Scales/Arpeggios Practice System

[Diederikeggenkamp]

Hey People,

I've been using an egg-timer to practice my "oversight on the fretboard"-stuff such as modes and arrpegios etc. But I need your opinion on something. What do you think is best?

A: study al modes in every scale every day, for instance:

70 minutes of major modes/arrpegios in about 10 minutes per mode, with breaks in between. Then later 70 minutes of melodic minor etc.

or

B: study one mode every day, living in the sound of that mode while you practice it for about 2 hours spread over the course of the day.

or

C: practicing every mode of 1 scale every day, like:

1 day of major scales, 10 minutes per mode 2 x a day. Next day melodic minor etc.

I'm curious about your views!

All the best,

Diederik

[kris]

Hi,
Most efective for me was transcribe all John Scofield video "On Improvisation" and pracise his great lines on modes.
First same key like John and after in another keys....and after I try to put them in tunes in my own style of playing.
John playing arpeggios in special way.It is good to practise them in tunes i.e. Stella.
Best
kris

http://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/impro...xe-stella.html

[Diederikeggenkamp]

Cool idea man. But not really an answer to the question. That what you're reffering to seems to be more for actual improv practicing. What I'm talking about is more of a.. daily routine/chops thing I guess. Thanks though!

[Laurits]

IMO it is too much to spend several hours/day praticing scales/modes, but if you have time for it and still have time to practice all the other stuff like: tunes, technique, reading, licks etc, that is great

I would probably choose to practice one or two scales/modes each day (or perhaps week) to really learn the sound and the fingerings and then I would perhaps make or find a couple of licks that use that exact mode.

/Laurits

[gersdal]

Originally Posted by kris

Most efective for me was transcribe all John Scofield video "On Improvisation" and pracise his great lines on modes.

It would have been great if you could post those

[bako]

A different variant that I like is playing a common root for all modes or all modes of one scale depending on time and focus on the day.
In this way you address 7 keys per 7 note scale and can better focus on the comparative intervals of each.
I practice full range in a position or full range of the guitar against a drone and possibly a metronome or a drum beat.
I play single notes, double stops and chords, anything that derives from the notes.
You can play a different root each day/3 days/week, whatever suits your present needs.

Major

C D E F G A B C

C D Eb F G A Bb C

C Db Eb F G Ab Bb C

C D E F# G A B C

C D E F G A Bb C

C D Eb F G Ab Bb C

C Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb C

Melodic Minor

C D Eb F G A B C

C Db Eb F G A Bb C

C D E F# G# A B C

C D E F# G A Bb C

C D E F G Ab Bb C

C D Eb F Gb Ab Bb C

C Db Eb Fb Gb Ab Bb C

Harmonic Minor

C D Eb F G Ab B C

C Db Eb F Gb A Bb C

C D E F G# A B C

C D Eb F# G A Bb C

C Db E F G Ab Bb C

C D# E F# G A B C

C Db Eb Fb Gb Ab Bbb C

Harmonic Major

C D E F G Ab B C

C D Eb F Gb A Bb C

C Db Eb Fb G Ab Bb C

C D Eb F# G A B C

C Db E F G A Bb C

C D# E F# G# A B C

C Db Eb F Gb Ab Bbb C

[kris]

Originally Posted by Laurits

IMO it is too much to spend several hours/day praticing scales/modes, but if you have time for it and still have time to practice all the other stuff like: tunes, technique, reading, licks etc, that is great

I would probably choose to practice one or two scales/modes each day (or perhaps week) to really learn the sound and the fingerings and then I would perhaps make or find a couple of licks that use that exact mode.

/Laurits

Yes.I like it.

[kris]

Originally Posted by gersdal

It would have been great if you could post those

Sure.
I will send some nice lines in modes...for the begining first mode c maj.

[gersdal]

Originally Posted by kris

Sure.
I will send some nice lines in modes...for the begining first mode c maj.

Great. Thanks.

I've looked at this example some years ago. It's very interesting how the intervals he's using suddenly turns the plain old major mode into a Scofield thing. I'm looking forward to do a bit of analysis of the intervals he is using from your transcript.

[cosmic gumbo]

If you don't spend some time on learning tunes and actually playing music and having fun, you're wasting a lot of time. Music isn't about doing hours of exercises.

[JensL]

What exactly do you do when you study a mode?

Are you running up and down scale or arps or do you play on a backing track or sustained chord or something like that?

If it's just scale exercises my experience is that you don't need to practice the modes just the scale. You can then practice playing the scale over a diatonic chord which is the same as practicing the mode.

Another thing to consider is that if you do not play modal music you might be better of composing lines on progressions than just the modes since that is how you need to play in the end.

Jens

[M-ster]

Originally Posted by kris

Sure.
I will send some nice lines in modes...for the begining first mode c maj.

That PDF contains "tongue-twisters" for the fingers!

[hans halmackenreuter]

if you play scales as a warm-up it's enough if you ask me. you get thru it fast enough and kris advice of playing licks and being able to play them in each key and position is also the way micheal brecker did it. at least that's what he said in an interview.

[fep]

If you practice a lot of arpeggios and scales you'll have predictable results, you'll get good at playing arpeggios and scales.

If you learn and practice and play and improvise over lots of songs you'll also have predictable results...

[Astronomer]

Are you going to learn the arpeggio shapes based on the CAGED shapes? If so, then here are some cool ideas on how to practice learning the shapes.

1) If you know the five pentatonic/blue boxes, then learning the minor 7 and half-dim shapes will be easy. Here, I would just practice them by playing over a 12 bar blues and focusing on combining any licks or ideas with these arpeggios.

2) Then, learn the dom 7 shapes and the major 7 shapes. You can go back and use the dom 7 shapes over the same 12 bar blues, or you can start working on major and minor ii-V-Is in all five positions in a given key. Then, you start practicing them through circle of fifths and outline tunes like ATTYA or something like that. You can then incorporate the two diminished shapes, but they're easier to remember in comparison to the other shapes.

3) Practice combining all five shapes of a given quality (like, moving through all 5 shapes of a Cmaj7 arp, for example). This is so you don't get caught up in just position playing when improvising.


Oh, and as for scales and modes, I suggest avoiding MM and harmonic minor initially if you're not comfortable with all of the major scale modes. It's much more important to play only through the major scale/modes when first starting out by practicing various patterns and string skips and vertical playing than it is to run up and down all of the scales and not utilize them in a musical way.

And here's where I get controversial. I don't think it's all that important to play tunes at this stage of playing. Why? Because it's the equivalent of learning to swim by jumping head first into the ocean...chances are you'll drown. Granted, it's important to listen to tunes to learn the language and to train your ears, but it's difficult to play well if you don't have the proper tools under your belt. You'd be much better off focusing on learning the scales and arps first until you get comfortable enough to turn that into music and apply it to tunes. Nonetheless, you can practice these things by using chord changes from certain tunes if you want that immediate application to actual jazz playing. It's basically practice a technique to be able to play hundreds of songs versus play one song and be able to only play one song.

[jckoto3]

I'm going for your option B, Diederik

I really like Mick Goordick's basic approach [from "The Advancing Guitarist"] when dealing with modes etc. That is, record 3-5 minutes of a simple chord-vamp that fits the mode in question diatonically, and spend that time improvising ideas using various fingerings e.g. perhaps limit oneself to single-string playing, or to adjacent string pairs, to 3-string groups, to a single position, etc. Or maybe limiting oneself to triads, or simple motifs and transpose them around, and vary them a bit. Little exercises like this. I personally find it amazing what happens when I create little arbitrary barriers for myself because, for one thing I'm not beholden to my pet licks and patterns all the time and for two, when my guitar becomes a little bit "smaller" I'm more inclined to really explore the possibilities without my normal mental blocks.

I like practicing modes this way because it helps to reinforce the sound of the mode, and it's a great opportunity for some practice improvising.

Admittedly, I don't do this often as I used to, but when I did it really helped me internalize the sounds of each mode as well as learn the fretboard pretty well.

[JakeAcci]

Originally Posted by Astronomer

And here's where I get controversial. I don't think it's all that important to play tunes at this stage of playing. Why? Because it's the equivalent of learning to swim by jumping head first into the ocean...chances are you'll drown. Granted, it's important to listen to tunes to learn the language and to train your ears, but it's difficult to play well if you don't have the proper tools under your belt. You'd be much better off focusing on learning the scales and arps first until you get comfortable enough to turn that into music and apply it to tunes. Nonetheless, you can practice these things by using chord changes from certain tunes if you want that immediate application to actual jazz playing. It's basically practice a technique to be able to play hundreds of songs versus play one song and be able to only play one song.

I understand your point, but I'll pose a question - do we encourage babies and toddlers to study the dictionary and practice phonetics before telling them they are ready to have a conversation?

[NSJ]

Just a bunch of nuthin' about a particular major scale fingering that I find really handy --from Chuck Wayne, but I'm sure he's not the first one to point it out.

Left hand numbering of fingers: 1234

Play the F major scale, beginning with the F on the 5th string, using the 4th finger, jump to the 4th string to get the next 3 notes.etc etc.
(2 octave pattern)
So the fingering is:
4 (5th string)
134 (4th string)
13 (3rd string)
124 (2nd string)
124 134 (1st string)

What's cool about this fingering is you can easily incorporate the diatonic arpeggi below your start note, the root, i.e. F (whatever diatonic scale degree---3,4,5 (Am7, BbM7, C7) are right there, with the roots on the 6th string; 6 and 7 (Dm7 and Em7b5) are right there on the 5th string--all below your your start note, the root. )

Of course, the goal is absolute finger independence such that any arpeggi or scalar pattern or even chord is readily available any time, but, still, that's a very handy and convenient fingering.

Cheers, carry on.

[kris]

C dorian scale/mode2/...over cmin7 chord.
nice Scofield's line over c dorian scale/ arpegios,scale,nice interval 6ths etc.
I practise this in different keys and tempos.

[kris]

C phrygian scale over cm7...mode 3
Nice Scof line.

Try to transpose to another keys...:-)

[kris]

C LYDIAN SCALE ..over C maj7...mode 4

I like this Scof line very much...:-)

[kris]

Good Luck...

I will send more if you like.
Regards
Kris

[gersdal]

Originally Posted by kris

I will send more if you like.
Regards
Kris

Beautiful. Thanksa lot.

I enjoyed thefirst one on c-major scale, and I’m looking forward to playing and analyzingthese too.

It seemsfrom the c-major example that John Scofield does a lot of string skipping tocreate wider intervals, so based on the c-major scale example I’ve started alittle practice regime with maximum two notes on one string and then forcemyself to skip a string for the next note … to create some of the sameintervals. So far some of my playing works, and some is rather bad :-) Any thoughts?

Kris:Please post the rest of your transcriptions from the On Improvisation. I likethese a lot. I hope you also have a transcript of the voicings he’sdemonstrating halfway in the video. If not, I’ll contribute with these.

PS Maybeyou should create a separate On Improvisation Study Group thread?

PPS Nice picture. You and the master I guess?

[alwaysharp]

I would just do one key a day in every position along with the arpeggios and then one string at a time. That's more than enough for a day. I wouldn't spend hours on that alone. A lot probably wouldn't stick if you overload on it anyway. One key nice and clean and then move on to some transcribing and/or some play-along stuff. That's similar to what I do and I think it's just enough.

[Astronomer]

Originally Posted by JakeAcci

I understand your point, but I'll pose a question - do we encourage babies and toddlers to study the dictionary and practice phonetics before telling them they are ready to have a conversation?

And I understand what you're trying to say too haha, but here's my take on this.

Babies learn languages through exposure and imitation, you're right. They don't learn how to talk and form coherent sentences through dictionaries and college professors, but the problem with the analogy is that I don't think learning jazz is synonymous with a baby learning his or her first language, but rather an adult trying to learn a second language.

Kids don't spend time thinking about grammar, and kids who learn language without being formally taught it in school will sound authentic, but will never be the next Shakespeare. And while imitation and immersion is key to sounding authentic, you still need the rigor of practicing technique and theory that can apply to a variety of situations so that you can become more artistic, versatile, and experimental than the kids who just rely on imitation and listening. Of course, there has to be a balance between the two, but I still stand by my reasoning that learning the skills first will make immersion that much more easier to understand and make your own.

If it's a necessity, then having a small collection of phrases and licks doesn't hurt if someone cannot fully converse in the language of jazz, but again, that hardly means that the player truly understands what is going on.

[Kman]

Practice scales and arpeggios but with songs. Hear and play them in the context of chord progressions. That is the best way IMO.

[kris]

Originally Posted by Kman

Practice scales and arpeggios but with songs. Hear and play them in the context of chord progressions. That is the best way IMO.

Ofcourse.

[whatswisdom]

Originally Posted by Kman

Practice scales and arpeggios but with songs. ...play them in the context of chord progressions.

Start with these:

Autumn Leaves.
Cherokee.
All The Things You Are.
I Got Rhythm.

[kris]

Originally Posted by gersdal

Beautiful. Thanksa lot.

I enjoyed thefirst one on c-major scale, and I’m looking forward to playing and analyzingthese too.

It seemsfrom the c-major example that John Scofield does a lot of string skipping tocreate wider intervals, so based on the c-major scale example I’ve started alittle practice regime with maximum two notes on one string and then forcemyself to skip a string for the next note … to create some of the sameintervals. So far some of my playing works, and some is rather bad :-) Any thoughts?

Kris:Please post the rest of your transcriptions from the On Improvisation. I likethese a lot. I hope you also have a transcript of the voicings he’sdemonstrating halfway in the video. If not, I’ll contribute with these.

PS Maybeyou should create a separate On Improvisation Study Group thread?

PPS Nice picture. You and the master I guess?

3 modes more...:-)

[gersdal]

Originally Posted by kris

3 modes more...:-)

Cool. For some modes he uses scale sequences, others arpeggios, and others again an intervalic approach. Wonder if that is randomly chosen, or if there is something more to it?