Timeline for How can I learn to solo on guitar?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 23, 2018 at 13:07 | comment | added | piiperi Reinstate Monica | It was only a remark about some guitarists who seem to consider it an achievement as such to play notes from a scale very fast. On some other instrument it wouldn't be an achievement. :) | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 12:45 | comment | added | Tim | @piiperi - Just don't understand the point of your last comment. I play guitar and keys, but am not unhappy in other keys than C. Scale notes in context are just as important in any key, on any instrument. And playing fast doesn't make one a great player. | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 12:18 | comment | added | piiperi Reinstate Monica | If we compare guitarists to keyboard players - I don't think many keyboard players would brag about being able to play notes from the C major scale very, very fast. "Look ma, no black keys at all! A hundred notes a second and no black keys, wow I'm a music genius!" ;) | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 12:12 | comment | added | Tim | @piiperi - you're spot on. Scales are very basic elementary stuff, so without them, one wallows. I try to emphasise all this, as all my teachers ever said was 'you need this or that scale to play in the exam.' Much later, I realised they're a heck of a lot more than that, and not knowing them for their proper purpose - as a basis for anything in that key - was pure ignorance, which held me back for years. | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 12:08 | comment | added | Tim | @leftaroundabout - a really good player will just do that actually on purpose. | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 12:06 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | @piiperi a good player will play F over that D chord, notice it's a minor-major mismatch, and pretend it was on purpose by bending it up in a deliberately slow and painful-blue-note way. Then do it again the second time the chord comes around. | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 12:06 | comment | added | piiperi Reinstate Monica | Of course you need to know scales (and even the most basic major and minor scales get you very far, because modes can be seen as their modifications), but in my opinion scales should mostly be used as reference points only, guide markings, to see where the phrases sit in relative to "known points". Like on the Fahrenheit scale, is +101 high or low for a person's temperature, when they come from the sauna. Guide markings to help normalize and compare things to known phenomena. Scales are really very basic elementary stuff, but it's not much to write home about, as music. ;) | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 11:33 | comment | added | Tim | ..on condition they know which appropriate scale notes to play! | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 11:32 | comment | added | Tim | @piiperi - what I tried to say was that learning a phrase, which is what I did as a kid, only taught me that phrase. Had I realised, which only really happened when I started teaching music, 50 odd yrs ago, that each note from a particular phrase, had its special place within a scale,, and I knew that scale, I could play it before I even had the guitar strapped on. And transpose it, and play it in different octaves - not just slide it up the neck. your 'advanced' players obviously aren't doing the even more important thing than playing - listening, but still knowing scales helps them.. | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 11:16 | comment | added | piiperi Reinstate Monica | It's surprising that you feel playing phrases was a waste of time. Looking at these scale-players, I've concluded that playing scales has messed up their thinking. Some fairly advanced players play the wrong notes and cannot hear e.g. that there's a II major in a chord progression, so they play an F on top of a D major chord, when a tune in Am uses the dorian feel for a short while. Something has gone a bit wrong for those guys. You seem to imply that you could just play scales and automatically recognize which of the notes belong to a chord. I haven't seen that happen. | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 11:01 | comment | added | Tim | @piiperi - and, actually, any note can 'belong' to a chord. It's how and where you play it that's the secret ! | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 10:59 | comment | added | Tim | @piiperi - my second para. states what you say. I really don't think anyone would believe that merely 'playing up and down scales' would produce good tunes - although it has been done exactly thus quite a few times! The idea is, those scale notes are embedded in muscle memory, so if one wanted to play 1,3,6,5,2, it would come out as such, without thought. Practising sensible phrases is o.k., but I wasted years doing that; if I'd realised a phrase was from a particular scale, I would not have wasted that time. You learn a phrase, that's all you learn. 'Give a man a fish...'- well-known adage. | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 10:46 | comment | added | piiperi Reinstate Monica | Talking about scales may give the incorrect idea that a scale is magic powder that can be thrown anywhere in any order... as long as its from the right scale, everything is "correct". Wrong. Scales are usually quite nonsensical as musical phrases. You need to know a couple of scales, but just don't play them in your performance. :) Playing a scale is like saying ABCDEFG... as a phrase. Makes no sense. I'd say, spend 1 % practicing scales and 99 % playing sensible phrases and songs. It's much more important and useful to know which notes belong to the chord you want to play, IMO. | |
| Aug 23, 2018 at 10:33 | history | answered | Tim | CC BY-SA 4.0 |