guitar savvy kids

[hotpants]

what books and scales do you practice

[Evycakes]

i suck .. i just read tabs and play what is in my head

.... maybe i should have not posted on account of the fact that i am not a guitar savvy kid

[brian]

books and scales???
niether man
just what comes out of my head, what i can listen to and try to play, or tabs off the net.

i only know major, pentatonic and blues scales. (ie 3)

[Castro]

funny you should ask that; i've just re-started practicing the technical side of things. i found this website thats pretty good for resources and info.

www.justinguitar.com

you should at least check out the technical exercises on there (only two there tho). they really are sorting out my fingers and showing me how incompetent i am on guitar

also i have this grade 6 book with songs and loads of scales (both of which i'll have to perform in the exam).

[Bradley]

Books? Scales? Foo Fighters
Fuck off mate. Get back to whatever science you're on.

[Castro]

thats a bit harsh

[hotpants]

thanks castro

fuck you bradley

[Bradley]

thats a bit harsh

[Castro]

hahaha

[Bradley]

thanks castro

fuck you hotpants

[sez]

Bradley, what books and scales do you practice?

[Bradley]

The book-scale of Sez

[Castro]

something to keep your fingers in shape when your not practising

with your four fingers (ie not your thumb) place them on a surface (table, your leg - anything really) and alternate which are touching the table in pairs like so

1 - 2 - 1 - 2 etc
3 - 4 - 3 - 4 etc

i've found that when i do that, even when i havent played for a week (which is enough to hinder my technique) my technique is still as good as it was. the best thing is you can do it anywhere you want

[soniktruth]

castro said:

something to keep your fingers in shape when your not practising

with your four fingers (ie not your thumb) place them on a surface (table, your leg - anything really) and alternate which are touching the table in pairs like so

1 - 2 - 1 - 2 etc
3 - 4 - 3 - 4 etc

i've found that when i do that, even when i havent played for a week (which is enough to hinder my technique) my technique is still as good as it was. the best thing is you can do it anywhere you want

actually, that is really useful information

[CoKeS]

i still dont fully understand scales... say if the lead part of a song is played in major pentatonic A, does it have to stay in A throughout the entire time, or can you switch it up?

[Evycakes]

paran0idandr0id said:

castro said:

something to keep your fingers in shape when your not practising

with your four fingers (ie not your thumb) place them on a surface (table, your leg - anything really) and alternate which are touching the table in pairs like so

1 - 2 - 1 - 2 etc
3 - 4 - 3 - 4 etc

i've found that when i do that, even when i havent played for a week (which is enough to hinder my technique) my technique is still as good as it was. the best thing is you can do it anywhere you want

actually, that is really useful information

word!! .. thanks for the technique

[Castro]

cokes2 said:

i still dont fully understand scales... say if the lead part of a song is played in major pentatonic A, does it have to stay in A throughout the entire time, or can you switch it up?

i think you can switch it up to the reletive 5th key. it'll sound slightly strange but it is acceptable. so from C this would be going up to G.

i'm not really sure about this, i'm sure rubberneck will be able to answer your question...

[Rubberneck]

to the rescue!

no, you absolutely do not have to stay in any single key signature. there is no rule that says that you cannot play an A sharp in an A Maj progression, but by theory there is a way to think about your melody instead of just throwing out random notes. one thing you can do is, as your example says, if the key is in A major, you can play the relative minor scale, which is found a m3 below the root. thats 1 and 1/2 steps, or 3 frets. so for A major, it would be F# minor. also, one thing to keep in mind, is that you can change scales with every chord in a progression. this makes playing lead a bit trickier, but it is the standard in jazz and can allow some very exotic melodies. another thing you can do, and something i am working on now, is called tritone substitution. i don't have time to go into the theory in depth, but i'll come back to explain more later if you would like. basically, tritone substitution says that you can play the major scale of the tritone (the flat 5th) over the V chord in a I-IV-V progression and resolve back to the major or minor scale of the I to allow the melody to resolve with the harmony. as i said, give this a read and i'll come back later this evening and try to clear up the stuff that i didn't explain well. hope this helps...

[Castro]

i knew you wouldnt fail

[CoKeS]

i kinda get it, but not really. i don't take guitar too seriously, i just fuck around and play what sounds good, but i wanna learn scales and stuff so i can make up my own leads, i already got chords down.

[Rubberneck]

to simplify what i said, i'll give an example of each technique that i suggested.

I) relative minor.

like all mainstream babbling idiots, i'm a sucker for the minor pentatonic scale, but how can you play a minor pentatonic over a major key, say a progression in G major? well, each major key has what's called a relative minor key where each note is also in the said major key. the only difference between these scales is the tonicized note (the root note). so G major's relative minor is found 3 frets lower than G, so if G is the 3rd fret on the E string, then E is the relative minor of G major. now i know i can wank away in e minor pentatonic over a G major progression.

II) Fuck Blanket Scales

what most musicians that you probably listen to do when they play a melody or a lead is referred to as a blanket scale. this means that they play one scale over an entire progression. for example, let's say you are playing a heart-felt love song for your trans-gendered lover that goes C major, a minor, F Major, G major (HOW ORIGINAL!!!). you can say that this progression is in the key of C major, and you could play C major (Or a minor from technique one above) over the entire progression, or what you can do is play a different scale over each chord. for example, play C Major over C major, then switch to a minor for the a minor chord. you could switch to F major for the 3rd chord and then G major for the fourth, but you can fuck around with sticking in on key for a few bars and then resolving in a G major melody or something.

III) Tritone Substitution

this one is a little trickier, because it involves tones that don't get along with pop music, so it may sound a little strange at first. western music is all revolved around a I-IV-V progression (settle down killer, i know not all sogns are set up like this, however if you look into substitutional chords, IE vi for I, you'll find most are). whats a I-IV-V progression? fuck it, lets call it a Gmaj-Cmaj-Dmaj progression. this is a I-IV-V in the key of G major. lets say we strum G for 2 bars, C for 1, and D for 1. when we get to D, the progression naturally wants to resolve to G. how do we take this lame ass progression and make it teh c00ln3ss? on the D major chord, instead of playing D major or even worse a blanket scale of G major, try something exotic like a tritone major scale. the tritone of G major is located at the flat 5th, think of the 5 in a power chord and lower it a fret. D is our 5, so Db (or C#) is our tritone. play the major scale for this badboy over your D and see what weird phrases you can get. this is especially cool if you know some flat 5 blues licks to throw in.

anyways, i don't know if that explained anything any better, but give it a shot and know that just playing in the key signature can make some awesome and beautifully fitting melodies, but it also limits your options beyond recognition.

[Evycakes]

now its getting complicated ...

[Rubberneck]

if this doesn't make any sense, let me know and i'll really try to simplify it without any theory lingo. also, if you grasp this and you are thinking "wow, this sucks" just let me know and i can explain some crazier stuff, or maybe some modal approaches which would possibly expand your musical knowledge.

[Bradley]

Rubberneck. You are disciplined.

[soniktruth]

did you study music rubberneck?

[Rubberneck]

i had a theory course in highschool and another last year at purdue, but besides that i don't have any formal training of any sort. i had never played an instrument in my life until 3 years ago. i just kind of got into it and pushed myself to understand what i was doing. i found that trying to teach myself music from a minimal understanding just lead to me running in circles so i took a break from playing music to learn how it works on a basic level.

[CoKeS]

hey, i got a question for rubberneck and castro, and anyone else who knows somthing about guitars... for christmas, i'm trying to get a new electric and my budget is around $300-350, and i want a telecaster. so my question is, what are some decent ones within that price range?

[Castro]

i'm not too sure what makes are good within that range so i'll leave that to rubberneck. (i think yamaha are a respectable make despite specializing in keyboards)

from personal experience i'd say the best thing to do when buying a guitar is to go into a shop and play them and pick one that you like the sound of. how the guitar sounds and feels is the most important thing because it affects how you play to a large extent.

[brian]

i think my brain just exploded

[nastia]

the only song, i can play on guitar - 'seven nation army' by the white stripes without solo :-p