If you know the words try singing along

Lessons: Chord Harmonization

Harmonizing the Major Scale

This is a very useful exercise that I found helped train my ear quite a lot when it came to figuring out chord progressions off cds that I used to have to play in covers bands.

This is a very useful tool for understanding some of the ways in which chords and scales interact (or even just for learning some new chords) and this can benefit your ear, song writing, soloing and chordal knowledge.

The basic idea here is that we will build a chord off each note of the major scale (but the hard bit is ensuring that we are playing the right notes within these chords so that we remain in key).

We will only use the notes of the underlying major scale available to us in each position - the side effect of this will be that we will have a different chord voicing of each note (minor, major etc.).

Lets look at an example before I confuse you completely ;)

Here are the list of the notes going from I(root note) to VII (the seventh note of the major scale), and some agreeable chords which can be built off each note

Note:	Agreeable Chords
I	Maj, Maj7, Maj9, Maj13
II	Min, Min7, Min9, Min11, Min13
III	Min, Sus4b9, 7#9, 7b9
IV	Maj7, Maj7#11, Maj9#11
V	7, 9, 13
VI	Min, Min7
VII	Min7b5

So lets look at this in practice. What we will do initially is to play the G major Scale to remind us of the notes we will be building chords on top of.

The first note(I) we play in the G Major Scale is obviously G, on top of this note we will be building a G major chord - as is shown in the figure above you will see this is an agreeable chord for the first note of the major scale.

The next note in the G major scale is A(II) for this note we will be playing a Amin7 chord - and then we can move through the reminder of the scale matching a chord to each note, as is shown in the example below:

Sample Harmonisation -	G Major Scale
I	GMaj
II	Amin7
III	Bmin
IV	CMaj7
V	D7
VI	EMin
VII	F#min7b5

Chord Shapes Used Above:
GMaj	Amin7
Bmin	CMaj7
D7	Emin
F#min7b5	GMaj (Octave)

I have included a little sample of me playing the chord sequence shown above.

Exercise 1

Experiment with creating songs using the rules shown above - find a suitable key (maybe one that you can sing in) and then find some single notes that work together (create a rudimentary bass line) -find a chord from the list above which suits each note in your bass line (eg for the 2nd note of the major scale play a minor 7th or maybe a minor 13th).

Remember that you do not have to play these chords in the exact order of the scale!!!

Exercise 2

Find a song that you like and know the chords to.... does it fit in with the chord rules above? (Remember rules are made to be broken - as long as it sounds good :)

Have fun with this and practice those chord shapes - sometime I would like to go into the details why the tonality of the chords you create on each degree(note) of the major scale change

Intermediate

Introduction To Legato Techniques I

Introduction To Legato Techniques II

Introduction to the Minor Pentatonic and Blues Scales

Alternate Picking I

Legato Phrasing: Lesson One - The Basics

Legato phrasing is a technique of playing notes smoothly so that they seemlessly flow together. On the guitar one of the easiest ways to do this phrasing is by the use of hammer-ons and pull offs.

Hammer ons

A hammer on is best explained like this :

Play these two notes just picking them as normal:

(suggested fingering 1 & 3)

Now play them again but this time only pick the first note and then force your third finger down onto the 7th fret without picking the string again.If you had enough force and accuracy then you should have completed a hammer-on.

This is written like this in tablature :

(Notice the hammer-on symbol above the notes)

Pull offs

A pull off is almost the exact opposite of a hammer-on. firstly position your fingers so that they are on two different frets on the same string. (eg put your first finger on the fifth fret of the D string and your third finger on the seventh fret of the D string).Then pick the string (therefore playing the note on the seventh fret) and once you hear the first note then just remove the top most (eg third) finger while still having the bottom most finger fretted - this should execute a pulloff.

Here is a diagram to show this.

So the note on the seventh fret is played first and then by pulling that finger off the fretboard quickly the note on the fifth fret is sounded without having to pick it.

Hammer-ons and Pull offs together

Here is an exercise to build up your strength in legato technique :

Practice this with all combinations of your fingers and repeat it all over the guitar neck.

(Only pick the very first note)

Legato Phrasing: Lesson Two - Multiple hammer-ons and Pull-offs

What I will be covering in this lesson are some ways in which to use legato techniques in your playing. In the last lesson we looked at the basic techniques for hammer-ons and pull-offs, by using these concepts in different ways we can create interesting sounding guitar licks.

The F Major (Ionian) Scale played with hammer-ons and pull-offs

Consider the following lick :

This shows a F major scale that is played over 2 1/2 octaves using hammer-ons, only picking once on each string. This is a good introduction to the hammer -on techniques in that as well as being a good scale to learn it sounds good (in the right place).... The next rather obvious way to approach this scale is to play is using pull-offs, starting on the highest note and picking only when changing to a different string

(At this stage still alternate your picking strokes.....all will be explained later !)

Beginning Legato Sequences

So we have seen how to play a basic scale using hammer-ons and pull-offs, well after a while as you can imagine this starts to get a little stale. A good technique for increasing speed and dexterity while playing something that sounds a little bit more interesting is to use sequences. A sequence is just a repeating fingering pattern that you use to work your way up a scale, an example may be to start on the first note, go up three, go back down to the start and then repeat the sequence starting on the second note, and then the third note etc.. Etc...

Consider the following example:

This is the basic sequence; note how it is only quite short.... This is the initial sequence, this is repeated within the same lick that is represented below, the first notes are the same then there is another repetition of the sequence, which begins on the next string up.... When the sequence is repeated over it starts to look a bit scarier - and it sounds a lot more impressive...

What should be noted is how I start with a simple pattern and then expand it while still just using the same initial sequence that is repeated over (and over) again.... Surprised how easy this seems - well the concepts are easy but getting your fingers to play these examples probably will take a bit more work!!!, But if you get the first sequence down then you will be a ways to getting there !!!!

Lessons : Introduction to the Minor Pentatonic and Blues Scales

In this lesson I would just like to introduce two new scales that most guitarists are very familiar with, the minor pentatonic and also the Blues Scale.

Introduction to the Minor Pentatonic and Blues Scales