Hello Friends,
This week we will start to make theoretical sense of the notes that you learned intuitively when you learned the melody on one string in the previous lesson. The idea here is to contextualize the notes of the melody into chord tones, depending on what the chord is at any given time. This is a process that hopefully will help bring together 3 elements of knowledge:
1) Familiarity with the sound of a given scale degree / chord tone
2) Awareness of the location of the different notes/scale degrees/chord tones on the fingerboard
3) Understanding of how these notes relate to the chord at any time
It may help to isolate and play on 1 string the notes of a D chord (D, F#, A), a G chord (G, B, D) and an A chord (A, C#, E) until they are second nature.
Cheers!
Chris
Topics and/or subjects covered in this lesson:
Bluegrass
Print Chords & Tab
Loop 0:00 Run-Through of Angeline The Baker Chord Melody
Loop 0:44 Breakdown of Chord Melody
Loop 24:50 Practice Loop with Chris
Comments
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I thought I'd mention that there is a wonderfully in depth, informative, and entertaining extended interview/conversation with Chris on the Everyone Love's Guitar Podcast (a very recent episodeI. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend giving it a listen. I post it here, not only because I can but because Chris mentioned something during the podcast that struck a chord with me. Actually he mentioned a ton of things, and he's mentioned it to us here on occasion, but for some reason having heard it again during the podcast it's suddenly sinking in and that is to give yourself permission to be sloppy sometimes when practicing. I think following that advice will allow me to post something on this lesson soon. I hope you give it a listen.
Kip, thanks for mentioning the podcast! It was a fun interview for sure. Nothing like talking about yourself for 2 hours ;-)
One of the biggest lessons I've ever learned about playing and working on music is that it's important to extend compassion to yourself. We can really get in our own way and obstruct our own progress by being too harsh which can create blocks in the form of physical and mental tension.
When you talked about learning with your ear first, then applying the intellect, you were spot on. That is essentially what we do in elementary school music classrooms. The kids experience the concept first through play--singing games, etc-- then it gets labeled. Then it gets more directly applied.
Exactly! How cool! Thanks for sharing.
I'm still with you on this man and I keep thinking back to something you said earlier ... maybe last lesson ... play like a child . You know when a child is sitting there playing with cars or soldiers and stuff just playing ... not thinking too much ... just moving stuff around .. knocking things over ... setting them up again ... trying stuff and having mindless fun ... just playing. Good stuff and a solid message.
Adding a little ever so slight thought to the process ... or maybe awareness ... or knowledge and I see things sort of conceptually coming together where I didn't think it would ever be possible in regards to "letting go" or 'improvising" ...
When I hear the word "IMPROVISE" in a sentence such as, How in the world does he improvise like that? It sends me the message that there is a formal procedural process that can be taught, memorized, and learned, and maybe after years and years of practice you'll get it right. Maybe that's why it's such a tough thing to teach ... when you say ... just play mindlessly ... eyes can glaze over.
I guess all I'm saying is you're doing a really great job teaching me this concept
None of which has anything to do with my fingers going where I want them too dang it.
Great lessons
Kip, thanks so much for this thoughtful comment! I think you hit the nail on the head when you wrote,"when I hear the word 'IMPROVISE' in a sentence such as, 'How in the world does he improvise like that?' it sends me the message that there is a formal procedural process that can be taught, memorized, and learned, and maybe after years and years of practice you'll get it right. Maybe that's why it's such a tough thing to teach...."
I think that's the thing - people tend to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the essence of improvising is. And therefore that essence gets neglected because there is a lot of learnable information that, of course, can be applied: scales, notes, chords, etc. But the misconception is that if you know all of that stuff then you will be able to improvise. One needn't look beyond most trained classical musicians - who know their scales, notes and chords inside and out, but can't improvise at all because there was no room in their training for them to exist in that pure state of play - to see this borne out in real life.