Become great at Improvisation – Pt 8 – Pentatonic scales on 1 string

Hi there,

Thanks for reading my blogs, feel free to ask any questions.

The next blog in this Improv series will look at playing the pentatonic scales just on 1 string at a time. This is another great way of learning how to integrate your scales + move across the neck easily.

In order to maximize the effectiveness of this exercise you’ll want to learn how the pentatonic scales are constructed.

The Minor pentatonic scale is built up of a root note (1), Minor 3rd (b3), Perfect 4th (4), Perfect 5th (5) and Minor 7 (b7) intervals

– Minor 3rd interval is 1 1/2 tones in size e.g. A to C

– A Perfect 4th is 2 1/2 tones in size e.g. D to G

– A Perfect 5th is 3 1/2 tones in size e.g. F to C

– A Minor 7th is 5 tones in size e.g. C to Bb

So let’s take A minor pentatonic as an example. The notes would be:

– A, C, D, E + G . So using the 5 shapes of A minor pentatonic, these are the only 5 notes you would be playing.

– An extremely useful exercise would be to play all the available notes of the pentatonic scale on 1 string at a time from the first available note. So if we took the 6th Low E string. You’d start with the open E, then G, A, C and so on.

Here’s all the available notes of the A minor pentatonic on the E string:

The intervallic formula for the major pentatonic is as follows: Root note (1), Major 2nd (2), Major 3rd (3), Perfect 5th (5) and Major 6th (6)

Let’s take the D major pentatonic for example: The notes would be:

D, E, F#, A + B

So you can use the exact same process as above.

So practice this in all keys on all 6 strings , and that will really help you to further your improv skills by getting to know the neck + keys a lot better.

Hope you’ve found this blog useful, you can find other great free info via the Js Music School twitter feed @jsmusicschool @harvey_jsmusic

Many thanks

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

James

 

 

 

Become great at Improvisation – Part 7 – Major/Minor scale bends

Hi there,

Thanks for reading my blogs, feel free to ask questions or suggest a subject matter you are having issues with.

Our next part of this improv series focuses on pitch bends using the major and minor scales. The previous blog centered on the essential bends of the pentatonic scales. Remember the pentatonic scales are simply 5 notes from the possible 7 available from the major/minor scales. Depending on the type of chords being used and style of music, one type of scale may be more suitable. With the Major/Minor scales you have 2 semi-tone bends which can be great for adding variety.

In the picture below i’ve highlighted the most essential bends that you can play around with. Red dots are Tone bends (2 notes/2 Frets e.g. G to A) and Blue are Semi-Tone bends (1 fret/1note e.g. G# to A)

CLICK ON THE PICTURE FOR A LARGER IMAGE 🙂

So a great thing to do is practice each shape up and down but performing the bends as you go along. By doing this you’ll get used to the tension needed to perform each bend accurately and you’ll give yourself a wealth of possible pitch bends to use in each key.

Remember to practice in all 7 shapes in all 12 keys. The tension of the strings varies up and down the neck (it’s the tightest near the nut) so it requires more strength at the start of the fretboard. Have fun!

Our next blog on the series will help to further integrate the scales by just going up and down the scales on one string at a time.

You can find other excellent free info via the Js Music School twitter feeds @jsmusicschool @harvey_jsmusic

Many thanks

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

James

 

Become great at Improvisation Pt 6 – Pentatonic bends

Hi there,

Thanks again for reading my blogs, feel good about spreading the word if you have found them useful.

So the next few blogs are going to really get stuck into pitch bends with the minor pentatonic scale, then move onto using them in the major and minor scales.

Pitch bends are a really great way of linking up shapes and creating variety in your lead playing. You are basically picking a note then bending the string with your fretting hand to reach another note. Often you are simply just bending the note to reach the pitch of the next note in the scale.

To keep it simple i’m going to just display the most essential bends of the 5 shapes on the G, B and E strings. These are the ones you are going to use the most.

In the picture below you’ll see the red circles on which to perform the pitch bends. In each pitch bend you are bending up the note to reach the next note (that would be in the connecting shape)

• The red circle highlights a ‘tone bend’. A tone is 2 notes (so E to F# or G to A)
• The red circle with a blue circle around it highlights ‘a tone and a half bend’ which means 3 semitones in total (so E to G or G to A#)

As the shapes are the same for the major pentatonic you can use the bends in exactly the same way.

Hope you’ve found this blog useful, we’ll go onto the major/minor scales next where you can add semitone bends to your repertoire.

You can find other excellent free tips via the Js Music School twitter feed @jsmusicschool @harvey_jsmusic

Many thanks

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

James

 

Become great at Improvisation Pt.5 – String skipping, hammer on’s and pull off’s

Hi there,

Thanks again for reading my blogs, if you’ve found them useful feel good about recommending other guitarists to read the blog.

So on part 5 of the Improv series we’re going to look at integrating String Skipping, Hammer on’s and pull off’s into your scale exercises.

So far we’ve looked at learning your 4 essential scales, then patterns of 3’s and 4’s. IMHO the next exercise is another excellent way to help integrate your scales into using them in a more musical context.

• Often in riffs and solo’s guitarists will play a pattern and then switch to a string that’s not necessarily next to it. Being able to jump across strings whilst still using the same scale is a great skill to have.
• Hammer on’s and pull off’s are used a lot in creating riffs, melodies and solos as they provide you with different sounds and ways of connecting up shapes.
• A ‘hammer on’ is where you pick a note on a string and literally hammer on the next note with another fretting finger (without picking)
• A ‘pull off’ is where you are picking a note and then creating another note by pulling off your finger (with another finger already pressed down)
• This exercise combines 3 techniques at once so it’s a fantastic one to learn.
• With the 3 examples below when ascending up the shape you use hammer on’s and coming back down you use pull off’s

Here’s the 1st shape of the A minor pentatonic using the exercise:

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it:

Here’s the 1st shape of the A major scale using the exercise:

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it:

Here’s the 1st shape of the A minor scale using the exercise:

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it:

Have fun using these exercises, you’ll also find them great at stretching those fingers. Remember to practice them in all shapes and keys.

You can find other excellent free info via the Js Music School twitter feeds @jsmusicschool @harvey_jsmusic

Many thanks

Rock ‘n’ roll

James

 

Become great at Improvisation Pt.4 – Groups of 4

Hi there,

Thanks for reading my blogs,

So far in this improv series we’ve learned the essential scales that you’ll want to use to improvise with. The last blog introduced a great exercise to integrate with the scales in order to start randomizing the scales. One of the challenges of improvising is to
not sound ‘scale like’ which is why lots of interesting patterns will help solve that issue.

In the last blog we looked at ascending and descending through the scales using groups of 3. Now we can have a look at Groups of 4. You can think of it in 2 ways:

• Playing 4 notes from the first note of the scale, then 4 notes from the second note of the scale and so on
• Playing 4 notes, then go back 2 notes and then play the next 4 and so on.

With these patterns it may take a little while to get used to them but after you get the pattern you can then apply to all shapes and scales.

Here’s the 1st shape of the A minor pentatonic using groups of 4: (you can click on the picture to bring up a larger version)

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it:

Here’s the 1st shape of the A major pentatonic using groups of 4:

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it:

Remember to practice these patterns with all shapes and keys. It’s also very useful to play these along to a metronome or drum machine and gradually increase the speed once the accuracy is there. Go for crotchets then quavers, semi quavers, triplets etc.

Hope you’ve found this blog useful – in the next few chapters we’ll look at hammer on’s, pull off’s and string skipping

You can find other excellent free info via Js Music School on twitter. @jsmusicschool @harvey_jsmusic

Many thanks

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

James

 

Become great at Improvisation Pt. 3 – Groups of 3

Hi there,

Thanks for reading my blogs. Hope you find them useful.
This is the 3rd blog in the series on improvisation after blogs 1 + 2 which map out your 4 essential improv scales.

Once you’ve learned all your shapes in every key for the 4 types of scales (major + minor pentatonics, major and minor scales) the next step is to integrate lots of cool patterns to help you turn these scales into riffs, melodies and solos.

In my humble opinion 2 of the best exercises to use are groups of 3’s + 4’s. Millions of riffs and melodies use these patterns and is a great way of learning your shapes inside out.

Groups of 3 means that you go up the scale pattern for 3 notes, come back a note then do 3 notes from that note and so on. Using alternate picking (down, up, down, up) with this pattern is extremely useful. You’ll want to practice this pattern going up and down each shape in each key.

Let’s take Pattern 1 of the A minor pentatonic using this exercise and you’ll get the following:

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it :

Here’s the 1st shape of the A major scale using the same sequence:

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it :

Remember this pattern can be used with all shapes in any key 🙂

Hope you’ve found this blog useful – the next blog will explain groups of 4

You can find other excellent free info from Js Music School on twitter @jsmusicschool and @harvey_jsmusic

Many thanks

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

James

 

Become great at Improvisation Pt 2 – Major + Minor scales

Hi there,

Thanks for reading my blogs so far – I’m doing a series of blogs to help aspiring guitarists to become great lead players.

This blog will focus on the Major and Minor scales. In the previous blog I showed the major and minor pentatonics. These are great for creating riffs and melodies and as they only have 5 notes within 5 shapes, they are fairly straight forward to learn. To develop your improv skills further you’ll want to learn the major and minor scales.

• The pentatonic scales are simply 5 notes out of the 7 notes contained within their ‘parent’ scales. So the pentatonic scales are simply a condensed version of the below.
• These extra 2 notes though can give you lots of cool stuff to work with. Especially when we get to pitch bends later you’ll be able to add nice semi-tone bends which aren’t available using the pentatonic scales.
• There are 2 ways of learning these shapes – my preference is the 3-note per string patterns below, I feel they are more symmetrical and cover more of the neck with each shape.

Here are the shapes: (you can click on the picture for a larger image)

• As with the minor and major pentatonics, the shapes used for the major scales are the same as for the minor but with different ‘root’ notes. These are the white notes. These are the ‘key’ notes so if you were playing in F major all the white notes would be F’s. This works for the minor scales as well.
• Again with these shapes the root notes become very important for creating melodies and riffs
• When you are practicing the shapes, go up and down the shapes and end on one of the root notes at the end to reinforce the sound of the shape.
• The shapes link together like a jigsaw the same way the pentatonics shape do, your 2nd note of any shape becomes the first of the next e.g:
• F major scale 1st shape would start Fret 1 (F), 2nd shape Fret 3 (G), 3rd shape Fret 5 (A), 4th shape Fret 6 (Bb), 5th shape Fret 8 (C),  6th shape Fret 10 (D), 7th shape Fret 12 (E)
• F minor scale 1st shape would start Fret 1 (F), 2nd shape Fret 3 (G), 3rd shape Fret 4 (Ab), 4th shape Fret 6 (Bb), 5th shape Fret 8 (C), 6th shape Fret 9 (Db), 7th shape Fret 11 (Eb)
• Remember there are 12 keys in music so 12×7 = 84 different places on the neck to play these shapes (best to think of it as 168 with major and minor as the root notes change)

Hope you’ve found this blog useful – any questions feel good about asking them in the comments section

You can find Js Music School on twitter @jsmusicschool @harvey_jsmusic for regular free guitar/ music related tweets

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

Many thanks

James

 

Become great at improvisation Pt 1 – Pentatonic Scales

Hi everyone,

Thanks for reading my blogs so far – feel good about asking any questions you may have in the comments section.

I get lots of guitar students asking me questions like

1.’how long will it take me to become a good lead player’

2. I want to get better at improvising but don’t know how to make up solos/riffs

3. How do I know what scales to use over what chords?

Answers:

1. It all depends on how much proper practicing you put in. If you practice all the things in the upcoming blogs regularly you can get to where you want to be faster.

2. In the next series of blogs I will explain a lot of the techniques and exercises that will help you to achieve question 1. There are hundreds of examples out there but I will just keep it simple and list the most essential.

3. Learning how the harmonized major/minor scales work and how they link to scales is essential, I will provide examples in this series of blogs.

So firstly learn your shapes of the major + minor pentatonic scales + major and minor scales. These are the most widely used scales and the most essential. The blue dots are the ‘Root’ or ‘Key’ notes of the scale. These become very important for phrasing your riffs and solo’s.

Key points:

1. The Pentatonic scales only contain 5 notes! they are just repeated.

2. There are 12 keys in music (A, A#/Bb, B, C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab) and each key contains the 5 shapes so there are 60 possible shapes for the Major and Minor pentatonics (120 in total)

3. They link together like a jigsaw. The 2nd note of each shape becomes the first note of the next shape.

For examples F Minor pentatonic, Shape 1 starts on Fret 1 (F), Shape 2 on Fret 4 (Ab), Shape 3 on Fret 6 (Bb), Shape 4 on Fret 8 (C) and Shape 5 on Fret 11 (Eb)

As you can see from the patterns the major pentatonic shapes are actually the same as the minor pentatonic but shape 2 now becomes shape 1 and the root notes change. This may seem a little weird but it will all makes sense later!

So for F major pentatonic shape 1 starts on Fret 1 (F) , Shape 2 starts on Fret 3 (G) , shape 3 starts on Fret 5 (A) , shape 4 starts on Fret 8 (C), shape 5 starts on Fret 10 (D)

Practice the scale shapes going up and down and finish on one of the root notes. You’ll start to hear how the shapes function.

So before moving on to the next step (learning the shapes is only the start of being able to use them) get cracking with all these in every key

Hope you’ve found this blog useful – in the next blog i’ll lay out the major and minor shapes

Rock ‘n’ roll

Many thanks

James

You can find Js Music School on twitter @jsmusicschool @harvey_jsmusic

 

The issues with ‘Mates Rates’

Hi There,

Thank you for reading my blogs so far and hope you find them useful.

In this blog i’d like to share with people my thoughts on ‘mates rates’ and why if you’re a business owner you should think carefully about whether you should be offering them.

From time to time in both my covers band and guitar teaching business’s, I’ll sometimes get asked ‘what are your mates rates’, ‘Do you do mates rates’, ‘do i get special rates for being such a good friend!’

When i started off both business’s I assumed this was the norm and offered reductions in prices for both business’s. I’ve come to realise that the only time mates rates are acceptable is in an exchange of services. So for example I’m providing cheaper rates for my wedding band in exchange for slightly cheaper rates for website design. This way both business’s aren’t affected financially + loss of time.

So some examples to why Mates rates shouldn’t be offered:

If my guitar lessons were £30 for 45 minutes and I taught on average 20 lessons a week = £600 x 4 = £2400 per month x12 = £28,800 per year

If I were to have for example 5 mates as pupils offering £20 per lesson and they were having 1 lesson a week that would equate to £550 a week , £2200 a month and £26,400 a year. So essentially I’ve taken a pay cut of £2400 within the year if I were to go down this route.

So thoughts:

• As any business owner knows there is a fair amount of risk in running a business so anything that can cause a reduction in income is not a good thing
• Some people asking for ‘mates rates’ may have full time jobs, earning a reasonable steady income that can easily afford your prices, so by asking for ‘mates rates’ they are actually doing the opposite of being a mate! This is because if they were a good mate they would insist on paying full prices as they’ll not want to see you take a pay cut
• ‘Mates rates’ do not occur in standard 9-5 jobs. So for example if your mate was your boss would you be willing to take a pay cut?!

So for my 2nd business (covers band business playing special occasions such as 30th, 60th parties and weddings) friends will be paying a lump sum of money for a very special occasion.

Say if for example I charged a friend £800 for a wedding instead of a standard price of £1200. Based on market research £1200 seems to be fairly standard for a 4/5 piece wedding band.

So say if we did 50 gigs a year @ £1200 = £60k

If 20 of these were offered at mates rates = (800 x 20) + (1200 x 30) = £52k

That means the band has missed out on £8K.

In the covers band business there are a lot of costs that many people booking will not be aware of

£1200 will take into account rehearsal fees of around £200, band payments £375, P.A hire £250, Van hire £50, website, business cards, insurance etc etc £75)

As you can see from the above costs if we were to offer £800 we’d actually make a loss on the gig.

So conclusions:

• If you wanna be a real mate – pay the full prices 🙂

Hope you’ve found this blog useful – more guitar related posts next!

Many thanks

James

 

Creating great riffs + melodies using triads

Hi There,

Thanks for reading my blogs so far.

In this blog we’ll be looking at how to add some variety to your songwriting + improvisation skills by exploring triads.

Triads are chords made up of 3 notes from a harmonized scale.

To keep things simple we’ll focus on triads from the major scale.

Let’s take a straightforward key of C major.

Using the formula TTSTTTS that gives us the notes C,D,E,F,G,A,B

Using the harmonization formula to produce triads/chords that gives us C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bdim

The intervals that make up these chords are:

Major – Root (1), Major 3rd (3) and Perfect 5th (5)

Minor – Root (1), Minor 3rd (b3) and Perfect 5th (5)

Minor 3rd = 1 1/2 tones, Major 3rd = 2 tones, Diminished 5th = 3 tones, Perfect 5th = 3 1/2 tones.

So your triads will be:

C = C, E, G

Dm = D, F, A

Em = E, G, B

F = F, A, C

G = G, B, D

Am = A, C, E

Bdim = B, D, F

If we just take the G, B and E strings we can come up with loads of combinations for these triads.

Here’s some examples:

So have a go at playing around with these and see what you can come up with. For writing songs, knowledge of triads are great as they give you lots of different options, for example:

• For creating single note melodies over chord progressions
• For adding depth to a chord progression i.e. one guitarist can play a barre chord C major while another plays a triad somewhere else on the neck
• Once you extend the triads to 7th chords that opens up more possibilities on top

Hope you’ve found this blog useful – feel free to ask any questions

You can find other great tips via the Js Music School twitter feed

@jsmusicschool @harvey_jsmusic @annie_jsmusic

Many thanks

James