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Yep, good example of soloing in the major pentatonic. Nice. I often find myself dropping to it when playing major pieces on acoustic guitar or electric with 10s or 11s, because it's hard to play in the minor pentatonic shape and achieve the necessary major 3rds on the top string through bending, so I drop down a minor 3rd and play major pentatonic. It is rather a country style, with those major 3rds and tone bends on the G string - which is why you like it I guess . 'Take it Easy' intro by the Eagles is a good example.
I think the reason many people default to the minor pentatonic is because it's thought of as being more soulful and flexible - you can overlay major tonic chords with that juicy minor 3rd, and if needed, majorise it through judicious bends, whereas you can't minorise the major pentatonic. But it sounds good in your hands.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
I saw a great sign at CrossFit on Friday night - "Obsession is what lazy people call commitment". I am lazy on the guitar, I get my jollies playing in time with my band, reacting quickly when the singer decides to do another chorus or improvises in a way we all strive to react to. So if I say obsession from now on it's with a tacit acceptance that I may well be lazy, but equally I may percieve the commitment to be misplaced.
If you wait a little while, all the people stroking their beards and saying "hmm yes... guitarists... not an intelligent species by default...." (implicitly setting themselves above common guitarists by generalising about their supposed motives) these people soon revert to their preferred behaviour (implicitly setting themselves above common guitarists by generalising about their playing).
When I used to watch Guthrie's Funk band play every Thursday, a friend came along and said "wow what are you thinking when you're playing that bit?!" the reply was "I was thinking how crap it is I can't smoke whilst I'm playing and I have to go upstairs to smoke and can't hold a pint in one hand and a cigarette in the other". Peturbed my mate asked the head of Music Teaching for the county who's great friends with Zak (the saxophonist) "what's he doing over that bit?" - this guy plays and looks like Bill Evans, the reply finally came: "he's playing over Em7."
If your head is striving to put labels on notes as they sail past (then your heart is not in it), you're basically a butterfly catcher in a meadow... you're in a beautiful meadow, packed with flowers and grasses, butterflies and bugs but you're on a mission and can only see 1% of that and the 1% you want to capture, kill and put in a jar.
Where I've been taught by the guys who write for Guitar Techniques (about 5-6 of them), modes are about 5% of the discussion; why is that? It's what doesn't get explained to people on a forum:
The amount of words written to explain modes is directly proportional to the complexity created by using modes, this has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the importance or prominence of modes within the performance or creation of music.
Imagine you got a book on football and 500 pages are dedicated to the off-side rule, 2 pages are dedicated to passing - superficially it's easy to believe that offside rules dominate the game, the truth is offside rule is more frequently something boring people discuss after the match and passing is something that happens throughout the match, has endless nuances but is a very simple concept to grasp initially...
Modes and scales are a system to describe note selection in western music, if you play enough music you'll recognise the sounds anyway and someone will explain them when you need to know - that is all there is to it. At that point you've a repertoire and an understanding of composition and timing as well - which is very very valuable to other musicians.
Can you count to ten on your fingers?
Yes
Show me
I count holding up an extra finger each time
Now show me 7
I hold up 7 fingers
Now 9
I hold up 9 fingers, and he repeats until I've held up all ten numbers of fingers.
Right, he says, so the chromatic scale is 11 notes. So you learn a finger position for 11 instead of the 10 you just demonstrated. Its only 1 more! Then all you have to learn is how to jump around between those 11 notes in a way that sounds good to YOUR ear.
I spent the next 18 months just learning to play by ear on the sax.
I'm not saying its right for everyone or for you. I will never be a great musician. But me, I find it far more satisfying to play by ear, whether guitar or sax.
I am not sure what that all meant with overlaying tonics etc, but I take it, I do play in a major scale! Do you think what scales to use or do you think in notes when you play? I always know where the root is so long as I start and end there, I know I'm fairly safe! [-O<
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
so maybe if it was looked at as being able to play over different chord types from each root of the scale it would seem more important...but saying that i think arps are where it is at you can outline every chord and even without the chords you can hear the changes...
i think they are important but not the be all and end all just part of the full picture
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See that is total double Dutch to me, I hit a note and if it sounds right it's right, if it sounds wrong it's wrong. It's black and white, I envy you guys that actually know what you are doing.
I confess I just can't seem to understand this, sorry - am I missing something? I mean, there are 12 chromatic notes not including the 13th repeated one - 7 whites and 5 blacks - so how and why do you miss one out on the sax, and which note is it? I completely agree with the part about developing your own natural ear for music. To me this comes from the 3-pronged approach of listening to music, playing music, and learning theory, all in parallel, but I know that's not for everyone. But to me, if one's goal is to attain the breadth and depth of musical language to be able to speak with your instrument and play by ear, whether it's your own compositions or someone else's, then I think it's a good approach.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
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Thinking is only for the practice room..
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Where this approach gets into trouble, is where you try to play through more complex changes - though with practice, I can usually find a way through them. As much as anything it's about being able to 'hear' an unfamiliar change properly.
As I said earlier in the thread, a lot of what are probably part of some exotic mode, are 'passing notes' to me.
I still think touch and phrasing using simple harmonic vocabulary always sounds more pleasing to a non-player's ear than screaming through every mode known to man.