I'm fascinated by this 'fusion' playing, can anyone dissect it for me?

axisus

I realise that this sort of playing is not most people's thing, hopefully the 'fusion' tag will deter negative people who don't like it!

OK, so I've posted this video before some years ago, but I still keep coming back to it. It is Per Nilsson improvising and it just blows my mind. I'm someone who is perpetually trapped in the simple blues scale so this sounds like a foreign language to me. 

I'm wondering how one would play like this? Presumably he's using a major scale mode? It is very melodic so he's maybe playing around the chord changes?

So if it is those things, you would need to know what mode to use I guess, and that depends on the chords? So .... you look at a chord chart ..... or do amazing guitar bods kind of know what chords are going on and therefore what mode to use without information?

Likewise, I guess you need to know all the notes all over the fretboard to know where to be at any given time? I er ... don't know fretboard notes at all! Is there a good way to learn?

So yeah, I'm just trying to find out how to get that sort of 'sound' playing over a backing track. Any pointers gratefully received!

hollywoodrox

That’s really great , it reminds me vaguely of Reb beach in the early 90s the Middle Eastern bit part way through sounds a bit Phrygian but with more happiness and some latter parts sound similar to “the rainbow in the rose”  by winger in tonality . It’s bloody great though. I’m pleased you posted it . I like Nili Brosh she’s great . Check out her YouTube 

im really looking forward to hearing someone on here break down the theory of it 

S56035

How is this not a discussion on quality control with those wonky frets???

viz

Love Per Nillson, such a cool and funny dude. And Nili. And her brother in fact. All good sausages. 

Anyway, yep the bits over the dominant chord (chord 5), which is D7 - he's playing D phrygian dominant. Then when it resolves to the tonic chord (chord 1), which is G, he's playing a mixture of G major, like you said, and G mixolydian. 

Quite unusual to go from phrygian dominant to the major tonic - normally it's a minor piece that commands phrygian dominant. Anyhoo, that's what it is. At least in the first minute - I didn't listen to all of it.

In terms of playing, it's just a matter of getting the scales and runs and arpeggios under your fingers; he's using plenty of distortion so you don't have to worry too much about awesome technique. Though pretty cool to play without a plectrum.

Lots of Satriani is like this - have you tried it?

axisus

viz said:

Love Per Nillson, such a cool and funny dude. And Nili. And her brother in fact. All good sausages. 

Anyway, yep the bits over the dominant chord (chord 5), which is D7 - he's playing D phrygian dominant. Then when it resolves to the tonic chord (chord 1), which is G, he's playing a mixture of G major, like you said, and G mixolydian. 

Quite unusual to go from phrygian dominant to the major tonic - normally it's a minor piece that commands phrygian dominant. Anyhoo, that's what it is. At least in the first minute - I didn't listen to all of it.

In terms of playing, it's just a matter of getting the scales and runs and arpeggios under your fingers; he's using plenty of distortion so you don't have to worry too much about awesome technique. Though pretty cool to play without a plectrum.

Lots of Satriani is like this - have you tried it?

Honestly, I marvel at people like you who can analyse this stuff! 

I love Satriani, I have tried learning a few pieces in the past but I am very poor with tab plus my technique is short of the level required. Thanks for the info here though, I love the sound of that early bit, which I assume is the Phrygian dominant.

monquixote

A lot of it is in the legato and playing three note per string patterns.

Find a backing track advertised as Phrygian and have a bash. Don't worry if you think you don't know the scale. It's just major but treating a different note as the tonic (home) note.

digitalkettle

monquixote said:

A lot of it is in the legato and playing three note per string patterns.

Find a backing track advertised as Phrygian and have a bash. Don't worry if you think you don't know the scale. It's just major but treating a different note as the tonic (home) note.

 @axisus is on about the Phrygian Dominant (Spanish Phrygian)...5th mode of the harmonic minor scale.

roberty

digitalkettle said:

monquixote said:

A lot of it is in the legato and playing three note per string patterns.

Find a backing track advertised as Phrygian and have a bash. Don't worry if you think you don't know the scale. It's just major but treating a different note as the tonic (home) note.

 @axisus is on about the Phrygian Dominant (Spanish Phrygian)...5th mode of the harmonic minor scale.

It sounds scarier than is is

monquixote

digitalkettle said:

monquixote said:

A lot of it is in the legato and playing three note per string patterns.

Find a backing track advertised as Phrygian and have a bash. Don't worry if you think you don't know the scale. It's just major but treating a different note as the tonic (home) note.

 @axisus is on about the Phrygian Dominant (Spanish Phrygian)...5th mode of the harmonic minor scale.

Yeah I know, Given he's trying to get out of just playing blues scale I dont think it really matters.

I'd suggest probably Dorian and Mixolydian are the easiest to understand and apply followed by Phrygian before you move beyond the major modes.

Starting with Phrygian Dominant sounds like a recipe for frustration.

steamabacus

Although I now know it as Phrygian Dominant or (as I first saw it called) Spanish Phrygian, to me it will always be the 'Steve Hillage scale' as I first discovered it by noodling along to Hillage. When I first started learning a bit of theory I worked out it was the notes of (for example) A harmonic minor played over a riff in E - but still had no idea why?

@axisus ; Do you have a looper pedal? If so try this...

Play a looped riff in E using E, F and D power chords (ie E5, F5, D5)

If you play over that using the notes of A minor (or C major - same notes) but using the E as the root note you will be playing in E Phrygian (a minor mode of the major scale)    E F G A B C D

If you now change that G (the minor third in E) to a G# (the major third in E) over the same looped riff, E still the root note, you will be playing in E Phrygian Dominant    E F G# A B C D

You can now widdle along for hours doing your best Steve Hillage impression

If you wanted to play the full chords for the backing riff you would use

E minor, F major and D minor    for E Phrygian

but

E major, F major and D minor    for E Phrygian Dominant

viz

Try this



It's classic Yngwie backing track - it's in A minor and it's got loads of E Phrygian Dominant ("PD"), like basically every Yngwie song ever.

The first 44 seconds are E(PD)

Then the next bit is a "Still Got The Blues, "backwards cycling through the circle of 5ths"" progression from D minor all the way to A minor.


For the E(PD) section, you play 1 b2 3 4 5 b6 b7 8, or E F G# A B C D E.

For the backwards cycling bit, you should theoretically play the changes - Dm, G, C, etc; but you can also just stick to Am throughout. Am has A B C D E F G A.

But you do have to flip briefly to A harmonic minor (or E PD, which has the same notes) when you get to the E chord near the end of the progression, because you need that G# over the E chord to get the Yngwie feels.

This guy is actually professing to play E(PD) throughout, but in fact over the progression he doesn't choose to play a G or a G# until he gets to that E chord, so the majority of it is just as much in Am as it is in E(PD).

steamabacus

I found a diagram for the fingerings for the E Phrygian Dominant on my laptop ...

stufisher

This has turned into a day of learning for me ... Rick Beato vid in the morning and this thread in the afternoon ... my brain can cope but my fingers can't 

Great vid and many thanks to @steamabacus and @viz for the insightful edification  

hollywoodrox

stufisher said:

This has turned into a day of learning for me ... Rick Beato vid in the morning and this thread in the afternoon ... my brain can cope but my fingers can't 

Great vid and many thanks to @steamabacus and @viz for the insightful edification  

Here here 

axisus

Yeah, many thanks @steamabacus and @viz plenty to be going on with!

I still don't get how people know what scale is appropriate 'on the fly'???

relic245

steamabacus said:

Although I now know it as Phrygian Dominant or (as I first saw it called) Spanish Phrygian, to me it will always be the 'Steve Hillage scale' as I first discovered it by noodling along to Hillage. When I first started learning a bit of theory I worked out it was the notes of (for example) A harmonic minor played over a riff in E - but still had no idea why?

@axisus ; Do you have a looper pedal? If so try this...

Play a looped riff in E using E, F and D power chords (ie E5, F5, D5)

If you play over that using the notes of A minor (or C major - same notes) but using the E as the root note you will be playing in E Phrygian (a minor mode of the major scale)    E F G A B C D

If you now change that G (the minor third in E) to a G# (the major third in E) over the same looped riff, E still the root note, you will be playing in E Phrygian Dominant    E F G# A B C D

You can now widdle along for hours doing your best Steve Hillage impression

If you wanted to play the full chords for the backing riff you would use

E minor, F major and D minor    for E Phrygian

but

E major, F major and D minor    for E Phrygian Dominant

Brilliant thanks @steamabacus I just tried that and instantly I was transported back to all those Gong albums from my youth. 

Big smile on my face now I need to explore this a bit more. 

octatonic

axisus said:

viz said:

Love Per Nillson, such a cool and funny dude. And Nili. And her brother in fact. All good sausages. 

Anyway, yep the bits over the dominant chord (chord 5), which is D7 - he's playing D phrygian dominant. Then when it resolves to the tonic chord (chord 1), which is G, he's playing a mixture of G major, like you said, and G mixolydian. 

Quite unusual to go from phrygian dominant to the major tonic - normally it's a minor piece that commands phrygian dominant. Anyhoo, that's what it is. At least in the first minute - I didn't listen to all of it.

In terms of playing, it's just a matter of getting the scales and runs and arpeggios under your fingers; he's using plenty of distortion so you don't have to worry too much about awesome technique. Though pretty cool to play without a plectrum.

Lots of Satriani is like this - have you tried it?

Honestly, I marvel at people like you who can analyse this stuff! 

I love Satriani, I have tried learning a few pieces in the past but I am very poor with tab plus my technique is short of the level required. Thanks for the info here though, I love the sound of that early bit, which I assume is the Phrygian dominant.

It is just practice.
Not dismissing Viz's abilities here- quite the opposite, he's done this so much that it is second nature.

Also check out Steve Morse and David Torn- they do a lot of Phrygian dominant style runs.
And Dream Theater.

In order to get there you need to play the harmonic minor scale and the modes of it.
Much as you have modes of the major scale, you also have modes of the harmonic and melodic minor.

Easiest to start harmonic in the key of A, because it is close to the natural minor mode.

A B C D E F G# A

If you start that mode from the 5th note E you get
E F G# A B C D

Map that across the fretboard- I mostly use three note per string patterns but you can also modify CAGED fingerings, it is just one note different to A Aeolian.
You want to be able to play this at a minimum in three positions and be able to link them up.
Five positions would be better.
I suggest starting at 5th (or slide from the 4th to the 5th on the 6th string), 7th, 10th, 12th frets and starting at open E too,

Drill the hell out of that for a week or two, play as scales and then move to creating melodic lines with it shifting between positions.
You can't do the second thing without doing the first thing (ie learn the alphabet, then create words).

Then (like a year down the line) work on transitioning in and out of chord progressions where you shift from other parent scales into phrygian dominant ideas.

The great thing about modes is once you learn one parent scale you have tacitly learned all the modes too, you just need to do the not-inconsequential work to link them all up.

Modes of Harmonic Minor:

1: Harmonic Minor:  A B C D E F G# A
2: Locrian ♮6: B C D E F G# B
3: Ionian ♯5: C D E F G# A B C
4: Romanian Minor:  D E F G# A B C D
5: Phrygian Dominant: E F G# A B C D E
6: Lydian ♯2:: F G# A B C D E F
7: Altered Diminished: G# A B C D E F G

Great tune- it gets tasty as fuck at 4:30.

But Phygian dominant is the main one used in fusion after harmonic minor.

axisus

octatonic said:

axisus said:

viz said:

Love Per Nillson, such a cool and funny dude. And Nili. And her brother in fact. All good sausages. 

Anyway, yep the bits over the dominant chord (chord 5), which is D7 - he's playing D phrygian dominant. Then when it resolves to the tonic chord (chord 1), which is G, he's playing a mixture of G major, like you said, and G mixolydian. 

Quite unusual to go from phrygian dominant to the major tonic - normally it's a minor piece that commands phrygian dominant. Anyhoo, that's what it is. At least in the first minute - I didn't listen to all of it.

In terms of playing, it's just a matter of getting the scales and runs and arpeggios under your fingers; he's using plenty of distortion so you don't have to worry too much about awesome technique. Though pretty cool to play without a plectrum.

Lots of Satriani is like this - have you tried it?

Honestly, I marvel at people like you who can analyse this stuff! 

I love Satriani, I have tried learning a few pieces in the past but I am very poor with tab plus my technique is short of the level required. Thanks for the info here though, I love the sound of that early bit, which I assume is the Phrygian dominant.

It is just practice.
Not dismissing Viz's abilities here- quite the opposite, he's done this so much that it is second nature.

Also check out Steve Morse and David Torn- they do a lot of Phrygian dominant style runs.
And Dream Theater.

In order to get there you need to play the harmonic minor scale and the modes of it.
Much as you have modes of the major scale, you also have modes of the harmonic and melodic minor.

Easiest to start harmonic in the key of A, because it is close to the natural minor mode.

A B C D E F G# A

If you start that mode from the 5th note E you get
E F G# A B C D

Map that across the fretboard- I mostly use three note per string patterns but you can also modify CAGED fingerings, it is just one note different to A Aeolian.
You want to be able to play this at a minimum in three positions and be able to link them up.
Five positions would be better.
I suggest starting at 5th (or slide from the 4th to the 5th on the 6th string), 7th, 10th, 12th frets and starting at open E too,

Drill the hell out of that for a week or two, play as scales and then move to creating melodic lines with it shifting between positions.
You can't do the second thing without doing the first thing (ie learn the alphabet, then create words).

Then (like a year down the line) work on transitioning in and out of chord progressions where you shift from other parent scales into phrygian dominant ideas.

The great thing about modes is once you learn one parent scale you have tacitly learned all the modes too, you just need to do the not-inconsequential work to link them all up.

Modes of Harmonic Minor:

1: Harmonic Minor:  A B C D E F G# A
2: Locrian ♮6: B C D E F G# B
3: Ionian ♯5: C D E F G# A B C
4: Romanian Minor:  D E F G# A B C D
5: Phrygian Dominant: E F G# A B C D E
6: Lydian ♯2:: F G# A B C D E F
7: Altered Diminished: G# A B C D E F G

Great tune- it gets tasty as fuck at 4:30.

But Phygian dominant is the main one used in fusion after harmonic minor.

Many thanks!

Dominic

Irrespective of the notes /scales/modes /tune ......why do these 'Fusion ' players always get their guitar to sound like a Rolf Harris Stylophone ?
I'm not saying that's a bad thing ......but I have tried and can't get an amp/guitar/pedal to sound anything like this.
Even a very high gain amp with a seriously strong drive pedal just sounds like a load of interference like trying to tune in an old radio
How do they make that sound ?

octatonic

Dominic said:

Irrespective of the notes /scales/modes /tune ......why do these 'Fusion ' players always get their guitar to sound like a Rolf Harris Stylophone ?
I'm not saying that's a bad thing ......but I have tried and can't get an amp/guitar/pedal to sound anything like this.
Even a very high gain amp with a seriously strong drive pedal just sounds like a load of interference like trying to tune in an old radio
How do they make that sound ?

It is a touch thing, rather than a tone thing.

 Right hand muting, tone pot roll off, picking is softer than you think, but with precision.
Lots of legato and years of playing 5 note rolls to a metronome.

Grangousier

But Phygian dominant is the main one used in fusion after harmonic minor.

Not a very learned person, but one thing I noticed when I tried this out is that if you add a note between the seventh and the root (there are reasons why you might want to do this) - in this case an Eb - you get two dominant seven chords a semitone apart - in this case E7 and F7.  Which also sounds good if you weave them together.

Also, the equivalent of minor pentatonic in Harmonic Minor would be A - C - D - E -G#, which also gives some fun sounds.

(One thing I try out on scales is to use the Pentatonic Generating Algorithm - the root, third, fourth, fifth and seventh. This isn't a real theory thing, or it could be a real thing, but I didn't read it anywhere, I got it from misunderstanding something completely different that someone said, but you get some interesting stuff.)