Tag: guitar

Book review: Guitar Method – Music Theory by Tom Kolb

music_theoryThis is less of a book review and more some notes on music theory as it applies to the guitar. It is based on Music Theory: Everything you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask by Tom Kolb from the Hal Leonard Guitar Method series.

I’ve been playing guitar for a couple of years, and I found myself increasing asking why I am doing things and how are songs constructed. What notes belong with which chords?

The book starts with a tour of the fretboard, the version below is from the Youcisian website, I use Youcisian app for learning guitar – it’s great.

Kolb recommends learning the fretboard by picking a note and playing it up and down the fretboard at all locations. I have a new toy to help with this – a Polytune 3 tuner pedal!Guitar Fretboard Notes Diagram

I particularly liked the figure showing how notes on the traditional stave matched up to locations in guitar tab notation.

p5-figure-2

P5 Figure 2 – how notes are repeated in traditional music notation and tabs

The observation that that the 5th fret on one string is the same note as the open note on the next string, except G to B when it is the fourth fret. This allows you to tune a guitar to itself, It seems like a useful cross-check. There was also a section on tuning using harmonics. I sort of got this working on my acoustic, I found I needed to watch a video: Justin Guitar – How to Tune Your Guitar using Harmonics to understand what I was trying to achieve.

The second chapter is on traditional musical notation, I feel I should know this but it isn’t a priority.

Chapter 3 is about scales and key signatures, there is an algorithm for generating the notes in a major scale. Figure 3 on p17 shows the C major scale in 5 locations on the fretboard.

p17-figure-3-major-scale-in-different-positions

Page 17 – figure 3 the C Major Scale at different locations on the fretboard

There is similar expression to generate minor scales.

p22-figure-15-scale-formula

Page 22 Figure 15 shows how the scale formula for major and minor scales compare.

Figure 13 (p21) shows how the C major and A minor scale compare

p21-figure-13-c-major-a-minor-scales

P21 figure 13 the C major and A minor scales compared

p21-figure-14-a-minor-scales

P21 figure 14 the A minor scale at different locations on the fretboard

Chapter 4 talks about intervals (steps between notes) and their names. The names of the intervals are listed.

p25-interval-names

P25 table of interval names

Each fret on the guitar corresponds to 1/2 a step. The different intervals form different patterns on the fretboard, these patterns are moveable but they change around the G-string because the interval to the G-string is four steps rather than 5.

p26-figure-5-interval-shapes-top-strings

P26 figure 5 interval shapes on the top strings

p26-figure-6-interval-shapes-bottom-strings

P26 figure 6 interval shapes on the bottom strings

p28-intervals-in-popular-songs

P28 A list of popular songs illustrating the intervals

Chapter 5 introduces us to triads which form the basis of chords. The pattern for major triads is 1-3-5 and that for minor triads is 1-flat 3-5. Augmented triads are 1-3-sharp 5 and diminished triads are 1- flat 3 – flat 5

Chapter 6 – harmonizing the major scale chords are related to scales via the process of harmonisation. The chords of a scale are given Roman numerals with the case indicating whether they are major or minor chords, and a o superscript indicating the diminished vii chord. The chords for the major scales are shown in the figure below

p36-figure-3-harmonized-major-scales

P36 Figure 3 Harmonized major scales

Jazz, blues and other music styles use 7th chords which add a seventh to the 1-3-5 pattern. This produces a harmonized chord table which looks like the above but with a 7 added to each chord! Actually the I and IV chords get a maj7 and the V chords just a 7.

Chapter 7 following on from the harmonized major scale get to construct a whole load more chords with different names by modifying the basic 1-3-5 formula.

P41-chord-names

P41 Chord names

Power chords are unusual in that they are comprised of only two notes 1-5, the rest are three or more. This does not say anything about the voicings of a chord, the exact notes on the fretboard which are played. Slash chords are sometimes just simplified names for chords which have a complex formal names. There are polychords, indicated by one chord name over another, like a fraction which suggest two chords played together they are not very relevant to guitarists.

Chapter 8 – we can repeat the exercise of harmonising the major scale for the minor scale. This changes the pattern of major and minor chords. Relative scales such as C major and A minor use the same chords but they take different roles in the chord number sense.P50-relative-scales-harmonized

P50 Figure 3 shows how the Roman numerals and chords of the A minor and C major scale relate.

P50-harmonised-minor-scale-table

P50 Figure 4 shows the harmonised minor scale

Chapter 9 if we know the scale a set of chords belongs to in a song them we can play notes from that scale as a solo over it. Progressions often start and end on the I chord so we can use that as a clue, and the V chord is distinctive too this seems to be because it is the "dominant" chord. Popular music often sticks with one key centre but other forms of music such as jazz can switch from key centre to key centre but they usually return to the original key centre.

Chapter 10 – the blues doesn’t follow the same scheme as discussed to this point. There are a number of different standard blues progressions based around the I, IV and V chords. The blues makes a lot of use of the minor pentatonic scale

p63-minor-pentatonic-scale-formula

P63 Figure 8 Formula for the pentatonic scale along with the major scale for comparison

p63-minor-pentatonic-scale-on-the-fretboard

P63 figure 9 A minor pentatonic scale at different positions on the fretboard

The blues scale has a different formula again, handily the formula and the scale at the 5th and 11th frets are shown in the same figure for the A blues scale. We should play notes from this scale of the A7(I), D7(IV) and E7(V) chords.

p64-blues-scale

P64 Figure The blues scale formula with positions on the fretboard.

There is also a major pentatonic scale.

p64-blues-and-major-pentatonic

P64 Figure 12A The formula for the C major scale and the C major pentatonic scale, compared

p65-major-pentatonic

P65 Figure 12B The C major pentatonic scale at different places on the fretboard.

To make matters more confusing it is not uncommon to mix the major and minor pentatonic scales with the same root together (parallel scales)!

Chapter 11 covers the modes of a scale. Modes of a scale use the same sequence of notes but with a different starting note because they use the same notes they differ from the scale starting at that note. The modes have names Ionian, Dorian, Phyrgian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian.

P68-scale-modes

P68 Figure 3 the modes of the C major scale and their notes on the fretboard

The chapter covers each mode, showing formula (notes), construction, category (major, minor etc), differentiating scale degree. chord types, harmony (Roman chord numerals), and common progressions as well has patterns on the fretboard.

Chapter 12 other scales and modes, this starts with an encyclopaedia of further scales, such as the whole tone scale and chromatic scale, showing information similar to that shown for the standard modes. This chapter includes information on arpeggios and how chords relate to scales.

Chapter 13 chord substitution and reharmonization. These appear to be ways of modifying chords, either by changing or adding a note or by substituting chords in a progression. What chords can be substituted for which depends on the family the chord lies in (Tonic, subdominant, dominant). This is one of those places where the function of chords are hinted at, tonic being something that "resolves" the key, IV chords move away from the tonic and V chords move towards it.

p88-figure-2-chord-families

P88 Figure 2 Chord families illustrated for the C major scale.

I find it useful to think in terms of computer code, what information do I need to generate the fretboard, scales and  chords.

  • Fundamentally we need the notes A-A#-B-C-C#-D-D#-E-F-F#-G-G#
  • From the notes we can generate the fretboard given there is a half step per fret and the notes on the open strings (E-A-D-G-B-E) – it would be interesting to know which octave a note sits in;
  • Using the scale formula I can generate the major, minor, major pentatonic, minor pentatonic and blues scales from the notes;
  • Given the harmonisation of a scale I can get the chords in the scale;
  • Given the chord compositions (i.e. 1-3-5) I can generate the notes in a chord and the names of the chords;
  • There’s probably an interesting exercise in generating chord voicings and scoring them for playability and sound;
  • Finally, we can calculate the modes of a scale;

Missing from Music Theory is much description of the "function" chords, these are hinted at in terms of returning to the root chord and resolving tension. Chord progressions and song structure are also not covered.

It seems like the next steps are looking at some of the songs in my songbooks, or tabs on Songsterr and working out which chords are being used and hence which scales, and what the chord progressions are. I should also be able to work out which scales riffs come from. It would be good to learn about song structure too.

Gear review: Boss RC-3 Loop station

boss-loop-station-rc3In a change from usual service I am reviewing some guitar related gear: a Boss RC-3 Loop Station. Review is probably not the right word, this is the only guitar pedal of this type I’ve used so really this is more about describing what it does, which would be useful for other novices, capturing some of the instructions in a more readable form and sharing some resources.

A loop pedal is a device which records sound – pedals are devices designed to be activated with a foot. The intention of a loop pedal is to capture short sequences of sound which you then play over as they repeat in the background, so that one musician can make the sound of many. Ed Sheeran and KT Tunstall are particularly well-known users of the loop pedal, needless to say that despite owning one I sound no where near as good!

It’s worth noting that although this is advertised as a guitar pedal it will record any sound fed into the input side, I’ve used it with my electric drum kit, it will work with the keyboards we have and if I had a microphone I could sing into it (but nobody wants that).

There are plenty of loop pedals around, following a series of price points / sizes.The cheapest one in the Boss range is the RC-1 for something like £80, I paid £125 for the RC-3 which is one step up from the most basic models. Above the RC-3 in the Boss range are the RC-30 for £171 which has two large size foot switches and the RC-300 for £440 which is much larger and has footswitches for each of three tracks.

The RC-3 has 99 slots to record loops to, and will provide a rhythm track as well in one of 9 styles. There is a USB port which presents the pedal as a file directory, this allows you to backup your loops and save WAV files from elsewhere to it. I picked the Boss because I have a couple of other Boss devices (my amplifier and expression pedal) and I like the brand.

The device itself is nice and chunky, made out of metal. I think I prefer the big rubberised pedal style to the round metal push buttons found on other loop pedals. I found the other controls a bit small and fiddly, I’m not as young as I used to be – bending down and looking at small things are hard! Fundamentally this is a “small format device” problem which isn’t limited to the Boss pedal, space is limited to control the functionality provided so you get a two character display and five push buttons.

The buttons select the memory slot to be used (or cycle through options), select the rhythm functionality, write a loop to a memory slot and allow you to set the tempo of the rhythm track.

A couple of handy hints I picked up from this video by Reidy’s – a fine Lancashire company: firstly the default mode is that pedal presses take you from record to overdub to playback modes, you can change this to record to playback to overdub by holding down the tempo button whilst switching the device on. As a beginner this feels more natural. Secondly, you can clear, undo and redo the current loop by long presses on the pedal – so you can muck around recording and deleting little phrases with just the foot control. These features are both explained in the paper manual which comes with the device.

You can also change the record mode from the default, of starting recording as soon as the pedal is pressed, to auto recording which starts when you start playing and count-in which sounds the rhythm for a measure before recording starts.

The built-in rhythms are as follows:

  1. Hi-hat
  2. Kick & Hi-hat
  3. Rock 1
  4. Rock 2
  5. Pop
  6. Funk
  7. Shuffle
  8. R&B
  9. Latin
  10. Percussion

The tempo is set by tapping the tempo button, you can’t fix it to a specific value using the up and down buttons – most likely because the display can only handle a two digit tempo – and that’s a bit small.

One thing worth noting is if you have a Boss Katana 50 and an expression pedal you will not hear the effect of the expression pedal on the loop pedal recording. This is because the loop pedal is not seeing the expression pedal in its input. You can sort of capture it by putting the loop pedal on the output side of the Katana and plugging headphones, or another amplifier, into the loop pedal but it is not an ideal solution. Higher specification Boss Katana have an external effects loop which is where you would put the loop pedal. More generally the effects you hear on playback are the ones set on the amplifier at playback time, not those being used at record time.

Applications

I’ve already used the Boss for the following:

  • Fiddling about with amplifier tone – record a loop then adjust amplifier settings as it plays back – you don’t have to wrangle your guitar and amplifier at the same time and can hear immediately the effect of your knob twiddling;
  • Record your practicing – I use Yousician which has a lot of exercises – chords changes, fingerpicking, scales and the like. The loop pedal is an easy way to do a quick recording to hear where you are going wrong;
  • Simple rhythm track – it has a bunch of rhythm styles whose tempo you can adjust;
  • Backing chords to play over – I need to practice doing this;
  • Backing sounds from elsewhere

Summary

I am pleased with my purchase! I think it will take me quite a while to get to grips with recording a backing loop – I’ve been watching the Justin Guitar videos below to help me with this.

Resources

Book review: justinguitar.com Intermediate Method by Justin Sandercoe

intermediate_courseIt is possibly inevitable that my guitar playing has leaked into my book reviewing, or that time I should have spent practicing has gone into reading books, or buying gadgets. So far I have been well-behaved on the guitar buying front, my guitar count is still at one.

However, I have bought a Boss Katana 50 amplifier which counts as saving money since it simulates other amplifiers! As well as 5 amplifier models it allows for 3 effects to be chained together to such as reverb, chorus and overdrive. Justinguitar.com has a whole section on the amplifier (link), this includes downloadable settings which if you’re playing correctly will give you the same tone as Justin and the original track. Any differences in sound will be down to your skill.

But back to the next book, justinguitar.com Intermediate Method by Justin Sandercoe is the follow up to the Beginner’s Course I reviewed previously. I reviewed the Beginner’s Method when I’d worked most of my way through it, this one I’m reviewing after just reading it and trying out a few of the new things.

The Intermediate Course contains five stages in contrast to the nine in the beginners stage, it finishes with a section on different improvisation styles including jazz and fingerstyle playing. The stages tend to develop ideas in previous stages rather than each stage representing a new area. Four months after I started playing it is probably a bit soon for me to be working seriously on this course, although I have a good memory for chord shapes and the minor pentatonic scale my playing is really slow which I think will only be fixed by practice. I could do with learning some more songs too. Justin pitches this very much as an optional course, the Beginner’ Course should leave you competent to play a wide range of tunes.

Barre chords were introduced towards the end of the Beginner’s Course, in this course they are expanded and developed further — indeed barre chords are the main chord work of the book. The beginner’s course just looked at the Major E-shape barre-chord, here we meet the variants of the E-shape (minor, dominant 7th and minor 7th), as well as other shapes (the A-shape and the diminished/half-diminished). One of my achievements playing guitar is a fairly good barre –gained by practicing bits of Creep by Radiohead excessively – it isn’t yet entirely useful since I can’t change very quickly.There are still some of the one minute chord change exercises which I found really useful in the beginner course.  

A new feature of this course is an introduction to standard musical notation. TAB notation works very well for guitarists since it tells you where to put your fingers but it doesn’t provide a visible sign of the rise and fall of a melody also other musicians don’t speak TAB.

The beginner’s course introduced the minor pentatonic scale, here we learn the major scale, the blues scale and a hybrid scale. The importance of scales is that they provide a basis for improvisation.

The intermediate course also covers some more advanced techniques including note bending and hammer on/flick off. This is handy because any cursory glance at guitar tutorials on YouTube will show tutors using these techniques fairly casually. As for the beginners book, Intermediate Course works best in combination with the video tutorials on the justinguitar.com website (which are free). I read the Blues material but the website pulls it together more clearly than the book and certain technical skills are very hard to learn off a page. nI particular the online course talks very clearly about using licks (short runs of individual notes) as “words” in a Blues language.

Alongside the course books there are also Songbooks, I have the Beginners Songbook and the Rock Songbook. These complete the online videos well, provided a record of chords and TABs for what can be complex songs.

I should probably review my “learning journey” at this point, I think the way forward here is to pick a few songs and learn them properly, maybe making a recording. Ideally these should focus on improving particular skills. So far I’ve learned riffs from a few songs – Seven Nation Army, Smoke on the Water, Teenage Kicks, Creep but not really the whole thing. The only exceptions to this are Link Wray’s Rumble, which is pretty simple and I’ve been practicing a 12-bar blues which varies from the version Justin teaches with an intro and an “outro”.

Although I’m not ready to work through this book systematically I’m glad I got it now.

Book review: The Birth of Loud by Ian S. Port

birth_of_loudMore guitars next with The Birth of Loud by Ian S. Port, this is the story of Leo Fender, Les Paul and assorted musicians and other guitar and amplifier makers.

As a recently started electric guitar player, and long time listener of guitar based rock, this is right up my street. It is most likely that any electric guitarists reading this will have a guitar with either the Les Paul or Fender name on it, or like me, have a cheaper variant of something like the Fender Stratocaster.

People started to attach amplifiers to guitars in the 1930s, the problem with a guitar is that it is not very loud when compared to other instruments. The problem with naive amplification of an acoustic guitar is feedback. The body of the guitar is a natural amplifier, it resonates at particular frequencies. Couple it with an electric amplifier and once you get above a certain volume the electric amplifier makes the body of the guitar vibrate, which it then re-amplifies making a horrible squealing noise (when done accidently). I know all this because feedback is an important part of undergraduate physics courses! Solid-bodied guitars avoid this problem by having no natural amplification.

Les Paul was a musician who experimented with instruments, guitars in particular and recording technology. He had a string of hits in the 1950s with his second wife, Mary Ford. He gave his name to the first solid body guitar from the Gibson company. More importantly he demonstrated what the new electric guitar could do. In terms of guitar hardware Les Paul feels somewhat incidental, as a musician he experimented with his guitars and recording equipment but he had very little involvement with Gibson and the guitar that bore his name.

Leo Fender on the other hand was a technician, an expert with design and electronics. He collaborated closely with musicians to bring them the instruments and amplifiers they wanted but he did not play music himself.

Both men had produced solid-body guitars in the 1940s which were pretty close to fence posts with strings and pickups attached. Such devices worked as guitars but ergonomically and aesthetically they were poor. They weren’t alone though, Paul Bigsby made what is arguably the first practical solid-body guitar and lap steel guitars with solid bodies had also been around for a number of years 

Fender’s first solid-body commercial guitar was the Telecaster launched in 1950, renamed pretty much at birth from Broadcaster because Gretsch had a drum kit called the Broadkaster and threatened to sue. This was followed by the Precision Bass (1951) whose design is also apparent in the Stratocaster which came later (1954). These instruments had somewhat prolonged and difficult births. Fender was keen to perfect them, and whilst his sales team led by Don Randall went out and sold them there were frequently long waiting times in the early days and designs were finalised and production ramped up. The early Fender factory sounded rather chaotic, and there were problems with product quality. The Gibson Les Paul was first released in 1952.

It strikes me that the Les Paul / Leo Fender rivalry is actually relatively unimportant. Les Paul was one a a range of musicians whose demands drove the development of electric guitars and amplifiers. If Fender had rivals it was with Gibson, Rickenbacker and other guitar companies. They vied for the imprimatur of the popular artists of the time, Les Paul initially but then musicians like the Beatles, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix.  

Carol Kaye is also introduced, I first came across her in a BBC4 TV programme Guitar, drum and bass. She appeared as a bass player on an enormous number of hits from the sixties, playing as a highly sought after session musician at a time when you get the impression that songwriters didn’t bother writing a bass part but left it to the session player to come up with something on the spot. The link with Fender is the Precision Bass she used.

I had fun hunting down some of the tracks mentioned in the book, Dickie Dale and the Del-Tones – Misirlou is a particular favourite which I’m trying to learn to play. Fender’s contribution to Dickie Dale were robust high watt amplifiers with spring reverb which made the surfer rock sound. And if you want to hear Les Paul then Lover published in 1948 is an important milestone. It is like nothing else that went before.

The bulk of the story ends at the close of the sixties with an epilogue describing what happened to everybody in the aftermath. Both Fender and Gibson became parts of larger organisations, CBS and Norlin respectively. They both seemed to have suffered from corporate neglect, leading to poor quality products, until they experienced a revival in the late eighties following sales to private investors. Gibson recently filed for bankruptcy whilst Fender seems to have thrived.

The book is comprised of many short chapters with long titles. It’s a very easy read, and a nice story. There’s a lot of the descriptive prose of imagined meetings and scenes that I associate with this style of journalistic story telling. It is well referenced, and the final sections of the book provide ample pointers to those who wish to learn more about the history of the electric guitar.

Book review: The Practical Guide to Modern Music Theory for Guitarists by Joseph Alexander

Continuing with the guitar theme here I reviewguitar_theory The Practical Guide to Modern Music Theory for Guitarists by Joseph Alexander. Reading the Beginner’s Course I felt I was missing out by not understanding why there were the notes there were and how they could be put together. The Beginner’s Course gave me enough knowledge to realise that generally songs were not just made by mashing a whole pile of notes together and hoping for the best.

My background is in physics, so I have very clear ideas as to what I consider to be a theory. Physics covers music somewhat indirectly, during training physicists are taught about “oscillations and waves” and “harmonic oscillators”. So to a degree I approach this book expecting to find a physics-like theory, music theory is not like physics theory.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part covers how musical scales are constructed, how chords are formed and chord progressions. The second part talks about each of the modes of the major scale, with fine names such as the Dorian, Lydian, Mixolydian and the Phrygian. Following some introductory material the second part of the book follows a regular pattern for each of this modes, so has the feeling of a reference section.

I found the first section jumped in a bit fast, I’ve not looked at musical scale notation for a very long time, and would have welcomed a bit more explanation. A guide to guitar tab notation would also fit well in here. The basics of both of these forms are straightforward enough but there are various symbols and conventions which are difficult to search for and could have been usefully collected here.

Indeed the existence of natural, sharp and flat notes is not explained. As I understand the natural notes A,B,C,D etc where discovered in antiquity to provide harmonious music. Although there are hints here that in the Western world we have all been trained to hear harmonious music in tunes composed from natural notes.

The natural notes represent musical sounds which have certain relationships in terms of frequency. The sharps and flats were added some time later based on a uniform division of the octave (a doubling of frequency) into 12 evenly spaced notes (in frequency). The notes on this scale fall approximately onto the natural notes but in addition provide some sharp and flat notes. The notes F flat and C flat do not exist which explains the irregular appearance of a piano keyboard and makes everything more complicated. The interval between a natural note and its sharp or flat is a semitone. The interval between two consecutive natural notes is a tone.

The C major scale comprises all the natural notes starting at C (CDEFGABAC), since natural notes are not evenly spaced in frequency this means that the steps between notes are not equal in size. No problem for a scale starting at C but if we form try to form a scale starting at a different natural note such as A (ABCDEFGA) then it sounds “wrong”, in fact this is a minor scale not a major one. To make a major scale we need to match the pattern in step sizes found in the C major scale which for A is (A, B, C♯, D, E, F♯, G♯). The non-uniform nature of the gaps between notes in the major scale makes the rules for forming scales very wordy.

I’m leaving it as an exercise for me to write Python code that constructs scales, this would help me see music theory as a more physical theory.

Chords are sets of three notes drawn from scale with the same spacing on the scale, so on the C major scale the C chord is formed of the first, third and fifth notes (CEG), similar we can make chords D (DFA) and E (EGB). Where there are whole tones between the first two notes in the chord is a a major chord, if there is only 1.5 tones then the chord is a minor chord. 

Early in the book Alexander makes reference to how the major scale is “too bright” for rock, this comment along with others later in the book discussing different modes and which forms of music they suit was intriguing to me but no expanded upon. Similarly with chord progressions (sequences of chords) there is clearly some theory as to moods that different chord progressions invoke but there’s no discussion of this in the book. This is where musical theory diverges from physical theories. 

Looking back I think I picked up this book too early. It feels like revision notes for someone taking a rather high level music examination. I’ve certainly learnt from it and I can see it as a useful reference in future but for me it raised more questions than provided answers.