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Chords in scales

What matters in guitar practice? What should you be working on?

To answer that question, you need to decide what kind of musician you are. Singer-songwriter? Composer. Soloist? Rhythm player? Those are the main identities you get to choose from. You may be one of these one year and something else in another year.

But what does it mean to be these things? How is a singer-songwriter different than a composer? What does a rhythm player need to know that a soloist doesn’t?

It’s important to be clear about these things because it makes it easier to focus on the things you want to focus on. It also gives you information about other things that you may not think to work on.

For instance, rhythm players focus on chords and rhythm. But knowing chords leads at some point to learning about arpeggios, which naturally leads (usually) to learning about scales.The rhythm player moves into the world of the soloist without trying to.

Let’s take a closer look at the rhythm/solo relationship.

Chords in scales

Every chord exists in a scale of some sort. Here’s the ionian mode…

…and here’s a G major triad.

I’m sure that you can find the triad embedded in the scale, but just to make it clear:

Using this technology requires a perceptual trick: you need to be able to play the chord and see the scale simultaneously, as well as be able to play the scale and see the chord.

To get this happening, you have to practice both until they feel natural. Then put them together by playing one and then playing the other. Simple in concept, not so simple in execution.

Here’s a way to work on it.

Exercise 1

1. Get a metronome
2. Put it on a slow speed.
3. Play the scale one note per beat
4. When you get to first chord-tone, place your fingers, one by one, on the other chord-tones. Do this in time to the metronome.
5. When the entire chord is down, go back to the first scale-tone you played (the G on the D string, 5th fret), and play the rest of the scale from there. Do this in time.
6. Continue this exercise with each chord-tone, always returning to the G on the D string and playing through the rest of the scale.

Exercise 2

1. Still with a metronome on slow speed, play the scale one note per beat.
2. When you get to first chord-tone, place your fingers on the first two chord-tones simultaneously, then on the remaining two chord-tones. Always in time.
3. When the entire chord is down, go back to the G on the D string and play through the rest of the scale. Do this in time.

Exercise 3

1. Still with the metronome on slow speed, play the scale one note per beat.
2. When you get to the first chord-tone, play the entire chord, then continue with the scale.
3. Go back to the G on the D string and play through the rest of the scale. Do this in time.

Chord-tones equal scale-tones

As these exercises make obvious, the chord-tones are part of the scale. A major implication is that you can choose any three or four notes from the scale, play them together and call them a chord. Don’t worry about giving that chord a name; just write it down so you don’t forget it.

Then invent another one. Play those two invented chords as a progression.

Play one chord for two beats, then the scale for two beats. Then play the second chord for two beats, then the scale for two beats. Continue going back and forth between chords and scale in this way. Once you’re used this structure, it will start to be easy to alter it (i.e. chord for one beat, scale for three beats, chord for three beats, scale for one beat, etc).

Eventually, moving between scale and chord becomes natural.

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Moving from ionian to dorian

Here’s the dorian mode.

The diagram…

…and the notes.

Here are the arpeggios in the B dorian mode starting on the 6^th string, 7^th fret. This is a bit of a finger exercise. Take it slow.

And here are the A ionian arpeggios from the last post.

First, make sure that you’re comfortable playing both. Once your fingers are comfortable playing the arpeggios in each mode, moving between them is a lot easier.

Going between modes

The method for doing this is pretty straight ahead. Just play the first arpeggio of the A Ionian mode, the one that starts on the 6^th string, 5^th fret. Then move to the first arpeggio of the dorian mode. That takes you from the A major arpeggio to the B minor arpeggio.

Here’s what that looks like. I’ve added a continuation of the dorian mode.

The next thing to do is work on moving from A ionian to B dorian, starting on every arpeggio in A ionian. You can also start from any arpeggio in B dorian, and move to A ionian.

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Arpeggios in position

You’ll have noticed, from playing the arpeggios in the last post, that each arpeggio type – major, minor and diminished – have their own shapes.

If you play them in the same position – as opposed to along the neck – things change.

Arpeggios in A

Let’s take the arpeggios in the key of A, fifth position. This means we’re using the A major scale, or A ionian. Same thing.

As you play this you’ll notice different shapes for the same chord quality. Major and minor triads each have two shapes, even though both shapes start on the root. This makes playing arpeggios in position a bit more difficult, but it makes it easier to use when soloing.

Use both

Both ways are useful, and – good news – they’re complementary.

Once you know your arpeggios in other modes, you can move between them using arpeggios.

In the next post, I’ll show you the arpeggios in the dorian mode. Then we’ll start moving between ionian and dorian.

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Dissonance, consonance, and arpeggios

At the end of the last post, I started talking about the chromatic scale. I’m going to back up a bit and expand the idea of single notes as non chord-tones, and talk about non chord-tones as part of arpeggios.

Think of single notes as being letters and arpeggios as being words. A phrase, then, is two or more arpeggios played in a sequence.

Creating tension on G major

So let’s take a single chord: a G major triad. Its chord-tones are: G, B, and D. Obviously, the G major arpeggio works, but what about all the other arpeggios in the key of G? Let’s take a look.

• The A minor arpeggio has an A, a C, and an E. No chord tones, so we’ll label that as tense.
• The B minor arpeggio has a B, a D, and an F#. This one is way more consonant with two chord-tones form the G major triad, and the 7^th of a G major 7 chord.
• The C major arpeggio has C, E, and G. Two non chord tones and the root of the G major triad. More consonant than the A minor triad, but less consonant than the B minor.
• The D major triad: D, F#, A. One chord tone and the 7^th of G major 7.
• E minor triad: E, G, and B. Consonant like the B minor triad – two chord-tones and one non chord tone.
• Finally, the F# diminished triad, which has F#, A, and C. this is probably the most dissonant triad of the key when played against the G major.

The takeaway is that you can plot the amount of tension you want to produce against a single chord. And yes, there is almost always more than one chord in any song. This means things can get complex pretty fast.

 The joy of work

It’s a lot of work to learn how to use arpeggios like this, but the payoff is enormous in terms of technique and ear training. Make it enjoyable (and not overwhelming), by just learning the arpeggios in the key of G for now and then playing them over a recorded G major chord.

Here’s are  the arpeggios in G major in sequence:

I’ve put these all on the same two strings to make it a bit easier to play. This way you can get the tension/resolution sound in your ear faster. I’ll talk about playing them all in the same position in the next post.

I’ll also talk about not playing them in sequence like this. It gets old fast.

As a technical exercise, see if you jump randomly from chord to chord smoothly (i.e. Gmaj to Cmaj to F#dim to Dmaj, etc.). Go as slow as you need.

As an ear exercise, repeat one of the more consonant arpeggios at least five times. Then play one of the more dissonant ones. Then reverse the process. Repeat a dissonant arpeggio five times, and follow it with a consonant one.

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