Getting Your Nerd On - The Benefits Of A Completist Approach

Yes, I know, I promised Allan Holdsworth this month, but it's just proving too big a topic! For now, content yourself with this...

As I mentioned at the start of the year, I set myself a few challenges. So far it's going pretty well, but every now and again I find myself stumbling across patterns – be they scale ideas, arpeggios or chord voicings – that are just so out there that I find myself thinking “when would I ever use this?”

And it's true, I'm unlikely to spend much time using the Phrygian Dominant or hammering out minmaj13b5 chords. The direct impact of these patterns on my playing is minimal. But then again, it's bound to be – I've been playing guitar for 23 years. The only stuff left to learn is the crazy out there stuff. So what's the point?

Well, the point is the indirect impact. Learning new things keeps me in touch with how to learn – and if you forget how to learn, you're not going to be terribly effective as a teacher. But it also means I find the odd curious pattern that just works. For example, the riff to the classic Killers track “Mr. Brightside” is an evil-to-finger sod of an arpeggio – it's not the kind of thing you just stumble across. It's the kind of thing you find when you're experimenting with add9 chord voicings and you find something that just clicks – that just sounds right. And then you develop it by changing the bass note and hey presto – a song!

As some of you know, last year I spent quite some time wrapping my hounds around Andy McKee's masterpiece “Drifting”. It took me a fair old while, and while I was trying to come to grips with a totally alien way of playing the guitar, I found myself wondering just how the hell does something like this get written??

And then a little later, I found myself voicing a D minor chord with the F note on the 1^st fret low E, open A and D note on the 7^th fret G, tapped with the right hand. And then I slid the tapped note up to the E and down to the C (9^th and 5^th frets on the G), while plucking the A with the right hand thumb... And then I started to understand how you might develop an idea like that into a piece like “Drifting”

So there really is an incentive to going absolutely nuts and bolts guitar nerd crazy with this sort of stuff – set yourself a task like finding absolutely every possible way to play a Cmaj7, for example, and be prepared to be amazed by some of the beautiful, haunting sounds you can coax from your guitar. Yes, you'll find a lot of junk, but you might just find something that kick starts your creativity in ways you would never have expected. 

The SImpsons Theme (Guitar Cover)

Flying In A Blue Dream (guitar cover)

Festival Time

The days are getting longer, the rain is getting warmer, and that can only mean one thing – summer is here! And what does summer mean (other than bipolar weather and crushing disappointment) music festivals.

As I write this, Download had just been and gone and it's now the turn if that legendary staple of British music – Glastonbury! Founded by local farmer Michael Eavis as the Pilton Festival in 1970, every year since then (with a few exceptions) the sleepy village of Pilton, Somerset plays host to roughly 175, 000 music fans. Just think about that for a moment. 175, 000 – that's the size of two or three towns. All crammed in to a single location – Worthy Farm.

I actually attended in 2000 and it was a remarkable experience – David Bowie, Travis and the Chemical Brothers (although I think I was elsewhere for them, watching – of all people – Rolf Harris.. wow, it really was a more innocent time). There were some quite remarkable performances by bands I'd never heard of before or since, and remarkable performances by bands I had, but most of all it was just fantastic to be up close to the big boys, watching them set up and adapt under pressures of time, no proper sound checks, just plug in and go – in other words, just like the rest of us have to do!

But although that experience has a special place in my heart, I consider my first Glastonbury to have been in 1995 – eight months after I'd picked up the guitar with the sole ambition of learning the riff to “Teen Spirit”, my eyes and ears were opened to a whole world of music I'd been deaf to. I pretty much spent the entire weekend in my room with guitar, practice amp and TV, jamming and learning and absorbing every little thing I could. As a beginner guitar player, I couldn't have asked for a better learning experience.

Next month – Allan Holdsworth tribute, I promise. It's just taking a bit longer than I thought – he was VERY clever... 

Blitzkrieg - Yngwie J. Malmsteen (Guitar Cover)

In Deep With The Harmonic Minor Scale

So, back in January I laid out a practice schedule for the year that would include me investigating and studying a variety of new ideas to kick myself out of a rut, and included in that variety was the harmonic minor scale, something I've long been more or less familiar with but never really looked into. So in the spirit of self improvement, I'm presenting my findings...

First off, what is the harmonic minor scale? It's a seven note scale built from these intervals:

R – 2 – b3 – 4 – 5 – b6 -7

We can view this as a natural minor scale with a natural 7^th, and you can see the minor 3^rd gap between the b6 and 7^th gives it an eerie, “haunted house” vibe. Classical music makes heavy use of this scale – in fact, in many classical guitar syllabi, the harmonic minor is taught before the minor pentatonic (you crazy classical fools!). However, popular music tends to favour the natural minor, which is in itself a mode of the major scale.

(The difference between a scale and a mode? The modes of the major scale are all re-arrangements of the notes of the major scale, and as the strongest, most straightforward tonality, the major scale is defined as the parent scale. With the harmonic minor, there is no way to rearrange the major scale notes to form the intervals of the harmonic minor, and it is the strongest and most straightforward of it's tonalities.. the modes of the harmonic minor are wondrous and obscure!)

Let's look at the A Harmonic Minor scale (it's the simplest to wrap your head around):

R – 2 – b3 – 4 – 5 – b6 -7

A - B - C - D – E – F – G#

Now, if we look at this modally, this is what we get:

A - B - C - D – E – F – G# - A Harmonic Minor

R – b2 – b3 – 4 – b5 – 6 - b7

B - C - D - E – F – G# – A - B Locrian #6

R – 2 – 3 – 4 – #5 – 6 -7

C - D - E - F – G# – A – B - C Ionian Augmented

R – 2 – b3 – #4 – 5 – 6 - b7

D - E - F - G# – A – B – C - D Dorian #4 (aka Romanian)

R – b2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – b6 -b7

E - F - G# - A – B – C – D - E Phrygian Dominant

R – #2 – 3 – #4 – 5 – 6 - b7

F - G# - A - B – C – D – E - F Lydian #2

R – b2 – b3 – b4 – b5 – b6 -bb7

G# - A - B - C – D – E – F - G# Ultralocrian

It's also worth taking a look at the results when you harmonise this scale:

i chord – A- C – E : Am

ii chord – B – D – F : B diminished

III chord – C – E – G# : C augmented

iv chord – D – F – A : D minor

V chord – E – G# - B : E

VI chord – F – A – C : F

vii chord – G# - B – D : G# diminished

This means that when you look at a simple 12 bar, you end up with :

// Am / % / % / % / % / Dm / % /

Am / % / E / Dm / Am / E //

I-V-vi-IV gets even more interesting: Am – E – Dm – F

Jazzers may be in for a shock – take a look at the ii-V-I.. Bdim – E – Am.

And then we can extend past triads to 7ths: 

i chord – A- C – E - G# : Ammaj7

ii chord – B – D – F - A : Bm7b5

III chord – C – E – G# - B : Cmaj7#5

iv chord – D – F – A - C: D m7

V chord – E – G# - B - D: E7

VI chord – F – A – C - E: Fmaj7

vii chord – G# - B – D - F : G# diminished7

Interestingly though, these chord sequences still have a (somewhat twisted) coherency and charm about them, and this is an excellent resource for players looking to write something new and different but not sure how to break out of a rut – tackling standard chord sequences in alternate tonalities is a great place to start.

Mapping out the modes using the three octave box/ transition technique covered in Progressive Guitar Training is a terrific exercise for both fingers and brain, and then there's improvisation... and once you've figured out how to be melodic with the Ultralocrian then... the sky is the limit!

Next month – a tribute to a lost legend, the incredible Allan Holdsworth. For those of you who aren't familiar, do yourselves a favour and YouTube him- and then see how long it takes you to pick your jaw off the floor!

Hail Hail Rock & Roll – A Tribute To Chuck Berry

It's always dangerous trying to make a case for such-and-such a musician being “the father of rock & roll” or similar- there's always some smart alec who will point out the trio of hitherto unknown musicians who really started the genre sometime back in the 12^th century BC. That said, I think you'd have to work pretty hard to deny the undeniably great and now very sadly late Chuck Berry's influence on the development of rock & roll music.

My first exposure to Chuck was indirect, and I think a great many guitar players of... “a certain age” will join me in this – the 1985 classic “Back To The Future”, where Michael J Fox grabs a very fetching red Gibson ES 355 and invents rock & roll. 

To my 12 year old self, his version of “Johnny B Goode” was far and away the greatest thing I'd ever heard and that red Gibson was the epitome of cool – I was hooked. Of course, it didn't even occur to me that it was a cover of a real song, I thought it was written specially for the film!The innocence of youth...

As a tribute to Chuck and the incredible legacy he leaves us with, this month's post will be a potted history of the great man and a brief overview of his playing style.

Humble Beginnings

Born October 18^th1926 in St Louis, Missouri to building contractor and Baptist church deacon Henry William Berry and public school principal Martha Bell – the fourth of six children – the young Charles Edward Berry began taking an interest in playing music during his early teenage years, taking inspiration from the blues legend T-Bone Walker in both guitar licks and showmanship (gifts which he would later pass on to one James Marshall Hendrix, but that's another story).

Chuck's school years at Sumner High School, St Louis, saw him develop a keen interest in music and give his first performance aged 15. In 1944 it also saw the first of several occasions when Chuck would fall foul of the law, robbing three Kansas City shops at gunpoint with a group of friends before stealing a car. He was convicted and sent to to the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa, near Jefferson City, Missouri, but even there he was still able to continue his musical activities, forming a vocal group within the prison.

Chuck was released on his 21^st birthday, and just over a year later married Themetta "Toddy" Suggs on October 28^th 1948. During this period he worked a variety of jobs – janitor, car factory worker, even a spell training as beautician! By 1950 he was able to buy a "small three room brick cottage with a bath" on Whittier Street, which is now listed as the Chuck Berry House on the National Register of Historic Places, and on October 3^rd of that year, the Themetta gave birth to Darlin Ingrid Berry.

After Darlin's birth, Chuck began looking for ways to use music to boost his income, and began working with a variety of local bands, including blues legend T-Bone Walker and took lessons from longtime friend Ira Harris. Both these artists would have a massive influence on Chuck's unmistakeable guitar style, and by 1953 Chuck had cemented a firm partnership with legendary blues pianist Johnnie Johnson which would go on to yield some of his biggest hits.Critical to their success as the combination of blues and R&B with country music, appealing to audiences across the racial divide.

Style Analysis

Chuck is famous for two aspects of his playing – first, the classic 5th-6^th boogie rhythm pattern, copied by innumerable artists (not least Status Quo), this relies on a steady straight 8^th rhythm, using a standard root-5^th powerchord voicing and stretching two frets over to get the 6^th with the little finger on the downbeats of beats 2 and 4. Although not part of a normal triad chord, the 6^th provides a sweetness and a sense of movement that helps drive a rhythm part along, and it's presence on the downbeats of 2 and 4 echo the "backbeat" idea with the snare drum.

This, in common with many of Chuck's guitar ideas, was copped from boogie piano players and adapted to fit the then still very new electric guitar. You'll see a heavy piano influence in much of Chuck's playing, for the simple reason that there were very few guitar players and very little recorded music (compared to today) to learn from. His genius here was adapting vocabulary from other instruments to fit the nascent electric guitar.

The second aspect is his dynamic, ballsy lead style that prioritised attitude and energy over technique. Chuck frequently professed admiration for T-Bone Walker and jazz legend Charlie Christian (amongst others), and you can see some elements of their playing in his jazzier single note lines, but his lead style was primarily focused on raw energy.

Much of Chuck's technique relied on two note "doublestop" ideas, often drawing inspration from the blues and stride pianists of the day – a perfect example is the iconic lick that kicks off the "Johnny B Goode" guitar break. This makes absolute sense for a number of reasons – pianists could capture the sheer high energy fury of a rock and roll tune far better than the guitar vocabulary of the day could (because at this point there was no such thing as a rock guitarist, just blues and jazz players). Also, the guitar amps of the day were very clean affairs, designed to reproduce the sound of the guitar as clear and distortion free as possible. This was great for jazz and to a lesser extent blues players, but failed to convey the energy needed for rock and roll, so by using two string ideas, Chuck was able to create "natural" distortion, thickening the sound of his guitar breaks and ensring that none of the rhythm was lost when he took a solo (in the process, eliminating the need to hire a dedicated rhythm player and thus split the money more ways... always a onsideration for struggling musicians!). Check out Eric Clapton's take on Chuck Berry's playing here, from the 1986 documentary Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll: 

When you analyse a song like Johnny B Goode, it's important to realise that Chuck wasn't really thinking in the same terms as we might, using scales and pentatonics. Lacking the massive musical educaion infrasructure that we now take for granted, Chuck took the eminently logical approach of visualising the root chord of the key he was playing over. For example, Johnny B Goode is a blues in Bb (legend has it, it was actually recorded in A and the tape sped up as a marketing ploy to make Chuck sound younger, but nevertheless it sounds in Bb) – so Chuck would visualise the outline of a Bb and Bbm barre chord (E Shape). Note the use of both major and minor – this is a key element of blues, like much of the blues vocabulary it would find itself sped up and used as the basis for rock and roll. Seen in this light, the Johnny B. Goode intro and guitar solo is an elegantly simple use of chord shapes and tones to create a hugely memorable, genuinely iconic rock & roll moment.

Other favourite Chuck Berry ideas that have become part of the accepted lexicon of rock & roll include doublestop bends – using a partial barre across two strings to get a dirty, gritty, guttural sound – unison bends and unusual chord ideas such as the augmented triads simulating car horns in “No Particular Place To Go”

It's hard to overstate Chuck Berry's contribution to rock & roll, and by extension, to the modern world of rock and metal, and the myriad offshoots of those two genres. His parting gift – an album dedicated to his wife, released this year and recorded at age 90 – is all the more inspirational for showing that he never, ever lost the drive to write, perform and create right to the very end.

RIP Charles Edward Berry – the world would sound very different had it not been for you.