Between the Licks

Hey name's Jared, just thought i'd say hi. Been playing for a while... i like any style. Kind of a theory nut, always happy to help if someone has a question, more happy to learn if anyone has advice. i'll try to post some lead tracks on here soon, like the site a lot, keep it up

hey dude im new to the site to, and a novice to guitar, what would you suggest to get good at guitar what do i need to know.

hey man, it really depends on what you want to play and for me to tell you what to do next, i need to know what you can already do... the first step is, do you know all the notes on the guitar? if someone pointed to any note on the fretboard, could you either tell them straight out what it is or could you find it? in my opinion, that is what should come first because once you know the notes, you will have to move on to basic chords (you should learn every one at least five different ways), and basic scales (i would start out with the pentatonic and learn all 5 positions) if you need any help with any of those things let me know and i will do what i can to help ya.

peace,
jared

Great advice Jared, I think a huge thing that helps to to learn patterns and how chord movements, licks, and scales are all relative. This allows you to apply a single pattern to any key, and once you take Jared's advice and learn all the notes on the guitar, you will have a stellar knowledge of your instrument.

Number 1 rule, PLAY THE SHIT OUT OF THAT THING!

Seriously, don't stop.

Hey also just new to this place,
been playing for about a year or three now, never did any theory.
But I like to get to know the thoery by now and be able to impovise, write some etc etc.
(i have written some, but i can never seem to find 'the rest' other than by trying things by sound/feeling instead of theory)

It seems you know your way around notes, how long would you say it takes to get comfortable with the theory (ok, a bit)m granted that I play every single day....

(it seems a lot you know, theory, terms, thirds, minors etc etc.......)

lets say I memomorzed all notes on the fretboard, whats the next step, and where does it end ??

thanx &
see ya


(i agree utterly, NEVER stop playing , as Sariola would say "Keep 'em strings ringin!!'" )

well theres one thing i love to do during solos. i fuse the pentatonic scale and the blues scale to create new sound and more notes to use. And another trick i love its to make simple riff and go back to it after every one or 2 riffs to keep a bit of rythym going.

makes it a bit more intersting

(lenard skynyrd did that second trick alot in the freebird solo)

Hey Nevyle,
I'd say that if you practice it everyday, just like anything else, theory will begin to come easy to you reltively quick. This also depends on how deep you want to go. Being an acoustic player, I assume your main concern is chords and how they should fit into songs. This is not a hard concept to learn, but a very difficult one to master (the reason so few people can write really really good songs) It all stems from the basic major scale. Once you know all the notes on the board, or at least how to find them, you should then begin to learn the concepts of the major scale. This could be easily learned in an afternoon if you really think about it and don't just learn the pattern (although i am a big fan of patterns). Once you know the major scale formula, and therefore what different notes will make up each major scale, it would then be time to learn how to spell chords out of that scale and what kinds of chords should go over the different degrees of that scale. I'm sure Bryan probably has some lessons on this site about those, and if you need me to, i will help as much as i can with words on a computer screen.

To answer your other question, no, it never ends. People get doctoral degrees in music theory alone, not just in instruments. If you think about the fact that chords are, in their basic sense, derived from the major scale and permutations thereof, then technically speaking, chords and other modes (a little more advanced of a topic) can also be derived from non-major scales. These techniques are not as common in popular music, but they are still factors one could consider. For all you mode players out there, try next time basing your modes off of the harmonic minor scale, you'll get such gems as the altered phrygian and the dorain dominant. I then challenege you to actually USE them in a song

Hey there. Pretty good site. I am also kind of a newbie to guitar (almost 2 yrs in now) I did stumble onto this site a while ago but for some reason forgot about it (my bad ) Maybe soon I'll post some of my cruddy jams for you to critique.

hey jared
thanx
i know my way around the major scale and the modes now a bit (but still need to practice of course). Being a programmer i love patterns and get how the modes 'shift' into eachother, scales being derived from it etc etc.
so i tried to apply this with a piece of music i just thought up.
however, I still cant find a proper scale for my piece.
during a piece of music, when does one deviate from scales? howmuch? etc..
I know my little piece sounds fine, notes fit together, its catchy..

so i thought id identify the notes i used, put them in order.
identify the step-pattern, and see to fit a scale agains that (a mode from the major hopefully).
i have half-half step part in there so its not one of the modes
gp found for me a bebop-scale and a spanish 8tone scale, bot also both with one accidental. both are not really sounding right also when i play some randomness in it with my piece..

My goal is to find my scale for my piece, so i can map that to my fretboard, and from there
i can see to think up the rest of the song....finally....
but it seems a single scale wont cover it so simply.

one guess is that maybe i should see the melody notes apart from the bass-line notes ?? two scales at once maybe (just reaching here....)

While the idea is to use a major scale and fit chords into it, even common progressions can step away from the "common" chord spellings.

For inspiration, a good idea is to snatch a few progressions from other songs. For example, just look up random songs (especially one you've never heard before). Try out those chord progressions and note how they move. Try a different song. You'll notice that its very common to stick with specific movements (like from a dominant 7th V chord to a I chord).

Also, chord substitutions can be handy and they aren't really too complicated.

As far as your last question, a lot of interesting chord progressions use different scales per chord, especially in jazz.


"Good artists create. Great artists steal."

Nevyle,
I'm very glad to hear you already know a good amount of theory. Feel good that you probably already know more than 90% of guitarists out there

In response to your questions:
From a technical standpoint, no, you never deviate from scales. While you may very well get to a point where you don't think in terms of scales anymore, the truth is that anything you play on the fretboard will be some variation of some scale. The ultimate goal that also happens to be a jazz musicians creed is "learn all the theory you can, then forget it" meaning that you should so cement everything theoretical in your head that you don't think about it anymore. The patterns and movements are so ingrained that the only thing you should need to think about is what you want your next phrase to sound like. At that point it becomes a matter of just doing, because you know you will be in the right key and won't have to worry about hunting and pecking like most other people do. In a more real sense of your question, I think you might be asking more along the lines of when to deviate from walking up and down scale shapes, my answer there would be as much as you can. Try to hum a melody and then play it on guitar. Walking up and down scales is only that cool when you can do it really fast and even then it gets old pretty quick.

For your songwriting issue:
I really would need to know more specifics about the chord changes and such to tell you exactly what I would do or what would sound right because as i see it, you have a couple of different things that could be happening. 1) you have a momentary key change, similar to a suspended chord, but used instead with a progression where one normal diatonic chord is superimposed over by a nondiatonic chord in a sense "suspending" the chord. or 2) you have a song that is actually based on an exotic mode or scale. Without knowing the exact chords and intervals you use, i would suggest two things. Play in the key that the rest of the progression fits in and when it comes to that second half step, i would either play an arpeggio of that chord, or use a chromatic pattern as passing tones until you get back to your normal key.

Sorry this one was really long, I would love to hear the song and if you want to send me a lead sheet, i can hopefully get you a one scale fits all situation.

Hey jared,
thanx soo much, This is a great help sofar.
The chromatic passing-notes I encountered while seraching, yes. (I read thats how the bebopscales are built)
I have a gp5 tab for it, so I can send it to you.
(give me an email adress, and ill send it. You could be of great help I see )
Its not an chord-song, but a little boom-shick-like chet atkins thingy (playing a little bass-line with a melody (using the thumbpick))
(more usable chords I'd like to identify also)

the bass (first part) goes GGAACCDD, very happy.
the melody uses; G, A, A#, B, (C), (C#), D, E
(between brackets are 'momemtarily' used.)
so you see, 8 notes already, and a lot of chromatic steps.
Of course, the chromatic scale fits, but that one doesn't count

It was all clear with simple theory and concepts, but its starting to get foggy again.....

thanx

Nevyle,
Thanks for the kind words, i hope i really can help you. my email is jaredontherun@hotmail.com
It also might be helpful if you post the mp3 on here too, if you have it recorded. This one might prove tough. Chet Atkins, great player, not at all my style. From what little i know about that kind of playing, it seems to me like most of the time what they did was use chord tones instead of scales (they were technically still using scales of course, but they moved them frequently) in this case the one scale to rule them all in this song might either not work out as well or will not give the sound you might possibly be going for but we will try nonetheless

Looking forward to the challenge