Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

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 know I promised more scales related blog entries, but I thought of this and wanted to post it… I promise, those scale entries are coming.

Anyway, are you? Frustrated that is… I recently posted what I thought was a very good article on learning an instrument and frustration. You can view that here. I thought and still thing it is a great article.

But a thought occurred to me and I wanted to make sure i share it.

It is absolutely impossible to practice something over and over and not get better at it. So if you are finding that you can’t play something that you have been trying to play, take a break… wait 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day whatever you need to wait in order to re-relax.

Then try it again. Repeat as nessasary. You will learn it.

As I said in a previous post, for scale practice, I’m working on learning the box pattern.

After going back and forth a little bit with Kenski (The Fillmore Five Project), I think I understand what the “Box Pattern” is. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to try to explain it right now, as I don’t think I could write something that in depth — and its not even a complicated topic…

Anyway, I’ve been learning the Box Pattern as defined here: http://www.myguitarsolo.com/sc_box.htm

I’ve already got the Pentatonic scale down; no problems there but I needed to do some work on the Dorian scale as MyGuitarSolo.com has it defined. I think I have it down, but I created some TuxGuitar files to practice with (for rhythm and timing practice).

I’ve placed the TuxGuitar files for download below:

• A Pentatonic (Minor) TuxGuitar File
• A Dorian TuxGuitar File

The source, MyGuitarSolo.com, has the scales written out in a way to show you which notes on the fret board to play, they do not show an order or direction to play the notes in. The TuxGuitar files are my interpretation of what order to play the notes. (Of course, it doesn’t really matter what order you play the notes in and if you are not familar with what I’m talking about keep an eye out here — much more will be coming about this topic).

Below are images of the TuxGuitar files (click to enlarge):

A Pentatonic (Minor)

A Dorian

I ran through some scales on GuitarCardio.com this morning. I thought that I’d post the TuxGuitar files that I created while running through the scales.

The reason that I’m making the files for these (mostly) is timing. I need to improve my ability to play in time and for some reason, on scales I’m terrible at this. Though, just drilling these scales this morning, I think, have helped a lot.

Hopefully you can find these useful.

F Pentatonic Major (String-6)

C#/Db Pentatonic Minor (String-6)

C#/Db Pentatonic Major (String-6)

A#/Bb Pentatonic Major (6-String) (2 pluck)

As I said in one of my later posts, I’ve taken a new direction - a new focus if you will. I’ve been following along with the book “Mel Bay’s Modern Guitar Method Grade 1,” playing the pieces and learning things in the order the book suggests.

Currently, I’m practicing on the the E note, F note and G note on the first string and the B note, C note, D note on the second string. I’m playing a few pieces from the book trying to practice my accuracy as well as my ability to read music (which, to me, is one key in this new quest).

As I was playing the first couple of songs (if I can call them that) from the book, I wasn’t sure if they were sounding like the should. I know that I was following the metronome properly, but I wasn’t sure if I was always hitting the right note at the right time. When you are first learning, so much is going on that it can be hard to ensure it sounds right… How can you tell [if sounds right] when the music is on paper?!

I remembered that I have a tabbing / music notation software called TuxGuitar (The team recently released version 1.0) which will actually play what I tab out. Now, at first, this might seem kind of stupid, but I swear it is working — it is helping.

The computer will always hit the right note at the right time. It is almost liking playing with another guitarist, but one that will never come out of time or make a mistake. Basically, like it is politely correcting you. Furthermore, as I’m playing along with the software I can listen to the notes that are played, and I instantly know via comparison if I’ve just played the correct note or not. When I play the wrong note, I can stop and figure out what the correct note is and work through the mistake.

Below are a couple of the songs that I’ve been playing in the TuxGuitar 1.0 format. You can give it a try.

Frolic - TuxGuitar 1.0 File

E - B - TuxGuitar 1.0 File

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:

A little bit ago, I posted about the fact that I wanted to go in a new direction; and I have since started.  I got a lot of good recommendations from different people and I appreciate everything everyone suggested.

However, as it turns out I didn’t actually go with any of them… at least not yet. I may revisit other material. For now, I’ve got a book called “Mel Bay’s Modern Guitar Method Grade 1.” I started flipping through it, and decided that this is where I’d start. I have a bunch of books, but for some reason I thought that this one suited me the best for now.

From this book, I’m basically trying to do everything right… I’m going through the exercises, I’m playing everything against a metronome and I’m ensuring that I’m playing the correct notes… Furthermore, this book only presents the material in standard music notations… Reading standard music notation is something else that I wanted to get out of learning guitar; my guitar teacher a while back wasn’t able to help me with that.

I will be focusing on material in this book as well as scales and of course, my quest to nail Bm which has been an “issue” for a while. I can play it better, but still can’t change to it quickly enough (for me).

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.

I’ve decide to take “learning” guitar in a different direction. I’ve been thinking about my previous post and decided that I want to focus a bit more on the basics of reading music and playing sheet music. While learning to play music like Staind, Cold, Tool, etc. is what I ultimately strive for, I think that I will only get there if I build a good base by starting with basic sheet music.

Given this I was hoping to get recommendation on different books that cover introducing playing guitar.  I don’t want something too simple but not too hard either. After all, I need to rebuild my hands up as it has been a while since I was playing.

Currently, I’ve got a couple of books including “Guitar for Dummies”, a book titled something like “Guitar for Beginners: The Fender Method” and a Mel Brooks [??] book.  But there are a lot of different books out there, all with a different method of doing things.

If you used one and would like to recommend it, please post it’s title (and if possible author) below. I would greatly appreciate it and it would be interesting to hear what people have tried. Likewise, if you tried to use a book and it didn’t help you or it was frustrating to read/utilize please post that too. What is bad is just as important as what is good.

Thank you

It is not new news to the Internet that America’s obesity rates are high — from what I understand, they are higher then most (dare I say, all?) other countries.

There is one “tip” that I’ve heard time and time again to loose weight and get fit is to not find a “close” parking spot. Instead park in the back of the parking lot where there is a ton of open space and plenty of room. From there, you hoof it to the building. I’ve read many different estimates but the experts say that doing this consistently for every where you go — for every trip will result in consistent exercise and also weight lost (eventually).

I look at this tip in this way: Don’t take shortcuts. Just park your car in the parking lot and from there walk to where you need to go. In the cities, you don’t necessarily get to drive directly to where you need to be! And people in the downtown cities who walk every tend to be healthier*.

I think that this logic can be applied to almost anything. It can be applied to learning guitar and it can be applied to your professional life or to something as simple as your house work.

How might you apply this logic in your guitar practice routine(s)?

Also, have you seen shortcut type solutions to learning guitar?

*=My assumetion. No research or other article supports this in anyway. In fact, I could be wrong but don’t tell anyone.