Let's Get Musical with Chord Tones: The C-F-G Diddy

In your lesson, Fretboard Mastery with Chord Tones, you learned the tones that make up the major chords E Major, A Major, D Major, G Major, B Major, C Major, Major, B♭ Major.

When you played those to help you learn the fretboard, did you hear something? Did you hear a hint of something musical sounding?

Well today, let us build on what you have done. 

I want you to focus on three tones, C, F and G. If you learned the chord tones for the matching major chords of the tones C, F and G, you are ready to begin playing some music.

Major Chord	Root	M3	P5
C	C	E	G
F	F	A	C
G	G	B	D

The C-F-G Diddy

1. Find the m3 on A, that is find C on A. 
2. Play the chord tones for C Major.
3. Find the m3 on D, that is,find the F on D.
4. Play the chord tones for F Major.
5. Find the P4 on D, that is, find the G on D.
6. Play the chord tones for G Major.
7. Now slide down and play the chord tones for F Major again.
8. Now move up from the D string to the A string and  play the C Major chord tones again.

There! You have played your first bit of music!

Practice this little diddy repeatedly. It might seem trivial and hokey right now, but years from now, after you have become a guitarist who amazes all, you will remember this little exercise and how truly it helped lay the foundation for your playing.

Also, find other frets on the fretboard from which to play the C-F-G Diddy. You can find C on the 8th fret of E as C is a M6 on E.

Where else can we find C? How about playing from the 10th fret on D? 

Beware though! Though the F falls on the 10th fret of G, because the B string is tuned as a M3 from G rather than a P4, you must slide up one fret to play the M3 of F, which is A. A M3 always is one fret less than a P4. You must move up one fret to play the M3 above F on B, otherwise you will end up playing a m3, which is an A♭.

The same holds true for G. As the G is on the 12 fret of G, which is a P8 on the G string, its M3, which is the B, falls on the 12th fret of the B string,  

Variation #1 

So now that you have the hang of the C-F-G Diddy, let us make it a bit more challenging. Rather than start on the root tone C and play C-E-G, start on the P5 tone, which is G and play backward, G down to C as in G-E-C. Do the same for the F part of the diddy, by playing C-A-F instead and also play down the G part as D-B-G.

And so you should now experience how this simple diddy can be quite challenging to play since you are starting out on guitar. Likely, there are many players if they have discovered Riptide Guitar, who, even if they have been playing awhile will find this a challenge. So you are in good company.

Variations #2 and #3

Now, mix up the two styles of runs, the ascending C-E-G, F-A-C, G-B-D with the descending runs G-E-C, C-A-F and D-B-G.

You might play it as C-E-G, C-A-F, G-B-D (Variation #2) and then as G-E-C, F-A-C and D-B-G

Improvise!

Come on now and have some fun! Challenge yourself. Make up your own variations. After all that is what improvising is all about and when you learn to improvise on the guitar, you will learn to play the guitar!

Read more ...

Shapes? Say What? Riptide Guitarists Play Runs! Master the Minor 5 (Pentatonic Minor) Runs.

Back in my teenhood, a guy in his late 20s from NYC, a guitarist and maybe a heroin junkie tossed me a softcover workbook-style book. I cannot remember the title of the book but I believe Alfred Publishing produced the work. This book was old. The copyright must have been dated to the early 1970s.

Other than not getting past the first couple of pages, as I recall, the booklet had runs which look exactly like "shapes" as seen below. The first page had the Position 5 run. I played that over and over. After awhile I stopped because I knew it was doing nothing for my playing even though I did not understand why.

After that, I put down the guitar for a long time. Bad teaching will discourage anyone.

So, today, everywhere on the Internet are lessons with pentatonic shapes played at positions. All of that kind of teaching seems so wrong to me in the same way as the Alfred book did many years ago.

Rather than shapes, you should learn to run through the scale, diatonically. In short, you should learn runs. Said another way, you should learn scales. Forget shapes.

Runs are so much easier to learn and to master. If you learn the runs, you will unlock another hidden doorway to advance your playing. Here are the three runs you need to learn. 

Index Finger Run — Minor 5 Scale

Pinky Finger Run — Minor 5 Scale

Ring Finger Run — Minor 5 Scale

So how does it work? 

1. Find your tonic tone.
2. Play the run that matches one of the fingers — index (aka pointer), pinky, ring.

Playing with the Open Strings

When you play a run with open strings, you must imagine the plucked open string is the number 1.

That Pesky B String

If you recall from Intervals, the Fretboard and the Strings (yes, you should have read that by now), the intervals between all the strings is a perfect fourth (P4), except between G and B, which is a major third (M3). Looking at it another way, the B string is tuned down a half step from the other strings.

To overcome that half step tuning down of the B string relative to the other strings, your playing must "tune up" by one half step. 

Before your fingers hit the B string, you must adjust the position your fingers in the run up one fret. 

Moving up a fret because of the B string happens so often in runs that two more runs are quite common — the D String Ring Finger Run and the G String Middle Finger Run.

D String Ring Finger Run

D Only Ring Finger Run  — Minor 5 Scale

G String Middle Finger Run

G Only Middle Finger Run — Minor 5 Scale

Practice, Of Course

1. Practice the three runs from tonic tones on the E string so you can master these runs with ease. 
2. Once you have the three runs down, practice from the A string.
3. Practice the D String Ring Finger Run and the G String Middle Finger Run.

Read more ...