Basic Theory?

Karl Hungus

Could someone recommend a site for me that would cover some basic theory at all? I've searched, but the sites I've come across seem to be fairly over my head most of the time.

OLP

Karl Hungus wrote:

Could someone recommend a site for me that would cover some basic theory at all? I've searched, but the sites I've come across seem to be fairly over my head most of the time.

http://wholenote.com/ go to basics section. Thats a pretty good site, I use the bass counter part and think it's great.

Giblet

Seconding Wholenote, I've been a member for years, although it's not as popular as it used to be.

pbsuxok1znja4r

Ultimate-guitar.com has some good columns and some knowledgeable mods in the musician talk forum. Check out my "CAGED system" improv lesson, it might be some help. Forums are your best bet though.

disgruntled

There's some good explanations of basic music theory here

ibreathemusic.com is very good too.

bluto63

Ultimate-Guitar is pretty good, and it has a few arcticles on learning different styles of music too. Not just blues and jazz, but funk, metal etc...

Good for coming up with the style that you want to play once you get the basic knowledge behind you

Giblet

Also, try find examples of songs which use certain modes and scales and jam over them.

For example when learning all the positions of the Aeolian mode in C I played along with Tea for One by Led Zep (C harmonic minor aswell). That's a real jam song anyway, but you can find all the postitions quickly in wholenote and just keep changing around and figuring out the best fingerings and stuff. I learnt a lot of modes and scales that way and the proper context for them.

Also try work out chords to jam along with by finding the 1st 3rd 5th and 7th notes of the scale, that's very basic but with that you can find which other chords compliment it.

token

Even tho i pretty much suck at improvising thats what i do aswell. Youll learn a scale far quicker if you practise playing it over a song. Take a song in any key, for arguments sake lets say Am, now start off in the first position of the pentatonic scale, start branching out to the other positions so you cover the whole neck, then start filling in the notes missing out of the minor pent from the minor scale.

It doesnt take very long to learn the pentatonic scale over the neck and only another while to fill in the missing notes. So i always think of pentatonic positions when moving around the neck, cos its really easy to remember the other positions of it on the neck. So you can start off at the 5ft fret, then jump up to the 12th fret, then when your at the 12th the 2 missing notes out of the minor scale pop into your head while your at that position and so on.

After awhile of that you get a good feel for a scale all over the neck in that key and the more you do it the less logical you will begin to think about it. Although that hasnt happend me yet

Giblet

*sniff* how they do grow up.