So in closing...Put down the bottle, extinguish that cigarette fore it makes thou breath stinky, and play some new jive. It's your ingenuity that made you infamous. You smiled so big and pretty in the "Jump" video!

Love,

Planet Earth

Yngwie, or as known by his neo-traditionalist deciples as "King"wie (pr. King-Veigh), has rendered many aspiring guitarists useless in his wake of ultra-efficient, smooth toned, pyrotechnic precision. He borrows from the greatest musical minds that mankind might ever know and delivers them through a vehicle of his own creation falling just shy of the fate of Paganini.

Bask in the glory of the man we call King

Greigh Gri Pearce

Enjoy responsibly.

It's just a bit of a break from the norm, relax! Do you mean to tell me that you practice or play 10 hours a day without breaking for a sandwich or a couple of laughs? Get over yourself I'll wreck you!

C D E F G A B C

And A 'natural' minor reads like this

A B C D E F G A

I place the word natural in quotes because there are 3 types of minor scale: Natural, Harmonic and Melodic. Those will covered in a later lesson! So in the meantime have fun will these and if I could give one practice tip it would be to make every effort to achieve a really clear tone. Speed comes natural once you have fluid motions at a slow speed.

Enter the Circle of 5th's. This tool is the beginning of understanding and memorizing which notes belong in what keys. We're talking about a finite group of pitches here [western music is really just twelve notes before they start repeating] so we're naturally going to have some similarities. Once you know what notes are in a key you can start to figure out what the chord set is going to be for that key. I won't get too deep into this now but check out this example.

The Key of C has these pitches

C D E F G A B C

So once we have this, you can start to build chords by taking this relationship...

Root (or 1), 3rd, and 5th of the scale and combine those notes wherever you want on the fingerboard or keyboard. So a C major chord will be

C E G

More on this later... Here's the Circle of 5th's and how to use it below

The key of C major at the top of the circle is where we begin to understand the Circle of Death...I mean Fifths. C major has all natural tones in it, no sharps no flats, just the white keys on the piano, however you want to think of it. That's what the Zero above the C means. Again, Zero Sharps and just as many Flats.

As you work your way around to the right you'll see each key has one more sharp than the one before it.In the key of G, there is the number ONE written next to it. This tells us there is ONE sharp in this key. To find out which note is raised or sharped you go the list called 'Order of Sharps' and go the first letter in the list. You should find 'F'. In the key of G, F is sharped (the key consists of these notes G A B C D E F# & G). Let's do another example. The key of A has THREE written next to it. This key has THREE sharps in it. to find out what they are, take the first THREE notes in the Order of Sharps and this will tell which notes are raised. With any luck you would have found F,C & G.

All of the keys to the left of C major work the same way, you would just use the 'Order of Flats' to find which notes have been lowered. The key of F major has a ONE next to it. Go to the Order of Flats and take the first note in the series. Found B? So in the key of F, there will just one flat, and it's Bb. Just one more. In the key of Ab now, ask yourself what number is next to the key, then take that number down to the Order of Flats and take the same number of letters from the beginning of the list. Ab has FOUR flats and they are Bb, Eb, Ab & Db. He-haw!

For guitarist, memorizing this is easy! Take C on the A string. Play a typical 5th [or power] chord. The second note in that power chord is G, which happens to be the next key to the right of C on the circle. Each key is a fifth higher than the one that precedes it. The order of flats and sharps is reciprocal. I memorized the order of flats first which is basically the word BEAD, then Greatest Common Factor. BEADGCF. The order of sharps is that same order of notes just backwards.

So the lowercase letters on the inside of the circle you ask? These are the parallel minors of the major keys we just spoke of. In the key of 'a minor' there are zero flats and zero sharps. Basically, it works out so the Major key and it's parallel minor key share the same number of sharps or flats depending on what key you're talking about.

I'll get to the difference between major and minor, whether parallel or relative, later on.

Lucid and free is the legato technique. It provides fluidity to melodic runs which accentuates the playful and deepens one's sorrow. The technique is achieved on the guitar by slurring between notes via hammer-ons, pull-offs, bending, sliding, or belching. Well, minus the belching part.

In the first example, pick the first note of each triplet and then slur (or hammer) the two tones that follow.

In example 2, as far fetched as it may seem, the 4th finger provides enough downward velocity you don't need to pick the first note of each string as you descend. With practice, you can maintain a smooth phrase and uniform tone by slurring the entire phrase.

In this, the first installment of Antics de la Live Show, we'll be discussing how to interact with your audience and making your shows memorable. Every artist must perform as if it were his/her/their last show. The emanation of positive energy will engage your audience and keep them wanting more, unless of course your bassist falls over inebriated in the style of Duff MacKagan. More on that later...Upon greeting one's audience, one might say, "Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen...we're not Zoopheliacs, but tonight we're going to make an exception!"Most people won't be sober enough to understand what you say, some will take offense, but most will choke on their drink from being blind sided by humour.

Back to that Duff MacKagan thing...

In an interview with Matt Sorum, he was describing for the interviewer a gig with GNR in which he had his head down doing his percussive thing only to be shocked from his entranced musical state to a sound not unlike two buses colliding at 45 mph. He looked up to find that Duff had passed out drunk and fallen on his bass. Cagey ol' rockers. 

In the video, we begin by creating a vamp between these two chords, one measure per chord. The convenient thing about using these two chords is that they share three notes...

Dmi7 has the notes D F A C

BbMaj7 has the notes Bb D F A

These two chords as they are voiced [or fingered] in the video are shown below

Over these two chords one can use, just to start with, the notes D F and A which are pictured below across the fingerboard up through the 15th fret. We choose these notes because both chords share them. You will not be able to sound bad if you stick to these pitches. So now, it's just a matter of how creative can you get with three notes. Sure, it's a finite set but there still are many possibilities to lay down something cool!

In the second solo, the melody gets developed a bit further, this time by taking a one octave D minor scale and infusing some chromaticism. Below is the scale that is used in the video. Note that the actual scale is in blue and the chromatically altered notes are penned in red

In the final example, we use a full two octave D harmonic minor scale to construct our melody. The pitches that are boxed in are there to show where the root notes [D] appear in the scale.

Now shred grasshoppers!

For when Guitar dot com goes live here is a public service announcement to make people in Connecticut aware of my new lesson studio and guitar brokerage house called Guitarra. The studio offers classic, jazz, flamenco, modern, and roots guitar instruction to the fine people of Connecticut and soon the world.

In the summer of 2007, Guitarra will be offering appointments to people who are interested in procuring a hand made instrument without having to travel across the planet to find it. Greigh Gri Pearce brings them to his studio for you.

Guitarra also offers a mastering service to bands and artists who already have a stereo master and final mix production to people with unmixed multi-track files looking for a fresh set of ears!

Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow

This day we discuss the construction and performance of the chords formed in the key of A harmonic minor. We'll then compose a short, four bar repeating form over which to improvise a melody.

First the scale itself. Harmonic minor, no matter the key, is formed when you take a natural minor scale, in this case A natural minor...

A B C D E F G A

And raise the 7th scale degree

A B C D E F G# A

From here, we build chords off of each note in the scale. Please be aware that the chords listed below are but a few of the seemingly infinite possibilities!

In the example given in the vid, I have composed my progression with two things in mind: Tension and Resolve. The Ami chord that I begin with provides a foundation that the progression will cycle back around to. The second chord, Fmaj7, shares two of the notes of Ami and may be regarded as a means to break away from the Ami without causing too much unrest in the progression. The third chord, E7, which is the dominant chord in this key, has a natural tendency to pull back to the i chord [Ami] but instead it deceptively moves to Dmi and then back to Ami. Everyone is going to approach things in their own way, so my only real advice is to be creative!

Please consult your fingerboard for the notes in A Harmonic Minor! They are still, in fact, A B C D E F G# A. As long as you subscribe to this set of pitches, no matter where you play them, art will happen.

Pea[r]ce be with you!

The compas looks like this with the accented beats in bold. The x's signify the golpe (a finger/right hand) tapping the face of the guitar to accent the beat. Flamenco guitars have a tap plate, or golpeador, to prevent the sound board of the instrument from getting damaged by the repeated fingernail strikes.

12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

x        x         x x    x

Here's the question then: how does the string player, who reads and writes their ideas in tablature, communicate their original idea to another musician who plays an instrument like piano or tenor sax or whatever? Already it's starting to get way stupid.

This to me is the single most motivating factor. The need to communicate musical thoughts and ideas. Notation provides musicians with an essential means of communicating their language. So here we go, first we'll talk about where the notes are on the staff...

The lines of the staff give us, from lowest to highest, E G B D F. I remember this by creating a memorable saying like this Ernie Gave Bert Dead Fish. The spaces between the lines just give us the word 'FACE'. The cool thing is that the order of notes on the staff are alphabetical as you go from line to space and space to line. Each string is alphabetical too, you just have to contend with sharps and flats.

So here we are...knowing where the notes are on the staff, but this pretty much means nothing unless we can put them in their places on the fingerboard de su gitmo. If we list the notes on the A string from the open string up through the 12th fret you'll know the musical alphabet, which you can then apply to each of the other strings. The open string is the A, the 1st fret is A#, the 2nd is B, the 3rd is C, and so on.

A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# A 

So now let's apply this to the 6th string (E).  All we're going to do is take the musical alphabet and start and end on the note E. Here's what it'll look like...

E F F# G G# A A# B C C# D D# E 

And it'll work this way for each string! So now we have to take our new found knowledge of the fingerboard and the staff and tie things together. In music notated for the guitar, no matter the style, you'll be given more than just the note on the staff. Here's an example...

You can probably figure on your own that this note is B, middle line of the staff. That's great for piano because there's only one way to produce the note, by pressing a key. In guitar notation, it will look like this...

The circled 3 is the string assignment, in other words telling you what string to find the note on, and the non-circled number 2 is the finger that the writer/composer suggests you use. My point is a guitarist can play this B on the middle line of the staff in numerous locations of the fingerboard. There's an example of this further down but let's get used to finger and string numbers first. Your left hand fingerings are like this:

1 Index

2 Middle

3 Ring

4 Pinky

and the strings are labeled this way...

E 1

B 2

G 3

D 4

A 5

E 6 

Here's another example... 

In this example, the first B has an 'o' next to it, Oui? That o signifies that the note is played as an open string. The second B has a circled 4 which means to play it on the 4th string [d string] with the 4th finger. As mentioned before, you can more often that not perform the same note on different strings.

[please pardon the lack of video accompaniment, I was given avian flu by my grandmother's Jamaican nurse. To her credit, I don't think she was aware of her carrier status.]  

Please put on extra perfume to disguise the smell of you soiling yourself as you watch this [and be aware of some slightly foul language]. If slight to marginally moderate foul language offends you, please redirect your web activity below.

Go here instead... 

The tremolo effect on the guitar is produced by playing the bass note of a chord with p [thumb] and then performing the melody note, typically a drone, with the a [ring] m [middle] and i [index] fingers respectively.

We're going to take the first eight chords of Etude no.2 in A minor by Carcassi and perform it as it was written first. Here are the chord voicings we'll be needing.

Once you have these under your fingers, so to speak, we can put them to practice. The manuscript and tablature below represent one of the many ways you can perform this piece. Karl Scheit edited twelve of Carcassi's etudes and had fingered eight different approaches to performing this study. So this is just one of many ways to perform it. Since going through these eight variations, I also applied Mauro Giuliani's studies for the right hand, which are kind of mundane in and of themselves, to this etude to make this things a bit more interesting. Enough already, here's the original notation before adding tremolo.

Once you've established this melody in your mind's ear, we can start to take liberties with the harmony and doing amazing things with it. You tremolo will really be solid if you build it by talking just two out the four notes per beat. Let's take the very first Ami chord you saw at the top left of the chord glossary. Now play p on the open A on the downbeat [1] and the m finger on open E on the and [+] of the beat. By all means practice with a metronome until your fingers are trained to perform this set of motions so you can hold a conversation with someone while playing and not falter in either rhythm or tone. The next step is filling in the blanks in each measure. Now add the a and i finger on the open E string. Our new pattern will be p a m i. So here's the first few chords with the tremolo!

If you're not careful, your tremolo will end up sounding like it's galloping. Make every effort to practice evenly and slowly and the speed will happen naturally once the motions are permanently etched in your technique. Also try to sound each pitch with the same dynamic, not allowing any note to be louder or softer than the others.

Word 

All of this here should be helpful in building a greater rhythmic understanding. Everything here is written with the beginning guitar player in mind but each successive post will get more in depth.

Quite often, that missing something is rhythm. Executing rhythms with charisma and feel is an art in and of itself. Now what I'm about to suggest may insult the artistic sensibilities of many of us, but it's one of those gotta do it sort of things. If you don't have a metronome, get one! Even though I have the gear to create killer production loops to practice along with I don't because in the beginning of metric training the focus should be on the player. You and me!

Take one chord. Like the Ami at the top left of the chords listed below.

We'll use this chord to begin our rhythm practice. Set your metronome to 60 beats per minute (bpm). We'll first try a whole note value. Right now your metronome is annoyingly clicking away. Start counting along with it...

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4.

Now when you get to beat ONE, strum the Ami chord with a solid downstroke and let it sustain for 4 beats. From here on out, the bold faced red number will indicate where you're supposed to strum and the regular black numbers indicate the beats that the chord or note is intended to ring for.

Whole Note [sound sustains for 4 beats]

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Half Notes [sound sustains for 2 beats]

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Quarter Notes [sound sustains for 1 beat]

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Now for 8th notes, we have to subdivide each beat into two parts because each 8th note is equal to half of a beat. These two parts are called the downbeat (1) and the upbeat [or "+" of the beat]. When you're counting along with your metronome, tap you foot on each number. These are the downbeats. When your foot comes off the floor in between downbeats, this is called the and (+) or upbeat. When you're strumming chords in an 8th note rhythm try your best to strum down on the downbeats and strum up on the upbeats. It'll feel almost as if your strumming hand and foot are attached like a marionette. So strum down on 1 and then up on the "and" of one. Keep the metronome where it is at 60 bpm. The +'s of the beat will fall in between clicks.

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +

Lastly, here is a breakdown of how the rhythmic pyramid functions.

A sad day for the instruments of this house on a New England hill  

Freedom from physical and psychological barriers is the one thing that an artist and practicing musician seeks out each day. As sessions and performances come and go, I become more aware of the fact that each note and phrase brings me closer to the blissful reality that I truly know nothing. 

Jeff Buckley is one of my greatest influences...an artist who gave everything of himself each time he wore a telecaster and stood before a microphone. This tune is called "Last Goodbye".      

This site will change the way I listen to music...this week. Pick your mood whether calm, dark, energetic or positive. If you don't want the software to know how you feel because you feel it's none of its business, then you can be a reclusive, antisocial shack dweller and pick a genre to listen to. Guess you told that software what's up. Now go find the bully from junior high school because you are your own man now!

Listen to slightly lo-fi streaming audio for or pay their $9.99/12 months for CD quality streams. Gimme the free one!

www.musicovery.com 

Now that Young Love is covering 1979 by the 'Pumpkins, I think I might be reacting in the same manner that some people from the older generation might have reacted to Steven Tyler and company covering Come Together. I'll bet anything that half of the people said, "Hey man, that's way hip" and the other half said, "How arrogant is that Steven Tyler trying to sing one of Paul's tunes!" I guess I'm kind of feeling the same way because I love when The Bad Plus covers unexpected melodies from pop/rock artists and reharmonize them to the n'th degree. I half way want to really dig it but the other half has me digging in and holding my nostalgic ground because that time in my existence is brought to life each time I hear Billy Corgan bleating like a sheep.

Ah, whatever. It's a good song that's been made available again to a younger crowd who might not have otherwise known who The Smashing Pumpkins were without the remake. 

Maybe it'll grow on me... 

This segment will focus on an arrangement I did of a tune by the late Jaco Pastorius called Portrait of Tracy. Jaco was an amazing bassist and as many of his closest friends described him, "The best self-proclaimed electric bassist in the world". He played with Weather Report, Pat Metheny, Mike Stern, or should I say they played with him? Jaco fanatics would probably prefer the latter. That's fine by me, no worries. Here's the manuscript for the performance in the video. 

Boo-Ya

Check out one of the featured players, Mimi Fox, on the Jazz Anatomy Channel at jazzimprov.tv and the vid of her performing her arrangement of When The Saints Come Marching In. Good times! 

Here's another audio editing extravaganza. A Spectacular if you will where timing is everything!

for more informative and tasteless crap click this line of words 

…”a general term used to refer to the position of musical events in time. It specifys the beginning of an event and the duration (how long it lasts). When events occur in alignment to a regular interval of time, a "pulse" emerges. These pulses may be grouped into beats and measures, commonly called a meter.”

This lesson illustrates how to play with a metronome. The metronome provides a steady pulse over which varying time values can be rehearsed. The video shows how to perform quarter notes, eighth’s, eighth triplets, and sixteenth note values over a steady click. Most people set the metronome when they first begin rhythmic training to something slow in the vicinity of 60 bpm’s [beats per minute]. Then try to perform quarters, eighths, eighth triplets, and sixteenths. If it’s comfortable and your not working too hard and you can remain relaxed at that tempo, increase the beats per minute by two and practice the same routine at that new number [in this case, 62 bpm]. Gradually work further and further until you find the threshold where its too laborious to keep your fingers in check rhythmically. Let’s say you get to 100 bpm and it’s messy. Back the metronome off to 98 bpm and work at that tempo for a while. Each player is different, but with a daily commitment you will set new personal records in not only your speed, but accuracy and overall comfort while playing the guitar.

If your business is music, then relationships are everything. A hero of mine once said 'Do you think the members of the New York Philharmonic know each other, never-mind like each other?' 

That person had a point but the dynamic is certainly different in a trio traveling by bus from city to city having to bear witness to the eccentricities of one another. I was in bands for a handful of years before I just didn't have the energy to compete any longer with all of the egos and, what I remember as, ill-informed opinions. It didn't matter what the situation was. We could have been driving to a show and the trailer wasn't positioned just so or nearing fisticuffs over how much mids to attenuate from the top snare mic during a session. Sting said it best when he said 'There is no room for democracy in rock music'. 

The first and foremost ingredient to success in this business is great songs but the point that I'm making is this, if you're in a band with a bunch of blokes that you like personally but may not be amazing players, you might get far because your chemistry is a contagion upon your audience. On the other hand, if you're surrounded by great players that aren't the nicest, ethically and morally upright people you've ever met, you may also go far because the music is great and your audience knows it. They may even become aware of the controversy surrounding the everyday goings-on in your act and see that as all the reason in the world to attend your shows. What's a little bloodshed among musical compatriots? All is fair in Rock & Roll.

In E major, the pitches are E F# G# A B C# D# E. You arrive at this by taking the starting pitch, E, and then using the following formula of whole steps and half steps to get the remaining notes...

W W H W W W H.

So the second note, F#, is realized by going a whole step higher than E and the 3rd note, G#, is a whole step higher than that, etc.

A chord is a combination of three or more notes sounded at once no matter how discordant or otherwise pleasant the sound. Each note of a scale [in this case E major] is the foundation of a three note chord called a triad. The notes of a triad are found by taking the root note of the chord E, the 3rd G# and the 5th B. Here's a more graphic illustration...

E F# G# A B C# D# E

Because of the range of the guitar, not terribly unlike it's linebacker monster of a big brother the piano, it stands to reason that provided that the player knows where all of the notes of the fingerboard are, any chord can be played in a vast number of ways all over the fingerboard.

The same technique can be used to find the Amaj chord and the Bmaj chord.

E F# G# A B C# D# E F# G#... 

The A triad, using A as the root note, is spelled by taking the 3rd and 5th notes higher than A in this key and sounding them wherever they can be found on the fingerboard. The same is true for the B chord.  

"It may be completely ineffective" 

G A Bb C D E F# G

Now when the scale descends from the G back down the octave you'll find this...

G F Eb D C Bb A G

From the standpoint of melodic creation, the full melodic minor scale [with the raised 6th and 7th scale degrees ascending and the lowered 6th and 7th on the descent] was utilized a great deal in baroque music. From here forward we're going to focus on just the ascending portion of the melodic minor scale which is called jazz melodic minor. Here's what the scale looks like starting in 5th position playing 3 notes per string.

When you perform this 5th mode of G melodic minor it gives you a sound similar to that of D mixolydian, but it has a lowered 6th scale degree and when harmonized yields the following chords...

There are some great textures that can be attained in these voicings. Experiment though and see what comes to light for your own playing by taking the same chords and revoicing them in your own way. The progression that I'll be posting in the vid very shortly uses D Dsus2 Bb+maj7 Gmi∆7 to C7#11 in 6/8 time where in the first bar the D chords split the 6 beats. Bars 2 3 and 4 have one chord each. Post some replies with your own ideas!

The progression of chords is like this where each chord lasts for one bar in 4/4 time...

C#mi C#mi B9 G#maj Amaj C#mi A7 A13 D Ddim7 :||

The melody of the tune is drawn primarily from C# harmonic minor which is pictured here voiced with the root on the A string.

I couldn't help the gratuitous improvising at the end. It uses this scale with some chromatic embellishments here and there. When you get to the final 4 chords of the progression, the note choices for your solo need to change. The notes that comprise the A dominant chords (7 & 13) contain notes that sit outside of the scope of C# harmonic minor. In this circumstance you could use just a straight A mixolydian scale or perhaps choose notes from each of those respective arpeggios (A C# E G for A7 and A C# E G B D F# for A13)