Lesson 9

Lesson 9

In this lesson we will work on shifting from our 2nd and 5th
C major / A minor pentatonic scale positions. We will also look at a couple very popular chord progressions, fingerpicking and transposition.

Review lesson 8 and be sure to have somewhat of an understanding of the topics in this lesson before moving on to lesson 10.

Reading Lesson 9

	Scales - Connecting Positions Connecting 2nd and 5th position C major/A minor pentatonic scales. The most important thing to remember about shifting positions is to shift with a finger that is playing in both positions. For example: On your high E string your 4th (little) finger plays both in 2nd position with the A and also in 5th position with the C . Shifting your 4th finger from the A to C keeps all fingers in thier proper positions. Try shifting from 2nd to 5th using your 2nd finger on the G. Doesn't work so well, does it?

The 3rd and 4th strings work well for shifts. The exercise below is going to have you practicing shifting on your 3rd string. You will use your 1st finger to do the shifting both forward and back.

Notice in the 1st measure you play A to C twice. The first time you will play A (2nd fret of your G string) with your 1st finger (index finger) and then C on the 5th fret with your 4th finger (pinky finger). Then you will play A again with your first finger but this time you will slide to C with your 1st finger. So now you are in 5th position and will play the D on the 7th fret with your 3rd finger. Then back to C with 1 and slide back to A with 1. Then repeat.

Try playing along wih this midi file (right click to open in new window).

The video below goes over the above exercise:

Patterns

With this pattern we will go up 4 notes at a time. We are using the 2nd position C major/A minor pentatonic scale from above. Start on G and go up 4 notes in the scale (G, A, C, D), then go back 2 and start on A and go up 4 notes (A, C, D, E), go back 2 again and go up 4 from there (C, D, E, G). Continue all the way up.

Just like our scales we should practice the scales up and back down. When you move the pattern down it will go like this. Once you get to the high A (5th fret of your high E string, should be your 4th finger), you will go down 4 notes (A, G, E, D) then go back up 2 to G and go down another 4 (G, E, D, C) and up 2 to E and back down 4 (E, D, C, A) and so on until you get back to the low G.

You should practice this pattern with all the major scale forms you have learned thus far.

The player to the right has 3 examples of the pattern from above being played over a progression. Eighth, eighth note triplets and sixteenth notes.

For slower connection speeds:

Midi example (right click to open in new window)

In the midi example you will hear the pattern played up and back down as eighth notes with the A being played twice at the top (once to end the ascending pattern and again to start the descending patter) and then sixteenth notes and then eighth note triplets.

Chord Progression - I V vi IV

Blink 182 - Dammit

Another popular chord progression used in many songs:

1 5 6 4 but written as I V vi IV

Notice the upper case roman numerals for the major chords and lower case roman numerals for the minor chord. If that doesn't make any sense review lesson 3.

Also notice that the strum pattern is the same as in the Greenday tune Time of Your Life from lesson 7. This time it is a bit faster :)

Complete Breakdown

Blink 182

Transposition

Let us move the above Blink 182 progression to a different key. Let's move it to the key of G major.

Because we learned the chord progression was a I V vi IV progression, we can build a G major scale and build the chords and fill in the progression:

Diatonic triads in the key of G major.

So you can see the advantage of understanding chord progressions as numbers in relationship to a key. The chart to the right shows how easy it is to change keys. Could you find the same progression in the key of D?

	I	V	vi	IV
Key of C	C	G	Am	F
Key of G	G	D	Em	C

Since the Blink 182 tune used just power chords we would just play power chords in G:

Minor Progression

We looked at the I V vi IV progression above and now let's take a different look at it.

You probably already know that E minor is relative to G major, so let's play the progression above in the Key of G but let's start on the Em.

Key of G = G D Em C

Key of Em= Em C G D

Interesting eh? The same chords but because it starts on a minor chord it is called a minor key and starting on a major chord made it a major key. It isn't always this simple and we will expand on it as we go through the lessons.

Greenday's 21 Guns verse uses this progression but in the key of Dm (more on this later)

Greenday - Time of Your Life So in lesson 7 we strummed the verse of the ever popular Greenday song Time of Your Life. Below is the arpeggio part similiar to what is played as the intro and 1st verse of Greenday's Time of Your Life. It is not exactly what is on the record but very close. You can play it with a pick or your fingers. The video below explains how to fingerpick the song but can be used even if you want to use a pick. The pick pattern is shown in the first measure above and is the same for the other 3 measures: Improvising We will look at 2 different progressions to solo over in this lesson. 1. Here is yet another progression with the same chords we used above. This one would be called: I vi IV V If you remember in lesson 5 we had almost the same progression but with an Am in measure 4 instead of D. With the progression in lesson 5, the chords could belong to two different keys but with the progression above the only key that has all 4 of these chords is the key of G major. Even though the 4 chords belong to the key of E minor, it would be called the key of G major because of starting on the G chord.
With this progression we know it belongs to the key of G because there are 3 major chords in every key and they are the I IV V. The only key that has G, C and D would be the key of G. So for soloing over this progression use your G major/E minor scales you have learned thus far.
2. Another fun jam track to play over is the progression from the Blink 182 tune above. It is a short jam track but fun to play over. The basic idea we looked at in Lesson 6 was that if a song started and ended with the same chord, the name of that chord was also the name of the key. In the case of the Tom Petty riff, it started on a D major chord and ended on a D major chord. Therefore we assumed it was the key of D major and improvised using the D major scale. However, the power chord does not have a 3rd degree which determines whether a chord is major or minor. The 5th position C major / A minor pentatonic from above and the previous lesson is great for determining which key to use over a particular power chord riff. For example: Click on the riff button below for a cool Blink 182 riff that uses all power chords. The first and last chord are both C5. Try putting your index finger on C (8th fret of your low E string) and using the most popular scale form from above. 1-4, 1-3, 1-3. This would give us C minor pentatonic or Eb major pentatonic. Doesn't sound so great over the riff though does it? Try putting your little finger on the same C and using the same form. 1-4, 1-3, 1-3 Much better eh? This tells us that the tune is in C major. Now that we know the key, let's solo. Press play on the player below and try to play the scale positions from above. Concentrate on shifting and using the proper fingers. I am going to get to the practice routine soon. Lesson 10