Jim Ellis | Fretprints

Study Materials for Guitarists

Effects and Practice

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Playing guitar with effects can offer a variety of sounds and give your sound a polish that is great for performance. Chorus, reverb and delay are a few effects that can add dimension to a relatively clean sound. It is great to play with effects for recording, jamming or performing but when it comes to practice I generally think it best to play without any effects. The reason for this is that effects cover up or diminish the impact of poor technique. It follows that if we are working towards improving technique then we need to hear as much as possible about how we play and what issues we may have. Work on practicing with a dry clean sound. Every room is a little different. When we go to play somewhere live we may become unhappy with the sound and the environment. We need to play though. So it is a benefit to learn how to play with sound that we don’t like. To practice for this try playing with sounds you don’t like in your practice studio. Try practicing with real bright harsh sounds without backing away on volume. Guitars with great tone are another issue. Practicing on beautiful sounding instrument is great, but it can start to pull your attention in a playing direction. For this issue I like to practice on an instrument that is high quality but has very little character. This way the concentration can hold on to pitches, time and technique. Practice sessions that focus on what we don’t know or can’t do just yet are really beneficial. Effects help deliver a sound that enhances what we do know and can play. Try practicing without distracting tone from guitars and effects. Get the best sound you can from your hands on any instruments.

Composition

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We want to play phrases that are entertaining to listeners and have strong musical grounding. Since improvising a phrase is an instantaneous form of composition, one way to strengthen this area is to compose and write out phrases. We don’t necessarily want to use the composed line in our improvisation. Though if something we write is appealing enough then we may want to internalize the material.

Try taking a chord progression from your repertoire or one of your originals. We want to have about four bars. Analyze the progression, understanding how the chords relate to the tonic. Also look at how they are functioning at a given time. Are they suggesting a different key area?

Once you have looked at the progression think about rhythm and places, in time, where you might want to begin and end phrases. One approach is to pick a rhythm, write it out, then assign notes later. Whatever you decide, use a strong rhythm that is fairly dynamic.

Next, think about which guide tones you may want to use. Thirds and fifths are good starting and landing points. Mixing in other tones as well can help make the phrase more interesting. Remember tensions as well. The eleven, for example, is a strong tension on major chords.

As we take time with the composition process, understanding of harmony, melody and rhythm will increase. This will work to help the improvisations that we play in live situations. Consider taking time for composition.

Comping Range

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Let’s consider range when comping with an ensemble. Guitar is a fairly low range instrument. One of the first things we may consider is how we fit in with the bass player. Bass lines often range up to our open third string and can go beyond that point. We can also find that G below middle C on the fifth fret of the fourth string and the tenth fret of the fifth string. Now we will consider the fifth string and below as area to avoid for the most part while comping. Let’s now think about the upper range. It is okay for soloists to play in the low and middle range, but we may want to avoid their upper range as they try to cut through the mix. So we will avoid the first string as well. This gives us with the fourth, third and second strings to work with. I’m not suggesting that we never play other strings while comping. rather that we can use these three strings as a staple source of notes for voicings. So what do we play with these strings? Often times the third and seventh of a chord work really well on the third and forth. Occasionally, we may play a sixth and a third. Then the second string we can use to play a nine, eleven or thirteen of some type. Try this out next time you’re playing with a band or with a recording. You may find that your comping is fitting right in. You will also allow the bassist plenty of room for creativity with her lines.

Chord Shapes Throughout

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On guitar we often need to learn particular musical material in several shapes around the neck. Let us find out how this applies to chord shapes and in a relative way, how many note combinations are there to work out. We will take a look at harmonic pairs, and three through six note chords and discover what we need to put together. In standard tuning we have the following intervals: Strings 6-5 (E-A); Perfect 4th Strings 5-4 (A-D); Perfect 4th Strings 4-3 (D-G); Perfect 4th Strings 3-2 (G-B); Major 3rd Strings 2-1 (B-E); Perfect 4th Because these intervals are varied, chord shapes and harmonic pairs will take on different shapes depending on the string combinations. In particular, shapes will distort when using strings G-B because other than those strings, standard tuning is uniform. Beginning with harmonic pairs we will find that there are two combinations that we need to work out. Shapes that involve the G-B string combinations will have to be different to achieve the same musical note intervals. For example if we play notes C and E using strings five and four we will have a diagonal shape between the frets and strings. If we choose the same two notes using strings three and two, the shape will remain on the same fret. For three note combinations we will find that there are three combinations to work out. Strings three through one and four through two will have unique shapes. Strings five through three and six through four will have the same shapes although different from strings three through one and four through two. Four note combinations have three unique shapes. Here we have shapes on strings four through one, five through two, and six through three. Chords on strings four through one are often the most comfortable to play while chords on strings six through three are can often be challenging. Five and six note chords on guitar can be challenging to play unless we are doubling a pitch. With five note combinations we will find we have two combinations; strings five through one and strings six through two. Six note chords we are limited to one combination as we are limited to six strings. Spend a lot of time working out three and four note combinations on the guitar. There are very useful and practical. Take one unique musical sound and find how the shapes for that particular sound change depending on the string combination you are using.

Time and Motion

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Both musicians and non-musicians generally appreciate music that has a steady tempo and solid rhythm. So why is it a challenge for instrumentalists to play with steady time and solid rhythm? There are likely a couple of reasons for this; thinking while playing, not knowing the material well enough and so on. In this article though we will talk about the spacial and time issues that contribute to shaky time and rhythm.

Distances between notes vary and time is steady. We need to practice moving from one note to the next while keeping very steady time. Pick an interval and decide to play that interval on one string or crossing over to a different string. This gives us a spacial shape to work with on the guitar. Next set a metronome and try playing that shape in a variety of positions.

Since the fret distances get shorter further up the neck and strings widths vary as well, we find that conditions change for the shape we are working with. Our constant is the tempo and rhythm we are working with. The hand needs to compensate for the varied distances while maintaining the time.

  • Work with one interval shape at a time.
  • Keep it to two notes.
  • Practice the shape with a several tempos.
  • Use triplet and sixteenth note subdivisions.

Move the hand quickly to the next note location making fret hand attack the note at just the right time. We want to make sure that the fret hand plays the time and doesn’t rely on the picking hand for time. Guitar is very challenging for this reason. Try these ideas out and take your time with every interval and practice at slow tempos.

Symmetrical Chord Shapes

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Help develop tension in your lines by using symmetrical arpeggios like the augmented triad and diminished seventh chord. Let’s take a look at how they work and try an exercise.

Augmented triads and diminished seventh chords both have equal interval distances between tones. Because of this we find that we can assign a root to any of the notes in the chord or arpeggio and end up with the same chord type and collection of tones. Another way to look at it is from the perspective of inversions. Since the augmented triad and the diminished seventh chord both are symmetrical, all the inversions have the same shape as the root.

Let’s look a little further into each type. The Augmented triad has three notes separated by major thirds. This means that there are four augmented triads total to work with given that there are twelve notes. Similarly, the diminished seventh chord has four notes separated by minor thirds. So it follows that there are three of these total. 

Try this exercise while working with these symmetrical chord and arpeggio types:

  • Improvise with an augmented or diminished seventh arpeggio.
  • Play one interval that is not part of the arpeggio.
  • Begin playing a new arpeggio.
  • Repeat the process.
  • Experiment with alternating between the augmented and diminished seventh chords.

This exercise is fun and challenging. Doing this exercise will help to improve your knowledge of chords and intervals. It will also help develop tension in your lines and touches on what John Coltrane was able to do with some of his progressions and playing. Having a little harmony in the background is a good idea. Even just a single major chord.

Intervallic Improvisation

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Improvising with an Intervallic approach is a great way pull from the chromatic scale and achieve an outside or modern sounding phrase. Choose a few intervals and a starting note, then play a phrase. Notice that direction in pitch, up or down, and rhythm are open to whatever you might choose.

If you are new to this way of playing or practicing try starting with two intervals and a simple harmonic background. Alternate between the two intervals and remain aware of the dissonance or consonance each note has with the harmony. Try choosing the interval direction, up or down, to regulate dissonance. For example, if the chord is Cmaj7, the current note in the phrase is E and the interval played is a minor 3rd. Then ascending to G is consonant while descending to D flat is dissonant. Here the interval is the same, but the directions are opposite.

The Intervals min2, maj2, min3, and maj3 are a good place to start and are a staple of many phrases. Notice what happens when pairing certain intervals. In some cases we find that particular interval combinations will have an associated scale other than chromatic. The maj3 and maj2 will tend towards the whole tone scale. So an occasional min2 or min3 interval will help break out of that.

Keep in mind that when playing any single-line phrase we are really playing intervallic. Here we are deliberately thinking about the intervals and choosing which to play based on a set or series of intervals. Enjoy and let me know how it’s going.

Phrasing

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There is a lot to study when it comes to phrasing. One area where guitarists tend to struggle is with ending a phrase. Often times phrases tend to go on and on without any clear separation. Let’s discuss what can we do to create stronger phrasing by completing our phrases. Start by making your phrase clearly end and rest for at least a few beats. This doesn’t mean that it needs to resolve, just that it needs to end. Now the next phrase will have a clear beginning which will be given a clear end as well. Make your phrases conversational. Question and answer is one of the best examples of this. End one phrase that doesn’t resolve then start and end another that does. Again we are clearly ending both phrases. Play your phrases within two and four measure groups. It is great to step out of this mold, but make sure you have a strong grasp of especially four measure phrases. Divide a thirty-two bar tune into four measure groupings and practice starting and ending phrases within those groups. These concepts and exercises will help make improvisations more clear and easier to follow for the listener. Think about how conversations and discussions sound. There is always a need to take a breath at some point when giving a talk or conversing. Take time to breath between musical phrases too.

Playing Changes – Practice Tip

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Improvising through chord changes is challenging. We want to have specific knowledge of how each note we play relates to the current harmony and the key of a tune. In practice what can we do to gain familiarity with these elements? One thing we can do is focus on one change, or two chords. Let’s talk about root notes first. We have eleven possible movements from one root to another. We may also consider that the root may remain the same while the chord quality changes. So we have eleven possible changes and twelve when we consider the root remains the same. Next, we have chord quality. Let’s consider five of these; maj7, 7, -7, -7b5, and dim7. Try these out with just one root note in the order mentioned, forward and backward. We hear that one note changes between each of these chords. Now, practice one root movement and pick one of the chord qualities for the two chords. Decide your approach to the lines; triadic, scale, ect. Play four or eight notes played as steady eighths for each chord. Improvise back and forth through the chord change in all positions and the full range of the neck. Get a sense for how the patterns and shapes change. Also, listen for how the harmony differs between the two. Some notes remain the same others change to different notes. Concentrating on just one change you will really get in-depth with chord changes and find yourself improvising with increasing ease.

Metronome Ideas – Part 1

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Try to hear subdivisions internally as you play phrases or comp. This will help strengthen the time feel. Focus most of your effort on the triplet and sixteenth note divisions of one beat. Also keep in mind that at faster tempos eighth notes are sometimes more appropriate. Sixteenth-note triplets are also worth working on. One goal to aim for is to easily switch your aural imagination between sixteenth and triplet note subdivisions without effecting the tempo. Exercise: – Set a metronome to click only once per measure. – Improvise with steady quarter notes. – Each measure alternate between sixteenth and triplet divisions internally or vocally. Try ta-ka-da-mi for sixteenths and ga-ma-la for triplets. Or whatever you normally use. – Pay attention to whether or not you are rushing or dragging. – As you become more accurate, change the metronome to click every two measures or four and so on. Working with a metronome is very helpful. Keep in mind that it is important to practice without a metronome as well. Also, look to the source by listening to players that have a great time-feel. Try to play-along with recordings and emulate your favorite players.