I've decided to do a weekly blog entry on here detailing different things I've learned about playing guitar. I'll pick one topic to discuss and just go to town on it. I'm no expert but I do have several years of experience, 4 years of music college, and more live shows than I want to remember under my belt. I hope that sharing whatever knowledge I've gained through the years will help someone, whether it's a struggling beginner looking for an answer or some inspiration, or maybe even a seasoned pro that wants a new spin on something. As always, if there's something I missed or something that's just completely, blatantly in error, please feel free to post a comment about it. Thanks!

So welcome to the first installation of "The Ground Loop". Don't be caught on the outside! 

THE GROUND LOOP

Vol 1: Imposing your own limits

This being my first issue of The Ground Loop, I've decided to take a unique tack into the world of performance guitar. I'm going to steer clear of theory (mostly, anyway) and try to keep my discussion as non-polarizing as possible. With that, let's begin!

Let me give you a setting. It's 1990. You've just started playing guitar on an old beat-up nylon string. You could be 9 years old, or 90 years old. It really doesn't matter. All you know is you've picked up this weird-looking thing with strings, and you are hooked. It makes all sorts of cool noises. So you get your dad/brother/friend/cousin (all NOT the same person, I hope ;) ) to teach you a few basics. You know....how to tune. The G chord. The D chord. The C chord. And they tell you to go from there.

So where do you go?

Well, if you're me, you already have *some* musical training through elementary school orchestras and choirs, and middle school band. I also had the privilege of being given a record collection around the same time I started playing. My father gave me his massive record collection. Basically, any even remotely influential band from the 50s through the 80's was in there. 

But let's assume you're not me, which holds true for most of you out there. (And for those who it doesn't hold true for...hope you're enjoying the bills!). Let's also assume you don't know the first thing about music. You don't know why a G is a G...why a C is a C...where they sit in relation to each other tonally. What do you do?

Well, these days, there's a TON of information available online. Guitar.com has some absolute masters of theory, technique, and performance that beginners would do well to take some notes from. Most popular songs are tabbed out by now, and even if most of the tabs are incorrect, at least it'll get you started on the right path.

The BIGGEST, most VALUABLE things you can do as a beginning musician are:

1) Find other musicians of a similar skill level, and just enjoy playing music! Very rarely in your musical endeavors will it ever be this innocent again. No theory nonsense to get in the way. No sense of real structure. Just wide-open rockin' out. Tons of fun. And FUN is what drives you to become better at the instrument! You wouldn't WANT to be a better musician unless you ENJOYED making music!

2) Record yourself. Most computers have microphones, and even though they're not high-quality, with a little tweaking you can get *passable* practice recordings. Nothing near the level of a studio but that's not the point here. The point is to record yourself so YOU can evaluate it. It is often said (and more often true) that you are your own worst critic. In the case of music, having a tough critic means eliminating the errors and building on the strengths.

-----The other advantage to this is, years later, you might stumble back across an early recording that had that "awesome" riff you just can't remember, it can get reused and rejuvenated into a whole new song!

3) Practice. I can't say it enough. Practice. You should find a way to fit practice into your schedule so it doesn't interfere with school and social life (then again, I did and while it might have been a mistake, I turned out into a half-decent picker!) IF you decide to go pro, THEN you can make it your life to practice 12 hours a day. That's your call though. As long as you're practicing every day and enjoying what you're doing you'll get better. 

Remember, music is a LANGUAGE. Its purpose is to express emotions and ideas in ways that spoken language can't. Just like you got better at speaking whatever native language you have by speaking it, the only way to get better at music is to play music.

And now to the part about limits. Never settle. Never say "oh, that song's too hard for me because I've only been playing for x months." If you do you're already starting out on the wrong foot. While it's true that unless you're a wunderkind or a virtuoso you probably can't play Racer X or Steve Vai in the first few months of learning the instrument, that DOESN"T mean you shouldn't TRY to learn difficult music. Give it your best shot. The worst that can happen is you'll learn something, even if you can't actually play the piece. The added bonus is, eventually, that 8-beat riff from "Scarified" will become easy and natural. You don't need to know the note names to play it. Just look up the sheet music for it and go to town!

You'll also discover that songs that are "too difficult", even though you'll be frustrated to the point of burning your instrument because you can't play them, will make those "beginner" songs MUCH easier to handle. It's the plateau theory of learning. If you operate your mind at a certain level...let's call it 8...whether or not you actually are able to achieve anything at that level is irrelevant. The fact that your brain and muscles are TRYING to achieve something there means that, when you come down to level 2 or 3, it's THAT much easier.

I took this idea from a martial arts concept that Bruce Lee pioneered, known as Jeet Kune Do. It essentially means "Having no way as way." It also means "Having no limitations." It involves several rules:

1) Never accept the given. The status quo is constantly changing, and you should be prepared to also. In music, this means you should always push yourself beyond your limits in order to "stay ahead of the curve". Don't be that guy who does nothing but plays "smoke on the water" (fantastic song!! I'm just using it here for an example) for hours on end. Once you get it under your fingers, great. Fantastic. Your bedroom walls don't care to hear it again (and no audience in their right mind would either!). Move on to something else that challenges you!

2)  Remove your limits. Our greatest hindrance is ourselves. When you accept this fact, then you realize that you can achieve any goal. 

3) When at first you don't succeed... This old adage, in martial arts, has to do with hitting an opponent. In Jeet Kune Do the concept is to not stop hitting until the opponent is down. In music, it means to not stop trying until that difficult 32nd note run is under your fingers. It may take you 10 minutes or 10 months to get it, but stick with it.  In the meantime, you'll find that things that were difficult before are becoming easier.

And that's the limitations I leave you with: None. Never accept level 2 as your highest. Always push yourself even if you can't play something at level 8, so that when you actually play something else at level 2, it's ridiculously easy.

Have a great week and be sure to come back next week when I'll actually delve into some science and theory! 

Today I am going to give a quick crash course lesson in basic theory. You will quickly notice that it all revolves around one thing in this lesson, the major scale. We will go over how this scale is formed, and how to play this on the guitar. These first few blogs are not concerned with rhythm...that will be later.

To begin, we will cover the MAJOR SCALE. A scale is nothing more than a way for us to organize pitches in our brains. The major scale is the basis for an entire world of other scales and chords, to be covered in future blogs.

Your major scale is simple: if you start on the C key on the piano (the one just to the left of any group of 2 black keys)

Or if you start here on a guitar

And you play each white key, going from left to right, until you reach another C

You have just played 8 notes, or one OCTAVE. This is also why there are only the letters A through G used; with 7 possible pitches in the major scale before you return to the original pitch, you only need 7 letters. On a guitar it looks like this:

If you prefer tab, there will be a tablature section added to the end of this blog. There will also be a future blog covering the scale positions all over the fretboard. So don't *fret* just yet ;)

And that is your C major scale. You may now be asking, "Why does it sound like that?"

As mentioned before, a scale is nothing more than a PATTERN. Your major scales follow a pattern described by INTERVALS. An interval is a certain amount of difference between two pitches. In most western music, we describe intervals in terms of STEPS. For instance, the difference between C and the next note in the scale, D, is one WHOLE STEP. Like this:

A HALF STEP occurs between the 3rd note of the scale, E, and the 4th note, F. Like this:

Now, the way these intervals are arranged define different scales. In the major scale, it goes like this:

-- = whole step, | = half step

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

You will notice that there is a half step between the 3rd and 4th notes (E / F) and the 7th and 8th notes (B / C). This is how a major scale is defined.

On a guitar, this is extremely easy to see. Each fret represents a half step. In the figure above, playing the 5th string / 7th fret followed by the 5th string / 8th fret is exactly a half step. To achieve a whole step, you simply move two frets instead of one, as in the example before the last one.

Once you understand this, you will begin to see that on a guitar, you can create ANY scale in ANY key simply by changing the order of your whole and half steps, and starting on different notes. That's a future blog though.

That's it for this blog! I hope to update it in the future with a video and an actual tablature section. Until then, adios!

But here it is...so buckle down and enjoy!

THE GROUND LOOP

Vol. 2  - The Modal System (basics)

WARNING - This article assumes basic knowledge of fundamental concepts in music theory. That is, you should know a major scale, and what it sounds like / how to create one in any key. For simplicity it's all in C here.

So you've heard some guy say "I think a Phrygian scale would sound cool over that". And you thought, "WTF is a Phrygian?" Well, Here is the short history:

A long time ago, when music was first starting to be written down, the Catholic church decided that music needed to be organized. They did not have "chords" like we do...they did not even use our tuning system! (Bach wasn't born for another 300 years yet). 

Here's how they organized it:

What we would call the C major scale would have been their Ionian mode. They have "chant notes" in each mode that are based in the Pythagorean system of perfect 4ths, 5ths, and octaves. For instance, the popular chant notes in the Ionian mode were the 4th and 5th scale degrees.

Well, that being said, they did not particularly like the sound of the Ionian mode ;) Most music extant from that period is in Aeolian, Dorian, and Phrygian modes. 

Sow how are we to get the different modes?

Take your C major scale, no sharps, no flats:

C D E F G A B C 

That's the "Ionian" mode. Simple so far, right?

Now extend it 2 octaves (for demonstration purposes)

C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C 

Start on D and finish on D. Sounds funky huh? That's the Dorian mode.

E to E is even weirder. That's the Phrygian mode.

And so on in that pattern. Here's the names based on the scale degrees:

I - Ionian

ii - Dorian

iii - Phrygian

IV - Lydian

V - Mixolydian

VI - Aeolian

VII - Locrian

To be perfectly correct however, you would not call these "C Dorian" or "C Lydian". You name them from the note on which they are based. So, D Dorian, E Phrygian, F Lydian, G Mixolydian, A Aeolian, and B Locrian are all in the "key" of C. What makes the difference is...blast from the past here...the "chant" notes, or the notes on which you begin, end, and dwell on in the middle. 

For instance, if I play a C major, but I solo over it beginning on an A, hitting a D and an E a lot, and then returning eventually to an A, I have just played A Aeolian (Or, as we call it these days, A Natural Minor) over a C Major chord. It's in the key, but it sounds a little odd.

"But," you may ask, "how do they relate to each other? what if they all started on C?"

Great question!

Here's how they work in terms of intervals (each - represents the notes of the scale, W = whole step, H = half step)

Ionian     -W-W-H-W-W-W-H- 

Dorian     -W-H-W-W-W-H-W-

Phrygian  -H-W-W-W-H-W-W-

Lydian     -W-W-W-H-W-W-H-

Mixolydian     -W-W-H-W-W-H-W-

Aeolian     -W-H-W-W-H-W-W-

Locrian    -H-W-W-H-W-W-W

So, each scale beginning on C, here's how those look:

Ionian     C D E F G A B C

Dorian     C D Eb F G A Bb C

Phrygian  C Db Eb F G Ab Bb C

Lydian     C D E F# G A B C

Mixolydian C D E F G A Bb C

Aeolian     C D Eb F G Ab Bb C

Locrian    C Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb C

I know formatting doesn't work that well, so if you'd like a copy in .doc format, shoot me a message and I'll send it to you.

Keep rockin!