Posted by Andrew Wasson
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Waking up and playing guitar in the early morning isn't exactly common, especially if you've only ever practiced guitar at night time. In this post, I’m going to show you a very cool Blues-Rock Scale that I'd like you try doing every morning. Test this type of practice to find out what playing in the morning is like for you. Doing this could change your practice habits forever...
EARLY MORNING PRACTICE: A lot of guitarists find that early morning practice helps them increase their focus (especially with their technical and creative playing). Many guitar players also find that early morning practice helps them to overcome focus problems. Even if you don't spend a lot of time practicing technique, try doing some early morning practice to discover how it works for you. WATCH THE VIDEO:
HAVE YOU TRIED IT? One of things I’ve noticed after teaching hundreds of students over the last 26 years here at Creative Guitar is that some of the best students that I’ve ever had are the ones who always get up quite early and play guitar for 20 or 30 min. before they start their day. For a majority of players, there’s something really good about "early in the day" guitar practice that seems to help them better integrate as well as memorize material. I’ve done early morning practice myself and it has made an impact on my own guitar playing, so I do know that this type of practice holds merit. And so, in this video, I’m going to suggest that you test this out for yourself and find out what it can do for you… For a practice suggestion, (to test out this early day study approach), I’ve got a unique fingerboard shape for the Blues-Rock Scale that you can learn to play and use. The shape of this "Blues-Rock" scale pattern covers a lot of ground, and it blends the sound of the Blues with the Blues-Rock flavor of the Dorian mode's "Major 6th." The scale shape is easy to play, and it’s suitable for almost every Blues or Rock chord progression that you’ll ever come across. So, let’s start things off here by learning the lower fret-region of this Blues-Rock scale pattern.
BLUES-ROCK SCALE (LOW REGION): [KEY OF "D"]
Alright, now that you’ve learned the lower fretting region of this neck pattern (in the key of “D”), let’s move this shape up the string sets and start understanding how this shape can function up in the higher range of the strings. The next pattern I have for you carries on where the previous pattern left off and we’re going to organize the next octave range from off of the top strings at the 7th position to continue up the neck with the notes of the key of, "D." BLUES-ROCK SCALE (HIGH REGION): [KEY OF "D"]
MORNING PRACTICE: If you put in about 3 – 5 min. per pattern each morning and focus on working toward the development of your; memorization, your picking ability and your speed, with these shapes, (using a metronome), you’ll start to have a solid sense of recall for the way these patterns sit on the neck. After that, it’s going to be a good idea to work a few more days at being able to start joining together the two patterns so that you begin recognizing and fully understanding the layout of this scale as a two-octave idea along and across the neck. So now, I’ll play through the way that this pattern would sit on the guitar fingerboard as a fully connected two-octave scale shape. BLUES-ROCK SCALE (2-OCTAVE): [KEY OF "D"]
JAM-TRACK /LOOPER PRACTICE: The other thing that’s important to your early practice routine with this Blues-Rock scale is to make sure that you also include some time spent working towards putting this scale pattern to use. Having a good jam track progression is obviously really important for that. So, I’m going to help you out with a Blues-Rock jam-riff that’s ready to go for applying the key of “D” scale pattern that we’ve been working on throughout this lesson. Here’s what the riff sounds like. BLUES-ROCK JAM: [KEY OF "D"]
Spend some time and record the chord progression shown above. If that isn't possible, keep things simple and just use a looper pedal to be able to play it back. If you can't do that use your phone and record it! Regardless, it is really important that you make a recording and apply the scale. Without doing that you'll never fully develop the sound and application of this idea.
MOVING FORWARD: What I’d like you to do with what we’ve discussed in this post, is to start working on this Blues-Rock scale idea in the earliest part of your day, and find out what it does for you. Take notice of whether or not working in the early day on guitar seems like it improves your sense of recall, or if it helps with your focus, or if you feel like your attention is better. Some of my own students have said that doing morning guitar practice for 20 – 30 min. helps them the most with doing technical work, like; practicing scales, doing technique exercise drills, and also with doing music reading exercises. From other guitar players who study with me, I’ve heard that they enjoy the early morning for making up melodies and doing some jamming and for their most creative work. I should also say, (full disclosure), that I have had some guitar students of mine come back (after trying this) and tell me that the early morning practice routine just didn’t work them. And, I can understand that because we all know that some people aren’t “early morning people,” and the fact is that some guitar players won’t enjoy doing early morning practice. That’s just the way life is. Different strokes for different folks!
•VISIT THE WEBSITE: If you’d like to learn more about topics like this one and many others,join my members siteas a free member and start looking through my, “Guitar Courses.” I’ve spent over 25 years working with hundreds of guitar students creating thousands of detailed step-by-step guitar lessons for both my website members and my private students. The result is the most comprehensive guitar course that covers every aspect of beginner to advanced playing ideas to help you improve your playing.
•LIMITED TIME OFFER: If youjoin my siteas a Premium member, you’ll receive aFREE copyof my popular Guitar Technique eBook. My Guitar Technique eBook is 28 pages of jam-packed exercises, drills and studies for mastering all of your technical skills at playing Guitar.
Have you ever wanted to play Jazz, guitar but you thought it was too complex and too difficult? Perhaps you've searched for a perfect scale, a scale that would help you sound jazzy - instantly? Could there possibly be such a scale? A scale that would almost immediately help with creating a jazz sound? Well, guess what - there is...
Our perfect jazz scale pattern consists of chromatic tones as well as, a color tone for connecting the scale into either major and minor sounds.
That said, just knowing this scale shape won’t make the jazz scale complete in your playing. You'll need to practice this! In order to round out your scale use you will need to study with jam-tracks, with chord player sequences and with a looper pedal using a variety of carefully selected chord harmonies.
This work will help you start to hit every function of the scales sound and do it all in the right sequence. That is what we will be discussing in this video. WATCH THE VIDEO:
CREATING THE JAZZ SOUND: We’re continuing with more perfect scales in this post with a focus on the sounds that you can apply easily and quickly to promote the sound of jazz. This scale also works well in; Soul Music, some types of Blues, in R and B, and Smooth-Jazz …basically whatever jazz style you feel like you want to try and fit this sound into - this scale should work well for you. NOTE: Stick with me to the end of this post, because I’ve got a really cool web-site I want to show you called “Chord Player” and it’s a great way for practicing your solos in Jazz or any style.
First, let’s begin by performing our initial jazz scale pattern on the neck. It’s a shape that functions well for both Major and Dominant chord sounds. You can use it in Major Jazz and in some types of Blues situations. Let's try a shape based off of the root of “C” from the 5th-string, at the 2nd-fret position. SHAPE 1). MAJOR JAZZ SHAPE
Now that we have this scale pattern, let’s try and perform a lick over a jazz chord jam to put this particular sound into play. Something else to remember, is when you’re trying to apply this scale at home, just let the scale and its sound do the work. Try not to over-think things. Instead place your musical focus on phrasing ideas that you hear in your head along with using phrasing devices like; slides, vibrato, hammer-ons and pull-offs. Those playing techniques will take you the furthest along with this sound… But, first to get you started, here’s a Minor jazz lick for you to try out. This lick is based out of this major scale pattern (shown above). Major Jazz Scale Lick:
Next, let’s shift the sound of our Jazz Scale idea over to Minor tonality.
SHAPE 2). MINOR JAZZ SHAPE When it comes to the scale set-up for minor, we’re going to shift the fret-board location of the 3rd scale degree from being in the “Major 3rd” position and we’ll move it over to the “Minor 3rd” position. If we set that up off of the same scale shape (that we played for Major), using a “C” root note off of the 5th string’s 3rd fret, we’d end up with a scale that looks like this…
As you can tell, the scale patterns for major and minor are very similar. The only real difference is the location of the scales 3rd tone. Off of the Major scale we had an “E” natural tone. But, to create Minor, we simply lowered the 3rd from “E” Natural, down to an, “Eb.” I want to help you apply this sound (of our new Minor Jazz scale), by organizing a melody to cover a Minor chord jam from off the root of, “C Minor.” Minor Jazz Scale Lick:
Work with the video demonstration of this lick until it feels smooth and easy to perform. Then, work at inventing your own licks.
CONCLUSION: In wrapping up, my suggestion is to work on generating some chord jams that apply a Jazz sounding chord harmony where you could get to work and practice these Major and Minor Jazz scales... If you have a looper pedal, record a jam with some jazzed up chords like the; Dominant 13 or using Major 7 or the Major 9. In the Minor direction, try using chords like the Minor 11 the Minor 7, or the Minor 6 chord. These chord sounds will function as excellent back-drops to create just the right setting for playing these jazz scales over. If you don’t have anything to play-back chords on, I’d suggest checking out a great online chord generator that was created by “OneMotion.com,” it’s called the “Chord Player.” Before we wrap up here, let me give you a quick tutorial on how to use this really handy online chord player… CHORD PLAYER:
•VISIT THE WEBSITE: If you’d like to learn more about topics like this one and many others,join my members siteas a free member and start looking through my, “Guitar Courses.” I’ve spent over 25 years working with hundreds of guitar students creating thousands of detailed step-by-step guitar lessons for both my website members and my private students. The result is the most comprehensive guitar course that covers every aspect of beginner to advanced playing ideas to help you improve your playing.
•LIMITED TIME OFFER: If youjoin my siteas a Premium member, you’ll receive aFREE copyof my popular Guitar Technique eBook. My Guitar Technique eBook is 28 pages of jam-packed exercises, drills and studies for mastering all of your technical skills at playing Guitar.
Posted by Andrew Wasson
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
When it comes to the study of riffs and licks, guitar students are making some big practice mistakes that are causing it to be more difficult to remember what was practiced day to day. In this lesson, I’m going to show you the biggest problems that I notice when students are practicing riffs and licks and I'll help you fix how you do your guitar exercises so you get much more out of each practice session...
The best part is, the corrective method that I discuss in this lesson can apply to almost every single riff and lick learning that you do, instantly creating great results that can really work when you include them into your practice routine. WATCH THE VIDEO:
CAN'T REMEMBER YOUR IDEAS? One of the biggest frustrations that a lot of guitar students face is that they will start working on a riff, or a guitar lick, and then (after they put down the guitar and come back the next day), they can’t remember the idea that they were practicing. Maybe they forget the shape the next day, maybe they can’t recall the rhythm. Maybe they do know the general note layout, but they can’t recall the order and sequence of the notes. Let's face it, practicing riffs and licks like this is totally counter-productive. So, you’re going to want to stop doing this.
A NEW APPROACH: In this lesson, we’re going to organize a NEW plan so when you sit down to study your riffs and licks you WILL remember them the next time you grab yr guitar. The first step of this new plan, comes down to understanding what it is that you’re playing. Let me show you a guitar riff right now that you can try at home and we’ll use my riff as our example in this lesson. Riff Example:
MEMORY MASTERY: Every guitar part that you play will always have information within it that clarifies several important musical elements.
When you learn new ideas, you need to; analyze the theory and rhythm behind the idea, write down what the riff on paper, and record the riff or lick for listening to on your next practice session. It’s like you’re creating a detailed plan, or you could call it a log of what you’re performing. This is important because the notes will tell you things… like what key the part is in… and the groove will tell you what kind of beat structure is there.
STEP 1). NOTE ANALYSIS: In the riff (that I just showed you above), we have a series of tones that all begin at the note of, “E.” And, if you have a look at any music keys chart you’ll see pretty quick that “E Major,” has four sharps, but our riff doesn’t. So that means our riff isn’t in the key of, “E Major,” it’s from the key of “E Minor.”
PROVE IT - EVERY TIME: To prove the key of the idea you're practicing, visit MusicTheory.net and use their Scale Calculator to learn more specifically how any and every riff or a lick you play /practice can be analyzed properly.
STEP 2). RHYTHM OVERVIEW: The next thing that’s important, is understanding what the rhythmic beat structure is like. Ask yourself some simple questions about what the rhythm part is like regarding what you’re playing. Things like… is the beat and the overall feel fairly consistent? Where does the feel of the notes get faster, or are there parts where the feel is slower? How do you want to tap your foot? Is it more quickly, or does your foot want to tap at a moderate or even at a slow pace? The riff example that we just played was VERY consistent. Except for at the end were it slowed down slightly. If you were to clap that feel, how would it sound?
Make a few judgment calls at this point, on whether the riff is made up of mostly eighth-notes, or does the riff have some quarter notes? I’ll give you a hint – this riff that I just played, is almost entirely made up of 8th notes, except at the very end - there’s two quarter-notes.
You don’t have to be an expert on rhythm to start asking these types of questions. But, once you do begin paying attention to rhythm, you’ll find that your musical memory starts to get a whole lot wiser!
STEP 3). RECORD THE PART: Once you’ve determined some ideas about your riffs; note structure, the key, the intervals, and the rhythm.
Once you’ve made a few crib notes about the riff that you’re working on, the next step is to actually create a simple recording for documenting what you’re learning. You can do this using your phone or you can do it on your iPad, or you can fire up an online web-app to record your ideas... I often use one that’s called, “online-voice-recorder.com.” This web-app will just use the microphone of your computer or your laptop to instantly record and then save whatever your computer microphone picks up. It's very easy to use a web-app or mobile app for making a quick recording on your home computer.
REVIEW: Alright, so now let’s review how this new riff and licks system I’ve laid out here for you, actually functions and how you can integrate it into your daily routine. Step one: Once you’ve got your riff organized, immediately take some extra time to become more fully aware of the notes that are involved with the part. Use fret-board diagram paper, and TAB paper to jot down the notes and their locations. Then, once you’ve got all the notes labeled, have a look at a key signatures chart, or use the interactive scale calc. over at MusicTheory.net to figure out your scale. Step two: Spend some time focusing on the rhythm and the beat structure of your riff or your lick. Make some determinations about the timing to help you better remember what specifically is involved with the rhythm structure of your riff or lick… Step three: Finally, record your idea and make a quick MP3 of what it is you’ve been practicing... This entire method (if you use it), will go a long way in helping you to better understand where you’re at when you first start practicing any new idea. And, best of all, it’ll help you to keep working on them the next time you sit down to practice guitar!
Have you ever wondered if there was a single perfect total chord workout? A daily routine that could create a real challenge for you. Especially when you consider all of the harmonies and chords that you will need to hit in that workout. Well, you're in luck, I’m going to deliver exactly that in this lesson...
If you want to try just a single total chord workout routine, and if you are new to this type of training, then you will want to do the "Triad" workout I'm going to cover in this lesson.
If instead, you want to adopt a more rigorous total chord split workout routine, then you will want to pair this up with doing a Seventh-Chord workout and perform both triads and sevenths in alternating fashion on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
WATCH THE VIDEO:
In this session we’re going to talk about chords. But, we’re not going to go on and on about elementary shapes and simple songs that you should learn in order to get better at your chords.
Instead, we’re going to dig right into how guitar players can become really talented at; making chords, at playing them efficiently in songs, and also (most importantly), how you can use chords for both composing and enhancing your music. Once we’re done this lesson, you’ll understand chord types that are important for you to practice. Plus, you’ll learn about a daily routine that you can get started on right away for working on chords in musical situations. To study all this, I’m going to introduce you to a great web-site called “Auto-Chords.com,” and on that site, I’ll discuss how you can use it's web-apps as a practice and technical training tool for not only practicing the chords, but also for using chords within a key signature. Practicing these skills will help you to be able to make up songs along with enhancing songs that you already know. This way, your music will start sounding a lot better - a lot faster.
STEP 1). CHORD HARMONY LEVELS: Let’s get started with a break-down of chord types that are important for you to practice. In music, we have different levels of chord harmony, they are; - Dyads: These are not truly a chord since a chord in music requires 3-notes, but instead these are two note harmony (intervals). Guitar players often refer to these as "Double-Stop Chords." They are used in a wide variety of guitar riffs. - Triads: The triad is the first true harmony in music and has 3 notes. Triads primarily consist of Major, Minor chord types and are used in a majority of Western music. They can be found in all types of music. Guitarists learn them early on as "Open" and "1st-Position," patterns. Additional triads include the "Augmented," and the, "Diminished," but they are rarely applied in most songs due to their dissonance. - Seventh Chord Harmony: 7th's are chords that have 4-notes. They can come across as sounding pretty Jazzy. They include; "Major 7," "Minor 7," "Dominant 7," and two options for "Diminished." The 7th quality chords are more challenging and require more dexterity to play with ease of use. These chords are commonly found in Jazz, although Pop Music can sometimes offer up situations for them as well. - Extended and Altered: Beyond the 7th chord, harmony can get much more sophisticated, with extended types called; “9th, 11th and 13th.” Plus, speaking of Jazz sounds, we can also create chord alterations, like the “b9, b5, #9, and #5. Those chords are very Jazz oriented and mostly found within Jazz compositions.
STEP 2). GENERAL PERFORMANCE: In a general playing sense, most of the music that we hear on the radio (popular songs), will be linked to the major and minor Triad chord types, along with a few seventh chord types performed once in awhile. With Dyads (Double-Stop's), we’re generally going to be rather limited to finding them used for 2-note chord riffs in songs - played within certain intro’s and in specific song sections. Discovering riffs that apply double-stops, would be more applicable to learning a specific song part, like the song riff in Jimmy Buffets, “Margaritaville,” or in Van Morrison’s song, “Brown Eyed Girl.”
This brings us to what is most important, and as you might have guessed from our discussion so far, that would be learning Triad chords to the highest level of skill possible. Development of the Triads along with becoming highly aware of how to play Triad shapes all over the guitar is critical. In shooting for a goal of becoming a talented chord strummer, you’ll need some technical dexterity and some physical skill along with the basic music theory awareness for using the triad chord types. Generally, this work starts with the open and 1st position chord patterns. You can get my free hand-out covering all of these patterns by going to my web-site and checking out the lessons page titled, “The Basic Chords on Guitar.” After that, you’ll need to begin the study of moveable triad chord patterns, which are often just referred to as “Barre” chords. If you need some help developing those, check out my Rhythm Guitar Lesson titled, “Winning the Battle Over Barre Chords.” That "Barre Chords," lesson also comes with an excellent free and highly detailed handout to help you get started on a daily workout routine with playing Barre chords on the guitar neck.
STEP 3). THE DAILY WORKOUT As you’re getting started with building all the higher levels of skill with learning all of your open, and 1st position triads (as well as) the Barre chords, this brings us to the really fun segment of this lesson where we’re going to get you familiarized with both the use and application of all of these chord types. As a way to practice the Triad chords at a more sophisticated level, you’ll want to start getting more organized with your knowledge of key signatures and how chords relate to the keys that are used to create popular music. At this point I'd like to suggest that we head over to a fantastic chord development web-site that you can start using right away in order to help you develop this practice idea at a higher level. It’s called, “AutoChords.com”
My suggestion is that you hit the Auto-Chords website once a day and when you’re there, start by selecting a key signature and then focus on taking a run through all of the chords that are associated to the key.
This will help with developing your memory for the chords of a key and how the chord qualities will operate inside of each of the keys. Then, you’ll want to start doing some practice on playing the chords of the “Main Progression” offered at the top of the Auto-Chords web-page.
Finally, make a study through the “Alternative” chord progression’s that are shown underneath the main progression.
Remember those "Alternative," options will offer you ideas for running through the primary key’s relative minor harmony along with two other jam ideas based off of the keys built from the 4th and 5th chord steps of your primary key.
All in all, this workout will be an excellent approach for developing a lot of chord concepts in a nice compact exercise that’s all in one place.
•VISIT THE WEBSITE: If you’d like to learn more about topics like this one and many others,join my members siteas a free member and start looking through my, “Guitar Courses.” I’ve spent over 25 years working with hundreds of guitar students creating thousands of detailed step-by-step guitar lessons for both my website members and my private students. The result is the most comprehensive guitar course that covers every aspect of beginner to advanced playing ideas to help you improve your playing.
•LIMITED TIME OFFER: If youjoin my siteas a Premium member, you’ll receive aFREE copyof my popular Guitar Technique eBook. My Guitar Technique eBook is 28 pages of jam-packed exercises, drills and studies for mastering all of your technical skills at playing Guitar.