Guitar Learning Blog

well, indeed it's easier for us to understand the circle of fifth than the circle of fourths in guitar learning. There are two reason for this. first, we can always find the fifth note on the guitar fret board, simply by pick the string right above the root note (for the root note on the 3th, 4th, 5th string and the 1st string, the fifth note is right above it; for the 2nd string, the fifth note is half-note-down above).  it's visually known by our eyes and our fingers can touch it right away. the second reason and the real reason is that the circle of fifth is obtained from the notes order linearly. there is something that we called tetrachord. the wikipedia definition: a tetrachord is a series of three smaller intervals that span the interval of a perfect fourth, a 4:3 frequency proportion.  the circle of fifth is obtained from diatonic tetrachord (this is sh!t, there are too many difficult words for beginner guitarist like me to understand!). I'll try to explain...

What we really after in daily exercises on learning guitar? licks, speed and accuracy? what happen after then? these questions keep me wondering about what stuff that really works. Practicing licks in slow-moderate-fast tempo was not really interested after i found some readings and videos about Scales and Modes. It changed my point of view in learning guitar years ago, when i thought that all i can learn was becoming fast and licks-rich playing, bunch of sweeping arpeggios, tapping all along the fretboard, you name them. all the famous guitarists can do were all i wanted to be. There are some unique sounds and styles of playing in every guitarist song. Thanks to Mr. Satriani's "Flying in A Blue Dream" which ignited me to look deeper in music. And this post will be a long one. Scales and Modes are effective for guitar playing, especially for the beginner ones who get bored with their distortion screaming loud but leads to nowhere. There are seven scales, at least t...