Here’s how it works …

Chords produced from the parent C major scale:

C – Dm – Em- F – G – Am- B dim – C

The “A” natural minor harmonies:

Am- B dim – C– Dm – Em- F – G – Am

Notice how the natural minor has the same harmonic structures are the major scale only in a different sequence.

The perfect cadence challenge …

In ‘C” major the strong sense of closure is produced by the “G” moving to the “C” (5 – 1 progression); whereas in natural minor version the Em to Am (5- 1 in the natural minor) produced a weak sounding cadence.

The solution:

Musicians solved the problem by sharpening the leading note (7th note) of the natural minor scale; by sharpening this one note they could change the 5th chord from a minor to a major thereby creating the intended perfect cadence.

Here’s what happened …

Harmonic structures produced from the natural minor

Am- B dim – C– Dm – Em- F – G – Am

The new harmonic minor (so named because of the ‘new’ harmonies it created)

A- B- C – D – E – F – G# – A (notice the sharpened 7th note)

Produced these chords …

Am – B dim – C aug – Dm – E – F – G# dim – Am

As you can see the 5th chord in the harmonic minor progression is now a major chord and a whole new world of harmonic and melodic possibilities has been created for the creative musician to explore.

So how do you overcome the dreaded “loss of motivation” syndrome and avoid being one of the guitar playing causalities?

Here’s my top 7 ways to stay motivated and play like a professional guitarist

1. Maintain a positive practice experience: There’s nothing worst that a bad practice session, it’s the fastest way to lose your enthusiasm and motivation, diagnose what went wrong: was it the practice material, the equipment or practice environment, whatever the problem is change it immediately, too many bad practice experiences are fatal!

2. Rekindle your passion: Listen to the players who inspired you to take up the instrument in the first place and remember the only way they achieved their ability on their instrument is through PRACTICE, if you are as dedicated and practice as much as they did you will be able to achieve your dreams.

3. New strings: Put some new strings on your guitar they will feel better under your fingers and your guitar will sound a whole lot better.

4. Play with other guitar players: You can’t beat playing and sharing ideas with other guitar players, that’s what music is all about; caring and sharing with other humans. Computers are cool tools but they can never replace human interaction!

5. An instrument to die for: There’s nothing more motivational than having an instrument you just absolutely love to look at, it just dares you to play it … save up and get an instrument you just can’t stop playing, that does not mean the most expensive, just the most desirable!

6. Set goals: Most people give up very easy (not just guitar playing); to overcome this set goals and to achieve your goals remember you need two things (1) clarity of vision – write your goals down; (2) force of intent – guts!

7. Take lessons: Take weekly lessons from an inspiring teacher, just being around an inspiring guitarist will do wonders for your playing, remember the role of the teacher is to help guide you and help you overcome your mental and physical obstacles, they cannot do the practice for you, the best teacher in the world cannot help you if you are not committed.

We will begin our connected learning by identifying the most commonly used minor scales:
natural
harmonic
melodic

You may know many other minor scales however these are the essential ones to learn and master. The first step is to be aware that some of these basic scales have several different names, in fact you may already know how to play them and be unaware of their aliases.

Important: The natural minor is also known as the relative minor and the aeolian mode; the structure of the melodic minor in classical music is different to the melodic minor in jazz music.

In order to grasp how minor scales work and why we have so many of them we must start at the very beginning with the major scale, all my examples will originate from the C major scale.

Here is a two octave C major scale: C – D – E – F – G – A – B – C – D – E – F – G – A – B – C

The natural minor is created by beginning on the sixth note of the major scale, hence the name relative as the natural minor contains the exact same notes as the major scale.

Two octave C major scale: C – D – E – F – G – [A] – B – C – D – E – F – G – [A] – B – C

The “A” natural minor : A – B – C – D – E – F – G – A

By stacking the individual notes of any scale in a constant intervallic format e.g., 3rds, 4ths etc., each scale will produce it’s own unique set of harmonies; it’s helpful to think of scales as horizontal musical structures and chords as vertical structures.

Since the natural minor scale has the same notes as it’s parent major scale no new chords are created.

Chords created from the C major scale: C – Dm – Em – F – G – Am – Bdim – C

A minor chords: Am – Bdim – C – Dm – Em – F – G – Am

Pull-off’s, like hammer-on’s (since they are essentially the same thing in reverse), expand possibilities of speed, phrasing and articulation, sound and touch; pull-off’s are equally as popular on both electric and acoustic guitar and are an essential part of the lead guitarist’s toolkit.

The Pull-off Technique:

The pull-off technique involves pressing down the primary note of the melodic line with the 1st, 2nd or 3rd finger while pressing down a preparatory note (higher in pitch on the same string) with either the 2nd, 3rd or 4th finger depending on the particular musical phrase.

Next, pluck the preparatory note, and while the string is vibrating, pull the finger playing the higher pitch away from the string (toward the side of the guitar fingerboard) in a plucking action. In other words, pick the string a second time with the fingering hand.

The pull-off should be strong enough to produce a solid tone approximating the loudness of the original picked note. Great care should be taken to maintain rhythmic control of the pull-off; don’t rush or drag the tempo.

This article will focus on one of the most common guitar moves: the hammer-on.

Hammer-On’s

The concept is to have your left hand fingers play extra notes that do not require any additional right hand picking (assuming you are a right handed player). This produces a smooth melodic sound, very much like a vocalist or wind instrument such as a saxophone.

The technique is very simple: When you pick a note the string vibrates the entire remaining length of the string (if you look closely at the tick strings you will see these strings vibrating) the idea is to select another note on the sane string and hammer-down (hammer-on) to the desired note, with a strong hammer-like action. This produces another tone, higher in pitch, without requiring any right-hand move. Thus you are able to get two or more notes for the price of one picking stroke.

Another way to think of this ‘hammer-on’ action is to visualise the action of the little hammers striking the strings inside a piano.

In fact endlessly practising scales can stifle your creativity, too much scale playing can ‘free your fingers and freeze your brain’. To put things in the proper perspective playing scales is like a boxer skipping rope or punching a bag. It’s not the thing in itself; it’s preparatory to the activity.

Here’s three tips that will help you overcome scale paralysis, lock-jaw of the wrist and frozen brain syndrome and help you develop your own individual guitar style.

Tip 1: Learn the 19 basic moves to playing guitar: just as there are basic moves (skills) that a person must learn to play tennis, drive a car or learn to type playing the guitar involves 19 basic moves that when combined will enable the guitarist to play any guitar style.

Tip 2 : Learn to balance the three basic music resources : music consists of three basic structures (a) horizontal structure is a melody; (b) vertical structures are chords;(c) oblique structures are called arpeggios.

Listen to your favourite guitar player, study how they blend these music structures to create an interesting well balanced solo, too much of any one of these musical raw materials will spoil the solo.

Tip 3: All the material you will ever need is in the song: think about this for a moment; it seems like I’m stating the obvious … but how many players are aware of this, learn to play the melody of the song, use the intervals of the melody and capture the sentiment of the lyrics and your solo will be a natural development of the song not some random pile of disorganised notes.

On the other hand some guitarists specialise in playing melody or single string notes usually played directly from the written sheet music, while this is the best option to clearly state the melody unless there is a rhythm guitar accompaniment the performance can be quite empty and dull.

The third option is to combine both the melody and rhythm parts of a composition into a solo guitar chord – melody style, whereby the guitarist plays all the parts of the composition without any need of other musicians to present a satisfactory performance.

Although this sounds complicated (or impossible) it’s really quite easy once you understand the concept, here are three tips to get you started in this style of playing.

Tip 1: Learn to play the single note melody, take great care to learn the melody correctly, if you can read standard sheet music it is a good idea to learn the melody exactly as it is stated in the written score; you can always embellish the melody later, the trick is to make certain you are playing the correct melody before you start improvising on the it.

Tip 2 : Play the melody an octave higher than the written piano score. Most guitarists don’t realise that the guitar sounds one octave lower than written; therefore in order for the melody to ‘cut through’ and not get tangled up with the chords it’s essential that you play the melody one octave higher, playing on the first or second strings will give you the best results.

Tip 3: Strum the chord on the first beat of each bar making certain the melody note is the highest note of the chord, in most instances the melody will be a note that already exists in the chord the trick is to make sure that the melody note is not lost amongst the other chord notes; sometimes you may have to slightly alter the chord shape to accommodate a melody note that is not contained in the chord.

Take your time working on only four to six melody notes at a time, aim for precision and make sure to really bring the melody out in your playing, like everything it takes practice, patience and perseverance but the result is well worth the effort.

But what if there was another way to learn and instantly recall songs and information you have already practised? The great news is there is … the trick is to learn via connected learning, whereby new information is related to information you already know.

Here’s how to apply connected learning to your guitar playing:

Step 1: Study popular chord progressions – instead of learning random chords study which chords work together e.g., the G – Em – C – D chord progression has been a popular chord sequence for many years, hundreds of hit songs have been based on this progression

Step 2: Learn via chord templates – once you find a chord progression you like keep your eyes and ears peeled for this chord progression in the music you are listening to. Check out how different songwriters use variations of this progression.

Here are some common chord progression templates for the G – Em – C – D progression.

(a) G /// | Em /// | C /// | D /// ||

(b) G /// | G /// | Em /// | Em /// | C /// | C /// | D /// |D /// ||

(c) G /// | G /// | Em /// | Em /// | C /// | D /// | G /// |G /// ||

Step 3: Apply these templates to Songs: As you play songs look for the similarities in the chord progressions, you will be amazed how many songs have the exact same chord progression.

Songs like … Every Day (Buddy Holly); Teardrops on My Guitar (Taylor Swift); and This Kiss (Faith Hill) and many more are all based on the G – Em – C – D progression.

There’s a certain number of A-B-C type things that if you have them all organised your guitar playing is a breeze, in fact you really look forward to your practice time.

Here’s a check-list to help you get started.

1. Equipment check list:

(a) have your guitar set up by a competent repair person – to be perfectly honest the majority of professional players would have difficulty playing a stock standard guitar off the shelf; to get the best results and to avoid injury to your hands it’s essential to have the action (the string height from the fretboard) adjusted by an experienced repair person; when you buy a guitar it is rare that the guitar is in optimal playing condition, having your guitar correctly set up will greatly accelerate your playing.

(b) music stand – a very useful piece of equipment that will make practice sessions much more enjoyable and will reduce eye fatigue and back problems.

(c ) chromatic tuner – notice I said chromatic tuner not guitar tuner; the standard guitar tuner will only help you if your guitar is very close to the correct pitch, if you could get the guitar that close you wouldn’t need a tuner, the chromatic tuner will locate any note no matter how badly your guitar is out of tune, this is particularly useful when changing strings.

(d) capo – I prefer the Kyser brand of capos, they don’t bend the strings out of tune.

(e) metronome – the TempoPerfect metronome by NCH.com is a free metronome that you can download to your computer.

2. What to do before you sit down to practice:

(a) decide on the project – obvious I know, but you would be surprise how few people actually work out in advance exactly what they want to achieve from the practice session, they just sit down and start playing. Players with written goals are the successful players, that should tell you something.

(b) clear everything not pertaining to the lesson – start your practice session with a clear desk if you have all your equipment ready, are clear on what you want to achieve and have all the distractions out-of- the-way the only thing that can happen is some great guitar playing and a lot of fun, so take the time to get organised, once you discover the advantage preparation gives you as a guitar player you will always take the time to prepare .