The other side of the coin (part 1)

Hi !

Today I’m sharing ideas on right hand picking after having numerous bad experiences a long time ago.

Imagine the situation: you’re a sideman, you got the gig, playing in a band in a cool venue. 
For 10 songs, your job is just to groove hard on chords, play a few lead licks sometimes but no real guitar solo on the horizon.
On the 11th song, then comes the 24 bar-guitar solo where everyone is excited (including you) and expecting you to burn, to be up to the great guitar player they all know.

Unfortunately, even if you spent hours practicing awesome licks, crazy shreddy alternate picking lines, soulful blues bends, elaborate bebop lines : all this background is destroyed by the funky hour you just spent playing rhythms with downstrokes, more focussed on groove than the subtleties of picking. Your right-hand is unbalanced, sort of attracted by a mysterious force towards the ground, on which you keep on desperately looking at, since you’re too ashamed of yourself playing like crap. 

What the hell is going on? Even if you’re trying hard to ignore this unbalance, everything you’re playing is not like what you’re usually practicing. You’re not confortable, sort of caught off guard by the situation whereas you know you’re a decent badass six-stringer.

Sounds familiar ? 

I’ve lived these moments, so I had to work on a territory I rarely used to go: the upstrokes.
Since playing downstrokes on the beats is natural, we guitar players tend to feel/think that upstrokes are less important or even not natural.

Here’s what I've noticed: 

• If I want to play better on what I know and usually do, I must work hard on what I rarely do.
• The more prepared and confortable with upstrokes I am, the more efficient I am in solos.
• If downstrokes are easy, natural and into the light, they can only shine if what is in the shade (upstrokes) are clean and strong.
• Right-hand picking is like a coin. One side is a downstroke, one side is an upstroke. Each side is as important as the other: If I want to improve, I have to work in both territories and leave no stone unturned.

Here are a few exercices I like to practice when I’m preparing for a gig, a recording session or any other guitar situation.

( Fig. 1 ) is a 5-note chromatic line played on even rhythms. Downstrokes and upstrokes are exaggerated with accents. Each accent is deliberately placed on a specific note in the 5-note line.
bar 1: accent on 1
bar 2: accent on 2
bar 3: accent on 3,
etc….
The purpose is to flush the crazy idea that all accents must be on downstrokes, to have more control on the music you play with your pick, to feel the independence of the upstroke from the downstroke.

( Fig. 2 ) is the G major scale we all know, played differently. It starts with an upstroke instead of a downstroke. After a few minutes you’re confortable with changing strings with an up-down right hand movement. You feel that your pick is "inside" the strings, your right-hand picking is more accurate.

( Fig. 3 ) is based on a G Maj7#5 arpeggio. I’ve seen John McLaughlin warming up playing strict alternate picking on triads. I’ve humbly practiced this approach and came up with my own stuff. Like ( Fig. 2 ), the cool thing is to reverse what we already know: upstrokes are played on beats, instead of downstrokes. For jazz lovers, note the substitution on B7 ( = GMaj7#5/9) then D#min7b5 ( = GMaj7#5/9/#11) in bar 8.

( Fig 4. ) is G major scale played in triads. Every group of 4 notes starts with an upstroke for all the good reasons I’ve developed before. The nice thing is the mix the accent-thing of ( Fig. 1 ) with a triad approach. In this exercice the accent is displaced: on the first note, then the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, the back to the 1st note, etc….


Have fun ! 

Jean-François

www.soubelet.com 

Moving chord tones (part 3)

Hi!

Today we carry on with chord tones practicing in two directions:

• how to play chord tones in diatonic patterns, the direct suite of part 2
• how to play chord tones with the addition of extra notes, creating some melodies on the top and on the bass.

( fig. 1 ) shows the progression of chord tones in a 1-5 pattern.
1 is F#, first degree of F# mixolydian,
5 is C#, fifth degree of F# mixolydian,
Then this movement in fifths is transposed in ascending thirds according to F# mixolydian.
F#-C# becomes A#-E, then C#-G#, then E-A#, and so on....
This exercice is good to practice intervals (fifths and thirds) horizontally and vertically on the neck; this also allows to play 3 octaves of the guitar in just 2 bars.

( fig. 2 ) takes the approach of ( fig. 1 ) in triad patterns.
Basically, we apply a chord tones on each note of each triad of F# mixolydian, in a 1-5-3 approach.
These are the triads of the pattern:
F#, G#m, A# dim, B, C#m, E#m, E.
F# is played in 1-5-3: F#-C#-A#
G#m is played in 1-5-3: G#-D#-B
etc....
This progression is a nice way of practicing rhythm (triplets) and chords positions altogether.


Now let's see how we can come up with tools to create melodies with chord tones.
( fig. 3 ) introduces the fourth, which is half-step or half-step above the third.
Each chord tones is followed by the related fourth. I purposely grouped all chord tones positions in the same neck area, in order to display many ways of playing the fourth.

( fig. 4 ) take the idea of ( fig. 3 ) horizontally on the neck in order to reach another range.

Let's do with the root what we just did with the third.
( fig. 5 ) is a interpretation of ( fig. 4 ).
Instead of playing the fourth of the chord tones we play the second, half-step or half-step above the root.
In my opinion, this lovely approach is perfect to break down all prejudices on melodies, bass, chord progressions. Each note become a potential melody on the bottom, the middle and the top.
We'll develop this concept later on.

Have fun!

Jean-François


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www.soubelet.com

The motive of the crime (part 1)

Hey !

Today I'm starting to speak about a vaste and important subject in improvisation and composition.

From my humble point of view this is the spine of any great improvisation and any great composition: motives (commonly called "patterns").

These are fragments of musical statements that are developped (or just repeated) in order to create a robust frame in which songs, solos and melodies are built.

So many great songs are composed on motives, from pop to heavy metal, from world music to classical.
At least we can find some similarities between Metallica's "Sad but True" and the intro of Mozart's "Serenade #13 In G, K 525, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik". 

In this post I'll focus mainly on rhythmic motives. Some motives can also be considered only with notes choice or movements, regardless of rhythm.

( fig. 1 ) is the Mozart's famous catchy "Kleine Nachtmusik" line that we all know. The motive is built on G (the key of the tune) and D7 (the related dominant).
What makes this line so mighty is not only the Wolfie's genius but also the 2-bar rhythmic motive that is transposed from G to D7. Also the conclusive movement of the second line that mirrors the suspended first line (ending on the note D) creates no doubt on the resolution on bar 4.

Now what is cool is to strictly separate rhythm from notes or harmony in solos.
Why not take a simple rhythmic motive (a canvas) and play all the notes (colors) we want on it ?

Let's play on B7.
Basically we can play B mixolydian or B mixolydian #11 (F# melodic minor) and other simple stuff such as B blues or Ab major pentatonic.

( fig. 2 ) is the main 2-bar motive we'll develop in this exercice. This is just F# melodic minor scale played in a jazzy mood, mixing some diatonic chromatisms, arpeggios and some kind of "pentatonic" sound on bar 2 with a little help from my scale.

( fig. 3 ) takes the rhythmic motive of ( fig. 2 ), plugged with a descending B7 arpeggio and chromatisms around the 7th and 3rd of B7.  

( fig. 4 ) starts with the #11th of B7 and leads to a bluesy tone on the 3rd. Bar 2 stresses the 2nd (C#) and the 6th (G#) of B7 to bring a jazzier sound. The end of bar is a plain excerpt of F# melodic minor in order to stress the B7#11 sound.

( fig. 5 ) is deliberately based on an A lydian #5 position, i.e F# melodic minor starting from the 3rd degree (A on fret 5, E string).  Bar 2 is a jazzy chromatic lick leading to the 3rd and 7th of B7, the chord tones.

As you can see in these short examples, possibilites are limitless in solos and compositions if we keep the same motive.
I could even play any crazy note I want (atonal, chromatic or tonal) and still be consistent with the rest of the solo because the spine is still here. Consistency, that's the point.

I'll develop other examples on motives in the next future.

Play strong

Jean-François


Don't hesitate to drop a line below, or on Facebook or Twitter to let me know about your thoughts on this blog post. That would be really helpful for me. THANKS !

www.soubelet.com 

 

Moving chord tones (part 2)

Hi!

Chord tones are back with a vengeance.

Whereas part 1 was dedicated to the introduction to chord tones and some ascending phrases, part 2 goes deeper into diatonic movements and emphasizes on descending movement all along the neck.

The raw material is still F# mixolydian harmonized in chord tones (1 root, 3rd third, 7th seventh) with the same chord structure (3rd is actually the 10th).

With two, three or four notes per string, we guitar players love structures when it comes to scales.  
( fig. 1 ) is a plain way of playing F# mixolydian with a 4-notes-per-string approach. This phrase starts with a F# on the melody and finishes with a F# on the bass.

( fig. 2 ) is built on a F# mixolydian pattern played in fourth. This example is interesting because of the mix between vertical and horizontal chord tones positions, as the objective is to strictly follow the pattern from F# to F#.

( fig. 3 ) is built on a simple 4-note pattern that is developed in a diatonic way. Because of the long range of this pattern (one octave between F# and F#), the phrase is restricted by the architecture of the guitar neck. Hence the limitation in two bars in this exercice.

( fig. 4 ) is one of my favorite approach of chord tones. An ascending phrase that mixes chord positions on 2 different sets of strings.
Set 1 with E, A and D strings.
Set 2 with D, B and E strings.
Of course, these sets can be customized with any adjacent strings (ex: Set 2 with A, G and B strings) and that freedom is the cool aspect of the exercice.
The 4-chord pattern is developped all along the neck, allowing to play nicely from fret 2 to fret 18 in just two bars.

( fig. 5 ) is the classic diatonic cycle in fourths. Each chord is a diatonic chord resolution for the next one, and so on. This cycle encompasses the famous II V I turnaround that is the core of jazz harmony.
Note in the last bar a new chord tones position with a different set of strings (A, D and G). The introduction of this new position brings numerous chord changes that we'll discuss later.


Play on!

Jean-François

Don't hesitate to drop a line below, or on Facebook or Twitter to let me know about your thoughts on this blog post. THANKS !

www.soubelet.com