Archive for the ‘Music Theory’ Category
Sooner or later any serious guitarist comes to realize that a solid theoretical background is the only way forward. Your ear can only take you so far, that’s when your musical theory can kick in and remove any musical obstacles in your way to fully expressing yourself.
Seems pretty straight forward… just go to the music shop and pick up a theory book and away we go; away we go alright… pick up the wrong book and you’ll end up more confused than you ever were before.
Musical fact of life # 1: Not all theory books are created equal.
I remember when I started my first job, it was at a music store teaching music; I had a bit of a reputation as a player in the local area playing in dance bands etc., and since I had already sold quite a bit of musical equipment for the music store based on my track record they thought I would be the obvious choice; if
the store had a potential guitar or amp customer they would leave a message with my mum, then after school I would go down to the store and demonstrate the gear.
Everything started out fine, I stumbled and fumbled my way through the guitar lessons, I’m not sure who learnt the most me or my students I know I learnt heaps everyday mostly about how not to teach.
Anyway, very early in the piece the store manager informed me that if I was going to continue teaching for the store I would need to be “qualified”; I didn’t know exactly what that entailed but it did sound scary
As it turned out what he meant was I needed to be formally qualified… just being able to play the guitar was not good enough if I was going to teach guitar for them.
The good news was they were going to pay for my lessons so that was neat… there was even more good news I could go to the theory lessons instead of having to work at the shop.
So I began my theory lessons and very soon became frustrated, confused and perplexed… things I knew worked on the bandstand the night before didn’t match up with the theory lesson the next day.
The more confused I became the more determined I was about finding the “truth”; so I started studying with other teachers to augment my “paid” lessons from the music store… boy, did that make matters worst; it seemed as if each theory teacher had their own slant on things many basic concepts did not match up.
Long story short… after a lot of playing, thinking and research I discovered….
Musical fact of life # 2: there are different types of theory… in fact there are three distinct types of theory: classical, jazz and rock/blues!
These are very broad categories they are all important and the complete musician needs to be aware of their similarities and differences.
They world is full of traditional classical theory books so I won’t discuss them here. Modern theory as applied to improvisation and the music of our time is what I’m about… it’s great to know what happened 400 years ago but it’s unlikely to help you secure that rock gig next Friday night,
Here’s my top three modern theory books for guitarists
Title: Modern Method For Guitar – By William Leavitt (Berklee Press)
Available from: Berklee.com
Overview: if you want to get in on the ground floor and study guitar and theory as applied to the guitar fretboard, this is the place to start!
Available in three volumes; the first sixty pages of volume one covers the basics of reading music in the first position of the guitar.
Part two of Berklee volume one introduces the five standard fingering patterns for reading music over the fretboard.
Title: Jazz Studies – by Bruce Clarke (ed clinch v.i.s.e text)
Available from: BillyHydemusic.com.au
Overview:A fantastic book that takes off were the Berklee book volume one finishes; the Jazz Studies book is ideal to use in conjunction with Berklee Volume two.
Fantastic explanations of how modes, cycle 5 and cycle 7 concepts work Jazz studies is a great introduction into the world of improvisation, if you have studied traditional theory this book will “blow the lid off” how you look at theory. Step by step instruction, very easy to understand. Highly recommended.
Title: “See It – Hear It / Hear It – Play It” – by Dick Grove
Available from: DickGrove.com
Overview:A complete course with DVD/text instruction from the man himself Dick Grove, you could easily pay $100,000 in college instruction and never get this type of tuition.
Everyone learns differently the DVD’s bring the written text to life helping to maintain the student’s motivation and enthusiasm. Any one of these individual courses or combination of all three theory texts will clear the way for you to express yourself on the guitar.
What key is the song “Malaguena” (Spanish dance) in that it uses the following chord progression; Am, G, F and E? It appears to be in the key of C except the E major chord. Shouldn’t it be E minor? And what scale can I play over it?
You’re right, the E chord should be minor. Then everything fits into the C major scale. In this example, the Am chord is functioning as the root (tonic). “A” is the relative minor (sixth degree) to “C”. So this would be called A Aeolian mode or A natural minor.
But the E major chord has a raised third, G#. Often times a progression like this includes an E7 which has a V7 pull and resolution to the tonic Am. And when the E major, or E7, chord comes up, the lead/melody usually raises the G to G# too. Then back to G natural when the progression returns to Am. This is called the harmonic minor scale. Specifically, this application would be called the “A harmonic minor scale” because the Am is functioning as the root (tonic). Anytime you raise the seventh scale degree of a natural minor scale you create a V7 chord and harmonic minor scale.
You can hear this done in songs like “Smooth” by Santana, “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, and “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica (E harmonic minor) just to name a few.
Music Theory for Guitar
Notice how more complex concepts like the harmonic minor scale stem from more fundamental concepts like major scale patterns and chord progressions. Guitar theory is a process. Don’t get ahead of yourself!
As a former engineer, I constantly ask myself: “What is the best way to learn guitar?” (or more specifically “What is the best or most efficient way learn a musical instrument?”. This is especially true after I went back to college at age 36 to study jazz guitar. With pretty good technique from being an 80′s shredder, and with a good work ethic (from Master’s Degree in Engineering, and Diploma in Object-Oriented Programming) people were telling me I’d have no problem learning jazz – I just needed to “learn the theory” since I already had the chops. Boy was this a wrong assumption!
In Classical music, in which I don’t claim to be an expert, musicians spend a lot of time playing songs. These are scores by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Paganini, etc and these composers usually have written many etudes. This means ‘study’ in English and provides a means to develop one’s chops, but in a musical manner. Sure these musicians also practices their scales. When you go to see a classical concert, the performer has undoubtedly spent countless hours playing and replaying the piece until it is up to speed and perfect. While no one really understands how learning works exactly in the brain, the usual comments are that this practice builds up muscle memory in the hands and head. I doubt any musician could play a challenging piece at full speed the first time it is placed in front of them. There are stories of famous jazz musicians who couldn’t solo over songs like Giant Steps at first because of the unusual chord progressions – these are people who were excellent musicians, knew all their scales and theory but were frozen. I view improvisation and the spontaneous combination of pre-rehearsed ideas, not as mysterious as many artists would like to project. Even Charlie Parker was quoted as saying “Learn the changes, then forget ‘em”. I interpret this to mean “learn what works over the progressions, get them into your ears so that you hear them and reproduce them without much thinking”.
When I think back to how I learned guitar, I spent most of my time trying to learn songs. This was because I was inspired after hearing a song. I needed to be able to play that tune! The challenge was that often these songs were so far beyond my technical ability at the time. And they usually incorporated way too many techniques in just one solo – bends, slides, hammer ons, pull-offs, two-hand tapping, sweep arpeggios, economy picking, legato playing, pinch harmonics, you name it! When this happened I had to isolate the issue (sweep picking) and get this working before adding it back into the main song.
Music is a language – the way we learn a language is by imitation. Early on ,we learn words and phrases without really understanding what we’re saying, then we assimilate the information and eventually innovate or improvise in daily life when we speak sentences to each other. Learning a style of music like rock or jazz should be the same way. Most of us never learned all the technicalities of the English language but we picked it up by listening, reading, speaking and making mistakes and being correct by our parents or teachers. Learning music should be the same.
There are many components to being a well rounded, professional musician, especially when improvisation is required. You need to learn scales, intervals, triads, arpeggios, chords, sight reading and ear training to name a few. These things as practice items themselves should be a smaller percentage of your overall practice time (say 20%). You need to have at least the basics down -such as the ability to alternate pick, hammer on, pull off, chords, etc. I had top marks in courses like jazz theory, put in tons of practice time, but still wasn’t happy with my improvisation ability. Most times it felt like a deer in the headlights.
I recently was lucky enough to find Jazz Sax Etudes by Greg Fishman from Chicago. He teaches differently than most, using tunes to inspire and teach students, and focusing on the songs. His instructions are to first get the tunes up to full speed BEFORE diving into all the theory.
So in summary, my point is that the best way to learn guitar in any style is by learning songs you love. Songs you love will inspire you to keep practicing and to get better. These songs will teach you the techniques you need to learn. Transcribe the songs, slow them down, buy a book to get the correct tab, do whatever you have to do to get the song down on paper. Remember that at slower speeds any song is playable by anyone! I use software called “Amazing Slow Downer” to slow down tunes and then I play along with the slowed down version. Play it slower at whatever speed you can play it perfectly, then slowly increase the speed until you have it at the actual tempo. If you have problems at speeds of 50% or less, isolate the problem areas until they match your ability with the rest of song.