Picking Coordination ExercisesA long while ago I posted this hybrid picking exercise. I've recently gone back to it and extended it a bit. Here are some variations. Vertical PolytonalityHere's something I picked up from Yusef Lateef's Repository: stacking chords where each voice is from a different scale. Interesting results -- check it out. Scale & Arpeggio Book ErrataIt's never nice to be wrong but since it's not possible to never be wrong the second best thing is having nice people to point out your mistakes so you can fix them. A few weeks ago Steven Muschalik spotted a few issues with particularly exotic scales in Scale and Arpeggio Resources and kindly took the time to email them over to me. Uses and Abuses of TablatureIf you want to follow the fashion of the online guitar pundits, the thing to do at the moment is denounce "tab". It's an unnecessary crutch that stunts your growth as a musician, they say. Eat your greens and learn to read traditional notation instead! Some Modal Ideas on NefertitiI've been working on the Wayne Shorter tune "Nefertiti" lately, and have a few ideas for scale superimpositions that sound quite interesting. What I'm presenting here isn't somethng finished; consider it ephemera from the woodshed. I find this quite a useful way to practice a tune with tricky harmony and you might, too. Allan Holdsworth, 1946-2017This weekend saw the passing of a giant in the world of guitar. I've no business writing an obit but here's a personal favourite track; I think it encapsulates his lyrical imagination and harmonic adventurousness as well as, of course, that famous legato: Finding your Voice and Being ContemporaryBy chance I happened across three people giving somewhat related advice about learning jazz, but from very different directions. The TL;DR here is that every musician needs to develop a way to figure things out for themselves in their own way, and that this is a creative process rather than a chore. Formal education can be useful for some specific things but spoonfeeding leads to weak forms of learning that you can't rely on and standardised syllabi produce standardised results. You need to know the tradition but it's raw material for you to form into your own voice. DIY Effects PedalsI wanted to let it be known I'm still alive and kicking, and still playing, just not thinking about theory / vocabulary ideas at the moment so my posts here have been scarce. I feel like I have a big backlog of stuff to work on on that front and a small amount of time available to do it, so adding to the pile isn't very productive. But also, my musical activities have been slightly taken over by a new thing: building effects. David Stern's 12-Tone Patterns
A New Sound from Harmonic MinorWhile noodling around in the practice room today, I discovered a new (to me) application for a Harmonic Minor mode. I'm sure I'm not absolutely the first person to spot this, but I got some good sounds out of it so I thought I'd note it here, especially as I also stumbled across an exotic scale in the process. |