Many people ask me, "Nelson, how do you study? How do you organize your practice time? " I think this varies a lot from person to person.
There are some people who have more time to practice, and other people who have less time to practice. But independent of how much time you have to practice, I think it is important to focus on at least 6 items that are primordial, that I consider to be the most important. The first one is your understanding of the neck of the guitar.
The second is technique. Third, is harmony. Fourth is improvisation.
The fifth is reading, and the sixth is repertoire. So there are six things that we need to always be studying on the instrument. I will speak generally and quickly about each one of these items, so that you are able to have an understanding of what there is to study, the priorities of study.
But in the videos to come, we will have talked about in detail each one of these subjects, in more specific way. Knowledge of the neck of the guitar involves obviously knowing the notes on the neck, to get to know the neck of the instrument, and also involves the mapping of the neck in terms of scales, arpeggios and chords. For the scale part, you need to know: The major scale, the minor natural, harmonic, and melodic scales.
These are called the diatonic scales. Other than these, there are the symmetrical scales: Diminished, whole tones, the Greek modes, which are the modes that have the major scale, the minor scale, dorian, phrygian, lydian etc. The modes that come from the harmonic minor scale, the modes that come from the melodic minor scale, Plus the pentatonic scales and the blues scales.
To give a quick tip as far as how I work on this, I prefer to think about the scales in numbers In other words, to think in terms of degrees instead of terms of notes. When you play a scale, let's say the major scale, instead of thinking of do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, I think 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, respresenting the seven degrees of the scale. With that, I have two things: I have the sound of the scale and the degree, the function of the note at the same time.
So when I play a note and it is the 1, I know that this 1 is my tonic. Two is my second, three is my third, four is my fourth, and so forth. So if I play a major scale and I want to do a minor scale, the difference between a major and minor scale is in the third, sixth and seventh, Which come down a half step on this degrees.
Or in other words, instead of being 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, it becomes 1, 2, flat 3, 4, 5, flat 6, and flat 7. So, 1, 2, flat 3, 4, 5, flat 6, flat 7, ok? And so forth.
So that's how I think about my scales, for each one of them. Arpeggios are when you play a scale in thirds. So, the fundamental, the third, the fifth and the seventh.
It is as if you played the chords melodically So 1, 3, 5, 7 for a major scale, 1, flat 3, 5, flat 7 for a minor chord, and so on. And for chords too, I also think in numbers. So if I have a C major chord here, I know that I have 1, 5, 7, and here I have 3, because if you count on the scale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3.
And it doesn't matter what octave you play he basic notes of the chord because they will always have the same function. So this is the fundamental, fifth, seventh, and third. And I think this way to mount all chords, all inversions, the tension notes, etc.
For the technique part, there are basically three schools of thought. The school with the musicians that use alternate picking, the school os musicians that use the pick to sweep, one strum for many strings, And the school of musicians that use hammer-ons and pull-offs, which is basically to play with your left hand. I, when I play, I mix all three in.
So if I take a random idea, Notice that I used hammer-ons and pull-offs, here I used alternate picking, pull-off again, and a sweep here which is one strum hitting various strings. I will be discussing each one of these techniques more in-depth in the next videos. The study of harmony is a study for you to understand the function of each chord.
Which chord can substitute another, how can you reharmonize a song. . .
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that is another very important thing to study Improvisation is the study of the development of musical ideas, to understand the relationship that exists between chords and scales, and also how to develop a solo in and of itself. Note that you can know all of the scales, all of the chords but still not know about harmony or how to improvise. To know how to harmonize, how to improvise, and know how to use these chords and scales, how to make music with them.
The study of reading music, which is our next topic, is also a study that should be done every day. And that can take up 5-10 minutes of your day if you have only a small amount of time available. It is by studying every day that you will develop a fluency in your reading.
There are a lot of tips I will give you in these classes, but it is important to know that it is important to study reading. The sixth topic, which is the topic of repertoire, I think is a topic which unfortunately ends up being abandoned by the majority of people. Many students look for me and they already know how to play all the scales, a lot of phrases, a lot of chords and everything, and when I say, "Let's play a song.
What song do you know by heart? " Normally they don't know any. Or sometimes one.
They made need a part or something else. So your repertoire will be made up of the songs that you know how to play, in various different keys if necessary, you know how to play the pure melody, you know how to play the harmony, you know the harmony, that you have already studied to try to reharmonize the melody. It's that song that you know how to play the melody and harmony at the same time, which we call chord melody.
So that is what it is to know a song. That is repertoire. And that is something you do bit by bit, just like stacking bricks to make a wall.
You learn one song, then you learn the second song, then the third, the fourth, and you will see that the 5th will be easier to learn than the first, and so on. Until you have a repertoire that you can use to express yourself with your chords, scales, improvisations, with your song, with your way of playing. So that's it.
Independent of the style you play, these six items are the ones that I think are most important for study. And I will leave you one last tip. Separate in these items those that are more mechanic and those that are more creative studies.
The mechanical studies, which are reading, scales, arpeggios, technique. You can work on these with a timer, doing studies of 3-5 minutes for each study. So for example, study 3 minutes of scales, or 3 minutes of arpeggios, or 5 minutes of reading.
That's good. The others, the creative ones, when you work on harmony and improvisation, repertoire, this will demand more time from you. So you will need to be with your instrument, and have more time for this.
So if you have 1 hour to study, take 20 minutes for mechanical studies and the other 40 for creative studies. If you have more time, use more or less that same balance between the mechanical and the creative studies. I hope these tips helps and never forget to use a timer and a metronome.
That will help a lot. Until next time.
