Quote:
Originally Posted by trueviper
I took up guitar a few years ago and am now learning songs strumming open chords. Every day I also practise frett walking and finger picking and I am making good progress What I would eventually like to do is play finger picking folk blues, playing covers and creating my own compositions in a similar way that Bert Jansch used to play. Bert is a big influence of mine and I love that kind of sound.
Once I am proficient at frett walking I would like to learn scales in order to achieve what I mentioned above so what I would like to ask is which scales should I learn? I don't want to learn scales for the sake of being able to play them but to use them to make music so is there a standard one to learn first or would I only need to learn a few of them? Any advice would be appreciated.
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Bert's a big influence of mine too.
Scales for his music? Don't learn scales. Learn
chords - all over the fretboard.
Especially: add9s, m(add9)s, min7s, maj7s, 6ths, 9ths, 13ths. But not just the standard jazz voicings: learn inversions, and learn how to form them by combining open strings with fretted notes above fret 5. (I.e., not barre chords - he could obviously play barre chords, but rarely used them.)
Bert almost certainly didn't know the theory behind them all, but he definitely knew all those chords and more.
The best demonstration of his phenomenal chord knowledge was this track, on his
first album (1965, btw, not 1964):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAT5T1lj6WE
I'm pretty sure he never practised scales (except maybe when he had piano lessons aged 7 or so, for a few weeks). He wrote all his music by ear and constant experimentation. He practised just about everything
but scales.
You should also seek out his own influences, and make them yours: Big Bill Broonzy, Davy Graham, Snooks Eaglin, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Jackson C Frank. Not to mention folk singers like Alex Campbell and Anne Briggs (from whom he got his love of embellishment: those rapid hammer-ons/pull-offs).