TECHNIQUE ~ CONTROL MASTERCLASS: _ ADVANCED Brian Maillard WTYITC Brian Maillard TECHNIQUE CONTROL MASTERCLASS: useialiliel= ADVANCED CONTROL INTRODUCTION Hi everyone, and thank you for checking out the advanced volume of my Technique Control Masterclass! In this section | thought we should increase our range of vocabulary by using a whole new range of melodic an harmonic sounds. We're going to work with a scalo used mostly in jazz music, but as you will see, it can also be adapted to more rack contexts. 'm talke ing about the melodte minor scele. IN THIS PACKAGE As before, we'll be playing one group of exercises with a clean sound and a second group with, a crunch sound, in order to focus on the different technical requirements and problems posed by these guitar sounds. We wil also be using two different backing tracks: the first in G7 and the sacond in Em, The G7 backing will enable us to use two of tho most popular modes of the mo- lodic minor. Before we start work on the scale exercises, let's start with some rhythm... WWW.JTCGUITAR.COMWe TEEN CTROLMASTERCLASSABVANEED RHYTHM EXERCISES (Ex1-5) Wolll start by playing over a simple 4/4 click. Here are five short but effective exercises, using a G13 chord shape with a wide variety of rhythms. Pay particular attention to the up/down strumming pat- terns. FUNK RHYTHM EXERCISES (Ex6-10) Now we'll do five exercises over @ section of Backing Track 1, This is obviously harder because we're now adding a chord progression, and the backing also includes a few bars of 6/8 time. The chord progression looks like this.. 4/467 1G7 1G7 1G7 (Gaug) | Gadd9 | Bbades | 5/8 Ebmaj7 |Eomal7 |07#5 1D7 I That means we'll be playing in a G Mixolydien (G A BC D EF) tonality for the first four bers, then a more open G major tonality jumping up to Bb major (for the Bb and Eb chords). The final D7 chords give us some tension and a turnaround back to G. In these exercises, | interpret the chords in several ways. In Ex6 I play pretty straight chord shapes, with an octave melody over the 5/8 section. Then, in Ex7 | alternate between Gm6 and G13 to cree- te bluesy major/minor ambiguity. Ex10 has come litte double-stop riffs over G7 MELODIC MINOR SCALE Now let's move to single-note soloing, and turn our attention to the melodic minor scale. First, a little history lesson... There are four very common minor scales in most of the styles of music you're likely to encounter. The natural miner, or Aeolian mode (C D Eb F G Ab Bt) is possibly the most common, as it's the direct transformation of the relative major scale (C Aeolian and Eb major have the same notes; C minor is the relative minor of Eb major). ‘The Dorian (C D Eb F G A Bb) is enother modal scale, and the only difference from Aeolian is that mejor 6th (A). Model scales were the primary source of melody in medieval music, but leter com- posers came to realise that the minor modes lacked an important feature of the major scale... the ability to create the powerful V7- resolution. In C major, this would be G7-C...just pley those chords, and listen to how the G7 wants to pull ‘towards C major. The B note in G7 wants to rise to C, and the F note wants to fall o E. This is a fun- damental aspect of harmony... tension->resolution, ‘To introduce this to minor keys, they simply added a G7 chord, changing the melody note from 8b ‘to B where necessary, and creating 2 G7-Cm resolution. This meant that they were effectively using ‘a new scale (tor the GY chord, t least)... harmonie miner! (CD Eb F G Ab B) ‘The problem with harmonic minor is that you have that awkward augmented 2nd jump between theWc TCMQUE CONTROL MASTERGLASS ADYANGED 6th and 7th notes (Ab-B in the key of C minor). People dir't like that, so they also raised the 6th, creating a smoother series of intervals. The melodic minor scale was born! (C D Eb F GAB) For a few centuries, use of the melodic minor was pretty complex. Their logic went like this... the fundamentel part of the V7-I resolution is the B (the major 7th, called the “leading note"). That only really applies to ASCENDING melodies (8 >C). If the melody was descending to a Cm chord tone (D- >C, F>Eb, A>G) the B note of melodic minor was no longer necessary. And if the B isn’t necassary, the A isn't necessary either, so they simply used natural minor (Aeolian) for descending melodies! Nowadays, we tend to use melodic minor only in one form (CD Eb F G AB) end it's very common in jazz, where its modes are used to play over “altered dominant” chords. These are dominant chords (G7, D7, A9, C13, etc) whore the Sth or Sth is raised or lowered... 6745, G75, G7#9, G7bS and other combinations. Remember this bit, well be returring to it later! MELODIC MINOR: 5 POSITIONS (Ex11) Here are five positions for C melodic minor, based eround the usual CAGED shapes. As you pley ‘thom, don't just use thom as technique exercises; liston to the quality of sound that we got from the major 6th and major 7th intervals (A and B), completely unlike the Ab and Bb of the natural minor. Usually, the minor melodic scale takes on a sort of alteration when itis played from the bottom to the top, and then returns to the natural state when we come back down from the top to the bottom. MELODIC MINOR: DIATONIC CHORDS You may already know the diatonic sequence for the major scale. This is the sequence of triads that simply follow the notes of the scale. We simply count 1-3-5 from each note, so for the C major scale the first tad Is C-E-G (C majon) the next triad Is D-F-A (D minor) and so on. The full sequence looks like this (C major ~ D minor ~ & minor — F major ~ G major — A minor ~ B diminished We can extend that to 7th chorcs, now counting 1-3-5-7 from each note, and agein, only using the 7 notes of the C major scale (CD EF GAB): (maj? = Dm7 = Em? — Fmaj7 - G7 — Am7 - B75 Note how the B chord changes from a simplo diminishod triad to a “minor 7 flat 5" chord (someti mes calles the “halt-diminished’), Also nota the G7... the all-important dominant. Let's now apply this concept to C melodic minor. First the trieds: minor - D minor - Eb augmented — F major ~ G major - A ciminishad — & diminished ‘And then the 7th chords: Cm/maj7 = Dm7 — Ebmaj7#5 - F7 - G7 — Am7bS - Bm7D5. Www.sTecUrTAR.comWc TANTO CONTROL MASTERLAS: ADVANCED ‘That gives us two new chord types. The m/maj7 is a minor triad with a major 7th; i's the second, chord in ‘My Funny Valentine’ or the Beatles song ‘Michelle’, and Bernard Herrmann made frequent use of a Bom/maj7 chord in his soundtrack to Hitchcock's ‘Psycho. Then there’s the Ebmaj7#5, wht chis like an eugmented triad with a mejor 7th, or a maj7 chord with a raised 5th, whichever way you look atit, ‘But more importantly, what about those TWO dominant 7th chords? They have a huge effect on the sound of the melodic minor scale, and by using the system of modes, we can generate two cool new ways of soloing over dominant chords. F LYDIAN DOMINANT (Ex12-15) ‘The basic principle of modes is that you can generate new scales and tonalities by using a different note as the root. In regular C major, the root note is C, and the character and function of all tho other notes are the rasult of their relationship with C. For example, the E is the majar 3rd and the Bis the major 7th. If we use all the same notes of C major (CD EF G AB) but use D as the root, everything changes. We're now in a minor tonality (the 3rd is , not Fé) and all the notes have new functions, because we're now looking at their relationship with D. Now the E is the 2nd and the Bis the 6th. We're now in D Dorian, We can apply this modal concept to melodic minor. f we take all the notes of C melocic minor (C D Eb F GAB) butuse F as the root note, we're now in @ major tonality (with the mejor 3rd, A) and our tonic chord is F?. This scale is F Lydian Dominant (F GA B CD £5 F's Lydian because of the augmented 4th (B) and dominant because of the combination of major 3rd (A) and minor 7th (Eb) as found in the F7 chord We don't need to study full scale shapes again (just use the ones from Exit) so here are four exerci- ses to develop your facility with F Lydian Dominant across the fretboard, Try to forget the sound of, C minor ~ for best results play over an F7 chord to reinforce the F major tonality in your head, FLYDIAN DOMINANT LEGATO EXERCISES (Ex16-25) With any new scale, it's always important to start using it with a range of techniques and styles, so that it becomes more than just a series of shapse. Here are ten exercises to improve your fluency with Lydian Dominant. G MIXOLYDIAN b6 (Ex26-39) Remember how there were two dominant 7th chords naturally occurring in the melodic minor scale? Let's apply the modal approach again, using all the notes of C melodic minor, but with G as the root. We now have G7 as our tonic chord, and the new scale is 6 Mixolydian b6 (G AB CD Eb F). i's very close to the regular Mixolydian (6 AB CD EF) but the flet 6th note (Eb) gives it an unusual little melodic tweak, wwwlsTecurAR.comWc TECHNIQUE CONTROL MASTERLASSADVARCED Here are 15 short exercises to improve your fluency with this new scale. Again, ty to forget the sound of C minor and F majar — we're now in 2 G major kay, so for best results play thase exercises over a G7 chord. PASSING NOTES (Ex40-44) Continuing with Mixolydian b6, these examples add chromatic passing notes between the scale notes. Exercise 3 is concentrated on one string, building a repeating chromatic pattern around the notes of the G7 chord (G 8 D F). Exercise 4 is the same principle, but this time it needs to be performed on all the strings. (CRUNCH RHYTHM EXERCISES (Ex45-48) Just like we cid at Intermediate level, here are four funk-metal or funk-rock rhythm exercises, which blur the distinction between rhythm and lead. Be very careful with the single-note pessages; try to keep the notes clean es well es paying attention to chords and timing. D MAJOR SCALE EXERCISES (Ex49-55) In this last part of the masterclass, we're using Backing Track 2, which fs in the key of E Dorian (E F¥#G ABCé D), Asa preperation for this, here's an ascending legato pattern, moving through seven positions of the D major scale, using 3-note-per-string shapes. You cen think of this as D major or E Dorian, it doesn’t matter (the notes are the same), PENTATONIC COMBINATION EXERCISES (Ex56-60) Here's a similar pattern, but based on B minor pentatonic (B D E Fi A). This gives a cool elternative sound over E Dorian, as you'll hear in the licks and solo. ‘This pattern moves through the five pentatonic shapes (2-notes-per-string), and in some shapes you'll encounter consecutive notes at the same fret. The work we did on the “rolling” movement, (Intermediate level) will help you to focus better on this improving this skill, LICKS AND SOLO To finish, we then have 10 licks and a full solo, where | demonstrate all of these concopts in a teal music environment. The full solo and Licks 1-5 are played over Backing Track 1 (with the extended 67 and 5/8 sections) and then Licks 6-10 are played over Backing Track 2 (E Doriar). Be sure to experimont with your own ideas and have fun with both backing tracks; | advise you to racord and to Isten to your playing, as this will allow you te identify and fix any problems in your playing... for example, poor bending, notes played toa lang or tae short, etc Www.sTCGUITAR.COMWTC TENE STROLMASTERCUASS ADVANCED CONCLUSION I sincerely hope thet I've provided you with the tools and information to take your playing to a new level, and | hope you wil enjoy improving your technique and your knowledge of new sounds. Ht might seem trivial but | want to remind you again... study and practise slowly and cleanly! [nope to see you again soon! Allthe best, Brian Maillard WW W.JTCUITAR.COM