hoping for some practice advice....

[soldierkahn]

Upto this point Ive been a self-taught player who just plays for kicks, but am now getting bored of just playing the same old songs all the time. I would rate myself as maybe an intermediate level of playing but I want to keep advancing. Ive hit an obstacle that Im trying to find the best way around.

From what I understand, to get faster for leads and solos, you need to develop muscle memory for the scales you use most often. I totally get that im not going to be shredding for quite some time, I would just like to make sure that Im doing workouts that will actually benefit me rather than waste my time. Ive printed out Fretboard maps for myself, on one side is the fretboard map for a guitar tuned in standard (EADGBE), and then on the reverse is the same scale for Drop D (DADGBE). This way when I find out what key the piece is in, i can grab the map and set it in front of me while i noodle around underneath whats playing.

Here is where I am hitting my wall. Ill use a fairly common chord progression to illustrate below:

D - C - G - D, im thinking of Cant You See by Marshall Trucker Band as my example, which is in the key G. At first glance I thought itd be in the key of D since it starts and ends on D, but the D scale uses a C# instead of a C, leading us to G. With that key/scale in mind, i look to my fretboard map:

E|----|F#-|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|---|F#-|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|
B|--C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|---|F#-|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|---|F#-|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|
G|----|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|---|F#-|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|---|F#-|-G-|
D|----|-E-|---|F#-|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|---|F#-|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|
A|----|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|---|F#-|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|---|F#-|-G-|---|-A-|
E|----|F#-|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|---|F#-|-G-|---|-A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|

and I can clearly see all the notes/frets that I can use underneath the chord progression, but what I cant seem to workout is WHICH notes to play. I cant seem to figure out if that piece of understanding is something i have to learn from just repeated playing over the progressions, or whether its some piece of music theory that i havent learned yet that is holding me back from "getting it".

now im not trying to be a Shreddy McFuntits, I prefer writing emotional leads/solos akin to Southern Rock and Blues-based music. I know the ability to play these scales fast is going to come in time after more practice, so Im trying to focus right now on how to build basic leads/solos to help me get the hang of writing them before stepping into the next challenge of building speed and adding more advanced techniques.

using the above song and progression, if you wanted to write a lead/solo over top of a chord progression you've written, how do you (individually) approach this part of your songwriting? I know everyone has a different approach, but due to my lack of knowledge in this department, im reaching out for help to see how some of you guys or gals get through this process?

 

[Solodini]

Use chord tones (notes which the chord is made from but in whatever octave you're currently playing in) on the strong beats, such as beats 1 & 3 in 4/4 time. That'll give you a good framework for your melody. Around that, pretty much anything goes, with notes of the scale being more of a guaranteed success.

You'll have the odd occasion where you'll encounter a minor 2nd or b5 (1 semitone or 6 semitones respectively) relationship between your melodic note and a note of the chord being played which might not be to your tastes, but most other notes will be fine enough, to most people's ears.

A simple thing you can do to expand your vocabulary of phrases and build the muscle memory of familiar shapes without playing the exact same thing over and over is to chop the melodies and phrases of the song into 2, 3, 4 and 5 note chunks to form the basis of new phrases which you can place in any order you like. Just be aware that notes landing on strong beats will fit best as chord tones. If the note available isn't a chord tone, try just moving that note to suit, or move the whole phrase to maintain the same sort of relationship between the notes of the phrase but fitting the relevant chord tones. If you put these phrases and modifications next to each other, you will probably form some new phrases which you can also move around. Lots of shredding is based on variations of similar phrases to create sequential movement, such as playing a phrase and then moving all of the notes up or down diatonically (alphabetically through the key). It's a good habit to get into of being able to move a phrase through the key e.g. BCBA, ABAG, GAGF, FGFE, et c..

If you get bored of the results of this, you can start adding in chord extensions on the strong beats, such as 7ths and 9ths of the chord, which will add a bit more intrigue. You can also get more variety in your rhythms by playing the chord tone/extension half a beat before or after the strong beat and not play anything else on that strong beat. If you're not used to making conscious decisions about modifying a rhythm then this will probably be pretty difficult for you.

The best way to start out with this is to write out:
1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a
put a dot under one of these symbols. Count through the whole lot out loud (one ee and ah...) and clap or play a note on the marked division. Do this a bunch of times on different divisions. Keep counting it out loud. If you're struggling, slow down!
Once you're smooth with one division marked, try it with 2. You could do the same note for both, or you could play a different note for each. Try marking these with an underline and a dot respectively. Do this a bunch, keep counting out loud, nice and slow.
The logical progression, once you've done a bunch of rhythms with 2 divisions, move onto 3 divisions marked. You could use 1 note, 2 with one repeated, or 3 different notes. Hopefully you can see how you logically progress this.

 

[soldierkahn]

thank you so much for this, that was extremely helpful. i tracked with at least 95% of what you put down (i got lost after the "1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a" part, but thats also only at first glance.

Im shocked that the wall was something so simple as just looking at the current chord being played, isolate the chord tones, and make sure to emphasize them on the strong beat. Ive been doing something thats been close to that, where once i sit down with the chord progression, i map out the different locations on the fretboard where you can make that chord, and use the root of the chord as my starting note for the lead. Ive also tried making myself think a little faster on the fly by going a few beats before the root note and the strong beat to scale myself up or down to that main chord tone to start the lead off. One "box" i need to pull myself out of is to stop concentrating on playing note after note, and to start incorporating bends or slides into or out of phrases so that my leads sound less like scale exercises and more like messages im trying to convey.

 

[FwLineberry]

D - C - G - D, im thinking of Cant You See by Marshall Trucker Band as my example, which is in the key G. At first glance I thought itd be in the key of D since it starts and ends on D, but the D scale uses a C# instead of a C, leading us to G. With that key/scale in mind, i look to my fretboard map:

It is in the key of D. It just doesn't use the D major scale. If you learn that opening flute part, you'll see that he lands squarely on the D note at the end of his phrases. When the guitar player takes over, he's playing out of D major pentatonic. The song is based on the D Mixolydian mode (D E F# G A B C). That's the same notes as G major, but makes D the home base. If you compare D Mixolydian to D major, you'll see that the 7th note is lowered one fret (C instead of C#) Lowering this note in a major key is the southern rock and classic rock sound. Get used to it. You'll find it used a lot.

and I can clearly see all the notes/frets that I can use underneath the chord progression, but what I cant seem to workout is WHICH notes to play. I cant seem to figure out if that piece of understanding is something i have to learn from just repeated playing over the progressions, or whether its some piece of music theory that i havent learned yet that is holding me back from "getting it".

How much time have you spent noodling around in major and minor pentatonic? Those are good scales to start with because they give you all the notes that sound safe in either the major or minor key. It's pretty hard to hit a wrong note working with pentatonics and yet there's a lot you can do with those simple scales. Many guitar players have come and gone without stepping outside the pentatonic scales.

now im not trying to be a Shreddy McFuntits, I prefer writing emotional leads/solos akin to Southern Rock and Blues-based music. I know the ability to play these scales fast is going to come in time after more practice, so Im trying to focus right now on how to build basic leads/solos to help me get the hang of writing them before stepping into the next challenge of building speed and adding more advanced techniques.

using the above song and progression, if you wanted to write a lead/solo over top of a chord progression you've written, how do you (individually) approach this part of your songwriting? I know everyone has a different approach, but due to my lack of knowledge in this department, im reaching out for help to see how some of you guys or gals get through this process?

I improvise all my lead playing, so writing leads is not something I do. But if you look at improvisation as spontaneous composition, the process is similar.

First thing I do is get a good idea of the raw materials I'm going to be working with - what key, what chords are involved, which scales and arpeggios work with those chords, what's the feel of the solo backing rhythm. When it comes to playing, I've got a lot of years behind me doing this stuff so it only takes a brief nanosecond to figure out where I'm going.

Now, think of a solo as a chapter in a book. It's not the whole story. The song is the whole story. But a chapter needs to be a self contained mini story within the larger story. It needs to have a beginning, a development and a conclusion based on a theme that ties it all together. As an improviser, I don't usually know the theme until I'm doing it, but I know the things that go into creating the overall theme. These things are the paragraphs and sentences of my chapter.

Think of one time through the chord progression as a paragraph. Like a chapter, a paragraph is a complete thought on the subject with a beginning middle and end. The chord progression itself provides this structure. In that MTB chord progression, the opening D chord sets the tone. The C gives a sense of going somewhere with the chords. When it gets to the G, you can anticipate that it's going to land back on the D. So it's like we took a trip with the C chord. The G chord is our vacation spot and now we're getting burned out and looking forward to going back home to D.

Try an experiment. Cue up that tune on youtube or whatever so you can play over those chords. Then play a simple line over each chord in turn, like A B D E D. Play that same thing over each chord with the same rhythm. Notice how the chords changing underneath that lick make it sound different each time you play it. It's the same lick, but it's in a different environment. Try it again, only this time mess around with the rhythm and timing a little bit so you're playing the same notes but making it sound a little different each time based on the chord changes. Now you're starting to tell a little story of your own. That lick is a sentence. You played that sentence over each chord and when you got back to the D it sounded like you had a little conversation that went around the room and came back home. That's a paragraph.

Landing on the root note of the scale over the home chord is like putting the final period on the last sentence of a paragraph. Landing on the root note of the scale over the other chords is more like a comma. Landing on the root of the other chords while playing over those chords is almost like a period, but nothing says, "I'm done with an idea" like that root note over the home chord.

Leading the listener through this little chord journey is called phrasing. Tasty phrasing is what makes a solo sound like you nailed it.

Back to developing the solo. I'll start with simple opening statement usually based around the root note over the home chord, maybe something like those notes I gave you to try. Since these chords aren't lasting all that long, that's probably all I'm going to play over the opening chord. When the second chord comes, I might branch out a bit in the scale above or below what I've already played. When the G comes I might use that change to slide into a higher position on the fingerboard, but I've got my eye on the fact that the D is coming around and I need to decide how I'm going to wind up this paragraph. With a strong period? With a question mark? With an exclamation point? Maybe I'll just leave the listener hanging for another trip through the progression.

The only note I'm really concerned about when I'm playing is the root note of the home chord. The rest I'm usually just following my ear and drawing on my experience of knowing what's going to sound like I want it to sound. I've spent so much time in the basic scales over basic chord progressions that they are old friends to me. You can play with the other chords in the progression by focusing on chord tones, or you can play against the chords creating tension that you're going to resolve back home on the D chord.

Now, that's the basic formula that I'm going to be manipulating as I play my solo. I'm going to stretch it out and build on it through each round of the chords working my way to the conclusion over the final chord.

.

 

[soldierkahn]

Well you werent kidding, that certainly did the trick last night! I decided to simplify even further and instead of using Cant You See as my backing track, i picked out a song that had just 2 different chords, Fmaj7 to C (i used the song Hold On To Memories from Disturbed, because its in D standard like me so everything felt and sounded right). Once I got the loop of those two chords going over and over again with Ultimate Guitars backing track tol, i pulled out my fret map for Aminor pentatonic / CMajor pent and started doing what you told me. I started extremely slow, and started going each of the pentatonic positions:

shape 1
e|--------------------------5-8----------------------------------------------|
B|---------------------5-8---------------------------------------------------|
G|----------------5-7--------------------------------------------------------|
D|-----------5-7-------------------------------------------------------------|
A|------5-7------------------------------------------------------------------|
E|-5-8-----------------------------------------------------------------------|

shape 2
e|------------------------------8-10-----------------------------------------|
B|------------------------8-10-----------------------------------------------|
G|-------------------7-9-----------------------------------------------------|
D|-------------7-10----------------------------------------------------------|
A|-------7-10----------------------------------------------------------------|
E|-8-10----------------------------------------------------------------------|

shape 3
e|-----------------------------------10-12-----------------------------------|
B|----------------------------10-13------------------------------------------|
G|----------------------9-12-------------------------------------------------|
D|---------------10-12-------------------------------------------------------|
A|--------10-12--------------------------------------------------------------|
E|-10-12---------------------------------------------------------------------|

shape 4
e|--------------------------0-3----------------------------------------------|
B|---------------------1-3---------------------------------------------------|
G|----------------0-2--------------------------------------------------------|
D|-----------0-2-------------------------------------------------------------|
A|------0-3------------------------------------------------------------------|
E|-0-3-----------------------------------------------------------------------|

shape 5
e|--------------------------3-5----------------------------------------------|
B|---------------------3-5---------------------------------------------------|
G|----------------2-5--------------------------------------------------------|
D|-----------2-5-------------------------------------------------------------|
A|------3-5------------------------------------------------------------------|
E|-3-5-----------------------------------------------------------------------|


I would say, after about 15-30minutes of going over each position, making sure to hit each note on a beat and starting slow, i stopped needing to look at the chart. After about an hour of continuously noodling over top of the progression, i started writing pieces of things that i liked the sound of. If there was a part where i wanted a fast ascent or fast descent, i would work it out slowly, and then work myself up to the speed i wanted to hear the notes at. After a good 3 hours last night of just nonstop jamming to the track, i was getting excited because i was getting faster.

thank you for such helpful advice, i made more progress in understanding in one night than i did the last 5 years lol

 

[soldierkahn]

.

Thank you tremendously for all of this, this was something that I was looking for as well. Being able to get inside someones head while they are approaching improvisation. When Im playing to other peoples songs, i treat them as backing tracks, and when there are openings, I try to improvise over them. I prep myself as i start the song by reminding myself of the chords that are being used in the part that im going to improv over, and then i find which scale to use for the improv. Once my opening comes, ill take a shot at a solo of my own, sometimes i nail it and give myself goosebumps and make myself smile, but then there are also those times that im like "good God Adam stop playing lol".

Im going to continue on working with the pent minor and major scales to help me develop the "framework" notes that can work over the whole piece, and once i really have the pent scales down, i can start looking at adding in the other 2 notes in the key. I finally came to the realization last night that i finally "get" the whole deal being learning the different MODES per scale Key. This is completely different from me being able to APPLY that knowledge to modes yet, but i finally understand their purpose of existence.

 

[soldierkahn]

Try an experiment. Cue up that tune on youtube or whatever so you can play over those chords. Then play a simple line over each chord in turn, like A B D E D. Play that same thing over each chord with the same rhythm. Notice how the chords changing underneath that lick make it sound different each time you play it. It's the same lick, but it's in a different environment. Try it again, only this time mess around with the rhythm and timing a little bit so you're playing the same notes but making it sound a little different each time based on the chord changes. Now you're starting to tell a little story of your own. That lick is a sentence. You played that sentence over each chord and when you got back to the D it sounded like you had a little conversation that went around the room and came back home. That's a paragraph.
.

Holy crap...... that was a great way to describe songwriting. This is why I wanted to start with these slower easier bands, if i can get that concept down, when I finallly start getting faster and playing over more complicated riffs, ill have a good foundation of understanding of what i need to do!

 

[soldierkahn]

does anybody have any song suggestions that have some basic chord progressions in them that i could use? One of my FAVS to use is Daughtry "Home".

 

[DudeManBrother]

Take 5 is a good one because you typically solo over just 2 chords (Ebmin and Bbmin) but because it’s in 5/4 and a flat key, it makes you think about what you’re playing a little more. Then you can learn the songs melody and some point, which can be a bit of a finger twister at full tempo. This is a jazz song, but if you can comp over this, you can comp over hard rock all day.

 

[soldierkahn]

Take 5 is a good one because you typically solo over just 2 chords (Ebmin and Bbmin) but because it’s in 5/4 and a flat key, it makes you think about what you’re playing a little more. Then you can learn the songs melody and some point, which can be a bit of a finger twister at full tempo. This is a jazz song, but if you can comp over this, you can comp over hard rock all day.

please forgive my naievity but is Take 5 the artist or the song title?

I know ill probably be called an idiot for this but i never really wanted to get into developing my muscle memory until I found the right scale guitar that felt comfortable to me. 24.75" is way too cramped and requires too thick of strings to maintain tunings for my taste, 25.5" is still a little cramped, 26.5" felt like it was just ALMOST there, and then when my 970XL got here and i tried 27" it felt PERFECT. So now im stepping back from just having fun and trying to start developing my muscle memory. Thank God Ibanez released a 27" 7 this year so now when i change from guitar to guitar, i wont notice a thing.

 

[DudeManBrother]

Nah man, we all come from little knowledge in the beginning. Take 5 is a song, probably most famously done by Dave Brubeck, but a “standard” that has been recorded by dozens of musicians. George Benson and Chet Atkins come to mind immediately for guitarists that have a recording of it.

(Opinion) Here’s the version which all others are measured by: