Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

As a follow up post to “Create your Own Custom, Unique, Unscripted Guitar Solo!“, I wanted to post the next box to learn — oh, yes — there are more boxes.  There are a total of five Pentatonic Minor scales (in the key of A). The post mentioned above introduced you to the first two - Box 1 and Box 2.

This post will introduce you to what is referred to as Box 3. The music below is Box 3 in A (Making this [also] A Pentatonic Minor). Keep in mind, for this previous series with the 3 boxes (so far) they have all been a A Pentatonic Minor scale, only on different positions on the neck of the Guitar.

A Pentatonic Minor - Box 3

You can download the TuxGuitar file here: TuxGuitar file - A Pentatonic Minor - Box 3

Remember to first memorize and practice the scale. Afterwards you can set yourself free with the scale; you can play around and improvise within the scale. Enjoy!

Bonus: Following is me practicing this scale with effects from my Pod v2. I’m posting it to illustrate how I sound when first learning a scale. I figure that it might make readers more comfortable with their practice to know that my material is full of mistakes also (it would for me). Note: The following is full of mistakes.

As I announced…

…a while back (see blog post), I decided to “start over” as it were. I felt that my practice wasn’t going anywhere and that I needed to reestablish my learning pattern. In my “re-effort” (is that a word?) I eventually stumbled upon (and blogged several times) about GuitarCardio.com.

This site eventually lead me to start researching scales and that presented the question “what was the most effective scale or group of scales to learn”. I eventually came upon something called “the box position.”

What I learned about the box position, to my surprise, is that it was not a set of scale patterns that one learns. It appears to be a description of playing within a single position. That single position doesn’t necessarily need to be the same pattern nor the same type of scale.

For example, the A Pentatonic Major scale in three different positions would be playing in the box position. Additionally, so would playing the A Pentatonic Major scale in 5th position and then the A Pentatonic Minor scale in 5th position.

The Box Position

I spent time researching and trying to understand what exactly is meant by “The Box Position” (a.k.a “The Box Pattern”). My conclusions is rather simple and straight forward.

There is not a fixed set of scales that make up the box pattern; every source or book can (and will) have their own method and scales. Take, for example, the link I’ve provided before on this topic previously: http://www.myguitarsolo.com/sc_box.htm

Their method of presenting the box position includes learning six scales in a specific order (I’m not yet sure if there is significance to the order); while another source, a book this time, shows the box pattern in all Pentatonic scales in different positions on the neck.

Both seem valid, and I have no reason to believe otherwise. That plus in all my research, I’ve not found consistent presentations of the box pattern. This lead me to the conclusion that there is no fix set of scales to make up the box pattern.

The Box Position using The Pentatonic Scale

I was in a bookstore looking to pick up a reference book on guitar scales. I stumbled upon a book titled “Practical Pentatonics” by Askold Buk. It is a small 44 page book about how flexible the Pentatonic scales can be and what can be done if applied, umm, creatively.

Now, obviously, due to copyright laws ( ) I can’t give away or post any of the examples they have in the book. That isn’t the point of the post, anyway. I want to share, in my own words, what I’ve learned and discovered from this book. Of course, if you become interested in this topic, I’d encourage you to purchase this book or a book like it (though, I’ve not found others like it).

Examples

Below are some basic examples. First, I’m going to start out with a basic Pentatonic Minor Scale in the key of A. [If you can not see the rest of the post, please view the post on UnderstandingGuitar.org. Most RSS readers will not display the following content properly.]

Read the rest of this entry »

I was about to start working on some random scales on GuitarCardio.com, when something that Kenski wrote as a comment a while back. A new comment on that page reminded me about it.

Kenski wrote “As a starting point I would advocate learning the box position for major scale“. I had started looking in to the Box Position, but I never really understood what it was. I looked and looked and never came to any conclusion. I did find a bunch of good material, but I never really understood it…

And I still don’t.  I found this: http://www.myguitarsolo.com/sc_box.htm

And while I understand what it is saying — run through the 6 scales on the same key — it doesn’t completely make sense. The scale patterns don’t match other sources.

Consider my other Google Result: http://www.robinmay.co.uk/index/independent_pages/view_independent_pages/10/

Is there no rule to this? If not, then why is this worth learning? If there is some form of rules, are they loose rules?

Any guidance would be appricated.

I can’t believe I missed this, but the TuxGuitar team has released the first whole version of their software. I’ve been using their software for a while but it has been listed as 0.9.1 as they’ve been completing the software.

TuxGuitar is a lot like Guitar Pro. You can tab out different songs or different tracks and it will play back the song that you’ve tabbed.

http://www.tuxguitar.com.ar/

Below are some screen shots that I quickly took [Click on them to view big versions]:

Give TuxGuitar a try… It’s Free!

I was reading PickStroke.com and on their side bar the author had listed “Guitar Cardio” might be a good place to visit if you need to work on your speed.”

And boy, is PickStroke right!

I think this site (GuitarCardio) is an amazing idea. Kudos to the author for authoring and hosting this.

The site basically will generate a number of scales for you to run though, it give you several options. I hope to use the site to practice scales while working on my new direction.

Give it a try: http://www.guitarcardio.com/

Screen Shot:

I was at a Sam Ash^ about 2 weeks ago, shopping around — just looking (at saxophones [the bug is gone]) and I came upon something that really interested me.

It was a small CD (Jewel) case which said “Learn to play this Hit Song!” It was in a display box with several titles named. I scanned through the titles and discovered that they labeled the level of skill required to play the given song…

So I scanned through looking for items marked at “Guitar_Level 1″ which is the lowest level. I ended up with only a handful of selections (like 2 or 3) and all but 1 was of no interest of me (as far as learning the song). That was “Smells like Teen Spirit” as performed by Nirvana.

I decided immediately to purchase it; I had to at least give it a try and it was only around $13.00.

You can find more information about this here: http://www.playitnowtunes.com^

My first impressions when I broke in to the CD and started to listening was positive. However, I don’t like their version of the song (Smells Like Teen Spirit) but that just probably has to do with the fact that I have always much preferred their acoustic or unplugged versions more then the electric (plugged?) versions.

I’ve only been working with it for two weeks. I don’t want to post a “this will work” or “this won’t work” opinion until I’ve spent more time with it; but I did want to let the world know that it was out there.

Check out this article: http://www.guitarnoise.com/article.php?id=542

The article covers things like Scales, Power Chords and Double stops.

I’ve been traveling for work as we are migrating projects to different offices. I don’t travel often, so it was interesting to me.

I was on the road on Friday, and then again Monday to Tuesday. All that time I’ve been away from the guitar. In a way, I felt that I needed a bit of a break from guitar. I had pushed myself and followed through on the exercises but some days I probably did more then I should have.

Over the weekend, during the time that I did have here at home I went to the Gym to get a little stress relieving weight-lifting in. I was flipping through a weight-training magazine between weight sets and either an article or advertisement reminded me that you should put a day between the days that you weight lift.  I’ve been doing weights training since high school, so this is not new information to me.

Perhaps we should look at this information in regards to learning guitar. The work that you do with you fretting hand is, in a way, similar to cardiovascular exercises. However, there are exceptions to this. Certain chords you learn, in particular barred chords, can be more like an intense weight lifting regimen. Keep in mind, that I’ve been “drilling” the Bm and F chords after reading the article in Acoustic Guitar magazine.

I felt that being on the road for those three days have given my hand the break that it needed in order to build up some muscle. I’m really not sure if this has any validity to it (in regards to learning guitar), but the theory seems sound.

I do need to give my hand a day or two to re-develop some of the dexterity that I had built up but hopefully barred chords will continue to get easier; they have been getting easier for the past couple of weeks.

I recently decided to subscribe to Acoustic Guitar magazine. And yesterday, I received my very first issue.

I was incredibility pleased with the issue as they had a wonderful article titled: “Tackling Difficult Chords.” I quickly read the article and I felt that it had some very wonderful tips on how to learn to imprint difficult barre chords in to your memory and fretting hand.

The article uses the F chord and the Bm chord as their example chords. Which is perfect because I’ve been working on the Bm chord. (I recently blogged about it.)

After I read the article I immediately began to apply what it had suggested. I worked with the F chord, the Bm chord and for good measure I threw in the (open) C chord. I’ve been having difficultly with that chord because it is awkward to my hand.

I drilled, and drilled the chords and have done the same thing since I read the article. That was about two days ago. It is probably too early to tell, but I do believe that it has improved my ability to play all three chords. As well as I want? Not quite yet, but it is a work in progress and I’m getting closer.

It is possible that the article just gave me the fuel to drill the chords again… I’m not sure. To any account, I loved the article and it would be worth a read to any one who is still working on memorizing barred chords.

What does the article suggest? I don’t want to give away too much (because I don’t want to plagiarize), but for those who might be interested…

The article starts out by telling you to fret the problem chord.  Play the chord arpeggiated - that is one string at a time. Play the chord twice (I suggest using alternate picking) once going down; from low E to high E then going up, from high E to the low E string.

Once you get to the low E string, release the strings but don’t remove your hand from the current position. Reapply pressure with your fretting hand with the same chord shape and do the arpeggiation again. Repeat until your hand can’t take it (actually, just repeat it a lot). You should pay special attention to whether the strings are ringing clearly or not. Don’t proceed until the strings all ring clearly - consistently.

The article then suggests you strum the chord, doing the same fretting hand pressure release as before. Repeat this a lot.

The article then suggests that you do a two-chord chord progression. One chord is the one you are learning, the other chord being a chord that you are very comfortable with. Repeat that progression. (yes, a lot.)

You may not get to this last step on your first or second day. I think that is fine. Take your time and be patient.

Buy the magazine and read the article. It has a lot more important information than what I’ve just given you.

You may also be able to read the article here: http://www.acousticguitar.com/article/default.aspx?articleid=22034

Play this for two minutes (not 99 as the music says), it will exercise your fretting hand and your picking hand much. (Click Image for a larger Rendering).

After you try this, please post a comment on what you think. Was it hard? Was it easy? Does your hand hurt too much to leave a comment?