Building Melodic Patterns (Guitar Lesson IM-136) How to play IF Stage 3

Justin's Completely Free, Intermediate Guitar Course Lesson IM-136.
Stage 3, Lesson 6.

In this guitar lesson we look at developing melodic patterns, and import part of developing your improvising skillset, by helping your fingers "muscle memory" to do cooler stuff than just play scales up and down.

Find the related course notes on the following link:
http://justinguitar.com/en/IM-136-BuildingMelodicPatterns.php

This is part of Justin's Intermediate Guitar Method, Foundation. A series of lessons available free online!

http://justinguitar.com/en/IM-000-IntermediateMethod.php

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

Full support at the justinguitar web site where you will find hundreds of lessons on a wide range of subjects, and all the scales and chords that you will ever need! There is a great forum too to get help, no matter what the problem.

And it is all totally free, no bull. No sample lessons, no memberships, no free ebook. Just tons of great lessons :)

To get help with this lesson (and for further info and tabs), find the Lesson ID in the video title (like ST-667 or whatever) and then look it up on the Lesson Index page of justinguitar.com

http://www.justinguitar.com

Have fun :)

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Hi. How you doing, Justin here.

Welcome to IM-136,

where we're going to be checking out melodic patterns.

Now, melodic patterns are kind of maths number games

that we can apply to scales,

to make them a little bit more musical
and a little bit more interesting.

They kind of force
all sorts of funny fingerings.

Your finger will be jumping in ways
that it wouldn't normally do

when you play the scales up and down.

And it's really good for your muscle memory

to have your muscles used to doing things

that isn't just playing the scale up and down.

Now, we already looked of course
at one finger solos which broke the scale up.

And this is kind of another thing that you can do

that makes your scale playing
a little bit more interesting.

Now, during this lesson, I'm going to go through
four very common number sequences

and apply them to the scales.

We're going to run through it
and there's TABs on the website.

And it's really important
that you see this written down on the website

because just doing it verbally like this and on video

is going to make it very difficult to understand.

So make sure you get over to the website

and check out the number sequences written down.

A lot easier to see when they're written.

Now the first one we're going to look at

Is this very simple number sequence
which is: 1-2-3, 2-3-4, 3-4-5, 4-5-6 etc.

Now, when you take a number pattern like that

and apply it to the guitar,

it's almost like we took the scale
and we numbered each note,

so we had :
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine

ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
fourteen, fifteen, sixteen...

and we apply that little pattern
that we just talked about to that

and we end up having:

one - two - three,

two - three - four,

three - four - five,

four - five - six.

Now, I've put a little gap in there to keep the talking

but if we take the little gap out:

. . .

You can hear straight away,
kind of makes the scale a little bit more musical.

You know, that's the kind of thing
that you might have heard

particularly in the Baroque period like Bartók and Co.

They used to use
these kind of little patterns all the time

and they'd sound really musical.

So, that's the first one that we're looking at.

And it's kind of like playing up three notes
of each degree of the scale.

So the first note up three:

. . .

Then starting on the second note
going up three notes:

. . .

Starting on the third note
up three notes

. . .

That's the one that we were just doing.

Now, the second one I want to look at
is playing up four notes

of each degree of the scale.

So we'd start on the first one
and go: one - two - three - four.

Then we'd start on the second degree of the scale:

. . .

Play up four again.

Start on the third degree of the scale:

. . .

Of the fourth degree:

. . .

Of the fifth degree:

. . .

Six:

. . .

Seventh degree:

. . .

Back to G again,
but we can keep going.

Now, I'm going to go through a close-up
of these really quickly

so you can see
some of the little fun finger patterns

that you have to put up with.

Because you want to make sure for this

that you stick to using the right fingers for the scale

This isn't like the one finger solos.

We're forcing your fingers to do weird things.

The third sequence we're looking at is:

1 - 3 - 2 - 1

Very, very common sequence to use, this one.

The second one would be:

two - four - three - two

and then:
three - five - four - three

then:
four - six - five - four

It's a bit hard to do in your head,

but, as I said,
you should be looking at these on the website.

Sounds like this:

. . .

In a close-up, in a second,
we're going to go right through the whole position,

but just to give you a bit of a taste

so you see what they sound like.

And the last one we're going to look at

is playing a scale in thirds, it's called.

And we're kind of going
from the root note, up a third,

well, like say miss one note,
play the next note,

then back to the one we missed.

Miss a note, play a note,
back to the one we missed.

Sounds like this:

. . .

It's a really, really important this last one,
this number four,

this playing scales in thirds, it's called.

And the reason it's so important,

is because melodies are often built in thirds.

So, if you've kind of trained your fingers up,

train the muscle memory
to play scales in thirds.

When you come to improvise,
you'll probably use thirds a bit, as well.

And they do sound really cool.

So, let's go to a close-up

and check out these four melodic patterns.

Pattern 1:

. . .

Pattern 2:

. . .

Pattern 3:

. . .

Pattern 4:

. . .

Once you're feeling confident

with the four patterns
that I've shown you here,

it's really good fun to try
and make up your own number patterns.

The thing is to keep it really simple.

Don't start trying to make up
big complicated number patterns when you start off

because it'll just do your head in

and you'll end up with a migraine
and wanting to give up.

So, make up a really simple number pattern

try and figure out the numbers first,

then try and apply it to the guitar.

I've got some more advice
on how to do that on the website

because it's a very,
kind of mathematical thing,

not something that's that easy to explain on video.

So, go and check out the written part of that lesson

for more advice on making up your own patterns.

But make sure you get this four,
that I've just explained to you, down first.

They're really important.

So, have a lot of fun with that, I hope

and I'll see you for another lesson
some time real soon.

Take care of yourselves!

Bye, bye!