Haha but seriously though. Different people learn in different ways, I think the way information is presented in this blog is great for some people. It could use a bit more (ie images/videos) but for the most part it's pretty good. I think it's great the conversations that are happening, but some of you do kind of sound like elitist dicks :D I like jazz as much as the next guy, but it's not how I determine a guitar player's skill. Just because you don't play jazz you aren't any less of a guitar player.
ZERG_RUSSIAN, slow down with the jazz facts. No one said learning jazz is bad. Jazz is cool.
It's just that not everyone feels like jazz is a necessity for all guitarists out there.
I'll give you a Starcraft analogy: If you're a bronzie who plays 4v4 once a month with his buddies, you don't HAVE to watch day9 and pro replays and practice a ton of 1v1 ladder. Some people just wanna socialize and have a fun time. That's what most guitar players end up doing anyway.
Someone like you and me might wanna look into learning the theory behind what we're doing, for practical reasons, but it's impractical to force these studies on beginners.
Also I think when you're referring to rock, you're actually thinking about radio oriented songs; Otherwise you're just plain wrong. Saying rock doesn't have a certain scale is an uninformed statement, mostly because a ton of genres (including jazz) have already been mixed with rock in the past few decades. If that's not what you meant I apologize.
On October 03 2012 02:19 JieXian wrote: Actually had all the chord names so I don't think 90% can't read chords. If you're talking about jazz then I don't find it surprising that many can't read hard chords because they aren't interested in the first place.
There's a HUGE difference between a dominant 7th played like a guitar player and a dominant 7th played like a jazz player. Knowing the chords is one thing but you really have to know why you're playing certain notes in a chord and why you're omitting certain ones. This is especially important when you get to polychords which can be different chords based on what you define as your root, and your root can be higher than your bass note if you're playing an inversion so it really, really matters. I'm pretty sure you're at that stage where you think you're doing a lot more on the guitar than you actually are.
Anyways in my opinion learning to improvise is the most important thing to do after you've got past the beginner stage, and I did it the hard way without knowing about scales
The way I learnt was I played songs on the computer and tried to play along it and keep trying. Eventually my hearing started to improve and I find patterns (scales) all the time.
Ehhhh... I get the feeling you're finding the same "pattern" or "scale". Once you know the fretboard up and down you can always solo in major/minor, but can you do it with a dorian? When? It's not something that's intuitive that you can just do by ear because I 100% guarantee that if you're listening to a rock song you're not ever going to "improvise" a dorian mode, and rock has little to no key changes, which makes it retardedly easy to find a root note and go into a minor pentatonic and color it with some scales from the aeolian. Jazz is different in that the jazz scale is chromatic and anything you can play technically works, but the bebop scale is a rhythmic innovation, not a tonal one.
I guess you can say I'm being an elitist but seriously I've been playing for 15 years and I remember when I thought I was hot shit for the reasons you think you're good, and then I played with some musicians and felt really fucking stupid when I couldn't follow them for two songs. If you think you're good at improvising now, get together with some people who play jazz for a living. One, you'll get better at improvising. Two, you'll realize how bad your understanding of music is.
hold on I got a feeling you're clouded by elitist perceptions:
Jazz is fucking difficult and I don't feel like seriously studying it anytime soon. I've tried watching one of theose Joe Pass videos on Youtube before and reading up theory. It felt like Joe Pass was speaking German. I've at least 10 gb of jazz, mostly less than 320 kbps mp3s, mostly from bebop / swing era from Monk to Mingus to Django because that's what I like the most and I know what it is.
I consider jazz to be highest rung in the musical ladder.
And yes I think I'm better than many casual players but knowing very well what I can't do I know that I'm terrible and have a lot more to learn.
Now with that aside, I totally disagree with your point. Firstly, I'm encouraging people to improvise because I feel joy doing it, and it doesn't need to be anything technical. Improvising in a major scale is hard enough and everyone will feel the joy once they have achieved that ability.
To draw an analogy with talking it's like being able to speak your mind or come up with jokes instead of reciting quotes or speeches that you've read or memorising someone elses jokes.
Improvising in scale "x" is absolutely something I can do with my ear when I'm listening to the song that uses that particular scale. Technically, your point is correct but I think it's you're coming from a more theoretical perspective, much like classical musicians in a way.
For example, tell me how can I not learn "advanced scale x" by playing along with this:
I'm very bad at theory but i've got a feeling that's a dorian, if it is then it'll be fucking great to prove my point even more.
I'm someone who spends time "coming up" with all kinds scales on the fretboard because I hear a lot of folk music. Most of the time I'll look it up in wolfram later on to discover it's formal name later and find out what other stuff I can do with it.
I was writing to beginners because that's what this thread is for. I think your style isn't suitable for beginners and you need to bring yourself down when teaching someone new and not scare him away.
Edit: I understand where you're coming from because learning jazz is so hard that I can only dream of being able to master it unless I quit my degree and study music. I got a feeling we have different definitions for the word "improv". Improvisation to me is playing on the fly much, like converstation. There also isn't a need for bombastic vocabulary to have a decent one.
I hope you don't mind the comparison with classical musicans too much but that's what you sounded like to me : somewhat close minded or rigid.
I learned how to read music at age 8, but 16 years later I still prefer reading tabs when playing guitar, which has since become my main instrument. I find it easier, because I playin a lot of dropped tunings, and literally NEVER play in standard. Drop C (CGCFAD) is my standard, followed by drop B, drop D,and drop C#. This kinda makes reading standard music notation a pain in the ass, as the fretboard is different for every song I play.
On October 03 2012 02:19 JieXian wrote: Actually had all the chord names so I don't think 90% can't read chords. If you're talking about jazz then I don't find it surprising that many can't read hard chords because they aren't interested in the first place.
There's a HUGE difference between a dominant 7th played like a guitar player and a dominant 7th played like a jazz player. Knowing the chords is one thing but you really have to know why you're playing certain notes in a chord and why you're omitting certain ones. This is especially important when you get to polychords which can be different chords based on what you define as your root, and your root can be higher than your bass note if you're playing an inversion so it really, really matters. I'm pretty sure you're at that stage where you think you're doing a lot more on the guitar than you actually are.
Anyways in my opinion learning to improvise is the most important thing to do after you've got past the beginner stage, and I did it the hard way without knowing about scales
That's actually the easy way =/.
The way I learnt was I played songs on the computer and tried to play along it and keep trying. Eventually my hearing started to improve and I find patterns (scales) all the time.
Ehhhh... I get the feeling you're finding the same "pattern" or "scale". Once you know the fretboard up and down you can always solo in major/minor, but can you do it with a dorian? When? It's not something that's intuitive that you can just do by ear because I 100% guarantee that if you're listening to a rock song you're not ever going to "improvise" a dorian mode, and rock has little to no key changes, which makes it retardedly easy to find a root note and go into a minor pentatonic and color it with some scales from the aeolian. Jazz is different in that the jazz scale is chromatic and anything you can play technically works, but the bebop scale is a rhythmic innovation, not a tonal one.
I guess you can say I'm being an elitist but seriously I've been playing for 15 years and I remember when I thought I was hot shit for the reasons you think you're good, and then I played with some musicians and felt really fucking stupid when I couldn't follow them for two songs. If you think you're good at improvising now, get together with some people who play jazz for a living. One, you'll get better at improvising. Two, you'll realize how bad your understanding of music is.
hold on I got a feeling you're clouded by elitist perceptions:
Jazz is fucking difficult and I don't feel like seriously studying it anytime soon. I've tried watching one of theose Joe Pass videos on Youtube before and reading up theory. It felt like Joe Pass was speaking German. I've at least 10 gb of jazz, mostly less than 320 kbps mp3s, mostly from bebop / swing era from Monk to Mingus to Django because that's what I like the most and I know what it is.
I consider jazz to be highest rung in the musical ladder.
And yes I think I'm better than many casual players but knowing very well what I can't do I know that I'm terrible and have a lot more to learn.
Now with that aside, I totally disagree with your point. Firstly, I'm encouraging people to improvise because I feel joy doing it, and it doesn't need to be anything technical. Improvising in a major scale is hard enough and everyone will feel the joy once they have achieved that ability.
To draw an analogy with talking it's like being able to speak your mind or come up with jokes instead of reciting quotes or speeches that you've read or memorising someone elses jokes.
Improvising in scale "x" is absolutely something I can do with my ear when I'm listening to the song that uses that particular scale. Technically, your point is correct but I think it's you're coming from a more theoretical perspective, much like classical musicians in a way.
I'm someone who spends time "coming up" with all kinds scales on the fretboard because I hear a lot of folk music. Most of the time I'll look it up in wolfram later on to discover it's formal name later and find out what other stuff I can do with it.
I was writing to beginners because that's what this thread is for. I think your style isn't suitable for beginners and you need to bring yourself down when teaching someone new and not scare him away.
Edit: I understand where you're coming from because learning jazz is so hard that I can only dream of being able to master it unless I quit my degree and study music. I got a feeling we have different definitions for the word "improv". Improvisation to me is playing on the fly much, like converstation. There also isn't a need for bombastic vocabulary to have a decent one.
I hope you don't mind the comparison with classical musicans too much but that's what you sounded like to me : somewhat close minded or rigid.
I'll drop the discussion here because I don't want to scare people off from learning guitar in the first place but all I'm saying is that I came from the point of view you have right now and I've learned through experience that it's like learning to cook using hamburger helper. Yes, you can make a meal. Yes, it's edible and can even be tasty. If someone gave you some ingredients and told you to make it from scratch, would you be able to do it? No.
On October 03 2012 02:19 JieXian wrote: Actually had all the chord names so I don't think 90% can't read chords. If you're talking about jazz then I don't find it surprising that many can't read hard chords because they aren't interested in the first place.
There's a HUGE difference between a dominant 7th played like a guitar player and a dominant 7th played like a jazz player. Knowing the chords is one thing but you really have to know why you're playing certain notes in a chord and why you're omitting certain ones. This is especially important when you get to polychords which can be different chords based on what you define as your root, and your root can be higher than your bass note if you're playing an inversion so it really, really matters. I'm pretty sure you're at that stage where you think you're doing a lot more on the guitar than you actually are.
Anyways in my opinion learning to improvise is the most important thing to do after you've got past the beginner stage, and I did it the hard way without knowing about scales
That's actually the easy way =/.
The way I learnt was I played songs on the computer and tried to play along it and keep trying. Eventually my hearing started to improve and I find patterns (scales) all the time.
Ehhhh... I get the feeling you're finding the same "pattern" or "scale". Once you know the fretboard up and down you can always solo in major/minor, but can you do it with a dorian? When? It's not something that's intuitive that you can just do by ear because I 100% guarantee that if you're listening to a rock song you're not ever going to "improvise" a dorian mode, and rock has little to no key changes, which makes it retardedly easy to find a root note and go into a minor pentatonic and color it with some scales from the aeolian. Jazz is different in that the jazz scale is chromatic and anything you can play technically works, but the bebop scale is a rhythmic innovation, not a tonal one.
I guess you can say I'm being an elitist but seriously I've been playing for 15 years and I remember when I thought I was hot shit for the reasons you think you're good, and then I played with some musicians and felt really fucking stupid when I couldn't follow them for two songs. If you think you're good at improvising now, get together with some people who play jazz for a living. One, you'll get better at improvising. Two, you'll realize how bad your understanding of music is.
hold on I got a feeling you're clouded by elitist perceptions:
Jazz is fucking difficult and I don't feel like seriously studying it anytime soon. I've tried watching one of theose Joe Pass videos on Youtube before and reading up theory. It felt like Joe Pass was speaking German. I've at least 10 gb of jazz, mostly less than 320 kbps mp3s, mostly from bebop / swing era from Monk to Mingus to Django because that's what I like the most and I know what it is.
I consider jazz to be highest rung in the musical ladder.
And yes I think I'm better than many casual players but knowing very well what I can't do I know that I'm terrible and have a lot more to learn.
Now with that aside, I totally disagree with your point. Firstly, I'm encouraging people to improvise because I feel joy doing it, and it doesn't need to be anything technical. Improvising in a major scale is hard enough and everyone will feel the joy once they have achieved that ability.
To draw an analogy with talking it's like being able to speak your mind or come up with jokes instead of reciting quotes or speeches that you've read or memorising someone elses jokes.
Improvising in scale "x" is absolutely something I can do with my ear when I'm listening to the song that uses that particular scale. Technically, your point is correct but I think it's you're coming from a more theoretical perspective, much like classical musicians in a way.
I'm someone who spends time "coming up" with all kinds scales on the fretboard because I hear a lot of folk music. Most of the time I'll look it up in wolfram later on to discover it's formal name later and find out what other stuff I can do with it.
I was writing to beginners because that's what this thread is for. I think your style isn't suitable for beginners and you need to bring yourself down when teaching someone new and not scare him away.
Edit: I understand where you're coming from because learning jazz is so hard that I can only dream of being able to master it unless I quit my degree and study music. I got a feeling we have different definitions for the word "improv". Improvisation to me is playing on the fly much, like converstation. There also isn't a need for bombastic vocabulary to have a decent one.
I hope you don't mind the comparison with classical musicans too much but that's what you sounded like to me : somewhat close minded or rigid.
I'll drop the discussion here because I don't want to scare people off from learning guitar in the first place but all I'm saying is that I came from the point of view you have right now and I've learned through experience that it's like learning to cook using hamburger helper. Yes, you can make a meal. Yes, it's edible and can even be tasty. If someone gave you some ingredients and told you to make it from scratch, would you be able to do it? No.
Actually the way I see it it's more like this: (no idea about how to make hamburgers because I'm from the other side of the world)
I can make simple Chinese meals or learn it decently quickly without following recepies and instructions. My mother doesn't. And I'm notorious in my family for doing crazy things with food which they deem ridiculous.
But I can't make Ferran Adria's stuff anytime soon using that method.
I'm sure we can agree that both are delicious when done well.
However to me learning proper theory and having a proper foundation is akin to learning recepies and knowing exactly what you're putting in and exactly what it'll do. So I disagree with your analogy. Moreover since people have always been making good food and music without any theory, I don't see why the it suddenly loses all credibility since it still works well. Of course I do believe it isn't the right approach in making haute cuisine or jazz.
I'm not disagreeing too much with you because I still want to learn jazz, and have always been at a very slow pace, someday I'll commit more time to it. I'm only disagreeing on your apparent dismissal of other ways of playing music.
Anyways out of curiosity, was that turkish song in dorian or was it something else?
I'm not sure which raga, but you can solo over it in D minor, and no, I don't think that's a dorian scale. This is:
It's really not about the scale itself though, you should be paying attention to what the tones do to the chords:
The only difference between the Dorian and Aeolian scales is whether or not the 6th is major (in the Aeolian it is minor, in the Dorian it is major). The I, IV, and V triads of the Dorian mode are minor, major, and minor, respectively (i-IV-v), instead of all minor (i-iv-v) as in Aeolian. In both the Dorian and Aeolian, strictly applied, the dominant triad is minor, in contrast to the tonal minor scale, where it is normally major (see harmonic minor). It is also worth noting that the sixth scale degree is often raised in minor music, just as it is often lowered in the Dorian mode (see melodic minor). The major subdominant chord gives the Dorian mode a brighter tonality than natural minor; the raised sixth is a tritone away from the minor third of the tonic. The subdominant also has a mixolydian ("dominant") quality. Overall, it is commonly used in funk because of its sound. The Dorian mode is also the basis of the ascending melodic minor scale, which is also known as the jazz minor scale.
Because like I said earlier, if you know any scale pattern up and down the neck you already know all the modes, you just have to know when taking the 2nd-7th notes in the scale as your root is going to do what to your progression. It really does become all about theory here.
Also, I don't think you quite understood my analogy:
On September 17 2012 09:24 ins(out)side wrote: * As much as it is possible, listen to music that you love and intend to learn. For myself, this meant learning every song off every Nirvana album. In terms of learning how to write music, doing this helps you make someone else's style a part of your own. This also helps you enjoy what you play, which is crucial to repeating what you play, which is crucial to continue raising the skill level of what you play. When you play the music of someone else to the extent that you start to free jam and write riffs that sound like that style, you have begun establishing your stylistic foundation....
noobie git-fiddler here, starting out just to try something different (have played drums on/off for about 8 years) and the only thing that truly resonates to me in this discussion is this point.
If you are going to do something that requires a large investment of time and effort it is imperative that you keep yourself interested in what you are doing.
You MUST enjoy learning to play your instrument, or you probably won't get very far in any amount of time at all. I've never had a lesson in my life (don't think that i dont regret that either) but the reason I stuck with it long enough to get good, start teaching myself new things, write my own music and am able to break down stuff I've literally never heard before all goes back to days I was just rocking out to some of my favorite music in the ol' drum shed, trying to play along with Danny Carey or Mike Wengren with one of their CDs going through my headphones. It was after all of this that I started getting serious and began seeking out information in the form of rudimentary sticking exercises, practice patterns, theory and etc. I would have never made it this far if I didn't WANT to make it here.
Specifically, just playing songs to learn is not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it can be the all important source of motivation that a new student, whether being taught or figuring it out for themselves, needs to build all of these important techniques and habits.
Really appreciate this! Been playing guitar for a year or two with absolutely no basics, just picking and strumming songs >_>. Maybe this will help get my basics :D
the only advice I can give to you after playing the guitar for about 10 years is; don't be obsessed with music theory, it almost always sucks the fun out of it and besides there's no possible way of writing down the solo from Machinegun (Hendrix) yet it is still one of the most soulful personal things recorded on guitar ever.
Enjoy the sound of the guitar, play as to how you feel, it's not a race, you're trying to convey something on the guitar, talk to people with it, share your feelings etc.
I'm really sad when I see all these new guitarists everywhere making a sport out of this (ie faster is better, more complicated = more sophisticated, more = better; all false approaches).
Try to create a special kind of playing that noone has ever done before, write songs even if you know 2 chords, be creative...
Tommy Emmanuel (look him up!) once said in an interview that his life is way, way too short for him to be reading tabs, learn to listen and not just follow orders from tabs. That way you will train your ear!
Also never forget that the sound of your guitar is important too, don't be obsessed with effects and special butique gear, Robben Ford has one of the most sought after sounds ever, yet even when he plays on a shitty amp it sounds like him, noone can duplicate him and you shouldn't.
Create your own style and have fun with it!
TL;DR: Take the I don't give a fuck about any rules approach and be creative.
Oh man this is like perfect. My brother has had his guitar left at my place for months now and I've been considering trying to pick it up and play as someone who has never had any real interest in music up until recently. I'm not home till next week, so I'll save most of this reading for when that comes closer, but I'm really glad to have found something like this. Thank you very much
From what I've read so far, great write up! My only suggestion would be regarding the "what should your first guitar be?" area.
My STRONG opinion for new guitarists is to NOT buy an electric right away. I've only fiddled around with a classical here and there but IMO an acoustic is the best place to start. Why? Finger strength! Helps build a great foundation!
On October 29 2012 14:28 RedMorning wrote: From what I've read so far, great write up! My only suggestion would be regarding the "what should your first guitar be?" area.
My STRONG opinion for new guitarists is to NOT buy an electric right away. I've only fiddled around with a classical here and there but IMO an acoustic is the best place to start. Why? Finger strength! Helps build a great foundation!
Shred on my fellow guitarists!
I completely understand where you´re coming from and the point about finger strength is correct. Still I disagree: When I wanted to start learning to play the guitar, my parents exactly proposed your way, to learn the accoustic guitar first. If I stick with it, I eventually get an electric guitar. I wanted to learn to play the music I listened to, but learned fingerpicking only (+no chords, no scales...) and this kind of music didn´t motivate me. I had lessons for about 4-5 month and then I quit. It just wasn`t what I wanted. About two or three years later a friend of mine startet playing electric guitar, which motivated me to start over again. This time however I got my parents to buy me a (cheap) e-guitar. The motivational difference was enormous, now I could learn the songs I liked and I put the neccessary hours into the instrument.
In conclusion, I would advise parents to first buy a cheap electric guitar* with an acceptable amplifier. If the kid sticks to the guitar, get him a good one after around 1-2 years and the amp still does it. If he/she puts the guitar down, not too much is lost with the guitar and most amps can be easily sold.
*Get it from an actual guitar store!! I got a used one for 135€ that sounds decent for its price, because the seller was a guitar teacher who cared enough to not sell crap.
EPT
No one said learning jazz is bad. Jazz is cool.![[image loading]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s2XJhDGA7yk/TyuL09A9y5I/AAAAAAAAA5M/UemtA95i2cU/s1600/bulli.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.extremesavingswithdivadesirae.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/HamburgerHelperL11.jpg)
