I was chatting with my daughter and showing her some of the pages that I’d been putting online. She said “Wow it’s all very complicated stuff, is there nothing for a beginner?”
That had me thinking about how best to give some guidance for someone who wants to try out some of these ideas that I discussed in earlier articles.
Let’s get started with a simple backing track.
I’m going to work in D Major, with the simple chord sequence I mentioned in the Sparse Chords article.
Here it is again.
As I’m working in D Major, the chords are Emin7, A7 and DMaj7. The first chord is played up on the 7th fret, let me record a few bars.
So get yourself a tape recorder or use Audacity (exactly how I did this) or whatever, and record a good 5 minutes of the chord sequence.
Next we need to play something over the top of this. In this case, we’re working in D Major so I’m using the Ionian mode of the D Major Scale.
The Black dots are the root note of the scale, in D Major these should be on a D note. So for example, the root note of the first shape should be on the 10th fret.
Often the thing to do is to chose a section (say a cluster of 6 notes) of one of the patterns and get it under your fingers then just see how the notes for to the chords. Then pick another 6 notes and see how they go. Then fit the 2 sections together.
It will take a while to really start to learn and understand the shapes. Don’t expect to be able to do this instantly. Eventually, with perseverance you’ll get there.
Here’s a brief passage of me playing around with the above sequence.
Keep pushing yourself to try new things. See how the Major Pentatonic fits over the entire sequence for example. Then try the Minor 7th Pentatonic over the E Min7 chord, the Dominant 9th Pentatonic over the A7 chord, and finally the Major Pentatonic over the DMaj7 Chord.
Written by admin
Topics: Basic, Lessons