THE
ULTIMATE
Rod Fogg
C OUR SE
ZERO TO
HERO
IN A
Guitar
On the CD 4 Introduction 5
Section One: Getting Started 6
Getting in tune; sitting and standing; which hand goes where 6
Ex 1 The open strings; notation; tablature; barlines; pulse; time signatures; 4/4 time 7
Ex 2 Open-string picking; half notes, quarter notes, and eighth notes; upstrokes and downstrokes; tempo and beats per minute 8
Ex 3 Notes on top two strings; numbering fret hand fingers and left-hand technique; introducing sharps 10
Ex 4 Picking strings one and two; introducing dotted half notes; sharps last for the whole bar 12
Ex 5 Blues on the E and B-strings; ties; double stops; the 12-bar blues, three choruses on the backing track; downstrokes on downbeats, upstrokes on upbeats 14
Ex 6 String crossing, top three strings; “Let ring…” and “…sim” 16
Ex 7 Notes on the G-string; sharps and flats; whole steps and half steps 18
Ex 8 Note values and rests 19
Ex 9 Blues on the top three strings with rests 20
Ex 10 G chromatic scale 22
Ex 11 Octaves; playing two strings simultaneously 23
Ex 12 Melody for first position notes, top three strings; playing “in position” 24
Ex 13 ‘Shadow Walk’ and all the notes so far 26
Section Two: The Lower Strings 28
Ex 14 The D, A, and E-strings; staccato signs; muting open strings 28
Ex 15 Notes on the D-string; working out notes beyond the fourth fret 30
Ex 16 Swamp-rock on the D, G, and B-strings; lead-in bars; repeat signs and first- and second-time bars; the tremolo effect 30
Ex 17 Double stops on D and G-strings; downbeats, upbeats, and syncopation 32
Ex 18 A-string notes 34
Ex 19 Surfing on the A-string; riffs, music in a key, playing in the second position 34
Ex 20 Notes on the E-string; double octaves 36
Ex 21 ‘E-string Boogie’; sharps and naturals; ties; alternate picking 36
Ex 22 ‘Rock’n’roll Rifferama’; key signatures 38 A division of Book Sales, Inc.
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EDITOR John Morrish DESIGN Paul Cooper
ISBN-13: 978-1-937994-33-4 Printed in China 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 www.racepointpub.com
CONTENTS
Digital edition: 978-1-62788-199-9 Softcover edition: 978-1-93799-433-4Section Three: Two Essential Scales 40 Ex 23 E minor pentatonic 40
Ex 24 E blues scale 41
Ex 25 Notes to the fifth fret and fifth-fret tuning 42
Ex 26 E blues scale solo; phrasing 44
Ex 27 Blues on the bass strings 46
Ex 28 E blues scale solo version two; motifs 47
Ex 29 ‘John Lee,’ E minor pentatonic Q & A; the metronome 48
Section Four: Blues Rhythm 50 Ex 30 Vamp on E5 and E6 50
Ex 31 E vamp with muting; E major key signature 52
Ex 32 Vamp on A with muting; A major key signature 53
Ex 33 Blues rhythm in E; the 12-bar sequence 54
Ex 34 Vamp on D with muting 56
Ex 35 12-bar vamp on A, straight feel 56
Ex 36 12-bar vamp on A, swing/shuffle feel 58
Section Five: The Theory Pages 60
1. Major scales 60
Ex 37 C major scale 60
Ex 38 G major scale 61
Ex 39 Key signatures and major scales for sharp keys 62
Ex 40 Key signatures and major scales for flat keys 63
2. Intervals 64
Ex 41 Intervals in the major scale 64
Ex 42 Intervals outside the major scale 64
3. Chord building 1, triads 66
Major, minor, augmented, and diminished triads 66
4. Chord building 2, chords in a key 68
Ex 43 C major in triads 68
Section Six: Chords 70
Ex 44 E major chord; strumming 70
Ex 45 E and A majors moving; chord grids 71
Ex 46 A, D, and E; naming chords 72
Ex 47 A, D, and E strumming; accent symbol 74
Ex 48 C and G strumming; shifting between chords 76
Ex 49 ‘Minor Mishap’; Am, Dm, and Em 78
Ex 50 ‘Low Strum, High Strum’; G, Em, C, D, Dsus 80
Ex 51 ‘Low Strum, High Strum’ with bassline 82
Section Seven: Seventh Chords 92 Ex 56 Eight open-string seventh chords 92
Ex 57 Rhythm part to Exercise 2; Em, G, C, B7 94
Ex 58 ‘Groovin’ Sevenths’; counting 16th notes 96
Ex 59 Surf-style rhythm; using most of the chords 98
Ex 60 Four minor seventh chords and Am7-D7 groove 100
Ex 61 Major seventh chords: Gmaj7 and Cmaj7 102
Ex 62 A, Amaj7, D, Dmaj7 rock style 104
Section Eight: Arpeggios And Chords With Added Notes 106 Ex 63 Sweep or alternate picking arpeggios 106
Ex 64 Arpeggios and pedal notes 108
Ex 65 Slash chord arpeggios; pull-offs and slides 110
Ex 66 Slash chords, rhythm part 112
Ex 67 Low arpeggios 114
Ex 68 Extended chords and added-note chord sequences; noting down chords 117
Section Nine: Bar Chords And Movable Chords 118 Ex 69 Two-note and three-note five chords 118
Ex 70 Bar chords and added notes; dynamic signs 120
Ex 71 G blues with movable chords 122
Ex 72 ‘Jimmy or Jimi?’ rhythm track; learning the lower two strings 124
Section Ten: Back To Soloing 126
Ex 73 G minor pentatonic, shape one, two octave 126
Ex 74 G blues scale, shape one, two octave 127
Ex 75 Solo on shape one with vibrato 128
Ex 76 G minor pentatonic, shapes two and three 130
Ex 77 G blues scale, shapes two and three 131
Ex 78 G blues solo, shapes one, two, and three; bends 132
Ex 79 G minor pentatonic, shapes four and five 134
Ex 80 G blues scale, shapes four and five 135
Ex 81 G blues scale solo, using all five shapes 136
Ex 82 Major pentatonic scale explained 136
Ex 83 G major pentatonic solo 138
Ex 84 ‘Jimmy or Jimi?’, rock guitar solo 140
Ex 85 Am-D7 groove with solo 142
Complete notes of the guitar 144 Spellings of common chords 144
CD01 Ex 1 The open strings and tuning notes. CD02 Ex 2 Open-string picking.
CD03 Ex 2 Open-string picking, backing track. (Also backing track for Ex 6, and Ex 12: see Ex 57 for the notation and tab.) CD04 Ex 4 Picking strings one and two, E and B-strings, lead. CD05 Ex 4 Picking strings one and two, backing track. CD06 Ex 5 Blues on the E and B-strings.
CD07 Ex 5 E blues backing track, three choruses. (Also backing track for Exercises 9, 28, 29, 30 ; see Ex 33 for the notation and tab.)
CD08 Ex 6 String crossing, top three strings. (Backing track CD03.) CD09 Ex 9 Blues tune on top three strings. (Backing track CD07.) CD10 Ex 10 G chromatic scale.
CD11 Ex 11 Octaves G – D – A.
CD12 Ex 12 Melody for first position notes, top three strings. (Backing track CD03.)
CD13 Ex 13 ‘Shadow Walk’: all the notes so far. CD14 Ex 13 ‘Shadow Walk’: backing track. CD15 Ex 14 The lowest three strings, D, A, and E,
CD16 Ex 14 The lowest three strings, backing track: also Ex 46. CD17 Ex 16 Swamp-rock on the D-string.
CD18 Ex 16 Swamp-rock on the D-string, backing track. CD19 Ex 17 Double stops on the G and D-strings
CD20 Ex 17 Double stops on the G and D-strings, backing track. CD21 Ex 19 Surfing on the A-string.
CD22 Ex 19 Surfing on the A-string, backing track. CD23 Ex 21 E-string boogie.
CD24 Ex 21 E-string boogie, backing track. CD25 Ex 22 ‘Rock’n’roll Rifferama’ on A. CD26 Ex 23 E minor pentatonic. CD27 Ex 24 E blues scale, shape one.
CD28 Ex 26 E blues scale, solo. (Backing track CD07.) CD29 Ex 27 E blues scale, solo on bass strings.
(Backing track CD07.)
CD30 Ex 28 E blues scale solo, version two. (Backing track CD07.) CD31 Ex 29 ‘John Lee,’ E minor pentatonic, question and answer. CD32 Ex 30 Blues vamp on E.
CD33 Ex 31 Blues vamp on E, with muting.
CD34 Ex 32 Blues vamp on A, with muting. (For Ex 33 see CD07.) CD35 Ex 34 Blues vamp on D, with muting.
CD36 Ex 35 Straight 12-bar in A, muted. CD37 Ex 36 Swing 12-bar in A, muted. CD38 Ex 37 C major scale.
CD39 Ex 38 G major scale.
CD40 Ex 41 Intervals in the C major scale. CD41 Ex 42 Intervals outside the C major scale. CD42 Ex 43 C major in triads.
CD43 Ex 44 E major chord, strumming. CD44 Ex 45 E and A majors, moving. CD45 Ex 47 A, D, and E, with accents. CD46 Ex 48 C and G, strumming. CD47 Ex 49 Am, Dm, Em: ‘Minor Mishap.’ CD48 Ex 50 ‘Low Strum, High Strum.’
CD49 Ex 51 ‘Low Strum, High Strum,’ with bassline. CD50 Ex 52 All the majors, plus Dsus4.
CD51 Ex 53 Major chords with bassline and dynamics. CD52 Ex 54 C and G with root and fifth bassline. CD53 Ex 55 C and G with hammer-on bassline. CD54 Ex 58 ‘Groovin’ Sevenths.’
CD55 Ex 60 Am7 D7 groove. CD56 Ex 61 Gmaj7, Cmaj7, Am7, D7. CD57 Ex 62 A, Amaj7, D, Dmaj7, rock style. CD58 Ex 63 Sweep or alternate picking arpeggios. CD59 Ex 64 Arpeggios and pedal notes.
CD60 Ex 65 Slash chord arpeggios: pull-offs and slides. (Backing track CD61.)
CD61 Ex 66 Slash chords, rhythm part CD62 Ex 68 Added-note chord sequences. CD63 Ex 69 Two-note and three-note 5 chords. CD64 Ex 70 Bar chords and added notes.
CD65 Ex 71 G blues with movable chords: three choruses. (Backing track for Ex 75, Ex 78, Ex 81.) CD66 Ex 72 ‘Jimmy or Jimi?’ rhythm track. CD67 Ex 73 G minor pentatonic, shape one. CD68 Ex 74 Blues scale, shape one in G.
CD69 Ex 75 Solo on shape one in G, including slides and vibrato. CD70 Ex 76 G minor pentatonic, shapes two and three.
CD71 Ex 77 G blues scale, shapes two and three. CD72 Ex 78 Solo with shapes one, two, and three:
introducing bends.
CD73 Ex 79 G minor pentatonic, shapes four and five. CD74 Ex 80 G blues scale, shapes four and five.
CD75 Ex 81 G blues solo, all five shapes. (Backing track CD65.) CD76 Ex 83 G major pentatonic solo. (Backing track CD48.) CD77 Ex 84 ‘Jimmy or Jimi?’ solo. (Backing track CD66.) CD78 Ex 85 Am-D7 groove, with solo (Backing track CD55.)
ON THE CD
INTRODUCTION
The Ultimate Guitar Course gets you playing in your very first lesson and takes
you on a step-by-step journey through to advanced soloing techniques. We
begin at the very beginning, assuming no prior knowledge. The exercises
progress smoothly so that both beginners and more experienced players can
soon find their level and start to make satisfying progress. Each exercise builds
on what has gone before, presenting new material in a sensible and
systematic way and including all the necessary information for complete
understanding. Also, the music is fun and sounds like the real thing—the sort
of music a guitar player would actually want to play.
Some guitar books begin with pages and pages of music theory before you
get to play a note. That is not what happens here. Music theory is important,
but in this book it is introduced step-by-step, where it is needed and where it is
most useful. Explanations are detailed and thorough and, most of all, the
course is extremely practical. Advice is included on left- and right-hand
technique and there are also explanations of how to achieve the sounds you
hear on the CD. With chord and scale diagrams, notation, tablature, and
pictures, you will find the book visually stimulating and musically inspiring.
Now let’s get playing!
Rod Fogg
London 2013
SECTION ONE
GETTING STARTED
Getting in tune
Before playing any music, the most important thing is to get your guitar in tune. Track 1 on the CD will give you notes you can tune to, but it is far easier to use a modern electronic tuner. Some you plug your electric guitar into, or you can use the sort that clips to the headstock of the instrument and picks up its vibrations. Or, if you have a smartphone, you can probably download a free guitar tuner app; I have one on my Android phone and I use it all the time.
With the guitar plugged in, turn your tuner on and play each string, one at a time. Make adjustments at the tuning peg (follow the string back to the peg to make sure you are turning the right one) until the tuner indicates that the pitch is correct, usually with a needle pointing to the centre or with a display that changes color. Check that the tuner displays the letter name of the string you are tuning; if the guitar is new the strings may well be below their correct pitch and need several turns before they are in tune. If you begin to get erratic readings from your tuner, it may be that the battery needs changing.
Sitting, standing, and which hand goes where
Most performing on the electric guitar is done standing up, but to put in the hours necessary to achieve guitar-god status it will probably be best to practice sitting down. In either case it is best for your hands if you keep the guitar neck pointing upwards; somewhere around 45 degrees is best. Whatever you do, don’t let it drop below horizontal. You will need a guitar strap that can be adjusted to the correct length. Imagine that the weight of the guitar is being carried by the whole of your back, rather than just your shoulder.
For most guitarists, the left hand holds down the strings on the fingerboard and the right hand plays the strings down near the bridge with a pick. Left-handed people often opt to do this the opposite way around, using a purpose-built or converted left-handed guitar. But there is no reason why any one hand should be better at fretting than picking, so if you are a left-handed beginner you might as well learn to play right-handed. The advantage is that when you go to your local guitar store you will find plenty of right-handed guitars, but very few left-handed instruments. Also, if you need to borrow a guitar at a friend’s house or a jam session, and you’ve learned to play left-handed, you’ll
On the left is a tuner with a jack for you to plug your guitar into. It also has a built-in microphone. The string is recognized
automatically, and the guitar is in tune when the green light in the center is lit, or when the electronic needle points directly upwards.
On the right is a clip-on tuner that senses the vibration of the guitar strings. The display changes color when the guitar is in tune. Follow the string you are picking back up the neck and across the nut (the block of bone or plastic that keeps the strings in position) to make sure you are turning the right tuning peg.
To avoid confusion, throughout this book we will refer to the hand holding down the strings as the “fret hand,” and the hand doing the strumming and picking as the “pick hand.” As you’ve probably gathered, the exercises are intended for electric guitar played with a pick, but most of them will convert quite readily to a steel-string acoustic or maybe even to a nylon-string guitar. If you don’t want to use a pick, you can try using the thumb and fingers of the picking hand to pluck the strings: this is known as “fingerstyle.” Some of the exercises, particularly in the later stages of the book, are intended to be played this way. Study the two pictures below and get used to holding the pick in this way, balanced lightly between thumb and index finger. Then listen to CD track 01 and take a look at Exercise 1.
Exercise 1: The open strings, staves, tablature, and pulse
We write music on a stave. The top stave in Exercise 1 has five lines and is for standard musical notation, which is not unique to guitar, but can be read and played by other musicians such as violinists or pianists. The bottom stave has six lines and is for a system unique to fretted instruments, known as tablature or “tab.” Each line represents a string and numbers are used to indicate which frets to play. The lowest line is your lowest sounding string and the top line is your highest sounding string. In this case the zeros represent the open strings: the sounds the guitar produces without any help from the fret hand. So the object of the exercise is to play all the open strings starting with the lowest sounding and ending with the highest sounding. Just let the pick fall gently from one string to the next with a relaxed downward movement of your picking hand. We call this a downstroke—not difficult, but we’ve got to start somewhere.
If you take a closer look at the notation stave, you will see that notes can be written on the
Above left: A good strap is essential. One that doesn’t slide around is best. Above right: A strap can still be useful to keep the guitar up at the best angle even when sitting down to play.
Below left: The pick is held against the thumb by the index finger and points directly at the strings.
Below right: If you get it right, the thumb will be pointing along the strings and the index finger pointing at the guitar.
T H E O R Y
Musical sounds are named after the first seven letters of the alphabet: A B C D E F G. There are more than seven notes on the guitar,
The music is divided up by vertical lines every four beats; these are known as bar lines. There are six bars in this piece of music and, as in most rock music, there are four beats to a bar. (Sometimes a bar is also called a “measure” but we’re sticking to bar in this book.) At the start of the piece there is this sign: 4/4. We call that a time signature. The top number tells us how many beats there are in the bar, and the bottom number tells us they are quarter notes; so that means four quarter notes to a bar in this exercise.
The clicks in the background introduce the idea of “pulse,” the steady background beats that underlie virtually all music.
Exercise 2: Half notes, quarter notes, and eighth notes
In Exercise 2 we are working on developing some faster movements with the pick. Listen to CD track 02 and check out the music on the page opposite.
In the notation stave the first four bars introduce a new kind of note—the half note. Each one of these lasts for two beats, so counting four beats to a bar we would play on beats one and three. Can you figure out which note you have to play? The zeros on the top line of the tab stave and the notes in the top space of the notation stave tell you to play the open high E-string.
Now let’s take a look at the next four bars. These
also introduce another new kind of note, the quarter note. There are four of these in every bar, one on each beat. This time we are starting to move across the guitar, using the B-string and the G-string. All these notes should be played with the pick, using downstrokes. You can see the sign we use for a downstroke in between the staves in the first bar of the exercise.
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0 0 0 0 0 0PRO TIP
Low and high: In music, terms like low and high always refer to
the pitch of the music, so the “low” end of the guitar is near the nut on
the first few frets, where the lowest notes are found. If you read “go up
one fret” it means go one fret higher in pitch. This would mean moving
your hand one fret nearer the bridge and therefore nearer the floor. You
might have noticed that we have two E-strings. The high E-string is the
highest sounding one, nearest the floor, and the low E-string is the lowest
sounding one, nearest the ceiling. Just remember that low and high
always refer to the pitch of the note.
T H E O R Y
At the start of the exercise you will see
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Beamed eighth notes Upstroke sign
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0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0EXERCISE 2CD TRACK 02 / BACKING TRACK 03
S O U N D S
Both the rhythm and lead parts on this track were played using the middle pick-up on a Strat through a Fender Deluxe Reverb amp.
Moving on to bars nine through 12, each bar contains two quarter notes followed by four of another new kind of note; these are known as eighth notes.
When more than one appears together, they are grouped (“beamed”) by joining their tails together. There are two eighth notes to a beat (that would be eight to a bar), so we tend to count them by saying “and” in between each beat, like this:
“One-and two-and three-and four-and”
So the count for these four bars would go:
CD 02/
Exercise 3: Notes on the E-string and B-string
In Exercise 3 we start using the fingers of the fret hand. There is no CD track with this exercise, because the idea is simply to get comfortable using the fret-hand fingers to hold down the notes on the E-string, and then the B-string, at the first four frets.
On the guitar, the fret-hand fingers are numbered from 1 to 4, starting with the index finger as 1 and ending with the pinky as number 4. Place your fingers, one at each fret, copying the picture below. If you have particularly small hands, you could try using fingers 1, 2, and 4 on the first three frets, and not worry too much about the note at the fourth fret just now. This will avoid the stretch and help to keep your hand parallel to the edge of the fingerboard, something all guitarists should aim for. Each finger should be as close to the fret as possible without being on top of it. If your fingers are close to the frets you won’t have to squeeze so tightly and you will be less likely to get fret buzz, where the string rattles against the fret instead of sounding cleanly. Aim to use the tips of your fingers.
The thumb goes at the back of the neck, opposing the fingers in a relaxed position opposite the first finger or between the first and second fingers. Check out the picture above. Don’t get into the habit of hooking the thumb over the top edge of the neck, and don’t press any harder than you need to.
T H E O R Y
The sharp sign (#) simply means “go one fret higher,” so F-sharp is one fret higher than F, and C-sharp is one fret higher than C. There is no sharp between B and C or between E and F, as you will see if you look at a piano keyboard (p19).
T E C H N I Q U E
There is no need to lift your first finger off the first fret when you add your second finger at the second fret. In fact, it is generally recognized as good technique to keep your fingers down when playing successive notes on the same string, so you should end up with all four fingers down on the E-string before releasing them to place them one at a time on the B-string. With your pick hand you should be playing downstrokes, smoothly and in a steady rhythm.
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0 1 2 3 4 E B G D A E 3 5 7 9 12 15 F F# G G# C C# D D#EXERCISE 3 NOTES ON THE E-STRING AND B-STRING
A fingerboard diagram showing the notes on the first four frets of the E-string and B-string.
Exercise 4: Picking on strings one and two
Exercise 4 is a straightforward study in coordinating the placing of the fret-hand fingers with downstrokes from the pick, this time with a backing track. Remember that when the music is moving slowly, and the quarter note is the fastest note, we tend to stick to using downstrokes. The fret hand plays the notes we learnt in Exercise 3, but keeping to the first three frets to avoid any problems with stretching at this early stage.
In bars three, seven, and 15 we have the note F-sharp played twice. Notice that in the notation stave we only need to put a sharp sign in front of the first F. The sharp affects any notes of that pitch for the entire bar.
There is one new rhythmic value: the dotted half note. Putting a dot after any note adds half its value. So if we put a dot after a half note, which is worth two beats, it will now be worth three beats. Most of the bars of this exercise use this note value—there is a quarter note on beat one followed by a dotted half note on beat two, which rings on through beats three and four. Check out the CD track and when you’re ready play along with the backing track.
With the new dotted half note we now have rhythm signs for four beats, three beats, two beats, one beat, and half a beat.
T H E O R Y
Notice that there is no rhythmic information in the tab stave. It is possible to write rhythms on the tab stave, but when there is a notation stave (often referred to as “dots” by musicians) tab rhythms are normally omitted to avoid unnecessary duplication. So you can read your rhythms from the “dots” and read your notes from the tab—or better still read the whole thing just using the notation stave. A common approach for guitar players who cannot learn to read music, or do not want to, is to learn the music “by ear” from the CD track and then use the tablature to guide their fingers to the correct notes.
S O U N D S
The lead part on this track was played on a Fender Telecaster using the bridge pickup through a Roland Jazz Chorus amp. This amp has a built in chorus effect which is used to provide movement to the otherwise static long notes in the exercise.
CD 04/
q=80 Spooky rock
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Exercise 5: Blues on the E-string and B-string
Exercise 5 uses the same set of notes as Exercise 4, but gets things moving a little more quickly with a faster tempo and lots of consecutive notes on each of the top two strings. Don’t be tempted to play all the notes with finger 1, or to use only fingers 1 and 2. It is best to stick to one finger per fret; so use your first finger at the first fret, second finger at the second fret and so on. Keep the fingers close to the guitar and make small movements. If the fingers feel stiff at first it is simply that they are not used to moving on their own. Work on it, and they’ll get better.
Remember, in bars five and six the fourth note is F-sharp, because the sharp sign in front of the second note affects every F in the bar.
The exercise is 12 bars long, after which there is a double bar line; these are often used to mark out sections in a piece of music. Then there is one more bar to bring the music to a close, in which you have to play two notes at once. Just use a downstroke. Two notes played at once are sometimes called a “double stop”—a term we have borrowed from classical instruments like the violin. We also sometimes call them a “diad.”
This exercise uses a form known as a 12-bar blues; it’s blues in style, and it’s 12 bars long. The form is commonly found in blues, rhythm and blues, rock’n’roll, and classic rock. When guitarists jam together they often use a 12-bar blues, taking it in turns to solo or play rhythm. Each time through the 12-bar is known as a chorus. We’ll be learning some ways to play the rhythm track in Section Four. On the backing track (CD track 07), there are three choruses, so you can play the piece three times if you wish. We’ll come back to this track in the future and use it to practice blues and rock soloing.
T H E O R Y
There’s one new element in the notation stave—the curved line that joins together two notes of the same pitch in bars four, eight, and twelve. It’s called a tie, and makes the two notes into one long note. It is a way of writing a note longer than one bar or, as in this example, lengthening a note beyond the bar line.
T E C H N I Q U E
In bars three and nine there are pick directions. Notes on the downbeats are played with downstrokes, notes on the upbeats—the “and” that falls between the four beats of the bar—are played with an upstroke. We’ve already met this basic principle for guitar picking and we will stick to it for most of the book.
CD 06/
q= 110 Medium blues
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CD 06/
Exercise 6: String crossing, top three strings
Playing repeated notes on the same string, as in Exercises 4 and 5, is easier than moving backwards and forwards from one string to another. Exercise 6—string crossing—is intended to get you working on moving the pick back and forth between adjacent strings while also adding fretted notes with the fingers. We will be using the open G-string and the note A on its second fret, as well as the top two strings from Exercises 4 and 5. The backing track is CD track 03, the same as for Exercise 2.
At the beginning you can see the instruction “Let ring…” It is easy to let the notes ring on when you are playing open strings, but once you begin to use your fingers to fret the notes it is important to get them on their tips so that you don’t accidentally touch a string that’s meant to be still sounding. You have to hold the string down through the whole bar as well. The sign …sim means “in the same way”—so carry on letting notes ring over each other for the whole piece. Aim for the same effect that you hear on the CD track.
Keep your fingers on their tips so you don’t touch the open strings when they’re meant to be ringing on.
CD 08/
q=85 Rock
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1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 2 3CD 08/
03
Exercise 7: Notes on the G-string
Exercise 6 is about learning the names of the notes on the first four frets of the G-string. We have seen that that a sharp sign (#) means “go one fret higher.” In music we also have a flat sign (b), which means “go one fret lower.” So G-sharp is the same note as A-flat, and A-sharp is the same note as B-flat. In this exercise we’ve used both names side by side. When they appear during the course of a piece of music, sharps and flats are known as “accidentals.”
We have seen that a sharp or flat last for the whole bar, so we also need a natural sign (§), which cancels a sharp or flat. One of these will crop up in a later exercise, but you can see some here, before the second-fret A and the fourth-fret B.
If we take a look back at Exercise 3, the F-sharp on the second fret of the E-string could have been written as G-flat and the C-sharp on the second fret of the B-string could have been called D-flat. When we start learning about keys and key signatures we will discover that there are certain times when it is correct to use a sharp and certain times when it is correct to use a flat. In the meantime get used to the idea that some notes have two names. One other thing to get used to is that almost every note on the guitar is available in more than one place. In this exercise we can see that the note B on the fourth fret of the G-string is the same note as the open second string we have been using in Exercises 4, 5, and 6.
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third fret
fourth fret
B
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Keep the fret-hand fingers curved, close to the frets and on their tips.
Exercise 8: Notes and rests
Some of the funkiest rhythms and grooves work because of the silences that separate the notes. So when it comes to rhythm, a silence is as important as a note and in music we need a way to write a silence. In Exercise 8 we have all the note values we have come across so far, from eighth notes lasting half a beat to whole notes lasting four beats, with the sign for their equivalent rest written underneath. A rest is the technical name for a silence in music.
On the guitar, it is important to play the rests—that means making sure you have released a fretted note or silenced an open string so that we hear a silence and not an unwanted note ringing on. More on this in the next exercise.
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Eighth note:
half beat
Quarter note:
one beat
Half note:
two beats
Dotted half note:
three beats
Whole note:
four beats
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Sharps and flats and the keyboard
For historical reasons we think of the musical alphabet as starting on the note C. The distance from C in this diagram of a keyboard to the next appearance of the note C is known as an octave. The black notes on a keyboard are the sharps and flats. As we mentioned before, there is no black note (sharp or flat) between B and C or E and F. The distance from C to C-sharp (or D-flat) is known as a half step and is the same as one fret on the guitar. The distance from C to D is known as a whole step and is two frets on the guitar.
D# F# G# A# Bb Ab Gb Eb F G A B C C D E C# Db T H E O R Y
if we play all the white notes from C to C we get a C major scale; we will cover major scales later in the book. If we played all the notes, both white and black, we would produce a chromatic scale. There is a chromatic scale starting on G coming up in Exercise 10.
Exercise 9: Blues in E, top three strings
Exercise 9 is a blues-based tune using most of the notes we have learnt so far on the top three strings, so you will be working on fretting notes accurately with the fret hand while also picking the correct string with the pick. In most music, melody notes are played fluently and joined together. In this exercise many of the notes are separated by rests. Listen to the CD track to hear the strongly rhythmic effect of this style of playing.
To silence a fretted note, release the pressure from the fret-hand finger so that the string is no longer making contact with the fret, but don’t take the finger off the string.
That should silence the note immediately. Silence open strings by touching them lightly with the fret-hand fingers or with the pick. Experiment to see which one works best for you. At the end of the exercise there is a chord— three notes played at once—with a downstroke of the pick.
q=110 Straight boogie
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0 1 0 2 3 2 0 0 1 0 2 3 2 0 T E C H N I Q U EThe pick directions may seem random but in fact they’re based on the idea that your hand is moving rhythmically back and forth in an eighth-note rhythm. As before, downstrokes are on downbeats and upstrokes are on upbeats.
S O U N D S
This one was played with a Telecaster guitar on the bridge pickup. The warm, fuzzy guitar tone comes from a small tube-amp turned up loud—an effect sometimes known as overdrive.
EXERCISE 9 CD TRACK 09/ BACKING TRACK 07
T H E O R Y
When the notes of a piece of music are played smoothly or joined up we say it is “legato.” The opposite—cut off or separated notes—is “staccato.” Many words we use in music come from the Italian language, although perhaps more in classical music than in rock’n’roll. You often see the word legato in guitar books and magazines describing a particularly fluid style of guitar solo.
PRO TIP
Try not to get caught up in looking at
your hands. If you know the music,
you can play looking at your fret
hand. If not you’ll need to look at the
music and play the guitar by feel.
It’s best not to look at your pick
hand—you’ll soon learn to find the
strings accurately if you persevere.
When you’re confident with a piece
of music, practice without looking at
either hand; this will let you make
eye contact with your fellow band
members or your audience on a gig.
CD 09/
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0 0 0 3 2 2 0 1 2 3 0 10 0EXERCISE 9 CD TRACK 09 / BACKING TRACK 07continued
CD 09/
07
Exercise 10: G chromatic scale
As a way of revising all the notes we have learned so far, and of introducing scales, we are going to learn a chromatic scale—that’s the name for a scale that has all the notes including all the sharps and flats. There are many different types of scale in music, some of which can be very useful to the guitar player as they are used for making up riffs and solos—we have some coming up later. Chromatic scales are useful as finger exercises and as a way of showing the logic of where notes are on the guitar.
This one begins on the open G-string and goes up one octave to the G on the top string. Chromatic scales can start on any note, and it’s normal to play scales up an octave or two and back again. In the notation stave we go up in pitch using sharps, and down using flats, which helps to make clear that “black notes”—the sharps and flats—have two names. There’s no backing track for this exercise so practice it and bring it up to the speed of CD track 10. The small numbers beneath the notes on the notation stave are fingerings—they tell you which fret-hand finger to use. (You remember? 1=index finger, 4=pinky).
T E C H N I Q U E
There is a technique that we use on guitar whenever we are playing scales or single-note lines. The idea is not to remove fingers from a string if the music is rising in pitch until it’s time to start playing a different string. This is how it works, starting with the first note of the scale. Play the open G-string and then hold down G-sharp with your first finger; leave that finger in place when you play the A with finger 2, and leave both fingers in place when you play A-sharp or B-flat with finger 3. Then release all three fingers at once as you play the open B-string. Keep them close to the guitar so you can continue up the
q=80
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3 2 1 0 4 3 2 1 0 3 2 1 0 EXERCISE 10 CD TRACK 10CD 10
Here are the notes of the first four frets on the top three strings.
E B G D A E 3 5 7 9 12 15 F G G# Ab F# Gb GA#b C C# D Db DE#b A AB#b B
PRO TIP
As you play all the notes from your open G-string to the third fret
on the E-string see if you can say aloud the note names. Say them in full:
G, G-sharp or A-flat, A, A-sharp or B-flat, and so on. This is a great way to
memorize the guitar note names.
Exercise 11: Octaves
In Exercise 10 we played a one-octave scale, so this could be a good time to explore what an octave is. “The same letter name at a different pitch” is one way of putting it. If you play Exercise 11 you will hear the gap (or “interval” as it is known in music), between two occurrences of the notes G, D, and A. The first note is an open string and the second note is a fretted note, and the two notes are then played simultaneously. Notice how, when they are played together, the two notes seem to merge into one, even though they are clearly of different pitches. It is this similarity that allows them to have the same letter name.
q=80
44
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0 3 0 3 0 3 0 3 0 2 0 2 T E C H N I Q U EWhen using a pick it is not easy to play two notes simultaneously if they are not on adjacent strings. You could use a big downstroke and mute the string in the middle with a spare fret-hand finger. You could also put the pick down and use your thumb of your pick hand to pick the low note and your index finger to pick the high note. The method we use on the CD track is to use the pick on the low note and the middle finger of the pick hand on the high note. Using the pick and fingers at the same time is sometimes known as “hybrid picking” and is often used by country guitar players.
T H E O R Y
Musical sounds are waveforms, and waveforms have frequency. Each time the music goes up an octave, the frequency of the note doubles. Frequency is measured in Hertz (or Hz), and is the number of complete cycles of the waveform per second. The frequency of your open A string is 110 Hz, the octave up (on the G-string) is 220 Hz. The octave above that note, which would be on the fifth fret of the top E-string, is 440 Hz. This is the note that an orchestra tunes to at the beginning of a concert and is known as “concert pitch.”
EXERCISE 11 CD TRACK 11
Exercise 12: Rocking the first position notes; top three strings
If you are playing notes with the first finger at the first fret, the second finger at the second fret, and so on, we would say you were playing in the first position. If your first finger was at the second fret, with the other fingers occupying the succeeding frets, we would say you were in the second position. On a typical modern guitar with 22 frets you can potentially have 19 positions. Guitar positions can be very useful for describing where on the guitar to play a piece or a sequence of notes.
As a general rule it is best to play the guitar “in position” and to avoid sliding the hand around as much as possible. A common rookie error is to move the hand around so you can use fingers 1 and 2 when you should keep the hand still and use the weaker fingers, fingers 3 and 4. If you use them, they’ll get stronger.
Exercise 12 is a legato solo tune for the top three strings in the first position. Together with Exercises 5, 6, 9, and 10 it works to build dexterity for the fret hand and coordination between the pick and fret-hand fingers. In bars four, eight, and 12 it will be tempting to use finger 1 at the second fret and finger 3 at the fourth fret (in other words, to use second position fingerings) but unless your hands are really small you should stay in the first position and use fingers 2 and 4 at the second and fourth frets. Gradually, your hand will get better at stretching.
T H E O R Y
This exercise introduces the dotted quarter note, one and a half beats long. (The quarter note is one beat, and the dot adds half its value.) Looking at bar one, we would count: one two and three four, playing the dotted quarter note on “one” and the following eighth note on “and.”
T E C H N I Q U E
Pick directions are given only where necessary in this exercise as you’ve probably got the idea of alternate picking by now.
With practice you can get used to opening out your hand and using one finger per fret.
CD 12/
q=85 Rock
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3 3 2 0 0 3 3 1 0 0 0 0 3 1 0 2 2 0 4 2 3EXERCISE 12 CD TRACK 12/ BACKING TRACK 03
CD 12/
Exercise 13: ‘Shadow Walk’ and all the notes so far
Exercise 13 is the last exercise in Section One, so congratulations on coming this far. It’s a long one, featuring groups of legato eighth notes, quarter notes, and some quarter note rests. It includes every single note you can play in the first position on the top three strings. That means you will need to use all four fingers of your fret hand, making smooth, fluid movements and keeping the fingers close to the guitar. Pencil your own pick directions in if you need to, keeping to the idea of alternate picking. You could also write in fingerings for the fret hand if it would help. If you find the piece a challenge—which it’s meant to be—slow things down a little and keep working on it. Remember you don’t have to finish an exercise before moving onto the next one, but you should always keep returning to work on anything you found difficult.
During the course of this opening section we have learned holding the pick, the numbers of the fret-hand fingers and the names of the open strings. We learned about tab, bars, bar lines, time signatures, and the names of all the notes in the first position on the top three strings, including sharps and flats. We have covered the note values from eighth notes to whole notes and learnt the function of dotted notes and ties. Most of all, we have learned to pick and finger notes accurately on the guitar and to coordinate the two hands. The next section builds on this and covers the notes on the lower three strings.
q=120 Shadows/surf style
5
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2 0 1 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 1 0 2 3 0 0 0PRO TIP
Always break a long
piece down into shorter
sections for learning purposes.
As music very often uses
four-bar phrases it can be a good
idea to try learning a piece
four bars at a time.
S O U N D S
We’re in surf guitar territory, inspired by the twangy guitar music of the early 1960s. This piece also mixes in some of the melodic style of The Shadows’ Hank Marvin (listen to their ‘Apache’ for this track’s inspiration). On the CD we used the bridge pickup on a Strat and added some reverb and a fluttering delay effect. Hank would have used a mechanical delay unit like a Meazzi Echomatic.
EXERCISE 13 CD TRACK 13/ BACKING TRACK 14
CD 13/
9
13
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2 0 1 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 1 0 0 3 1 1 0 2EXERCISE 13 CD TRACK 13/ BACKING TRACK 14 continued
CD 13/
SECTION TWO
THE LOWER STRINGS
Exercise 14: The D, A, and E-strings
Exercise 14 is about learning to recognize, name, and play the three lowest-sounding open strings on the guitar. Sometimes these strings are referred toas the bass strings, with the top three strings being called the treble strings. We introduced all of the open strings back in Exercise 1, but to save you having to flick back to remind yourself, the first note in this piece is the open A (or fifth) string. In the second bar, you have two notes on the open D (or fourth) string and the third bar uses the open E (or sixth) string.
We have seen the quarter note/dotted half note rhythm before, in Exercise 4, and the same rhythm is maintained for seven bars. In bar nine a new rhythm is introduced and played for six bars.
In Exercises 8 and 9 we introduced rests and mentioned that silences are
as important as notes when playing a rhythm. We also introduced the terms “legato,” meaning joined up, and “staccato,” meaning separated. When playing staccato it is sometimes easier to read a rhythm if the note values are left long and a staccato sign, which is a dot placed above or below the note, is used instead of a short note and a rest. Check out the first two bars of Exercise 14 and you can see that the first note in each bar is to be played staccato. We then have the sign ...sim, which we first saw in Exercise 6, and which means “carry on in the same way.” So the first note of each bar should be staccato until the rhythm changes in bar eight.
In bar nine the staccato first note returns and is again carried on until the rhythm changes in bar 15.
Laying the fingers flat across all six strings (top picture) is one way to quickly mute the guitar or to play an open string staccato.
The outside of the pick hand can also be used to silence the strings between pick strokes.
PRO TIP
The best way
to play a staccato open
string is to touch it with
your fret-hand fingers
just after it has been
played; but you should
experiment with using
your pick hand to damp
all the strings instead.
T E C H N I Q U E
When you come to the second bar and play the open D-string it is important that only the open D is sounding. If you don’t do anything to stop it the open A from bar one will ring on. So as well as playing the first D staccato you should mute the open A. Being able to mute strings is an important part of controlling the guitar—especially the electric guitar, which, when turned up loud, can interact with the amp to create feedback.
CD 15/
16
A Marshall Guv’nor distortion pedal is used between guitar and amp to provide a powerful lead sound for Exercise 14.
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0 0 0 0 0 0 0EXERCISE 14 CD TRACK 15/ BACKING TRACK 16
CD 15/
Exercise 15: Notes on the D-string
In the rest of Part One, Section Two we will be learning all the notes on the lower three strings, starting in Exercise 15 with the D-string. Notice that we go straight from E at the second fret to F at the third fret: as we’ve seen before, there is no sharp between E and F. Play these notes one by one, starting with the open string, saying the letter names and using one finger per fret.
Exercise 16: Swamp-rock for D, G, and B-strings
Exercise 16 makes use of the notes on the D-string from Exercise 15 together with notes we already know from the G- and B-strings to create a swamp-rock lead guitar part.
Swamp-rock mixes Louisiana blues, Cajun, and zydeco with rhythm and blues, rock, and country. Bands like The Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival have been associated with the style, which features a powerful rhythm and blues backbeat.
You may be worried to see that there are only three eighth notes in the first bar. Not all music starts on the first beat of the bar. You have to count one, two, three beats and then play the last three eighth notes of the bar on “and four and.” On the CD there are seven clicks at the start of the track; four of which are the usual one bar count in, with three more giving you the missing beats from this incomplete bar.
Exercise 16 also introduces repeat signs, which tell us to repeat the music between the two signs shown left.
It also uses first- and second-time bars, which are common when there are repeats. Bar 13, with the number 1 written inside a bracket, is called the first time bar. After playing this bar we go back to the repeat sign at the beginning. Second time through, you’ve already played the first-time bar so you go straight to the second-time bar, which has the number 2 written above it.
This lets us have two different endings: the first leads to a repeat, and the second leads to the end.
°
¢
&
D
open string
E
second fret
third fret
F
F-sharp or G-flat
fourth fret
⁄
D-sharp or E-flat
first fret
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b
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0 1 2 3 4PRO TIP
This is a great place to
practice your alternate picking:
down strokes on downbeat and
upstrokes on upbeats. Grab a pencil
and write them in for yourself.
T H E O R Y
Guitarists mostly call an incomplete bar at the start of a piece of music an “upbeat” or “lead-in.” The technical name for it is an “anacrusis.”
T H E O R Y
As we are learning notes in the first position the exercise only involves the first four frets. What about the fifth fret? You may be able to figure out that the note above F-sharp (or G-flat) is G. This G is the same note as your open G-string, and you could keep going up, fret by fret, to G-sharp, A, A-sharp, and so on up the D-string. Eventually, at the 12th fret, you will have gone up an octave and be back on D again.
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First time Second time bar bar
q=90
Swamp-rock
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2 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 1 2EXERCISE 16 CD TRACK17 / BACKING TRACK 18
CD 17/
Exercise 17: Double stops on the D and G-strings
Exercise 17 introduces some new techniquesand also sneaks in some of those notes above the fifth fret that we mentioned in Exercise 15. In bar one, you play two open strings with a downstroke, followed by two notes at the third fret. Most guitarists would do this by laying the tip joint of their first finger flat across those two strings, as in the picture (right). All the double stops in this piece are played using the first finger in that way.
The first three notes in bar one are on the downbeats. The next three notes, crossing into bar two, are on the upbeats. In music we have a word to
describe the placing of rhythmic accents where they wouldn’t normally occur: syncopation. Rock and pop music, like the jazz and blues they emerged from, tend to have a great deal of syncopation. This can make the music hard to read, but if you listen to the CD track, you will hear rhythms that are routine to anyone who is familiar with rock music. Check out ‘Smoke On The Water,’ by 60s/70s rock band Deep Purple, to hear the music that inspired this track.
Finger one tip joint flat on D and G-strings at the third fret.
T E C H N I Q U E
One of the most fun things about this exercise is that it contradicts almost everything we’ve done so far. Firstly, you can lay your finger down flat instead of on its tip; secondly, you can play the whole piece just by sliding your first finger around, whereas we usually aim to play “in position.”
When it comes to the pick hand, you can also forget about alternate picking in this one: just use downstrokes. It may take some practice to hit only the two strings we need and to move the pick quickly enough for the eighth notes that start in bar nine.
S O U N D S
A modern high-gain amplifier such as a Mesa Boogie, Soldano, or Marshall can usually make this kind of intense overdrive simply by turning up the gain. Otherwise a distortion effect in front of the amp will help. We also used an EQ [Equalization] pedal (below) to remove the high frequencies and boost the middle range.
T H E O R Y
Check out the notes at the fifth fret: C on the G-string and G on the D-string. On the sixth fret we have D-flat and A-flat, which could have been written as C-sharp and G-C-sharp.
CD 19/
q=100 Deep Purple style
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0 0 0 0 3 3 5 5 0 0 0 0 3 3 0 0 6 6 5 5 3 3 0 0EXERCISE 17 CD TRACK 19 / BACKING TRACK 20
CD 19/
Exercise 18: Notes on the A-string
Exercise 18 introduces the notes on the A-string up to the fourth fret. Say the letter names as you play the notes, using one finger on each fret.
Exercise 19: Surfing on the A-string
We’ve seen that surf rock is a twangy guitar-based music that goes back to the 1960s. Surf tunes, like the rock’n’roll styles they emerged from, often use riffs. A riff is a pattern of notes that is usually repeated and sometimes moved around, up, down and to other strings. Be aware, though, that sometimes the word riff is used to mean “a musical idea” that is not necessarily repeated. Riffs are found in most kinds of rock music.
In Exercise 19 the opening one-bar riff is played twice and then moved across to the D-string. It then comes back to the A-string in bars five and six. The music heads off in a different direction for bars seven and eight, before returning to the riff on the A-string in bar nine. Bar 12 has a chromatic three-note sequence bringing the music home to the open A-string.
Notice that, as in Exercise 17, there is a lead-in bar, this time containing just one eighth note which is tied across the bar line to the first beat of the first bar. This means playing on “and” and holding the note across the first beat “one.” Normally the first beat is accented (played more strongly) but in this case the accent falls in front of the first beat. More syncopation! As the anacrusis is so short, the CD track begins with only the usual four beat count-in.
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0 1 2 3 4 T E C H N I Q U EIf you have small hands and are finding it hard to open the fingers out over four frets, use your first finger at the second fret for most of the piece. We would call this playing in the second position, and your fingers would open out over frets two to five. Go back to the first position in bars seven and 12 when you need to use finger 1 at the first fret. When you move up and back, take your thumb with you on the back of the neck.
S O U N D S
Use a clean, bright tone from your bridge pickup, starting with an upstroke and following the pick pattern that is given in bar one. The CD track was recorded using a Strat through a Fender Deluxe Reverb.
T H E O R Y
The “home note” for this piece of music is the note A; it is the final note, and the note that gives the music a satisfying ending. Musicians would say the music was in the key of A. We will explore the subject of keys later in the book.
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0 2 0 3 4 0 3 2 1 0 0EXERCISE 19 CD TRACK 21/ BACKING TRACK 22
