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!

Lenny - Stevie Ray Vaughan Guitar Cover

Bach Prelude

Taking it up to 11...

Last month was chord month for me, and this time I've been looking at 11^th chord voicings.

A quick recap for those unfamiliar with extended chord voicings – chords are made from notes stacked in intervals of thirds, that is play the root, miss the 2nd, play the 3rd, miss the 4th play the 5th. That gives us a basic three note chord or triad. These chords can be extended using the 7^th, 9^th, 11^th and 13^th intervals (the 9^th is the 2^nd up an octave, similarly, the 11^th is the 4^th and the 13^th is the 6^th, each bumped up an octave).

As always with extended chords, there are many different variations but the three most important are the major, minor and dominant voicings – major will always contain a 3^rd and a 7^th, minor will always contain a b3 and b7, dominant will always contain a 3 and a b7. It's important to bear these rules in mind as we look at the practicalities of voicing these chords on the guitar.

So this gives us three chords to look at:

Maj11 – R 3 5 7 9 11

Min11 – R b3 5 b7 9 11

11 (for dominant chords, we just use the number of the highest chord extension) – R 3 5 b7 9 11

This starts to cause a few problems, as we're now needing six notes in the chord, making for some very unwieldy voicings. Time to trim the fat!

We need a root to base the chord off, so that stays..

We need a 3^rd to define whether the chord is major or minor, so that stays..

The 5^th, however, is the same for major, minor, or dominant, so that can go.

The 7^th stays as it defines whether the chord is major or dominant

The 9^th is the same for major, minor, or dominant, so that can go.

The 11^th is our highest extension, so that stays.

Now we can voice our chord simply R 3 7 11 (major) R b3 b7 11 (minor) R 3 b7 11 (dominant)

Voicing the chord as four note chord means it can be inverted – built from the R, 3, 7, or 11. For example, C11 – R 3 b7 11, C E Bb F can be started from any of its four component notes.

Along the top four strings (D G B E) this will give us voicings of:

E Bb C F

F C E Bb

Bb E F C

C F Bb E

Notice that we've dispensed with the traditional rules of chord inversions – that stuff is for keyboard players who only have one place to play each note and two hands to grab their chords with. We're grabbing clusters of notes that fall under the fingers.

Getting to grips with chord voicings this way is an extremely cool way of mapping out the fretboard and learning which note is where, and for that very reason I'm not going to put fret boxes up here, I want you guys to do the homework! Once you've mapped your chord out on the D-E strings, try it on the middle (A D G B) and low (E A D G) string groups. Then try the minor and major voicings. Then change the key and do it again. Do that for a month, and you'll be hooked on the shimmery, sci fi, haunting ethereal sound of these chords, you'll almost certainly have discovered a few new riff ideas and you'll know the fretboard far more comprehensively than trying to memorise any fretboard map will ever get you!

Have fun – see you next month for the Kumoi Pentatonic...