Practice makes perfect/songs
Practicing can be boring.
When I was in my teens I taught guitar for a few years. And one of things I always found important was knowing the basics. Same thing when I teach Photography, or when you want to learn anything, knowing the basics is key to faster progress.
However just running through scales can be very boring, and will in a lot of cases actually stop people from playing all together.
And in all honesty it’s great for finger strength but unless you’re stuck in the 80’s, or have any hope to be as good as the instagram players…. I think practicing with a proper backing track can be a lot better.
First of all you can still practice your scales, just select a proper backing track for style, key and tempo… and you’re off.
Start out with scales but very soon you will find out that your fingers and mind will start doing other things, much more interesting things. Playing on the beat is cool, but what about just before, or behind, or alternate. With a metronome it’s not something you will quickly do, it doesn’t feel natural, but with a backing track, before you know it it just happens.
But there is more
When playing with backing tracks you already get a vibe from the track, not it becomes much easier to “feel” the scales.
One of the things I found the hardest to learn was how to get the modes to sound like I heard on the records. I got myself a Kawai session trainer and still couldn’t figure it out and eventually gave up. When I started playing again a few years ago I got a Kawai session trainer for nostalgic reasons but as soon as found the backing tracks on YouTube I never hooked it up again. (still love it).
Now it was also a lot easier to feel the modes.
And that’s the difference. A mode is not just a scale, it’s a feeling, a mood and a story.
But does that mean you always have to follow the same notes….
Luckily not. If you want a little bit of extra flavor, why not throw in some passing chromatic notes, or pass through a few nice dissonant notes. As long as you land on the right ones 😀
Yellow Gorilla
When I want to write something new I always start in my DAW (logic) with some drum loops and a standard one note bass line. The reason I let the bass just play one note is because I don’t yet know which way I want to go.
When you commit for example to an E minor chord you are already steering towards a certain feel or key. By using just one repeating bass line you can go which ever direction you want.
And sometimes a riff just happens.
And do make sure you record it, on your phone or your DAW it doesn’t matter.
I’ve had so many moments where I thought I played a great riff, continued playing and building and although I still remembered the notes I could not figure out the timing anymore, so always record 😀
In this case I wanted to write something in the style of Metallica, but ended up with something quite a bit different.
And sometimes, when you’re lucky that one riff gives too many ideas to chose from because they would all go into a different direction. So I decided to just split the song up into a few different versions, with that same kind of theme.
Yellow Gorilla is the more rock part.
Gear
Ibanez Jem 7v WH Ebony
Synergy Vai module
Marshall 8008
Genome with cab emulation
FX G-major, X32, MDX1000, Sonic Maximizer AM21, Lexicon Alex
Mastering via SM pro audio Tube Pre-amp for the final stage.
Listen to Yellow Gorilla on your favorite streaming service via this link
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