In PART 1 we looked at syllable stress: how individual words carry natural emphasis patterns and how the melody either supports or fights those patterns. Part 2 zooms out one level. Beyond the word there’s the phrase, and beyond the phrase’s stresses there’s its shape.
Every guitarist has written a line that looks great on paper and then fights the melody when you try to sing it. The words are right. The chord progression is right. But something is still off. In almost every case I’ve seen, the culprit is prosody.
For the tenth album to bear his name, guitarist, bandleader, and educator, Oz Noy, opted for the most demanding possible context: An absolutely unvarnished concert recording, capturing his trio with virtuosi Jimmy Haslip (bass) and Dennis Chambers (drums) without the benefit of overdubs or post-production sweetening.
It’s almost inevitable that as guitarists we want to be able to play fast at some point when learning how to play the guitar. Whatever style of music you play, there’s no denying that it’s impressive to pull out fast licks here and there, not just to impress our audience but to also express ourselves in our playing.
Many times guitarists and particularly guitar students do not feel satisfied with their daily performance on the instrument; they attribute their poor technical or artistic achievements to physical tiresome, insufficient practice time, or lack of discipline. According to my experience, all these are external factors, namely symptoms of a deeper cause: wrong use or waste of energy, which includes all forms and kinds of energy possessed by a human being.
Let’s first take a look at the basic, position 1 Blues Scale in the key of A minor. This is usually the first scale guitarists learn when they start to explore lead playing, so it might be review for some of you. If it is new, take some time to really work out this fingering, it is one of the most common and important scale fingerings for rock and blues guitarists to have down.
In this guest lesson by master guitarist Morten Faerestrand, you will be checking out a sweep lick from Steve Vai’s classic song “For the Love of God.” Not only does Morten teach you how to play the lick across the neck of the guitar, but he also shows you how to take this idea and run it through your guitar solos in an improvisational manner
One of the hits on Steve Vai’s album Real Illusions was the tune “Building the Church.”
What immediately grabbed our attention and blew everyone away was the insane intro lick that Steve also repeats later in the song. He moves it around, making a completely new section of the composition.
Many new guitar players purchase an acoustic guitar or have one given to them as a gift, not knowing a thing about the ingredients that must go into the craftsmanship in order to produce that tone they heard when they first fell in love with the acoustic guitar and dreamed of becoming a great player.
The book begins, well, right at the beginning with instructions on how to hold the guitar properly, read TAB and chord charts, and how to properly go about strumming the instrument. The book then leads readers through chords, scales, patterns, technical exercises, fingerpicking and more, as it presents pretty much all of the information one could need to make the transition from a beginning to intermediate player.
