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Understanding Scales

Music Theory
Tippecanoe41  
8 Dec 2014 01:50 | Quote
Joined: 08 Dec 2014
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I have been playing for a while. I can play most things within reason, but I don't have any clue why they sound great. Like when I listen to a Clapton song, I can tell it is brilliant and the solo fits perfectly, but I don't know why. So I have tried to get into writing some of my own stuff but it has become a painful procedure of guessing, playing, saying yes, no, decent, and moving on. I have started studying scales for solos and fills and I recently heard Clapton play a song live and I wanted to figure out why a fill he used worked. It seems in the scales I have looked at you never have a sequence where four straight notes fit the scale. In this song he used D, D#, E, and F in one fill. He was going from G7 to C and on the EAD strings he played G,A,A#hammerB,D,E,EhammerFpulloffE,B,E,D#,D into a C chord. This is unless I'm just way off on mimicking it on my own guitar. How does this work? It just seems that the scales I see only have at most 3 of 4 notes in a row that fit. Is it because the F wasn't played by itself but only as something to quickly hammer to and then pulloff?
My second question. It may fit the above. Somewhere I read that you can add "chromatic" notes. Does that apply to the above question?
J.R.M.30  
16 Jun 2016 20:25 | Quote
Joined: 10 Jan 2013
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My suggestion, to you, is to play and theorize that of Chopin, not Clapton.
J.R.M.30  
18 Jun 2016 17:18 | Quote
Joined: 10 Jan 2013
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Plus 1, ma tran-thang?
jrc444  
6 Sep 2016 00:37 | Quote
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jrc444  
6 Sep 2016 00:39 | Quote
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Empirism  
7 Sep 2016 02:22 | Quote
Joined: 23 Jun 2008
Finland
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For understanding the scales, you need to undertand why they work or not is The key of the song.

the example you gave is a bit tricky, but we must also understand that he is one of the best guitarists on the planet and understand music very well, but I think the Key of the song is some G variant maybe bepop with some japanese style on it, if you give me the song name, i can tell the key more better to your example.

Now the understanding the scales, when you are know the key of the song say C major for example. You can look circle of fifths, and you see that it have relative minor that is A minor, to both keys of the songs, c major or a minor, you can play both scales, C major and A minor scales and they fit perfectly on both cases, why? because they contain same notes.

Now if you google some "c major scale positions" you should find a picture that contains 5 boxes, position 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. If you look them more closely, you see that position 2 is both, half of position 1 and half of position 3 same for the position 4 is half of 3 and 5.

Now, lets say the song is in key of A minor and you start playing the scale from position 1, you play it for a while and you are playing A minor, then you get bored to it and play the scale from 5th position, there you are actually playing E minor, if you play it from positon 3, you are actually playing C major.

I also want to point out, that those figures on the scale postions of C major are the SAME figures to ALL major scales, just depends where you start the rootnote. maybe C major is not perfect for understanding this so lets move to "G minor scale positions"

http://www.guitar-chords.org.uk/scales-images/g-minorpentatonicpositions.gif

that is pentatonic, but dont mind that, i want you to figure out the point. Now you see its root note (marked black) start in fret 3 on position 1. That is a note G. Now if you move whole thing towards to starting on fret 5. Yep, you guessed right, its then A minor scale positions.

aaand btw, I know that this is a post from quite long now eh? so maybe you figured this out already, but i wrote it if someone struggling with same things wondering how to lead well.

Hope this helps
-Emp


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