This is less of a lesson and more of a demonstration. In this video, I'm messing around with a little groove on Logic Pro X (recording software) and walking through a few different ways to approach chord voicings for the rhythm part. Its a little more informal compared to my typical videos, but I think its important to get informal because making music is often an explorative, informal, creative process. Let's just have fun with rhythm parts.
Read MoreLast week was the second week of Melody Making lessons and WOW your submissions on the the SPJ Community have been awesome! Everyone (yes, everyone) should be proud of the melodies they are writing. This week we'll be diving a little deeper into melody making, so if you haven't watch the past two weeks of livestreams, I recommend that you catch up before watching this one.
Post your homework assignments here, on the patreon forum.
Read MoreLast week I got a lot of comments to the effect of "don't move on, let's keep working on Dorian." So I decided to do another lesson clarifying how to think about modes in general and then the last bit is about Dorian specifically. I made some cool charts to help show my points and I made a fun little GIF which I'll post on the community forum. I hope you enjoy this lesson and keep in mind - if this is your first video of mine, definitely go back through the previous Music Theory Monday lessons.
Read MoreLast week was the first week of melody making lessons! We went over some simple melody making "rules" and this week we'll be building on those foundational skills. Watch last week's live stream here if you'd like to get caught up!
Post your homework assignments here, on the patreon forum.
Read MoreIn this MTM, I talk about Dorian Mode - how to think of this mode as a kind of minor key and how to play around with the chord progressions that it gives you. We talk about a few songs that use Dorian mode and how to use it in your own songwriting.
Read MoreIn this lesson we'll take the G shaped chord and move it through this order:
Major
Minor
Diminished
Maj7
Dom7
Min7
Half Diminished
Fully Diminished
From there we'll discuss how easy or difficult it is to use this chord as a movable shape and which forms work best. Sometimes they are easy to move around and easy to manipulate and sometimes they are just plain weird. In this case, the G shape is pretty weird.
Read MoreI'll start the stream with exciting updates and talk a little bit about the homework from last month. Then I'll reveal the theme for this month, give a lesson on it, and pass out your homework assignment for the week! Next week we'll build on the skills you practice this week. After the lesson I'll be available for questions! First, questions about the homework, then whatever questions you have!
Read MoreI uploaded a new version of this lesson with a message at the end because we had a technical issue with the audio at about the 1hr mark! This was a fun livestream talking about using movable chord shapes (ala Rubik's Cube) with the 7 chord progressions we came up with this month! If you need to catch up, check out the previous weeks:
Have fun watching this one and please submit homework and questions to the livestream discussion post.
Read MoreIn this lesson well take the E shaped chord and move the chord through this order:
Major
Minor
Diminished
Maj7
Dom7
Min7
Half Diminished
Fully Diminished
From there we'll discuss how easy or difficult it is to use this chord as a movable shape and which forms work best. Sometimes they are easy to move around and easy to manipulate and sometimes they are just plain weird.
Read MoreIn this lesson well take the A shaped chord and move the chord through this order:
Major
Minor
Diminished
Maj7
Dom7
Min7
Half Diminished
Fully Diminished
From there we'll discuss how easy or difficult it is to use this chord as a movable shape and which forms work best. Sometimes they are easy to move around and easy to manipulate and sometimes they are just plain weird.
Read MoreThanks again for being here. I'm so so grateful for YOU. Yes you. I hope you're enjoying your time here and I hope you feel excited to pick up your guitar every day.
This "live!" is the third week of chord progression homework. If you've just joined, here are the links to the last two weeks of chord progression homework. We're gently building layers of complexity for each week of homework, so I'd recommend watching week one and week two!
Week one: https://www.patreon.com/posts/39112891
Week two: https://www.patreon.com/posts/tune-in-today-at-39334605
Read MoreThis is the fourth installment of my formal music theory course!
Other lessons in this series:
- Homework
- Practice 1 - Open Position Scales
Read MoreHi Everyone!
It's Wednesday which now means its livestream homework assignment day! From now on, I'll have a homework assignment every Wednesday. If you can't catch it, I'll link it here within an hour or two afterward so you can watch it later!
I'll have updates about what lessons are coming up and I'll assign some new homework related to last weeks chord progression homework. Then it'll be a Q&A session with whoever is watching about whatever questions you might have.
I hope you can join! Catch up on last weeks homework assignment so you're ready for the next layer!
Read MoreHi Everyone!
This is big news. From now on I'm going to have a weekly livestream every Wednesday. I'll hand out some homework at the beginning of every month, and every week I'll check in on the progress, talk about more ways to explore the homework, and possibly feature a few choice examples of completed assignments.
I want to stress the importance of not just absorbing and watching these lessons, but really spending time getting to know things. The videos I've been making for this community are designed for you to really spend time practicing and understanding, so I thought a central weekly video to tie things together ought to be a fun and useful idea.
Check in each Wednesday this month for more different ways to make and manipulate chord progressions.
Read MoreThis is the third installment of my formal music theory course. We get into what intervals are and how they are named. Check out the included PDF for an overview. Practice this theory for yourself and play along with some tracks in the "Interval Practice 1" "Interval Practice 2” videos.
Other lessons in this series:
Read MoreIn this lesson I talk about how to speed up the "counting up from open" method of figuring out what note you're playing. We talk about BEAD at the 7th fret and some ways to use octave shapes to explore the fingerboard a little more.
Read MoreWe already broke down the chord progression in the previous lesson. Now it's time to analyze how the melody harmonizes with the chords. This type of breakdown is helpful for both songwriters and lead guitar players who want to understand how soloing and other lead lines work over chords. At the end I discuss briefly how to practice writing your own melodies using the simple rules:
1. Start your melody on a note in the current chord
2. If moving through the scale, continue through the scale until you reach a chord tone
3. If skipping notes, only skip to another chord tone
Read MoreI talk about how the CAGED soloing concepts turn the penta shapes into other shapes and how to think about that, especially when soloing over progressions. I address a few Patron questions about the topic and a few about related topics.
Read MoreIn this lesson I wanted to talk about how different kinds of scales sound when you're playing a solo and how you can mix and match as long as you're focused on notes in whatever chord is going by. The idea here is that chord tones are so important, you can almost do anything you want as long as you're following the chords.
Read MoreWhile preparing for the next CAGED Soloing series I realized my current I-IV jam track wasn't ideal, so I made a new one. This isn't a lesson, but it is a look at how I put a track together with guitar, bass, drums, and keys. In the future I might livestream lessons like this so I can interact while I'm working.
Read More
