Hi. How you doing, Justin here.
Welcome to IM-136,
where we're going to be checking out melodic patterns.
Now, melodic patterns are kind of maths number games
that we can apply to scales,
to make them a little bit more musical and a little bit more interesting.
They kind of force all sorts of funny fingerings.
Your finger will be jumping in ways that it wouldn't normally do
when you play the scales up and down.
And it's really good for your muscle memory
to have your muscles used to doing things
that isn't just playing the scale up and down.
Now, we already looked of course at one finger solos which broke the scale up.
And this is kind of another thing that you can do
that makes your scale playing a little bit more interesting.
Now, during this lesson, I'm going to go through four very common number sequences
and apply them to the scales.
We're going to run through it and there's TABs on the website.
And it's really important that you see this written down on the website
because just doing it verbally like this and on video
is going to make it very difficult to understand.
So make sure you get over to the website
and check out the number sequences written down.
A lot easier to see when they're written.
Now the first one we're going to look at
Is this very simple number sequence which is: 1-2-3, 2-3-4, 3-4-5, 4-5-6 etc.
Now, when you take a number pattern like that
and apply it to the guitar,
it's almost like we took the scale and we numbered each note,
so we had : one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine
ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen...
and we apply that little pattern that we just talked about to that
and we end up having:
one - two - three,
two - three - four,
three - four - five,
four - five - six.
Now, I've put a little gap in there to keep the talking
but if we take the little gap out:
. . .
You can hear straight away, kind of makes the scale a little bit more musical.
You know, that's the kind of thing that you might have heard
particularly in the Baroque period like Bartók and Co.
They used to use these kind of little patterns all the time
and they'd sound really musical.
So, that's the first one that we're looking at.
And it's kind of like playing up three notes of each degree of the scale.
So the first note up three:
. . .
Then starting on the second note going up three notes:
. . .
Starting on the third note up three notes
. . .
That's the one that we were just doing.
Now, the second one I want to look at is playing up four notes
of each degree of the scale.
So we'd start on the first one and go: one - two - three - four.
Then we'd start on the second degree of the scale:
. . .
Play up four again.
Start on the third degree of the scale:
. . .
Of the fourth degree:
. . .
Of the fifth degree:
. . .
Six:
. . .
Seventh degree:
. . .
Back to G again, but we can keep going.
Now, I'm going to go through a close-up of these really quickly
so you can see some of the little fun finger patterns
that you have to put up with.
Because you want to make sure for this
that you stick to using the right fingers for the scale
This isn't like the one finger solos.
We're forcing your fingers to do weird things.
The third sequence we're looking at is:
1 - 3 - 2 - 1
Very, very common sequence to use, this one.
The second one would be:
two - four - three - two
and then: three - five - four - three
then: four - six - five - four
It's a bit hard to do in your head,
but, as I said, you should be looking at these on the website.
Sounds like this:
. . .
In a close-up, in a second, we're going to go right through the whole position,
but just to give you a bit of a taste
so you see what they sound like.
And the last one we're going to look at
is playing a scale in thirds, it's called.
And we're kind of going from the root note, up a third,
well, like say miss one note, play the next note,
then back to the one we missed.
Miss a note, play a note, back to the one we missed.
Sounds like this:
. . .
It's a really, really important this last one, this number four,
this playing scales in thirds, it's called.
And the reason it's so important,
is because melodies are often built in thirds.
So, if you've kind of trained your fingers up,
train the muscle memory to play scales in thirds.
When you come to improvise, you'll probably use thirds a bit, as well.
And they do sound really cool.
So, let's go to a close-up
and check out these four melodic patterns.
Pattern 1:
. . .
Pattern 2:
. . .
Pattern 3:
. . .
Pattern 4:
. . .
Once you're feeling confident
with the four patterns that I've shown you here,
it's really good fun to try and make up your own number patterns.
The thing is to keep it really simple.
Don't start trying to make up big complicated number patterns when you start off
because it'll just do your head in
and you'll end up with a migraine and wanting to give up.
So, make up a really simple number pattern
try and figure out the numbers first,
then try and apply it to the guitar.
I've got some more advice on how to do that on the website
because it's a very, kind of mathematical thing,
not something that's that easy to explain on video.
So, go and check out the written part of that lesson
for more advice on making up your own patterns.
But make sure you get this four, that I've just explained to you, down first.
They're really important.
So, have a lot of fun with that, I hope
and I'll see you for another lesson some time real soon.
Take care of yourselves!
Bye, bye!