Are SCALES And MODES The Secret To Understanding The FRETBOARD?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 30 июн 2024
- Many people will tell you that you don't need to learn scales and modes on guitar... and those people are wrong! Keep watching to find out why you should absolutely be practicing scales and modes.
----
FREE eBook "How To Learn The Notes On Your Guitar Fretboard": www.musictheoryforguitar.com/...
FREE eBook "18 Tips To Make Your Pentatonic Solos Sound Professional": www.musictheoryforguitar.com/...
Complete Chord Mastery course: www.musictheoryforguitar.com/...
Master of the Modes course: www.musictheoryforguitar.com/...
----
If you like this video, share, like, comment & don't forget to subscribe for more content!
Need help with music theory for guitar? Check out these FREE resources: www.musictheoryforguitar.com/...
FOLLOW ME:
RUclips: / musictheoryforguitar
Facebook: / musictheoryforguitar
Twitter: / theoryguitar
Website: musictheoryforguitar.com 
Видеоклипы
![Megan Thee Stallion - Rattle [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qY6qwqVCsww/mqdefault.jpg)
Kudos to you and those other three on the internet! Have played for decades, been in bands, taught an adult ed beginning guitar course, etc. etc. etc. AND it is clear that a substantial number of novice guitarists -- mostly adults who never played a musical instrument in school, and often are baffled by simple musicianship concepts -- want to play great RIGHT NOW. They want to improvise guitar solos right now. They want to do it all right now and their search for the magical formula that will instantly solve all their problems is intense, if not never-ending. And those who advocate work and slow progress usually are met with indifference, at best. Thus all the chord-tone etc. approaches -- which certainly DO get the novices excited -- but aren't exactly a substantive cure to the overall challenges. On one hand, if the Learn Fast Gurus can help somebody play at least something, yeah that's better than nothing. But I can tell you this overall situation existed long before RUclips and I see no end to it, ever.
After memorizing every position of the major modes, it is easy to make alterations for any scale mode.
Lydian b7. Just play lydian and alter the 7.
Ionian #5
Just play ionian and raise the 5. Etc
Hope that people find the course that Tommaso made about the modes 👌🚀
I'm late to this party, but I'll add that for me the key is to have fun. I'm one of those people who learned the shapes first. And now I'm just trying to apply them to progressions. For example, I'll play a harmonic minor progression and then improvise with the harmonic minor modes on top of the progression. Sometimes it sounds flawlessly good; sometimes it seems to strain to keep together. I just try to enjoy my time and I try to remember what works and what doesn't (although I often forget and repeat my experiments). Obviously I'm not trying to accomplish anything in record time; I'm just attempting to fill in my days until I die and entertain myself. It works for me.
The only trade-off of a freatboard over a keyboard is that you do not clearly see the notes but you can just care about the intervals -the scales-. Learning to play a guitar by the "notes" as you would in a keyboard instead of by "shapes"/"scales" would be not to seize actual advantage of the guitar.
There are advantages to both, so the most advantages are using both. I'm a guitarist who learned the typical stuff as a child, then as a teenager who couldn't afford private lessons, I took beginning music theory in school on piano. So after the theory class, I went home and transcribed everything to the guitar.
Had this not been before the internet, and been before tab was popular, I likely wouldn't have learned near as much in such a short amount of time, and wouldn't know near as much, ir really, how to even play as well, because back then the only way to learn violin solos and other instruments solos on the guitar, one had to be able to know what notes are what.
I could type out another 4 paragraphs of reasons doing both is an advantage, and can only give one reason why learning only one is better: it takes effort. And that's fine. Not something I would advocate for, because I would terrible at transcribing, but not everyone wants to learn so much.
It's all a matter of how interested and or how good someone wants to be. I say just be yourself in the end. Perfection is myth.
I agree it's best to use both - and I will add that if you train both approaches long enough, they actually start to "merge" (it's hard to explain, unless you had the experience) and they work together seamlessly. And I also agree that the guitar fretboard is "natively" more "interval-based" (though I would think of it as "degree-based", but that's a story for another time) and that the piano is "natively" more "absolute-pitch-based". Both approaches can of course be applied to both fretboard and keyboard.
As a piano teacher I start with the bass, then build the chord, then build the scale that works on the whole song (degree I ). It comes last because that way students get familiar with the scale in a gradual way, from the 1st note of the bass, to I III V, to I III V VII (if apropriate to the song they're learning), then all the degrees the scale. I make it very clear that if they want to be free and improvise then they have to learn the scale that works on the Ist degree (at least... but no need to frighten them xD). One per song they like, it's not that much. I also tell them to fck around when we're learning chords, that they try moving the IIIrd degree around and see how it sounds, fck around with the V degree, so that they build critical listening and sense how that alters the mood of the chord, the tension/release it creates. Later I tell them that they're actually playing extensions. But I degress.
Modes and scales are not just necessary, they're fun to play around with, with a simple drum beat, or by changing the tone/the instrument. People are missing that it's not just "work", it's actually fun if you come from the angle of discovery and curiosity.
Oh and I tell them that meeting a scale is like meeting someone on a bus. You engage conversation, you're not straight like "hi what'syournamehowoldareyouwheredoyoulivewhat'syourjobalrightlet'sexchangenumbers", you take your time and let the scale teach you about itself. By this point they look at me funny xD
Sounds good to me (I learned basic theory on piano). Most guitar teachers teach cords first, then scales and how they relate to chords. It does happen a lot though that a student reaches a certain point and decides they don't need the rest. And that's a choice, but it leaves them in the dark more. We're all in the dark on some things, and that's fine. But people who insist on that choice one way or the other for other people, are intentionally or not, trying to take that choice from them.
@@aylbdrmadison1051 i see what you mean. I kind of make the choice for my students to not learn sheet music... i've had parents call me out on this. I've had classic and jazz training yet can't be bothered to use sheet music anymore. Should be careful how i influence them.
A practical FYI: To obtain the finger pattern of a mode. Say G major (Ionian mode) g a b c d e f# g. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, And you know the finger patter for the scale for 2 octaves. Then to get the finger pattern for Dorian. Shift the starting note to the 2nd position and play the Dorian scale by hearing the Ionian scale. Once you obtained the Dorian finger pattern using this method. Then go back to G and play the Ionian mode, then play the Dorian mode in G.
Then go to the B third position and establish the Phrygian mode by hearing the remaining Ionian 2 octave scale.
Do this for the remaining modes.
2. Once you get the scales the chord shapes are another issue.
3. Going from one mode to another. Take for example Dorian. If you start on D you can shift to D Major. if you are playing Dorian in C. you are flatting the E to Eb and the B to Bb looking like this for the formula 1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7, But what's this? Doesn't this look like the key signature of Bb major. So you can move from C (Ionian) to (Dorian) then using the flats you can pivot to Bb major and back.
Just keep in mind of all this going on. You only have to memorize 7 basic 2 octave scales for the modes.
Well stated... It's hard to believe some of today's so-called music instructors.
Great video as always Maestro. I came at guitar playing a little different than most in the sense that I was always a songwriter and the guitar was just the most utilitarian instrument for my songs. But having said that I was always struck by that Dire Straits tune where Mark Knopfler talked about *Guitar George" who knew all the chords but couldn't " make it cry or sing. " Which always struck me funny because I couldn't understand how if one truly knew all the chords how they wouldn't also know all the scales because the scales of the key had the diatonic chords living inside them, ya know?? But I came up in the 1980s when shred was king and that style just never appealed to me. What's fascinating about that is that at that time when fretboard gymnastics drove the conversation the arpeggios of Randy Rhodes and Steve Vai were all the rage, but although these were mostly 3 note per string runs they were still also chords, ya know?? But somehow through too many exercises had become feats of dexterity as opposed to music, or so it seemed to me. Nonetheless, I eventually learned how to do some shredding along the way and it can be a blast so I'm not totally knocking it, but it is 🤔 interesting to me how harmony and melody are talked about. To me it seems that they're kind of the yin and yang of the same thing, or again_ at least as far as my understanding. But as always, I am perfectly willing to admit I don't know much....
Cheers and all the best!
Another thing that is interesting is how classical music was about the intervals and keys, and harmonization was not thought about as chords. That's a more modern way of thinking of harmony.
Remember that Guitar George "doesn't WANT to make it cry or sing". He's accomplishing his own goals. He's not a wanker. He understands that the form is more important than embellishments of the form. A song is a cake, a solo is icing. George is a baker, the decoration of the cake isn't his job.
@@d.l.loonabide9981 That's definitely a solid point. It's his decision to be the rhythm guitar player and in that way to better serve the song. Probably could use a few more Guitar George's in the world.
99% of teachers: Modes are just names of the major scale starting on a different degree. Me: Modes are 99% dictated by the chords and progression.
Glad to find another member of the 1%: ruclips.net/video/8z_MwotLh1M/видео.html
i *hate* the 'modes are just the major scale starting on a different note' approach to this concept so much. like, yes that's where the notes in each mode come from, but that gives absolutely zero information to what that actually means, or how you actually use them in a musical context. it's so important to understand how the modes fit into chord theory, but so many teachers seem to completely gloss over it
Not in modal playing, so I'd say it's a lot less than 99%, but it is often true. Regardless, those things are not even close to mutually exclusive. The only difference is choosing to not learn the full scale, and or the full harmonization of the scale, is intentionally gimping oneself. The only valid reason to not learn one or both is laziness. I don't think of that as valid for myself, but it's the path some choose, and that's their choice, no biggie.🙂 But some who should know better, advocate for not learning one or both, just to get clicks? That's a choice too, but deceiving people is a really big problem.
@@lysdexiar31 : It just makes remembering the correct intervals easier. So it's only useless people stop there. Then some might get the idea that scale positions are the modes, not how the intervals relate to the tonic. I teach students the positions of the C Major scale and have them learn the names of the notes as soon as they have a handle on the shape in their hands. Then I show them how those shapes can work as modes by moving the.
It's far less intimidating, and after having various students with different drives and aspirations over four decades, I've found that more students end up continuing to learn that way. Not filling their heads up as fast as I can, because that almost never works. I try to show the easiest path, then they have a more solid base to stand on going forward.
I'd change how I taught if anyone had ever shown me how that can gimp a person to learn them that way, but bar them stopping right there (witch I do warn them there is more to it), I've never seen why I shouldn't and I still have many years of seeing actual evidence that it's more successful.
Anyway, no one has to agree, I'm just sharing what my personal experience has shown me. 🙂
"Modes are just the major scale STARTING from another note" is a useful shortcut for people who ALREADY know how modes work and know how to establish a clear tonal center in music. If it is NOT a good starting point - because people who lack the context (and beginners always lack the context... otherwise they would not be beginners) are steered in precisely the wrong direction. You guys have NO IDEA how many times a week I get people sending me videos saying "how do you like my Dorian improvisation" when they are improvising on a major key and starting every phrase from the second note of the key. (I teach both online and offline, and if you teach only offline you probably are not seeing the same problem as much as I do)
The thing about the CAGED system is that it's a step toward learning fretboard patterns.
You're not done though.
If you're familiar with those basic chord shapes it can be a good stepping stone.
It allows you to proceed from the known to the unknown.
This is a principal in all education no matter the subject.
In my experience, it's better to sidestep CAGED completely, and go straight to other patterns. YMMV.
I don't really advocate for CAGED either.
@@MusicTheoryForGuitar : After decades of not learning caged, and focusing on diatonic harmony, I now wish I had learned it much earlier because I'd be better at playing the styles of music where that system is prevalent. It's like should a person learn scales and modes? Of course they should, if they want to get better. By searching for what is "the best way" we often just end up gimping ourselves. Learn them all, if you can.
But CAGED is a subset of diatonic harmony.
Although the idea it's just Tomasso and about three other people on YT that advocate learning scales and modes is clearly an exaggeration, definitely ignore anyone who advocates for not learning them. Unless ofc the entire point is to *not* become a better musician. In that case, don't learn anything else either. Just stop where you are and remain wantonly ignorant. No problem That's literally the best way there is to never get better. It is a personal choice.🙂
I listed all the YT guitar channels I know, and eliminated all the ones that posted videos saying "you don't need to learn scales". I was left with 3 channels, and mine. So, not really an exaggeration :-)
Arpegios are great but I can’t imagine saying knowing scales is not useful. Just worked out something where changing a single diatonic note made the whole section make better sense (to my ear).
Yep. The arpeggios are derived from chords, the chords are derived from the scales.
@@d.l.loonabide9981 yes, I love the idea of tonal colors but there is so much emphasis on harmony and so little on lines or sparse harmony. At least from the micro amount I know or see.
Agreed! And yet I hear nearly every day some "teacher" saying that "scales are useless".
@@djonakachopper : Keep looking. There are so many that take different approaches. Try using different search words, and check out those other people mention. This is one of my favorite theory channels, and Tommaso is really cool, but I subscribe to others too (even piano), because no one teaches everything. Not that I will ever learn all there is to learn about even one genre, it's variety and uniqueness in music that I love most.
"So much emphasis on harmony and so little on lines or sparse harmony." Yes! In my courses, I teach all harmony based on voice leading i.e. "lines". Everything makes more sense that way (IMHO).
Hi, great video !
I have a question, how can I spell instantly all the notes in each scale ? ( the 7 seven modes of the major scale is already great )
I can do it kinda fast for the spelling of triads but scales are harder…
Thanks
For me it's helpful to stay focused on the formula for the scale. Major=whole, whole , half, whole, whole, whole, half. Now it doesn't matter what key I'm dealing with, I'll know the correct notes.
You can either think of the intervals of the scale (either W W H etc, or M2 M3 P4 etc) or you can memorize how many sharps/flats there are in each scale (using the circle of 5ths or other ideas) or you may memorize ONE pattern for the major scale, play it starting on the root note you want, and read the notes out of the fretboard... or many other ways... These are only temporary, though: eventually you use some of these scales so often that you end up memorizing them.
@@MusicTheoryForGuitar okay thank you Tommaso !
Why would anyone playing guitar not want to understand music theory (inc. scales and modes)? Don’t you want to know how it all works? Don’t you want to understand your fretboard? I don’t understand the mentality.
Maybe just learn all the things you can but make music as soon as you can. Most pop rock songs are only 3 chords, but you can learn a lot more.
This may seem a simple answer, but it's kind of the best overall advice I've found today.
First comment😍
The vast majority of harmonic and melodic. concepts are derived from the major scale.
There's no escaping it.
True. Except in the many cultures who do not use all of the same standards as western music.
@@aylbdrmadison1051 We are discussing western music here. I wouldn't attempt to explain how Arabic or Indian music works, for example.
The moment we start talking about modes, we are firmly in the western canon (i.e. we assume the major scale as the basis, we assume a temperament with 12 notes, not necessarily equal, plus a series of other things that other culture may share or not - but definitely do not share ALL of them). Other cultures have similar things, of course - but they are not "modes". For instance, ragas are not modes. Same goes for the "middle eastern" systems. Heck, even medieval western "modes" are not modes in the modern sense! Anybody who is qualified is more than welcome to make videos about the music of other cultures - I'll be the first one to watch and learn! But if we talk about modes, we are already restricting the discussion to the western canon (unless we are talking specifically about the history of modes, in which case good luck, as musical cultures exchange ideas way more often than people expect...)
Shave it