Scales
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Posted on Oct 31, 2008 03:52 pm
Jay Singh
Member Since: Oct 31, 2008
Hi guys,
I am Jay,and i have joind this community for getting some answers to the questions that have been bothering me for sometime now....
I know scales and modes but i have got no idea about how to practice them,i do try to play a scale..lets say a minor scale,and i try to play it in different keys but i kind of feel stuck there,i cant seem to get past the notes and create melody out of those notes,can u guys please help and tell me what to do ???
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Oct 31, 2008 03:59 pm sit back, close your eyes, and just start picking through the scale...not in order, just mess around...jump from here to there for no reason and in no order...seriously.
that's what I have always done, only without a scale, I just strum a bit, jump around chords, at some point, a few things fall together and you gots yourself a song...or part of one. 20 years later you'll find you have about 150 songs half written...then you need to learn how to piece chunks together.
:-)
welcome to HRC.
Dematrixhttp://www.reverbnation.com/2ndgMember
Since: Nov 27, 2007
Oct 31, 2008 07:30 pm im with ya there dB.
a real good way to get get writers block too, is to be too serious about everything.
also just because someone doesnt know "any" scales, dont mean ya dont play em, and even be more advanced than someone that does.
im not baggin anything, but i think learning "anything" too exclusivley will hinder your progress, Because you risk becoming a carbon copy of who or what you learn off.
you know...product of your enviroment and all that stuff.
if you keep that in mind though, then you can learn and be yourself too.
i write in a very similar way to you dB.
you gutta feel da lerv.
when it moves you, ya onto something.
Oct 31, 2008 07:37 pm I found it amazing that when I first started writing, before I knew anything about anything, years later I am trying to learn scales and realize that all my coolest riffs fit perfectly within [this] mode of [that] scale...things started clicking, then I realized I don't need to know it, cuz I play it inherently, since that what sounds right.
Seemed like a good justifcation to not bother learning it. :-D
Oct 31, 2008 08:19 pm yeah that's one thing some people don't get about music theory! your ear finds it, because theory is a formal explanation and formal labels for why things sound good.
but i like theory. it's teaching me connections and things i wouldn't otherwise be able to remember and which would always just seem like nameless accidents to me. voice leading is the new thing that's been happening to me, very suddenly. i guess i reached critical mass with chord knowledge, and now i can play in inversions all the time on piano, finding the nearest inversion of any chord i want and kind of making the progression kind of just bleed together into one logical thing.
when peeps get stuck playing scales instead of melodies, you've gotta somehow now forget the scale. the idea that there's an order--any kind of order--to the notes at all is what kills you. you should probably pick just one position for the scale, in one place on the fretboard, and sit in front of the tv and start moving around the scale and listening. finding rhythms seems to create spontaneous melodies, so try to play the guitar like a drumset, using the notes in all kinds of orders.
i dunno, i never had this problem because i don't know the fretboard and refused to actually memorize scales. i figured i might get stuck running through patterns, basically. instead i memorized interval formulas and the sound of scales. if you do that you can forget the finger patterns that get you stuck. you'll know that lydian is just a major scale with a raised fourth note, and a minor scale is just a major scale with a lowered third and seventh note. it can really get you out of the habit of just running through scales. scales end up getting tied right to your ear, too.
