Hi again, fellow twanger.

Kirk’s Weekly Guitar Lesson

This week’s lesson is more of a demo than a lesson, in fact two demos.

As you probably know by now, I’ve never been much of a scale/mode player. I learned them all decades ago and I certainly know what they are and how to play them, but when it comes to actually making music on the fly — improvising — they never came in very handy. No matter how I tried, they always just sounded like scales and modes and the end result was amateurish. What I was seeking among all those patterns was melody, and it never seemed to emerge properly. Too many notes, too many patterns, too much information. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees … the ‘melody for the notes’. It was then that I started to realize that the melodies I liked were all based around the chords. I made a point of really analyzing them and without fail they all showed the same thing: Melody loves chord tones.

In the two demos I put together you’ll be able to see and hear that for yourself. I used the same chord progression, in fact the same mp3, as last week’s Arpeggio Blues piece, and in the first, I systematically go chord-tone hunting, following what I like to call ‘the chord of the moment’. In the second, I take it one step further and go hunting for double stops all consisting of chord tones. You’ll hear how easy it is to build good strong melody and harmonize them if you can really zero in on chord tones. Scales, modes, pentatonics … all become redundant, relics of the past … let me re-phrase that: thinking scales and modes becomes a relic of the past. I do of course use scale notes, modes, pentatonics … but I’m not thinking about them. I’m thinking about something I have to know anyway: the chords.

You’ll find those two movie demos in the General Lessons Forum.

Guitar for Beginners and Beyond Community

Do come and join us at the forum … we’re close to 20,000 strong now, and a very helpful team of great players, technicians, songwriters, theorists and entertainers has emerged. You’ll find us all there on a daily basis. Between 70 and 100 new members join every day, so come on over … join up and join in!

PlaneTalk – The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book

After watching the two chord tone demos mentioned above, you will probably ask yourself “OK, I get it, but how do I tune my brain so I can see those chord tones?” … the answer is the subject of my book PlaneTalk. It reveals the trick to doing just that. Enough said, drop in and visit the site to read more.

Slide Guitar in Standard and Dropped D tunings

Most sliders tune their guitars to open tunings when they want to play slide. I used to myself, as that is the traditional way of playing slide. The problems I found were:

– first, I needed to mentally remap my fretboard every time I played. I do like to know what I’m playing, and in open tunings I was never sure.
– second, I needed a spare guitar. Constantly retuning is a pain, especially if you’re in front of a crowd.
– third, I don’t want to have to play slide for the whole tune. I like to mix both normal and slide into a hybrid style of playing.
– fourth, I got tired of sounding like everybody else, which is what open tunings almost force upon you.

If you’d like an alternative look at slide guitar, check out the new DVD I released. It’s a 70 minute demo of the art in standard and/or Dropped D. My favorite is Dropped D, and by just tuning that one bass string down, you retain the basic layout of standard tuning, but you get a bonus power chord on the bottom end.

Go to BottleNeckGuitar.com to find out all about it.

Until next week, happy twanging!
—
Kirk Lorange