Becoming an advanced player

[Solodini]

Since we're talking about advanced playing here, a query: I've been seeing lots of recommendations to work on the modes of harmonic and melodic minor as well as the diatonic modes. How often do the rest of you actually *use* those modes? I can see productive uses for Phrygian Dominant, Lydian Dominant, and Altered, and that's about it. (Of course, I'm not a Holdsworth fan, so maybe those of you who are have different contextual info that makes those scales useful....)

Quite frequently. Whatever we're calling 6th mode of Harmonic Minor comes quite naturally, I find. I guess the fact that I can't remember the name for it, just the harmonic structure goes to show that becoming familiar with various harmonic ideas is useful for them to simply expand your musical palette and vocabulary.

As such, learning to be fluid with tonality is good. It makes tension and resolution easier, once you're used to it.

 

[progman]

Wow.... This is becoming a very successful thread. Great recommendations. All this theory talk is making me feel like an idiot though. Overwhelming to say the least. I wish I took theory in high school or college.

 

[Solodini]

It's not too late.

 

[Rommel]

For some theory help/review you might want to check this site out. There are free exercises on there. musictheory.net

Working on learning complete songs, as well as playing along with recordings will help you improve faster. They will also help you pinpoint where you need to put in "extra work".

 

[celticelk]

Quite frequently. Whatever we're calling 6th mode of Harmonic Minor comes quite naturally, I find. I guess the fact that I can't remember the name for it, just the harmonic structure goes to show that becoming familiar with various harmonic ideas is useful for them to simply expand your musical palette and vocabulary.

As such, learning to be fluid with tonality is good. It makes tension and resolution easier, once you're used to it.

Lydian #9? I guess I just don't like the #9/b3 against the major 7 unless I'm specifically going for that Spanish/Arabic/classical/whatever harmonic minor sound. I'm more likely to use Lydian Dominant #9, which is basically a 7-tone subset of symmetrical diminished (just omit the b9), although I use the b9 so much it's hard to say whether I'm actually "thinking" of one or the other at any given point.

 

[Maniacal]

^ yes.

I don't decide to play for example Locrian #6 for improvising, but I will do my best to see all the mode shapes over a static vamp.

So if I am playing over a E Phrygian Dominant backing track, I will still play all the relevant mode shapes and their arpeggios. It's a work in progress that is gradually getting me out of seeing boxes that ultimately limit my movement across the neck.

 

[djyngwie]

There's little doubt, that most people will find some of these modes more useful than others. As was said, Phrygian Dominant is probably the most used mode of harmonic minor. I like the hungarian (4th mode) quite a bit as well. For melodic minor, the ones you (celticelk) mentioned are certainly the most used, but I'd like to add that the locrian natural 2 is pretty cool over half-diminished chords.

But yeah, those are the modes I've used the most. That doesn't mean somebody won't gravitate towards other modes. Find out which ones are useful to you and use them - don't feel bad about getting more mileage out of what you like; it's a good thing to focus on your strengths. You can always go back to some of the others and experiment. Sometimes, I find that I try out a particular scale/mode and I'm all "how can this ever be useful and sound good?" and then, months or even years later I revisit it and suddenly it all makes sense. Tastes and ears grow and develop over time. For me, a lot of the melodic minor sounds were like this.

 

[80H]

An advanced player is nothing more than someone that has a solid grasp of enough fundamental wisdom to choose what they want to do with the instrument.




A beginner has no freedom and an intermediate player has very little. The distinguishing line between your average advanced player and your average intermediate player is that an advanced player has already mentally solidified many of the skills that an intermediate is just being exposed to. Simply put, an advanced player is living in accordance with a significant number of fundamentals while the intermediate is just considering them.


What's even more important to realize is that advanced is a relative term. Your average person off the street knows nothing about the instrument, and all they care about is what sounds good, and rightly so. They are the true check to your abilities. From this perspective, it's easier to see that "advanced" is a word that is used by guitarists for other guitarists.

As far as being a musician goes, skill is literally pointless until it is necessary to play something. I have met guitarists that couldn't hold a candle to my kneecap technically, but their ability to make music that people love is their kneecap that I can't hold a candle to (yet!).




I am currently enjoying floating around in the gray area between advanced and pre-virtuoso, and it's not easy for me to remember every little detail that got me from point a to point b, but what I can say for certain is that the four most important ingredients for growth are basic, fundamental building blocks, practice time, technical advancement (from square 1 to square 2 ad infinitum) and musicianship (the act of creating and offering music).

It might seem like a simple formula, but that would be like saying that a marinade is a simple formula because it only requires spices, oil and an acid. There is a massive amount of wiggle room within the categories, and there's literally not enough hours in the day to even remotely get one hundreth of one percent of the possibilities covered in your entire life. That's when the development of your own voice and style starts to make much more sense.

 

[viesczy]

Yea, just like what my guitar teacher had me start doing right before I quit lessons. I took them for about 3 years almost 20 years ago. Stuff like, "starting with the first position"...

1-2-3-4 up and down the neck
4-3-2-1 up and down
1-4-2-3 etc etc

All alternate picking. Not the most interesting stuff, but probably gets the job done. I should have stuck with it. I am thinking about starting lessons again. Maybe something like 1/2 hour every other week due to time constraints.

They are BORING those exercies, but those warm up exercises are invaluable for building a great set of hands. I still use the a combination of them as my first picking routine just to sync my two hands. Then I go to Scarified, then it is off to w/e I am rehearsing (right now I am FIXED on Novacek's Perpetuum Mobile) or composing/arranging/developing something.

I will say this about those exercises... I sorta did so much alternate picking that not picking every not feels weird to me. Unless it is a trill or a tapped note with my right hand, typically I'm picking the notes.

The Holdsworth legato type of stuff is as alien to me as all that jazz was to me!

Derek

 

[Adam Of Angels]

Ok, bear with me here...

What is very frustrating to me is, (and mind you, I am self taught and have a solid working "vocabulary" when playing) I always hear people talking about learning to use different modes and such, but aren't you always ever just playing a particular scale (C Major - containing all of its 7 modes - for example) over a progression at any given point, rather than playing a particular mode of a particular scale over a progression? I always became massively confused by this. In order for a mode of a scale to fit over a progression, it has to be in key (and it would therefore make more sense to talk about what key you were playing in as opposed to what mode you were using), unless you are modulating using "versatile" modes (modes that will fit over several different chords of different keys, as I understand it) over a shifting chord pattern (one that is changing keys). I hope that makes sense. Put more simply, but perhaps too crudely: rather than talking about the importance of learning how to use a particular mode, shouldn't we just place an importance on playing in key? When I'm improvising, I'm following along with any variety of notes (from any of the modes in the key I'm in) that are in key with the progression, rather than playing with one mode. Ugh.

I can't call myself anything less than an advanced player at this point, but when I hear these sorts of discussions about using modes in different ways, I always feel like I'm either completely blind to this whole realm of possiblilities, and bound to smack myself when I finally figure out what I was missing, or that everybody is using technical terms that I've outgrown the need for as an intuitive player.

Any light shed on this would be met with much love and gratitude.

 

[djyngwie]

That's parallel thinking. While it's good for some things (learning the basic idea behind modes being a pretty important one), in a lot of contexts it really is useful thinking of each mode as a separate scale, even if you can always relate it back to a major scale. For instance, a lydian scale is more than just a major scale played a fourth perfect away: each note takes on a different function and so on.

Both mindsets will add to your understanding of music. And there's other, hybrid ways of thinking about scales (the lydian chromatic concept, for instance). Again, knowledge is power.

 

[Solodini]

Lydian #9? I guess I just don't like the #9/b3 against the major 7 unless I'm specifically going for that Spanish/Arabic/classical/whatever harmonic minor sound. I'm more likely to use Lydian Dominant #9, which is basically a 7-tone subset of symmetrical diminished (just omit the b9), although I use the b9 so much it's hard to say whether I'm actually "thinking" of one or the other at any given point.

I like playing with semitone resolutions so the lydian #9 feel works well for that in Major centric tunes. I like it for being able to mirror movements in other harmonic contexts as well, so being able to do so around tonic chord tones I find to be handy.

 

[Adam Of Angels]

I like playing with semitone resolutions so the lydian #4 feel works well for that in Major centric tunes. I like it for being able to mirror movements in other harmonic contexts as well, so being able to do so around tonic chord tones I find to be handy.

Could you possibly post a clip demonstrating this? Knowing how this translates musically would be helpful, I think.

 

[Maniacal]

I'd like to see that too

 

[Solodini]

Could you possibly post a clip demonstrating this? Knowing how this translates musically would be helpful, I think.

I'll try to make some time to do so!

 

[Adam Of Angels]

Also, not to high jack the thread, but any thoughts from you or Maniacal on my previous rant-sized post?

 

[progman]

An advanced player is nothing more than someone that has a solid grasp of enough fundamental wisdom to choose what they want to do with the instrument.




A beginner has no freedom and an intermediate player has very little. The distinguishing line between your average advanced player and your average intermediate player is that an advanced player has already mentally solidified many of the skills that an intermediate is just being exposed to. Simply put, an advanced player is living in accordance with a significant number of fundamentals while the intermediate is just considering them.


What's even more important to realize is that advanced is a relative term. Your average person off the street knows nothing about the instrument, and all they care about is what sounds good, and rightly so. They are the true check to your abilities. From this perspective, it's easier to see that "advanced" is a word that is used by guitarists for other guitarists.

As far as being a musician goes, skill is literally pointless until it is necessary to play something. I have met guitarists that couldn't hold a candle to my kneecap technically, but their ability to make music that people love is their kneecap that I can't hold a candle to (yet!).




I am currently enjoying floating around in the gray area between advanced and pre-virtuoso, and it's not easy for me to remember every little detail that got me from point a to point b, but what I can say for certain is that the four most important ingredients for growth are basic, fundamental building blocks, practice time, technical advancement (from square 1 to square 2 ad infinitum) and musicianship (the act of creating and offering music).

It might seem like a simple formula, but that would be like saying that a marinade is a simple formula because it only requires spices, oil and an acid. There is a massive amount of wiggle room within the categories, and there's literally not enough hours in the day to even remotely get one hundreth of one percent of the possibilities covered in your entire life. That's when the development of your own voice and style starts to make much more sense.

I agree with most of this. When I say advanced, it is kinda one of those "I don't know exactly what it is but I know it when I see (hear) it" kinda of things. What I really want is to improve on is:

1. Increasing my speed and left/right coordination (alternate picking, legato)
enough to...
2. Become proficient with finger tapping and sweep arpeggios
3. Learn more "tricks" for my arsenal
4. Maybe not so much "theory" per se, but guitar terms and scales. Not that interested in stuff like sight reading. I don't want this one to take to much of my total "guitar time"

 

[Solodini]

Ok, bear with me here...

What is very frustrating to me is, (and mind you, I am self taught and have a solid working "vocabulary" when playing) I always hear people talking about learning to use different modes and such, but aren't you always ever just playing a particular scale (C Major - containing all of its 7 modes - for example) over a progression at any given point, rather than playing a particular mode of a particular scale over a progression? I always became massively confused by this. In order for a mode of a scale to fit over a progression, it has to be in key (and it would therefore make more sense to talk about what key you were playing in as opposed to what mode you were using), unless you are modulating using "versatile" modes (modes that will fit over several different chords of different keys, as I understand it) over a shifting chord pattern (one that is changing keys). I hope that makes sense. Put more simply, but perhaps too crudely: rather than talking about the importance of learning how to use a particular mode, shouldn't we just place an importance on playing in key? When I'm improvising, I'm following along with any variety of notes (from any of the modes in the key I'm in) that are in key with the progression, rather than playing with one mode. Ugh.

I can't call myself anything less than an advanced player at this point, but when I hear these sorts of discussions about using modes in different ways, I always feel like I'm either completely blind to this whole realm of possiblilities, and bound to smack myself when I finally figure out what I was missing, or that everybody is using technical terms that I've outgrown the need for as an intuitive player.

Any light shed on this would be met with much love and gratitude.

So are you meaning the thought of changing "mode" to suit every chord? If I've interpreted your post correctly, yes, playing dorian over the ii chord, phrygian over iii, lydian over IV et c. is just playing the tonic key.

However, if your tune feels like it resolves to D with an all natural key signature then it's D Dorian.

Or are you meaning using atypical modes with each chord, such as Ionian of I, IV and V, for a simple example?

 

[celticelk]

Ok, bear with me here...

What is very frustrating to me is, (and mind you, I am self taught and have a solid working "vocabulary" when playing) I always hear people talking about learning to use different modes and such, but aren't you always ever just playing a particular scale (C Major - containing all of its 7 modes - for example) over a progression at any given point, rather than playing a particular mode of a particular scale over a progression? I always became massively confused by this. In order for a mode of a scale to fit over a progression, it has to be in key (and it would therefore make more sense to talk about what key you were playing in as opposed to what mode you were using), unless you are modulating using "versatile" modes (modes that will fit over several different chords of different keys, as I understand it) over a shifting chord pattern (one that is changing keys). I hope that makes sense. Put more simply, but perhaps too crudely: rather than talking about the importance of learning how to use a particular mode, shouldn't we just place an importance on playing in key? When I'm improvising, I'm following along with any variety of notes (from any of the modes in the key I'm in) that are in key with the progression, rather than playing with one mode. Ugh.

I can't call myself anything less than an advanced player at this point, but when I hear these sorts of discussions about using modes in different ways, I always feel like I'm either completely blind to this whole realm of possiblilities, and bound to smack myself when I finally figure out what I was missing, or that everybody is using technical terms that I've outgrown the need for as an intuitive player.

Any light shed on this would be met with much love and gratitude.

I'll have a crack at this, at least until the theory heavyweights make an appearance.

Let's start here: Dm-G7-C is a progression in C major. No more, no less. C is the chord to which you shall resolve, and the chord of the resolving shall be C. =) It's not a Dorian-Mixolydian-Ionian progression. And since all of these chords are diatonic to C major, you can just play the C major pitch collection over the progression and have everything work.

BUT: the pitches in C major (CEFGABD) also have particular relationships to the chord that is sounding *at any given moment*. When the Dm chord is sounding, then the C note functions as a minor 7, and has a more "restless" feeling than when the C chord is sounding. In order to explicitly identify the relationships of those C major pitches against the respective chords in the progression, you could describe what you're playing as D Dorian - G Mixolydian - C Ionian. Same notes, but what you're conveying is the particular relationship of that pitch set to the harmony-of-the-moment.

This is a useful way to think about what you're doing because there's no universal law that says that I *have* to play C major over a C major progression. Maybe I want a melody that sounds a little more pungent, because that's how my tastes run. I might choose alternate pitch collections to play over each of those chords that are reasonably consonant with the harmony-of-the-moment, and which provide more interesting melodic alternatives than a vanilla C major scale. I might play D Aeolian (DEFGABbC) - G Altered (GAbBbCbDbEbF) - C Lydian (CDEF#GAB), for example, because I like to exploit the half-step movements that occur in moving from one scale to the next, and because I like the sound of the Lydian scale's #4 better than the major scale's natural 4. This is pretty standard bebop stuff. But our progression is still in C!

Conversely, you can have progressions in C that are not all composed of diatonic chords in C major. If I play Dm-G7#9-C, for example, the #9 in G7 (Bb) is not part of the C major pitch collection, but the progression still resolves unmistakably to C. Or I could substitute Db7#9 (Db-F-Ab-Cb-E) for the G7#9, and have two notes that are not diatonic to C major, while retaining the strong resolution on C. In those cases, simply playing C major over the progression might not yield a melodic line that is aesthetically pleasing against the harmony (depending on your tastes, of course), and you might want to select a different scale for that portion of your melodic movement.

Of course, not all music has strong functional harmony. There are genres (modal jazz, doom metal, a number of electronic styles, etc.) where functional harmony is optional or even discouraged. Take the jazz tune "So What," for example:



There's no progression there: they just hang out on Dm7 for a while, then switch to Ebm7, and then back to Dm7. Under those circumstances, a soloist might reasonably select any scale that's consonant with that harmony and spend some time exploring it. In the case of "So What," the two chords in the head and Bill Evans' piano comping tend to nudge the soloist towards selecting Dorian rather than, say, Phrygian or Locrian, though a determined soloist who wants to consciously evoke those dissonances might play using those scales anyway to create tension, and then resolve to a more "inside" Dorian sound.

Make sense, or more confusing?

 

[Solodini]

https://soundcloud.com/adamsatur/lydian-9-thang Bit rushed together and kinda awkward but you get the jist.