Challenge!

If ever there was a day of the week when motivation simply does not exist, Hump Day would be it. It’s still a wee bit too early to get excited about the weekend, it’s never a paycheck day and, as much as you really want to sit around and do nothing, you know you can’t. To make things worse, the summer is just about over, the vacation days are pretty much all used up, and now begins the push for the holiday marketing and 2012 business strategy sessions are starting to take hold.

Good times… good times.

I mean, a guy would have to be some kind of nut job to think that people would be motivated to actually sit down and practice guitar on a day like this, right? I mean, the sheer gall to ask someone to do more work when they are already mentally spent with two more work days to go!

Who would be so much of a jerk that they would issue a challenge on a Wednesday to try and see who has the moxy — the balls — to challenge you to get off your ass and show what you’re really made of?

I would.

That’s right, slackers. Today is the Hump Day Challenge. There are no excuses, no reasons why you can’t, no if’s, and’s, or but’s. Today is going to make you a better guitar player. If for nothing else because you got off your butt and put in the work. I am a firm believer that you make the most progress when you are the least motivated but show up and put in the time anyway. The gains may not show up immediately, but they have been made and you know you feel better having done the work when it’s over.

So, today I am giving you three things to work on. Do all three and good manna from heaven and all that other stuff will happen. (It’s true; I’ve seen it and stuff.)

1. Chord Inversions

Using the 1346 string group (low ‘E’, D, G and high ‘E’ strings), play all of the chord inversions for the following chords: EMaj7, Em7, E7, Em7b5. If you need help with the fundamentals, read about them here and here.

I specifically chose this string group because it’s uncommon. What kind of challenge-maker would I be if I gave you easy stuff? There will be some odd stretches. Too bad; work ‘em out. You might find some very interesting chord voicings that you like.

2. Learn Eight Bars of a Solo

You’re probably thinking, “This isn’t too bad.” I didn’t tell you what kind of solo or in what musical genre to learn a solo from. It doesn’t even have to be a guitar solo. But here’s the kicker:

You’re not allowed to use your index finger.

That’s right. No 1st finger allowed! You have to learn the entire eight bar solo using only your middle, ring, and pinky fingers. And no, you can’t show me how strong your middle finger is if you know what I’m sayin’…

A solo with bends in it or a fast bebop solo would be ideal, but your choice of solos is ultimately up to you. Just remember, there is no quiz for this challenge, so the less work you put in the more your flaws will show up later.

3. Ten Minutes of Rhythm

Using your metronome, pick a comfortable tempo. Find a fretted note on your guitar — it really doesn’t matter which one — and for ten minutes straight (no stopping!) I want you to play the following one right after the other:

• 4 quarter notes
• 8 eighth notes
• 12 triplets
• 16 sixteenth notes

The quarter notes fall on the metronome beats. Immediately follow that with eighth notes (two per beat) and then divide the beat into triplets. Then on to 16th notes (4 per beat). Continuously repeat this pattern for the full ten minute time period. Concentrate on:

• Consistent timing
• Hand/pick coordination
• Dynamics

This is not easy. It’s boring, repetitive, and will get on your nerves.

That’s a good thing.

If you can go the full ten then you are a maverick among slackers.

I urge you all to take today’s Hump Day Challenge. It’s good for your playing, good for your brain, and good for the environment. Al Gore personally sponsors this exercise to help prevent climate change. (It’s true, just ask him.)

Good luck, Fretheads!

The Hump Day Guitar Challenge is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

Just some light reading for the weekend

I’ve been trying to come up with a simple yet hard exercise to challenge myself. I didn’t want some overly-complex arpeggio or crazy gymnastic lick, but rather something that would normally seem so archaically easy that I could just pick up the guitar for a few minutes and work on it. The idea was to do this many times throughout a weekend instead of sitting down and working on it for an hour straight.

As I was working through some lesson material it dawned on me that one of the biggest “problems” I hear among guitar players – well, musicians in general, really – is that their timing sucks. Always behind or ahead of the beat, and 99.9% of the time not because they are playing with the pocket. I’m a victim of this sometimes as well, though I tend to play directly on top of the beat; almost too metronomically (is that a word?) for my own taste.

And so it dawned on me how I could test myself on how good my timing is, and it’s deceptively difficult. So what better way to make myself feel better than to try and torture all of my fellow Fretheads!

Ready, Set, Doh!

So here it is. First, you’ll need a metronome. If you don’t have one you can use the one on the Online Guitar Tools page.

What you’re going to do is pick something that you already have down pat. This can be a scale, an arpeggio, or a gymnastic exercise. It doesn’t matter what the specific tool is, but you have to make sure that you have it down pat so you don’t have to think about technique or fingerings. The point is to not be distracted by outside parameters.

Once you have that figured out, put the metronome on a ridiculously slow pulse – 53 beats per minute or lower. Listen to the pulse for about 30 seconds to try and get it into your ear (into your soul, really) and then start playing along with it in quarter notes; in other words, one note of your chosen exercise per beat of the metronome.

Pay particular attention to not only striking the note at the exact same time as the metronome’s pulse, but also holding the note for the entire beat. Quite often we shorten the note’s value in order to try and get to the next note on time. But, that is not the right way to play. Each note deserves its correct value.

If you think you have that down, decrease the tempo even lower. If that still doesn’t present much of a challenge for you, then play 8th note triplets for each pulse. Meaning, three evenly-spaced notes in between each beat of the metronome.

If you can do that with no problem, I applaud you greatly! You have definitely put in the dirt time and should be very proud of yourself.

As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t something to work on for an hour straight. Just pick up the guitar for 5 minutes several times a day throughout the weekend and give it a shot. I think many of us (yes, us) will be surprised at how bad we really are at it. But, it’s absolutely something worth working on.

If you give it a try – and I sincerely hope you will – please do us a favor and comment on your results. It will be very interesting to see how everyone made out.

Good luck!

The Weekend Challenge is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

The "Scale Identification" lesson screen from EarMaster Pro 5

EarMaster, the interactive ear training and music theory software program, is the most comprehensive learning tool I have seen in a very long time.

The developers say:

Covering pitch and rhythm training, music theory and solfege, EarMaster is a complete and powerful ear trainer for all musicians at any level.

The question is, does it live up to the hype?

Getting Started

When first launching the EarMaster program, you arrive at a main menu that asks you to choose which Training Mode, Exercise Area, and input method (piano or guitar interface) you want to start with. Graphic menu buttons at the top of the interface also allow you to choose what area you want to start with. The Exercise Areas in the “Standard Tutor” mode are:

• Interval Comparison
• Interval Identification
• Interval Singing
• Chord Identification
• Chord Inversions
• Chord Progressions
• Scale Identification
• Rhythm Reading
• Rhythm Imitation
• Rhythm Dictation
• Rhythm Correction
• Melodic Dictation

Interface and Functionality

Interval Comparison Screen and Interface

Overall the functionality and interface of EarMaster is very intuitive and not hard to figure out at all. The Exercise Area menu is at the top, the note input menu is on the right, the main learning area is in the middle, and the utilities menu is at the bottom. It’s laid out perfectly and I don’t think it can be improved upon.

One thing that I didn’t quite like was that when starting a new module, if you don’t hit the “New Question” button, it will automatically start for you after a few seconds. I would prefer this to not happen as I like to have full control over when I want to begin. But, a very minor annoyance for sure.

The Chord Progressions Exercise Area

Each area has several lessons which increase in complexity as you progress higher. For example, the “Chord Progressions” module starts off with identifying major and minor tonic V-I chords. By the time you get to lesson 20 you are working on modulations to bIII and bVI, with everything in between. It’s very comprehensive. Here is the complete Chord Progressions lesson list:

1. Identify major and minor tonic in V-I
2. Dominants with and without 7
3. VIIdim7 in major and minor
4. Common dominant – tonic combinations
5. Major/minor subdominant (IV) and supertonic (II)
6. Various dominant-tonic combinations
7. ii-V-I combinations
8. ii-V-I and ii-bII-I combinations
9. IV-I combinations
10. Two mediant combinations
11. Four mediant combinations
12. Three part plagal cadences
13. Extended tonal cadences
14. Fifth sequences
15. Folk progressions
16. Progressions with bVII7(b)
17. Interrupted cadences
18. Modulations #1
19. Modulations #2
20. Modulations to bIII and bVI
21. Last Step!

And that’s just one Exercise Area. You can see that EarMaster covers a lot of ground.

Scoring and Tracking Progress

Oops! Wrong Answer.

Each area has you start a new question, enter your answer, and then check to see how well you did. A scoring meter at the bottom of the screen shows your correct answer percentage. If you get a question right, you are congratulated and can proceed to the next question. If you get a question wrong, EarMaster will tell you so but also show you what the correct answer is. This seems like a no-brainer, but they do a very good job in terms of graphic design to make your results very clear and easy-to-understand.

There is also a Statistics screen that allows you to see, organized by date, what you worked on and how well you did. This is an excellent way to see if you’re actually improving or not, and which areas you need to work on.

Jazz Tutor Mode

EarMaster also has a “jazz tutor” mode which you can choose on start up or through the “Change Tutor” option found at the beginning of each lesson and in the main menu. Jazz Tutor mode works exactly the same way as the normal mode, but many of the exercises are different, geared towards the harmonic and melodic elements that you’ll find common to jazz music. Unless you are very, very good at music theory, rhythms, and you have a great ear, I recommend you work through the normal mode first.

Concerns

The only concern I have with EarMaster is in the rhythm modules. There are several lessons that play a rhythmic example and ask you to play back the rhythm by tapping on the space bar of your keyboard. Perhaps it’s a latency issue, but no matter how hard I tried there was a very noticeable delay in the time I hit the space bar to the time the beat sounded and was checked against the example. For the life of me I could not fix the latency problem, resulting in continuously incorrect answers. I suspect this can be fixed somehow, but I was unable to figure it out.

Pricing and Ordering Information

EarMaster is available in many options including a Pro option, Essentials edition, and several school and academic licensing versions for classroom learning. The EarMaster Pro 5.0 Internet download version is reasonably priced at $59.99.

Is It Worth the Price?

In a word, absolutely! I was a music theory major in college and the EarMaster program is just as comprehensive as many of the classes I took at the university. With the only downside I found being the rhythm module, there is hundreds of hours worth of lesson material here to study and self-test on. I especially recommend this for music students of middle school age up through college, as well as home musicians that are interested in becoming better at music and their instruments.

For more information on how to purchase EarMaster, visit their website – www.earmaster.com.

Improve Your Ear With EarMaster is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

C    C#/Db   D   D#/Eb   E   F   F#/Gb   G   G#/Ab   A   A#/Bb   B/Cb   B#/C (again)

All of these notes are a half step apart and located on the following keys of a piano:

Please take notice of the “#” and “b” symbols after some of the note names. These are known as “sharp” and “flat” notes, respectively. In layman’s terms, a “sharp” note (#) implies that the note/tone/pitch is one half step higher than the note that came before it. C#, for example, is one half step higher than C. Similarly, a “flat” note (b) implies that the note/tone/pitch is one half step lower than the note that came before it; Db is a half step lower than D.

You may be wondering why some of the notes in the list are separated by a slash, or why they are listed as “X or X” on the piano graphic. Notes such as C# and Db are known as “enharmonic notes.” C# and Db are exactly the same; they sound exactly the same if you were to hear them, and they are located in exactly the same fret on the guitar.

I must admit that it’s hard to explain the jump you have to make from simply learning the notes to understanding what key signatures are and how they function. The basic idea is that music compositions usually have a strong, core tonal center from which the music bases itself. These tonal centers provide an easily-identifiable place of recognition not only for the listener, but also for the composer. You may often hear people say, “xyz song is in the key of Bb,” or “Play this in E Major.” When these things are mentioned, the speaker is referring to a key signature.

The Major Keys

In a major key, the intervals of notes from one to another follows this system:

Root note | Whole step (same as two half steps) | Whole Step | Half Step | Whole Step | Whole Step | Whole Step | Half Step

It’s pretty easy, actually. Using this list of intervallic relationships, and starting on the note ‘C’ for the sake of simplicity, a C Major Scale will look like this:

C  D  E  F  G  A  B  (back to C, one octave higher)

If you’re having trouble figuring this out, go back to the list of notes/pitches at the beginning of this article, start on the ‘C’ note, and move forward the appropriate number of steps (half step or whole step) to find the next note.

Key Cycles

Traditionally, we memorize the major keys in a cycle of 4ths, so going up four diatonic (“in key”) pitches from C brings us to F. In all my years of playing music and majoring in music composition in college, I honestly cannot tell you why this cycle moves in 4ths other than to give the music theory student something easy to understand. (As a side note, if anyone knows why this is the case, please tell me; I would love to know!)

Now that we are in the key of F, let’s start building an F Major Scale:

• F (the root note)
• One whole step from F is G
• One whole step from G is A…

So far, so good, right? When we move one half step up to the next note from A, we have a choice of either A# or Bb. Which do we choose? Both notes sound the same, right? The best way I can explain this is that we already have an “A” note in the scale, so for the sake of avoiding unnecessary confusion, we want to use the Bb note name instead, giving us:

F  G  A  Bb

• From the Bb we can move up another whole step to get C.
• From C, another whole step to D.
• Another whole step to E
• And one more half step brings us back to F… back to the beginning but an octave higher.

Put it all together and you get: F  G  A  Bb  C  D  E (F)  – the F Major Scale!

You should continue this exercise through the rest of the key signatures on your own. I’ll give you one more example because I’m such a generous person:

Ab Major = Ab  Bb  C  Db  Eb  F  G

Just in case you need a little push, here is the entire key cycle in 4ths starting from C:

C   F   Bb   Eb   Ab   Db   Gb   B   E   A   D   G

The process of determining the notes of each major key is very easy once you get used to it, and after a eventually you will automatically know that the key of E Major has four sharps, the key of Bb Major has two flats, etc.

Consistency Helps

After you’ve spent some time with the major keys, you should begin to notice that the order sharps and flats appear in each key is constant. As you move through each key, the order of sharps and flats get added to consistently each time. The order of these sharps and flats (also collectively known as “accidentals”) are:

• Sharps – F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B#
• Flats – Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb, Fb,

Some interesting things to note:

1. The order of sharps moves in intervals of a fifth.
2. The order of flats moves in intervals of a fourth.
3. The order of both sharps and flats are exactly reversed. Turn the order of sharps around (just for the sake of comparison) and you’ll see that it’s the same exact order as flats.

The ordering of sharps and flats is something you should just memorize. In the long run it makes things MUCH easier to have this information ingrained in your head so you don’t have to think about it while you are playing. I don’t know of an easier way to internalize the order, so just cram it into your brain however you can (consistent practice always works) until you don’t have to think about them anymore.

Putting It on Paper

To identify the key signature of a composition to its performers, the composer writes the number of sharps or flats at the beginning of the piece of music, after the clef and before the time signature, on every staff. For now I have to presume that you know what a music staff looks like and how it works. (If not, please take a look at xxxxxx.) The key of C Major has no sharps or flats, therefore no accidentals appear on the staff at the beginning of the composition. In this case the music staff looks like this:

The key of F Major (one flat – Bb) would look like this:

The key of Bb Major (two flats – Bb and Eb) would look like this:

Here is the complete list (which I hope you tried to figure out on your own, cheaters!):

Luckily, there are a few tricks that make understanding the key signatures easier:

• When looking at a key signature that has “sharp” notes in it, the key signature of the song is one half step above the last sharp that appears on the staff. For example, the key signature with four sharps in it (going in order – F#, C#, G#, D#) would be E Major; one half step up from the last sharp, D#, is E. Make sense? Similarly, the key signature with six sharps in it (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#) would be F# Major. Since E# is enharmonically the same as the note F, the appropriate choice for the next note one half step up would be F#.
• When looking at a key signature that has “flat” notes in it, the key signature of the song is based on the NEXT TO LAST flatted note – the penultimate note for the word nerds out there. As an example, if you take the key signature of 4 flats (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db), look at the second to last flatted note – in this case Ab – and that is the key signature – Ab Major.

Believe me, it might seem like an awful lot to learn, but once you break it down there are only a few components that need to be learned and they are really quite simple to retain once you understand the concepts.

A Minor Issue

I know what you’re saying… “Hey Josh, that’s great, but what about those minor keys I also hear about?”

Ahh, yes… minor keys. Minor keys are very easy now that you have an understanding of the major keys. Minor keys and Major keys are related to each other; that’s why you will sometimes hear them referred to as a “relative minor” or “relative major” key. The best way I can describe minor keys is to get you to start from a major key and move down a minor third (on the guitar this relates to moving up or down three frets). So if you start on “F” for example, and move down three half steps you get the note D. Therefore, D minor and F Major are relative to each other. They both have the same notes in them (D, E, F, G, A, Bb, C). The only difference is that in the key of F Major you use F as the tonal center for your composition, whereas in D Minor (the saddest of all keys, really…) you use D as the tonal center.

If you want to find the relative major key of a minor key, just move UP four ½ steps. The relative major key of B minor is D Major (two sharps – F# and C#). Remember that you will always move down a minor third from a major key to get its relative minor, and you will always move up a minor third from a minor key to get its relative major key.

That’s the long and (not so) short of it. I hope I haven’t confused you guys too much. Look for plenty more articles to come. As always, comments/criticisms/questions and suggestions for future articles are certainly welcome.

Enjoy!

Music Theory Lesson: Key Signatures is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

I know many, many people that aren’t interested in learning music theory; they don’t care what notes are in a CMaj7 chord so long as they know how to play the shape on the guitar. To those people I say simply, “You’re missing out.” There’s certainly nothing wrong with not knowing music theory – several very famous guitar players never learned to read music – but if you put in the time, the rewards will come back to you tenfold.

We’re going to start off very simple, with a look at the most fundamental aspect of music – the music staff:

Exciting, isn’t it? Basically, a music staff is nothing more than five evenly-spaced horizontal lines. Can’t get much simpler than that. Notice that the five lines also create four spaces, one space in between each set of two adjacent lines. Remember this; it becomes important in a minute.

Before we can get into how the lines function, we need to first determine what kind of staff it is. Staff type is determined by which “clef” is used. There are four commonly-used staves:

For the sake of this article we’ll use the treble clef, but I will explain the other three later as well so you are well-rounded. (Just think of the conversations you can start when buying the lovely lady a drink at the bar.)

In order for the musicians to know that they are dealing with the treble clef, you put it at the very beginning of the staff:

Now that you (and the musician) knows that you are dealing with the treble clef, it’s easy to explain where the notes are supposed to go. Starting at the bottom, the first (bottom) line is the note “E”:

Moving up from the first “E” note, we put a note in the first space. This is the note “F”:

Moving up from there, we have “G”:

I don’t think I need to go through all of the notes, do I? Good… if you go through them yourself – which you certainly should – you’ll realize that the top line of the staff is the note “F.” The cool thing is that the notes don’t really stop there. You can put notes above the staff. For example, the space above the top line (“F”) is the note G:

Go up another step from there and you have the note “A.” The problem is that without a guide it would be very hard to stick a bunch of notes in the space above the staff and have the musicians figure out which pitch the note is. Back in the day the guys were really smart, however, and came up with a way to make this much easier; they created lines and spaces above the staff. For example:

This is the note "A"

The note “B” above this would be:

You can continue this upward for a while. Be aware, however, that each instrument has its own range. Certain instruments can only reach up so high (or low). You have to keep this in mind when writing music; certain instruments (and even certain players) won’t be able to hit certain notes.

Moving down the staff, you can have notes go below the staff. For example, the lowest note on the guitar is an E, which looks like this:

You can follow the notes down from the “F” we started with (first line of the staff) to the low E note I just showed you.

Now, at the beginning of the article I also showed you four different clef types. I think now is a good time to show you how the other three work. Most likely you’ll see the bass clef most often after the treble clef. Here it is again in case you forgot:

The bass clef is also called the “F clef.” Why is that you ask? Well… do you see the two small dots? Those dots straddle the line that, as it pertains to the bass clef, is the note “F.” In essence the two dots of the “F” clef pretty much tell you where the note “F” is. (Too bad the treble clef doesn’t do this too, right?)

Using the same principle as we did with the treble clef, you can figure out what the notes are if you keep in mind that the fourth line from the bottom (straddled by the two dots) is the note “F.”

The alto and baritone clefs are slightly similar. Here is the alto clef:

See the number three looking thing? If you look closely, you’ll see that the middle line is where the two loops of the clef meet. Do you see it? In the alto clef, that middle line is the note “C.” If you look at the baritone clef (see the graphic at the beginning of the article), the same principle of finding the “C” note applies, but this time it’s the fourth line from the bottom.

You probably won’t use the alto or baritone clefs much at all, unless you are deeply into classical music. But you should know about them nonetheless.

That’s about it, Fretheads. It’s quite straight-forward. You should now be able to recognize what the music staff is and how it functions, and with a little practice you should be able to pick out the notes quickly.

Enjoy!

Music Theory Lesson: The Music Staff is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.