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May 2002
HurtsSo Good
May 2002 issue
Principles, Patterns and the Perils of Performance.
So I'm sitting in the back of our bus contemplating the injuries I've sustained over the past two years of touring. Normally, when an intelligent individual hurts himself, he allows his injury to heal. Unfortunately, our performance shedule ensures that I exacerbate my wounds every night! I'm currently suffering from a swollen foot (due to a previous altercation with a heavy object), mild stomach flu, a pesky pinkie cute and now a sharp pain between my shoulder blades. I can't wait for tomorrow's show! What does all of this have to do with music theory? Theory: music can be quite hazardous to your health.
But that's not the kind of theory we've been exploring. Rather, we've spent the past two months discussing the kind of theory that explains the nature of Western music. If you've completed your homework from last month's column, then you have (succesfully or unsuccessfully) constructed major diatonic scales in the keys of B, F# and C#. If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, I strongly recomment you find the March and April 2002 issues of Guitar World. Looking at the formulas for these three scales (Figures 1-3), you'll notice certain similarities: each major scale contains eight notes, including the keynote and its octave, and follows the standard interval pattern: whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step.
Their differences are determined by which notes must be raised one half step, or "sharped," in order to create the appropriate distance or interval between consecutive notes in the scale being constructed. In the B major scale (Figure 1), five notes must be sharpened: C. D. F. G and A. In the F# major scale (Figure 2), six notes (including the key note, F#) are raised. Notice also in this scale that E has become E#, even though there's really no such note because the note one half step above E is actually F. So why do we write E# as opposed to F? Because, as ridiculous as it may sound, that's what the laws of music theory dictate!
When the rules of major scale construction were written way back when, it was decreed that every major scale had to contain one of each note name (A, B, C, D, E, F and G), wether it is raised, lowered ("flatted") or left natural. In other words, no major scale can contain two "versions" of the same note. So, F and F# in the same scale is illegal, hance the reason E# is written as the seventh note of the F# major scale as opposed to F natural. Like-wise, in the C# major scale (Figure 3), which consists entirely of sharped notes, B# is the correct theoretical name for the seventh note, not C. Unnecessarily complex? Maybe. But don't blame me; I didn't create this rule.
Interestingly enough, each of the scales we've constructed so far has had one more required change than the one before it. For example, the C major scale has no sharped or flatted notes - all of its notes are natural. The next scale we looked at, G major, had one note that became a sharp - F became F#. Notice that F# is the seventh note in the G major scale, and that in each subsequent scale we've constructed, we raised the seventh note, while the raised note(s) from the previous scale reappeared. For example, the next scale we looked at was D major, which has two sharps: F# and C#. F# was previously raised in G major and C# is the seventh note in the D major scale. And so the pattern continues. The pattern of increasing sharps (0,1,2,3,4, etc...) occurs as you construct the major scales in a particular order. We'll get into that next month.
Hopefully you've come prepared with the other half of your homework and memorized the G major diatonic pattern I showed you. This month you are to memorize the next two diatonic patterns (Figures 4 and 5). Each of these patterns has you playing three notes per string. I've chosen to illustrate each one of them in two complementary ways: the first part of each figure shows you the fingering positions as they appear on the fretboard, while the second part presents the pattern in traditinal tablature (TAB) form and shows it ascending and descending.
As you practice these paterns, be sure to alternate the direction of your picking so that each downstroke is followed by an upstroke. Finally, pay special attention to the left-hand fingering guidelines accompanying each pattern. It's important that you use particular fingers as you navigate the fretboard. Bad habbits are hard to break and can limit your speed and dexteity down the road. Speaking of the raod, it's time for me to get into my bunk and go to sleep. Tomorrow is another show day, and the last thing I need is to add exhaustion to my list of impairments.
Peace out.
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