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  #16  
Old 01-16-2018, 04:28 PM
LouieAtienza LouieAtienza is offline
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I first started playing a keyboard when I was a kid. And not an electronic one, a small organ, with chord keys on the left, and piano keys on the right which were numbered. Although we learned do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do in grade school, I heard 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 and so forth. Then the 3-note chords I would do as 1-3-5, 2-4-6, 3-5-7, and 4-note chords as 1-3-5-7, 2-4-6-8, 3-5-7-9, et cetera. I illustrate this to supplement Howard's point about "moveable scales." Once you can hear these intervals and associate them with shapes, it makes it easy to transpose to a different key simply by playing the same shape in a different part of the neck.

Because for some reason my brain functions best with groups of three, I arranged all my "scales" as 3-notes-per-string. So for G, I actually start at the third fret of the 6th string and go 3-5-7, 3-5-7, 4-5-7, 4-5-7, 5-7-8, 5-7-8 (from string 6 to 1.) Now if you extend this, you can start at A (5th fret, 6th string) and go 5-7-8, 5-7-9, 5-7-9, 5-7-9, 7-8-10, 7-8-10. And if you continued on figuring it out starting from the 7th, 8th, 10th, 12th, and 14th frets, you would have learned every single note in the key of G on the entire fretboard! Pretty cool, huh? As a bonus, you learn the fingering for the seven modes! I didn't invent this; though I thought I did!
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  #17  
Old 01-16-2018, 05:43 PM
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rick-slo rick-slo is offline
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With fingerstyle scales are often mixed in with harmony notes or the requirements of getting to the next full chord quickly.
Or there is a scale started way up the neck that does a jump down an octave or more somewhere way down on the neck.
Then the use of open notes can come into play. Or you just like the sound of open strings. Moveable patterns are nice, but
do what makes sense for the situation at hand.
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Last edited by rick-slo; 01-16-2018 at 06:57 PM.
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  #18  
Old 01-16-2018, 10:29 PM
LouieAtienza LouieAtienza is offline
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That's what makes learning the different positions of the scale as I mentioned all the more valuable. Since all the strings are tuned to a note in the key of G major, C major, D major, as well as Em, Am, Bm, it makes open-string drones and pull-offs to open strings a lot more manageable.
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  #19  
Old 01-17-2018, 02:01 AM
jessupe jessupe is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vindibona1 View Post
It may be important to acknowledge that solfeggio (do, re,mi, etc) stays the same for all major scales IN THE US AND NORTH AMERICA it is not the same in much of Europe and the rest of the world. What we use is called the "moveable do" where as you say Do will be the tonic of a major scale regardless of the key. In other parts of the world they used the "fixed Do" where. C is Do, D is Re, etc, and these syllables will not change when the key changes.

My personal opinion is that while sofeggio has it's uses, I've never found it to be terribly helpful and found traditional theory notations easier to understand and translate into music and it's mechanics.
The wiki I posted goes into what you are saying about the movable "do"...

I think the real benefit is primarily for children and people who have no music exposure who want to learn. To be able to hear the scale and hear the intervals knowing that it is used for the starting point of harmonic structure is very helpful. To be able to know what it is you are trying to play "sound" wise seesm to me to be very helpful.

To sit a student down and just start showing them scales and how to push down this note, then pluck that note, then on to the next misses the point that a student may know the old "do re mi" but not know that that IS the major scale, it helps to understand key center based music.

I remeber when I was learing, I knew tons of stuff, but had some real missing links because I think the few teachers I had assumed that I understood key center.

Meaning starting the do re mi off of C makes it C major, and if I sing the same thing, but start off G, I'm in G major, that information somehow was not translated to me for quite some time, thus making it seem more confusing than it really is, for me, by being able to understand the hearing part made it so the theory part made sense.

But however one comes to play music and what ever works, as long as they are playing music, to me , than it is mission accomplished.
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  #20  
Old 01-18-2018, 03:15 PM
jwing jwing is offline
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Moveable scale patterns are important, but for somebody just learning to play single notes in G, against the open G chord, my advice is to disregard them for a little while longer and focus on making music with the G-scale notes with as many open strings as possible. The main reason is that the open strings will ring out while the player is moving to the next note or chord. Bluegrass guitar makes heavy use of open strings.

To the question of which fingering, I reply: Both!

Also, practice until you are fluent playing the open G chord with your ring finger on the sixth string root note as well as your middle finger on the sixth string root note. On the latter, know how to play the chord with the B-string open or fretted on the D-note. Learn how to mute the A-string with with the finger that is fretting the sixth string. That will free up either the index or the index and the middle finger for single note playing.

Making music on a guitar involves slides. The classical jargon for this is "glissando." That right there tells you that anybody who says that fingers need to stay at assigned frets is full of dogdo.

BTW, as you play more, understand that major chords are made up of the 1,3, and 5 notes of the major scale. Start by seeing chord shapes in just the first three strings and memorizing which of those strings corresponds to which notes of the scale. When you know where the 1, 3, and 5 notes are, 2, 4, and 7 are easy to find, and slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs lose their mystery.
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  #21  
Old 01-19-2018, 07:43 AM
SunnyDee SunnyDee is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jwing View Post
BTW, as you play more, understand that major chords are made up of the 1,3, and 5 notes of the major scale. Start by seeing chord shapes in just the first three strings and memorizing which of those strings corresponds to which notes of the scale. When you know where the 1, 3, and 5 notes are, 2, 4, and 7 are easy to find, and slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs lose their mystery.
This may be super obvious to people who have a background in music, but it was a revelation to me, so maybe it's helpful for someone else:

In regard to memorizing notes, finding the 1,3,5, I think it's very helpful to notice that the voicing for standard chord shapes doesn't vary. Noticing that there are just two main patterns was really helpful for me. For example, in the shapes based on open G, C, and the 4-string F, the notes are always, top to bottom, in the order of 1, 3, 5, 8, (3, 8). So, the bass note is always 1 (obvious) then the third, fifth, octave... ordered like on a piano. The voicing for all the chords based on the E-shape, all the barre chords is 1, 5, 8, 3, (5, 8) which gives them that "guitar" sound.

Noticing this and checking it against chords I knew helped me realize that the third isn't just randomly placed in there somewhere. Makes it obvious, for example, why the E shape differs from the Em the way it does (it's moving the 3rd). Those piano like shapes can have two 3rds, but only one 5th. The barre shapes can have two 5ths but only one 3rd. It was harder to see useful things like this when I was trying to just learn where the notes were in each chord.

Noticing that the voicing is always the same makes it easy to find the 3rd (on a standard barre shape, it's always the 4th string, for instance) so sus chords make sense. Seeing the 8th makes the 7th chords easier to grasp. All of this helps me create chords and remember chords long before I could memorize note names for each one. Very helpful.
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