Practice Guide for Lesson 3

I couldn't help but give this guitar god a little "pizzaz"....

Anyway....

In Lesson 3, Stonedragon begins with Tuning...

Hey, like I said before, you always want to tune your guitar because....Never Mind...

In Lesson 3 Stonedragon begins by addressing the chromatic scale, which is basically every note available on the guitar...

Then you talks about whole-steps and half-steps...and does an excellent job explaining that, so I am not going to go any further into that...

Then he gets into some good stuff...so lets talk about it...

W - W - H - W - W - W - H
AKA...The Major scale!!!

Stonedragon begins to talk about tension and resolution within a solo, without really saying THAT necessarily. Anyway, learning the major scale up each string and the Whole-step Half-step pattern is really crucial to get get an understanding of these things...it will help you immensely later when you are moving on to other things and learning new things.

Here is MrSamson's suggestion on single string major scale practice:
I am someone big on practicing or working on these type of things in an excessive manner.

What I did to practice this W - W - H - W - W - W - H concept is to place NEON ORANGE little stickers within the middle of the fret where each C note resided.

By doing this, it made life MUCH easier to visualize the Whole-step Half-step pattern and also resolve the "solos" I was working on as I jammed against the chord progression. I must warn you, I did this with my cheap Ibanez, and that time I did not have my Fender Strat, which I don't know if I could raise enough courage to do that with. Regardless, it did not ruin the neck of the Ibanez, and the glue cleaned right off when I changed the strings.

(I did not have to worry about trying to get the stickers off because I wore them out to the point where they simply just fell off)

Then, what I did was walk up and down each string, starting on the root, in this case C, and working the Whole-step Half-step pattern up, down, and then back up to the Root note I started at.

I went as slow as I had to, and repeated it on each string obsessively until I was able to complete this exercise without error, which at times required 6 or 7 attempts.

When I was finally able to correctly do that string I was on, I would then, and only then, move to the next string.

When completed this exercise, I would then working on soloing and resolving with the chord progression, working each string individually.

Stonedragon then moves on in Lesson 3 to Left-Hand techniques, which encompasses...

Really at this point, there is no point in providing specific exercises to work on these techniques. The reason I say this is because you should be working on them NATURALLY anyway simply because they are so fun to do.

At Least that was the case for me....

WARNING

If you do not find the above techniques fun to work on...

You may have chosen the wrong hobby (obsession?) to take up.

 

Perhaps Cribbage is more for you...or collecting Antique Outboards...

Stonedragon next moves on the Righthanded techniques in Lesson 3, which consists mainly of

Muting....

The exercise provided by Stone involving Just What I Needed by the Cars is totally appropriate and challenging for the beginnner.

My advice...Patience.

I can remember working on this, and with hard work, I was able to nail it relatively quickly. That was awesome, that is really a good exercise to do for this technique.

Everyone in Rock-and-Roll uses the muting technique...especially this man...

Within the Music Section of Lesson 3, Stonedragon has three examples to work on...

1

Smoke On The Water by Deep Purple...this one is actually pretty easy and straight forward...HOWEVER...
Try and absorb what he is getting at when he makes the point of this Inversion thing here with this song.

Honestly, at first, I did not get the point of it...so don't sweat it if you don't either, it will become more clear, at least it did for me, when you begin working on Pentatonic scales.

2

Balls To The Wall by Accept...this was difficult for me...and the timing takes some getting used to. Listen closely to the recording provided.

3

Cat Scratch Fever by Ted Nugent...this was actually difficult for me as well at the time. You will get it with work...I promise...if I can, anyone can...trust me!!!

 

That's All Folks!!!!!!

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