Practice Archives - GUITARHABITS

3rds Intervals over 5 Major Scale Shapes/Positions

March 24, 2020 By Klaus Crow Leave a Comment

I hope you are doing okay with everything that is going on now. These are crazy times, but we have to make the best of it. We have to help each other out while keeping a safe distance, be considerate of others, smile to people to relieve a bit of their burden, but with all that don’t forget yourself along the way. Being kind to yourself too. Have a bit of fun. Try to enjoy the present moment.

For those of you who stay at home, you might have some more time on your hands now to enjoy the guitar, develop a nice practice routine, and make some good progress. Well, here’s a great guitar workout for you…

Practicing melodic intervals really developed my skills to solo and improvise over major chord progressions. Just by going through the scale intervals on a regular basis you are training the muscle memory for your fingers and acquiring the vocabulary for your creative mind to help you shape your musical brain and come up with melodic ideas. It’s an exercise that is not to be underestimated.

In this lesson we are going to learn “melodic intervals in 3rds” following the major scale. We’ll practice these 3rd intervals over 5 different scale shapes/positions across the neck, so we’ve got a great workout for you! Don’t worry we’ll take it step by step.

Make sure you know the major scale in 5 shapes/positions before you start this lesson, but on the other hand you can also skip that for now if you just became excited to dive into this lesson. You can always come back to that later. I can imagine you want to try at least the first exercise to know what we’re talking about here. I totally understand.

Another upside is that the exercises will train your ear to recognize 3rd intervals. This will improve your aural skills, which is a important part of becoming an accomplished musician (Try to sing along the notes as you play the exercises). The practice of playing the intervals will also increase your dexterity. A win-win situation in many ways.

How to Play and Build Maj7 Chords on Guitar

January 3, 2020 By Klaus Crow 5 Comments

Today we’re going to learn how to play Maj7 chords and how to build them from scratch.

The Major 7th chord is a mesmerising chord which is commonly found in jazz music, but also in pop music and world music it is regularly used to express a beautiful hypnotizing or dream-like sound.

We’re going to look at open Major 7th chords (open strings involved), moveable Maj7 chords (containing no open strings) with the root note located on different strings, starting at the Low E (6th string), A-string (5th string) and the D-string (4th string), and Maj7 bar / barre chords.

First things first, let’s take a look how to build a major 7 chord.

CHORD CONSTRUCTION / ANALYSIS
Major chords consist of the root, 3rd and 5th notes of the major scale (1 3 5). The major 7th chord (Maj7) consists of the root (1), 3rd, 5th and 7th notes of the major scale (1 3 5 7). That means the 7th note of the major scale is added to the major chord.

For example, if you take the notes of the C major scale = C D E F G A B C
The Cmaj7 chord consists of the notes: C E G B (1 3 5 7)

If you take the D major scale = D E F# G A B C# D
The Dmaj7 chord consists of the notes: D F# A C# (1 3 5 7)

This way you can build or analyze any Maj7 chord:

Note: In the chord diagrams above: the black dots above the nut are open strings, and the letters in the dots indicate the note names.

Here are some popular songs that use the major 7 chord:
Old friends by Paul Simon starting with Fmaj7 and Cmaj7, capo on 4th fret.
Something by The Beatles: Amaj7 chord (second chord of the verse)
Maybe tomorrow by Stereophonics: Ebmaj7 chord (first chord of the song) Under the bridge by the Red hot chili peppers: Emaj7 chord (at the end of each verse).

How to Play, Locate, Memorize and Practice Bar Chords

September 20, 2019 By Klaus Crow 4 Comments

Once you know how to play bar chords, the next step is to learn how to instantly find, recognize and play every bar chord type all over the neck.

For that to happen you first have to locate, memorize and practice the four essential bar chord shapes (E major, E minor, A major and A minor) all over the fretboard in the most effective way.

The E major shape bar chord indicates a barre (first finger) with an E major (shape) chord played with your 2nd, 3rd and 4th finger.
The E minor shape bar chord indicates a barre with an E minor (shape) chord played with your 3rd and 4th finger.
The A major shape bar chord indicates a barre with an A major (shape) chord played with your 2nd, 3rd and 4th finger.
The A minor shape bar chord indicates a barre with an A minor(shape) chord played with your 2nd, 3rd and 4th finger. See diagrams below:

E major shape – E minor shape – A major shape – A minor shape bar chords

Major Bar Chords (E Major shape)
To find and recognize the names for all the E major shape bar chords you only have to memorize the natural notes on the low E-string, so no sharps (#) or flats (b). (See the neck diagram below).

Memorize the frets and their natural notes:
|1st fret = F | 3rd fr = G | 5 fr = A | 7 fr = B | 8 fr = C |10 fr = D |12 fr = E |

These are 7 natural notes and on each fret starts a bar chord with the same name. For example, when you play an E shape bar chord starting on the 3rd fret where the G note is located on the Low E-string, your chord also is called G major. When you play the E shape bar chord on the 8th fret you’re chord is now called a C major chord and so on. See diagrams below (The chord shape moves up and the chord name changes with it).

Move the entire chord shape up to any fret to change keys.

Mastering The Fretboard Through The Cycle of Fourths

August 30, 2019 By Klaus Crow 6 Comments

In becoming an adept guitar player it is important to master the fretboard, learn all the notes on the guitar, and be able to move freely around the neck and play all your scales, riffs, licks, chops and solos in every key.

You can cultivate this by using and practicing your musical ideas through the cycle of fourths. For in depth explanation of the cycle of fourths check out How to Benefit from The Circle of Fifths and Fourths. In this post we are going into the practical side of things.

Let’s say you play a cool lick in the key of A (See example below). Now the next thing you do is move the lick up a fourth (up 5 frets) and play it in the key of D (A to D is a fourth), then play it in the key of G (D to G is a fourth), next in the key of C (G to C is a fourth), then the key of F (C to F is a fourth), next key of Bb (F to Bb is a fourth), key of Eb (Bb to Eb is a fourth), key of Ab (Eb to Ab is a fourth), key of Db (Ab to Db is a fourth), key of Gb (Db to Gb is a fourth), key of B (Gb to B is a fourth), key of E (B to E is a fourth), and back to the key of A (E to A is a fourth).

Below an example of how to move the lick through the cycle of fourths from A to D to G. You try to figure out the other keys. If you want to learn this lick in a videolesson check out Cool Acoustic Electric Blues Guitar Lick

Now you’ve passed through every key via the cycle of fourths. Practice this with your chords, triads, licks, arpeggios, scales, etc and you’ll discover it’s purpose and benefits. You will feel it’s different, akward and challenging to play the same lick, scale or exercise in other keys. You have to relearn that lick or scale a bit in various positions, because you have moved it up or down the neck.