Sunday, December 19, 2010

Songs & singing...

I've still been on the guitar and still doing lessons but... There is always a but! But I'm trying to learn 'songs' and worse than that - how to sing along to em.

Been looking at Led Zeppelin's (too difficult but I love em!):
The Rain Song & Over The Hills And Far Away

Some I used to play bits of (badly): 
Clapton's acoustic version of Layla
Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here & Welcome To The Machine
Screaming Tree's Dollar Bill
Hendrix Hey Joe & The Wind Cries Mary

Trying to sing along is a real show stopper. 

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Lesson 7: Chord Construction Made Easier (part 2)

I should be able to figure out all the notes that are used in a major scale to make up a chord...
Looking back at the first part of lesson 7 and a (major) scale as numbers 
gives me 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 from a given the root note.
By placing my fingers on the guitar at the root note shown in the image below

A table of notes in a scale is constructed from the scale pattern above where 1 is the root note starting point and then looking at the distance between the notes. 1 to 2 is one step/tone, 2 to 3 is one step/tone,  3 to 4 is half a step/tone etc.

I should be able to figure em out and draw them all up in the table below (and I'm going to force myself to do it to make sure I get it!)

1 root C
2 minor DD#EFF#GG#AA#BCC#
3 minor EFF#GG#AA#BCC#DD#
4 major FF#GG#AA#BCC#DD#E
5 major GG#AA#BCC#DD#EFF#
6 relative minor AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG#
7 major (can be flattened for a blues sound) BCC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#
8 octave CC#DD#EFF#GG#AA#B

HTML table ALERT :) 
it has been a long time since I've done one of those!

Now to make the Major chord you need the 1, 3, & 5th notes in that scale.
Easy so far!

To make the Major 6 you need the 1, 3, 5 & 6th notes in that scale.
I'm still following! 

To make the Major 7 you need the 1, 3, 5, & 7th notes in that scale.
Yes, thankfully, it is that easy :)

To make the Minor chord you flatten the 3rd so you need 1, 3b & 5th notes in the scale.

Minor 7 is 1, 3b, 5 & 7thb

Suspended 2 is 1, 2 & 5th

Suspended 4 is 1, 4 & 5th

C or D is an easy one to try that out on. Play the D and then try to add those notes in and magically you will be making those chords.
I like magic!

To be sure there are plenty of other chords but this is a good of enough start for me in my effort to rule the world and understand the beginning of chord building on a guitar.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Lesson 7: Chord Construction Made Easier (part 1)

Lesson 6 was a bit too much in the deep end. So I was after something to help me understand it in a more structured way, something with numbers (which for me was going to be a simpler way).

To find the notes that make a chord:
  • Put your 2nd finger on the root note. That's note 1 in the sequence. So in the key of C, and the chord of C, you need to find the root note on the top, fat, E string. That's going to be the 8th fret on the top E string. This puts your fingers in a good starting point for the notes that make up the chord of C.
  • The next note in the sequence is 2 frets up, where your little finger is sitting over the 10th fret. That's going to be a D and it is note 2 in the sequence.
  • That sets you up for the note pattern shown blow (in red crosses). The rest of the notes look like this:

X marks the spot to the pattern to the notes above.

Also numerically (where it makes sense for me!)

To build a (MAJ) chord you want to take the 1st, 3rd and 5th note of the (MAJ) scale.

So in C you want 1 - C, 3 - E & 5 - G.

If you now finger a C chord down at the zero fret you will see that those are the 3 notes that make up a 'C'.

Next time will go into how other notes modify a MAJ chord.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Lesson 6: Chord Construction

This lesson was my first step into looking at how guitar chords are put toegher.
It was lots of fun 'cause strangely enough it was making some sense!

Trying to make some sense of my notes from that lesson, one week later is, proving to be more difficult... OK so diving in without a safety net - here goes!

Short Story: 
Major chords: constructed from 3 notes (1st, 3rd, 5th) in the scale.
Minor chords: constructed from 3 notes (1st, flattened 3rd, 5th) in the scale. 

Long Story: 
Major chords are made up of 3 main notes, the 1st, 3rd and 5th note in the scale.

In the C Major scale:
1 = C
2 = D
3 = E
4 = F
5 = G
6 = A
7 = B

So C, E and G are the ones!

As a bar chord on the 8th fret: 
To make the Minor you flatten the 3rd note of the major scale. 

In the Cminor from the Major scale:
1 = C
2 = D
flattened 3 = Eb
4 = F
5 = G
6 = A
7 = B

C minor barred on the 8th fret:

Grokking that? 
Just remember that Major is 1,3,5 notes from the scale. 
To make a Minor from a Major chord you just flatten the 3rd note in the scale.

More next time in part 2 of chord making.

Lesson 5: Something showing a scale in use

Intro to 'Since I've been loving you' - Led Zeppelin

Learning WTF a scale is (a group of notes that sound the business together) and how it is put together is the type of ground work I was after from a guitar teacher. How to make music is something else again :)

So my guitar geezer told me to look at Since I've Been Loving You 
by Jimmy Page. It has been called one of the best guitar solos of all time and looking at the intro you can see it sits in pattern, in a scale.

My very rough draw up of the intro tab with no timing shown is:
(right mouse and open image in another window to go large)

Looking at those notes and based on the FECK all I know about scales so far I can kind of tell that that is in either C Minor or D#(Eb) Major.

Should be easy to tell 'cause it is beginning with your index finger on the 8th fret C note (or somewhere around there!) and because you are there with your index finger you are in a Minor. So C Minor.

Looking at where your little pinkie finger is naturally positioned it will be in the D#(Eb) [D sharp / E flat] note. So you could also say you are in D# Major (and the C is the relative minor).

I'm pretty sure Mr Page (being the walk on water guitar god he is) moves in and out of scales and patterns and does what ever the fark he wants when he wants without giving a flying shite about them at all
but it is still nice to know that all of those notes in the intro to 'Since I've been Loving You' are BANG on in the beginners scale I've been learning.


Lesson 4: Transitions

Back to the C major scale and soloing over it. 
 Looking at the scale below 
(which I've duplicated from the most excellent 'all scale looking thing' at and cut up into patterns below) (right mouse and open image in another window to go LARGE)

If you are on the 5th fret and moving up and down in notes in Pattern 5 and you want to get up to the 12th fret and Pattern 3 you can just 'leap' up in there in a single bound like super'fecken'man or you could play other notes on the way up there.

A nice way I was shown to transition between these patterns was to hold 2 notes on the bottom (thinnest) 2 strings and play them at the same time (or close to the same time) and then play 2 more just up in the scale and repeat (with any variation you want) until you get up, or down, to where you want to be next.

Hopefully the image above helps to explain this (but I doubt it!).
Looking at the 5th fret you can hold the 5th fret bottom string and the 6th fret next string up and then ping those 2 notes together and slide or jump up to the 7th fret and then do it again.

You can see that sometimes your 2nd note is 2 frets up, not 1 - as you are trying to 
play notes that stay in the C major scale and sound 'nice' together.

I'll 'YouTube' this one at some point. 
It will take about 10 seconds of video to explain.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Lesson 4: (prequel) It is OK to suck

After listening to Jimmy Page and Billy Gibbons play guitar all weekend (and trying to learn some of it) I remember a HUGE penny dropping leap forward in learning to play Chess that helps me learn Guitar. 

Its OK to be shite at it and total failure is as good as success.
You need to LOVE being shite at it.
Embrace the crapness, the failure, the bung notes, the lack of understanding 
and LOVE it.

Wallow like a pig in shite in the failures.
And learn from it.

I wanted this blog to be about my lack of musical understanding (my diminished guitar reality) and my lessons to improve that.
Bring on the failures!

Friday, April 23, 2010

Lesson 3: (part 2) Tango - fark the tango!

The geezer was trying to get me to learn a Tango using E, A minor and D minor with plently of muted strings and slaps and stuff. 

Its too hard and I can't play it. So after a few seconds thought on this one I say 
Fark the Fecken Tango!

So I did a quick You Tube search for something a bit more up my alley and found 'little miss can't be wrong' teaching hill billy Blues.

I was really after something bluesy with string damping to practice ('cause I'm rubbish at holding a rhythm with additional right hand damping or left hand string muting going on).

I've been practicing something along the lines of this. I'll probably add, for amusement value only :) , some YouTube links of me trying to play this later this weekend. Gulp..

If I ever get any good at the Tango rhythm I'll do a post on it - but don't hold your breath..

Lesson 3: (part 1) More Cmajor / Aminor scale

So I went back to the Cmaj scale
and look at it over the entire fretboard

So the notes from the open strings at the zero fret and all the yellow ones are in!
Hopefully the image below with colours for the 2 main shapes we were looking at helps out. 
(right mouse on the images and open em up if you want to see the ends)

To move to play in another key is just a move of that entire pattern up or down the fret board.

So to move to D(major) would mean moving your little finger to the D note on the 10th fret (thinnest / bottom string) and putting your index finger on the B(minor) on the 7th fret (thinnest / bottom string). That is where you would then start 'pattern 1'.

A move to play in G(minor) means putting your index finger on the G note on the 3rd fret (thinnest / bottom string) and putting your little finger on the A sharp (major) on the 6th fret (thinnest / bottom string) and that is where you would then start 'pattern 1'.

After 3 lessons on this it was starting make some sense and we were playing cords in Aminor and I was attempting to play in those notes above over the entire fretboard - and I was pretty crappola at it :)

The tango 'beat' is a tricky one & I still can't play it... grrrrrrrrrrr
More on that one next time.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Lesson 2: Rhythm (my lack of it) in C

Wiki defines Rhythm as "any measured flow or movement, symmetry" and mine SUX.
So the Geezer was getting me to sit in 3 cords that can be used to play under a lead in the Cmaj scale from the 'notes' shown in lesson one.

The cord progression was: Amin7, Dmin7, Emin7
Amin7 & Dmin7 played from the bar cord at the 5th fret and the Emin7 played from the the bar cord at the 7th fret.
(To make it easier then the bar cords below you could just play Amin, Dmin, Emin, with or without the 7ths, at the zero fret).

7ths were used for 'colour' and we were also changing, without losing the Rhythm I was told!, to the non barred versions at the zero fret.
For additional variation dropping into something that looked like this:

 Yes that IS supposed to be your index finger on the 8th fret! So it was like and Emin at the 7th fret with a root C added?
Looks weird sounds good!
That cord shape was played at the 7th, 0 and 12th frets.
At the end of the lesson we were playing the Amin based cords above and doing some really rough Cmaj soloing over those. Well he wasn't rough but I really was...

Guessing Amin based cords sound 'good' against Cmaj scale notes as Amin is the relative min to that scale.
Remember that putting your little finger on on the 'C' on the 8th fret of the top 'E' string is the note 'C' and since it is your little finger that sets you up for Cmaj and automatically your index finger will be on the relative minor - which in this case is A(min). That sets you up for the 'lead' in Cmaj.

Next lesson was some tango!

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Lesson 1: Scales (part 2)

Part of the first hour in me getting guitar lesson 1 covered looking at other parts of the C scale on the fretboard & scales in other keys.

At the end of this lesson I had some understanding on how to put a very basic solo in a specific key together and 'keys' in general had lost most of their 'terror' for me :)

Guitar geezer called the patterns below the '2nd position' but I've also seen it listed as 'Pattern 3' and 'Pattern 3 plus one octave *
Before looking at the 2 images, sketched below, remember they are exactly the same shape/pattern but the second one is one octave (12 frets) higher up the fretboard and you are 'barring' (playing every note) on the 12th fret to make it the same pattern as you play on the ZERO fret (open strings).

Definitely worth spending time eye balling those until you 'see' they are exactly the same - just 12 frets up the neck / one octave higher.
Looking at that pattern (and the fretboard on your guitar) and working out what each note is in those shapes and the shape from the previous post, was for me, worth the time and effort. It helped me grok it a little deeper and it dawned on me that nothing is flat or sharp in C (I'm no music dude remember!). I'm guessing that is obvious to anybody who knows anything about music - but that's not me :)

A little Googling and it becomes clearer especially when viewed from middle C on a piano.
You can now solo!
So now you have, starting from your little finger on the 'C' on the 8th fret of the top 'E' string a simple starting point for a basic solo in the C major scale. That starting position is a 'root' note in the C major scale. You can pick notes out of the 2 patterns listed so far (the zero fret + 12th fret version and the 5th fret pattern from the last post) and away you go.
There are a couple of other patterns and notes that can be used to join up those 2 basic patterns giving you places to go to between those shapes. Geezer said don't worry about them for now "They are not so important"; but I printed em out and had a look at them anyway :)

Now what you need is somebody playing some cords in C major and you can begin your path to world domination :)

More on the cords next time.


(an octave from a note on your guitar is from any starting position plus 12 frets higher, or lower I guess, and the easy one to see/hear is by playing any open string and then playing the same string on the 12th fret).

Once again its not black magic (I'm missing the magic now guitar is starting to make some sense!) and if you look at your single fat 'E' string from the open string (fret 0) to the 12th fret you are playing all the notes between the two 'E's: E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E).

Lesson 1: Scales (part 1)

First thing the guitar teacher (from now on known as the 'geezer') got me to look at was the C major scale; apparently its an easy one...

I've drawn up part of the C maj scale below with the most excellent balsamiq ui designer:

thin string on the top of the image
fattest string on the bottom of the image

Short Story:
Looking at image above

  1. Little pinkie finger finds the maj note. For 'C' place little finger on the 8th fret, thinnest string, and you will be on C. You are now in 'C' maj.
  2. Index finger (first finger) finds the relative minor. It is 'always' 4 frets back from the maj. Place your index finger on the 5th fret thinnest string. Your index finger is now on the 'relative' minor, in this case 'A', to where your little pinkie finger is.
  3. Pick each note in that pattern above, in the fret position above, and you should hear some 'do re mi fa so la ti' sounds emerging.
  4. Enjoy!

Longer Story:
You can play that pattern of notes anywhere on the fretboard BUT there is a simple 'trick' to making it easy to find out where you should be playing it for the 'key' (some note grouping from a 'root' starting note / cord) you want to be 'in' - where thankfully & very magically stuff sounds 'nice' together.

Lets call it a black magic get your mojo working trick!
To play in 'C' major you put your little 'pinkie' finger on the 'C' note (in the image above) and you are ready to roll! Easy :)

In this case, in the picture above, the 8th fret on the top (thinnest) E string is the note 'C' (when your guitar is in tune and you are using the standard tuning).

For the next piece of guitar black magic you take your first finger (index finger) and put in on the 5th fret on the top (thinnest) E string.

That magically gives you the 'relative minor' to the note your 'pinkie' finger is on.
Don't worry too much about what a maj / min is right now (I'm not).

So in this case since your little finger, on the 8th fret, is on C maj your index finger, 4 frets back on the 5th fret is going to be on A - which is the relative minor to C maj.

I wish I knew that years ago! Litte finger on the maj then index finger will auto-magically be on the relative minor.

Now from there you move up and down the fret board into other 'groupings' of notes (that have different shapes then the picture above) that also sound 'nice' when played/picked/bashed over somebody else strumming cords in the key of 'C' maj (or it's relative 'A' minor). The geezer called the grouping in the image above 'position one' but I've also seen it called 'pattern six' else where.

Next part of lesson 1 (coming later) was other patterns of notes that make up a C guitar scale and where to play them to stay in 'C'.

Phew. I'm knackered after writing all that. 
Time to stop writing and play :)

Welcome to a guitar trip for the musically retarded

Started guitar lessons Christmas 2010. I've been self abusing a fretbaord (aka self 'taught') for a few years but getting no where fast.
Getting a pro on the job seemed like a step in the right direction. 

Rather than keep paper notes from the lesson sessions I'm going to post em here.

Share the pain right?

How hard can hitting 6 strings be...

It is actually a guitar term... :P

Legal stuff:  
  • I'm musically retarded and this is going to be my take on the guitar; at the very least that is going to be full of holes, errors and lots of bad timing.
  • Also note I love love love guitars and pity the fools who don't play em.