Nice Music Theory Site

Found a site with nice descriptive informaiton on note/chord theory for the guitar.

http://www.zentao.com/guitar/theory/

Apologies if it's a repost.

That's a great find. Much of it is exactly the kind of thing I worked on and still see the guitar as. It's great that he encourages the theory to be "played" and heard as this is the only way that this stuff makes practical sense...it's not enough to read it!

I read the last three chapters...

the modes thing was well done and takes it to where it needs to go, not where most people stop that leaves people confused.

FINGERBOARD ORGANIZATION - Organizing the fretboard based on triads, 7th chords, pentatonic scales and modes. This also was well done and the pentatonic thing very good introducing a couple of "exotic" types as well and a dominant version (maj pentatonic with a b7) that should open up a lot of doors for some. The use of the triad as a basic building block is sage advice and relating progressions to scales and modes and such with practical exercises to work them out and understand progressions is not something you see that often, and well worth it.

The Melodic Sequences thing is really cool. They appear to be lifted from the book I used (Leon White; Modern Improvising) pretty much, but this kind of thing really helped and frustrated me back then. However, you will recognize this stuff as the kind of thing that most instrumentalists will have to practice ad infinitum.

The only thing there I think that might be worth mentioning is that he includes TAB as well as the notation and this can be limiting and misleading. White's book was all in standard notation and the fingering had to be worked out. I spent ages trying to play some of the trickier ones "in position" with a scale pattern (you should apply these to every scale in every key, every position...it will take a lifetime) and this is a good exercise and the TAB kind of indicates that.

What I found after a while is that some of the 'finger twisting patterns' are so much easier if they are played along the neck rather than across it. This was an important 'discovery' for my playing in a lot of areas. It showed me that there are more ways to skin a cat for one and that playing in position, from boxes, is often harder. The result was that the entire fretboard opened up and I started to see things as intervals either across or along the fretboard and all the "patterns" and "boxes" merged into one and opened up the whole board for me.

I was just thinking yesterday that I really should revisit these exercises. The reason that these things are so "powerful" and practiced so much by other instrument players, is that these sequences or parts of them appear everywhere in all melodies and after playing them for a bit, and reading them, you will start to instantly recognize them by ear and sight (if you are a reader) and your practice regime will have them under your fingers without thinking. The reverse is also true, when you are improvising, if you "hear" (with your inner ear) a sequence of notes, you will be able to know what the intervals or patterns of intervals are and how to play them...again without "thinking".

So...kudos there for putting these patterns out there, and for putting them in a way like Leon White did for me, that initially I found frustrating, by just giving you enough to start you off and forcing you to work them out for yourself.

...

Anyway...good find and well written in a succinct way but that takes these concepts at least to the conclusion that others very often miss out. Lots of people give modes as simple patterns, or how to get them...major scale on different roots....but this is not what these things are about. His advice is great, but you really need to play the material and not just read it. A lot of people compare a mode for instance to the major scale that they derived it from (which are the same notes from a different root) and this makes things worse in most cases...here the mode is compared to the major scale on the same root giving you a much better comparison.

Nice find...I hope that he can add still further to the material...now I have a place to go to to work on my sequences...hahaha

Thanks for posting that. Just skimmed through it and it looks like exactly what I need. I'll be spending some time there.

The Forum there is also pretty good............

Found a site with nice descriptive informaiton on note/chord theory for the guitar.

http://www.zentao.com/guitar/theory/

Apologies if it's a repost.

Great site, Agave Blue!! I've passed it on to colleagues, students and friends.
Thank you for sharing!:grin:

Ed N