GUITARHABITS

How to Play and Apply The Dorian Scale

May 14, 2019 by Klaus Crow

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If you know your way around the pentatonic / blues scale, the major scale and minor scale and you feel like you’re up for a new challenge, it’s time to expand your soloing vocabulary.

Let’s take a look at one of the 7 modes of the Major scale. Dorian might be your new endeavor.

The Dorian scale is very common scale in the jazz music, but it can also be applied to pop, rock and metal to give your soloing some fresh and lively colors.

The dorian scale is the second mode of the major scale.

All 7 modes (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian) are derived from the major scale. Each mode starts and stops on a different note within the major scale. Dorian starts on the second degree of the major scale all the way up to an octave higher.

Example:
C Major = C D E F G A B C
D Dorian = D E F G A B C D

Formulas:
Major scale = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Dorian scale = 1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7

If you start on a random note to build a Dorian scale the pattern of whole and half steps would be: “whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half, whole”. (a whole step = 2 frets, a half step = 1 fret). So the formula in semitones = 2 1 2 2 2 1 2

DORIAN SOUND
Modes are scales derived from the major scale. There are major modes and minor modes. If we look at the minor modes (they contain a b3) you can see the Aeolian mode (natural minor scale) and Phrygian mode both contain a minor 6 (or b6), whereas the Dorian mode contains a major 6. The 6th sets it apart. It becomes the characteristic note and identifies the Dorian sound.Continue Reading

Reevaluate Your Guitar Goals

By Klaus Crow 7 Comments

May 14, 2019 by Klaus Crow

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What more can you wish for when you’ve achieved most of the goals you had in the past?

I’m pretty grateful for my life right now and all the things I’ve experienced and accomplished.

I’ve played in a lot of different bands, done hundreds of gigs, played music for a living, met a beautiful girl, got married, traveled to beautiful countries, started teaching guitar for a living from my home studio, started a blog, got three kids and made some really good friends along the way. Of course, that’s the short version.

While I’m really happy with accomplishing a lot of the goals I had, goals can also change once you get older. Life changes, circumstances change, you change and so it’s not that strange your goals change along with you.

Lately I read something in a book that really struck me.
Let’s fast forward a couple of years. Suppose you are somewhere around 85 years old, you are lying on your death bed and look back on your life. Are there still things you wish you had done in your life or regret you didn’t have? Think about it for a moment.

Now let’s rewind again.Continue Reading

How to Memorize Music and Lyrics Forever and Ever

By Klaus Crow 5 Comments

August 11, 2023 by Klaus Crow

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy

Memorizing song lyrics hasn’t always been my strongest asset. Learning chords, chord progressions, scales and guitar solos were always the easy part.

I’d go through them once or twice and they were stored in my brain for ages. But those nasty lyrics didn’t seem to get further than my short term memory.

Spaced repetition

I ultimately tackled this problem by using a learning technique called spaced repetition.

Spaced repetition works with graduated time intervals. It makes use of the spacing effect where you learn something several times spaced over a long time span.

Instead of cramming (hastily and intense studying at the latest possible moment) which is great for storing huge amounts of information for a short period of time, spaced repetition will pass the information from the short term memory onto the long term memory and make it last indefinitely.

Source

This technique was first discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus, a german psychologist who experimented with the study of memory and did some extraordinary findings. He contributed to science with brilliant insights on the forgetting curve, the learning curve and the spacing effect.

Practice Memorization

While you can apply the spaced repetition technique to any kind of (musical) information, we’ll take “memorizing lyrics” as an example.

How to Play The Most Common Types of 7th Chords

By Klaus Crow 6 Comments

September 5, 2023 by Klaus Crow

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7th chords are over the place in every style of music.

There is the dominant 7th chord which is the main ingredient for blues and the major 7th chord which you can find a lot in jazz music, but also chords like the minor 7b5 and diminished 7 are part of the jazz chord vocabulary.

Well to be honest, I don’t think there is a 7th chord that you don’t find in jazz music.

The minor 7 and dominant 7 chords are very common in pop music and also the major 7 is not unusual. Today we’ll discuss the most common types of 7th chords in music.

For each 7th chord you can see four examples (see images below). The first two chords on the left are open chord shapes (containing open strings) and the two chords on the right are moveable chord shapes (containing no open strings). The first moveable chord has the root on the low E-string and the second has the root on the A-string. I’ll explain…

A moveable chord can be moved all across the neck and played in every key. For example if you take the Gmaj7 chord (see image below, third chord from the left). The note on the low E-string is your root note. In this example it’s a G note. If you move the entire chord up a half step (1 fret) it becomes a G#maj7 chord. Your root note has now moved up to the 4th fret low E-string which is a G# note. (So if your root note is a G# note that means your chord is G#maj7. Move the entire chord up another half step your root note becomes an A note so your chord becomes Amaj7.

The same applies for the moveable Cmaj7 chord shape (fourth chord from the left). Here the root note is on the A-string. The root note is on the third fret A-string which is a C note, so it’s a Cmaj7 chord. Move the entire chord up a whole step (2 frets) your root note becomes a D note so your chord becomes Dmaj7.

You can do this with all the other moveable chord shapes as well.

Tips:
– Practice and memorize all the common types of 7th chords shown below.
– Play songs with 7th chords to hear and recognize how they are applied.
– Locate the root of the moveable chord shapes and practice them in different keys.

Okay, it’s time to expand your chord vocabulary!

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