Chordal contexts for practising basic scales and arpeggios ?

[timmyo]

OK - whilst getting some major scales and arpeggio shapes under my fingers, it occurs to me that I could/should try and practice them in some sort of musical context to get a proper feel for them. Playing phrases/snippets based on major scales/arpeggios over a basic 1,3,5 progression sounds a bit cheesy/nursery rhyme - so what other fairly simple progressions might offer a slightly more entertaining flavour or backing to be playing with them (in both senses of the term) against ?

ta

Tim

[jalapeno]

1 / 4 / 5 - blues progression - NOT playing blues scale

2 / 5 / 1 e.g. Am / D7 / CMaj7

Circle of 4ths/5ths

[Nas]

Look at some standards.

something like autumn leaves, set the metronome to a low setting around 60 - 90 and play the chord tones. Use the metronome beats as one and three get the basic arpeggios sorted.

You should be able to hear the chord changes as you are soloing.

[clarky]

when I get my students to mess with melodic substitution I set up a groove which is just drums and bass guitar so that there are no chords at all

the bass pumps away on the root note only

this allows the greatest freedom to experiment of all

I start the groove just looping on the note E so that the student can really have lots of time and freedom to experiment without the need to be aware of an impending chord change bearing down on them...

as they gain in confidence I'll alter the backing so that they play over 4 bars of E and 4 bars of A
again just root notes on the bass

you'll find that just from those two notes alone, there is a shit lot you can do.......

you'll be really surprised....

[timmyo]

ta

[imported_JS]

when I get my students to mess with melodic substitution I set up a groove which is just drums and bass guitar so that there are no chords at all

the bass pumps away on the root note only

this allows the greatest freedom to experiment of all

I start the groove just looping on the note E so that the student can really have lots of time and freedom to experiment without the need to be aware of an impending chord change bearing down on them...

as they gain in confidence I'll alter the backing so that they play over 4 bars of E and 4 bars of A
again just root notes on the bass

you'll find that just from those two notes alone, there is a shit lot you can do.......

you'll be really surprised....

It works well for me. I just fire up Guitar Rig and play a drum loop and throw in the bass and then can do what I llike over the top.
Then I play to a simple chord backing loop and try to work out where the solo problems are and more importantly WHY.
Far more useful to me at the moment than blasting over Total Accuracy backing tracks.

[clarky]

the really cool thing with this is that you can create your own level of difficulty..

as in..

you can make the same chord last for twice as many bars before you change to another so you have plentl of time to screw with various tonalities before the change...

ok so this don't make for great song-writing, but for experimental purposes this is tip medicine..