Playing through the chord changes. For most rock guitarists, there is a standard approach to playing lead ideas. They pick a scale and wail in it. Hopefully the scale covers all the chords being played underneath. This isn’t a dig or criticism, it’s just what we/ they do. This approach can work fine for most scenarios, but what do you do when it doesn’t work? When the chords are moving about and going to other keys or tonalities? Obviously the answer is play faster and use the trem to dive bomb a lot. If that fails stare accusingly at the bassist to infer they are playing the wrong notes. OR you could learn how to address the chord changes and play smoothly through it. This of course will
How do I harmonise stuff? Well that is a much bigger question that you realise. But not unanswerable. Firstly, we need to understand a few things in order for you to correctly grasp what it is you are doing. When you harmonise it is defined as “in music, the implementation of harmony, usually by using chords, including harmonized scales” What the hell did that mean? So let’s set up a scenario. You bring me a simple 3 note line and ask for it to be harmonised. Firstly, we need to ascertain what are you playing this melody over? In the first example I have taken the simple melody and placed it in E minor, which seems very obvious. Underneath the melody notes I have placed some chords that woul
A sparkling second part of the exercise, sequins, get it? Oh come on these puns are free. Previously we have ascended the natural minor scale in 4 note groups. This exercise is changing one note but the sequence is the same. The new scale is the harmonic minor scale. The only difference is the 7th note in the scale is sharpened. It is only one note different but you are going to find the fingering now throws up some interesting finger combinations. These are demonstrated in the video, so pay close attention. Happy exercising.
Fingers looking fat? Need to get that beach finger look? Well here is an exercise to slim your knuckles down and make you the most wanted image on the guitar beach. WTF am I going about? Anyway here is an exercise. This exercise is going to come in 3 parts, so we will look at part 1 for now and once you have mastered it we will move it along. Hopefully you will see how it evolves and start to devise ideas for yourself. Initially you may look at the above and think, "well that's a lot of notes i have no idea what is going on." Let me demystify a little for you. Essentially this is an A natural minor scale and it ascends, 4 notes at a time. Once we have gone up 4 notes we go to the second n
