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.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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 »

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’ve been looking at the details of the Dorian Scale (also known as the Dorian Mode) because I’m trying to go through the Box Pattern.

I found this video that I thought was interesting and wanted to share. While it isn’t specific to the box pattern, it is related to it. This is something I will need to come back to later (if only for the information on improvising)

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 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.

This will be a quick post, but a post none-the-less….

IG Blog was actually the first Guitar blog I started to follow… It is actually the inspiration for this blog… On IG Blog, quite a while back I found a series that IG posted about the CAGED chord system; I’ve been meaning to go through the system for quite some time but every-time was deterred by something else in my pursuit of the guitar.

Anyway, I’ve finally “forced” myself to start going through it. So far, I’ve gone through the first and second “pages” and am, thus far, very happy with it. The information on these pages are very valuable to any level of player.

http://igblog.wordpress.com/2007/04/02/a-good-approach-to-guitar-chords/

http://igblog.wordpress.com/2007/04/10/a-good-approach-to-guitar-chords-part-ii-caged/

Back when I was working with an instructor, he tired to convey this information but unfortunately, wasn’t too good at it.  I want to encourage any beginner or intermediate guitar player looking for solid information on Chords and theory to at least check out these articles that IG posted. I will continue the series either tonight or throughout the rest of the week. Expect more posts on this topic…

It’ll probably take me at least a few months before I’ve got everything pat…

I wonder if IG has posted anything on the Pentatonic Boxes?…