Hello, I am basically self-taught and I can’t read music. I have tried on several occations to read ( BUT I SUCK!) . Actually I am slightly dyslexic and reading involves the left brain reading the paper and the right brain playing the notes and somewhere in-between it gets all messed up for me. When I started playing guitar solos I was into the rock and blues thing and I learned most of the standard blues and rock licks and I would pull those things out of my bag of tricks when I was soloing. Then the jazz fusion wave hit with John McLaughlin , Chic Corea, Tony Williams, Jeff Beck, Jan Hammer, David Sancious, Jon-Luc Ponte and others and it turned my music down a new path. When I started learning this type of music it was very difficult and I learned it all by ear, one note at a time. Then one day it hit me “Scales” I started to see patterns. This let me to figuring out scales and patterns. I would draw a picture of the guitar neck and the add the dots. This led me to finding the 7 string pattern that goes round and round. From this I wrote out the seven patterns and learned them by playing them over and over. Now there are a lot more things to learn besides the seven patterns and we will get into that later. But the 7 patterns are a good starting point! |
I will show you a pattern and give you several mp3s on how to use them. I will then create a short backing track with me playing notes from the pattern and I will supply the backing track for you to practice over. |
– – – – – – – – Pattern 1 |
Here you will see that your middle finger on the low e string is the minor key and your baby finger on the high e string is the major key. I tend to think in minor keys. By sliding this pattern up and down the neck you can use this pattern for all 12 keys. |