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Showing Tag: "scale" (Show all posts)

Confusing Names and Symbols

Posted by The Wizard on Thursday, September 24, 2009, In : Easy Music Theory 
Confusing Names And Symbols


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Let's keep the riff raff out

So we know what to call the white keys on the piano. But what about the black ones in between? Well they actually have two names depending on where you're coming from. "There's no reason to keep it simple" the monks said "The more complicated we make it, the easier it is for us to keep the riff raff out." Let's humor these guys from the past and see what they came up with.


The note in between the C and the D is ...
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The Fast Practical Approach To Theory

Posted by The Wizard on Wednesday, September 16, 2009, In : Easy Music Theory 
The Fast Practical Approach To Theory


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Cut the crap and give me a practical approach


When I decided to get serious about my guitar playing I also decided to become an expert on music theory. And so should you. Because music theory is a nothing less than a basic understanding of the mechanics of music. This understanding will help you immensely when you improvise, when you compose or when you want to learn any chord progression or solo simply by listening to it. When y...
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Bridging The Blues Scale Shapes

Posted by The Wizard on Sunday, August 23, 2009, In : Power Blues 101 
Bridging the blues scale shapes


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From vertical to horizontal

At some point in your development you feel the urge to learn to play using the entire fretboard instead of being locked into one or two positions. The first step to doing this is mastering all 5 of the blues scale shapes. But if this is the only thing you do, you won’t really develop the freedom you want, you’ll still be locked into positions only now there are five and not two of them. To truly go f...
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Sweep Picking Power Blues

Posted by Pure Speed on Friday, August 7, 2009, In : Power Blues 101 
Sweep Picking Power Blues


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Dramatic Arpeggios

The blues rock context embodies a whole range of different sounds. You can put almost any scale, arpeggio or lick in there and if you do it right it’ll sound really cool. Today let’s stick an E-minor triad in there and hear how it sounds. I’m going to take a sweep picking approach to this idea. But you can use the notes of the E-Minor triad to produce a lot of interesting sounding slow licks as well. If you’ve been...

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How To Play Melodic Power Blues

Posted by The Wizzard on Wednesday, August 5, 2009, In : Power Blues 101 
How to play melodic power blues


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Mixing the blues scale with the Dorian scale

Today’s  idea requires a little more work than the two previous ones. I’ve written about this before but here it is again: Mixing the blues scale with the Dorian scale. The Dorian scale is, of course, your regular Major scale but with it’s second note as the root note.


Here’s your number one regular pentatonic / E-Blues shape again:



And here it is with the added E-dorian (Also D-Major...
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The One Minute Major Third Expansion

Posted by Pure Speed on Saturday, August 1, 2009, In : Power Blues 101 

The one minute major third expansion


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Using every available note on the fretboard

I hope you had fun with the idea and the licks in my last article. Today I’m going to expand a bit on that same simple idea. But before I go on I would like to make this clear: You can use all available notes on the entire fretboard to play over any Blues Rock chord progression, and when you come to the end of these articles, you will! So the point of these article is not to show you...


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Expand The Pentatonic Scale In Two Minutes

Posted by Pure Speed on Thursday, July 30, 2009, In : Power Blues 101 

How to expand the pentatonic scale in two minutes


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More freedom and choices

I’ve been looking forward to writing this series about how to master the blues rock sound in all it’s different manifestations. This is by far the most used sound in all of rock music so mastering it is crucial. But most people often feel a bit limited by the measly five or six notes that you have at your disposal in the traditional pentatonic blues scale. I use to feel that way for sur...


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The Patterns Of Sweep Picking

Posted by Pure Speed on Friday, June 12, 2009, In : Sweep Picking Perfection 
The patterns of sweep picking


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7 Arpeggio patterns and you're set

In this article, I'm going to give you the basic sweep picking patterns that I use when I improvise. They are very simple and can be used in any type of music. I'm talking about the Major, Minor and diminished triads. While there are many variations on these basic arpeggios, these are the fundamental three types you really need to master. You can add chord extensions like the 9th the 11th or other add-...

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How To Visualize Every Note On The Fretboard

Posted by Pure Speed on Thursday, May 28, 2009, In : Instant Fretboard Vision 

How to visualize every note on the fretboard


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Master one key first

When I started this series of articles I promised you that if you stayed in the key of A-Minor/C-Major long enough, I would teach you to name any note on the fretboard in as little as a day. Well here's the simplest and easiest way to do this. But it will only work as well as your ability to visualize the A-Minor/C-Major scale. If you don't feel very confident at this yet, be sure to stay in that key ...

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How To Use All This Now, Now, Now!

Posted by Pure Speed on Tuesday, May 26, 2009, In : Instant Fretboard Vision 
How to use all this now, now, now!


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A second way of navigating

I'm an impatient guy. I like to be able to use what I learn very fast. This article as about the strategy that I have used to go from playing the standard blues scale pattern, to using all of the fretboard and all of the available scales and arpeggios. It's simple, easy and fun to work with. But first I would like to expand a bit on my last article. Yesterday I showed you how I navigate around the fretboa...

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How To Always Know What Scales To Use

Posted by Pure Speed on Monday, May 25, 2009, In : Instant Fretboard Vision 

How to always know what scales to use


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How to make the right choice fast

In this article I'm going to give you a quick, easy tool you can use to instantly know what scale to play over any rock, pop or metal chord progression. I'm not going to go into the deeper realms of music theory, I'm just going to give you a simple and very effective tool.

So let's say you have to figure out which one of the three scale tools you can use to play a solo. Here are the two things y...

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How To Create The Malmsteen Sound

Posted by Pure Speed on Saturday, May 23, 2009, In : Instant Fretboard Vision 

How to create the Malmsteen sound


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Change one note and everything changes

The last tool you need to be able to improvise over any rock, pop or metal chord progression, is the Harmonic minor scale. This scale is our old friend the Minor / Major scale with a slight change and a new name. You take your natural A-Minor scale but change the 7th step and push it up one fret. Here's our well known A-Minor / C-Major pattern:



Now let's push the 7th step up one fret (The G not...


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How To Master The Minor And Major Scales

Posted by Pure Speed on Thursday, May 21, 2009, In : Instant Fretboard Vision 
How to master the Minor and Major scales


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The same scale used in a different context

Let's get one thing straight: The "Natural Minor scale" is just your old Minor / Major scale, used over a Minor chord progression. In the last article I covered blues rock and how to mix the "Dorian" scale (Which is still the old Minor / Major scale with a new name!) with the blues scale. To play over chord progressions in a regular Minor key we'll do almost the same thing. We won't ...

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How To Master Blues Rock Scales

Posted by Pure Speed on Wednesday, May 20, 2009, In : Instant Fretboard Vision 

How to master blues rock scales



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The Blues scale and the Dorian mode

When ever you play solos in a Blues/Rock context you can use the blues scale and mix it with the "Dorian" minor scale. The Dorian scale is just your old regular Minor/Major scale that we've been focusing on in the last couple of articles. But every step in the Major scale has a name of it's own. IF you start on a C and play 7 notes up and down, you'll hear what we call the C-Major scale.

This scale...

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How To Nail This Challenge In Two Months

Posted by Pure Speed on Tuesday, May 19, 2009, In : Instant Fretboard Vision 

How to nail this challenge in two months


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If you fail to plan - you plan to fail

This article will show you ways to master all the things I've talked about.  And the first and most essential thing is the concept of planning. This doesn't have to take more than a couple of minutes but it's essential to your success. Planning is deciding what you will do and for how long you will do it. Here's what happens when we don't plan:

  1. We decide on something we'd like to maste...

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Develop Automated Pattern Recognition

Posted by Pure Speed on Saturday, May 16, 2009, In : Instant Fretboard Vision 

Develop automated pattern recognition


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An effective strategy

When you've given yourself sufficient time to learn to play all the notes on the top two strings, it's time to move on. But remember, the top two strings should feel like home now. You should be able to clearly visualize all the notes on this set of strings quickly and effortlessly. If you still feel a little slow at this, here's another strategy you can use:

Place your guitar besides your TV-set in an upr...


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Breaking Out Of Limiting Scale Patterns

Posted by Pure Speed on Friday, May 15, 2009, In : Instant Fretboard Vision 

Breaking out of limiting scale patterns


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The secret to memorizing a map

The fretboard can be compared to a city with it's roads and locations: If you try to find your way around the whole city at once, you have to refer to the map at every crossing and corner. But if you live in one part of the city for a couple of months, you get to know that neighborhood so well, that you can find your way in the dark. And if you then move to another part of the city, the sam...


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A Totally New Way Of Thinking

Posted by Pure Speed on Thursday, May 14, 2009, In : Instant Fretboard Vision 

A totally new way of thinking


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Instant Fretboard Vision

In this series of articles, I'm going to give you, what I consider to be, the fastest and easiest way to "fretboard vision": The ability play over the entire fretboard like it was the easiest thing in the world. If you apply every element in my strategy and really go for it, you will not believe what will happen to your skills in this area. This subject is such an amazing example of how much progress yo...


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