Guitar II: Figuring and Writing

This template was created with a broad range of styles in mind, and aspects are applicable to other instruments.

The Blocks are not rigid, and progress may be nonlinear and variable in time.  If Block 1 helped you, you are welcome to send thanks, including in money form.  The value of Block 1 might be, on average, $170. 


Block 2

After playing other people's music, learned from outside sources, you might be interested in figuring stuff out "by ear", or writing some of your own music.  You will need to understand how the guitar is laid out, how jumping around and chord forms associate to sounds.  Intervals and basic diatonic theory (below) are for everybody, and pentatonics with additions are basic to styles with a blues-influx.

If you want to create "parts" and/or solos, in other words if you want to be a "guitar player", you might start paying more attention to rhythm.  Half a notion of time signature is helpful, the part that denotes grouping of pulses.  Connect the dots to feel time more continuously.

Guitar players need something to play on, such as single notes, combinations of notes, and percussive sounds.  "Lead players" need more, such as various phrasing notions and "special effects" like harmonics.  Turning/incorperating things into exercises can be helpful.


(The middle one even sits like a guitarist.)


If you want to sing with your guitar, you will need to pay more attention to melody.  Roughly, any musical "story" is melodic, and is commonly carried out via changes in pitch, rhythm, and duration.  This is somewhat akin to be song-sensitive -- setting up various relationships between yourself and the song, which is to say the chords, primary melodies, and lyrics.

Your part in an arrangement is created by the interaction between you and all the other stuff.  In something purely improvised, this interaction is more variable.  But as you perhaps found out in Block 1, even when you know every sound you're going to make in advance, it still comes out different every time.


INTERVAL PROGRAM

Here are twelve principle intervals, with applications.  Each interval is one fret greater distance than the last, and as an exercise, figure out and play intervals on adjacent strings.  It may be helpful to learn the numbering and fingering for the major scale first, as this will greatly simplify locating intervals and understanding their names. 

Half Step/Flat 2nd.

A one fret move, in either direction.  String twelve of them together to form (a/the) chromatic scale.


Whole Step/2nd.

String these together to form the whole tone scale.   Neither this nor the chromatic scale may be of immediate use to you, but memorizing the sounds of the intervals will be.


Flat/Minor 3rd.
 
Moves from a pitch to one a flat 3rd away is ultra common is blues-related music, especially if you tweak the leading note a bit sharp before descending, or the upper pitch when ascending.

Form sequences of minor thirds to create diminished arpeggios.


(Major) 3rd.

With major and minor 3rds, you can form triads.  You met the diminished triad above, formed by stacking a minor third atop another.  If you put the minor 3rd on top of a major 3rd, it's called a major triad.  Switch that to get a minor triad, and stick a major 3rd on top of another and form the augmented triad.


(Perfect) 4th. 

Strike two notes on adjacent strings at the same time to create double stops, of which 4ths form a type of "power chord."


Flat 5th (Sharp Fourth). 

Useful for such things as summoning the devil, and bebop. 


(Perfect) 5th.

As a double stop, these are the most common "power chords."


Flat/Minor 6th.

In case you lost count, we're up to an interval of eight half-steps/frets, and with this interval it becomes especially useful to extend the double stop concept to strings with one (silent) in between.

Note that the flat/minor 6 is an inversion of a major 3rd.


(Major) 6th.

Learn the major and minor 6ths in different keys as double stops, for a widely useful device, most common in blues, country, and rock directly derived from those sources.

Note that the major 6th is the inversion of a minor 3rd.


Flat/Dominant 7th. 

Not much in use as a double stop, but added atop a major, minor, or diminished triad, you get the recipe for the dominant 7th, minor 7th, and diminished seventh/half-diminished arpeggios.  Unless you play the simplest of pop music, you will need these.

Note that adding the flat 7th to a triad is like sticking another 3rd atop the two below.


Major 7th.

Also not in wide currency as a double stop, but beloved as the makings of the major 7th and major/minor 7th arpeggios.  You get these by adding major 7ths to major and minor triads, and as with the flat 7th, adding the major 7th to a triad is another 3rd atop 3rds.


Octave

Full circle, in terms of letter name and in some way I think nobody truly understands -- octaves sound "alike", even though they are clearly not the same pitch.  They are super important to fretboard navigation, starting with the 12th fret as the octave of the open strings, and locations of octaves for strings with one in between them.

If this sort of thing interests you, you might move on to comparing intervals via their relationship to the octave above and below a given pitch, as was done with the 6ths.


If you can learn the sound of each interval and associate them tightly to fretboard jump/configurations, you will be able to instantly play melodies and riffs, both the ones in your head and in the songs you are figuring out, and improvisation becomes possible.  Conceptual/physical knowledge of intervals allows you to do with a guitar what you do naturally with your voice, and makes building chords and understanding their names much easier.  

 If this all seems very abstract to you, go on to Block 3 (forthcoming).

Four Views on Offense

A radio show recently posed the question:  how should public art be funded during a recession?  It was framed in terms of prods to fund the "hits", until there is money for the risky exhibits. 

After commercial break a new question swept the topic away, because no one called in.  But maybe that's not surprising -- recall some "art controversies" from the last two decades:  Robert Mapplethorpe, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Holy Virgin Mary, and My Sweet Lord.   One thing they all share is the offending of people enough to care, not just about funding but the very existence of art.


I.

I have no answer as to whether anyone should view, let alone fund bullwhips in asses, or alternative takes on Saviors and kin.   How could I, when I have no sense of the "utility vs. danger" of such art? 

It is, of course, possible that no one should be making such things, that they represent some kind of abomination, perhaps with the capability of spreading.  But how is an organizer or funding agent supposed to know?   Even after an event has already been seen, is it possible to seperate what has merely offended versus what has caused actual harm?

Could an artist be doing his job to suggest that Jesus had (sex), or that an icon could be fashioned from porn and elephant shmear?  I think so, inasmuch as you are being challenged to view something against contrast.  You may not like the chocolate Jesus, even less idea of a savior mounting his good lady wife, but who says an artist's job is to make something you like?

The subject of a 1913 scandal, in New York.

A recent exhibit at a library featured twenty or so framed white rectangles, a description of a famous event in the center of each.  According to the artist's statement, he is trying to get people to see how images of events are conjured in one's mind despite not being at an event.

The exhibit is annoying (like I'm not at an event) and so I would veto it if something else were available.  And guess what, most people I ask about the exhibit don't much care, which I take to mean the exhibit is not "offensive" or otherwise radiant enough.

So, should it have been funded?  Should it exist?  One way you might find out is by measuring the exhibit's ripples through culture.  You could poll exhibit viewers to get some idea, and some of the offended will offer their views, but how can you really know what havoc or good your art has wrought?  

Art funding is (hopefully inspired) guesswork, exhibit design an art all its own. 

The artist behind the library exhibit is a successful advertising man.  His field, more than art funding or curatorship, believes it must steer clear of offending people to accomplish it's ends.  Yet advertising is (IMHO) usually ugly, and in full public view.

(Not to say the installation was ugly -- it wasn't so much an ad as an attempt to question perception.)

Does anyone really believe a steady diet of advertising is harmless?  Can chronic glorification of competitiveness via manipulative emptiness possibly be a bad thing?  

Of course it isn't just advertising that makes public spaces a jumble of nonsense.  Those ugly billboards stand near bland, even malformed architecture, and commercials only add to the insult of much radio, TV, and Internet content.  We are assaulted daily by vacuousness, ugliness, and stupidity from many sources, even if we try to avoid it.

Yet some people are worried about a rendering of Mary, cloistered in a gallery, or a Jesus made from chocolate?   It always gets me that such things upset people more than, say, war, starvation, and disease.  Maybe this is testament to the power of "the arts", but it seems more like a certain Creator's twisted sense of humor. 


Consistently, the "offended" in art scandals appear to lack the capacity for self-reflection, and the "offenders" appear to believe that what they put out into the world is somehow selectively, magically interactive, producing only good or neutral effects.  Wow, "the arts" really are special!

I think (hope) most people, not completely self-absorbed, believe art is neither harmless nor The Antichrist. 

So, I sympathize with everyone involved in art scandals, but believe nothing approaches the destructiveness of what is outside the galleries.  Complain and bitch as you will about "the arts", and I certainly do enough of it,  but I think we are trying to control things that are much larger and/or more personal.

Sermon on the Mounted

I have since learned that the preacher was insulted.  She who came to me unannounced, presumed to know my "problem" and how to fix it-- she was insulted.

Then I got a birthday card, wherein her apology is clothed in the message that in her heart lies a trump card.

But Happy Birthday anyway!


It was the usual story.  I am made in god's image, my primordial ancestors given idyllic splendor with a condition -- don't eat the fruit of the Tree.  Then came the embodiment of Evil, as a snake, and the stupid woman was seduced to eat.

As I result, I am bad.  I am broken, and sinful, and my only chance to be reunited with something called god is through "the heart," specifically through another thing named "Jesus."

This was told to me as if it was news.              

           

Normally I don't stick around for this stuff, but I made an exception because the preacher was likable, and perceptive.  Plus, I was trapped -- and that is the most bothersome part of the message.

I came home that night after a day of moving boxes and job hunting.  I did not want visitors, but I'm not living in my own space, and so could not overtly complain.  A bubbly middle-aged woman shows up, unannounced, and immediately takes an abnormally strong interest in me -- I was set up.

First came the ice breaker, later the question:  do I have five minutes to spare, to look at a drawing?  And then I knew -- here it comes.


I was shown in pictorial form what I narrated above, the story of the Fall and the proposed solution.  Five minutes became half an hour as I attempted to understand what this preacher had to offer, and (especially) why she had come.

Eventually I lost patience, and the response to my charges of condescension and judgment was surprising. The preacher stated she is so happy with this God-thing in her "heart"  that she is bursting, and so must share.  But without an appointment?  When what was clearly expected was for me to sit attentively and listen, and agree, instead of having a conversation?

In other words, it was about her, not me.


Beyond the pretense and conniving that set up the meeting, I do not feel I was subjected to a self-lie, at least not a conscious one.  This was not some spaced out, starry-eyed "born again" . . . or was it?

She did repeat things an awful lot, as if my rejection was a matter of incomprehension.  Allow me to elucidate what I was trying to say that night.

The "Fall of Man" story makes sense to me on this level:  at some point consciousness became able to process "good versus evil," and has been working out the ramifications ever since.  One of them is the tension between accepting and dominating inclinations, which include knowing.

I can accept that I have inherited the consequences of duality -- clearly.  I can even accept the idea of alienation from "God", but what do you mean by that?

And there exchange goes on forever, trying to delineate exactly what that word is supposed to represent. And that's the problem, because "god", understood in such venerable terms as the "ultimate source" or "uncaused cause", has no qualities.  It's Mysticism 101:  all attempts to label and discuss are pointers, at best.

So, what is that we were really talking about?  What am I alienated from? 

What was she alienated from?

c. 1470

Postscript:  The preacher and her husband have since taken me out to lunch for my birthday, and gave me a Christmas present as well. This is all very nice, but I still don't know what it's about.

Eye Candy 3

 

Thoth and Seti, Abydos, Egypt.

Feckless

Crop circles don't seem to be much on people's minds, which is kind of a shame, because they aren't all made by feckless nerds with boards and rope.  Consider, for example:

Feckless nerds maybe, but boards and rope? 

If you're not impressed, consider the execution:  (and what's wrong with you?)

 

Boards and rope?   For any of the circles pictured above, how were the designs even mapped out?

So, if not stomping, how?  There is apparent evidence that circles with unknown makers were done using electromagnetism.  So, the least outlandish explanation would appear to involve technology that most people don't know about, perhaps run by feckless nerds. 

Feckless alien nerds?