Learning Melodic Style Guitar

[GAJ52]

I have touched on this subject some time ago in another post but can’t find it.

Can anyone give me any advice on learning to play melodic ‘Shadows’ style guitar. I can read tablature and have learnt a few of the easier Shadows tunes, but each tune seems to takes forever to learn. Have any of the members got any tips on learning particular scales or any other idea that would allow me to learn to play melodic style guitar a lot quicker. I am not interested in playing any other guitar style so learning the hundreds of different scales would be a waste of time.

Apart from lots practice I just feel I’m missing something very obvious !!

Many thanks

Glen

[grip]

Hi Glen,

I don't think there is an "easy" route to take. If you can read tabs, then practice, practice and more practice.

If you have recording software you can import the original track and break it up into "bite sized" pieces and make a copy of each section many times and play along with each multiple part until you feel you have it. It also gives the opportunity to slow it down and keep the same pitch if you need to.

Ear training by playing along to anything will help. I know I'm not the only member on here that downloads all sorts of midis and just try to play along to them.


Kind regards,


Chris

[graeme]

Few people are blesssed (or cursed, depending on your point of view) with perfect pitch. However, most people can detect and recognise relevant pitch, i.e. the interval between two notes.

Learning to recognise intervals in this way will greatly assist you in playing along to anything. In fact, you will find you rarely have to revert to tabs, or any other notation system, for most things.

The same is roughly true for chordal work. A major chord sounds 'different' from an augmented one. Once you have the sounds of the different chord structures locked into your brain, busking becomes a whole lot easier.

[Franticplucker]

Hi Glen,
This is an interesting subject, I like many other guitarists don't read music, I don't know the names of the notes on the fretboard, I never took the trouble to learn tab, I do know the names of some of the chords I play, I just picked that up over time. but I don't know the names of the individual notes that make up the chord, also apart from knowing the top string is E and the bottom string is also E, I am not even sure of the names of the other strings in between.

So when asked, as I am sure many of us have, 'When you play a tune How Do You Know where to put your fingers'. how do we explain it 'Answers on a Postcard Please'.

This is my theory, I go along with Graeme's reply, when we sing a song, or play a tune on guitar, in our mind we are always one or more notes in front of the note we are actually playing, and we use the note we are playing as a reference to the next note in the song that we need to play, and instinctively know that the next note required is say, three frets up on the next string higher.

This is relative pitch recognition, playing by ear, if you have this ability you don't actually need to learn how to play the tune, you just can, but for it to work you must be very familier with the sounds produced from the different strings when fretted at different positions on the fingerboard.

For some of us this ability comes more naturaly than others, But I think to familiarize yourself with the fingerboard sounds, use a finger walking method, for example fret a string with your index finger, miss a fret then fret the same string with your ring finger, then walk through all six strings at different positions up and down the fingerboard, then bring in other fingers.

This is a way of familiarizing yourself to the relative sound of one note to another, you just have to keep repeating this kind of exercise for as long as it takes, until all unwanted symptoms disappear.
Good Luck
Vic.

[stratomaster]

I endorse what Chris says about learning tunes in chunks.

When we had our four piece schoolboy instrumental group, we would buy the latest 45RPM record that we wanted to learn. This record would be played on a Dansette record player in the front room of our lead guitarist.
We would play the record in little chunks until we had all learnt our various parts, working through until we had the whole tune off pat.

Anyone remember Nero and the gladiators? we bought 'Hall of the Mountain King' and learnt it by the above method.
When we played this instrumental on stage, we reproduced the thunderclap by lifting up the corner of one of the reverb amplifiers. and dropping it back on the floor. I can't remember the make or model of that amp, but it had springs and a microphone to produce the reverb effect........Happy days ;D

James.

[GAJ52]

Gentlemen

Many thanks for your help.

If I listen to a piece of music I can normally play the melody (one finger) on a keyboard practically without any mistakes so I assume I must have some pitch recognition ability. My problem is doing the same with a guitar over 6 strings, I can never remember which fret to press when changing strings, its not logical like a keyboard. I have often read within guitar tutorials to learn specific scales if you want to play Blues, Jazz etc so your fingers get used to a certain pattern over the fretboard but I don't know if this would also apply to the Shads 'melodic' style of music.

Glen

[Deleted]

Hi Glen,
From what you say its coming over that you know little about the basics of guitar playing. My advice would be for to forget about scales jazz etc etc for the time being. You need to learn how to play OPEN chords first, they are the basic chords at the bottom of the neck which involve one or more open strings. A beginners keyboard book will have quite a few songs in with only three or so chords. Learn these chords on the guitar and sing or hum the song along with your playing. Then start to play the melody and you will see the notes begin to coincide with the notes in the chord formations. If you struggle get someone who is accomplished on guitar to start you off with a one to one.
Stabbing blindly in the dark will set you back to the point of giving up and thats not necessary.
Tony

[Charlie Hall]

Hi Glen,
Learn a major scale first, based around a barred major chord like A at the 5th fret. Try this:
Note 1 5th fret bass E string (Doh)
Note 2 7th fret bass E string (Ray)
Note 3 4th fret A string (Mee)
Note 4 5th fret A string (Fah)
Note 5 7th fret A string (Soh)
Note 6 4th fret D string (Lah)
Note 7 6th fret D string (Tee)
Note 8 (1) 7th fret D string (Doh)
Note 9 (2) 4th fret G string (Ray)
Note 10 (3) 6th fret G string (Mee)
Note 11 (4) 7th fret G string (Fah)
Note 12 (5) 5th fret B string (Soh)
Note 13 (6) 7th fret B string (Lah)
Note 14 (7) 4th fret treble E string (Tee)
Note 15 (8) 5th fret treble E string (Doh)
This sequence of notes spans 2 octaves and will get you quite a long way to starting to understand where the notes in a major scale are. There are others as well, depending on which note on a particular string you start from. Then there are minor scales (same as a major scale except the 3rd note in the major scale is flattened one semitone, called a minor 3rd). Just move the whole sequence up or down to play in other keys. Just knowing the above could get you playing a number of tunes (that are already in your head) quite well, then you can expand from there.
Apologies if you already know this much but I have assumed you don't, based on what you are asking for.
Regards,
Charlie

[JohnJ]

Hi Glen

As Tony said the basic chords are a must, but to play melody you also must learn scales and in particular the major scale and it's intervals as all the other scales are formed from different variations of it also all songs contain the notes of the major scale in the key they are written ... it is hard to explain in a short mesage but if you learn and practise the major scale in all keys and positions you will quickly find that you will learn all the notes on the fretboard and you will be well on your way to bcoming a melody player but my best advice is to see a good teacher

The major scale intervals are:
tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone a very simple formula and if a song is written in a key say of "A" you start on the "A" note and follow the intervals to "A" one octave higher and keep going until you run out of fretboard then play it back down this formula applies to all major scales

Cheers John

[JohnJ]

Oops sorry Charlie just had another look, seems like we both lobbed at about the same time but we are both saying much the same thing

Cheers John

[GAJ52]

Charlie, John, Tony

Many thanks for putting me on the right track.

My playing style is so limited i.e. Shads that I didn't want to waste time studying scales I didn't need, for hard rock etc. As there are so many excellent players on this forum it was the ideal place to ask for advice and as usual I wasn't disappointed - many thanks again for your help. I will have to record a few chord sequences and try to improvise over them using the relevant major scale.

Regards

Glen