2017 Goals, Learn More Than Ever, Relization I Suck. Help!?

Brandon Breeze

Active member
Putting myself on blast here. So, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I don't really know, or hang out with musicians. I would like to actually learn some new stuff this year, and by some, I mean a lot.

I've been playing guitar for a number of years, played in garage bands many years ago. Took lessons for less than a year, and likely forgot most of it. I have an awesome family of gear, and want to make better use of it. I can play really fast, and while there are no rules in rock n roll, musically my fast playing makes no sense. That's because I just use shapes, rather than notes that are organized by a key/scale etc. I learned A minor pentatonic, and that's about the only scale I know.

Here's an example of my fast playing with a shape. This shape simply uses the 1st, 3rd, & 4th finger in their relative positions based off of their location on your hand. I learned this loosely from Paul Gilbert's Terrifying Guitar Trip video. I can do the same with many shapes like 1, 2, & 4, play them up and down the neck at will, or stretch out the fingers to skip frets, skip strings etc. While this is impressive to folks that don't play guitar, or to guitar players with little to no aptitude, I know it makes zero sense musically.



Here's a Rythym based off of the same shape:



The most complex thing I've ever learned, an excerpt from Yngwie's Arpeggios From Hell. Not in any way trying to show off here, quite the contrary. I share this only to show that I have the capability of learning "advanced" type of stuff even though I consider myself beginner to intermediate at best.



I have this book, I'm sure it has everything I've wanted to learn forever. Simply put it's information overload for me. I have very little time to spare these days and as I get older it's a heck of a lot harder to learn new stuff, and retain it.



The whole point of this thread is to hopefully get some insight from you guys that are much more skilled than I am, and point me in the direction of a way to learn that may be a bit less tedious. I'm not a fool, I know it takes a lot of practice, dedication, and hard work to be awesome at guitar. At the same time I work 50+ hours a week, and have a pretty random work schedule(retail), so I don't have the luxury of taking lessons from a local teacher.

All excuses aside, I want to learn more than ever.
 
Already learned something from the book. I inherently know A flat minor, B major, C flat major, & C major pentatonic scales because the fingering patterns are exactly the same as A minor, just with a different starting note(or neck position)
 
Or maybe I know all the minor pentatonic, looks like the scales are all the same patterns, just in tpdifferent locations on the fret board, so now I just have to figure out what makes the key the scale is in.
 
Try this as an exercise. Pull up a track, or create a track. Then instead of shredding over it, sing a solo into a mic. Complete with bends and harmonics, and speedy runs. A complete solo from beginning to end.

Then, go back through and learn how to play the solo you created. It'll really keep you musically honest and hopefully you'll learn patterns or licks.
 
audiomichael":3nq1tdv8 said:
Try this as an exercise. Pull up a track, or create a track. Then instead of shredding over it, sing a solo into a mic. Complete with bends and harmonics, and speedy runs. A complete solo from beginning to end.

Then, go back through and learn how to play the solo you created. It'll really keep you musically honest and hopefully you'll learn patterns or licks.

This would be great if my singing voice wasn't 100x worse than my guitar playing lol
 
After seeing that when it comes to the minor pentatonic scale, all the finger positions being the same, just in different locations, that gives me something that I can learn a lot in a short amount of time. For the first shape the key in which the scale is in is determined by the first note on the scale, so now I can play one scale in every single key. That's huge progress for only a couple hours. I already know all of the finger positions, just now have to figure out how they relate to each scale
 
I'd like to help u out, but unless I'm reading it wrong, we need to start again. All good though, ur courageous for reaching out.
 
Fuego":129rb99k said:
I'd like to help u out, but unless I'm reading it wrong, we need to start again. All good though, ur courageous for reaching out.

Not sure what you mean? I'm reaching out so that theres accountability. I could talk about it all day long, but if I make no effort than I'm stuck doing the same old thing. I'm tired of the same old thing.
 
I'm sort of in a similar place. My main goal this year is to try to play more actual music and less noodling/drills. It seems that doing a bunch of practice drills, while helpful to build technique/increase speed, don't really help me make actual music. And lately I'm more into the musical content than the amazing musicianship.
 
SpiderWars":3v2ws83b said:
I'm sort of in a similar place. My main goal this year is to try to play more actual music and less noodling/drills. It seems that doing a bunch of practice drills, while helpful to build technique/increase speed, don't really help me make actual music. And lately I'm more into the musical content than the amazing musicianship.

I agree, except that I don't know a bunch of the technical stuff. I think this will help to unlock more creativity and expand my range of music making. Interestingly I looked at the major scale, and the same is true, all of the finger positions are the same, just in different locations on the fretboard. If someone would have mentioned that many years ago that would have been huge.

One of my friends plays saxophone, and is in college band. We're gonna start jamming this year. that will allow us to have some fun, learn from each other, and keep our sanity!
 
Learn the basics of modes and you'll see that (except for the harmonic/dominant stuff) they are ALL the same damn scale. That is, the intervals remain the same. I like to relate the modes to the corresponding pentatonic scale (I think I heard this from Guthrie Govan video).

There are 7 modes, and one of them (Locrian) is a real weirdo and is used sparingly. That only leaves 6 modes, three are the major pentatonic with 2 extra notes and the other 3 are minor pentatonic with 2 extra notes. You already know Major and minor (Ionian and Aeolian modes respectively) so that only leaves 4 modes to learn. Of those extra 2 added notes to the pentatonic, only one of them changes (from the 'naturals' of the Major or minor scale) to make a new mode.

Examples:
G Ionian is just G Major or G Major pentatonic with a 'natural' 4th and 7th. G Mixolydian is the same Major pentatonic with a 'natural' 4th but with a flatted seventh. G Lydian is the same Major pentatonic but with a sharp 4th and 'natural' 7th. See how only the 4th or 7th changed?

G Aeolian is G minor or G minor pentatonic with 'natural' 2nd and 6th. G Dorian is G minor pentatonic with natural 2nd/sharp 6th and G Phrygian is G minor pentatonic with flat 2nd/natural 6th. See how only the 2nd or 6th changed?

Lots of ways to look at modes but this is just a way I like. Of course, understanding it and being to fly through it on the fretboard are two very different things.
 
You're right, understanding, and being able to apply it to the fret board are two very different things. I feel though that being able to understand it first will make it easier to apply to the fret board.

Here's a video explaining what I was talking about earlier. This is probably beginner type stuff, but I just learned my first guitar related stuff of 2017, so I'm excited.

 
UberKrankenschtein":2yr3qqnr said:
audiomichael":2yr3qqnr said:
Try this as an exercise. Pull up a track, or create a track. Then instead of shredding over it, sing a solo into a mic. Complete with bends and harmonics, and speedy runs. A complete solo from beginning to end.

Then, go back through and learn how to play the solo you created. It'll really keep you musically honest and hopefully you'll learn patterns or licks.

This would be great if my singing voice wasn't 100x worse than my guitar playing lol

OH! Believe me, my singing is BAD! The singing is meant to be like an outline, so that you are phrasing musically, and you're hitting notes that follow the chords.
 
audiomichael":hpnws68b said:
UberKrankenschtein":hpnws68b said:
audiomichael":hpnws68b said:
Try this as an exercise. Pull up a track, or create a track. Then instead of shredding over it, sing a solo into a mic. Complete with bends and harmonics, and speedy runs. A complete solo from beginning to end.

Then, go back through and learn how to play the solo you created. It'll really keep you musically honest and hopefully you'll learn patterns or licks.

This would be great if my singing voice wasn't 100x worse than my guitar playing lol

OH! Believe me, my singing is BAD! The singing is meant to be like an outline, so that you are phrasing musically, and you're hitting notes that follow the chords.

I did try to hit the notes with my voice today, man singing is hard work, All this time I thought the singers had the easy job lol. I've found a lot of helpful info just by searching around. If you're careful you can find really great stuff on YouTube. For now I'm going to focus on my book, and throw videos in the mix for a different perspective.
 
What's your end goal? I would recommend making it something specific aside from just "learn more on guitar" or "get better at lead guitar" - if your goal is still big picture, break it down into smaller, more achievable goals that all work towards that bigger goal. From my experience just sitting down and learning scales and practicing them is the tedious part of guitar - it isn't fun and it is slow going. I always try to mix that stuff with learning new techniques or practicing techniques, or just learning / writing new songs. I could go on more on this but I'll keep it short unless you're interested.

Also... Never under estimate learning a solo at 50% speed from ear, helps a lot with ear development and then you start digging into "what he is playing here sounds cool but it doesn't sound like any scale I know - so what scale is it?" And before you know it you're digging into a scale you don't know and learning it. Or "that technique is difficult at full speed but I can play it at half speed" and you start working on that section learning it at half speed and you have an exercise to help improve that technique but also work up to speed an actually apply it to a song.

Random thoughts, take 'em or leave 'em
 
You're right my goal is very broad, and far reaching. If you would have asked me that 10 years ago I would have simply said, I want to shred your face off. Now, I want to learn more than just that. I like blues, metal, classical etc. Some of my favorite guitarists are Dime, for his southern influence, shred and feeling. Yngwie for his classical influence, feeling, shred blued and shred. Paul Gilbert for his shred, MAB for his insane shred and ability to ambidextrous playing ability. Marty Friedman for his odd way of doing everything, Jimi & SRV for blues. There's plenty more of course, but that's the general idea of things.

Yes, learning scales is a tedious task, but my recent finding that most scales use the same shapes all around the neck for the different keys, gives me a lot of hope, since I can learn shapes really easy.

While taking a break from Minor Pentatonic I flipped over to the harmonic major scale and learned position 1 in the key of C. Now I can play one shape of the harmonic major scale in any key, and that's awesome.
 
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