A fundamental concept of music theory is the idea of intervals.
An interval is the musical distance (or difference) between two notes.
On guitar, you can think of it as how many frets there are between two notes.
Think About Musical Intervals on Guitar When it comes to beginners thinking about intervals, the guitar gives us a problem:
We have a lot of strings
This can make it difficult to visualise intervals, especially when working them out across strings.
Me, learning some baroque stuff Most of the time, we learn guitar because we want to play songs we have listened to, the songs we love. Playing those songs gives us a way to connect to the music that has been a significant part of our lives, on a much deeper level.
Learning those songs also allows us to connect to others, by playing the songs together. Every guitar player gets a kick from jamming their favourite songs with their friends.
Often when it comes to improvising, a big reason people struggle is that they are trying to learn too much in one go, setting unrealistic or even impossible goals and expectations for themselves.
Overwhelm is one of the biggest problems guitar players face. It affects nearly every area of our playing.
And it affects our improvising, especially, when we are trying to apply scales over a chord progression.
Quick side note: This is aimed at getting anyone to be able to improvise on guitar.
Symmetrical chords have a unique place in music theory, which results in a unique application to the guitar (and fretted instruments in general). This article is the first in a series, that is will take a look at symmetrical chords, where they come from and how we can apply them to guitar.
To start with, we will look at a little bit of theory. In the next few parts we will look at some practical applications - i.
A key skill for making your scales and arpeggios sound musical, rather than sound like playing a scale and an arpeggio, is to learn how to integrate scales and arpeggios on guitar.
When I first started learning modes and scales, I had this idea that I had to know everything, in all positions, all over the neck. That’s cool. But when it came to arpeggio integration… well it was just too much for my brain to handle.
It’s been said that you can’t be a great lead player, without first being a great rhythm player. And if you are writing your own material, part of being a great rhythm player involves having great riffs. Today, we’ll look at how we can write riffs using the harmonic minor scale. Let’s look at a little bit of theory
The Harmonic Minor Scale The harmonic minor scale has the following intervals:
So you’ve put years into learning your instrument. Into learning music. And you want to record an album.
You’ve had ideas for your riffs. Recorded them. Re-recorded them. Then finally recorded them in time.
You started turning those riffs into songs.
You’ve put everything you have into your songs, into writing, re-writing, editing… and then started the whole process over.
You fought those negative, self defeating thoughts about your work, that voice in the back of your head whispering “who are you to record your music professionally?
This is a pretty killer lick. It is just before the main solo in Liar by Yngwie Malmsteen. Take a quick listen to the arpeggio section before the solo here:
https://youtu.be/GaUCs3SoD0g?t=1m58s
Yngwie uses the arpeggios:
G#o G#o Am Am G#o G#o Am Am A∆ Dm G∆ C∆ Bb∆ Am F∆ E∆ And we get the impression that the sequence is split into the following three sections:
Section 1 (x2): G#o G#o Am Am Section 2: A∆ Dm G∆ C∆ Section 3: Bb∆ Am F∆ E∆ And it looks like we are in the key of A minor (check out chords from minor keys).
As musicians, we are always looking for new ideas we can incorporate into our playing and compositions. One thing I like to do when I come across a new idea, is to figure out how to conceptually reduce it into a set of easy and simple to apply rules. Being a metal musician, I’ve been interested in writing songs in minor keys.
So when I started learning about minor keys… that’s exactly what I wanted to do.
Key changes. When I was learning guitar, no one really explained how these work to me. There are some basic approaches I figured out, such as modulating between keys with shared chords… or just abruptly changing key. But I always liked knowing why something worked, or having a set of rules I could follow. I didn’t have any such rules for writing key changes.
Then my guitar teacher introduced me to a classical pianist called Chopin.