Guitar Noise » scales and modes

Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8

David Hodge — Wed, 13 May 2009 02:34:42 +0000

First, an apology – even though I mentioned (last time out) that we’d cover two topics in this particular installment of our “Turning Scales into Solos” series, I’d like to put one on hold for a (very) short time. We’ll look at the inherent trap that almost all of us fall into simply by practicing scales in “Part 9,” which should go online sometime in mid-June.

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

Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7

David Hodge — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:14:55 +0000

With your indulgence, I’d like to begin this next lesson by repeating a few pieces of information from some of our other lessons in this “Turning Scales into Solos” series. First, let’s look at this idea from our second lesson (One Note at a Time):

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?

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

Targeting a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6

David Hodge — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:37:34 +0000

If there are two main points that you have, hopefully, gotten thus far in each of our “Turning Scales into Solos” series of lessons, it’s that, first and foremost, a solo should be determined by the song, by its mood, feel and chord progression. The second idea is that a single scale is rarely the only solution to finding a way to solo over a chord progression.

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”)

Not sure that I’m really okay with that one…

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?

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5

David Hodge — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 06:57:07 +0000

Our fourth installment of “Turning Scales into Solos” will, kind of by its very nature, be a shorter lesson than normal. But just because it’s short in length it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing here to learn. Quite the contrary! Before we can (temporarily) walk away from the blues, there’s one more very important scale to discuss. Appropriately, it’s called the blues scale.

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

Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4

David Hodge — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:00:18 +0000

Last time out, in The Major and the Minor, we listened to the tonal qualities of both the major and the minor pentatonic scales when used for soloing over a typical blues progression. Both had their merits. The major pentatonic was good at defining the major tonality while the minor pentatonic added flavor by its use of “blue notes.” And for those of you who may have forgotten about blue notes (or simply didn’t read the last lesson), here’s a quick recap, 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.

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

The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3

David Hodge — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:22:50 +0000

Welcome to the third installment of “Turning Scales into Solos!” I hope you’ve been both practicing the exercises from our first two lessons as well as spending time listening to solos in music. And I guess this is as good a place as any to note that you should listen to any solo, whether it’s played by a guitar or an ocarina. Listening to other instruments solo is a great way to develop your ear for phrasing, as well as to pick up ideas that may eventually find their way into your fingers as they fly over the frets.

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!

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2

David Hodge — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:55:29 +0000

So, how did you learn to swim? Did you take it step by step – getting comfortable in the water, maybe learning to float and then dogpaddle and then finally get some real arm and leg motion going – or did you jump (or get thrown) into the deep end and figure that you’d better learn really fast. Not to mention soon!

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.

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

Scales and Soloing FAQ

Guitar Noise Staff — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:08:19 +0000

Scales and modes can be used as the building blocks for solos and chords. This page answers your questions about scales and includes some examples of how you can use them to spice up your playing.

What is the major scale?

The major scale consists of eight notes. The first three notes are whole steps, followed by a half step, then three more whole steps and then a final half step (remember that each fret on the guitar is a half step).

Using the key of C the scale is as follows:

To find out what all this knowledge is good for check out the article Theory Without Tears.

How do I build minor scales?

We know that for every major key, there is also a corresponding minor key. We also know (if we remember our discussion on relative minors in Happy New Ear) that, since C is the VI in the key of Eb major, C minor is the relative minor of Eb major. What you may not know is that there are three traditional minor scales for any given minor scale.

The natural minor scale is simply the C major scale written in the key of Eb major. It incorporates all the flats one finds in that key (Bb, Eb and Ab). If you can figure out what major key your relative minor belongs to, then you should be able to write out the natural minor scale without a problem.

And harmonic minor scales as well. The only difference between the harmonic minor scale and the natural minor scale is the VII note. The striking thing about this scale is the interval between the VI and the VII, now a step and a half. This gives the scale an eastern feel to it.

Melodic minor scales muddle things even further by having the gall to be totally different depending on which way you are going. The ascending scale is just the C major scale with a minor third instead of the regular third (Eb instead of E). The descending melodic minor scale is the same as the natural minor. This may sound silly, but I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the step by step (or half step in some cases) intervals in a descending natural or melodic minor scale are the same as the intervals in the ascending major.

To find get some clear examples and find out more on minor scales take a look at the article Scales Within Scales.

What are modes?

A lot of people look at modes as if it were a big mystery, but they are really a fairly simple concept once you learn how to use them on guitar. There are seven tones to the major scale hence there are seven modes to the major scale.

Here are the modes of the major scale.

You simply take a note out of the major scale and play it as if that where the root. So if you start on C and end on C you are in C ionian. Now to find your relative minor simply go down three scale degrees from your root or up five. So the Relative minor of Cmaj is Amin. To find you relative major if you are in minor do the opposite. It also sounds really cool to play the major scale and it’s relative minor ate the same time. This is called harmonizing.

Really there is no mystery in modes or theory at all. The only reason why there is a so called mystery is because for some reason people start off learning songs and generally all they ever do is learn songs and copy licks instead of actually learning their instrument.

For a more thorough examination of modes and their uses check out the article Modal Thinking.

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to modes and select edit to make improvements.

How do I build modal scales?

In addition to the three minor scales (natural, harmonic and melodic), there are also quite a number of modal scales. “Modal” is one of those theory terms that gives people the willies. If you want a much more scholarly approach, I suggest you check out Jimmy Hudson’s column entitled Modal Thinking or pick up your favorite textbook. For me, it is easier to think in terms of food. Your C major scale is your steak or chicken or soup stock or whatever you decide to start out with (hey, I never said this was going to be a great analogy…). The various flats and sharps that you can throw in are simply spices that will gives different flavors to your scale depending on the combination of spices you decide to use.

Most people learn various modal scales in order to develop different style for leads and solos. Some prefer to use them in order to spice up their songwriting. Bass players can utilize them to create astonishingly beautiful bass lines. Anyway you look at it your knowledge of minor and modal will augment your abilities.

There are some practical examples and uses for modal scales in the article Scales Within Scales.

How do I take a scale and make it into a solo?

Most solos are the result of planning. The guitarists involved know how many measures are involved or what chord changes are taking place underneath the solo. The good lead guitarists will construct a solo, giving it the same qualities of a well-written song – a beginning, a middle and an end as well as points of dynamic tension and release. Leads generally fall into one of the following categories: “rhythmic,” “melodic,” “slashing” and “effects.” They’re pretty self-explanatory and can often overlap. With a fair degree of practice and a backlog of riffs, just about anybody can come up with their own guitar solos.

For a complete answer head over to How do I take a scale and make it into a solo? A lesson on melodic solos, with a step by step guide to constructing a lead part, can be found in the article Leading Questions. Also don’t miss our series of lessons on creating solos, starting with Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1.

How do I know what notes I can use in a solo?

There’s actually a little more to it than simply knowing what key the song is in, but let’s start simply. The easiest way to tell what key a song is in is to look at the sheet music. The number of flats or sharps will pretty much tell you. Chances are, though, that you rarely use sheet music. You’re more likely to have a sheet which has the chord progression. (And to be honset with you, the chord progression is a lot more important than the key but we’ll come back to that…) If you look at the chord progressions of a song, the chances are pretty likely that the song is grouped into patterns of progressions. Usually, but not always, a song will begin and end on the chord of its key. Also, if you listen to the song, there are places where it just sounds like it comes to a conclusion and that will almost always be the same chord.

Knowing what I call the “primary and secondary chords” of any major key can be very useful to you. For instance, if you see that a song has G, A, D, Bm and F#m chords in it, you can make an educated guess that it is in the key of D major. Bm and A major are also possibilities and you’d have to listen to the song to know for sure, but look – you’ve narrowed it down to three of the twenty possibilities! That’s a great start. If you want to know more about how to figure out the primary and secondary chords of any key, read my article The Power of Three.

But you will find out that knowing the key is not always an indicator of what notes to use. This is why knowing some theory will help you out a lot. Take the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil. This song is in the key of E but the chord progression is E, D, A, E. I’m sure you know that the D note is not part of the E major scale. So what do we do? Well, if you know modal scales, an E Dorian scale (E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D, E) will work very well. You may not think that the G would work but it provides what is called a “blue note” that gives some nice tension to the proceedings provided you do not just sit on it for a long period of time. Sometimes it is a lot easier to look at the chord progression and think, “Okay, what key would normally have all these chords” and then work from there.

Another thing that works quite well fairly often is to use the relative minor pentatonic scale. If you know a song is in G major, for example, soloing in the E minor pentatonic scale (E, G, A, B, D) will sound perfectly fine.

I hope that I’ve demonstated here that while knowing the key of a song is very important, it’s also just as important to carefully examine the chord progession when trying to figure out what notes you want to use to solo.

Check out our series of lessons on creating solos, starting with Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1.

Which mode should I use?

D Ionian is the same thing as D major. D Lydian is the same thing as A major but starting, or emphasizing the D. You can start with any note you choose to. But keep in mind that in order to have the feel that your solo is going somewhere along with the chords, the solo should contain elements from the chords. That’s where modes come in. If you are in the key of D Major. The Chord A Major can be found in it. Over that chord I would play A Mixolydian or C# Locrian or E Dorian. These are elements from the chord that are going to be emphasized by the mode being played over it. There are other scales that can be played over this, but this should get you started.

How do I get away from pentatonics when soloing?

This is one of the problems when people learn to only use scales in terms of leads and improvising. Solos can be thought of as songs within songs – with their own melodies and dynamic tension. If you haven’t done so yet, you might want to read Leading Questions and Picture In Dorian Gray.

Also, we’re in the process of putting together quite a few articles on soloing and improvisation that might interest you. What I’d recommend is to start looking outside of your normal style for a while. Check out Gilbert Isbin’s piece on fingerstyle. This shows how different chord voicings can lead to interesting improv ideas: Improvisation for the Fingerstyle guitarist.

Look out for our new articles where we’ll be dissecting other people’s solos and seeing how they tend to come from a combination of scales and chord voicings. We’ll also work on constructing some of our own.

Also, and this is incredibly important, listen to how other instruments solo. Trying to imitate phrasings other than the guitar can also inspire you to new things.

On Guitar Noise you will find more than a month’s worth of articles on this topic on the soloing and improvisation page.

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to improvising and select edit to make improvements.

How do I move a scale from one key to another?

What you want to do is to look at your scale positions that you already know and figure out two things: the note on the 6th string and its relationship to your pentatonic scale. Since you are using an Em pentatonic scale (and we know that the notes are E G A B D E, let’s look at what you already know:

Pos 1- 0 open E (root) on sixth string
Pos 2- 3 fret G (3rd)
Pos 3- 5 fret A (4th)
Pos 4- 7 fret B (5th)
Pos 5- 10 fret D (7th)

Now since we know that a Dm pentatonic scale is D F G A C D, then we can just look at where these notes fall into place on the sixth string and our patterns will remain the same (unless we have open strings to deal with):

Pos 1- 10th fret D (root) on sixth string
Pos 2- 1st or 13th fret F (3rd) – on 1st fret watch for open strings
Pos 3- 3rd fret G (4th)
pos 4- 5th fret A (5th)
Pos 5- 8th fret C (7th)

See how easy it is?

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to transposing and select edit to make improvements.

How do I use scales to play guitar fills?

If you listen to good guitarists you’ll note that they often put in a riff or a run of notes when changing from one chord to the next. It’s usually very short and rarely complicated – a hammer on here, a pick off there, maybe a bit of a scale. But for all its simplicity it adds a great deal of flair to your playing. A fill is nothing more than an interesting transition from one chord to another. Often what keeps a good beginner or intermediate from making the next step forward is an inability to incorporate fills into his or her playing.

The simplest fills are best summed up by that wonderful cliché “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.” You’re on a C chord (in a song conveniently in the key of C major). The next chord in the song is a G. All you have to do is walk up (or down) the C major scale to G. Pretty easy, isn’t it?

There is a lot more said about this in the article All Down The Line.

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to guitar fills and select edit to make improvements.

If the major scale is comprised of 8 notes where is the 8th note?

This is one of those “quirks” of music. Let me see if I can explain it in one shot.

When you see the major scale written as “1W, 1W, 1H, 1W, 1W, 1W, 1H” you have to realize that you’re NOT counting your starting note! No lie! Whoever came up with this system takes it for granted that you’re going to know your root note and then continue from there. It’s not where is the 8th note, but rather where is the first note. Technically, this should be written as “Root, 1W, 1W, 1H, 1W, 1W, 1W, 1H” That gives you the root on both ends and all should be well with the world.

So in the case of the D major scale, it would be:

(root)
D
then one whole step (1W) to
E then another whole step (1W) to
F# – and not F as you have it
then your half step (1H) to
G
then three whole steps to
A, B and C# (not C)
and then the final half step (1H) to
D

How are Indian notes matched with the western scale?

First, I have to tell you that I am not absolutely positive about this, but I will do my best to check it out to make sure. In most cultures, when a basic scale is sung out in notes it is generally taken to mean that it is the simplest scale possible, which in this case would be the C major scale. I am making this judgment solely upon the similarities I encountered in Greece when a musician would tell me that a song was in “Re” or “La minor.” I have also run into this when playing with some people here in Chicago who play South American (Peruvian, in this case) music and we need to find our common knowledge in terms of keys.

I was able to do some research this morning and, based upon what I’ve learned so far, I think that this line of thinking should be correct. According to what I have learned, there are twelve tones (swara) in the Indian music system (although I think I should say the North Indian, correct?) and when they are arranged from end to end, from Sa to Sa, the flats and sharps do indeed correspond to those on a C major scale.

So, as far as I can tell, ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni’ would be matched with ‘Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti’ which in turn would be matched to the notes ‘C D E F G A B’

What are some scales and chords used in celtic music?

One of the common misconceptions about Celtic music (not to mention all sorts of other genres) is that it contains different chords and/or scales than other music. Now while Celtic music may have a lot of “character traits” for lack of a better term, it still uses the chords and scales with which you are already familiar.

Most traditional music, including Celtic, was old long before the guitar even came around. Hence a lot of the flavor of Celtic guitar style comes from trying to get your guitar to mimic the nuances of the older instruments associated with the Celtic traditions – which would mean a lot of harps, fiddles and pipes. Having a lot of open, ringing strings creates both the sound of the harp and the drone of the pipes. This is why a lot of guitarists who specialize in Celtic music prefer either drop D or DADGAD tuning (which you can find out about in my column On The Tuning Awry), it gives a lot of opportunities for open drones in fifths. Say you’re playing a solo in the key of D. You can use your lower three strings as a drone and play a melodic lead on your high strings at the same time.

A further way to imitate the pipes is to use a lot of “trilling” effects – such as hammer-ons and pull-offs. If you listen to Celtic music (and listening to any traditional music is the best way to come up with ideas) there is a lilting quality to it. Melodies flit about in a very ornate style. You cannot add too many trills. Another cool technique is to use vibrato on various notes. Not typical guitar vibrato (where you slide your finger back and forth along the string) but rather hard vibrato where you move your finger PERPENDICULAR to the string. This will cause your melodies to occasionally go slightly sharp or flat, but this again gives the impression of the instruments not being perfect. Well placed bends can also do this.

For even more on playing celtic style music check out the article A Celtic Air and a whole series of celtic song arrangements by Doug Sparling on the celtic music page.

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to Celtic music and select edit to make improvements.

Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1

David Hodge — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:26:43 +0000

I got this email a short while back:

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!

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

Mastering the Higher Positions

Special to Guitar Noise — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 08:00:08 +0000

The purpose of this article is to introduce guitarists to reading and improvising in higher positions on the fretboard using learned scale patterns as a guide. Guitarists tend to be somewhat comfortable with note names in open position, but become disoriented and frustrated when they attempt to move up the neck. Using the five scale patterns presented here and a basic knowledge of the Circle of Fifths you will be able to play in any key over the entire neck of the guitar. Just go slowly and don’t quit!

Many of the exercises in this chapter ask the player to read a melody in a particular position using a “closed” left-hand fingering. That just means that we are not going to be using any open strings. If we avoid open strings, the patterns become as movable as any simple bar chord. This approach will give you more options when playing and be the “key” to unlocking the mysteries of the higher frets.

The Five Patterns

I believe that the easiest way to master the higher positions is through the memorization of five scale patterns. These patterns cover the fretboard in a given key, showing you very clearly where all of the “in” notes are. They can then be transposed to other keys by moving them up or down the neck without any change to your fingering. Here are the five patterns in the key of C major:

Pattern 1 (Frets 12-15) (numbers in circles indicate which string to play note on – (6) is low E, (5) is A, etc.; numbers beside the note indicate which finger to use to fret the note – 1 is index finger, 2 is middle finger, etc.,)

Pattern 2 (Frets 2-5)

Pattern 3 (Frets 5-8)

Pattern 4 (Frets 7-10)

Pattern 5 (Frets 8-13)

Second and Third Position
Try reading the following melody, which falls nicely into the second and third positions with Pattern Two in C major. Remember that the second string shifts into third position so that we can reach the F on the sixth fret with the fourth finger. If you would like to read it once in open position in order to familiarize yourself with the sound of the melody its not a bad idea.

Exercise 1

Transposition
Now let’s try reading the same line in a different key without changing positions. We’ll try G major for now because it shares many of the same notes with C major. What pattern would you use for second position in G major? If you said pattern four you would be right. I put the lower leading tone (F#) and the high A in parenthesis in order to emphasis the tonic G.

Here is the melody from Exercise 1, which we read in C, now transposed to G. Use pattern four as the guide for the frets.

Exercise 2

Now let’s give D major a try. Use Pattern One in to play this next exercise in second position.

Exercise 3

Any diatonic (in a key) piece of music may be approached in this way. Simply figure out the key, the position or positions in which most of the notes fall, and then apply the appropriate pattern. This pattern-oriented system will enable you to easily find your way around in any key or mode anywhere on the fretboard.

Vibrato

Playing melodic passages without using lots of open strings can also give you a few more options musically. For example, you can add vibrato to a closed note, but not an open string. A “classical” vibrato is created through the rhythmic raising and lowering of a pitch by pulling and pushing the string horizontally to the fretboard. A steel-string guitarist usually creates vibrato by bending sharp, pulling the string either up or down, and then relaxing back to pitch. I have always believed that the best way to get the feel of a natural vibrato is by listening to a really good cellist or violinist. There is also much to be learned from a good singer.

One of the aspects of vibrato technique that needs attention is the speed at which the note vibrates. A good rule of thumb is to use a slower vibrato for low notes and a faster vibrato for high notes. Just imagine a soprano singing a high C with a slow vibrato or a baritone using a fast one. The soprano would sound like she has had a bit too much to drink and the baritone would sound like he was having an anxiety attack.

Fourth and Fifth Positions
Just like before, find the key and then a pattern that fits the general area of the neck that most of the notes fall. For this next example in A minor, play in the fifth position using pattern number three (C major/A minor). Don’t forget to raise the G to G# in the fifth measure.

Exercise 4

Here is the same melody that we read earlier (Exercise 3) in D major (second position) transposed now to E major. Simply move Pattern One up to fourth position for this one.

Exercise 5

For this next melody in A major/fourth position you use Pattern Four.

Exercise 6

Improvisation
The pattern-oriented approach is not only useful for reading music; it is also extremely helpful when improvising. Using a learned scale pattern to improvise is not anything new to most players; however, there are some exercises that can make us even more comfortable in the higher positions. It’s a fact that many guitar players will learn only one or two patterns and use them almost exclusively. The problem with that is that it limits you to one spot on the neck for all of your solos. With five different patterns you will be free to move anywhere in the key all over the neck. Practice connecting the patterns so you can easily jump from one to another without any trouble.

Practice Challenge No. 1: Try to play scales through the Circle of Fifths without shifting more than one or two frets away from where you start. For example if you decide to try this in second position you would go through the following patterns:

C major/Pattern Two
G major/Pattern Four
D major/Pattern One
A major/Pattern Three
E major/Pattern Five
B major/Pattern Two
F# major/Pattern Four
C# major/Pattern One etc…

Practice Challenge No. 2: Play every position for a given key by shifting from one pattern to the next while ascending and then descending the fretboard. For instance, if you start with an ascending C major scale in second position (Pattern Two) shift up into Pattern Three on the first string and then descend. When you reach the bottom of the Third Pattern in fifth position, shift to Pattern Four in seventh position and ascend. Continue like this until you complete the fretboard and then try it in a different key.

Final Thoughts

While this article has focused mainly on using the patterns for major and the relative minor, they can also be used for Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, and Locrian. You don’t even need to learn different patterns, simply recognize the new tonic. In other words, if you’re thinking about a pattern in major, focus on the second degree of the scale and make it the new “home base”. Now you’re playing a Dorian pattern. It’s just that easy!

A word of caution: do not think only in patterns while ignoring individual note names. Too many guitarists play patterns without any idea which notes they are fingering. What you really need to do is practice scales slow enough that you can say the names of the notes to yourself as you go. After all, learning the names of the notes was the whole point.

About the Author

Dr. Scott Morris, DMA, is the Coordinator of Guitar Studies at California State University in Dominguez Hills, California.

Guitar Playing By Numbers

Graham Merry — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 08:00:08 +0000

Well, not quite.

This article started life as a stand-alone piece. However, Oleg Twerdov presented a similar piece, before mine was finished, so I offer this as another look at the same idea.

First of all, I’d just like to say that it is not a replacement for theory. It will not teach you the names of notes in scales or chords. It just offers you a way of using theory without too much thought.

Let’s start by looking at a major scale in intervals, just as Oleg did- WWHWWWH or TTSTTTS. We can translate this, directly, into frets, each one being a semi- or half-tone apart from it’s nearest neighbour. Looking at the major scale this way, gives us 2 frets, 2 frets, 1 fret, 2 frets, 2 frets, 2 frets, 1 fret.

Looking at it cumulatively, we have 0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12. So, the intervals are:

These numbers are important, so I’ll repeat them 0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12.

Although what I show here is based on standard tuning, it is easily adaptable to other tunings, as it only requires that you know the number of frets between each string. In standard tuning, the guitar is tuned to perfect fourths (with apologies to the G string, which insists upon being a major third).

What, though, is the relevance of the numbers? They represent the number of frets from the root to the corresponding scale degree – and, knowing that, I can work out any scale position, without even having to know the name of the note I started from.

By applying the offset (in terms of the number of frets) to the starting position (the root), you can build a major scale anywhere on the fretboard with no trouble, at all.

Right, let’s do just that. Let’s arrange a major scale on the fretboard, without even knowing the name of a single note. To make things easy, we’ll start with a note on the low E (6th) string – I’ll use the 5th fret (I’ve called it 6/5 – 6 th string/5 th fret). Right, we have our root note. Where do we find the 2nd degree? Two frets up from the root (just like in the table), so 6th string 7th fret (the scale so far – 6/5, 6/7).

However, because of the construction of the guitar fretboard, I can also find the same tone one string higher on the A string. Because there are 5 frets difference between the E and the A, I can take the interval away and get the number of frets LOWER on the A string – (Base + 2 frets)-5 (difference in frets between strings) = Base-3 frets, but 1 string higher. We started on the 5th fret of the low E, so the other position is 1 string higher – the A string – and 3 frets lower (5 – 3 = 2nd fret), so 5/2 (instead of 6/7, which is exactly the same pitch).

The third is 4 frets up from the root (in this case, the 5th fret) – 6/9 – but no-one is going to stretch 4 frets voluntarily. We should, therefore, look one string higher – Root+4 frets (3rd interval) -5 (frets difference between the strings) = 1 string higher and 1 fret lower (5/4). Our sequence, so far, looks like this – 6/5, 6/7, 5/4 (I could also have used 6/5, 5/2, 5/4).

The 4th degree is 5 frets up from the root, but if no-one is going to stretch 4 frets, they’re not going attempt 5, so we have to, again, go to the next string – Root+5 frets (4th interval) -5 frets difference between the strings = same fret, but one string higher. (6/5, 6/7, 5/4, 5/5).

The 5th is 7 frets up from the root. So, Root+7-5 (frets to next string) = 2. So the 5th degree is on the next higher string and 2 frets higher than the root note. – (6/5, 6/7, 5/4, 5/5, 5/7).

Rather than go through each calculation, let’s just jump to the octave. This is 12 frets higher than the root, so we have to factor in more than 1 string (each being 5 frets difference), i.e. Root+12-5=7, which is still too much of a stretch, so we have to take the jump to the next string and deduct another 5 frets from the answer: Root+12-5-5 = 2. So, we have to go 2 strings higher (5 + 5) and up 2 frets. – I’ve filled in the other notes in the major scale and you get this – (6/5, 6/7, 5/4, 5/5, 5/7, 4/4, 4/6, 4/7 – play it, it’s the A major scale).

One thing that I have not yet included, in the calculation, is the G string. Don’t panic, it’s no problem. Whenever you cross the G to B string (or vice versa), you have to calculate 4 frets between strings, rather than 5. Instead of 2 strings being 5 + 5, you have to calculate 5 + 4 and find the remaining frets. So an octave is 12 – 5 – 4 = 3 – two strings and three frets higher. Why don’t you fill the major scale, that I started, all the way up to the high E string, taking care not to forget the dastardly G-B divide!

OK, here’s a table showing all the positions:

s = string, f= fret. 0= same, so 0s = same string

The column “G/B” denotes the difference, wherever the interval spans the G-B divide.

The method also allows you to work backwards – but instead of calculating from the root as 0, you call it 12. Going from the root to the 7th (found 11 frets up from the root): 12-11=1, so the 7th is 1 fret lower than the root. The calculation of moving from string to string doesn’t change. Let’s say I want to find the 4 th degree of the scale, but on a lower string than the one I’m on. For argument’s sake, we’ll assume that we’re on the root note and to make the calculation easy, at 4/7 (4 th string/7 th fret). The 4 th degree is 5 frets up from the root, so 12 (rather than 0) – 5 = 7, so 7 frets lower than my current position. I can deduct 5, to bring me one string lower: 7-5=2. I still have 2 frets left so I have to go those 2 frets lower, which takes me from the 7 th fret to the 5 th on the next lower string to where we started, so I land on 5/5.

It doesn’t stop there. Just think, you have a major chord and want to play a 7th. If you don’t know the actual fingering, you have to first work out the 7th degree of the scale that you’re in, drop it by one semitone and find that note on the fretboard.

I’ll give you another way. The 7th is 11 frets up (or 2 strings and 1 fret) from the root. A 7th chord needs a flat 7th (one semitone lower than a normal 7th or an “11b” – normal 7th is 11 frets up from the root), so we need 2 strings up and 0 frets up (0-5-5+10). I know my root note, so I can find the flat 7th 2 strings higher at the same fret. As long as it isn’t the only occurrence of a triad note (R, iii, V), I only need to fret that string at the same fret as the root note and I have a 7th chord. Alternatively, I can use the reverse calculation. A 7th is one fret lower than the root, so a flat 7th is going to be 2 frets lower. I look for a note 2 frets lower than any root, other than the bass root note. It all, of course, needs to be modified, if the G-B problem arises.

Let’s build a C7. Here is our starting point, the Cmajor chord – x32010. I need the root, two strings higher, same fret. The root is on the 5th string at the 3rd fret, so I need 3rd string, 3rd fret – yep, a classical C7. From the other standpoint – there is a root note on the B string, at the 1st fret. The method says 10 up or 2 down, but 10 up is idiocy and 2 down is somewhere the wrong side of the nut – what to do? The open B string is tuned to the same note as the 4th fret of the G string, so let’s start there. The 1st fret B string is the same as 5th fret G string, which gives us: 5-2=3, 3rd string 3rd fret.

Take a Gmajor – 320003. I want a G7. So I look at the note 2 strings higher than the base root note (low E, 3rd fret), the D string – which is, unfortunately, the only occurrence of a D (5th degree) in the chord. I, then, look at another root (high E, 3rd fret) and drop 2 frets, to the 1st fret. Here is a G7 chord. This, by the way, is also 10 frets up from the root note on the 3rd string 0 fret (G): Root+10-4 (we’re crossing the G-B) -5 (B to E) =1 (1st fret, 1st string).

Once you have this in your mind, it is easy to translate any interval to the fretboard. You want a power chord? It’s made up of the root and the 5th, which is 7 frets higher than the root. Pick the root and look one string higher and 2 frets up (3, if you’re lumbered with the G-B problem). Same applies to the octave – (12 frets – 5 – 5 = 2), 2 strings higher and 2 frets ( 12 -5 – 4 = 3 for the G-B) up.

Once you have a reasonable grasp of the numbers, you can short-cut your way around the scales. How far is a 6th from a 3rd? A 6th is 9 frets up and a 3rd is 4, so the distance is 5 frets. How far is a 2nd from a flat 7th? A 7th is 11 frets up, so flatted it’s at 10. A 2nd is 2 frets up, giving us 10-2 = 8.

We can now use this knowledge to look more closely at some other scales.

The Major Scale.

What can I say? – WWHWWWH or TTSTTTS. I’ve told you how to build this.

The Minor Scales

Relative Minor – WHWWHWW

Flattens the 3rd, 6th and 7th. Easy. The sequence becomes, 0, 2, 3 (was 4, but flat, becomes 3), 5, 7, 8 (was 9, but flats to 8), 10 (was 11, but flats to 10), 12. (0,2,3,5,7,8,10,12)

Harmonic Minor – WHWWHW#H

It’s the same as the relative minor, except that the 7 th isn’t flat, which gives rise to a 3 fret gap between the 6 th and the 7 th (which I’ve shown as W#). Otherwise, it’s the relative minor – (0,2,3,5,7,8,11,12)

Melodic Minor (up) – WHWWWWH

This is the same as the major scale, but with only the 3 rd flattened, so (0,2,3,5,7,9,11,12).

Melodic Minor (down) – WHWWHW#H

Is exactly the same as the relative minor scale. (0,2,3,5,7,8,10,12)

The Major Pentatonic – WW(H+W)W(W+H)

This is the same as the major scale, with the 4th and 7th degress removed, so instead of 0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, the major pentatonic consists of 0, 2, 4, 7, 9, 12

The Minor Pentatonic

This is the same as the relative minor scale, with the 2nd and 6th degress removed, so instead of 0,2,3,5,7,8,10,12, the minor pentatonic consists of 0,3,5,7,10,12

The Modes.

Ever thought of learning the mode box patterns – after you’ve learnt the major, minor, pentatonic and God knows what other patterns, of course. No need.

Modes are just major scales, which start at different positions. Take the Mixolydian, starting at the 5th degree (7 frets up – the “base fret offset”). Just modify the calculation to deduct the base fret offset – so the root of the mixolydian is the position in the major scale minus the offset (7-7=0), the 2nd degree of the Mixo mode is really the 6th degree of the major scale, but knowing the base fret offset (7) and knowing that the 6th degree of the major scale is 9 frets up, we get 9-7=2. the second position is 2 frets higher than the “root” of our mixo scale. The 3rd is at 11 on the major scale, so 11-7=4, which is probably best one string higher, but 1 fret down (just as in the major scale layout). Next comes the 4th, which is the octave of the base major scale, but we call it 12, rather than 0, because it is the octave and not the root of the original scale: 12-7= 5, which goes on the next string, same fret. The 5th of the mixo (the 2nd of the major scale) is at 14 (octave+2), so 14-7=7 – applying the original calculation, we get 1 string and 2 frets higher.

Mixolydian mode:

You can build any mode at any starting position, without even having to memorise a single box pattern.

Whether building major scales or modes, you end up with the same patterns on the fretboard as the box patterns found in any book, but this method gives you the ability to build a scale, even if your memory is not that good and you haven’t played the pattern for several months. In fact, the more you use this method, the easier it will become to build the box patterns.

One drawback of box patterns, is that they are boxes. You learn 5, effectively, separate entities. Bringing them together and using them as one large network of notes is difficult, once you’ve learnt them separately. Another problem is that most people (and I include myself) learn the boxes as they are presented on paper, almost invariably starting with the “1st pattern” at the 6th string, 5th fret – and find that changing to play the same box somewhere else on the neck is a mental challenge. This method takes you away from building box patterns and into building scales. Try building a run from the A on the low E to the higher reaches of the high E, using box patterns. You’re going to traverse at least 2, if not 3. By selectively changing strings, you can build runs, as long as you like, on one or several strings, just by adding the necessary number of frets to your last position. This is another point – as you get better with the fret intervals, you start to think also in terms of intervals between positions, within the scale (iii – IV is 1 fret in the major scale, etc.). It is, however, the number of frets from the root, which is important – it gives you the frame of reference from which to work – the root of the scale.

Although Helgi Briem has been promoting the use of intervals for, certainly, as long as I’ve been a member of GN, this only recently hit me – it was one of those “light going on” moments. Since then I’ve found building scales much easier than with a scale chart. I’m seeing why frets are played, where they are and what relevance that position has to the rest of the scale, even if it hasn’t registered what the names of the notes are. Give it a try – it really doesn’t take long to grasp.

For those of you who say that you are lousy at maths, here’s another method – left foot is the root note, right foot is the octave and your 10 fingers (and thumbs) are the positions in between – there’s absolutely no reason NOT to give it a try now, is there? ;))

Exotic Ports of Call

Tom Serb — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 08:00:06 +0000

I’ve had a few students asking me about exotic scales recently, so I’ve distilled a little dialogue exploring the topic. Hope you find it useful!

What would you like to work on next?

Well, I’d like to use some exotic scales in my solos. I try, but they don’t sound right.

Well, there are a couple of different ways to use them… what do you mean by not sounding right?

They just don’t sound good. When I solo with major scales or pentatonic scales, it sounds ok, but the altered scales don’t.

I see… well, there are really three different ways to use altered scales. The easiest way is to use them as a contrasting element called a variation. Play me a phrase in C major.

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

Good. Now let’s pick a scale that’s got seven notes, just like the major scale does. How about the Zangula scale? That’s one of the scales from Arabic music:

The differences in the scale are the third, fifth, and seventh, which all get flatted. Now here’s how your phrase sounds when you repeat it flatting those notes:

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

I understand you so far… but I’m still not sure how to use it.

Most of the time when we build a solo using contrast, the main theme – your phrase in C – we can call the ‘A’ form. The variation would be ‘A1′… so when you structure a longer phrase, we usually make it A-A1, like this:

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

I just added a couple notes to your original phrase so it flowed into the variation.

I get it now! But it doesn’t sound Arabic to me…

That’s because we’ve used it as a contrast. It’s like speaking the original phrase a second time with an Arabic accent – that’s not really the same thing as speaking in Arabic.

Ok, so show me how to ’speak’ it in Arabic.

Well, a style of music is about a lot more than just the melody. For example, when we studied the blues scale, you played a lot of triplets and broken triplets, because they’re so important to the blues feel. Every style of music has rhythmic signatures, and when we combine those with melody and harmony, it sounds like that style. Here’s a signature rhythm in Arabic music:

So if I play our A1 riff with that rhythm, it’ll sound more Arabian:

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

And if I harmonize the scale, the tonic chord is going to be C-Eb-Gb, or a G diminished chord… the IV chord will be F-A-C, or F major, and the V7 chord will be Gb-Bb-D-F. That’s a pretty awkward chord, since the F and Gb notes are so close together, but we can just take the top three notes as a Bb major chord. So if we throw some of those chords into the mix, we can get something like this:

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

So how can I tell what rhythmic signatures to use for a style of music?

By listening to music in that style. When you listen, try to figure out if there’s a rhythm that’s constantly repeated. Then listen to another couple of tunes in the style, and see if they use the same figure. Pay attention to how the melodies and harmonies are shaped, too… if you change just a couple notes in your original melody, you can make it even more Arabic sounding:

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

Very cool. But there’s a lot of different scales… show me another one?

Ok. We started with a seven-note scale, which makes it very easy to use alterations against your original phrase. If you use a scale that’s got a different number of notes, you’ll use extra notes as passing tones. If it’s got fewer than seven notes, you have to plan the alterations a little more carefully – you can repeat a note, or use the note above or below the corresponding scale tone. Let’s try the original phrase with the Rwanda scale, which has no fourth, and a flatted third and seventh:

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

Sounds a little bit blues-y.

It should! The Rwanda scale is the same as minor pentatonic with a second instead of a fourth.

You said there were three ways to use altered scales – we’ve talked about variations and using signature rhythms… what’s the third?

Well, that’s the one with the most freedom of all: if you learn the scales, and how to work with them, and you do it long enough… you’ll hear them when you want to, and you’ll be able to pick and choose elements from different scales as part of an overall melody. It’s got a lot in common with variation, but you don’t need to start with a simple theme.

Sounds like a lot of work!

More like a lot of fun

Preparing To Climb – or, So I Know A Scale. Now What?

David Hodge — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 08:00:23 +0000

In some of our earlier columns, we’ve covered various aspects that you probably want to know should you desire to learn how to solo and improvise. Moving On Up showed us how we could move three basic chord shapes (E, D and A) up and down the neck in order to form new chords. Scaling The Heights introduced us to the two scales – the major scale and the pentatonic scale – which are the cornerstone of most soloing work. And our last column, A La Modal, hopefully demonstrated to you that knowing one major scale means knowing seven different modal scales.

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:

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

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

A La Modal – Guitar Column # 62

David Hodge — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 08:00:00 +0000

Beginning guitarists (okay, almost all guitarists!) worry about a lot of things. They’ll hear a term and say to themselves, “Omigawd!! I don’t know anything about that!” and run off in a blind panic. Take these two big meanies: scales and modes. Just the mention of them starts people off, hoping against hope that these have nothing to do with the dreaded “circle of fifths!” I’m here to tell you that your anxiety is quite unnecessary.

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

The Mystery of the Modal Scales

Peter Simms — Thu, 28 Aug 2003 08:00:38 +0000

The “Modes” (modal scales) seem to be a mystery to many players. Therefore I’m going to try and clear up some questions on this subject. This set of notes can propel you far forward in your guitar adventures!

Most of us know the “Major Scale“. It is an note sequence of Whole Steps (W=2 fret distance) and Half Steps (H= 1 fret distance). That sequence is WWHWWWH (see example #1). Play a “C chord”, then play example #1 forwards and backwards to get that sound in your head… this is an important thing to do right now. Once you can feel and get used to the sound… come back to this lesson. I set this exercise on 1 string so you can see the whole and half steps.

You can take a listen to it on a midi file: Click Here

EXAMPLE #1

Now that you recognize the sound of Major Scale, I’m going to tell you that it also has another name: The Ionian Mode. The idea with the modes is that if you start with another note of the major scale and end with the same note, you change the “whole step/half step” relationship… and get another sound or “mode”.

The Dorian Mode starts with the 2nd degree. If we were to use our example, you get: D E F G A B C D. Our sequence is then WHWWWHW. Play a “Dm Chord” and play example #2.

You can take a listen to it on a midi file: “Click Here”

EXAMPLE #2

This gives us a new sound, and raises a question…

Is it a new scale or just the same scale starting on the 2nd degree? It is both! One of my students just asked me this (even though I’ve heard this question from dozens of my students over the years). This is what I wrote him:

“The Modes are tricky. It seems you know enough about them to be dangerous. There are two schools of thought on this. One school… says it’s all one scale, therefore just relate it to the Major Scale (Ionian Mode). The other school of thought is that each mode has it’s own unique sound. They both have strong arguments, and I don’t think that argument will ever be settled. I myself tend to lean to the other. If you take chords for instance…. a “C6″ and a “Am7″ …. they share the exact same notes:

C6 = C E G A
Am7 = A C E G

Well.. which one is it? It depends on the function of the chord and which note is being played in the bass. There are several examples, but I will leave you with this one to think about.

The modes in my opinion function like these chords. If the chord progression is leading to a sense of resolve on the C6 chord… you are soloing with C Ionian (major) … and you are leaning your notes in that scale to support that chord. If the chord progression is leading to a sense of resolve on a Am7 chord … you are soloing with A Aeolian… and you are leaning your notes in that scale to support that chord. Does this make any sense to you? …….. The fact remains: you can do a lot with this set of notes! Therefore that is why it is on your list of things to do.”

Each note has its own modal name (I put the chord to play when playing the mode):

Take a listen to the modes played in order (Example 3) Click Here

C – C Ionian (start on the 1 st note)
Dm – D Dorian
Em – E Phrygian
F – F Lydian
G7 – G Mixolydian
Am – A Aeolian
Bm7b5 – B Locrian

EXAMPLE 3

I tend to take advantage of the “it’s one scale” idea, by learning 6 fingerings extremely well (example #3) that cover the complete fretboard. And, be able to switch the “root” which in turn switches the “mode”. Check out the fingering diagrams below.

The only way to really get the effect of a modal scale: is to play the accompanying chord, then play the mode.The Modal Scales and the Pentatonic (blues) Scales are your strongest working scales for soloing. You will hear musicians mixing Pentatonic and Modal Scale extensively: Carlos Santana, Kirk Hammit, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, George Benson, John Scofield, ….. all styles… they cover it! Therefore…. GO FOR IT! They are definitely worth learning.

Enjoy!

Modal Thinking

Jimmy Hudson — Sat, 09 Aug 2003 08:00:52 +0000

Last month I gave you guys an extensive study on intervals. A lot of people look at modes as if it were a big mystery, but they are really a fairly simple concept once you learn how to use them on guitar. There are seven tones to the major scale hence there are seven modes to the major scale. With the interval study I showed you last month how to make chords and scales. What you will do is take each note from the major scale and build a seven chord or triad over it. There is a formula for the harmonized major scale. This is the essence of modal thinking. For this study we will use the key of Cmaj. If you know the alphabet you will know C maj. A harmonized scale is the formation of triads or chords on each note of a scale so here is the chord pattern for a harmonized Cmaj scale.

Cmaj7, Dmin7, Emin7, Fmaj7, G7, Amin7, Bmin7b5

So the basic formula is maj7, min7, min7, maj7, 7, min7, min7b5. This works in every key. The harmonized scale is also what most composition is based off of. You will hear allot of jazz guys say that is a ii,v,i progression in C maj. What they are saying in essence is Dmin7, G7, Cmaj7. So that leads us to the modes of the major scale. In order to fully get the modes out you must have a chord or triad behind you. Otherwise you would simply be playing the scale. So here are the modes of the major scale.

So as you can see it is a pretty simple concept. You simply take a note out of the major scale and play it as if that where the root. So if you start on C and end on C you are in C Ionian. Now to find your relative minor simply go down three scale degrees from your root or up five. The relative minor is the Aeolian, you can go down 3 frets on a guitar to find it. So the Relative minor of Cmaj is Amin. To find you relative major if you are in minor do the opposite. It also sounds really cool to play the major scale and it’s relative minor at the same time. This is called harmonizing. So really there is no mystery in modes or theory at all. The only reason why there is a so called mystery is because on guitar for some reason people start off learning songs and that is generally all they ever do is learn songs and copy licks instead of actually learning their instrument. If you follow my practice schedule and you study my columns I promise you will never need tablature as a crutch again. There are also modes to the harmonic and melodic minor scales. You can get a copy of these and more at the Guitar Grimoire book of scales and modes. It is a very extensive knowledge based book and I think that a law should be passed for every guitarist to own it. Now that you have the formula for modes try writing out the modes in every key. Also come up with as many progressions as possible, try a II, V, I, IV, VII, or a III, II, I, you can make up all kinds of progressions using modal thinking.

A Mixolydian Scale Blues Guitar Riff

Darrin Koltow — Sun, 27 Apr 2003 08:00:30 +0000

Much adieu is made about the blues and pentatonic scales for creating cool blues riffs. But here’s another scale that’s useful for making riffs: the Mixolydian scale. Before we talk about this scale, let’s use it. Play the following exercise. The numbers at the bottom of each staff tell you which fingers to use.

Click here to hear the MP3.

Click here to hear the MIDI file.

You’ll find the Power Tab file (for Windows users only) here.

(More info on the free Power Tab at http://power-tab.net)

We’ve actually used three different Mixolydian scales here: the A Mixolydian, the D Mixolydian, and the E Mixolydian. Notice how the notes in each Mixolydian scale contain the arpeggios, or chord tones, for chords in the A blues. For example, the first measure would be an A7, if you were playing chords.

So, the arpeggio notes for A7 are A, C#, E, and G. Now look at the notes in the Mixolydian scale for that measure: A, B, C#, D, E, F#, and G. All the arpeggio notes are here on the strong beats, which are beats one and four. The non-chord tones are on the weak beats. These non-chord tones or notes are called passing tones.

Noticing whether a note falls on the strong or the weak beats is important, because it deeply affects the music.

When you make riffs with the A Mixolydian scale, you want to make sure the strong beats tend to use the notes A, C#, E, and G — the tones of the A7 chord. If the passing tones from the A Mixolydian scale fall on the strong beats, your playing won’t sound like the blues.

Where Does the Mixolydian Scale Come from?

Once you recognize that the A Mixolydian scale is really just an A7 arpeggio with some passing tones installed between the chord tones, you can rephrase your question to this: what scale do I find the A7 chord in? Answer: the D major scale. Compare the D major scale to the A Mixolydian scale:

Notes in D major: D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#
Notes in A Mixolydian: A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G

Notice that the notes in each of these groups are the same. The difference is that each group starts and ends on a different note.

A Mixolydian scale has the same notes as a major scale. The only difference is you’re starting from the fifth degree of the scale instead of the first.

The Mixolydian scale is an example of a mode. Note how close this term is to the term “mood.” That’s not a coincidence: Different modes produce different moods. The Mixolydian mode is a good way for inducing a bluesey kind of mood, which you saw and heard in this exercise.

Other Places to use Mixolydian

You don’t have to be restricted to using the Mixolydian just for blues playing. You can generally use a Mixolydian scale any place where you can use the dominant 7th chord that’s based on the Mixolydian.

For example, let’s say you’re playing this mini-progression: A, G, and D. All of these chords are in the key of D major. What dominant 7th chord goes with the key of D major? Yes, A7. So you can play an A Mixolydian scale on top of this progression.

If you’re instead working with the chords E, D, and A, which are all in the key of A major, you can use notes from the E7 chord, or E Mixolydian, for playing over the changes. You can do this because E7 is the dominant 7 chord in A major, and E Mixolydian is the mode or scale that emphasizes the E7 chord tones.

How do I take a scale and make it into a solo?

David Hodge — Tue, 18 Feb 2003 11:01:36 +0000

Most solos are the result of (gasp!) planning. The guitarists involved know how many measures are involved or what chord changes are taking place underneath the solo. The good lead guitarists will construct a solo, giving it the same qualities of a well-written song – a beginning, a middle and an end as well as points of dynamic tension and release. Of all the guitarists I know there is maybe one or two who are capable of a quality lead at the drop of a hat. Don’t get me wrong, there are a zillion who can improvise a spur of the moment solo (usually based on scales) that will sound great and, more often than not, fit the mood of the song. With a fair degree of practice and a backlog of riffs, just about anybody can do this. I’m not kidding.

Leads generally fall into one of the following categories: “rhythmic,” “melodic,” “slashing” and “effects.” They’re pretty self-explanatory. And they can overlap – you can have “rhythmic/melodic” or “melodic/effects” and so on. A rhythmic lead usually is a rhythm guitar part brought to the fore. The start of the solo in Proud Mary is a great example of this. The second half of that solo is a melodic lead.

The difference between a melodic and a slashing lead is can be best seen (okay, heard) in the two solos in the Pink Floyd classic, Comfortably Numb. The first solo, between the verses, is truly gorgeous (and the solo on Mother from the same album would fit this description as well). The “melody” carefully follows the chord changes. You really can “sing” it, if you wanted to. The lead at the end of Comfortably Numb is more harsh – full of jarring runs of blues and rock riffs strung together. It’s the sort of thing that makes you drop everything and grab your air guitar off its air guitar stand and play along. Slashing leads are more concerned with scales and flashy guitar “tricks” which could include anything from a simple bend to a complex series of tapping. A melodic solo will follow the path laid out by the chords of the song; the slashing solo will say, “Here’s my scale!” and stick to that, letting the chords of the song fall where they will.

An effects lead is precisely that, a solo built out of an effect or multiple effects. Usually, an effects lead is combined with a melodic or slashing lead but it can stand on its own. One of the inherent problems of an effects lead is that it relies solely on the electronics to accomplish its task This is why some bands sound so much different live on stage than they do on record. Innovations in effects are rapidly changing this, however.

For the beginner, the melodic lead is the best place to start. Way too often guitarists learn to solo simply by copying other solos. You learn various riffs and “tricks” and then string them together in the appropriate key. This is a tried and tested method and while it will get you off to a fast start, it will not make you a good soloist. It will make you a good imitator. If you start out with discovering and developing your own style, it is easier to adapt other guitarists’ styles to fit yours. I’m not saying don’t learn solos note for note (more on that later), just wait a little and give yourself a chance first. Become someone else later if you want to.

Another good thing about melodic leads is that, again due to the nature of the solo, they can be studied and learned on any guitar, whether electric, acoustic or classical. Never con yourself into thinking that “solo” automatically implies “electric guitar.” Any song arranger or soloist worth his or her salt will explore not only different types of instrumentation when constructing a lead, but also the ever-growing array of devices through which to play them.

A lesson on melodic solos, with a step by step guide to constructing a lead part, can be found in the article Leading Questions. Also don’t miss our series of lessons on creating solos, starting with Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1.

Scales Within Scales

David Hodge — Mon, 21 Feb 2000 08:00:42 +0000

I will admit up front that I have never been overly keen on scales. Oh, I know that they are important and they are valuable tools for soloists, but I’ve always been much more interested in chords and harmony. It wasn’t until I started listening to music from other cultures that I developed an appreciation of what scales could teach me. Do yourself a favor… don’t wait as long as I did. But don’t obsess about it either.

Going Modal

When we talk about the key of a song, we will normally speak of it being in “this” major or “that” minor. This is an easy and useful reference that will normally alert us to the flats or sharps are likely to be used as well as which chords we are most likely to encounter. But the “key” of a song is simply a starting point of a song’s overall tonality.

By now you’re all bored to tears with the C major scale, but since a lot of my funding comes from the “C Major Scales Are Our Friends” Foundation, I’ve got to show it to you one more time:

Okay, now the fun stuff starts. We know that for every major key, there is also a corresponding minor key. We also know (if we remember our discussion on relative minors in Happy New Ear) that, since C is the VI in the key of Eb major, C minor is the relative minor of Eb major. What you may not know is that there are three traditional minor scales for any given minor scale. Let’s take a look at them:

The natural minor scale, as you can see, is simply the C major scale written in the key of Eb major. It incorporates all the flats one finds in that key (Bb, Eb and Ab). If you can figure out what major key your relative minor belongs to, then you should be able to write out the natural minor scale without a problem.

And harmonic minor scales as well. The only difference between the harmonic minor scale and the natural minor scale is the VII note. In the example, you can see that the “B” (which is the normal VII in the C major scale) is used in the C harmonic minor scale, while the “Bb” is used in the natural minor scale. The striking thing about this scale is the interval between the VI and the VII, now a step and a half. This gives the scale an eastern feel to it.

In addition to these three minor scales, there are also quite a number of modal scales. “Modal” is one of those theory terms that gives people the willies. If you want a much more scholarly approach, I suggest you check out Jimmy Hudson’s column entitled Modal Thinking or pick up your favorite textbook. For me, it is easier to think in terms of food. Your C major scale is your steak or chicken or soup stock or whatever you decide to start out with (hey, I never said this was going to be a great analogy…). The various flats and sharps that you can throw in are simply spices that will gives different flavors to your scale depending on the combination of spices you decide to use.

Here, again in the key of C, are a few of the more popular modal scales used throughout history:

Now, you should take the time to listen to these scales and appreciate the different feels each of them offers. You can figure them out yourself step by step, or you can use a few shortcuts:

Dorian Scale: You see in our example that a C dorian scale has two flats – Bb and Eb. These are the same flats one would use if in the key of Bb major. So, if you wanted to write a G dorian scale, then you would start with a G scale (G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G) but you would write it out in the key of F, which is one full step lower than the G. It would look like this:

Phrygian Scale: In the example the C scale is written as if in the key of Ab. Therefore a phrygian scale is written in whatever key is two whole steps below your root (or in the key of the minor VI, if you prefer).

Lydian Scale: This C scale is written as if in the key of G, so a lydian scale is in the same key as the fifth of its root.

Mixolydian Scale: Right, it’s in the key of the fourth (in this case the C scale is in F).

Aeolian Scale: A C scale in the key of Eb? You guessed it… this is just a fancy name for the natural minor scale.

Pentatonic scale: As the name implies, this is a scale of five tones: I, II, III, V and VI. The fourth and seventh have been eliminated.

Whole tone scale: one of my favorites. Each note is exactly one whole step from the next. As the name indicates, there are no half steps in the entire scale.

“Hungarian” scale: An interesting scale which incorporates a minor third and sixth which is then followed by a step and a half to the next note. You can hear this a lot in the melody lines of Eastern European music.

WARNING!!! WARNING!!! OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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.

Okay, let’s take a big leap. You may not realize it just yet, but these scales can help to show why some chord progressions work even when they look like they shouldn’t! Look at a song like the Rolling Stone’s Gimme Shelter. When you look at the chord charts, it looks like this:

If I’d never heard the song before, I could easily think that the song is in E or A, simply judging by the TAB. But I have heard the song and I know that this is not the case. Part of the difficulty of figuring out songs, rock songs especially, is that the guitar can be a master of disguise. When I play this song (and I learned from watching others) I tend to only play the fourth, fifth and sixth strings with these fingerings:

Notice that there are no thirds in these chords. To the ear, they are neither major nor minor because the third is not present to define the tonality. There is no such thing as “neutered chords,” but this is what I call these voicings. The proper term is C#5 or C#5 (no third) but that implies a major tonality.

Anyway, if you look at this chord progression as being part of a natural minor progression (or even a phrygian, for that matter) they make perfect and (pardon the pun) natural sense. The chord progression for these songs stems from a different modal scale and not the simple major scale.

Most people learn various modal scales in order to develop different style for leads and solos. Me, I prefer to use them in order to spice up my songwriting. Bass players can utilize them to create astonishingly beautiful bass lines. Anyway you look at it your knowledge of minor and modal will augment your abilities.

There’s A New Borg In Town

Another way to analyze strange chord changes is to look at a chord as a moving object. Bear with me, you know I get in these moods…

Whether you read music or TAB, you do realize that music is indeed a foreign language. But unlike most languages (and I say “most” because I do not know all of them and I’d like to be surprised one day), you must read it vertically as well as horizontally. There may be notes stacked up on top of one another, as chords or harmony lines. And while you’re looking up and down, you must be constantly read left to right, from the beginning of the song to the end.

Last column I briefly mentioned the song Hey Joe. Let’s take a look at one of the verses of this song:

Now, as I pointed out last time out, this song spends virtually the entire introduction establishing itself in the key of E (and this is another one of those songs that people will always argue about whether it’s major or minor. For our purposes, that doesn’t really matter and we’re going to use major chords just to make our lives easier). Then, after taking all the trouble to settle into the key of E it starts out with a C chord. Insane, huh?

Well, not really. In this case we have to look where we’re headed. Every line of every verse follows the same chord progression, which ends up with E. The E chord brings a feeling of finality to the line, a sense that the line is over and it’s time to start up a new one. But how did we reach this ending place? Let’s work backwards and see.

First, let’s look at the primary and secondary chords in the key of E major:

Immediately before the E chord we play an A. Easy enough to explain – it’s the IV chord in the key of E. Before the A we play D and we could explain that as being the VII of E major, but how are we going to explain the G and the C which precede the D?

Remember what I said about a chord being a moving object? In this song, the purpose of all these chords, from the C to the A is to bring us to the E (as in “E”nd of the line). We also know that chords serve more than one function. The A that serves as the IV chord in this key is also the V chord in the key of D. The D that we’ve labeled as VII here is IV in the key of A. Wait a minute! Did I say IV? Would it strike you as an incredible coincidence if I pointed out to you that G is IV in the key of D and that C (you’ve guessed, haven’t you?) is the IV in the key of G?

Now I’m going to have to do a quick confession. What I’ve been referring to as “VII” should really be called “IV of IV.” What I mean by this is that we are taking the IV chord (in this case the D) from the chord chart of the IV chord (A). We are borrowing from that key in order to move from one key to another. If we look at all the chords in this progression, this is what we would see:

(If this is too confusing, do as I do and work backwards. It helps. Really.)

This is a very common use of chords in songs. It allows the tonality of the music to wonder all over the place while still marching onward to its final point, in this case the E chord at the end of the line.

So when we were discussing songs that used the progression I … VII … IV … I, such as Taking Care of Business or Sympathy for the Devil I should really have said that the progression was really I … “IV of IV”- IV- I.

Another very common use of what I’ve taken to call “borg chords” is the “V of something.” V of V is the one with which you’re probably most familiar (even if you don’t know it yet). V of II, V of III, V of IV and V of VI are also used a lot. Let’s use the key of G for this examination. Here are our primary and secondary chords in G major (notice I’m not even looking at “VII” anymore):

Here are the “V of …..” chords in G:

Now, I’d like you to remember something I said in passing last time about how the progression V to I (and particularly V7 to I) really stamps the tonality on a musical phrase. If you’re in the key of G and you’re going from the G to the C chord, this is usually either done straight from G to C or via a G7. This makes sense now, doesn’t it?

Think of how many times you see an A or A7 chord in a song in the key of G. Nine times out of ten, what is the next chord? Right, it’s D. An E or E7 chord usually heralds the coming of an A minor.

Of course, there are exceptions to all of this, but the reasons they are exceptions is because, more often than not, chord progressions do tend to follow certain patterns.

One of the more prominent exceptions is the I … V of II … IV … I progression. In the key of G it would look like this: G … A (or A7) … C … G. It’s a very pleasant transition, used in songs on all ends of the spectrum (Paul Williams’ Old Fashioned Love Song, Donovan’s Atlantis and Brain Damage by Pink Floyd just to name a few).

You can now understand why all this “VII” chord analysis gets me skittish. Often what we decide to use as “VII” is simply something borrowed from somewhere else in order to take us from one place to another. The real thing to remember is that it is a decision. Ultimately what you decide upon as a chord progression should be what sounds good (or simply interesting) to you.

As always, I’d like to thank Paul for all the extra editing work he’s been doing for me at Guitar Noise and to remind you that you should feel free to send me any questions, criticisms, comments and suggestions either directly by email or on the Guitar Forums.