Wednesday, August 3, 2011
When teaching guitar, I find that my students need the most help with groove. Students come to me expecting to learn chords, scales, riffs and ultimately entire tunes. I do teach those things, but after a little guidance, anyone can learn them on their own just as well from books, videos, web sites and so [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged attention, funk, funky drummer, groove, hip-hop, linkedin, meditation, rhythm, swing, time
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If you’re a guitarist, you may have noticed that it’s hard to get your instrument perfectly in tune. This is not your imagination. If you tune each string perfectly to the one next to it, the low E string will end up out of tune with the high E string. If you use an electronic [...]
Filed in Math, Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged autotune, harmonics, harmony, history, Math, Music, Music Theory, tuning
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My last post on minor keys covered the three scales you need for most situations in rock, pop and so on: natural minor, harmonic minor and dorian. There’s also the blues scale, which sounds good in any key, major or minor. For musical Jedi masters, there’s one more valuable minor scale. It’s called the melodic [...]
Thursday, January 20, 2011
The C major scale is the foundation that the rest of western music theory sits on. If you master it, you get a bunch of cool chords and scales for free, along with a window into a huge swath of our musical culture. How to form the scale Imagine an ice cube tray with twelve [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged beethoven, bjork, chords, classical, folk, harmony, leonard cohen, major scale, mozart, Music, Music Theory
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Expanding on a post about blues basics. When you’re first learning to improvise, it’s daunting to be confronted with all the scales. Fortunately, there’s one scale that sounds good in any situation: the blues scale. It’s a universal harmonic solvent. I haven’t encountered a chord progression yet that didn’t fit with the blues scale. It [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged blues, charles mingus, chords, dave brubeck, harmony, henry mancini, jazz, miles davis, Music Theory
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Since I’m teaching the twelve-bar blues to some guitar students, I figured I’d put the lessons in the form of a blog post. Blues is a big topic and this isn’t going to be anything like a definitive guide. Think of it more as a tasting menu. Blues is a confusing term. You probably have [...]
Filed in Music, Music Teaching, Music Theory
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Also tagged aretha franklin, batman, blues, chords, country, duke ellington, Emotion, flatt and scruggs, hank williams, harmonica, herbie hancock, jazz, john coltrane, john lee hooker, louis armstrong, memes, modules, muddy waters, Music Theory, race, thelonious monk, tritones
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Friday, December 17, 2010
I’ve always been more of a Beatles guy than a Stones guy, but respect where respect is due, “Gimme Shelter” is a classic. It’s on my mind because Dangerous Minds posted the isolated tracks, and they’re a lot of fun. It’s fascinating to hear the separated vocals, guitars, bass and drums. The Youtube videos containing [...]
Filed in Music, Recording, Video Games
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Also tagged audio editing, keith richards, merry clayton, michael jackson, Recording, remixes, rhythm, rock, rolling stones, Sampling, singing, sixties, tuning
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Once you’ve mastered the basic guitar chords, you might want to tackle some scales. The pentatonic is a good scale to start with. It’s easy to play, easy to memorize and sounds good in an astonishing variety of musical situations. Here’s how to play it:
The other day Brian Eno was on NPR talking about his process. He likes to have people walk into the studio without any preconceived ideas or written out material. Then he has the musicians improvise within certain constraints. Usually these constraints are more about a mood or a vibe than a particular musical structure. After [...]
Filed in Autobio, Hardware, Improvisation, Interfaces, Music
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Also tagged brian eno, buddhism, comedy, electronica, groovebox, Improvisation, intuition, meditation, revival revival, singing, upright citizens brigade
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Most beginner guitarists start by learning the same fifteen chords, usually called the “standard fifteen.” I’ve also heard them called the open chords because they make use of open strings and are thus easy to play. For fingerings, have a look at wikipedia or any book on beginner guitar. You can also see this handy [...]