Playing scales vs Playing the changes (my honest opinion)
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- Quick video on playing scales vs playing the changes when improvising. This is a deep topic that can go deep down the rabbit hole but here some initial thoughts on the subject and how I conceptualize it. If you have any questions let me know!
I feel you bro. I’m 45 and played most of my life by ear after learning the old school way (rewind tape, listen, play, rewind, listen, play…) and it served me pretty well until a couple of years ago when I decided I should probably learn theory and know what I’m playing. So I learned the caged system and all the penta, major, minor, mixa, blues, triads, arpeggios..the whole thing. Now my head is full of information I just can’t connect to the playing experience. I’m a more knowledgable player for sure but it’s gotten frustrating and has taken me away from the ‘fun’ of it I guess. I’m thinking the way forward is to actually drop most of it, keep the caged system and just build a huge lick vocabulary I can drop in the right box over the right chord at whim. After a couple years of theory I know 100% I’ll never be the guy with note letters and keys and triads in his head while playing. I don’t think I wanna be either. There’s nothing wrong with it at all, but I think everyone isn’t cut out to have a head full of theory. We aren’t all built that way.
Nice, I'm 44 so we're probably in similar places as far as our journeys! I agree, we're all so different I think thats the beauty of it! Keep on working at it (like I do), as long as you're making improvements and enjoying the journey, thats all that matters!! Much love and thank you for the comment!!
I think playing the changes is just another technique for soloing. One of many, and each produces a different sound and feel. You don’t have to learn every technique, but the more you know the better. When I’m playing the changes, I think about the chord shape more than this note is the root, third, or fifth.
definitely well said, I also forgot to go over mixing the 2 approaches which definitely relates more to chord shapes and how you're looking at it. But you're right, lots of different approaches!
Matt Schofield definitely has a play over the changes style. It works well in the Jazz/Blues context. Good video.
I just pick the right scale and use my ears. And if there's some modulation happening, then I just change the scale. When I was a kid, I learned to improvise by just listening to music on radio on soloed over every song. Even people like Pat Martino simplified their thinking. He didn't think about playing over II-V-I, but only II.
I love it, playing with records is one of the best ways to improve your improv skills!
Feel is everything for improv. I think people are better off focusing less on going to a different major/minor box 1 position for every chord change and instead trying to focus on just replacing their pentatonic box with like Aeolian instead, or Mixolydian/Dorian. If you replace your A minor pentatonic box 1 and instead use A Aeolian and add in the two little extensions under it the albert and BB boxes and meshing that all together. You can truly start to get melodic and musical that way. What you’ll start to notice is when you know say both A minor pent and A aeolian you start to learn when you can do a quick minor lick and then backslide one fret back to one of the major tone sounding notes in mixolydian on the 4th fret, and feeling when to do that and when to slide the other way down to the albert and bb boxes. A great song for this is a mixolydian track such as “Althea” and messing around with blending mixolydian and aeolian and/or dorian. You can listen to Jerry and if you mentally remove all his chromatics you can sort of feel how he goes back and forth between minor and major tonality
thanks for the thoughtful comment here! I absolutely agree, mixing scales in that way is a great way to give yourself more options for your lines! There's so many ways to create, it really comes down to how your mind frames it how you can the most easily keep your mind clear and use your heart/ears instead of your head! Keep on pickin' my good man!
“Clutter my mind”. Well said.
Thank you!
Very interesting topic, you explained your thought process and reasoning for this very well. This hit hard for me as trying to play changes is something I'm actively working on right now.
I think one benefit of working on playing changes is that I'm much more aware of which chord is playing at a given moment in the song. Sometimes, when I'd just be improvising more freely using scale shapes, I can tend to "lose" my place in the form.
Greetings from Hungary!
Well hello from sunny Southern California, happy to virtually meet you! And thank you, I’m glad you got something out of it! I’m gonna do a follow up video about it tomorrow because I left some stuff out I now realize in the points I was trying to make. Honestly, the comments on here have sparked some new ideas, I’m so thankful you guys have been engaging with it! And all the way from 🇭🇺🎶
Fair points. Be aware of the arpeggios but follow your ear mostly 😊 even with scales too. They can talk about different scales every bar when that will sap your creativity or making music.
I agree fully. I still play the changes at times and I forgot to throw in the chord shape concept within scales but for the most part I follow my ear!
Playing chord tones over the underlying chords is the key to being melodic. Players who are very melodic tend to do this all the time. But as stated in the video if the changes are fast its a much harder task to shoot a fast moving target. More sedate changes, and its not that difficult if you know your chord shapes all over the neck. He did say in the video country is maybe not an ideal style for this but its very much the same as blues in this regard and most top country players DO play the changes.
100% agree depending on tempo, sometimes country tunes are burners and I don't have time to get out a different idea over the IV chord or the turnaround but you are right, A LOT of the time they are playing the changes for sure!!
I'm not sure how you've equated targetting notes with doing less thinking. Sticking to a "one size fits all" scale and playing any of those notes randomly across an entire progression requires minimal thinking, and you don't even need to know what chord you're on. If you know that a change is coming up and you want to stress what the chord is by playing the major 3rd, for instance, then you need to know precisely what that note is and where to find it in several places on the fretboard, as well as plotting a melodic path to hit that note at the moment that the chord changes. There's a lot more thinking required when you're targetting specific notes. I can understand that it's more fun to just stick to a key regardless of the chords and it's the only way to survive if you don't actually know the song, but that's because you can get away with not doing much thinking.
I don't disagree, I'm just coming from a different place as far as how I navigate through changes. I don't believe there's a "right" answer to this, we all think of the fretboard differently. I'm not claiming to be a great guitarist, I'm just trying to help people who are more in beginner territory and just share what has helped me. As mentioned in the video, most of the chord tones in a given progression can be found within the key, I'm not saying not to target chord tones. But theres more than one way to do that. And I would add that I think there are a TON of guitar legends who have used more of scale approach, I'm not the only one who prefers this....
It was an important moment for me to realize scales were just all the chord tones in the key. My approach is that when i solo im just playing a harmony. If im trying to play very straightforwardly i take from two places, the central melody and the notes in the chords. I tend not to think like that, I try to just play what i feel like im speaking my mind and if the notes i play are in the chord thats how i felt. If there extentions or they create reharmonization thats fine too.
Thats me though. Im the kind of guy that if im told what to do i consider it and then do what i feel like doing. If youre a hired guitarist they might expect whatever phony crap they thought up. In that case ignore my advice about the importance of sincerity, artistry, expression etc.
I have a similar personality therefor approach! LOL But I'm with you, realizing the chord tones are usually right there within the scale was a breakthrough for me!
@@dallaswadesguitarlessons6759 I realized that partly from studying music theory but also from programming sequenced synthesizers. If you have an established bassline or chords you can play literally any notes in the key over it and they'll sound like the modal sound of the bass notes or chord underneath. Every note ends up having a function based on what's below it. You could even just play one note repeatedly and it's function will change as the modal sound underneath changes. By function I mean how it applies to the chord formula. If youre in C and the chord is c major and you play a d note, that's just making it a Cadd9. If the chord changes to G, that D note will be the fifth of the chord.
@@za4310 this is a fantastic point that I in hindsight I should have touched on in the video! Thank you for adding this comment, very true statement here!!!!
totally agree
It's definitely a nuanced topic. After making the video I realized I didn't discuss mixing the 2 approaches which is definitely something I do. I'll definitely do more vids down the road on this topic. Keep on jamming my friend!
Pretty much what I do, I mostly let the feel loose and I don't worry about mistakes if I'm feeling it since it usually opens a route I wouldn't normally come up with resulting in surprising new things
👍
I tried to watch and listen…. But the “rambling “ didn’t do it for me - get to the point
Thanks for the "constructive" criticism😂😂