New Year's Resolutions 2019

Feels like I've only just got the hang of putting “18” at the end of dates, and here we are again – new year, new practice plan! Why? Well, because I want to keep getting better of course – why else?

This is also a pretty significant year for me – come November, I'll have been playing guitar 25 years (seriously, I am that old) and I wanted to mark that anniversary with a challenge for myself. As I mentioned, my big challenge for last year was the Bach Toccata & Fugue in D minor, and I'm happy to admit that drove me to the edge of my technical and cognitive abilities.. but I did it! Eventually, anyway...

So I'm marking this year by taking up a piece that was transcribed in the first guitar magazine I ever got, Guitar For The Practicing Musician March 1995 – featuring transcriptions of (among others) Nirvana's version of “The Man Who Sold The World” from their Unplugged album (my reason for buying it) alongside tab for a song called “Bad Horsie” by a chap called Steve Vai.

Now, it's important to realise quite how stupid I was at that age, and I had yet to comprehend the concept that one song could be more difficult than another one, let alone comprehend the quantum leap in technique and understanding needed to tackle that track – I sat down with the tab and was woefully confused.... two years later, convinced of my own abilities, I decided to have another crack and was once again massively out of my depth. So I reckon it's about time I ticked this box and got this one in the can. I did “For The Love Of God” - I can do this... I hope..

Meanwhile, there's a schedule to keep to! So my plan, as always balancing, diatonic and pentatonic scales, arpeggios and chords along with new pieces to learn – here's 2019 mapped out:

January – Major scale and modes. 3 octaves, played in 3rds, sequenced in 3s and 4s. Pieces – Eric Johnson “SRV”, Paganini Caprice #24

February – Arpeggios (triads). 3 octaves, played in 3rds, sequenced etc.

March – Chords (triads and inversions, closed and open voicings). Piece – TBC

April – Minor Pentatonic & Modes. Piece TBC

May – Byzanine Scale R b2 3 4 5 b6 7

June – Arpeggios – 7b5s. Piece TBC

July – Chords (7b5s and inversions, closed and open voicings). Piece TBC

August – Pentatonics (Lydian R 3 #4 5 7). Piece TBC

September – Oriental Scale R b2 3 4 b5 6 b7. Piece TBC

October – Arpeggios – 7#5s. Piece TBC

November - Chords (7#5s and inversions, closed and open voicings). Piece TBC

December – Pentatonics (Mixolydian R 2 3 5 b7). Piece TBC.

For The Love Of God (Steve Vai Guitar Cover)

Wrapping Up 2018

The dust has settled on Christmas, and as I write this straining to see the laptop screen over a belly filled to bursting with turkey, chocolate and Bailey's, it's time to say goodbye to 2018 with a look back at a very busy year..

First off, mega thank yous to everyone involved with and who supported this years' TUNEICEF effort – Phil Matthews, Beth Hartshorne, Guilty Pleasures and Dave The Rock Band, along with 13 year old whizkid Daniel Pook who showed us that the future of guitar is in very safe hands, as well of course all my students who worked so hard writing and recording their tracks, and not forgetting Ian and Sharon for letting us use The Beacon again, and of course Matt Chubb for not just contributing his peerless vocals but lending us his PA – without which the whole thing would not have been possible!

So time to look back over a busy year – I posted my planned practice/ recording schedule in January, and have stuck to it as faithfully as possible, covering a variety of themes – chords, arpeggios, pentatonic and diatonic scales and have delved into some weird and wonderful tonalities – the diminished, whole tone, Kumoi and Hirajoshi scales have come under the spotlight, along with inversions and arpeggios stretching all the way to 13^th chords – next year, I'll start altering them (sharpening 5ths, flattening 9ths etc)... that should get spicy.

In terms of repertoire, the big piece has been Paul Gilbert's take on Bach's Prelude & Fugue No. 5 in D Major:

This was a BIG undertaking – without any discernable repetitive structure, this was a case of learn two bars, practice, learn the next two bars, practice, add together, practice... rinse and repeat, for eight months or so. This really stretched my cognitive, let alone technical facility about as far as anything has – so alongside it, I ran the blues classic “Hideaway”, as well as some Satriani and the beautiful SRV ballad “Lenny” as almost light relief. But, I DID manage it!

So next year – Paganini. Caprice No. 24. Oh yes, I'm coming for you.... just as soon as I finish digesting the hundredweight of mince pies I've consumed over the last few days....

In the meantime, what have you been working on this year? And any specific goals for 2019?

And let me leave you with the TUNEICEF album itself – remember, all proceeds straight to UNICEF themselves, so treat yourself!

https://tuneicef.bandcamp.com/album/tuneicef-2018

Useful Stuff No One Tells You #1 - Backing Vocals

Howdy. As some of you know, I usually try and theme my posts in some way to relate in some way to what's currently going on in the world at large.

This is not one of those posts. In fact, this cropped into my head pretty much fully formed the other day when out with the dog and wondering just what the hell I was going to write about this month, and is the first of what I hope will be an occasional series of articles on skills I've had to acquire over the course of my career as a professional musician and teacher - but specifically, skills no one warned me I would need.

The biggest and most glaring of these is singing. Now, an awful lot of people make the assumption that if you can play in instrument, you can automatically sing, too - at least to a halfway presentable standard. After all, music is music, right?

Nuh-uh. Step forward Slash, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Angus Young....... and, um, me. For some people, music is something they love to create and play despite the fact that the most natural, instinctive instrument of all, the one that we are all born with is just a bit on the wonky side. Or in my case, almost entirely defective - I started with almost no range, ability to project, pitch or sustain a note. Some people are born natural singers - I was born with the natural ability to clear a room. Seriously, I have demos from the mid 90s on cassette that are under lock and key because they could be used as blackmail.

Now, this is not a post on how to turn yourself into a great singer - because although I'm a hell of a lot better now, I am not and will never be one - but it is about how to get yourself started as a pretty useful backing vocalist. We often have misconceptions about backing singers, that they're just "singing along" with the lead vocal, but there's a bit more too it than that. Truth is, well arranged vocal harmonies can really lift a band or an arrangement head and shoulders above the competition.

There are plenty of great tutorial books, videos and YouTube channels on vocal technique and I'm not going to delve into that stuff here - breathing exercises, projection, vocal resonance and so on are best explained by proper vocal coaches. What we're going to look at here is the additional theoretical understanding needed to generate the harmonies that can lift a chorus and make it soar.

The first thing to understand are the basic principles of harmony. I'm going to skip through with just the bare bones today for the purposes of time, but we'll start with the chromatic scale (all 12 notes, each one a semitone apart):

A - A#/Bb - B - C - C#/Db - D - D#/Eb - E - F - F#/Gb - G - G#/Ab

Now, as comprehensive as that is, it sounds godawful. Too many notes, too close together. So the next step is the major scale:

Root - tone - 2nd - tone - 3rd - semitone - 4th - tone - 5th - tone - 6th - tone - 7th - semitone - Root

   A                 B                 C#                      D               E                 F#              G#


In Western music, harmony comes from stacking notes separated by 3rd intervals on each other:

A -   4 semitone/ 2 tone (major 3rd) - C# - 3 semitone (minor 3rd) - E

So in this example, if A was the melody note being sung by the lead singer, one backing singer might hit the C# above it, one the E above that (although if the lead singer is female and the backing singers are male, it's probably more feasible to move both the harmony notes down by an octave).

So now you've worked out what you should be singing, the next trick is learning how to actually do it. Pitching a backing vocal, for the uninitiated, can be infuriatingly difficult. The best thing to do, to begin with, is to play your note and then sing it. When you can do that, play the chord and sing your note over it, and when you can mange that, play the melody note and sing your harmony against it. You can also familiarise yourself with the various intervals by playing your chord and singing the root, 3rd and 5th notes separately, this will help train your ear. Be patient - time and practice will get you there.

Hopefully that's got some of you started working on your vocals - backing vocals are an incredibly useful and marketable skill for any musician to have, so get to practising and see you next time!

Jeff's Boogie - Jeff Beck Guitar Cover

In Deep With.. The Whole Tone Scale (+ TUNEICEF plug & update)

Ploughing through the new tasks I'veset myself for this year, September has brought me to the whole tone scale – this is arguably one of the core tonalities, alongside major, minor and chromatic. As it's name suggests, this is a symmetrical scale with each note a whole tone away from the next.

Viewed as a series of intervals, this gives us:

R – tone – 2 – tone – 3 – tone - #4/b5 – b6 – b7

This is a hexatonic (six note) scale combining elements of both major and minor tonalities, and the resulting sound is eerie – very cinematic. Examining it, it's possible to see that this scale has no modes – it's symmetrical nature, with each note a tone apart from every other note, means that no matter where you start it from, you will always have the whole tone structure.

Another curiosity is that there are in fact only two whole tone scales: the E, F#, G#, Bb, C and D whole tones are all exactly the same as each other, as are the F, G, A, B, C# and Eb:

E – tone – F# - tone - G# - tone - Bb – tone – C – tone – D

F# – tone - G# – tone - Bb – tone - C – tone - D – tone – E

G# – tone - Bb – tone - C – tone - D – tone - E – tone – F#

.. and so on.

Viewed from a chordal perspective, there's only one type of chord that really lends itself to the whole tone scale – the augmented. No matter where you start from, you wind up with the pattern:

Root – two tones – 3 – two tones - #5

E – G# - C E augmented

F# - A# - D F# augmented

G# - C – E G# augmented

A# - D – F# A# augmented

C – E – G# C augmented

D- A# - F# D augmented

The symmetrical nature of this scale makes it very easy to map it across the fretboard using a simple movable pattern:

Here using a speedy legato six note pattern:

Played in 3rds:

Sequenced in 3s:

Sequenced in 4s:

This scale is a nice gear to change to when you want something flat out weird, containing major and minor elements, with the unsettling symmetrical elements jarring the listener out of their comfort zone.

TUNEICEF 2018

It's that time of year again – leaves are falling from the trees, the temperatures are beginning to fall.. and my students and I are embarking on the annual charity album! So far we've had a track donated by the fantastic singer/songwriter Phil Matthews (aka The Village: https://www.thevillage.me.uk/ ) and the first student track by Paul Blount is up on our Bandcamp page with a good few more hot on it's heels!

If you want to get involved and help raise funds for UNICEF (not to mention get your hands on a rather tasty little album), check out our Bandcamp page: https://tuneicef.bandcamp.com/album/tuneicef-2018

and our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TUNEICEF/ - like, share, subscribe, and if you've got a track you'd like to contribute then welcome aboard, the more the merrier!

In Deep With.. The Kumoi Pentatonic Scale

Pentatonic scales are hugely versatile creatures, often lending themselves very easily to the fretboard. The minor pentatonic is pretty much every guitarist's first scale for improvising, and it's not normally long before he or she learns the “3 frets back” rule and is able to access the sound of the major pentatonic.

However, that's usually where they leave things – the next step tends to be onto the major scale and modes, learning three note per string ideas, before introducing arpeggios and so on. By this point, pentatonics are usually overlooked and dismissed as “novice stuff”. This is a shame because there are a great many pentatonic scales, particularly those that originate from Oriental cultures, that can access wildly exotic sounds and still be relatively straightforward to play, and this month's Kumoi pentatonic is one of them.

Firstly, it's necessary to pin down exactly what this scale is, as there seems to be some confusion on the internet! The Kumoi, or to give it it's full name, the Hon Kumoi Shiouzhi scale , has an exotic, quintessentially Japanese sound, and is built from the following intervals:

R b2 4 5 b6

In the key of E, that gives the notes of E F A B C (contrast to E G A B D from a regular minor pentatonic scale) – notice the lack of 3^rd, the sinister quality of the sound is down to the b2 and b6 intervals

As always when learning a new scale, a great way to work it in to your regular playing is to take a basic minor pentatonic lick and “Kumoi-ify” it – as I've done here:

Then try it with the “2 bars on, 2 bars off” approach (two bars rhythm, two bars of improvisation, not stopping for mistakes, keeping the rhythm going) – I've found that it suits darker, heavier blues/ rock and metal tunes, and works very well in something like “Voodoo Child” for an off-the-wall psychedelic feel!

Normally, discussions of an exotic scale would end there. But as my readers and students will be aware, I have something of an obsessive compulsive disorder when it comes to learning scales – I want to know EVERYTHING this scale can do! So let's begin by looking at it from a modal perspective:

Kumoi:

R b2 4 5 b6

E F A B C

Starting from the F, this gives us:

R 3 #4 5 7

F A B C E – this strongly implies the Lydian mode of the major scale ( R 2 3 #4 5 6 7)

R 2 b3 5 b6

A B C E F – this points to the Aeolian mode (or natural minor scale) – R 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7

R b2 4 b5 b7

B C E F A – this outlines the Locrian mode – R b2 b3 4 b5 b6 b7

R 3 4 6 7

C E F A B – this implies the Ionian mode, or major scale – R 2 3 4 5 6 7

So, play the E Kumoi over an F and you've got yourself a pretty solid Lydian sound, play it over an Am and you'll get an interesting take on A Aelian, and so on.

This brings me to my next topic – chords. We can derive some pretty interesting and idiomatic chord sequences by harmonising this scale in 3rds (or as close as we can to 3rds).

Basic triads contained within the scale:

E A B – Esus4

F A C – F

A C E – Am

B E A – B7sus4 (implied – no 5th)

C E A – C6 (implied – no 5th )

Changing this up to 4 note chords gets us even more fun stuff to play with:

F A C E – Fmaj 7

A B C E – Amadd9

C E B A – C maj 13 (implied – no 5^th)

and my personal favourite:

F B C E – Fmaj7sus#4! Now that's a spicy meatball...

So my next challenge to myself is to write something using this scale... stay tuned!

See you next month for a progress report on this year's #TUNEICEF project, and more!