Unless you're playing jazz or country or some other weird technical style you can get away mostly with just knowing your pentatonic scales, and picking out arpeggios from chords for solo's. Works 99% of the time I reckon. Anything more is just fret wankery really, when it comes to rock music anyway...
Getting good at the guitar
- Thread starter Xanadu
- Start date
I was talking about my advice, not yours. Mine was purely emergency bluffing tricks.
Your advice is better, but mine includes no 'wrong' notes so is good for 'emergency solos you might fluff a bit'.
No i was talking about yours too.
Both those players are VERY pentatonic orientated players, but do it soo very well that most people thinking they are brilliant.
Not that I don't think they are brilliant, they are, but they still play based around those pentatonics a LOT.
starfish2000
Well-Known Member
Go and buy Ralph Deyners "The Guitar Handbook" its just the bible and aside from a good historical knowledge of the guitar in the back there is a techniques section with are all your scales and modes and techniques laid out in a simple straightforward way. Also I'd try and learn some licks off records, but once you have mastered them, move them around and play variations and make them into your own. Anyone can do parrot fashion if they practice enough, its bringing your own thing to the table thats always the most impressive.
I got that book right here.
With a Foreword by Robert Fripp.
It is a bible, not a handbook.
eta - to be honest I used it as a reference in a reply I made earlier about dissonance and consonace as I couldn't remember the terms off the top of my head. I use it all the time when creating lesson plans.
id recommend getting a book of scales and just practicing them over and over until you're comfortable playing over them.
start off with pentatonic. then major, minor, blues, mixolydian, dorian, etc etc.
im not a particularly profficient guitarist but im actually quite good at solo'ing just cos i put some much practice into learning the different scales and playing them over and over again. its great for jamming - you can just stick a cd on, find the right key and make up solo's on the spot. its great fun!
start off with pentatonic. then major, minor, blues, mixolydian, dorian, etc etc.
im not a particularly profficient guitarist but im actually quite good at solo'ing just cos i put some much practice into learning the different scales and playing them over and over again. its great for jamming - you can just stick a cd on, find the right key and make up solo's on the spot. its great fun!
northernhord
Active Member
I,m a bass player but can also play guitar well, I learnt by simply playing, and playing and playing, I wouldnt bother too much with tuition unless you wantto unwittingly pick up the playing style of others.
I will admit a serious amount of bias here, I am a guitar teacher.
The above quoted post is rubbish.
The only thing you pick up teaching yourself is bad habits. I know, I am self taught over the past 20 years and I had to work very hard to rid myself of bad habits when I found out how I should have been playing.
It also takes twice as long to learn anything on your own, and there is always the danger you are learning something incorrectly, no one there to correct your errors, I spent 5 years thinking that the FACE on Sheet music was the F at the top. It isn't by the way, it is FACE upside down with the F at the bottom.
There is also the point that you are not in a vacuum as a musician, so while it is great that you can play and solo and move around with chords, that is no good at all when the Keyboardist says, Ok lets play that in F#m.
You have no idea where F# is, cause you self taught, you have no idea what the minor scale is cause you never learnt it.
I like being able to walk into studios and have other musicians just tell me what they need.
"We need a I IV VI II in F#m"
Np.
I couldn't do that until I started looking into teaching and I had to learn what all that crap meant.
Have to say I've found the reverse. Started learning the piano some 14 years ago. Ditched it and took up guitar. I know scales as far as, what shapes are minors, majors, blues and a couple of others I forget the name of. But if I'm playing a B Major scale up at the 7th fret, I wouldn't know what every note was included. Not with out stopping to think. But then I don't read music or tab. Learn by ear, once I had the basics.
Now I have a synthasizer and I'm trying to learn to play keyboard by transposing the chords and scales I know from guitar on to that. Cos I've been playing guitar so long, playing fitting scales feels like muscle memory more than thinking, I need a G# here. Now practise is more about trying to play clean, fast and with some originality.
I'd be fucked if i had to write out the notation for one of my solos. Not cos they're so amazing. Just I don't remember them that way.
I don't think many people think of soloing in that way Xenon, there just isn't time, it has to be muscle memory.
What I meant by simpler on the Keyboard was the fact that C Major for instance is simply all the white notes starting from C. Dorian is all the white notes starting from D. Phrygian is all the white notes starting form E. etc etc.
It is just laid visually much better then a fretboard.
Not to mention of course that all the Sharp notes are easily visible, where on the fretboard they are not, not only that but they move around on each string.
It is a very difficult instrument to look at and understand musically. Whereas the keyboard is very easy to look at and understand.
starfish2000
Well-Known Member
I like being able to walk into studios and have other musicians just tell me what they need.
"We need a I IV VI II in F#m"
QUOTE]
And those studio sessions....are they for a pit band in the west end or something, cos noboday talks like that in any studio I've ever been in
If you want a teacher go for it, you'll learn loads. But I think either way will work, its nebulous, I'm self taught and theres gaps in my knowledge, but I've made records, auditioned for a couple of pro bands along the way and a lack of theory has never held me back.
Unfortunately you just don't know that. Much like I can't claim that knowing music theory has got me anywhere I wouldn't have gotten anyway.
It is one of those things where you don't really know what impact it would have had. Perhaps by displaying a certain amount of music theory you would have been invited on a project that you wasn't invited onto, perhaps doing that would have meant you didn't get invited to another project you did get invited to.
You just never know.
I wanted to be comfortable with other musicians without relying on just my ear.
TitanSound
Mr Beardy Drummer
You sir, should be shot.
Actually no that would be to quick.
You sir, should be sliced and diced.
Ah I see what you mean. Though I never really learned what dorian and phrigian meant. I might read up on some theory.
miniGMgoit
OverWeightUnderAchiever
Blues riff
