309: Soul Guitar (Complete Guitar Workout)

Use simple chords, often just the guide tones 3 and 7 are fine, sometimes 3, 7, 9 is fine. Simple chords and simple repeating rhythms. One of the most common mistakes young funk and jazz guitar players make and bassists, drummers, and keyboard players for that matter is that they confuse funk for just randomly whacking away at repeating eighth or sixteenth notes.

Funk is subtle, contrapuntal, and powerful music. Pay attention to the details! This funky little jam moves between C9 and Eb9. Check out the rhythm part carefully. There is some C9, some C7 9. Make sure that even the muted notes have a clear attack. Also, full disclosure, there are a ton of mistakes in this take. Uptight-y tell you otherwise. So, one of the reasons I chose this example is that it moves between two related keys.

The chords are basically C7 and Eb7. Think about it…work it out. Microtonal more than 12 notes per octave music is huge in plenty of non-western music, and that has it's own sets of rules that I'm not well versed in. Also, the frets on a guitar are a poor approximation of "perfect" tuning, and many intervals are slightly sharp or slightly flat. Violin players often play slightly off from the guitar note since it sounds better in context with the rest of the string section.

So, while the slightly out bends aren't exactly common, they aren't unheard of even in classical music. I guess my point is that everybody is sort of an asshole in this thread. Theory is just an explanation for why music sounds the way it does, and a few shortcuts to help understanding grow. Because guitar isn't his craft. What difference does that make? You think things like scales and technique are limited to just guitar players? You don't think trained vocalists sit down and sing scales? Or work on their breathe control, timbre, and dictation?

I would agree with this, to a degree. I think subconsciously he knows the scales and patterns, and notices that they are often the same, and knows what he wants, and sometimes that's a blues scale, and sometimes that's maybe a harmonic minor, or major scale, and i think he knows that to some degree. But, because he hasn't acknowledge it, and learned it as a set pattern, he doesn't wield its full power.

That's not to say that he can't make as great music as another who has though. I agree with him, that it's not the scales you learn or anything like that, that makes good music. I also think that a lot of people try to learn those very well in order to make up for some lack of feel sometimes. I am with him, that I don't really love the fast technical stuff, and that something is difficult, doesn't make it good music to me. But, knowing these things makes you more powerful of a musician. He said it himself, he can't go very fast.

Now, very fast, is not necessarily good. Faster is not better. But faster can be a tool of expression.

How it is used makes a big difference. If it is used just quick notes all in a row all the time, that's rhythmically boring and fast all the time like that can become draining or tedious, imo. But to be able to play quickly is a tool one can use in a strong emotional, and great way.

That is a tool he does not have. It's like, he might be able to write nice poetry, but there are a bunch of words that just aren't in his vocabulary, and if he knew them, he might be able to make better poetry. Not because those words are better. But because he is a great musician, and with more colours at his disposal, he can make more beautiful imagery that comes from him honestly. However, there are many different styles of music.

I don't think he was necessarily advocating learning as little as possible about his craft. But, his craft was not instrumentalism really, it was more songwriting. I'm sure kurt cobain knew very little in terms of theory, but he made cool music.

Was he a great guitarist? But he was a cool songwriter. It's just different artists prioritizing different things, and putting effort in different skills. It's difficult as well, to know what you will be capable of, with some skill before you obtain the skill, and to be able to play very quickly is a lot of work, for something you will only use from time to time. It's a lot of work to be able to play real quick, and a player like him, would only use that with his style very little. Just a little quick run here or there perhaps. And he would have to put all this time into practicing that, all of this time not spent on songwriting, and performing and promoting, and whatever else, just for a quick little run here or there.

I get his point of view, and I much prefer beautiful slow music, over quick and mundane. But I want the power of quick nonetheless. I have plenty of emotions and thoughts but very very very very few people could just pick it up and translate their thoughts and emotions into sound. A lot of time I think hitting random notes will produce a melody or motif that resonates with one's thoughts and feelings and that is how one speaks through with emotion.

I think it's ultimately up to the guitarist or musician to allow themselves to, as Young said, "give you a rather sad view of your future. The individual ultimately decides if they want to allow themselves to be boxed into what's comfortable and what's safe, what's already been done and is basically just being reproduced. Having the tools to create music doesn't mean you will limit yourself in terms of artistic integrity and risk. I know plenty of people who studied music and refuse to stick with overly used chord progressions and so on. You'll never find someone who has actually learned and absorbed music theory that regretted it.

You will however find a bunch of defensive guitarists who struggled with it and gave up or never tried in the first place that try to claim it sucks your creativity. Once played with someone who believed a DIY philosophy was the only way to create anything new. He knew 2 chord shapes and could come up with a riff here or there but couldn't tie it together at all.

But you may find that they think they know what works for everyone, when actually some people just like learning the way they choose to learn. Yes, meat and potatoes are all you need for a really great dinner. However, learning how cooking works can make for fancier meals. Meah, I'm sick of hearing people give "advice" based purely off their own perspective.

No one may give a shit if I know how to play scales, but I give a shit, cos it helps me and makes things easier. Then when people hear me, they give a shit that I play well, because I took the time to learn the ins and outs of the guitar and of musicality in general. I'm sure people are very proud that they're ignorant to various aspects of theory as it means they play with their "feelings", but it's a bullshit argument, you can play melodically while still knowing what you're playing.

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Writing music that's comprised of G, Em, C and D while having some very basic pentatonic melody isn't the only music that can invoke emotion. It's like people think that the minute you understand what a flattened fifth is, you can't comprehend melody. To be fair it's not like he was throwing around unsolicited advice - he was asked in an interview. I do agree with you, though. Yeah I guess so! I just get a bit carried away when I hear the "Knowledge means you have no feels in your playing" argument, it's a massive pet peeve of mine!

Flattened fifth is awesome. Oh god that flat five leads to so much great shit if you just learn how to do it. That is pretty literately too because flat 5 is a amazing leading tone. Can not play blues with out it. Flat 5 is acceptable depending on context as well. Think about a half diminished chord.

What else is it called? A minor 7 flat 5. In his case I'd tend to think of the flat 5 as an augmented fourth since he's using it as a leading tone though.

You can also call chords 11s, even though the 11th is the 4th in reality. When chords are written out, the diminished fifth or augmented 4th will look like this, respectively:. Sometimes people say "flat 5" for personal reasons. Technically, it's not right because it's a diminished 5th, originating as a perfect interval, but it helps with speed of recognition with some folks to say "flat 5. For the other chord, I would probably say, "C major 7 sharp 11," even though we are dealing with an augmented fourth.

I don't think he was knocking theory, knowing chords and scales is fine. What he's saying isn't for him is practicing scales as an exercise in and of itself. It's not a new sentiment and we all know players who can play scales really fast and their solos sound like someone playing scales really fast. I guess so, though the people who just play super fast scales are the people who don't write good music. I'd say the majority of musicians will understand there's more to music than playing fast.

Those who don't just end up jerking themselves off in a guitar store while hoping people watch them. This is why I didn't go to art school and just paint black canvases that represent my dark soul. That's the funny thing. Going to art school doesn't necessarily teach you how to paint black canvases, but it does teach you how to talk about why you painted them, or at least creatively BS your way through a crit. Have you ever heard a Neil Young guitar solo? I think it's pretty apparent that he doesn't give a shit about scales or technique.

Love him none the less. He has some real skill playing the acoustic guitar though. The earlier stuff on Harvest and around that time is great. He might not know scales but he knows chords.

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Some people probably put too much emphasis on learning scales, but seriously how else do you learn to improvise lead parts? So I guess play note's that aren't where you play them, notes that aren't there at all, and any notes you like. He's being some type of weird elitist. Plus he uses a lot of wild vibrato and I suppose that can throw a note out of the bounds of the western 12 tone system.

So maybe that's what he's referring too? I think Neil falls into a category of talented dudes who really have no idea how they do what they do. These types give horrible advice. The problem with this is, playing "any note you like" when you don't know what you're doing sounds bad. Utilising tensions and understanding which notes sound which way during a solo or when you're writing a melody means you actually can play "any note you like", because you'll know exactly how it'll react in relation to the chord behind you.

That said, as Victor Wooten has pointed out in a few videos, you're never more than one fret away from a "right" note, or at least one in the scale—if you hit a 6th you'd have to go down 2 to get the 5th of a chord, or if you hit a b7 you'd have to go up 2 to get to the root. That advice has helped me loads since I first heard him say it, if I ever struggle over a tune, I know that I can find myself on a "right" note eventually. I tend to over-utilise chromatic runs, that way I can stop where there's a right note and it all sounds intentional.

Myles Davis said their are no wrong notes in a song, only notes played at the wrong time. This works a lot better for you if you're Myles Davis. I fully agree, playing over a jazz tune, you probably will defy melodic sense an awful lot, but it'll sound super cool! This advice might work for someone with a natural intuition for the guitar like Neil has. But this makes no sense to me.

Lets say Im jamming the blues with a beginner that needs some help- I will teach them the blues scale. Im not just gonna tell them "play whatever notes you like" because a beginner wouldnt know where to start. Am I having a stroke, or is that statement totally nonsensical? I honestly don't even know what he's trying to say here. What does he mean the notes aren't where he plays them?

Learn patterns of the "right" notes to play by ear, trial and error. Adjust up and down the neck for each key by ear. Essentially scales but without any formal music theory attached in the learning process. That would be my guess and the way I first taught myself, several years ago.



Yet if a musician tries to master musical vocabulary and technique, there's always someone off at the side with a snotty thing to say about it. The mechanic who fixed my car earlier kept going on about spark plugs and injection lines. He had clearly gone to mechanic school, but he had absolutely no feel! Neil Young is an old dude. Most guitar gods are old dudes. When those old dudes were young you didn't have youtube where you could check lessons, you didn't have tab sites, you didn't have whole websites devoted to theory.

You learned to play by ear, and by making LOT of mistakes. But the thing is, after you've made those mistakes, after you learn to play, after you learn to "express your feelings", guess what? You're playing the same fucking scales the modern guitarist are, the same notes, the same chords, the only difference is that you learned it by the trial and error method which took long ass time. But when these old dudes start to go on about how theory is uselss blah balh blah they don't realize that theory and youtube and all this shit we have they didn't allows people to progress MUCH faster.

It doesn't just happen in music, it happens in everything. The newer generations are always better than the older ones, mainly because we do stuff more efficiently. What these old dudes also have on their side was that they were there first. We might casually think how great the old stuff sounds and how lame the new stuff sounds, but there's only so many blues licks you can come up with and those guys were there first and they left with the best of them. I'ts not exactly easy to come up with a great sounding original licks when people have been picking off the best for last years.

Great thoughts that I have also had on my mind for a while. Been a drummer and classical musician for most of my young life and now as a young adult, I picked up guitar. With guitar, I'm also focusing a lot on compositional behaviors and patterns over the generations and across varying genres. It's interesting what people revere as good music.

Of course it's subjective, but when we really look at what we use in films, background music, theme parks, parties, etc, it's like the same stuff played over. I'm really into experimental music of many genres and, while I still appreciate the "masters" of whatever sound, I am a bigger proponent of progress and innovation and not getting so fixated on the past especially the mentality of "it was so much better back then".

I think new innovative stuff is always around but we get so saturated with everyone trying to imitate what's been done because it's so comfortable. You put a great perspective on comparing older generations and newer generations and my hope that innovation is still viable has just been increased a bit: Well I'm glad to hear that! Think about it, the modern music has developed in only last years or so, after we figured out how to record stuff. It's really mind bogling to think about the kind of access we have to music, compared to the access people had in the beginning of 20th century.

I mean before radio, hearing music, not to mention good music, was probably a pretty big thing. Now we just open spotify and have millions of songs right at hand. The newer generations are NOT always better than the older ones. There may be more available musicians that record companies can just plug into some pop country band, and those musicians are really phenomenal, but there were so many more great BANDS back then.

Filled with equally great musicians. I'm only 21 so it's not like I'm some biased old man here. But also, music is about as opinionated as it gets. I thought the rest of your post was solid. If you think there were more great bands back then, I suspect that either you're not hearing the best of what's out there today or you're trapped by nostalgia yes, it happens to us younger folk too. The music industry today doesn't always do much to help the truly innovative and interesting bands reach your ears, but they're there.

I agree with a lot of what you said, except there is an infinite number of amazing blues licks left to be made with the same old tired pentatonic. There isn't a set number and people have picked of the best, imo. There are way too many possible variations for that. That's like saying all the best statements have been made, since mankind has been speaking for millenias. If you know the basic theory AND have a lot of passion then you will be great.

Most of the virtuoso players have such a passion that they want to learn everything they can to understand what's going on and open new doors. There's nothing wrong with some learnin'. Came here to say this. I wish I could just end up playing all the right notes with talent alone! I however require the use of scales and theory to understand what I am playing and to help choose the right notes. It doesn't mean it's not played with feeling. I imagine this is why lots of truly great athletes end up failing as analysts, coaches, executives, etc with some exceptions, obviously.

When you are just so gifted at something it's probably very difficult to relate or relay information in a way that's helpful to "normal" people.



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It's actually a bit more than just learning guitar, even if you're just learning guitar. You can learn to compose for just about any instrument purely from musical knowledge. I agree with his sentiment as I understand it. I think we all know guitarists who learned scales and theory like so many of us have, but then they get "stuck" there in those scales, shapes, whatever. They get sucked out of the experimental, the discovery. I think or I hope that's what he was getting to maybe. I think that's valid. I am a classically trained musician and I began my education at a young age. After I got my first taste of a loose improv ensemble I began to resent the rigidity of the orchestra and the consistent squashing of any improvisational flourishes.

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I don't think that experience is universal, necessarily, but it was mine and biases my opinion, admittedly. I'm a guitarist who adhered to this advice for years, my entire playing time really, and it is one of my biggest regrets. Learning the ins and out of your instrument simply allow you to be a better musician.

That is not the point, i think the point is that the moment you will get stuck you will revert back to the scales, and you won't be looking for another way out. That is what people mean by "losing the feel". I understand why people think that, and where all that comes from, but it's not a good philosophy. If you get good at music, you will discover these patterns anyway, and then realize what a dolt you've been for not having just learned them quickly in the first place, because they are actually very useful. Some people use theory as directions, as a way to help them know what to play.

But truly what theory is, or should be, is just a way to get you to more quickly and easily make you able to make whatever sound you imagine, come through your guitar. This gets lost so easily. You hear so much "what should I play over this chord? That's how a computer would make music. It's the specific notes, the specific timing, the specific journey between the notes as they travel over a specific progression which makes music music.

And that can be great in an infinite number of ways, as well as terrible, and what pattern you stick to when you are making music has really quite little to do with how awesome it is. Except, for how that can help you make it "work". But that's like learning grammar, so that you can make sentences, that technically "work". But the aim in poetry is not just to string sentences together that make grammatical sense.

The point is to say beautiful things. This is exactly how I feel and it is such an important part of what people are trying to say when they say "I don't know any theory or have formal training" I'm looking at you Slash or SRV , what they are really saying is that they have found patterns in their own way and have applied it to their playing. I think Neil Young is over-emphasizing to make a point. I completely get what he's saying. This lesson category focuses on fretboard navigation and exercises to help you improve on the guitar.

These video lessons are great if you are looking to gain a better understanding of your guitar. In this group of lessons you'll find videos that show you how to use alternate tunings, perform maintenance on your guitar, and you'll also find some fun playing examples from Nate. Learn about the many styles of music you'll encounter while learning the guitar. These guitar lessons don't follow a specific order, so you can jump into the ones that interest you most.

Soul Scale Exercises for Improvisation + Guitar Tab

Learn about the many types of chords you'll come across when playing the guitar. These standalone lessons contain helpful chord diagrams to make learning these guitar chords easier.