Every time I buy a new album the the first thing I do (after listening) is read the liner notes. Call it musical research or mild obsession, but over the years I’ve amassed quite a bit of trivia in my mind.
I don’t actively seek the opportunity to contribute such knowledge unless specifically queried about such facts. I got the hint when my fiancee gave me a Rock Snob’s Dictionary for Christmas a few years back. The question “Who co-wrote, recorded, and played guitar on Chris Cornell’s first solo album?” rarely comes up in daily life, let’s just say I like to know, you know?
I really did like the sound of Chris Cornell’s “Euphoria Morning”. After reading the liner notes I discovered that Alain Johannes of Eleven had a lot to do that sound. It appeared he carried a lot of creative weight on the recording/mixing side and the writing/playing side as well. Alain has also worked with another of my favorite groups, Queens of the Stone Age, and recorded and toured for Lullabies to Paralyze.
Here’s a clip of Johannes from his tour supporting Euphoria Morning. I like the “space guitar” sound he gets by using a lot of effects and wide intervallic stretches. Sounds like he’s using some type of synth as well. Different and creative. While it seems Alain is happiest using his talent to play a supporting role in the efforts of others, I’d really like to hear him record a solo album in the near future.
While I’m working up a big series of posts on virtual lessons I’ll offer on the site I thought I’d share a recording of my old band playing live for U-92’s Morgantown Sound.
I have a ton or live and studio stuff we’ve done in the past on my hard drive. This particular performance was recorded about 5 years ago. I wrote the song, “Forbidden Fruit Jam”, towards the end of my real woodshedding years. BONUS: It’s an instrumental so you won’t hear me trying to sing!
Listening to this is like taking a ride in a time machine. I was living with my band mates at this point in my life, probably still had a pony tail(a rock and roll requirement), and I probably had a mid-term the next morning. My guitar is panned hard left and my good friend Ez is blazing through the right speaker. You can hear I was having a problem with my input jack towards the middle of the song as I was always too cheap to replace them right away I dropped a few notes here and there but over all I’m still pretty happy with the way I was playing.(especially between 3:10 and 3:25)
The point to all of this is to encourage everyone to record themselves or their band as much as possible. It’s always nice to listen backwards once in a while, even if it occasionally makes you cringe!
Utilizing an odd time signature is a good way to add some variety into your playing. It can give that riff you’ve been working on a little extra uniqueness. The key to doing it effectively is to make it sound natural. No calculators or Star Wars action figures are necessary. Just a little thought and a little more practice
If an idea comes to you and it isn’t quite fitting into 4/4, or you notice that your foot (because you tap your foot when you practice) is in the air instead of hitting the ground at the end of the riff, then it’s probably in an odd time. Get to know how it works first and then count it out. The riff below is one example of how to use an odd time somewhat naturally. When you listen to it, you may or may not notice that it’s in 7/4.
The descending notes on the 2nd string are optional. After the D on the 3rd fret I play a C on the 1st fret and then a C# on the second fret (to make an A major). I’m also using pull-offs wherever I can.
Try to come up with a few different ideas in odd time-signatures. You can start by adding or subtracting a beat from something you already know. If you do in fact want to get nerdy about it, try playing it against something that’s in 4/4 time. You’ll notice that it syncs up at the LCM of beats between the two different time signatures. 3/4 and 4/4 will sync up in 12 beats(LCM of 3 and 4) which is 3 measures of 4/4 and 4 measures of 3/4.
My apologies for not having updated in a while. I thought I’d write a little post and explain the process of how I come up with a post. Maybe this will be helpful to some and maybe some faster bloggers out there can give a few tips.
For me, it takes a good deal time to create a post. I’ve just started using Audacity to record my sound examples. It’s a very intuitive and simple piece of open source software. Once I installed LAME to encode my files to mp3 it has worked very well for my purposes.
For those who are wondering(which I’m sure there are thousands of you) I’ve been using a Tascam US-122 interface, a Shure sm57 , myself, and usually a Tacoma DM-10 to bring you the audio samples you’ve so enjoyed. The notation is created first in Finale, exported as a .tiff, resized, and converted to .gif. It is not a quick process.
It seems to work well but I was wondering if any guitar bloggers out there have a faster system for creating a good post?
Let me first thank the sponser of guitHelp’s 2nd CD Review for providing the CD. You see, without guitHelp’s #1 reader (my fiancee), I’d probably be reviewing Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger or anything else on its way down to the program director at your local Golden Oldies station. In short, thanks Liz!
Onward.
If you like Clutch you may already have this one but if you’ve never heard of them, surf on over to pro-rock.com because you, my friend, are in for a treat. You can also listen to them at Clutch Radio.
After I first scanned the tracklisting and gave it a preliminary listen I wasn’t keen on the fact that they re-recorded and released One Eyed Dollar. Sure the Hammond Organ assimiliates nicely but it doesn’t sound much different than the original version. I can tell you though that by my third consecutive listen of the album (on long solitary road trip(even longer story)) I caught myself playing air guitar to the song’s concert ending. Clutch will make you like their songs even against your own will. Upon reading an explanation of whythey re-recorded the song it all makes perfect sense. Now when I hear it, I’m thinking, “Good idea!”
From Beale Street to Oblivion, like the rest of the Clutch catalog, is exciting, inventive, and unique. It follows a path the band has forged since releasing Blast Tyrant and Robot Hive/Exodus. It’s still the classic, riff-oriented Clutch you’ve come to know and love, but their riffs are getting smarter, loopier, and bluesier by the minute.
What I like about Beale Street is the texture and balance they create. The syncopated cyclical verses contrast nicely with driving straight-eighth choruses. It takes you down a winding country road to the driver’s seat in a 110 mph Mac Truck on the highway (downhill, no brakes) . Highlights for me are Child of the City, Rapture of Riddley Walker, When Vegans Attack, and Mr. Shiny Caddylackness. Pick up this album and you’ll hear a rock band in its prime and find yourself checking the rear-view mirror for angry vegan bicyclists before you know it.
In order to increase reader participation here on guithelp I’ve decided to start a little contest. The rules to enter are as follows:
Leave a comment on any post.
Easy huh?
A winner will be selected randomly after 10 comments have been made anywhere on this site. If you’re wondering how to leave a comment look for the word Comment below each post and click it. You can enter up to five times so long as you have something different to say each time. Attempting to cheat by leaving gibberish comments will result in immediate disqualification and is punishable by law.
The prize will be selected from a pile of CD’s that I don’t listen to anymore. Good Luck!
Before we discuss the modes of a scale let me first explain how a major scale is made. There are two rules:
You need one of each note in the musical alphabet(A, B, C, D, E, F, and G).
The intervals between the notes must follow this pattern in steps:
whole(2 frets), whole, half(1 fret), whole, whole, whole, half.
So if we start with F we end up with F, G, A, B(flat), C, D, and E. We call it a B flat instead of an A# because of rule 1 and we need a half-step there according to rule 2. We can build a major scale from any note by following these rules.
Playing those notes in that order results in a F Ionian mode. When you start from G and play up an octave (G-A-Bflat-C-D-E-F-G) you have the G Dorian mode. Remember it’s not a G major because you a using the notes in F major. Thus for each of the 7 notes in a major scale you have a corresponding mode. All of the modes built in the key of F are below.
One of the first hurdles a guitarist must overcome is learning to break away from first position “cowboy” or “campfire” chords. Those names aren’t meant to detract from the value of these chords as they’re employed in literally millions of songs but knowing only chords that use a lot of open strings and don’t go beyond the first 4 frets can limit your understanding of the instrument and really leave you stuck in a rut.
One way to get out of this rut would be to learn more chord voicings. Essentially a Drop 2 chord is formed when you take all of the inversions of a 7th chord on a set of four strings and remove the next to last note and place it in the bass. On the top four strings there are 4 different drop 2 voicings for each 7th chord. These shapes are very useful for helping you move around the neck but can also allow you to play various chords in the same place on the neck by using different shapes. The voicings for all of the chords listed below follow the same pattern from the 4th to the 1st string. Try substituting these into some songs or chord progressions you already know.
Here’s a clip of Tony Janflone Sr. and Jr. playing some seasonal music. I took several lessons from Tony Sr.(the one in the middle) a few years ago and am still digesting some of the things he gave me to work on. We’d usually start by playing a few scales but he’d inevitably work in and interesting Pat Martino story and a life lesson or three. Both are phenomenal guitarists.
Scales modes were first categorized by the Greeks in the time of … ancient Greece. While they can be a source of confusion for guitarists both in their use and pronunciation they’re essentially simple variations of a major scale. For example if you take a C major scale with the notes C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C, the Ionian mode can be played by using those notes in the same order starting from C. When you start on the 2nd note in the scale “D” and play D - E - F - G - A - B - C - D you are playing the Dorian mode in C major. For each note in a major scale there is a corresponding mode that goes with it. Each mode mode has a distinct tonality and can add variety to your improvisation.
Describing the characteristics of each mode is beyond the scope of this post so we will instead focus on a mode created from the 4th note of a major scale, the Lydian mode. I first became interested in the Lydian mode after learning the philosopher Plato suggested that in order to create a perfect state the Lydian mode should be outlawed. Here’s what he had to say in Republic:
… so we may now banish the
mixed Lydian harmonies, which are the harmonies of lamentation; and as our
citizens are to be temperate, we may also banish convivial harmonies, such as the Ionian and pure Lydian.
Interesting.
Below is a chord progression for which the G and C Lydian modes are suitable tools for improvisation. Try G Lydian over the first two bars and C Lydian over the next. If the scales seem familiar its probably because you can use scale shapes you (should) already know. Since a G Lydian is built off of the 4th note in the D major scale, you can use a C Shape D major in 2nd position. Likewise a G major E shape will give you a C Lydian scale if you start on a C. Pay attention to the C# in the first two bars and the F# in the second two, those are the notes that make your improvising sound distinctly “Lydian”.
I dropped a few notes here and there but over all I’m still pretty happy with the way I was playing.(especially between 3:10 and 3:25)
In order to increase reader participation here on guithelp I’ve decided to start a little contest. The rules to enter are as follows:
… so we may now banish the
