It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
Still a way to go on the Natural Major Scale, but getting there on the Natural Minor and it's incredibly useful.
Also +1 for justinguitar
Once you know the pentatonic you only need to add a 2nd and a 6th and you've got a minor scale
starting from any fret, any string :
XXYYZZX ad infintum (or just keep repeating if you have infinite strings - or 7 or 8 say) for a Major Scale
shift up one fret when moving from X to Y
shift up one fret if moving from a G string to a B string
(X is frets 135, Y is 124, Z is 134)
modes are are just as easy - same pattern, just different starting points in that pattern
E.g. Minor / Aeolian start the pattern with ZZ, Lydian XY, Dorian ZX, Milo XXX etc)
(source Michael Pillitiere)
Learn one pattern only to begin.
Not just the fingering, the up / down, the pattern etc.
But how to use it. What you can do with it. Learn licks, play licks, reshape licks. Create licks. Play over backing tracks. Etc.
Then learn one more pattern. Do the same as before.
And then learn how to connect the two positions you now know.
Do all this before learning the 3rd pattern.
And so on.
That is the job of months - unless you have an 8-hour / day practice schedule.
G major, 3 notes per string, all 7 patterns
G major pentatonic, all 5 patterns
their warmup is to play G maj linking all 7 patterns as a continuous exercise working through every pattern with the metronome in 1/4 notes and then again in 1/4 triplets from the pattern starting on the 3rd fret right up to the octave on the 15th
then we do the same with the pentatonic shapes
it's good for fingerboard knowledge, not only in G, because the relationships of patterns and fingerings gets burnt in.
it's also good as a picking exercise because it's alt picked throughout and so you play a lot of notes against a click to make it all the way to the octave
and good for aural perception.. hearing the scales and feeling where they are on the fingerboard when you fret the notes
also.. G major fingering is exactly the same for its relative minor and associated modes.. so nail the fingering in one and you nail it for all.. that just leaves learning the context of minor / other modes rather than treating the location of the notes as something different for your motor skills to learn..
additionally... as the student gets tidier and more proficient.. we gradually up the tempo to keep the pressure on the technique..
when we look at repertoire and are looking at riffs and solos etc, I often see the penny drop "oh it's this shape" even though we'll be in a different key..
it's great when they are learning songs and repeatedly encounter familiar fingerings as it helps what they are learning stick
We're playing an instrument that makes transposing a breeze. I really don't want to have to figure out all the notes of, for example, Gb Major, when I can just see all the Gb's on the fretboard and put my patterns on top. Or see all the Gb's on the fretboard and put all the intervals on top. I don't want to see the Gb Major and have to go in my head: okay, it's 6 flats, so here's a Bb, here's the Eb, etc.
I guess it's okay to do it that way if you are mostly in the same key throughout a piece, but for anything with chord changes I prefer the easy route.
I know other instruments have to do it that way, but we don't, so why should we?
there are no Greek names..
practicing the 7 different fingerings for G major is still G major, just starting from a different note..
to my students I simply refer to them a 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc position
context wise, the tonic is always G
so this exercise has nothing to do with modes or anything like that..
when we get into modes at a later time, I explain how the context changes
this means that all 7 fingering patterns for the centre key of any given mode are already known and remain available
and so in any given mode, the student can visualise the entire fingerboard based upon those 7 interlocking patterns
it is therefore less to learn because the fingers already know where to go..
it's then simply a case of getting the ear and mind to understand and get to grips with the new modal context
most folks seem to not find it too difficult to accept and understand that the major scale and the relative minor share the same pool of notes..
they tend to be completely comfortable with the difference in tonality and are quite happy to to write, solo, improvise in major and minor keys..
the funny thing is that modes behave in exactly the same way..
a relative minor is simply a different key / scale to it's parent major key [and so shares the same note pool] that has it's own specific tonality or 'voice'..
in that sense, modes are no different at all..
and so modes don't need to be taught differently or in a special way..
once the relative minor thing is fully understood, modes are just more of the same
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.