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How To Play Guitar Modes
How To Play Guitar Modes
How To Play Guitar Modes
Ebook151 pages49 minutes

How To Play Guitar Modes

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About this ebook

How To Play Guitar Modes is a method book for beginners and intermediate guitar students. It breaks down the 7 modes that come from the major scale into very simple, easy to understand step-by-step lessons. This allows for quicker study and understanding of the concepts and principles associated with guitar modes.


When it com

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 21, 2020
ISBN9781733064453
How To Play Guitar Modes
Author

Dwayne Jenkins

Dwayne Jenkins is an independent author, private instructor, accomplished musician, and entrepreneur. He has been an accomplished musician for 35 years and has authored many books on how to play guitar. He runs a very successful guitar-teaching business out of Denver, Colorado, and has been in business for over 20 years. Dwayne's has a unique teaching style that gets students of all ages and skill levels to have fun playing guitar quickly. His passion for music and teaching shines through with every lesson plan, book, and online course that he creates. So if you'd like to learn to play the guitar, no matter if it's electric or acoustic, be sure to get involved with Dwayne's Guitar Lessons, where more can be found at his website @dwaynesguitarlessons.com.

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    How To Play Guitar Modes - Dwayne Jenkins

    Chapter 1 Getting Started

    Lesson 1: What is a mode?

    A mode is a selection of notes within the major scale of the key that it is taken out of. Starting on a particular note of the major scale. The major scale (any major scale) has seven notes and each one of these notes has a mode that is created off of it.

    For example, if we look at the notes within the key of C major, the notes are:

    Give each one of these notes a number value and we have:

    There will be a mode created from each one of these notes. Since the scale starts and ends with the same note, we only count it once. That means the scale has 7 notes. Technically, C-B. The last C will be the start of the scale in the next octave.

    This is what we will be learning in this book. These 7 modes and how we can use them in our guitar playing.

    Lesson 2: Is it the same as a scale?

    Well, yes and no. Let me explain. All modes are scales, but not all scales are modes. There are literally thousands of scales that can be played on the guitar. This goes for chords as well. Crazy huh? The reason for this is because of the notes that make up these scales and chords.

    So technically modes are scales because they are made up of a selection of notes within certain keys. But they only come from the notes of a major key. Not a minor key. This is what makes them so mysterious.

    A scale is technically defined as a selection of ascending and descending notes within certain intervals (distance between them) that can be used to form melodies and guitar solos. These can be both major scales such as in G major, as well as in minor, such as in E minor.

    When it comes to minor scales there are many. Natural minor, harmonic minor, melodic minor, etc. But with the modes, there are only the 7 modes because of the fact that they come specifically from the 7 notes that reside in the major scale. If there were 10 notes, there'd be 10 modes.

    This is what makes them different from scales. Are they a selection of notes like a scale? Yes. Do they have all kinds of different variations like scales? No. See what I mean by yes and no?

    Once you get down the fundamentals of why there are only 7 modes and where they come from, they become easier to understand and work with. This is what we are shooting for in this book.

    Lesson 3: Why learn to use them?

    Learning about the modes and how to use them will help you to increase your understanding of many great things.

    It will help you to learn and understand:

    1.Notes within the major scale

    2.Chords that can be created within the major scale

    3.Guitar licks that can be created for solos

    4.Ear training by learning note intervals

    5.How to build finger strength & dexterity

    6.Learn & write songs easier

    7.How the music notes works better in theory

    And much, much, more. All these things will help you to increase not only your guitar playing but your whole overall musicianship. And that is what you are shooting for by learning this information.

    This is the true benefit over just playing guitar by ear. You get to fully understand what it is you are playing.

    There is nothing wrong with playing by ear. It is a skill I recommend you learn and later in this training I will go over some things you can do to help develop this. But if you are going to study diagrams, notes and theory, you want to develop an understanding of why it all works the way it does.

    Lesson 4: Reading tablature

    The best way to fully understand modes is to be able to not just play them but to read them as well. Remember, music is a language and you want to learn how to read it, write it, and speak it. Playing modes on the guitar is the speaking part of it. The other part is the reading and writing.

    This is where tablature (tabs for short) and diagrams come in. Here in lesson 4 we are going to look at how to read tablature for quick reference of these 7 modes. This will help you to understand them better and be able to find them quicker along the fretboard.

    Tablature has been around for many years and is a simple method of reading sheet music. It takes out the guesswork and is specifically designed for our purpose. We will be working with horizontal lines that represent the strings, and numbers that represent the frets.

    Here is an example of tablature. The 6 horizontal lines represent your guitar strings with your biggest string (your sixth string) being on the bottom.

    The reason for this is because in sheet music of any kind, the lowest note will always be on the bottom. So when reading tabs, you want to make sure to remember this. It is what makes this hard to read and understand for most people who play guitar.

    That is why they choose to just play by ear.

    Numbers represent the frets that you will be playing on. So in the example of tabs, there will be numbers on the lines.

    Here we have an example of a note at the eighth fret on the first string. This would be your smallest string.

    Just think of the lines as being upside down from your guitar. I know, it is a bit confusing, but trust me, as you work with it, it’ll get easier to understand and execute. Sorry, I didn’t design it, I just teach it.

    Here are some more examples:

    Here we have two notes that will be played one after the other. This example also shows an open note which is represented by a 0. This is when you play a string without putting a finger down on a fret. Here it will be on the 4th string from the top of your guitar. The open D string.

    Here we have 4 notes played one after the other on the 6th and 5th strings. This is part of the G major scale. Play it and you will hear the Do Re Mi Fa.

    This is the basic fundamentals of how you read tablature. Lines and numbers. You just got to remember a couple of things:

    1.Lines represent the guitar strings upside down

    2.Numbers represent the frets that you play on

    Now tabs don’t show you everything like what fingers to use and timing sequence, but what they do is give you a simple basic place to start learning from. This is where they will benefit you in this musical training.

    As we progress with other concepts

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