Pat Metheny sounds just like a lot of other fusion guitarist to me. I haven’t heard of Hiram Bullock but i’ll check him out.
As for Holdsworth, when I hear him play I have no idea what he’s doing because I’m not knowledgeable in music theory to that extent, but to a lot of world renowned technical guitarist he’s up there with Hendrix.
It took me a couple solid weeks of listening to his music plus reading up/watching videos on how he approaches the instrument before I finally started to clue in. And my understanding of the theory behind what he does is still probably pretty two-dimensional.
The fact that you need at least a basic understanding of theory to make sense out of what he does is pretty awesome.
Good books on music theory, specifically guitar.
Think it’s finally time to learn slap bass.
Any good tutorials on it I can look over?
I don’t know of any books, but if you’d like a great visual reference with printable worksheets then I highly recommend Doug Doppler’s Diatonic Theory and Harmony DVD.
It’s a fantastic DVD that centers around some of the basics in theory. It doesn’t go SUPER deep, but then you’d be going to school for that; but it does however, teach you what you need to get started in understanding the basics of theory. Which that alone will put you ahead of soooooo many guitarists who still believe theory kills creativity. Ugh!
Oh, and Doug Doppler is a former student (I assume his last) of Joe Satriani. And we all know how Satch’s former students turned out. =D
This guy’s channel is full of great material, and best of all, it’s free. Hope you find it useful!
Oh snap, I just had a flashback that I had started watching this guy’s video then my VPN cut out on me.
Good looking out man. :tup:
Happy viewing, bro. His channel has a good balance between fundamentals and some advanced techniques, imo. I have a bad habit of lifting his arpeggio licks lol.
Also, has anyone heard the bass playing on the new Coheed & Cambria album? Solid stuff.
i only know that he’s approach to playing the guitar is similar to playing a saxophone. I just cant hear that yet.
When you lay the chord on the strings make sure that you dont hold the shape of the chord when you decide to release it before trying again.
when you release the chord open you hand like so
http://welshscribe.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/open-hand.jpg
then attempt the barre chord again (or any other chord). Its a lot harder to connect your fingers simultaneously on the strings this way, but you’ll notice an improvement after a few days.
His approach to soloing and his approach to chording (the latter of which, despite his own stated wishes, is as far away from horn playing as it gets) are deeply intertwined. Basically, it comes down to scales. He knows them all, no matter how exotic, plus a bunch that I’m pretty sure he invented.
He doesn’t think of scales like a guitarist. In other words, he doesn’t think, “Okay, in this position, the box for the scale looks like this, and in that position, it looks like that, etc.” An exceptionally daring guitar player might string together several boxes so they have more navigability on the neck and access to some cool wide fingerings, but that’s still thinking in terms of boxes. Holdsworth doesn’t think that way. He just knows every position of every degree on the scale through all the available octaves from the lowest note to the highest. In his instructional video, he shows a chart of how he looks at the neck and it’s just an explosion of dots from top to bottom without divisions by position.
Another thing most guitarists do that he doesn’t (or, at least, that isn’t really a part of his approach) is learn chords first by name and then how they work with certain scales. You know, you learn the fingerings for all the basic chords you need to know first–E major, D minor, G minor seventh, whatever. That’s as much as a lot of guitarists ever learn, because that’s the bare minimum you need to know to bang out a song.
Holdsworth’s approach, which I personally endorse but am obviously not nearly as good at, is to start with the scale and build chords out of certain degrees within that scale. Considering that many of the scales he uses are pretty exotic, and that he packs a lot of very highly-stacked chords into his progressions (a lot more than you hear in rock and metal, and even a lot of jazz), his compositions start to sound really elaborate and baffling. I’ve heard a lot of uninitiated listeners say that it just sounds like random stuff all thrown together… but of course it isn’t.
Then when it comes time to solo, he’s basically following the same sprawling roadmap of scale degrees across the whole neck as he does when he’s building chords out of those degrees. Because he doesn’t think in terms of boxes and tends to use a lot of slurs and string-skipping techniques (in other words, his saxophone-esque approach to lead playing), he tends to play with a lot more fluidity and doesn’t fall into patterns as much as a lot of electric guitarists do. His tone also sounds a lot smoother than it would if a more conventional guitarist played through his gear. He deliberately minimizes picking because he doesn’t like the noise-to-note ratio that comes with the attack of the pick.
Another crucial thing is that Holdsworth changes scales a lot, sometimes from chord to chord. It isn’t enough for him to know all the scales everywhere on the fretboard and to bang them every which way to get his dense and bizarre chord voicings. He switches them up constantly, which, to my ears, makes the mood of any given composition evolve constantly.
That, to me, is one of the craziest things about him. Not only does he have the entire book of roadmaps memorized, but the map is constantly changing and it never fazes him. His knowledge and ability to apply all those scales in both chords and lead playing is already astonishing as it is, but he can leap in and out of those scales, chain them together, and deal with the constant changes without ever losing his train of thought or breaking the fluency of his soloing technique. That is a depth of musical knowledge that I am certain I will never achieve.
And that is probably one percent of one percent of all there is to know about Allan Holdsworth.
So what you’re saying is to completely loosen my grip from the neck and then reapply the chord from a open hand position? If you don’t mind me asking how exactly does this effect me playing barre chords in a mechanical sense.
I’ve always built my own chords,I find it much easier when writing a song to just write down the scale degrees of the first key and then go from there. I find only using a few basic chords incredibly restrictive and you lose a lot of nice voicings. I’m not a very adaptive player though, I plan this all out beforehand.
When I’m writing, I also have the same approach, sometimes I’ll even write it on piano first and then attempt it on guitar. When attempting improvisation though, pentatonic go!
Eventually you’re going to have to do more chord switching, so the more practice you have forming the chord quickly from a neutral hand position, the more natural it will feel when you have to form that chord from any other position. You don’t get that kind of workout from just moving the same hand position down to the strings and up again.
*I see I see. So besides practicing the chord changes like for example regular E chord to F Barre chord or going from a scale to a barre chord it’s also good to just practice making the shape from a neutral position. I’ll incorporate this then into my practicing. Thanks for the tips guys. *
Yeah, it’s kinda like the difference between practicing a combo against a dummy in training mode and being able to confirm into that combo against a live opponent.
New to the thread here!
Just thought I’d leave this here for fellow bass peeps 
[media=youtube]sPR7mq9YWZA[/media]
I could spend hours playing this tune and still be satisfied.
Yes, this exercise isn’t specifically for barre chords only. As Warpticon said it increases your finger speed when switching between different chords/scales. Barre chords arent harder than major or minor chords because you have to apply slightly more pressure, its forming the barre chord before landing it on the strings that makes it hard.
When you’re able to land the chord correctly 80% of the time try it without looking. Use your index finger to check that you’ve landed on the right strings.
*I haven’t found barre chords harder to play than regular chords in fact it took me a much shorter period of time to learn not only to play them but also change between different shapes in comparison to chords like G and D minor which took me months to get comfy with. Rather my barre chord problem was me applying too much pressure with my fretting hand which createdcramping after 20-30 minutes of playing barre chords. Even with that said I’m appreciative of the advice of practicing chords in another manner that will help me build muscle memory and help me think less when playing. *
Having some minor problems with the new hand workout with my brain and my hands is having some discrepancy between each other. Up until now I’ve practiced changing chords (and learning chords) by practicing going back and forth each possible chord I previously knew into the new chord. Then afterwards I’d incorporate said chord change into different chord progressions (and songs) so that I’d get comfy with applying it in playing situations. However so far (read last two days) my chord changes haven’t been as economical in changing as usual and have been lifting up further from the fretboard. Are there some remedies for that or will that be improved with time and it’s just my brain going a little haywire since it’s something new in my routine?
A nice workout in economizing your chord changes would be to put together a series of chords that involve a finger that doesn’t move. It’s interesting to see which chords can be ‘anchored’ during their changes. Of course, lifting your hand off the fretboard entirely is the most used method for getting your hand ‘in shape’, but the ‘anchor’ workout is always interesting.