Originally Posted by daveyh
there are 12 notes and 3 types of chord it doesn't take that long to figure out the number of permutations of those in a bar is significantly less than the number of modes and scales people peddle in books.
If you really need scales to cover all alternatives, use the C major scale and the Eb pentatonic (AKA white keys and black keys).
It's easier to remember the sound of G# over a E7 chord than it is wonder, using pitch axis theory or diatonic theory, which modes and scales you might be playing.
People seem more apt to suspect I know no theory; than question how much theory they really need.
Just tools. Lots of people know what a plane or chisel do, but would be totally screwed if they tried to hang a door. Lot's of joiners know how to use a plane or chisel and can make a door, but wouldn't be able to make a cabinet anyone wants to look at. Plenty of cabinet makers can make wonderful furniture, but wouldn't know how to design a barley twist column. Lots of furniture designers don't know how to use a plane and chisel.
The person who accepts and does all those is the artist.
I don't think that metaphor works - I'm not entirely sure what it's meant to mean, it kinda feels like a largess.
There are varieties of chisel and planes for a variety of applications.
Whereas
There are 12 notes and 3 types of chord for every type of musical application in western music.
If a jazz player wants to shift to country music - it simply means a different set of chord/note combinations becomes more prevailent... from a theory perspective (still only really of use if you can hear the sounds in your head) - the reality is the rhythms are markedly different and the concept of a 'bag' of tunes is replaced with a list of convoluted licks in different keys, the keys used for jazz are different from country generally because brass instruments sound better in flat keys and string instruments better in.
It has precious little to do with learning the country scale. It has more to do with knowing which players you like.
Metaphor works fine. As there are a variety of tools, there are a variety of scales etc, all with different characters that can be used in situations. It's nothing more than knowing the most appropriate tool for the job.
But that's beside the point as I have zero interest in whether you think theory is important or not, I'm interested in personal recommendations of books people have found useful.
What you're describing is "pattern playing" - I don't rate it. I see it more as a ball and chain than a tool.
But then again you don't rate Guthrie and I think one of his achievements (along with people like John5) is to swap genres fluidly within a few bars - that isn't possible if it's all kept in toolboxes - too many boundaries.
Another vote for Creative Guitar numbers 1 and 2 then.
No, it's just knowing theory. 'Pattern Playing' is just the creative ability of the player manifesting.
Same thing with John 5 as Govan, awesome technique and music that brings a new level of achievement to the word 'chore'.
But being so 'creative' I'd guess they mustn't know any theory?
Scales, modes and such aren't tools - they're simply explanations of collections of notes people have chosen to play together.
So people using scales and modes etc to evoke the same sounds these note selections create are using patterns - it's pattern playing.
Theory is an explanation - largely redundant and where it is seen in abundance is in people unable to extemporise or replicate sounds.
Clearly there's an impediment in your enjoyment of what they do. I don't like all their music, but I really enjoy the fluidity of their playing, equally I've friends who grew up listening to rockabilly, jazz , country and folk and when they ad-lib I really love the sounds they create - it defies genres it slips between them beautifully.
People using patterns are too rigid, they don't hear George Benson's bebop as the country scale - mostly because they don't differentiate between rhythms - which is really what identifies the majority of music - not the the notes.
Theory is a means of explaining the sounds you hear or communicate what you want to hear to other musicians.
If theory is used to generate note selection, the act is explicitly not creative, where's the experimentation? where's the exploration? Where's the risk? Creativity is about creating NOT recreating.
At the end of learning all the scales and all the chords and all the diatonic theory - what will you have? A perception of what notes sound good with what chords, what intervals evoke which emotions - these traits will reoccur in hundreds of scales until the scales are irrelevant - so why not learn them without the artficiality of scales in the first place?
People get hung up on note clusters, and people make money selling their systems of getting to the point where you can hear the notes you want to play and perform that task - listening to more music and transcribing stuff you love will get you there far sooner.
But if you want a couple of books to teach about the main scales and modes and their uses, how to play different time signatures and how your note selection or rhythm can help you impersonate other instruments - Creative Guitar 1 and 2 are the sensible choices regardles of your feelings about Guthrie's music or the people who've recommended it
Subjective, but for what it's worth:
Best all-round guitar/ theory/ general musicianship books (or series):
Elementary Training for Musicians - Paul Hindemith
Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns - Nicolas Slonimski
The Advancing Guitarist - Mick Goodrick
For Guitar Players Only - Tommy Tedesco
Modern Method for Guitar (parts 1,2&3) - William Leavett
Music Reading for Guitar (The Complete Method) - David Oakes
Musicianship and Sight Reading for Guitarists - Oliver Hunt
Creative Guitar (parts 1&2) - Guthrie Govan
Modern Reading Text in 44 - Louis Bellson
Chord Chemistry - Ted Greene
Modern Chord Progressions - Ted Greene
Jazz Guitar Single Note Soloing (books 1 and 2) - Ted Greene
There are plenty more good ones but this is a great 'core' collection for any library of any serious guitar student.
It's pattern playing if people approach scales and modes (etc) as tools rather than as 'frameworks'. The use of 'scales and modes' can actually be identified from two perspectives. One of them is from the point of view of a player who has learned a scale and then becomes imprisoned by the framework by the dependency on this scale that has been cultivated. The other point of view is as a player uses notes from a scale but doesn't really know what it is or what it's called. They are technically "using a scale" but don't think in this way because they are following the sounds that they want to hear and 'sticking' with notes that they have figured out seem to work together to offer sounds that they like.
Last edited by Nik Harrison; 16th January 2013 at 12:00 PM.
Interesting, I guess I've opted for Leon White's Sight to Sound over the David Oakes (still got that one :^)
But shit, yeah Mick Goodrick's book is a brilliant suggestion!
I'd love to have a drink and a chat about Ted Greene's Single Note Soloing approaches... I never got it in the same way as the others. That Louis Belson book is brilliant in it's approach to rhythms - I need to grab my copy back from my nephew who's a drummer
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