leading with your ring finger when you switch between these two chords even when you choose not to use the walking bass line! Now you’re on your way to having much more speed and ease with this chord progression.

And it will work in the opposite direction as well, as you can see and hear in the following line:

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Play through the strumming pattern on C in the second measure. Then begin the third measure by playing only the C note twice, then playing B (you might find it easiest to use your middle finger) and then the open A. Again, you’re using the open A string to buy yourselves a moment to get your fingers in place to form the G chord. Taking advantage of open strings like this is an easy way to smooth out and quicken your chord changes.

You can repeat both of these walking bass lines in the next two lines of the chorus, going up from G to C on “…you’ll never know dear…” and then coming down from C to G on “…how much I love you…”

And again I can’t stress enough that some concerted practice with these bass lines will also help you get into the habit of leading off your C and G chord changes with the finger for the bass note, which in turn will help you make this transition in a more timely fashion.

But wait! There’s more!

Maybe it’s because I’m a teacher or maybe I simply can’t leave well enough alone, but I always try to give my students a little more to both strengthen what they already know and to expand on that knowledge (or the new knowledge) a little more.

So when we come to that third line of the chorus, let’s have a little fun, and even extend that fun into the fourth line:

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Here, since we’ve got a little time to kill sitting on the G chord, we’re creating a G to Em and back to G progression where there technically isn’t one. Is that allowed? Well, it sounds perfectly fine, so why not? And as you know from reading Part 1 of Connecting the Dots, going from G to Em simply involves hitting the F# note at the second fret of the low E (sixth) string at the right time. So doing this short little bass run reinforces that learning.

But I’d also like to extrapolate on what we’ve already worked on in this lesson, so let’s do that in the G to D and back to G of the last line (“…please don’t take my sunshine away…”). After coming back up to G from Em in the third measure, I start out the fourth measure with two beats of the basic strum for G. Then I hit the open A string again and the B note (second fret of the A string), just as if I was going to do a G to C bass walk. But instead of landing on C, I skip up to the open D string to start the fifth measure. And voila! Here we are at D.

Going from D to G is a little trickier. I could continue up the scale, going from the open D to E (second fret) to F# (fourth fret) and then to G (either open G string or fifth fret of the D string), kind of like a backwards Friend of the Devil. I could also use the “go down the same way you came up” method we’ve been employing for our G to C (and consequent C to G) changes throughout the song.

Instead, I’ll opt for something a little more interesting. Since the notes going up from D are E and F#, I’ll play them on the low E (sixth) string, just as I did in the Em to G change. Any of these possibilities will sound fine; this one just sounds best to me.

Okay, if you’re with me so far, then it’s time for a little reward. Here’s a very easy flourish with which to end this song:

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When you come to the next to last measure of You Are My Sunshine, start out with a strum of your G chord and quickly pull off your finger on the high E (first) string to let the open E note ring out. Then simply perform a single pull off on the third fret of the B string for the second beat, and again on the third fret of the G string for the third beat and finally on the third fret of the D string for the fourth beat before playing one resounding, final G chord. Isn’t it fun that such a complicated-sounding riff can be so easy to perform?

I hope you had fun with this lesson and that you enjoy playing around with this song. It’s a crowd favorite with older and younger people (no one knows how depressing it is!) and can be a great number to use if you find yourself needing to lead a group session for the first time. You might even find yourself liking it!

More important, use the walking bass line from G to C wherever and whenever you can. This will help you get into the habit of forming your C chord from the bass up and that will improve your chord changing.

And, as always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Connecting The Dots – Part 1
• Connecting The Dots – Part 3
• Connecting The Dots – Part 4

One of the more simple bits of this seeming magic is the walking bass line. We’ve used it in a number of our song lessons here at Guitar Noise, such as Friend of the Devil, Eleanor Rigby and (Sitting On) The Dock of the Bay. There’s even a little bit of a walking bass line in one of the versions of House of the Rising Sun lesson.

What we’re going to do here is to look at the basics of putting together walking bass lines. While we’ll cite specific songs and examples to help understand them, we’ll put more of our focus into looking at how to glean enough information from other sources, such as chord progressions and timing, so that we can create our own walking bass line fills. The idea here is to give you enough knowledge and confidence so that you can have this “little touch” at your beck and call.

This will be done in a series of lessons, both Guitar Columns, such as this one, and in upcoming song lessons (both in the Easy Songs for Beginners and the Songs for Intermediates sections) as well. In the columns, we’ll focus specifically on the walking bass lines, while the song lessons may touch upon other subjects as well. They tend to do that, don’t they?

Starting With Our Roots

First, and I can already hear your eyes rolling in your head, if you seriously want to be good at this, you are going to need to have a little bit of theory under your belts. Not too much, so don’t worry. Your reputation as a “self-taught guitarist who doesn’t need to know how to read music or know any music theory at all for that matter” will be safe with me. After all, we all know how important image is!

But you will need to know some things – simply iterating our topic, “walking bass lines,” points that out. If we’re “walking,” where did we start from? Where are we walking to? How long is it going to take us to reach our destination? Are we expected to arrive at a specific time? What route, path or trail are we going to take to get us there? Are we going to stop for lunch along the way?

All good questions, yes? And the answers are all dependent on many factors. But, for starters, let’s begin with the most basic of ideas in order to tackle the first question.

As you already know, every chord is made up of notes. What you may or may not know, depending on which Guitar Noise articles you’ve read or how much you’ve learned from other teachers, books, DVDs or other tutorial sources, is that each note of the chord has a function. For the moment, we’re concerned with the root note of any given chord. Simply put, the root note is the note of the chord that bears the same note name of the chord.

Okay, maybe that’s not so simple on the surface, but, trust me, it really is! The root note of an E major chord is E. The root note for C major is C. The root note for C minor is also C, because “minor” is a chord name and not a note name (and if you don’t know or remember your note names, run right over to any of our beginning theory lessons, such as The Musical Genome Project, and come right back). The root note for Cm7(b5)? If you said “C,” and I hope that you said it without any hesitation or quiver in your voice, you’re absolutely right! Okay, here’s a trick question: What’s the root note for the chord F#m7? Hopefully, you said “F#” and not just “F,” since F# is a note name. You have to include any sharps or flats if they are with the initial name of the chord. So the root of Bb7(#9) is, you guessed it, Bb.

So now that we know where we’re starting from, where should we go? The easiest way to start thinking about our walking bass lines is by looking at the root note of the chord we’re at to begin with, and then look at arriving at the root note of the next chord in our progression. Yes, there are (many) other paths down which we can choose to walk, but for now let’s concentrate our efforts here.

The Key Parts: Time And Place

Since we’re concentrating on moving from the root of one chord to the root of another, it’s also a good idea to work within the key of the song (or progression) in question. Again, I can’t stress enough that this is simply one of many ways of going about putting together a walking bass line. But I think that if you can grasp what we’re trying to do here, you might find some of the more “exotic” routes easier to navigate. How about we start with the key of C, just so we can take a look at our C major scale for old time’s sake?

Now (hopefully) we’re all aware that we can extend our C major scale on either side of these notes. Since we’re talking about walking bass lines, we’re obviously more concerned with the lower notes, those on our low E (sixth), A (fifth) and D (fourth) strings. So let’s just focus on those for the moment, shall we?

So far so good! Now we need a progression to work with. Let’s continue keeping things simple by working with one measure of C followed by a measure of Am. Maybe something like this:

Okay, this would be a good place to good over our questions:

Where do we start from? We want to start with the C, since it’s the root note of the C major chord.

Where are we walking to? We’re walking to A, since it’s the root note of the A minor chord.

How long is it going to take us to reach our destination? Are we expected to arrive at a specific time? You may have thought I was being frivolous in asking this, but now you see that these are, pardon the pun, key questions. Ideally, we want to hit that A note when we switch chords, so we want to arrive at it on the first beat of the second measure. And since it would be nice if we could keep some of the chord strumming while we do it, let’s try this:

Nothing too complicated here. We start with our basic pattern and substitute individual C and B notes for the third and fourth beats of the first measure. We could go with a full Am chord for the first beat of the second measure (as we have in Example 3), but it can’t hurt at this point in the proceedings to hit yourself over the head with the bass notes in order to hear exactly what you’re trying to accomplish.

Now let’s try reversing directions:

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As I keep mentioning, this is simply one way to get started. If we wanted to, we could incorporate noted from outside of the C major scale to make things more interesting. Here’s one way we could do that:

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Seeing The Signs

I think it’s important to take a moment here for a bit of sidestepping. One of the (many) things that fascinates me no end is the very amusing paradox of many guitarists’ (and aspiring guitarists’) mentality. On the one hand, possibly no other musician celebrates not knowing anything about music more than the guitar player. We don’t have to read music. Our heroes didn’t read music. We don’t need to know theory. You get the drift.

On the other hand, many of these same guitarists go way out of their way to label things that other musicians don’t even worry about. In Example 5, for instance, many guitarists wouldn’t even bother attempting that simple walking bass line unless someone had noted that the chord progression was C, C/B, Am. Without the slash chord (for more on slash chords, please see the Eleanor Rigby lesson) it might not ever occur to them.

The point here is to make sure you know to not depend on the music to spell out everything for you. You want to learn for yourself where and when to put in walking bass lines to make your music more interesting and less mechanical.

You should always be on the lookout for signs in the music or chord charts that indicate favorable chances to toss in a walking bass line. What sort of signs? Well, in our example, we’ve used a very simple bass line to go from C to A and then back again. In the musical alphabet, those notes are two letters apart. So whenever I see two chords whose roots are two notes apart, whether those two notes are two whole steps or a step and a half apart, then I think about using something along these lines when playing. Doesn’t matter if the chords are major, minor, sevenths, or what have you. Typical chord changes that you’ll see in a lot of guitar music are:

• C to Am (or A or A7)
• G to Em (or E or E7)
• D to Bm (or B or B7)
• F to Dm (or D or D7)
• A to F#m (or F# or F#7)
• Am to F
• C to E (or E7 or Em)
• G to B (or B7 or Bm)
• D to F# (or F#7 or F#m)
• A to C#m (or C# or C#7)

There are, of course, many others. Also it’s important to remember that these bass lines can travel in either direction. You’re not limited to a one-way trip.

To walk from your first chord to your destination, try to keep two things in mind: the “route” or “path” you want to take and when you want to get to your destination. More often than not, it’s good to use the old “shortest distance between two points” method, using your root note from the first chord as the starting point, the note in between as the second step in your walk and then arriving at the root note of your destination chord. But it’s also important here to take into account the key of your song. For instance, if you’re going from G to Em, use F# as your middle step, not F. Likewise C# sounds a lot better when going from D to Bm because C# is part of the D major scale (which has the same notes of the B natural minor scale).

As for time of arrival, getting there when the chord changes is usually the best strategy, but there are others. The (Sitting On) The Dock of the Bay lesson gives you a great example of the use of anticipation, or arriving just a tad earlier than expected. Anticipations can give a very interesting twist to a walking bass line.

Here’s an example that might bear this out. If you look at most chord charts for Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb, you’re likely to find this for the verses:

Given that we’re going from G to Em, it’s not too big a stretch to try something like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You can hear, even on an acoustic guitar, that this bass line provides a lot of punch. And punch is precisely what we’re looking for in this instance. We start out with our G chord and then pound that F# note at the second fret of the low E (sixth) string a half beat before reaching the Em chord. For those of you who like flailing away at the bass notes, you can be less subtle by giving the G root note of the first chord an extra hit before moving on to the F#, as demonstrated in “Example 8 (alternative).”

Before anyone writes to tell me, I know that this is not the chord voicing used on the original recording. If memory serves me correctly, the G is done 32003X and the Em is actually an Em7, played 02003X. For the purpose of this lesson, I’m trying to keep things simple and have opted for an easier arrangement. Might as well save the real voicings for an Easy Songs for Beginners piece, no?

And speaking of adding a little spark, in the chorus section, you’ll find a number of A to C chord changes:

And here’s a cool trick to handle those:

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Even though our intent is to spice up the A to C change just by walking up the bass notes from A to B to C, we’re able to do a lot more than that in this case. In essence, we’re using the B note in our walking bass line, plus the guitar’s standard tuning to create a very cool sounding chord change. On the fourth beat of the measure, hit the A chord on a downstroke, pull off your fingers, hammer the index finger on the second fret of the A string (to get the B note in the bass) and play a short upstroke, hopefully one that misses the high E (first) string. All of this happens in the blink of an eye, so take heart if you need a little practice to sort it all out.

Technically, just to appease all the “I need everything spelled out even though I don’t need theory” crowd, this passing chord is G/B. You can also play it as shown in “Example 10 (alternative),” which adds a D note at the third fret of the B string. Personally, I find this harder to do on the upstroke and when I want to play this change in this fashion, I’ll use two very quick downstrokes. Both ways, as you can hear in the previous MP3, sound perfectly fine.

I hope that this brief introduction to walking bass lines whets your appetite for more. As mentioned earlier, we’ll be looking at this in a series of columns and song lessons (both Beginner and Intermediate) that will be going up online over the next few weeks. And don’t forget to look at some of the old lessons to get more information on the subject.

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Connecting The Dots – Part 2
• Connecting The Dots – Part 3
• Connecting The Dots – Part 4

Three years into things, I have to say that it’s going well. I’ve a pretty full slate of guitar students and I also teach four group guitar classes at the local community college. Between teaching and writing, I keep very busy and make pretty much the same money I was at the ad agency I worked at in Chicago.

But I have to confess something to the people who write or call or talk to me about how great it must be to be “living my dream” – and that is the simple fact that I never dreamed of a life like this. Honestly. In fact, this is so far beyond my old dreams that I often wonder how I managed to end up where I am doing what I’m doing. But that’s not all that hard to figure out. In the immortal words of the Kevin Bacon character in the movie Tremors, “I got myself a plan.”

Living vs. Making A Living

People are nothing if not a wealth of contradictions. This is a good thing, actually, but it also leads many away from paths they might otherwise travel, if only for a while. When we think about someone making a living in music, we almost automatically think of him or her as performers. Not only that, but as “successful” performers, and please feel free to spend a moment or two lost in your favorite rock ‘n’ roll fantasy.

But performing is just one part of the much larger picture of the music scene. Or any artistic endeavor, for that matter. There are people making their living in music in as many different ways as you might be able to imagine. Not just the obvious ones such as writers, producers, managers, agents and the like, but also the “behind the scenes” folks – the sound and lighting people, the computer technicians, the instrument technicians, the luthiers, even the people who own and run clubs and music stores (both sheet music and instruments) and CD and record shops. And teachers, let’s not forget teachers…

It’s quite amazing, when you stop and think about it, how much music there is in our everyday lives. And the logical step you should make is that there has to be people who have managed to bring it to you. The music that plays along with your video games didn’t just magically happen. Someone wrote it, produced it, recorded it and managed to get it on the product. The guitar you’re eying on eBay had to be made by someone. The amplifier or effects boxes you play around with were designed, tested, marketed and sold by teams of people.

We need to sidetrack a bit…

For close to fifteen years, I made a living as a “headhunter,” that is, a recruiter or employment consultant, if you will. I solicited companies to discover job openings and then found people to fill those openings. It was a lot of fun and also very weird because my job existed on the fact that so many people were unhappy with their jobs. As I said, a wealth of contradictions…

I’ve been lucky in that I’ve been very happy in pretty much all my jobs. Part of the reason is because I know that, at least in the society into which I’ve been born, one needs a job in order to survive. One must “make a living.” But “making a living” doesn’t have to be on a different plane than living. Way too often we use our choice of making a living as a self-definition. “Hi, I’m David. I’m a bus driver, restaurant manager, headhunter, songwriter, musician, media accounts analyst, teacher…” We don’t always see that our profession is also simply a part of the big picture of who we are.

This viewpoint also works in reverse, and this is where most people stumble when they think about pursuing their dreams. To put it bluntly, if you’re going to “make a living” in music, you’re going to have to treat it like “making a living.” In other words, you have to approach your dream with the same sort of approach that you would in choosing a college or a profession. You need to have a plan.

In Tom Hess’ many articles here at Guitar Noise, he talks about the importance of setting goals. Darrin Koltow, in his writings, also stresses the need for goals, adding that our objectives need to be both specific and measurable. We see the reasoning behind this when we’re trying to improve ourselves as guitarists and musicians. But is there any reason not to apply the same logic to our lives? If you were happy “making a living,” then would that be any different than simply living?

Getting Concrete

One of the things I tend to mention a lot in the songwriting critiques that I do at the Sunday Songwriters’ Group is the need for specific, concrete images in one’s lyrics. One right word is worth hundreds of “close” ones.

If it is truly your goal to live your musical dream, then you have to get very specific with yourself. What do you want to do? It’s not enough to say, “I want to make a lot of money playing music.” That’s way too general! Oh, it’s a good enough place to start, but without getting into much, much, much, much more detail, you might as well be dreaming. And the idea here is to stop dreaming and start making the dream happen.

Let’s look at our statement again:

“I want to make a lot of money playing music.”

Without batting an eye, you should be asking the following (and more):

“How much money?”

“What kind of music?”

“Whose music?”

“Playing how often?”

“All by yourself or with others?”

Each of these questions, in turn, has to be broken down even further. Don’t be afraid to be nitpicking. More importantly, don’t think that asking questions means that you don’t believe in the dream. People who can’t question their dreams or who see questions as attacks are not interested in making the dream happen. They are expecting to magically wake up one day and that somehow it’s all working. Don’t laugh, because I’m sure you know some people who even expect to learn the guitar this way!

Let’s get back to that first question. It’s pretty important because it will set the stage for how much you’re going to have to work. Music is one of those very skewed professions in that the amount of money people make is all over the board. But what really makes it a hard question is that most people honestly don’t know how to answer it. And it doesn’t really matter what profession they are in or want to be in.

So let’s fine-tune the question a little more: How much money do you want? How much do you need? And then let’s get to the really important one that you have to answer as honestly as possible: Why?

Let’s backtrack a little again: I’m not here to give you any answers to these questions. But I am here to tell you that how you answer them (and how honestly) is going to be a big part of determining how far you get in your pursuits of your dreams.

When I made the decision to move to Massachusetts, I also made the decision to give my best shot at making a living as a music teacher. That was only the first step. The next was to figure out what that really meant. And that meant two big things: figuring out how much money I needed (and wanted) to “make a living” and how I was going to get that money.

So I sat down and worked on the first question. I wrote out every single expense I could think of that I would incur simply by living somewhere. Food, clothing, shelter, all the basics. Then all the stuff I didn’t want to think about but had to: medical insurance, taxes, transportation, communications, materials. Then all the stuff that I didn’t even think twice about ever in my life. It’s amazing how quickly things add up.

According to the 2004 Census, the median household income in the United States is just shy of $44,000. That’s for a family of four. The median personal income is slightly less than $24,000. But none of that really means anything to anyone. If you live in New York City, you’re not likely to live there long making $24,000 a year. Circumstances have to be taken into account on an individual basis and this is why I can’t give you any answers to these questions.

But I can answer for myself. I figured that since I was doing alright in Chicago and that since my trips to my soon-to-be new home revealed that the cost of living was going to be pretty close to the same, that my goal would be to try to make the same amount of money in my new home as I did in the old one. I had specific numbers to work with.

And having a specific goal is key, because it makes everything else work for you. Let’s say, for the sake of having a specific goal (and for the sake of making the math easier for me!) that we decide we want/need to make $24,000 a year teaching. This means that you need to make $2,000 a month. And if you’re charging say $20 for a half hour lesson, then you need to teach a hundred such lessons a month. That’s slightly less than twenty-five lessons a week, which means five students a day five days a week. Now you have some real numbers that mean something.

But before you go thinking, “Hey I could teach two and a half hours a day and make that happen! So why not double it and make twice as much money!” you need to take a lot more into account. Yup, more questions!

Where are these students going to come from?

How will you handle cancellations of lessons?

What about student turnover? (after all, no one should be taking lessons forever…)

When do I get to take a holiday?

What do I do during the summer if no one wants lessons?

Again, each of these questions leads down a different road. And you are going to have to deal with them at some point, so why not come up with a few answers ahead of time?

No Decision Is Ever Final

The thing to remember is that all answers, just like life, are momentary and may have to be reviewed time and time again. After all, your needs and desires are constantly evolving and the ways to meet those needs will likewise require some tweaking and adjusting over the course of time.

The major point I want you to take away with you is really very simple: If you want to make a living in music, then you need to start by getting very specific about your goals and then going through your numbers in order to see how feasible it may be.

Throughout the course of 2007, we’ll be running articles with various people in all phases of the music business and getting into more of the hard specifics that you may need to include in your plans.

In the meantime, though, please send any questions you might have my way. If I can’t answer them directly, I’ll do my best to find someone who can answer them for you. Write me at dhodgeguitar@aol.com or PM me on our Forum page here at Guitar Noise.

Until next time…

Peace

In the upcoming book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Bass Guitar, I mention that there are two kinds of bass players – the “born” and the “converted.” “Born” bass players start out on the instrument, while “converts” come to the bass via guitar, piano or any number of other musical backgrounds.

Personally, I think that every guitarist should play bass. There’s a simple reason behind this thinking and it’s stated in the very first sentence of this lesson. Any guitarist who’s truly having trouble getting his or her rhythm in shape will find that concentrating on the bass (or at least the bass lines of a song) will help to improve their timing.

There’s actually another reason as well, but that’s for our next bass lesson…

Today we’re going to work on our timing and rhythm by trying something that, while easier than it looks, will require your attention. If you can count to seven, then come along with me! And, even though this is a bass lesson, we still need this:

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Money, from Pink Floyd’s classic album Dark Side of the Moon, may seem to be a strange piece to pick for a “beginner’s” bass lesson, but it fits our needs on several levels. The fingering involved is very basic (almost all of it is in “open” position) and will be a good introduction to (or reminder of) the bass fingerboard for many of you. We’ll also get to examine the importance of “closed” patterns when playing bass lines and discuss the difference between swing eighths and straight eighths.

But mostly it’s about counting to seven. With the exception of the section that consists of a guitar solo and the very, very end of the song, Money is in 7/4 time. This will take a little getting used to, but (hopefully) you’ll find once you’re in the groove you won’t even think twice about it.

For the sake of not having to think about too many things at once, I’ll not worry about going over all the details of the theory. For now, know that Money is in the key of B minor, which is the relative minor of the key of D major. And most of the bass lines center around the B minor pentatonic scale:

Just as when playing guitar, you want to think of your scales as continuous, so let’s take a moment and extend this one across all four string in open position:

When using this extended scale as a warm-up, try to play any notes that occur on the second fret with your index finger and employ your ring finger or pinky for the notes that fall on the fourth fret. This is a textbook example of “the box,” which you can read all about in Dan Lasley’s Bass for Beginners column conveniently titled, The Box. Notice the lowest root note (B) is on the second fret of the A string. The octave (the next higher B note) is played at the fourth fret of the G string. That’s just like on the first four strings of the guitar. Note, too, that the fifths (F#) are on the same frets as the roots, but on the strings immediately lower (the D and E strings).

The main riff of Money kicks off with a root to octave to fifth and back to the root bass line before adding in more notes from the B minor pentatonic scale. You have two things to keep track of here: counting to seven and using “swing eighths.” You’ll hear why in just a moment:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Did you hear the difference between using swing eighths and straight eighths? It may seem like such a little detail but it’s quite striking, isn’t it? By the way, this main riff serves as the introduction to the song; it’s played until the vocal starts, signaling the beginning of the verse.

Take the time to practice this riff if for no other reason than once you’ve nailed it down you’ve got more than half the song covered. Start slowly and get it into fingers and head. Again, try to use your index finger for the notes on the second fret and either your ring finger or pinky for the notes on the fourth fret. You might find it easier if you slightly flatten the fourth fret finger, just as you might to play a power chord on your guitar. This is, not coincidentally, another one of the little things that a bass guitar can help you with. If you’re having trouble fretting power chords on your guitar, try fingering them on the bass for a week or so. When you switch back you’ll wonder what all your earlier problems could have been!

Another thing you might do, especially to assist going from the B note at the second fret of the A string to the F# at the second fret of the E, is to roll your fingertip onto the lower string. This is a handy technique to develop for both bass and guitar playing and takes only a little concentrated effort to get the hang of it.

Most importantly, don’t be afraid to count out loud if you’re having troubles with the timing.. Don’t laugh! When faced with a tricky bit of rhythm or a timing they’ve not played in a while, most professional musicians (at least the ones I know) will count aloud in order to get it into their heads. It really does help. That’s the reason I do it on the MP3 and you should feel free to do it yourself.

Most tricky timings will break themselves down into ones you can handle if you let them. The “feel” of the 7/4 timing in Money is that of taking a measure of four beats and then adding one of three. So feel free to count it out that way (“…one, two, three, four, one two three, one, two, three, four, one, two, three…”), if it helps to do so.

When you have the main bass riff under wraps, the “secondary” bass riff will be a breeze:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

With the “secondary” riff, try to keep the notes crisp and short, what’s called “staccato” in the musical world. Here the bass line is echoing the rhythm of the sung lyrics and playing staccato helps to punch out the rhythm in a tricky part of the song for the singer.

The verses end with a four measure sequence that reorganizes two measures of 7/4 into one of 8/4 and one of 6/4 before going back to two measures of the main riff:

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Again, I can’t stress enough the need to use swing eighths here. Hang onto the first F# (fourth fret of the D string) for two beats before playing the “descending power chord” formation. Lift off whatever finger you’re using to play the fourth fret to sound the open A string and then place it back to get the C# and F# (fourth fret of the A and D strings, respectively). You’ll find that your middle finger is free to get the F natural on the third fret of the D string, which sets you up to play the E note that starts the second measure with your index finger. That same middle finger can be used to play the G note (third fret of the E string).

And again, I can’t stress enough the importance of counting aloud if you’re having trouble. With a little bit of practice and effort, you’ll be able to handle a whole verse:

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Money, as noted earlier, starts out with the introduction (repeated playing of the main riff), followed by two verses. The second verse is followed by a sax solo, also played in 7/4 time. It will be much like playing the verses, with the main riff getting the lion’s share of the solo. But at one point, the main riff is played in E minor for four measures instead of B minor. On the bass, such a transition is easily accomplished. First we want to take our main riff and turn it into a “closed” position riff. This means eliminating the use of any open strings. So, replacing the A of the open A string with the A note found at the fifth fret of the E and playing the D note at the fifth fret of the A string (instead of playing the open D string), our “closed” riff will look like this:

You can see there’s a bit of a stretch involved here, but I don’t want you to worry about that just yet. Instead, let’s relocate our riff up to the seventh fret, where you’ll find an E note on the A string. Now we can play our “main riff” as our new “Em7 bass riff (sax solo section)” in the following manner:

Because you’re much further up the neck, you should be able to use the suggested fingering in this example. “i” is “index finger, “r” is ring finger and “p” is pinky. With a little bit of practice, you should find this riff as easy to play as the main riff. Better yet, you only have to play this one four times the entire song.

After returning to the main riff, the sax solo section winds up with a playing of the “v – iv” riff follows by a switch to 4/4 time, ushered in by two measures containing nothing but triplets:

This may seem like a piece of cake, but it’s easy to let it take you by surprise Practice this transition slowly. It’s important for the bass player to be able to articulate these triplets cleanly and clearly, propelling the song forward from the “sax solo” section on to the “guitar solo” section.

And now that we’ve covered said “sax solo” section, let’s take a look and a listen to the sax solo section in its entirety:

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Besides being in 4/4 time, the “guitar solo” section involves some cool sounding walking bass lines, complete with descending chromatic (half step) tones. After what you’ve been through, this won’t be hard. But it is important to play this section with staccato firmly in mind and to remember your swing eighth feel:

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The guitar solo section, while in 4/4 time, uses the same count of measures as the sax solo section, broken up in pretty much the same way. It starts out with eight measures of the “Bm bass line.” Notice that the first measure is different from the other seven in that it starts out with a quarter note of B while the remaining measure use two eighth notes, played as swing eighths. You can get a nice effect by hammering on to the first B of the second (and following) measures from the open A string.

After our eight measures of the “Bm bass line,” we get four measures of the “Em bass line” followed by another four of the “Bm bass line.” Again, the first measure of the Bm will be different from the three after it.

The staccato feel is especially important in the final four measures of the “guitar solo section.” I like to occasionally change the fourth quarter note of the first measure (E at the second fret of the D string) to an eighth note of that E followed by an eighth note of the open E string, giving me a chance to hammer on the F# at the start of the second measure. That’s strictly artistic license.

The final descending line of the last two measures (the notes of which are played by the band in unison) leads to the “turnaround,” which is a repeated playing of four measures of the Bm bass line from earlier. This leads to two repetitions of the guitar solo section. The last time through this section, skip the “turnaround” and go right back to 7/4 time and the “main riff,” repeating it until the vocals start the last verse.

At the end of the third verse, Money returns once again to 4/4 time, with the bass simply repeating the B (second fret of the A string) and the note of the open D string over and over again while the song fades out. It’s almost anticlimactic after all the timing skills you’ve demonstrated up ’til that point.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this excursion into bass playing and that this lesson has helped you get a handle on your timing. Working through a difficult timing such as 7/4 can give you the confidence to tackle some of the more “workaday” rhythms you’ll encounter in most other songs. And switching from timing to timing, as you have here in Money is good practice whether you’re a beginner or intermediate player.

And, as always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments and/or concerns. And if you’d like more bass lessons, let me know about that as well. I’m hoping to do two or three more in the next couple of months. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

But augmented and diminished chords are, as the cliche goes, another kettle of fish. Just the names, “augmented” and “diminished,” give one pause. Do I need a special degree or extra study to employ one of these chords?

Not at all! You may not know it, but augmented and diminished chords are not all that much harder to learn than “ordinary” chords. Chances are that they are simply unfamiliar to you, since they don’t tend to pop up in songs all that often. They used to, though! Pop songs of the thirties and forties were filled with them. Motown and groups like the Beatles used them in the sixties. How often you come across these chords really depends on what type of music you listen to. And for the songwriter, these chords can open so many doors that it’s positively overwhelming!

So let’s take a look at them, how they’re formed and the functions they can serve. If you’re capable of counting to twelve, you’re capable of understanding and using these marvelous chords.

Leading You By The Ear

First, if you aren’t familiar with how chords, be they major, minor, augmented or diminished, are formed, then you might want to take a moment and peruse two old columns of mine called The Musical Genome Project and The Power of Three. I think you’ll find both pieces an easy read. And while you’re at it, take the time to go over Five To One, as the ideas there are going to be essential to the topic at hand.

And if you’re ready, let’s take a look at an old friend, the C major scale:

You may not have thought about this much before, but which note ends the C major scale? Depending on your personality, you either said “C” or “B” and I’m willing to bet that the majority of you picked the first answer. Either answer is fine; one could just as easily argue that there is no end of the scale – it just goes on and on…

But those of you who went with “C” probably did so for a good reason. It sounds like we’ve finished the scale. If you end on B, then you’re likely to feel that the scale is incomplete, that it’s hanging there waiting for an ending. Don’t take my word for this! Sing it or play it and hear for yourself.

This is the sense of “home” that we discussed ages ago in Five To One. And whether you know it or not, a lot of that sense of home relies on the B note, or rather, on the fact that the interval between B and C is a half step and not a whole step. In the study of music theory, half steps are often referred to leading tones. They serve to direct a voice, a melody, a solo or a chord to a specific destination. If that destination gives us a sense of home (and if not totally a sense of home, then at least a sense of respite), then we call that resolution. We even briefly touched on this in A La Modal, when we looked at the use of the C major scale in The Israelites and heard how the use of the half-step between C and C# gave us a wonderful sense of completion.

Believe it or not, most of you are already aware of how this sense of home works, even if you feel you can’t put it into words. This is why chord changes like F to C and G to C sound more complete; there’s more of a sense of finality than, say, Am to C. It’s because of the use of leading tones:

I’ve marked the leading tones here with little slash marks (“/” or “\”), which illustrate the movement of the notes. I also added G7 to this chart, to remind you of the discussion in Five To One about why G7 to C sounds even stronger than G to C – you’re using two leading tones instead of one. Is everyone with me so far? Okay, then, let’s take a look at augmented chords.

But first, I want to plant this in your brain because we’re going to want to look at it a lot in the very near future. Remember that, in Western music anyway, there are a total of twelve chromatic steps going from C to C:

That number, twelve, is going to become very important to us! So keep it in your hat, as they say, and don’t even bother to ask me who they are! By the bye, I can assume you all know that C# (number 2 in this chart) is the same as Db, right? Likewise, Eb is D#, F# is Gb, G# is Ab and Bb is A#. Got it? Good!

So now let’s take a look at Caug. As you read in The Power of Three, one makes an augmented chord by taking the root, adding a major third (the note two full step up from it) and then adding another major third. If it’s easier, just think about adding a half step to the fifth. Either way, you’ve got C, E and G# and it looks like this:

Since an augmented chord has the raised fifth, and since, in this case it’s G#, it’s a fairly safe bet that your ears want it to lead you to an A note. More often than not, an augmented chord will resolve to the fourth (F in the key of C) or the sixth (Am in the key of C. Check out these progressions and see if you don’t agree:

And these progressions are even more striking when you start with the C chord:

Can you hear how you build the tension when you change from the G in the C chord to the G# in the Caug? And then how the tension drains away when you finally get to that A note in either the Am or the F? This is a great thing for songwriters. You can use it as a melody line or, more striking still, use it as accompaniment as the melody holds on a single note common to all chords. And you don’t have to stop there! Check out this progression:

I’ve deliberately used the Fmaj7 here so that we can have sustained tones on the first two strings, namely the open E on the first string and the C note (second fret) on the B string. We start with the C to Caug to Am that we used in Example #6 and then raised the A note an additional half step to Bb, which gives us C7. Then we slip back down to A of the Fmaj7, lower that a half step to get the FmMaj7 (quite the chord, no?) and then finally get back home to our C chord.

Another thing I should point out here is that a lot of writers will use the C6 or Am7 chord (both of these chords use the same four notes: C, E, G and A) instead of plain old Am. As with so much else in music, it all depends on your own taste.

Sadly, outside of jazz, one is hard pressed to find augmented chords used with any regularity. You may find the occasional song (or songwriter – John Lennon regularly peppered his work with a well-placed augmented chord or two) where they pop up. In jazz, you’ll often find the seventh added to them. There is a moveable chord form for this and it looks like this:

Kudos to those of you who, having read my column, Moving On Up, can see the reasoning behind this. We’ve taken our E shape and adjusted the fifth, which is on the B string, accordingly moving it up a half step. The root of this chord is on both of the E strings (first and sixth), while the third is on the G and the seventh is on the D.

Now, let’s put the augmented chord on hold for a moment and take a quick look at our second feature, if you will. Diminished chords also demonstrate the importance of leading tones; perhaps even more so than the augmented chords. Think back on Example #2 and ask yourself, what’s the difference between Bdim and G7? The Bdim contains the same notes except it has not G. In other words, it’s a G7 without a root. So it will always contain two leading tones in it, depending of course on the chord to which you intend to resolve. More on that in a moment…

First a quick bit of stuff that might be confusing. It’s rare to play pure diminished chords, that is, the root, minor third and flatted fifth, on the guitar. Because the instrument is, for the most part, tuned in fourths, it’s hard to create comfortable chord voicings that use adjoining strings. That’s not to say it can’t be done. Here’s a common moveable chord for pure diminished chords:

For this moveable chord, you only want to play the three strings indicated. The root is on the A string, while the flatted fifth is on the D string and the minor third is on the B string. This particular fingering leads itself very nicely to chord progressions like this:

This is a very common progression in jazz or old pop standards. You can hear this at the beginning of We’ll Meet Again or all throughout Ain’t Misbehavin’. And it’s a terrific example of leading tones, here in the bass notes. If you start with the C major chord and then only change the C note, moving it up a half step to C# while keeping the E and G intact, you’ve then got C#dim. This resolves to Dm, from which we go to Gaug7 that will bring us back to C.

But guess what? To a jazz player, this is not a diminished chord! He or she calls it a “half diminished” chord. Why? Well, I might need the wit of Nick Torres to figure this out but I highly suspect that jazz players insist that anything good enough to be called a chord should have four notes!

So let’s remember that our diminished chord is made by taking the root, adding a minor third to it and then another minor third, which gives us the flat fifth. By the way, this flat fifth is called the tritone. It’s as far away from the root as one can get. But more on that later. For now, on top of all that we’ve got so far, let’s stick another minor third:

Technically, in terms of the major scale, we’re adding the sixth to the chord, but in music theory terms we call this a diminished seventh. The diminished seventh can easily be played on the guitar. Here’s Cdim7:

And now we’re in for some real fun! Because of the make up of the diminished seventh chord, you have all sorts of ways to resolve it! Let’s look at a Cdim7 and see a few examples:

This is all a matter of the use of leading tones. When going from Cdim7 to C, for instance, we let the C note stand pat while the Eb lead us up to E while the Gb and A collapse in on the G note. I didn’t plot it out, but the A could just as easily lead up to the Bb and give us a C7. Or, in our second example here, the Eb could lead down to D, the Gb and A could collapse on G again and the C note could lead down to B, which would give us a G chord. We could also, as I hope you see, create G7, Gm or Gm7 just as easily.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! If you’re up for it, and I have to admit that this is a lot easier on a keyboard than on the guitar, try resolving from Cdim7 to any or all of the following chords: Db, Db7, Dbm, Dbm7, Eb, Eb7, E, Em, Gb, Gb7, A, A7, Bb, Bb7, Bbm, Bbm7 and B7. Even if you decide to take my word for it, just reading that list of possible resolutions should put you a little in awe of the possibilities of this chord. But wait, as they say, there’s more!!

More Fun With Numbers

Ask any of my friends and they will gladly tell you that my grasp of science and/or physics is, at best, more than slightly tenuous. Still, I will declare forever and a day that all the wonderful talk about wormholes and dimensional portals and all that sort of fanciful thought probably started with a musician who was under the spell of Augmented Diminished Dementia.

Remember I told you to hand on to the number twelve? Let’s take a look at something incredibly interesting. Let’s take the twelve tones of Example #3 and the Caug chord of Example #4. Remembering that the Caug chord is built with a root (C), a major third (E) and then another major third (G#), what happens if we add yet another major third to the equation?

Goodness, we’re back at the root! How on earth did that happen? We’ll grab a pencil and come join in the fun. The interval of the major third is two whole steps, or four half steps. So if we’re starting with note “1,” then the next note in our sequence will be “1″ plus 4, which is “5″ and we look on our master chart and low and behold, “5″ is E. So far, so good! Adding four to “5″ gives us “9″ and wouldn’t you know it? G# is the note assigned to “9.” That’s our Caug chord, alright! So let’s add four to “9″ and we’re up to “13,” which, being a half-step up from B puts us smack dab on the C note.

Remember again, our total number of chromatic notes is twelve. “13″ is the same as “1″ as far as we’re concerned here. And twelve, as I truly, sincerely (dare I say desperately?) hope you all know, is divisible evenly by four. Repeat with me from your childhood: “Twelve divided by four is three.” This means that each augmented chord is actually the same as two other augmented chords! They share the same notes! Again, don’t take my word for it! Do the math and see:

And do you know what that means? There are only four possible augmented chord combinations! Oh, each one has got three names (or more if you start changing your flats for sharps – for instance, G#aug, from this example, is the same as Abaug, no?), but I think you see where I’m coming from:

Now go back to our twelve chromatic tone chart in Example #3 (or Example #14, since it’s closer!) and see if we’ve left anyone out. Pretty wild, huh? I’m more than willing to bet that those of you who learned how to play, oh, Gaug, for instance, didn’t have a clue that you also learned how to play Ebaug as well.

And knowing this sort of thing can be gold to a songwriter. You’re writing a song in the key of C and you want to really go wild on the bridge. Instead of using the time-honored C7 to F approach, why not go to Caug? And then instead of going to F, think of Caug as Eaug and go to A without batting an eye. Your listeners will blink and wonder how you managed to transport them without their knowing!

If this isn’t wild enough for you, then let’s go back to the diminished seventh chord. Think about this – the diminished seventh, as we saw earlier is built upon a stack of minor thirds. So guess what happens when you throw another minor third on the pile?

Yup, we’re back at the root again! The interval of a minor third is equal to three half steps, and twelve divided by three is four. So depending on what note you choose as your root, you actually have FOUR different diminished seventh chords here at your disposal:

And now you’re probably jumping ahead of the game and you’ve already guessed the next big secret of life: There are only three different diminished seventh chords! We’ll use flats instead of sharps this time but be sure to check and see if I’ve missed any, will you?

So, knowing this, how easy is it to figure out your moveable diminished seventh chords? Pretty easy, I suspect. Just find one note of the diminished seventh chord on any of the first four strings and use this pattern:

As you can see, this repeats itself every third fret up the neck. Not a bad thing to know!

Remember when I gave you a list of possible resolutions for the Cdim7? Well, that was a pretty good clue for what you were getting yourself into, no? And again, for a songwriter, this is like having a passkey (no pun intended) to get free access from one key to the next with a minimum of trouble. C to Db? They said it couldn’t be done! “Ha!” I say. Just use the Cdim7 chord and you’ll be there long before anyone knows you’re gone!

This, sincerely, is one crazy subject that tends to confuse the daylights out of people. So please take the time to read it all over as many times as you need to. I hate telling people this, but it is all numbers and nothing more. Okay, it is more – it’s also a lot of fun! A warning, though… Augmented diminished dementia is fairly contagious. Please do try not to overdo!

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

Today we’ll take some of these elements and add a little more depth to them. We’ll also look at the ideas of structure and targeting. And since we’ve got a full plate anyway, what say we take a short look at bending strings as well?

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

I’d like to do all these things by examining a solo that already exists. It’s a good idea to start out with a solo that fits the criteria I set forth in an old column of mine, Leading Questions, meaning I’d like it to be short, slow (relatively, anyway) and simple (again, not too simple – we should have a bit of a challenge, no?). And it’s singable, too! So I’ve called upon Lindsay Buckingham’s brief solo in the original recording of Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide, taken from the group’s self-titled album of 1975 to help us out. By the way, if you haven’t read Leading Questions, I heartily advise that you do so now! We’ll wait!

While learning to play leads by copying others’ solos is a time-honored practice, you can lose something by doing so. We can never go into Lindsay Buckingham’s head as he came up with this little lead, perhaps saying to himself, “Let’s use a Bb major scale!” anymore than we can say whether or not he put any more thought into it other than, “Hey! This sounds cool!” So we can never truly know how much of what we examine today was thought out beforehand back then. But that doesn’t mean that things like structure and motifs were totally ignored, either. Most professional musicians (not to mention non-musicians!) will tell you that good solos usually are structured like good songs.

So it’s up to you to understand the why of learning solos this way. And the chances are that the reasons will be different for each of you depending on where you are at this point of your guitar-life. Some of you may simply want to learn this one particular lead. Others may be looking to make that leap across the seeming chasm that exists between knowing a scale and creating an interesting solo with it. Still others may be interested in examining the use of bends to add more depth to your knowledge of scales.

These reasons, and others, are the difference between studying a solo and merely copying one. Just like I tell you in the various song lessons here at Guitar Noise, practically every bit of music you learn can be applied somewhere else. And while I can try to coach you in using the knowledge you gain, you have to open your ears and minds to the chances of doing so.

Back to the task at hand, this particular solo comes a little more than halfway into this particular song, serving as a brief interlude between two identical bridges:

Well I’ve been afraid of changing
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder even children get older
And I’m getting older too

Landslide, on the original recording, is in the key of Eb. If you’ve read the lesson Laura Lasley and I wrote on this song, you already know that it’s fairly simple in terms of chord progression. The entire song, except for the first line of the bridge, consists of this two-measure sequence:

Buckingham plays his solo over four repetitions of these two measures and it ends when the bridge, which starts on a Bb chord, begins again. What I’ve done here is taken the melody of the solo and written it out for you:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This is the “no-frills” version of this solo. I’ve simply notated the notes of the melody and nothing more. By the way, if you’re one who’s interested in this sort of thing, on these MP3s I am playing a Fender Stratocaster with the “five way” selector on the neck pickup. The tone is as clean as I could make it.

Please make note of the fact that I wrote the notation of this lead an octave lower than the actual notation would normally be written. There’s a reason for this; since I want you to be able to make connections between the notes on the staff and the scales which we’ll be examining momentarily, I don’t want you to also worry about reading the notes way above the staff line. I hope this isn’t too confusing.

First, I’d like you to examine this in terms of structure. You can divide the solo into two basic sections: part one is the first four measures and part two consists of measures five through eight (and the first bit of measure nine, where the bridge begins again). Right off the bat in part one, Buckingham uses a rhythmic motif, playing a set of four sixteenth notes, the last of which is held for an additional few beats. He uses this motif in each measure of part one, except the fourth measure where he’s simply holding on to the note that ended the final motif for the entire four beats. Just where did these notes come from? We’ll get to that in a moment.

He starts out the second half of the solo, in measure four, almost identically. Measure four is, note for note, identical to measure one except the last note doesn’t spill into measure five as the last note of measure one is tied into the first half beat of measure two. So we start out measure five on the first beat instead of the second (as we do in measure two). It’s a subtle difference, but it’s definitive signal that we’re planning on not simply repeating ourselves.

And we certainly don’t! While the notes of measure five are the same, Buckingham deliberately alters the rhythm and plays around with it in measure six before going into pretty much a whole measure of sixteenth notes (measure eight) which closes out the solo.

Having looked at the structure, let’s now look at the notes. As mentioned, the song is in the key of Eb. In case you don’t already know, here’s the Eb major scale in what’s known as “root-six” position, meaning that the root of the scale (Eb) is on the sixth (low E) string:

And here’s where the wrinkle comes in – Buckingham doesn’t use an Eb scale throughout the entire solo. If you read music (and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t! Take a look at the article Your Very Own Rosetta Stone and see how easy it is to get started!), you know enough to look for accidentals in the notation. Accidentals are changes to notes, making them different from the key signature. If you look at measure eight, you’ll see a symbol that looks kind of like a mutated pound sign (#) in front of the third note, which is an A. This indicates that you want to play A natural instead of Ab, which is in the key signature. Accidentals always override the key signature and last for the duration of a measure.

Scanning through the entire solo I can also see that not only is the only use of an accidental, but it’s also the only use any A note (natural or flat) in all eight measures. All the A’s are natural and they’re all in measure eight.

So what does this mean? For starters, it means I might want to rethink using an Eb scale and instead use the Eb Mixolydian scale:

Here I have all the notes I need for this solo. Seriously. All the little motifs and phrases, as well as the long sequence of sixteenth notes at the very end, are just notes take from this scale. They are grouped into short, pleasant sounding melodies that are very much in character with the overall tone of the song. There is no magic formula when it comes to this.

But why would Lindsay Buckingham choose to use this particular scale? Again, there are several possible answers and I can’t begin to tell you which, if any, shaped his thinking. But let me tell you what I might guess, simply based on the evidence at hand.

To me, it’s a matter of what’s called targeting. Even though the solo takes place in a song in the key of Eb, it ends squarely on a part of the song that has momentarily moved to the key of Bb. The first line of the bridge consists of these two measures:

And then it goes happily back to repeating the two measures in Eb that we’ve been playing the entire song. And if we go back and look at the chords in of the rest of the song, you can see that they can fit in either the key of Eb or Bb:

So playing the notes he does in the first six measures of the solo, Buckingham really doesn’t have to worry about which scale he’s in as either will do. It’s not until measure eight that he commits to the Bb scale (or Eb Mixolydian, if you will), and that is because he wants to land squarely on a note of the Bb chord when the bridge starts. And, by choosing D, which is the ever-and-all-important third, as his final note, I think he gives it as good an ending as possible.

And I also tend to think of this scale more as “Bb” than “Eb Mixolydian” because of the notes he chooses to draw out, the F in measures one, three (and, consequently, four) and five and the Bb in measure two (which ties over to measure three). Because every other chord of the progression is Bb, it’s easy to kind of sneak the tonal center of the song that way.

So let’s take a moment and look at the Bb scale, again in “root-six” position:

Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but it doesn’t come close to the tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteen frets, where all the notes of the solo seem to be. So what do we do?

This is where our last lesson, A La Modal, comes in. We learned that scales don’t have to start on a root. We can start them on any note (also called the degree) of the given scale. For instance, we can start our Bb scale with the D note (the third of the Bb scale) on the sixth string:

This is why people will tell you that knowing your scale is only a first step, that you should also learn the various places on the neck where you can play it. Some teachers will find a scale position for each note of the scale. So, again using the Bb major scale as an example, you should be able to play a Bb scale with Bb (example #2C), C, D (as here), Eb (example #2B), F, G and A as your starting notes on the sixth (low E) string.

Why? You’ll notice, in this last example, that I added two extra notes (Eb and F) to the top. We’ll be needing that high F for this solo and I wanted you to see that they are easily within reach of the Bb scale, but only when we use the Bb scale which starts with the D (or Eb, as we saw in example #2B) on the low E (sixth) string.

As I mention, we can use any note as our starting point. Let’s look at the Bb scale starting on the C note, which is the second degree of this scale:

The TAB notes in parentheses are optional places to play the same note. The A and D can be played on the twelfth fret of their repsective strings instead of on the seventh frets of the D and G strings. Which fingering you decide to use is truly a matter of choice, or of the size of your hand!

But what I want you to see is that, in both these last examples, we’re more into the area of the neck that Buckingham uses for his solo and we haven’t changed our scale at all, merely the scale’s position. In fact, for this solo I’m thinking on using these two positions of the Bb scale.

But how can I do that when the second measure has a note on the fifteenth fret? This is where bending comes into play. We’ll be devoting a whole column in the (relatively) near future on this, but for now you might want to brush up on the subject in the old column, Tricks of the Trade. You can use bends, particularly “full” bends, which raise the tone of the string one full step, to condense, or expand, your scale. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

I’ve taken a segment of the Bb scale, going from G to G (and the music notation (not the TAB) is back to being an octave lower for clarity) and written it out in TAB. This is the area where most of the solo is played. In the first example you can see that whichever fingering you use, you will have some big stretches to deal with. As a rule, you want to keep your solo played in a span that is comfortable for your fingers. A range of three to four frets is ideal. But we can’t get that here.

Unless we taking bending strings into account, as we do here:

In this scale, I’ve eliminated the use of the tenth, fourteen and fifteenth frets by using full bends at various points in the scale. This frees my fingers from having to make awkward stretches.

And bending also allows you to give your guitar more of a voice; it allows it to sing. This isn’t going to be the easiest thing to demonstrate but allow me to try by looking at the very first phrase of the solo:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Here I’m playing this four-note phrase in four different ways. First, I play it “straight,” that is I strike each note once. And if you’re wondering how I’m getting the tone I do, I’m taking a page out of Lindsay Buckingham’s book and I’m not using a pick! That’s right, I’m playing all these MP3s with my fingers! First I play the Bb (eleventh fret of the B string), then the C (thirteenth fret), then the D (tenth fret of the high E (sixth) string) and finally the F (thirteenth fret).

I also strike with my fingers four times during the second time I play this. But on the third note, the D, instead of fingering it on the tenth fret of the first string, I strike the C note (thirteenth fret of the B) a second time and bend that note up a whole step to get the D. Then I strike the F note.

The third time through I only strike the C note once. I start on the Bb, then pick the C, wait a brief moment and then bend it up to D before striking the final F.

And on the fourth time through this phrase, I only use my fingers twice to strike the strings. I play the Bb first, as I’ve done each time, but then I hammer-on to the C note at the thirteenth fret and then bend that to get the D note before ending with a strike of the F note.

Each of these ways has its own voice and charm. I particularly like the last one because it seems to me like someone singing in one breath, but by hanging on to the bend (which, bended, is the D note) you get a nice harmony between the D and F.

Which notes you decide to bend is totally up to you. Listening to the solo, I find more and more places to stick in a few, such as here during the second and third measures:

It’s important to play around. Find what notes, if any, you feel comfortable about bending. Find which fingers work best for you. In this example, I’ve indicated the fingers I use, but there are certainly other ways of doing it. The main thing with example #5, for me, is using my middle finger for the note on the eleventh fret. This shifts my fretting hand slightly down the neck (“down” meaning down in tone, away from the body of the guitar), which makes getting the note on the tenth fret a breeze.

I want to take the time to point out what goes on in measure seven of the solo:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This bend is a little tricky in that you want to use your index finger to bend and hold the bend on the G string while playing the following notes on the B and high E (sixth) strings. This is a technique worth practicing, as you’ll find it used in all sorts of music, from metal to country, or “from Hank to Hendrix” as Neil Young might say. The reason that this is used a lot can be found in the “straight notes” TAB. If you look closely, you’ll see that the notes line up in the E-shape I described in Moving On Up. Using a bend to get the same shape creates wonderful overtones on the guitar. Most people will immediately think Little Wing when hearing them, but it’s a technique used across all genres and styles.

Speaking of most people, many folks may take a look at measure eight of this solo and then throw in the towel! They don’t realize that if they’ve gotten this far, all the hard stuff is already done. Whenever you’re confronted with a long series of notes, the best thing to do (and you know what I’m going to say!) is to take it apart and deal with each section slowly:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Here’s a clue: practice the scales I gave you at the start! Here we’re simply using portions of examples #2D and #2E. Where I put the “(sl)” symbol is where I slide (using my index finger) from one scale to the next. When I practiced this when I learned it, I worked first on the part up to the slide until I had it smooth. Then I worked on the second part. Finally I put them both together. One thing I found out while working out the second part was that I often would default to what I wrote out in example #7A. Not only that, but I kind of like that a lot better than the “original!”

Okay, after (and only after) you’ve taken each section by the horns and gotten it to a point that you’re happy, then put it all together. Remember to take it slowly:

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And once you’re happy with the results of that (and don’t fret about mistakes – listen to how many I made!), then you can work up to speed:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

I hope you had fun with this lesson and that it whets your appetite for trying out a lead or two. We’ll take the time every other month or so to examine more leads as well as to create some of our own. I think it’ll be fun. Hopefully, you will, too!

And, as always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

All of which is certainly true. And also the main reason behind my choosing that particular piece as our first lesson into guitar arrangements. If you’re going to start something new, there’s no reason to make things so hard on yourself that you’re forever discouraged from trying it again. But, now that we’ve got our first success out of the way, shall we move on now to something, say, only slightly more difficult?

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

I say “slightly more difficult” and I mean that in terms of learning to play this piece. But you’ll soon find that we’re going to have a lot of different choices to make and each choice will, potentially, lead us down different paths. Without wanting to make too big of a noise about it, this is where knowing more about theory, particularly chord construction and conventions of chord progressions, can be a big help to you.

Our song for arrangement today is a classical piece, Brahms’ Lullaby. It’s something that you’ll all recognize it once you’ve heard it. So, why don’t we look and listen:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Everyone got it? Good! You’ll notice that I’ve already placed the melody in the key of G major and, for good measure, gave you the chord progression that comes with it. Those are the chords the second guitar is strumming in the background of the MP3. This arrangement is very basic, mostly in order to continue to start us off on this series with pieces that will both sound good and also boost your confidence.

I’ve chosen to do this in G, as most of you might guess, in order to keep us dealing with the easy chords we all know and love. And the melody, for the most part, is on the first two strings. But, even with something as seemingly simple as this, you might find surprises lurking around the corner!

I took the liberty of numbering the measures of this song, so we’ll be able to keep referring back to it. Please note that this song is in three-four time, as opposed to the usual four-four. That means that each measure is three beats long. There’s a “pick-up” measure of two eighth notes (both G notes at the open G string) to start us out. And in the first two measures, the melody line conveniently consists solely of notes that make up the G major chord, namely G, B and D.

Before moving on, let’s take a moment and review what we might want to know about chords, at least the chords used in Brahms’ Lullaby. As we’ve seen, we’re using three chords, G, C and D7. If you’ve read any of our beginning theory pieces here at Guitar Noise, then you should be able to break each of these chords down into its component notes. I’m going to add the regular D chord, since the seventh is simply an addition to it (as you can see):

Let’s now look at measure three. Even though the chord accompaniment says we’re still playing a G chord, then melody goes from G to F# to E. Likewise, the first note in the melody of measure four is E (the note of the open high E (first) string), which is not part of either D7 or a regular D. It certainly didn’t take us long to find out that what that one reader emailed me is certainly true – melodies, as a rule, will contain notes outside of the accompanying chord.

So what shall we do? Okay, get ready to grimace because you know the answer that’s coming up: there’s all sorts of things we can do! And this is where you have to make choices. I’m going to show you a variety of answers to this, but please be aware that there are even more than I’m giving you.

For the sake of making this illustration simple to follow, let’s suppose that we’ve decided to play out Brahms’ Lullaby all in block chords, much in the style of our first version of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. One answer would be continue using only G, C and D chords. When you think of it, that’s not that big of a stretch since every note in the G major scale is a part of one or two of these three chords:

So, keeping all that in mind, let’s look at one way to deal with these two measures:

That certainly will work. If we want to branch out a little bit (and perhaps flex a bit of our theory muscle!), we could realize that this little phrase resolves to the D chord. Why not stretch out and “borrow” the fifth of D (A or A7) and make this resolution a little more dramatic:

Amazing what a difference a single chord can make, no? If you’ve taken the time to play both examples (and I want you to! That’s why there’s no MP3 with these – you should be learning to hear these things and the best way to do that is to play it yourself!), you might find that you like the first one more than the second. You might also prefer Example #2 to Example #1. You might even like them both equally.

Well, brace yourself because there’s still more! Let’s suppose, again merely for the sake of an example, that I want to play this and keep the accompaniment as intact as possible. Is that too much to ask? Not at all! Remember that each note of the melody is also the note of what I call an embellished chord. If you’ve read my (very) old theory article, Building Additions (and Suspensions), you should be able to follow along with this chart:

Are you still with me? I hope so! Have a look (and play it!) at what we’d have if we opted to use these “embellished chords:”

Now that’s sounding pretty nice, right? I hope you took the time to play both examples here, because there is a wonderful difference between the first, using the Dsus2, and the second, which starts out measure four with D9. To play this voicing of D9, by the way, start out by playing a C7 chord (take a regular C chord and add your pinky to the third fret of the G string) and then slide the whole chord up two frets. The fingering should be X54530. There won’t be a test, but this will come back to haunt you later on. Promise!

Also notice that in the first example, we end on D5. Again, referring to Building Additions (and Suspensions), you know that this is a D chord that has no third; it’s just made up of D and A notes. Guitarists these days call this a D power chord, which is really funny if you think about it. Imagine Brahms telling people, “It’s a power chord, dude…”

As nice as both versions of Example #3 sound, let’s try playing these two measures without using “block chords.” Strum the whole G chord and let it ring while simply playing the remaining melody notes:

This is what’s called “passing tones.” The notes of the melody which are not a part of the accompaniment chord are “passing” from one chord to the next. Here the F# and the E create the sound of the embellished chords Gmaj7 and G6, respectively, when you play them while allowing the G chord to ring under them. Likewise, playing the D chord underneath the E note that starts measure four creates a Dsus2 which then resolves to D5, or “D without a third,” if you will.

And I don’t know about you, but after trying out all these examples, I’m most taken with this last one. So that gives me two things on which to concentrate as I put together my arrangement: sticking as close to the original accompaniment chords as possible and allowing the “non-chord” notes of the melody to simply be passing tones instead of trying to come up with a block chord for each note. There aren’t many places where this happens, just enough to help us learn a thing or two!

After playing around a bit, I also come to realize that the finger style arrangement (the third one) we did in the last lesson might be the best choice here, so let’s give it a looksee, remembering, as always, that my playing isn’t (as always) always spot on:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

First off, let me note that the melody line is indicated by the notes with upturned stems. Any notes with downturned stems are the accompaniment. I’m using the relatively normal (pun intended) “rule of thumb” here: notes on the D, A and low E (sixth) string are played with the thumb. The three high strings are played with the fingers, usually the index on the G, the middle finger on the B and the ring finger on the first (high E) string. This example will give you an idea of what I mean:

Pay special notice to measure three. Here I pick the bass note (with my thumb) along with both notes on the high E (first string) and the B string (picked, respectively, with the ring and middle fingers) and then use my index finger to play the open G string on the off-beat. You can just as easily not play any of the notes on the B string during this measure; they are not, after all, part of the melody. I just like the way it sounds.

In addition to the picking fingering shown in the TAB, take a moment to look at how I try to make things easy on myself. Unlike Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, I don’t feel that I have to fill up every space with an eighth note of accompaniment. If the melody is two eighth notes, as in the third beats of measures two and three, then the accompaniment can be a single bass note of a quarter beat.

In fact, look at measures five and six in Example #5. All of the accompaniment in these two measures (as well as later in measures eight and twelve) consists of quarter notes. What we’re doing here is allowing the song to have its own rhythm and not making it chug along in a steady beat of eighth notes from start to finish.

In measure eleven, I go back to that D9 chord we discussed earlier. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! One of the things I discovered during our “experimentation” stage was that I liked the way this voicing allowed the strings to ring out. This fingering gives all three notes of the melody (C, D and E) the chance to spill over onto one another. I think it sounds very dreamy. I like it so much, in fact that I use it to start measure fifteen as well.

Speaking of measure fifteen, I use the F# note on the second fret of the low E (sixth) string in order to have a nice lead up to the G in the final measure. You could just as easily opt for an open D string there.

I want you, as you study and play this, to again pay special attention to how all the accompaniment is dictated by the chord shapes. And to how easy this makes it to play! When we move on to more complicated songs which will involve moving further and further up the fretboard, the logic of finding a good chord fingering will still apply. In fact, it’ll be even more important for us to keep in mind!

Finally, I’d like to share with you an alternate thing to try in measures eleven and twelve:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

When I was putting together this arrangement, I found this to be a nice way of playing these two measures. If the whole D9 thing just throws you, give this a try.

I hope you all enjoyed working out this song arrangement. Those of you with little ones have no excuse not to practice this a lot! Next time out, we’ll check out Greensleeves, which should give us a chance to work in a minor key and deal with all the inherent fun things that tend to go along with songs in minor keys!

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next lesson…

Peace

Also check out… An Introduction to Song Arrangement Part 1

We’ve got a lot of material here at Guitar Noise on both scales and modes. I’d highly recommend Peter Simms’ Mystery of Modal Scales for those of you just starting out. What I’d like to do with this column is to (very briefly) show you how to put together any modal scale yourself. Trust me, you can do this! It’s easy! Also, I’d like to explore a few of the practical applications when it comes to modes. And if you’re not careful, you may learn two easy songs – Green Day’s Warning and that old Desmond Dekker reggae classic, The Israelites. I guess that means we’ll need this:

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

First, though, try to put everything out of your mind. Everything. We’re going to start from scratch and, while this may be old hat to you, it never hurts to go over it again. I should add, at this point, that you might want to read the first part of my article Scaling The Heights so that we’re all on the same page as far as definitions are concerned.

I’m very tempted to quote the words of Guitar Noise Forum member Helgi Briem, who often tells people (and I’m paraphrasing here) that as long as you know your major scale inside and out, you’ll be fine. When it comes to modes, that’s certainly true! All of our modes come straight from the major scale.

For the sake of explaining this relatively quickly, we’re going to use the C major scale. No flats and no sharps. Here it is.

C major scale (also called the Ionian mode):

I C D E F G A B C

The thing to be aware of here is that what makes any scale a scale is the pattern of intervals between notes. All major scales start out with the root (called “I”) and then the second note (“II”) is a whole step up from the root, the third note is another whole step up from that. The fourth note is only a half-step up from the third. The fifth, sixth and seventh notes are all whole steps again and a final half-step leads you back to the root. This is why people often write out the pattern of a major scale as “WWHWWWH” where “W” means “whole step” and “H” indicates a half-step. I personally don’t like this because unless you remember to include the root, you have no starting point. Technically, that scale should start at D, no? So, just to make me happy, let’s rewrite this as RWWHWWWH.

Getting back to business, let’s stay in the key of C major but start with the D as our root note instead of the C. This scale would be

II D E F G A B C D

This is a Dorian scale. What makes it a Dorian scale is the new set of intervals. With D as the root, the scale would read: RWHWWWHW. It is this pattern of whole and half steps that defines the Dorian scale. You might also see that, except for the root, we’ve simply shifted the pattern of the major scale up to the second position. Thinking about this in terms of intervals, as Peter notes in his article, is important. The intervals, as we said, define the scale.

Because, in this instance, you started with the D note, it is a D dorian scale. You can see that (since there are still no flats or sharps) it is still, technically, in the key of C. But because our root is D, that is where the “modal center” or “home” is.

If we start with E, we would have an E Phrygian scale

III E F G A B C D E

Are you with me so far? If we start with the F it’s called an F Lydian scale.

IV F G A B C D E F

Now let’s start with G. This is a G Mixolydian

V G A B C D E F G

We’ve now reached the A note (and this is where it all gets really interesting). This is an A Aeolian scale. It is also the A natural minor scale.

VI A B C D E F G A

Finally, let’s start with B, the seventh note of the C major scale. This is the B Locrian scale:

VII B C D E F G A B

Now, if you noticed, I put Roman numerals along with the scales. These correspond to the notes of any scale. So if you have any major scale (and remember to keep the intervals between the notes the same):

I II III IV V VI VII VIII

As you can see (and might guess), a lot of figuring out scales is actually working backwards. If I’m playing a G dorian scale (G because the scale starts with the G note as the root), I take a look and see that “dorian” starts with the II note of any given major scale. What key is it in? It has to be in the key of F because G is II in the key of F. Being in the key of F, which has one flat (Bb), then a G dorian scale will look like this:

G A Bb C D E F G

Let’s try another one. Let’s compose a D lydian scale. Okay “lydian” starts on the IV, so I need to figure out which major key has D as the fourth. You’re right, it’s A. A has three sharps (F#, C#, G#), so a D lydian scale must look like this:

D E F# G# A B C# D

So you can see why Helgi’s axiom of learning one’s major scales is so important. When you learn one major scale, you’ve actually learned seven different modal scales! And if you’ve caught onto the fact that I tried to point out to you in Scaling The Heights, then you know that if you’ve learned one major scale (in a particular position), you’ve actually learned them all! This means that you’ve also learned all your modes. Amazing, no?

Remember, though (and you knew this was coming, right?), that it’s one thing to know where and what the scales are and another to have practiced them well enough to be able to have them, no pun intended, at your fingertips. Still, I think that it’s important for everyone to know that learning these is not beyond you, not by any means!

Okay, now that we know what modes are and how to get them, is there a point to all of this? Well, let’s suppose that you’re playing a song in the key of A major. Now let’s also suppose that you’re doing a solo while the song is simply switching between an A and a D chord. Well, instead of relying solely on your A Pentatonic scale, you could liven things up a bit by using the D lydian scale for your solos.

The reality, though, is that most guitarists never worry about this. Seriously. What the majority of people do is figure out which key is the relative (or natural) minor of the major and then use that scale for a staging point for the lead. And, more often than not, they’ll use a Pentatonic scale instead of a full one. There’s that “pentatonic” thing again! If you want to learn more about those, go back and read the second half of Scaling The Heights.

In spite of this penchant for pentatonics, there are times when knowing your modes can be very useful. Let’s look at a few examples which will, hopefully, allow you and your ears to appreciate the often subtle differences modes can make in your playing.

Let’s start with something I’ve already shown you in an earlier Easy Songs For Beginners lesson. Click over on the article on Cat Stevens’ Wild World and look at the first and third lines of the chorus. You’ll see (and hear on the MP3s) a descending C major scale. This is probably the most obvious example that I could ever point out to you, except if you listen to the melody of the Christmas carol, Joy To The World, which is also nothing more than a descending scale (which key? depends on what key you happen to know the song in!).

As you study more solos, you’ll be amazed to find that an unbelievable number of them (and we’re talking mostly about rock, metal, folk and country music here) use one of six scales – Pentatonic (major or minor), Major, Minor, Blues, Dorian or Mixolydian.

The Mixolydian is a favorite in rock and metal because a lot of songs have chord progressions going from the root to the flatted seventh (actually IV of IV – see the old column Scales Within Scales) to the fourth. In the key of A, for example, that would be A to G to D. Since the G note is not part of the A major scale (G# is), many guitarists would use an A minor pentatonic (A, C, D, E, G) and work the C note as a “blue note.” But you don’t always want that sort of thing. Sometimes you want the C# and the G. So what do you do? The easiest thing to do would be to work off of the A Mixolydian scale:

You can see that the A Mixolydian gives us the notes we want; we get the G without having to lose the C#, which puts the “major” in A major! In Green Day’s song, Warning, the bass and guitar double on an ascending and descending A Mixolydian scale, and it’s this repeating of the scale throughout the song that gives the music such a powerful hook:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

The riff that is played between the verses (and which starts the first two lines of the last verse) is also pulled from notes of the A Mixolydian scale:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Believe or not, that is the entire song, music-wise! All you’ve got to do now is get all the words and you can play it. Or I can provide that for you as best I can (and I take no responsibility for these not being the right lyrics, okay?):

Finally, I’d like to demonstrate to you how powerful a modal scale can be, especially when used with a bit of thought. In Desmond Dekker’s The Israelites, he starts out with the song with the time honored I – IV – V progression (note: for the sake of our lesson, I’ve transposed this song down a half-step to A (the original recording is in Bb) – since we’ve been working in A in Warning and because of our quick look at Wild World, I think you’ll understand!), so our chords are A, D and E. Let’s look and listen:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Whoa! Someone went and threw in an ascending C major scale into the middle of that! Did you hear it? You better have! I took the liberty of playing it over and over again at the end of the MP3! Now, this switch from A to C might seem like a crazy thing to do, but let’s remember our modes. The C major scale (Ionian mode) is, note for note, the same as the A Aeolian mode (or natural minor scale). So what the songwriter has done here is to briefly switch from one mode to another and right back again. See for yourself:

One thing I want to point out here, if for no other reason than I think it’s both very clever and the main reason this works so well, is that he starts the A Aeolian scale on the C, which is the third note of that scale. This is why you hear it as a C major scale. And it’s also the reason why it resolves so well. In a major scale (actually in most scales, but that’s another story!), we’re very used to the final resolution being a half-step, B to C in this case. Our ears like this sort of thing, no lie. And what our ears do for us do here is add an additional half-step, C to C# (the all-important third again!) to comlpete the resolution back to A major and make us feel we’ve returned home after a bumpy, albeit brief, trip.

And that’s all there is to this song. Here’s the complete transcription (although, again, I have to stress that I am going from memory here and I know that I may have the lyrics wrong – or at least, not quite right!):

I hope you’ve enjoyed this lesson and, more importantly, I hope that it puts many of you at ease where your fears of modes are concerned. What I’m hoping to do in our upcoming future columns is to go back to where I left off and look at the basics of lead playing. We’ll look at various techniques used in soloing and analyze a few of them. When you can see how they’re put together (a bit of a scale here, a chord arpeggio there, maybe a slight change of mode), you’ll probably find that you can a lot of things you previously thought you couldn’t.

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forums page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

But some of us cringe at the thought of singing. We would prefer to let the guitar do the singing for us. Fortunately, the guitar is perfectly capable of standing up on its own. You can plunk out a melody on a single string, you can add harmonies and bass lines, you can even use it to provide your own percussion.

Folks who take up the classical guitar already know this. Likewise jazz guitarists who play a lot of what’s called “chord melody” pieces. What I’d like to do is to get you started on figuring out how you can do this sort of thing yourself. Naturally, we’ll start out simply (even simpler than Auld Lang Syne, which Graham Merry transcribed for us in his wonderful article, The Birth of a Chord Melody, which you definitely should read, by the way), and, over the course of a number of articles, build up our skills and confidence.

So let’s get this part out of the way first:

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

We’re going to start with what I believe is the oldest melody known to man. That would be the classic, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Believe it or not, this was once the only melody in the world. People would sing this one melody with whatever words they could come up with. While some of those lyrics still use this melody today, in songs such as The Alphabet Song (A, B, C, D, etc.) and Baa Baa Black Sheep, other lyrics, both ancient and modern (O Happy Dei, She’ll Be Coming ‘Round The Mountain and a certain grunge classic that I promised not to mention by name…) have, quite fortunately, found different melodies.

Alright, even if you don’t believe that, this particular melody is an ideal place to start. Why? Well, you want to take something that (a) you know well and (b) is not that difficult to play. If you are familiar with any of my song lessons here at Guitar Noise, you know that this approach can work wonders.

I want to bring up something I wrote in my piece on Silent Night, which should give you a good idea of our game plan:

There are three essential things to playing in solo fingerstyle – melody, bass and “accompaniment.” You want the melody of the song to ring out, if for no other reason than letting people know what the song is! The bass and accompaniment, usually chord arpeggios, should enhance your presentation – adding color and texture.

My reasons for choosing Twinkle, Twinkle should be apparent. Why not start out with a song whose melody you know intimately? But, just because you know it by heart, that does not mean there won’t be some work involved! Surely you know me better than that (in fact, well enough to know that it’s taking all of my renowned restraint not to say “…and don’t call me Shirley…”)!

For instance, in what key shall we play this in piece?

Okay, it’s now time for another disclaimer – as always, I am trying to explain things as simply as possible and (I can never repeat this enough) what works for me may not be the ideal solution for you. I will try to talk you through (what passes for) my logic as we progress through this lesson. But always remember that there are other ways of doing these things. The more you learn, the more you can experiment and the more you experiment the more shortcuts you will find. Just remember to have fun!

Alright, then! What key? First off, let me give you a crucial pointer: it doesn’t hurt to start out within your boundaries. For the sake of this lesson, I am assuming (and let’s not go there!) that you are a relative beginner who knows a few chords (probably open position) and feels more comfortable on the first five frets than way up on the neck. With a little thought, this is not a handicap. Follow along!

Remember that we are after three things: melody, bass and accompaniment. Let’s look at the melody line and chords (the chords being what will ultimately make up the bass and accompaniment) of Twinkle, Twinkle. Since the object of our endeavors is to play it as easily as possible, I’ve written this out in the five most friendly guitar keys: C, G, D, A and E major and posted the accompanying chord on top. Shall we examine the melody of each? Remember that the last line of this song is essentially a repeat of the first line, so don’t be confused by my writing out only two lines for each key!

A good question to ask here is “where do we get the melodies?” Well, for most of the simplest songs, you can often figure them out yourselves. But any music book, whether it’s a book of traditional songs, new songs or even a hymnal is a great place to start. Fake books are exceptionally good sources because they always show both the melody and the chord accompaniment, which are the two tools that will give us everything we need. Until you get very good at ear training (or with a combination of theory and guesswork) and can figure out chords on your own, do try to start out with the melody already written out for you.

Now, getting into the melody aspect of things, I want to bring up something else: because I want the melody to ring out as much as possible, I want to try to play it on the first two strings (the high E and B strings) wherever I can. Also, since for the sake of this lesson, I want to stay within the boundaries of the first five frets, this effectively limits my choices to the keys of G (with chords of G, C and D) and A (with chords of A, D and E). Because the melody in the key of A has only the one note on the G string, I opt to go with this choice. I would, though, like to encourage each of you to come up with an arrangement in the key of G when you’re done with this lesson. If for no other reason than to hopefully teach you that you can do this yourselves!

The key of A it is, then! Now that we have the melody, what should we do about the bass and accompaniment? In this lesson, we’ll look at three possible answers. First, let’s play our song with “block chords” as the accompaniment:

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This is about as simple as it gets. In this arrangement, I want to play the bass note with my thumb and use my index and middle fingers (and occasionally the ring as well) to play the other notes of the chord.

Notice two important things: First, the melody note is always the top note of these chords. Consequently, you want to strike that note a little harder than the others. It will, normally, stand out louder than the others (unless you have the thumb of the Incredible Hulk), but it doesn’t hurt to practice giving it a little added oomph.

Secondly, and this is why we started with this song (and in this key!), all of our chord shapes are familiar open position chords. If you can form and play an A, a D and an E major chord, there’s nothing at all difficult about playing this. It’s all a matter of practicing which notes of the chord you want to strike.

Speaking of which (wait for it…), this is one of many ways you can play this. If you can sweep more than one string with your thumb, and if you’d like to give your arrangement more of a drone in the bass (like a bagpipe), then you can play the A note in the bass when you are playing the D chord, for example, on the first two chords in measures two and three. Try to strike the A and D strings with your thumb instead of only just the D string.

Likewise, you can use your thumb to strike both the low E (sixth) string and the B note on the second fret of the A string any time you come across the E chord, as in the first two chords of measure four.

So, congratulations! You can now play a chord melody. How about that?

But, as I mentioned earlier, we still have two more arrangements to cover in this lesson. This next one starts with the melody, but for the accompaniment, we are using only a bass line of single notes. Some people call this a song “in two parts” By the bye, I’m playing the bass notes a little louder than I normally would simply so that you can hear them better in the mix:

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Quite a difference, no? What is happening here is that, because you are only playing two notes at any given time, your ear is filling in the missing harmony parts. This is why it’s important to move the bass line around and take in different parts of the chords. In the first measure, for instance, play the open A string as the bass note all the way through. While you may have a sense of A being the key, but you really don’t have any sense of it being A major unless, somewhere, you add in the C# note, either on the fourth fret of the A string or on the second fret of the B string, as in Twinkle #1. This is one good reason to learn music theory – you won’t have to guess which notes will and won’t work!

Technically, we are, in a sense, changing the chords in our song. While the first two notes are “A,” we could now call the second two note “A/C#,” which is the standard way to indicate an A major chord with the C# note in the bass. I don’t really want you to worry about that right now. Instead, simply listen to how the two lines play with and against each other, sometimes mimicking one another in parallel motion, sometimes one moving while the other doesn’t and sometimes going in opposite directions. You can create a lot of drama with just two notes!

One thing that you should note is that this arrangement caused a chord change of another sort! No lie! Look at measure three. The first two (actually four) notes are D in the melody line and B in the bass. Definitely not a D chord since that is D, F# and A. However, an E7 has E, G#, B and D, so that works fine as far as the name thing goes (so, for that matter, would calling it a D6).

But even though we’ve fundamentally changed the accompanying chord, we’ve not changed the tone of the piece. In fact, with the exception of the first two sets of notes, everything in the first four measures is in parallel thirds, or tenths, if you’re inclined to look at it that way.

The point of all of this, though, is not to send you scrambling around for your theory texts! I just want you to beware that, on occasion, you can come up with something that isn’t in the “original” form and it will song fine in the context of your arrangement.

Creating two-part songs – taking the given melody line and coming up with a harmony part for it – is challenging and a great exercise in learning how harmony lines work together. If you’re so inclined, you might want to come up with one for all the different keys we first examined this melody.

Finally, let’s look at something that is more of a fingerstyle arrangement:

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Here we go back once again to our open position chords. We play the melody (use your middle or ring finger) and bass (using the thumb) together on the beat and then pluck another string in the chord ( I use the index finger here) on the offbeat. Our accompaniment is straight eighth notes, which gives us a steady and even feel to it.

Again, I cannot stress enough that this is not as hard as it looks or sounds. If you keep the chord shapes steady throughout, as you did in our first arrangement, it’s simply a matter of striking the correct strings. And just to make you wonder – no, I’m not playing along exactly to the notation or TAB that I wrote out. Why? Because I made mistakes! But because I played this with my fingers on the chords, it’s very hard to tell exactly where those mistakes are. If you’re playing an A chord, for example, with the high E (open first string) in the melody and hit the E note (second fret on the D string) instead of the A (second fret on the G), what harm have you caused? Absolutely none. Don’t freak out about things like that. Most people will never notice. And, after all, if it’s your arrangement in the first place, who’s to say you didn’t intentionally mean to do it that way?

All of this, as anything you learn on the guitar, requires practice and repetition. Think of the easiest melodies you know and try to come up with your own arrangements of them. Don’t start with a long or complicated melody. As you get more confident doing this sort of thing, you’ll take on more and more complex pieces.

Next time out, we’ll continue with first position in order to hammer down these skills. I’m thinking Brahms’ Lullaby might be a good choice.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next lesson…

Peace

Also check out… An Introduction to Song Arrangement Part 2

Almost twenty-eight years later, the twelve-string is still my primary instrument. If I am playing a solo gig, it’s a good bet that I’ll be playing an acoustic twelver. My Seagull gets the lion’s share of the work these days. If it’s an electric jam, then my Raven will be in my hands.

This is not to give you the impression that my relationship with the twelve-string has always been the stuff of fairy tales. Far from it! But, just like winters in Chicago, many of the hardships involved have been greatly exaggerated.

For those of you who have always wondered, let me take some of the myth and mystery out of this beautiful instrument. If you can play a six string, you can play a twelve. But just as playing an electric guitar requires a different mindset than playing an acoustic, one also needs to develop the right feel for the twelve.

You should always look at any guitar as an instrument of it own. It waits for you to find out what it’s capable of. If you were to give me three different electric guitars and three different acoustics and told me to play the same song, you would get six different, possibly very different, versions of that one song. That’s because I believe that the guitar and I are a partnership – we work together to produce music.

Today, I’d like to go over the basic principles of the twelve-string guitar with you. As a thank you for letting me indulge myself on this topic, I’ve included an “Easy Songs For Beginners” lesson with it. So I guess that means we’ve got to get this out of the way…

These files are the author’s own work and represents his interpretation of these songs. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Looking back, I suspect that not knowing how to play guitar at all helped me a lot. I treated learning the twelve-string simply as learning the guitar, going painstakingly through the same processes that everyone else did – finding the notes on the strings, memorizing chords from diagrams, wondering if my fingers would ever stop hurting. But one thing it did do was make me learn how to tune (and listen to hear being out of tune) in a hurry.

To the casual observer, the twelve-string looks pretty much like other guitars. The headstock may be slightly larger to accommodate the extra six strings. The fretboard is slightly wider for the same reasons. The strings are set together in pairs and each pair of strings is fretted as a single string.

I know a lot of people like to number the strings of a twelve-string guitar from one (high E) to twelve, but I find it much easier to number them as a six-string guitar, that is one through six, adding the designation “a” or “b” to each string as well. “A” means closer to the floor (as viewed when I am sitting with the guitar) and “b” is closer to the ceiling. The main reason I do this will, hopefully, be readily apparent when I tell you that all the “a” strings are tuned just like those of a regular guitar in standard tuning. So if you ignore the “b” strings for the moment, you’ll see that the two guitars compare like this:

The first two sets of strings, the high E (1a and 1b) and the B strings (2a and 2b), are unison pairs. When struck, they sound the same note and this is the same note as on the first and second string of a normal guitar. So let’s add them to our chart:

And now the fun begins. The next four pairs of strings are tuned in octaves. This means that, although they are the same note in name – like the “do’s” in “do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do” – they will be two different notes. String “3a,” we already know is the same as the G string on regular guitar. String “3b” is tuned to the G note that its an octave higher. The simplest way to think about it, if you’re a linear person, is to think that it’s the note at the twelfth fret of the G string. But it’s just as easy to find these notes in first position. The G an octave higher than the open third string is at the third fret of the first string. Let’s go on and find the rest of the notes:

These six “b” strings give the twelve-string guitar its fullness of sound. Whenever you play a string, you are playing an additional note. Here are a few basic first position chords. Each one is accompanied by two charts – one showing the notes of the “a” strings (again, the same as a regular guitar) and the second one giving the notes sounded by the “b” strings:

Where this gets really interesting is when you start using notes on the G and D strings. On the “b” strings, you are now using notes that are extending beyond the range of the “normal” chord. Take a look at these:

I’ve often wondered if playing the twelve-string guitar led to my fascination with chord voicings. When you start playing up the neck, especially on the G and D strings, you bring in notes from all over. If you’ve read our latest Intermediates’ Lesson, Give A Little Bit, or the Beginners’ Lesson, Love The One You’re With, then you’ll be intrigued by how some of those chords sound on a twelve-string. Here’s the notes that would be involved:

Knowing that you have this extra range of notes at the first position also helps you figure out some songs. I’ve always loved Paul Simon’s For Emily Wherever I May Find Her. The song’s theme is a simple arpeggio:

I came up with all sorts of ways of playing this, none of them good or even remotely like the recording, which is full of shimmering notes that ring over one another. I just couldn’t figure out how he did it until I took the “b” strings of the twelve-string into account. If I put a capo on the third fret and use the high strings of the D and G strings, then I can play these notes, conveniently formed by the Dsus2 chord (made into an Fsus2 by use of the capo):

This is one case where the type of guitar you play does indeed matter a lot. Here, the twelve-string is essential in order to get these notes.

But that is not usually the case. Some people write and ask what songs can be played on twelve-string guitar and my response, invariably, is “Any song you’d like to play.” This may sound strange, but I think of songs as simply songs, not electric guitar songs, acoustic guitar songs, piano songs, songs with intricate horn arrangement songs. Imagine a song being a person or an object in the middle of an art class. If you have fifteen students painting a picture of the subject, will you not get fifteen visions?

Since no one told me “You can’t play that song on a twelve-string guitar,” I played everything on it. Granted, I learned that not everything sounded great. Some songs needed special care and thought in arrangement in order to make it work. But developing this attitude early in my playing made me learn a lot about the fretboard and the magic a guitar can produce.

And damned if we don’t find ourselves looking at chord shapes again!

Let’s learn the song Melissa, by the Allman Brothers. Before we do that, though, I’d like to recommend that you also read (or reread) the column But Then Again… as we’ll be using a lot of the theory discussed there and I don’t want to bore you to tears repeating a lot of it. By the bye, if you don’t have a twelve-string guitar, don’t let that stop you from learning this! It sounds great on a six-string, too.

We’re going to simplify matters greatly by not calling some of these chords by their proper names. Please don’t get too hung up on that for now. I’m more concerned about you following the logic. If you’d like, feel free to go back over this and determine, for instance, that wherever I have “F#m” I should have “F#m7add4.”

Bearing this in mind, here are the chords to the song:

Now, let’s make this easier, shall we? I use these chord voicings (all E or Em shaped, in fact they are the same chords I show you to use in Angels Of The Silences over in But Then Again…) in the introduction and first two lines of the verses:

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Each chord here, by the way, is held for four beats. We want to start out with our first position E chord. You’ll want to play this so that your index finger is free, so put your middle finger on the 1st fret of the G string, your pinky on the 2nd fret of the D and your ring finger on the 2nd fret of the A string. Now, when you change from the E to the F#m, all you have to do is slide your pinky and ring finger up two frets and place your index finger on the 2nd fret of the G string. To move from there to the G#m, slide the entire shape up two more frets.

This is the heart of the song, its signature, if you will. You should practice this until you have it down smoothly, letting the changes flow into each other.

At the third and fourth lines, the chords change every two beats. We shift to a first position A shape and the other chords in this progression will also be A (or Am) shapes:

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Again, the trick to being smooth here is in using as little finger movement as possible. Depending on how you form your first position A chord, try to keep one, or possibly both of your fingers in position on the G and D strings. This way you only have to worry about fingering the B string as you move up the neck.

The fourth line of the verse brings us back to our original chords, now being played for two beats apiece. From the G#m, we go to A (in E shape) and then to C and finally B (or B7) before coming back to the intro progression at its leisurely four beats per chord. You can approach this fifth line in any number of ways. Here are two that I suggest to my students:

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In the bridge, all the chord changes, except the final B, take place every four beats. We start out with standard first position E and D chords and then move to A. Depending on your inclination, you might want to use partial A-shape chords (still keeping the B string open):

Or E-shapes:

On the closing A and B of the bridge, I use my index finger to sound the bass note. The final B is held for eight beats, and I like to add a little slide on that eighth beat. I simply strike the sixth string and let my index finger slide from the 7th fret down to the head of the guitar. Since my other fingers have no choice but to follow, they are now in position to take up the E chord when I start the third verse.

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And that’s the song!

A couple of final thoughts concerning the twelve-string guitar: Some people worry about the extra tension on the neck, that the additional strings might cause it to warp faster. To combat this, they tune their twelve-string lower to reduce the risk. While I understand this concern, I’ve never found this to happen in any of the twelve-string guitars I’ve owned. I use standard tuning and all sorts of alternate tunings (and man, oh, man, can you have a blast with those!) with both my electric and acoustic twelve-strings. I guess it’s really up to you to figure out how you feel about it. The best thing to do is to discuss it with someone who knows a lot about your particular make of guitar. Go straight to the manufacturer if you have any doubts.

Finally, I’d like to mention one other thing that the twelve-string makes possible, even though it’s done on a six-string guitar. It is called Nashville Tuning. You may have heard of this and wondered what it is. Simply stated, you take one regular six-string guitar, buy a set of twelve-string guitar strings and put all the “b” strings on the six-string! This is what you end up with:

This, as you might imagine, leads to some very interesting sounding chords. I’ll be writing a column about this sometime in the future. In the meantime, two popular rock songs that you might know that use this are Wild Horses, by the Rolling Stones and Hey You, by Pink Floyd. And, of course, David Gilmour has to make thing even more interesting by using a “3b” string as his 6th string. This is why you may find yourself wondering why no one has the right TAB for this song!

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this basic guide to the twelve-string guitar and the song lesson as well. As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next lesson…

Peace

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretations of these songs. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Some of this material we have covered before in our various discussions on theory. For the sake of getting right to the heart of the matter, let’s agree on the definition of a few “givens” right here and now.

1) As far as we are concerned, we have twelve notes with which to work. They are all a half step from each other and are as follows:

2) A scale is defined as a sequence of notes used from a specific note to the next occurrence of that same note. This sequence is a specific pattern, usually a combination of whole-steps and half-steps. The pattern tells us what type of scale it is.

For instance, look at the twelve notes we have just listed. The next note in the sequence would be A once again. Each note is a half step from the next. So this is indeed a scale. It is called the chromatic scale. You will notice that this scale has twelve notes in it, which is unlike the major and minor scales we already know. It’s important to get out of the habit of thinking that a scale will have a certain number of notes. .

Let’s take another example. Suppose we had a scale where the notes were A, B, C#, D#, F, G and then A again. There are six notes in this scale and each one is a whole step from the other. This is called a whole tone scale. Since A is the root, or starting point, it is an A Whole Tone scale. Later in this article we’ll be examining the pentatonic scale, which, as you might guess, has five different notes. So please try not to get hung up on the number of notes in a scale, okay?

3) A major scale is defined by the following sequence:

I cannot tell you how important it is to know this. When we write out other scales, as we will shortly with the pentatonic, we do so in terms of the major scale. Knowing your major scale well can make learning all the other types of scales much easier.

Be sure you have this down pat before we move on. Read the first part of Theory Without Tears and test yourself by writing out different major scales. Definitely know C, G, D, A and E because you will find that the majority of guitar songs are in these keys.

4) The relative minor of any major key is the sixth note in that key’s major scale. So, for instance, we know that the C major scale is:

Since A occupies the VI position, we know that A minor is the relative minor of C major. Type “relative minor” into the search engine on the home page if you want to find a wealth of information to read to learn more about this.

4(a)) A natural minor scale is defined by the following sequence:

4(b)) The notes in the relative minor’s (natural) scale are the same notes as its relative major scale. This is a mouthful and I’m not really sure there’s an easy way to say it. This is what I’m talking about. Going back to our C major scale:

It has neither sharps nor flats. The A natural minor scale, since A is the relative minor of C major, will not have any sharps or flats, either:

And, if you’re interested in such things, the relative minor scale is called the Aeolian mode. So pat yourself on the back, you’ve picked up a bit of modal theory!

5) Each fret on a guitar denotes a half step in tone. Two frets would therefore be one whole step.

6) Any chord, major, minor, whatever, is built from the I, III and V of its major scale. The IIIs and Vs can be raised (indicated with a sharp (#) sign) or lowered (indicated with a flat (b) sign) a half step, but they would still be discussed in terms of changes from the MAJOR key. (Read The Power of Three.)

The First Major Breakthrough

A lot of people freak out about scales because they think that there are so many of them to learn. Well, they are right. Thinking logically about what we already know, there have to be twelve major scales. Since we know that there are three different minor scales, then it’s easy to figure out that there are thirty-six of those. Almost fifty scales in just two categories! I’d be scared!

But in panicking over scales, we forget about the guitar itself. It is designed the way it is for a reason – to make your life simpler. Last time we saw how we could take one chord shape and turn it into a whole new chord by placing it somewhere else on the fretboard. We do the same thing with scales.

The key to learning scales is to give yourself a reference point from whence to start. Traditionally this point is the root of a scale. And for now, this is a good place for us to start. But don’t get too comfortable here. To develop skills in soloing and improvisation, you will want to know how to practice scales starting from each note of the scale. We’ll be looking at ways of doing this two articles from now.

We know that the G major scale is G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G. If we were to map this out on our fretboard, it would look like this:

You see here that if we put our root (G, in this case) on the low E string, we can climb two full octaves in first position. We can, in fact, do this all over the neck of the guitar. But first we have to eliminate our use of open strings. This is very easily done:

The trick here is to position your fingers in such a way that you have the best movement over the notes. Since this all fits in a range of four frets, I dedicate one finger for use in each of the frets. The middle finger covers the root and the other notes (C, D and the last G) that fall in the third fret. My index finger gets the second fret, where the B, E, A and F# are played. The first F# and the B that occupy the fourth fret are played by my ring finger and my pinky gets the A, D, G , C and E notes on the fifth fret.

This is what is known as a scale pattern. Usually you will see them written in books like this:

However, for our purposes, we want to convert this from a specific scale, G major, so that it will work for any major scale. Provided that your guitar is standard-tuned (or at least tuned in standard intervals, like all the strings lowered a half step or something) and that your root note is on the sixth string, this will work. What we are going to do is replace the specific notes of the G major scale with their Roman numeral counterparts (and “R” for “root” or “I”):

Believe it or not, you can now play every major scale on your guitar. All you need to do is find the root note on the sixth string and follow the pattern. How about a Bb scale? Well, even if you don’t know the notes involved, you can still do it as long as you know that Bb is the note on the sixth fret of your low E string:

At this point, some of you may already be ahead of the game. Knowing one scale pattern that covers four frets, even though it has sixteen notes, certainly doesn’t begin to cover the range of your guitar! And songs don’t necessarily stay all nice and polite in the same key. We’re going to get to all that (promise), but today I want to take a brief sidestep.

Whittling Things Down To Size

If you think that the major scale is a lot to deal with, you are right. Most blues and rock (modern, classic, metal, neo-metal, punk, alternative, progressive and whatever category you’d care to come up with in order to set your music apart from everyone else’s in order to have it be marketed and mass produced for a targeted audience. Lord, doesn’t anyone just play music anymore?) guitarists live and die by the pentatonic scale. Why? For starters, it has five different notes instead of the seven of the major and minor scales. (Much) More importantly, it is very guitar friendly.

Remember our list of “givens?” Here’s another:

7) The major pentatonic scale for any key is defined as follows (all notes derived from the major scale):

So if we go back to our G major scale and take out the notes we want, we see this is our G pentatonic scale:

I call the major pentatonic the “My Girl scale” because if you play it with the correct rhythm, it is the opening riff to the old Temptations song. Paul McCartney uses it a lot as a bass line – a really good Beatles song to hear this bass line is Your Bird Can Sing.

But wait! Things get even easier! I don’t know about you, but having to continually span four frets (here the second to the fifth) is a bit of a pain. The most comfortable thing for a guitarist to play is the interval of a whole step (two frets). We can accomplish this by being sneaky and “shifting” the scale along the fretboard. Start with playing the G with your index finger and then the A note (fifth fret) with the ring finger. Now, instead of jumping strings between the A and B, slide your ring finger up the two frets to get the B note and look where the rest of the notes in the scale now fall:

You see, we were doing great until we reached the G string and then had to go back to the fourth fret to find the B note. So, let’s employ yet another shift, sliding once again from the A to the B note on the D string (again, using the ring finger), like this:

Now look at how much of the neck we’ve covered! And we haven’t once moved beyond the range of two frets!

And Wait!!! There’s More!!!

No lie, it gets even easier. Besides knowing how the major scale is formed, knowing your relative minors will improve your playing in a hurry. Why? Let’s look and see.

We have already established that the G major pentatonic scale is G, A, B, D, E and then G again. Since we know that E is the VI position of the G major scale, we also know that Em is the relative minor of G major. Remember our definition of scale:

A scale is defined as a sequence of notes used from a specific note to the next occurrence of that same note.

If we look at our G major scale and E (natural) minor scale, we can see that they are composed of the same notes:

The only difference is which note we have chosen to start on. And because we start with a different root, the pattern of the scale is different. The major scale is root, whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. But when you start with the E as a root, the pattern becomes root, whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole. This is the big mystery behind modal scales, one that we will examine in depth in the near future. For the sake of simplicity, we usually break down even the minor scales in terms of the major scale, like so:

The “b” indicates “flat” meaning that we have lowered the normal position of the major scale by a half a step. If you compare the E major scale to the E (natural) minor, you will see that we have indeed done this:

So, let’s add another given to the list:

8) The minor pentatonic scale for any key is defined as follows (all notes derived from the major scale):

Okay, here’s the payoff: The minor pentatonic, in its root form (having the root note on the sixth string as its starting point), is the easiest guitar scale in creation. It is both simple to play and to memorize:

Now I want to drive this point home to you. Look at the minor pentatonic scale chart we just did. Now look at this chart of the same relative major pentatonic:

Can you see that it’s the exact same pattern as far as where on the fretboard you can find the notes? The notes are, in fact, the same. What has changed is which position (or degree) the note occupies. To me, this is why learning scales can throw a lot of people off. You could learn one pattern and never see how it interacts with another, or how it relates to chord shapes, which is what we will be discussing two lessons from now.

But, for the time being, what does this all mean to you? Put as simply as possible, this means that as long as you can find your root note on either the first or sixth string, (and they are both on the same fret unless your guitar is tuned differently than standard), you have this incredibly easy scale available to you in both major and minor pentatonic. Let’s look at a few examples:

If you’re a beginner, you’ll be dumbfounded at how may song riffs and solos are taken from the pentatonic scale. Here are a couple of riffs and a lead, which I think you’ll recognize:

I hope you are starting to realize that the guitar is not the unfathomable mystery you might have once imagined. You simply need to take the time to learn about it and about music and to think things through in a logical manner. Speaking of which, Paul has managed to get an interview with Bill Edwards, the man who wrote and publishes the Fretboard Logic series. Once you start seeing how patterns work, you’ll be amazed at how quickly your fingers take to them. And that can be both good and bad.

We have been fortunate to find a number of talented guitarists and writers to contribute pieces on soloing and improvising. I highly advise you to read all of their material. With this little bit of basic knowledge I’ve given you, it won’t seem as hard as you might initially think.

In the next column we’re going to take a detour into something more stylistic in nature: string bending. It will give us a nice break from moveable chords and scales before we come back and tie a lot of these threads together. Seeing how the chord shapes and scales (and bends) all fit in together will help you make even more sense of all of this.

And, as always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see discussed in future columns. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next lesson…

Peace