A combination of standalone guitar lessons and backup to the one on one lessons I give to my students at the Leeds Guitar Studio. You'll find lots of useful information for guitarists of all types.
Here's another little finger twister for you. Not only will this get your fingers in a tangle but it'll mess with your mind a little bit too!
In this particular slice of Digital Hell you'll be playing an odd note grouping of 5 descending along a single string. The first finger must stay very low and reach back to anticipate the next position whilst the other fingers are playing.
This could be played two different ways rhymically:
As a pentuplet so you're playing the entire 5 note pattern in the space of one beat or alternatively over a 4/4 pulse.
Played at any kind of speed this becomes confusing to the ear as the mind tries to resolve a constantly shifting 1. This is a useful device for creating rhythmic interest with relatively simple figures but requires greater rhythmic control to keep in time.
Many players use this technique in their improvisation.
For ease of reading the example is notated in 5/16 but in the video I'm playing it over a 4 pulse. The tempo is 140bpm but as always build up to faster tempos slowly ensuring clarity at all times.
OK I fess up. That title is entirely misleading and designed to lure the unsuspecting guitarist into reading this blog and watching the video. The clue was the use of the word SECRET. It's a bit like when it says 'Rare unseen footage of player X' in a Youtube description. If it's on YouTube it's no longer rare or unseen! But I digress...
Guitarist's are suckers for anything that promises to aid them in that endless quest for tone and the guitar mags are full of it.
'10 things you must do to sound like Eddie Van Halen'
1: Huff Schwinn cycle paint (it's what Eddie used)
2: Rewire your guitar only on a full moon and don't forget to bypass the tone pot.
3. Get some authentic Marlboro burns on your headstock etc....
And on it goes.....
Whilst a lot of this stuff us usefull and valid advice the fact of the matter is these mags are there to sell product whether it be the artists (their latest CD) or the manufacturers (their latest amp).
Often I find the latest offering from Blackmarstarshall or whoever to be completely unusable but these products are aimed at a mass market and the key thing here is finding something that works for you.
So here's the real meat of this article - after this you can go back to watching Ukrainian midget tossing, pictures of donkeys wearing fedoras or whatever else you do with your internet time.
Okay so the tone secret of the Pharaohs is.......
It's at either end of the tone chain that the major changes can be achieved. The bit in the middle...well.....meh!
The beginning.
The player's ears, hands and heart.
They make the single biggest difference but you can't buy those.
Strings
Great strings are the heart of your sound and anyone that says they don't make a difference is frankly an idiot. For years I used Ernie Balls and thought they were the best you could get. Until I tried Newtones that is. They sound and feel better last far longer and because they're wound for YOU the gauges and core can tailored to your instrument and requirements. Over the years either through necessity or curiosity I've tried others but they just don't cut it. A big shout out to Kurt Mangan strings by the way who've come the closest! Pickups
Getting the right pickup for the guitar is crucial and handwound pickups are always better. More articulation and detail. In terms of bang for you buck it's hard get more for less. Amps only do just that...amplify. Feed crap in at one end and they'll throw crap out at the other end. Loud, distorted crap!
This is why I pay more attention (and money) to this stage than any other. I think that without the right pickup you're fighting a losing battle.
The end. Speakers
Finding a speaker you like sound of is critical and can transform the sound of an amp for better or worse in 5 mins. This is easily controlled by you and doesn't cost a fortune to experiment with.
Finally the listeners ears. People do hear things differently and there's nowt you can do about it.
Some have golden ears whilst some are made of cloth.
Anyway....watch my video and check out Catwhiskers Pickups.
One of the trickiest aspects of improvising is negotiating chord changes. It's fairly straightforward when all the chords belong to the same key. In that instance one single scale will suffice but rarely does a piece of music stay in one key. Even a basic 12 bar blues uses chords belonging to 3 different keys and most jazz standards will migrate through several tonal centers. To be truly harmonically aware one must hear all the way up through a chord. A 7th chord comprises of a root, 3rd, 5th and a 7th but whether they're played or not the there's also the 9, 11 and 13 in there as well. This requires you to practice modes/scales in a harmonic fashion or what I term Harmonic Scales.
Harmonic Scales
This is where you play up through a scale in 3rds - 1,3,5,7,9,11,13 and back to the octave again. As you're playing every other note in the scale this takes two octaves to complete and spells out the innate tonality of a given mode. I've seen these described as"super arpeggios" by Larry Carlton but I dislike the term and thus describe them as Harmonic Scales because they're exactly that: scales played in a harmonic manner, spelling out the tonality.
It would be hard to overstate the importance of getting these under the fingers and more importantly into the ears. Everything that follows in this lesson requires familiarity with them.
Freedom through Discipline
This exercise is just one of a group of exercises that I collectively refer to as 'The Disciplines'. Over time I will do videos for all them. Read the summary below and then watch the video. Like all of the disciplines it's very simple conceptually but can be practiced at any level of difficulty.
Position yourself on the bottom string anywhere on the neck
You will have 4 or 5 notes under your fingers
When you hear the random chord play through the harmonic scale that sounds correct starting on one of the notes that are under your fingers.
Play all the way back to the root passing through the 2 octaves.
When the next chord sounds try and find the nearest note to the one you finished on to begin the harmonic scale descending. It may be the same note of course!
I recommend singing the notes as you play them.
You can either use the mp3's or better still have a friend play you random chords. These need to be either Major 7th, Minor 7th or Dominant 7th. To increase the difficulty use a metronome and do it in tempo, add altered chords or have someone fire ping pong balls at you whilst you play.
If you're a guitarist looking for gigs it really helps if you've a quick way of showing people what you can do. A calling card if you will. This is even more important if you play numerous styles like I do. Generally people are resistant to the idea that a guitarist can be accomplished in more than one idiom. To combat this it helps to have the different styles back to back as they are in the video below. This way you're on to the next thing before they've got time to think, 'I don't like/am not looking for rock'. You also benefit from a sense impact as one style bumps up against another. Making a video is a good idea even if there's no real visuals as sharing video on social media is a lot easier than just audio alone. Enjoy and yes, I'm looking for gigs, so please share around!
At some point or another every guitarist will practice sequences. Usually the focus of these is the development of technique but there's a bit more to it than that. Or rather there should be... Playing with intervallic patterns can give you the raw material for improvisation. Short phrases that can be recombined in many ways to form longer musical statements that have their own internal logic and flow. At that point what started out as a dry, technical exercise becomes a creative act which is what all practice should ideally be. The genesis of this idea was hearing chromatic 3rds in the playing of Scott Henderson. He was clearly using them as a way of introducing an 'outside' kind of falling motion into his playing. I then set out to catalogue all the different chromatic 3rds patterns I could and notate them as part of my 'digital hell' series. The 3rd is a harmonically defining interval so it's good for creating 'outside' lines. Here's some of the patterns I used in the video.
Here's a summary of the concept I explain in the video.
Start any of these 3rds patterns within the chord tones. i.e. Over Bm7 you could start the pattern on D and F# (the 3rd and 5th of the chord)
Move it chromatically in either direction until you 'hook' back into the chord and resolve the tension created by the chromaticism. IN - OUT - IN again.
It's a really simple concept and not the only way of applying these by a long chalk but it is very effective. The improvisation at the end is a little more repetive than I would have liked but I was really focusing on this one concept and as such it's a little unbalanced. Enjoy!
Over 30 years of teaching guitar I've created many exercises for developing technique. These have turned into a whole series I've dubbed 'Digital Hell'. Here's an extract from number 1 in the series. This particular one focuses on 'squeeze-release', left-right synchronisation and economy picking all packed into nutritious bite sized exercises. Here's the extract
and here's the video. Skip to 0.45 to see the examples notated above.
Hybrid picking is all the rage these days and why not?! It's great for developing patterns and rhythms that you might not play otherwise. Here's an example of it I used whilst composing the riff for the Dirty Fakirs tune, Highs and Lows. It was played with a stereo tempo delay which fills out the sound and gives it extra rhythmic energy but it works just as well without. The SoundHere's a screenshot of the cubase arrange page showing the two plugins I used for this guitar sound. The guitar was recorded via DI and then I used Cubase's own Chorus plugin going into the wonderful Nasty DLA by Boosty. If you're not familiar with his work you're missing out big time. The tempo is 116bpm and you can see from the screen shot that I used quaver notes on one side and dotted crochets on the other. Any half decent processor should be able to replicate this sound for you.
The Technique I've annotated the picking/fingering that I used but don't feel compelled to follow them if something else works better for you. It's just that my ring finger falls nicely over the higher notes. Your index finger might work better if your hands are bigger! The riff works nicely because of the contrary motion and parallel 6ths. Note also that this is played and tabbed in P4 tuning although it's playable in standard. It'll just be slightly stretchy! You can hear the full track and a minus guitar version at the bottom of the page. Once you've got the riff up to speed try it with the delay and then play along with the backing track version.
Let me know how you get on and if you're feeling brave maybe I'll transcribe the solo!
Here's a video showing the riff in close up at various speeds.
Virtually every acoustic guitarist has a capo. You know, that clampy thing that lives in your guitar case.
Every once in a while you'll get it out when your singer's complaining that the Oasis song he wants to sing "Isn't in his key". And let's face it, the poor lamb's only got one to chose from!
So you slap it on at the 2nd fret and transpose up a tone and suddenly Wonderwall is in F# minor - a key the Gallagher brothers haven't even heard of let alone written in!
Well that's only a part of what you can do with a capo. We studio hounds know a few tricks for creating those lush acoustic textures you hear on the records - Here's one of them.
It's all down to how the guitar is tuned. Here's the theory in short.
How it works:
Capoing at the 5th fret use the open chord shape found one string down from where you are.
So D major is now an A major shape.
Capoing at the 7th fret use the open chord shape found one string up from where you are.
So D major is now an G major shape.
The only thing to remember is the tuning break between the G and B strings. You need to add one note in that case.
e.g.
Capoed at the 7 fret a G chord would be C shape not a B shape.
It doesn't take a lot of practice to get used to doing this quickly. After all there's a finite number of possibilities.
This trick is a great way of creating arrangements and variety when playing with another guitarist. There's rarely any point you both playing the same open chord shapes and if anything it'll cause problems.
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