The GuitArchitect’s Guide To Chord Scales Is Out Now (As Well As The New 4 Book Pdf Bundle!)

Posted on March 23, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Chord Scales

Update – 2/3/2013

Hello everyone! As of 2/1/2013, all of my books are available for order exclusively on my Lulu.com page and on Amazon which means that while I may run an e-book bundle offer directly in the future as of right now, unfortunately, no bundle options are available.

I’m leaving the page up for archival purposes but if you go to the Books link at the top of the page, you’ll find more detailed information about the books below and the other books in the GuitArchitect’s Guide To: series.

I’m happy to announce that the Chord Scale book is done (with the help of massive edits from John Harper and Doug Kearns – thank you both!)!

I’ll talk about it a little more below – but as a shortcut there are now 5 ways to buy the book.

(based on the 6/5/12 – pricing model)

If you would like to purchase the Chord Scales pdf (or any other individual book pdf) for $15 (usd) please click the PayPal link below. (Also, when ordering, please specify which book you’d like – The GuitArchitect’s Guide To Modes: Melodic Patterns, The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Modes: Harmonic Combinatorics, The GuitArchitect’s Positional Exploration, or The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Chord Scales).

Any 1 GuitArchitecture pdf for $15

If you would like to purchase any two book pdfs for $20 USD (and save $10 off of individual orders) please click the PayPal link below. (Also, when ordering, please specify which 2 pdfs you’d like – The GuitArchitect’s Guide To Modes: Melodic Patterns, The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Modes: Harmonic Combinatorics, The GuitArchitect’s Positional Exploration, or The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Chord Scales).

Any 2 GuitArchitecture pdfs for $20.

If you would like to purchase any three book pdfs for $30 USD (and save $15 off of individual orders) please click the PayPal link below. (Also, when ordering, please specify which 3 pdfs you’d like – The GuitArchitect’s Guide To Modes: Melodic Patterns, The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Modes: Harmonic Combinatorics, The GuitArchitect’s Positional Exploration, or The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Chord Scales).

Any 3 GuitArchitecture pdfs for $30.

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The Four-book PDF bundle (which includes The GuitArchitect’s Guide To Modes: Melodic Patterns, The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Modes: Harmonic Combinatorics, The GuitArchitect’s Positional Exploration, and The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Chord Scales) is available for $40 USD using the PayPal bundle button below. (A $20 savings off ordering the books on their own).

4 GuitArchitecture books for $40.

If you’d like a paper based version (and save yourself printing and binding costs), you can go to the link here ( Lulu.com ) to buy a nicely bound version of any of the books.

Please note:

I turn all orders around within the same day I receive payment notification.

Chord Scales is 190 pages of instruction and reference. It’s the shortest book I’ve written, but it’s just as deep as any of the other books. The big difference between this book and the other books, is that this book starts by taking one chord scale and really putting it through the ringer and demonstrating how to use it in ways that are intuitive and musical. Once the process for what to do with a chord scale is demonstrated, the book then goes on to outline all the unique chord scales from 3-12 notes!!!

The book has a lot of performance insights and presents the material in a way I believe to be truly unique (at least I’ve never seen it dealt with this way before). It’s incredible exciting to me, and while it’s been written as a soloing, compositional or improvisational resource for guitarists – it could be invaluable to musicians in general.

Here’s the front cover (more jpegs of the book can be seen below).

For more information about ordering, just skip to the bottom of the page. For those of you who want to know more about the book, just keep reading.There are a couple of posts that I’ve put up that excerpts and adapts material directly from this book. To get a sample of the book’s style you can check out :

CREATING CHORDS AND LINES FROM ANY SCALE – A HARMONIC COMBINATORICS / SPREAD VOICINGS LESSON

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Making Music Out Of Scales

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The lulu.com page includes a preview option for the first 12 pages of the book, but I’ve included some additional jpegs of some of the Chord Scales book pages below. Since the jpegs were converted from the pdf of the book, there’s some pixelation in the jpegs that’s not present in the pdf, but these will still give you an idea of what’s in the book.

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More Information:

If you’d like to find out more about the other books in the GuitArchitecture series, you may want to check out this post as well:

DIFFERENT PRICING TIERS ANNOUNCED FOR BOOK PDFS

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As I said about the books, I’m striving to create content that represents something I would be psyched to find on the web and hopefully it evokes a similar reaction in you as well.

Thanks for reading!

-SC

Favored Curry Or Spicing Up Chord Scales And Triads Part 2

Posted on December 24, 2010 by GuitArchitecture

In Part 1 of this lesson, I went over how to create a chord scale for improvising over a specific chord (in this case C major) chord. As a brief recap – here is the chord scale I chose:

C major chord scale with a # 2, # 4, and a b6 scale degree.

To start this off – here’s a sample lick using this scale:

Here’s how the scale sounds played slowly (1/4 note at 90)

Here’s the scale faster (1/4 note at 180).

The chords you say?

Since we’ve engineered this chord scale around a C major triad – we know that any licks we come up with will work over that chord – but to see what other chords can be used with this scale – we need to harmonize it.

Let’s look at the triadic (3 note) harmony first.

C major chord scale with a # 2, # 4, and b6 scale harmonized in 3rds (triads)

**Note the first 2 chords have been moved to the back three strings to facilitate playing:

Here are the chord formulas that are generated:

C, E, G – Root, 3rd and 5th – C Major
D#, F#, Ab – Root, 3rd and double flat 5th – non functional harmony*
E, G, B – Root, flat 3rd and 5th – E minor
F#, Ab, C – Root, double flat 3rd, flat 5th – non functional harmony*
G, B, D# – Root, 3rd, sharp 5th – G Augmented
Ab, C, E – Root, 3rd, sharp 5th – Ab Augmented
B, D#, F#, – Root, 3rd, 5th – B Major

(Note: even though these don’t have a triadic function they can serve a function enharmonically – I’ll get to that in the 7th chord section).

To recap – any licks that we generate from this scale will work over C major, E minor and B major.

Adding the spice

Since we started this approach with C major – let’s look at a lick that spices up a C Major Triad.

Here’s an mp3 of the lick. This is an example of something I might play as a backup accompaniment in the pre-chorus of a song.

To my ears even playing this over a straight C major tonality, the D#–>E really triggers an E minor tonality. Try playing this over a C major –> E minor progression.

Moving to E minor – here’s an approach I use a lot in rhythm playing.

The first step is to take a set of three strings – in this case I’ll use the high E, B and G strings.

Starting with a sample chord voicing in the low register – ascend up the neck by moving each note in the voicing up by scale degree. In this example:

I’ve started with an initial voicing (Ab, C and E) and moved it through scale-wise motion.

(Note: I hear this as G# instead of Ab – you may want to see the section on enharmonics below).

Here is an mp3 of the voicings. In the audio example, I play a low E between each chord to establish an overall tonality.

Having done this – I see some cool dyads ( 2 note voicings) on the B and G strings that I can use to spice up an E minor vamp. This is an example of the type of comping I might do on the verse of a song if the song chart just said E minor).

Here is an mp3 of the lick. Don’t be afraid to lay into the slides or add a little vibrato to make the notes sing a little more.

With a lot of these approaches – I’m not really conscious of what the specific functions of the notes are. Once I know that the scale will work over a chord – it’s more about focusing on the sound of the notes and how they fit into the song. On some tunes – these notes would clash with the melody and it wouldn’t work.

This process is about building a repertoire of sounds to have at your disposal. Knowing the theory around it just allows you to adapt those sounds and approaches to make the fit where you want them to.

Space is the place

Here’s a lick that takes the above approach of breaking chords up into different string sets and applies it to a melody line. Here I’ve focused on the A, D and B strings and added in the high E string at the end.

Here is an mp3 of the lick. Note the slides, vibrato and slightly rubato phrasing at the end of the lick. These are the little nuances that help make the difference between playing music and playing notes.

This next lick combines chord forms and melody by using artificial (i.e. “harp”) harmonics. To produce these – a chord shape is held with the fretting hand while the picking hand picks and partially frets notes 12 frets higher resulting in a chime like timbre. If you are unfamiliar with this technique – just google Lenny Breau (an absolute master of the approach) and you’ll get an idea.

For this specific lick: I’m holding the D# with my second finger, the C with my 3rd and the Ab with my 4th so I can reach the F# with the fret hand 1st finger.

Here’s an mp3.

One of the secrets of this method is to strategically time the release of the fret hand notes. The longer you can leave the notes held down, the more the pitches will bleed into one another – which produces the desired effect. Before we go to the next lick I need to make a brief enharmonic diversion.

An Enharmonic Diversion

An enharmonic is when a note is spelled differently but sounds the same (for example Ab and G#). When playing this over an E drone – I hear the pitch on the first fret of the G string as a G# (i.e the third of the chord) instead of Ab. It’s very difficult for me to hear that note functioning as a b4.

As a case in point, here’s another lick. (This piece makes liberal use of vibrato bar scoops – listening to the mp3 of the lick for phrasing is recommended).

I’ve notated this lick with both a G# and a G natural as those are the intervals I hear in the approach.

With this interpretation it makes the scale harmonically vague as it would then have both a major AND a minor 3rd. If we go back over the initial triadic chord and replace the Ab with G#, F# for Gb and D# for Eb we get a couple of different chord options.

C, E, G#- C Augmented
E, G#, B – E Major
G#, B, D# – G# minor
C, Eb , G – C Minor
G, B, Eb – Eb Augmented
Ab, C, Eb – Ab Major

To recap – in addition to C major, E minor and B major – these licks can also be used with care over E major, Ab major, C minor and G# minor.

To finish this approach out for now – let’s look at 7th chords.

C major chord scale with a # 2, # 4, and b6 scale harmonized in 3rds (7th chords)

**Note: the stretch on the second chord should be approached with caution. If it hurts – stop playing immediately!

Here are the chord formulas that are generated:

C, E, G, B – Root, 3rd, 5th and 7th – C Major 7
D#, F#, Ab, C – Root, 3rd and double flat 5th, double flat 7 – Enharmonically – this spells – Ab, C, Eb, Gb, – or Ab7 – but doesn’t serve a function from the D# pitch.
E, G, B, D# – Root, flat 3rd, 5th and 7th – E minor (Major 7)
F#, Ab, C, E – Root, double flat 3rd, flat 5th – Enharmonically – this spells – Ab, C, Eb, Gb, – or Ab7 – but doesn’t serve a function from the F# pitch.
G, B, D#, F# – Root, 3rd, sharp 5th, 7th – G Augmented 7
Ab, C, E, G – Root, 3rd, sharp 5th – Ab Augmented 7
B, D#, F#,A – Root, 3rd, 5th, flat 7th – B7

This gives us a couple of new tonalities to explore – namely, C Major 7th, E minor (major 7th), B7 and Ab7.

The final tally:

At a minimum, this chord scale will generate licks that can be used over the following chords:

C major, C Major 7th,

C minor, C minor (major 7th)

E major, E Major 7

E minor, E minor (major 7th),

Ab major, Ab7

G# minor

B major, B7

Next steps:

You will probably not like the use of this scale with all of the chords listed but, as is the case with any musical approach, the key is always to use your ears as a guide to what works and what doesn’t.

I hope this helps!

Happy Holidays and thanks for reading!

The material in the lesson is adapted from the material in The GuitArchitect’s Guide To Chord Scales book. More information about that book (including an overview and jpegs of sample pages) can be found here.

-SC

PS – If you like this post you may also like:

MAKING MUSIC OUT OF SCALES

CREATING CHORDS AND LINES FROM ANY SCALE – A HARMONIC COMBINATORICS / SPREAD VOICINGS LESSON

.

RECYCLING SHAPES OR MODULAR ARPEGGIOS FOR FUN AND PROFIT

GLASS NOODLES – ADAPTING A PHILIP GLASS ARPEGGIO APPROACH TO GUITAR

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MELVILLE, MADNESS AND PRACTICING – OR FINDING THE DEEPER LESSON PART 2

SOME USEFUL ONLINE PRACTICE TOOLS

POSSESSION IS 9/10S OF THE LAW BUT PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING OR PRACTICING PART VII

TESTING YOUR VOCABULARY OR PRACTICING PART VI

PRACTICE WHAT YOU PLAY OR PRACTICING PART V

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DEFINITIONS AND DOCUMENTS OR PRACTICING PART IV

TENSION AND THE SODA CAN OR PRACTICING PART III

PROPER POSTURE IS REQUIRED FOR PROPER PERFORMANCE – PRACTICING PART II

PRACTICE MAKES BETTER AKA PRACTICING PART I

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MELVILLE, MADNESS AND PRACTICING – OR FINDING THE DEEPER LESSON PART 2

FINDING THE DEEPER LESSON

INSPIRATION VS. INTIMIDATION

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WARMING UP: FINGER EXERCISES, THE 3 T’S AND THE NECESSITY OF MISTAKES

“THE LIMITS OF MY LANGUAGE ARE THE LIMITS OF MY WORLD”

A BRIEF THOUGHT ABOUT MUSIC THEORY

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BOOKS

LESSONS

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Favored Curry Or Spicing Up Chord Scales And Triads Part 1

Posted on December 7, 2010 by GuitArchitecture

[This lesson uses material from The GuitArchitect’s Guide To Chord Scales which details all unique chord scales from 3-note cells to the 12-note chromatic set. You can find out about that book (and the other GuitArchitecture books) here.]

When improvising over a C major chord, the first thought for many beginning improvisers is to use the C major scale as a melodic resource. For example: here are the notes of a C Major triad (C, E, G) broken up into a sample 2 string arpeggio:

C Major Arpeggio

One related chord scale for this scale is the C Major (Ionian) scale. The reason for this is that all of the notes in the C major triad are found in the C major scale.

C Major Scale

While there is nothing wrong with this approach, in addition to being a fairly bland melodic color to utilize, it contains the 4th scale degree (F), which is often referred to as an avoid note because of its 1/2 step relationship to E.

Option B: Modal Interchange

One solution to this is to use modal interchange to find alternate scales that work over a triad. For example, C Major is a diatonic chord in the key of G. Playing a G major scale starting and ending on C produces a C Lydian scale.

C Lydian (Parent scale: G Major)

This scale works well with the triad. In addition to containing the C major triad, it also has a raised fourth degree (aka #11), which adds a nice tension.

But this is merely scratching the surface of what can be found from this approach.

Option C: Creating your own chord scale

Here ‘s a process for generating any chord scale based on a chord.

Step 1: Start with a chord and write out the notes of the chord in ascending order.

Note: the smaller the chord, the more scale options you will have.

Let’s now look at the C major triad as a chord formula. Since it’s made up of the notes C, E and G any parent scale for C major chord should contain these notes (at least for now).

Step 2: Between the notes of the chord, write in all possible notes for each additional scale degree.

For example, in the Ionian and Lydian chord scale examples above, the 2nd degree was D, but it could have just as easily been Db or D#.

Expanding on this idea, the 4th could either be F natural or F#, the 6th could either be Ab, A natural or A#, and the 7th could either be Bb, B natural or B#.

If we apply this idea to the all of the other scale degrees, we end up with a chromatic scale that looks like this in list form:

Scale Degree 1 – C
Scale Degree 2 – Db, D, D#
Scale Degree 3 – E
Scale Degree 4 – F, F#
Scale Degree 5 -G
Scale Degree 6 – Ab, A, A#
Scale Degree 7 – Bb, B

or this in music notation:

C Major triad with chromatic scale degrees

Note: If you are planning on harmonizing the scale, deriving modal arpeggios or pentatonics, I recommend you keep each scale degree unique (i.e. that you use either Db or D or D#, but not more than one type of D pitch).

Likewise, there are several enharmonic pitches (i.e. pitches that are spelled differently but sound the same) presented in the full chromatic. While you could use A# and Bb in a chord scale since they are the same sounding pitch the result will be a 6 note scale.

Step 3: Choose the scale degrees that sound the best to you.

Based on the above parameters, there are 32 unique chord scales for the C major triad. Let’s look at one of them.

For this example, I’m going to choose a #2 for the second scale degree, a #4, a b6 and a natural 7 scale degree for a very chromatic chord scale. Here it is in list form: