- Hey guitar players, it's Nate here
and today we are gonna be taking a look
at the classic song The Wheels--
- [Mike] Nate!
- On the bus.
- I find your lack of prog disturbing.
This is my week and my show.
- No, no you cannot do that.
You cannot do this to my channel.
I've been doing this for 10 years.
I deserve some respect--
(error code signal)
- I don't even know how much cheese that was.
(laughs)
Hey guys, Mike with Become the Knight here,
filling in for Nate this week on GuitarLessons.com.
For those of you who aren't familiar with my content,
I talk a lot about progressive rock and progressive metal.
I'm a huge fan of Dream Theater.
One question that a lot of my audience asks me
is how do they learn to sound more proggy.
How do they further capture that sound.
Now while prog falls under a really large umbrella,
there are some very simple
and effective things that you can do
to sound a lot more proggy.
Today's lesson, you do not need any music theory background
in order to implement these today.
The only thing that you need to know is a power chord.
(guitar playing)
All a power chord is are three strings and two frets.
Simple enough.
Have you ever thought of just changing one of the frets?
For example,
(guitar playing)
The notes in a power chord are very harmonious.
All of their overtones work very well together.
Some of them are the same.
That's why these three notes together sound so good
and are all over music.
But if you move one slightly away,
(guitar playing)
you have a very dissonant sound.
A lot of prog uses dissonance to it's advantage.
It adds a lot of color to something
that is very smooth, and almost,
you would say, possibly too perfect.
It makes it ugly, in which case
you can actually make it more unique.
As with everything in this video,
I highly encourage you to experiment.
This exercise is very much about experimentation,
to see what you can come up with.
Here's a couple of the ones I came up with.
Very simple.
(guitar playing)
Yes, all of these chords do actually have names.
I'm not gonna tell you what those are.
I'm gonna pretend not only,
do you have no music theory background,
but you don't even need it for this exercise.
Now, we've come up with all these weird chords,
how do we actually use them so that
they sound good together?
One of the most common tools for changing chords
in a chord progression is using same notes.
It could take a potentially really weird chord change,
and make it sound at least somewhat comfortable,
just by having literally the same fret
and string in one chord to another,
that could be completely different shapes,
be in completely different keys.
Here's a very simple example using the exact same
three note shape, just moving up the fret board.
(guitar playing)
Now, while that was pretty cool,
it feels like, okay, where is this going?
So, you have to start using your ingenuity.
Use some different shapes,
work out to see what you feel is best.
(guitar playing)
Another extremely useful songwriting technique,
actually from 21st century contemporary classical music,
is called planing.
Planing is simply taking the exact same
chord shape and voicing,
and simply moving it up or down by one fret.
And you continually do this motion.
Now, I don't remember if its technically planing or not,
but sometimes, I like to move two frets,
and continue that motion, here's an example.
(guitar playing)
Planing, in conjunction with that very mystical,
weird chord, kind of gives you this feeling
of we're just kind of floating along.
We're not sure where were gonna stop.
Another fantastic use for planing,
is this particular chord shape,
moving up or down in half steps,
its extremely effective.
(guitar playing)
Now I get asked by my audience a lot,
how you play in different time signatures,
other than 4/4.
I guess technically this is the only thing
we will talk about theory today. (laughing)
if you have a riff that you like but you
feel like it needs a little more spice of life,
a little bit more rhythm,
treat this thing like a bad Tinder date,
and just cut it short.
For example, here is this riff,
in this rhythm, in 4/4.
(guitar playing)
Simply by cutting off that last beat,
depending on how you wanna count that beat,
you can turn it from something that's relaxed,
in to something that's WOW!
Its taking me off guard for a little bit.
And in the second turnaround,
i'll even go one step further,
and alternate between chopping off two beats, and one beat.
(guitar playing)
My last tip for you today is listen and learn.
This is probably the hardest tip in this video.
If there is a band, or an artist
that you want to sound more like,
listen to more of their music,
and listen to it often.
Having good musical recall,
and really burning these notes,
and these rhythms into your brain
is the best way that you're going to
see that come out on your instrument.
And, go ahead and try and learn some of their stuff.
A large part of the composition process
for a lot of guitar players is muscle memory.
If you incorporate their style of writing
and playing into your muscle memory,
it will more naturally show itself in your own writing.
So of these weird chords that we made out of power chords,
what is your favorite?
Let me know in the comments below.
If you liked this lesson, drop a like.
If you didn't like this lesson, drop a like!
I just think its hilarious
that you thought you had an option here.
Also, if you'd like to see more of my content,
you can go to Become the Knight on YouTube.
I also am Become the Knight
on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @becometheknight
Thank you guys so much for watching,
see you on my channel,
on here, we'll see, we'll see how it goes.
Huge thanks to guitarlessons.com and the Nate
for letting me take this one this week.
Rock on!
(slow guitar music)