Monthly Archives: September 2016

19 Sep

The Anatomy of a Major Scale

What Is A Scale?

In music theory, a scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch (Wikipedia).

Scales are constructed of intervals. An interval is the harmonic space between two notes. The smallest intervals we regularly deal with are Minor Seconds (half step) or Major Seconds (whole step / two half steps).

The Major scale is the most well known scale. Walk past any practice room and you’ll hear the common pattern: ‘Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do’. Knowing your major scales is fundamental. Just about every audition or jury will expect you to be able to play them. Having scales under your fingers makes music easier to play (since almost all music is constructed from scales of some sort). Our thinking on improvisation and music theory is often built around using scales.

Let’s look at the C-Major Scale:

majCThis scale is built mostly of major seconds. In fact there are only two minor seconds, between the third & fourth notes and the seventh & eighth notes.

majC

So Let’s Look at Some Other Major Scales:

 

F-major?

majFThere are those half steps between notes 3-4 and 7-8

 

G-major?

majGThe half steps are there again.

 

It’s safe to say that all major scales contain half-steps between notes 3-4 and 7-8 the rest of the intervals are whole-steps.
Alternatively, you can think of the major scale as: Whole-Whole-Half-Whole-Whole-Whole-Half (WWHWWWH).

wwhwwwh

So What Now?

You are going to have to learn (and memorize) all twelve of your major scales. There are two ways to do this. The first is rote memorization: get a book of scales and play them until you can’t forget them. Unless you have a photographic memory that means alot of time spent drilling your scales, leaving you less time to work on music.

Understanding how these scales are constructed (half-steps between notes 3-4 & 7-8 / WWHWWWH), you can build each scale from the ground up: just pick a starting note and go.

At first practice writing all of your major scales. Write a scale play it, then do the same for another. Soon you can throw away the pencil and paper: try figuring out the scale in your head and playing it straightaway.

Be sure to play different scales every day. Don’t be afraid of the less familiar scales (F#, Db, etc).

 

Bonus:

Write and even improvise music using any major scale.

 

Do you appreciate these lessons? Considering donating to help keep them coming!
Even better, sign up for a lesson!

 

12 Sep

Intro to Rhythm Guitar: Subtractive Strumming

Teaching guitar to hundreds of students since 2004.

In music there is nothing more important than rhythm. Appropriately, the Rhythm Guitar Player is fundamental to any band.

Rhythm Guitar provides the harmonic and rhythmic underpinning. A good rhythm guitarist will help the band keep the beat, establish the groove and give us a recognizable chord progression. A good rhythm guitar player is all you need, supporting or even taking the place of a drummer and bass player. On the other hand a bad player will be a real drag on the band.

 

Subtractive Strumming

Subtractive Strumming is my approach to Rhythm Guitar playing. Before attempting these excercises, be sure you know your rhythm fundamentals (whole notes, half notes, quarter notes & eighth notes). You should also be prepared to play a few chords.

  • Each of the following rhythms should be played separately. Do not go directly from #1 to #2.
  • These patterns can be played with any chord.

subtractive

  1. We start with straight eighth notes. Play these by strumming ‘down-up-down-up-down-up-down-up’ while counting out loud (one and two and . . .)
    • Counting out loud keeps you honest.
    • Keep a steady tempo throughout.
  2. Here we’ve taken away (or ‘subtracted’) the first upstrum on the ‘and of one’. By removing the upstrum, we’ve turned the pair of eighth notes into a quarter note.
    • Make sure your strumming arm keeps moving at the same pace.
    • Don’t forget to count.
  3. Now we remove the first and second upstrums leaving us with two quarter notes and two pairs of eighth notes.
  4. Turning the first three pairs of eighth notes into quarter notes, the only upstrum is on the ‘and of four’.

 

All four of these rhythms are solid strumming patterns. First practice each pattern on a single chord, repeating many times. Once you feel comfortable, add a chord change. Then try applying the rhythm to a song.

Practice these four rhythms for a solid week (or until you feel you’ve mastered them).

08 Sep

The Practice Method

I use this method myself in my own daily practice. You can use it to learn how to play almost anything!

  1. Take a small section (2-4 notes).
  2. Play it 1x, 2x, 3x perfect.
  3. Take another small section.
  4. Play it 1x, 2x, 3x perfect.
  5. Combine the prior sections, play 1x, 2x, 3x perfect.
  6. Repeat as necessary.

A few notes:

  • Work smaller sections than you want to. Make it manageable and avoid mistakes.
  • Perfection is the key. If you make a mistake working on playing it 3x, go back to 2x. If you err on 2x, go back to 1x. If you make a mistake playing it 1x, choose a smaller section.

 

06 Sep

Practicing vs. Playing

Are we or practicing or playing today?

Lets look at the differences:

 

Practice

Practicing is what we do to grow as a musician. This includes any warmups, scales, technical exercises, etudes as well as learning new music.

Practicing, often, is not pretty. Just listen to any beginning trumpet or saxophone player and you’ll hear all sorts of strange sounds. When you practice you’ll make many mistakes. This is good. We learn from our mistakes.

Practicing is tedious. Noone wants to hear you play the same thing over and over again but that’s the only way to learn.

Most of all, practicing is necessary.

 

Playing

Playing is really any time we pick up the instrument.

Playing is fun.

Playing is when we revisit the music we already know.

Playing is performing (even if its just for yourself).

 

Balance

Be sure to balance practicing and playing. If all we ever do is play the music we know, we’ll never improve. If all we do is practice, it’s easy to lose our connection to why we started playing music in the first place!

 

One More Thing . . .

While we’re at it, I’d like to quickly point out the difference between group practicing and rehearsing.

Practicing as a group is still practicing. When we’re trying to learn or write new music we are practicing.

Rehearsing is about putting music together as a group. Players who arrive ready to rehearse should have already practiced their own parts. This way we can spend time locking in the groove & putting the music together.

 

Now go out and practice, play, rehearse and perform!