What’s in a phrase?

I’d like to thank Ernie for the email he sent me a few days back. It’s from this email that I got the topic this installment of the Lessons page. He also asked me a few more questions that I would be addressing to in the coming lesson pages. So if any of you guys wonder if I take time out to read your email, I do and I try to answer each one of them as soon as I can. Keep the mail a-comin’!

Phrasing is to music what enunciation, diction, accent, expression and sentences are to languages and speech. You can say that one musical phrase is a musical statement or sentence. Through this particular concept, we can transform the lifeless notes, scales, arpeggios, etc. into this intriguing phenomena we call music. Phrasing can be broken down to its bare essentials of rhythm, melody and harmony but I won’t be taking that approach in explaining what phrasing is. Instead, I’ll be talking in a language that everybody here can easily understand. (I hope)

Have you ever tried playing a scale over and over and over and over, with strict adherence to a consistent tempo dictated by a metronome or a drum machine? Well, how does it feel? Boring, ain’t it? Music isn’t meant to be boring (although, some music are) and what I just described above isn’t music, it’s an exercise. Phrasing changes all that. Now take the same scale, screw the metronome and play it with a varying rhythm. You can play the first 4 notes fast then keep the 5th note sustaining, then play the next 3 notes slow then pause a little bit then sustain a couple more notes before going for a double whammy divebomb on the 2nd fret harmonic of the G string. Now it sounds funny while reading it on paper but just wait till you try it on your guitar.

Now that you have the basic concept, I’ll share some of the things I keep in mind that makes me phrase my solos the way I do.

                    1. Try to breath in between phrases/lines

Since the guitar isn’t a wind instrument, it’s easy to get carried away playing endlessly without stopping even for a moment. Think like a sax player or a singer and pause in between lines. It makes for good phrasing and it buys some you some time to think about what to play next. And most importantly, there’s little chance of you hyperventilating due to lack of oxygen.

2. Listen to and study instruments other than guitar

This helps expand your vocabulary of licks. You don’t necessarily have to be able to play a sax or a piano; it’s enough to know how the instrument works. There are things unplayable on the guitar but the guitar can also do things unplayable on other instruments. Knowing how other instruments work can give an insight on their phrasing and the insight you get you can apply to your guitar playing. And if you’re using a guitar synth, you can pull off some pretty authentic antics when you use, say, a trumpet or a sitar or a cello sound.

3. Look around for inspiration

Rhythm is one element of music that can stand on its own. And it’s in everything around us. Frank Zappa and Steve Vai base some of their phrasing on the irregularities of human speech. Maybe that vacuum cleaner churns out a hip rhythm that you can use on your next progressive solo. Whatever catches your ear, memorize it then try to mimic it on guitar.
 
 

 There are lots more ways on how to phrase your lines and I’m going to leave it up to you to discover them. Where’s the fun in learning guitar if I spell everything out for you? Just keep an open mind and an open ear and eventually you’ll stumble upon something uniquely yours. And isn’t that what we’re all after?

Here‘s a group of notes (7-note MIXODORIAN-BLUES HYBRID scale for all you mode heads out there) that you can mangle in search of the ultimate way to phrase. Play ‘em, slur ‘em, slide ‘em, bend ‘em in any order whatsoever and prepare to be surprised by what you can actually do with them.

The red dot is the root of the scale.



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