HOW TO PRACTICE - PART 1 | Mastering Chord Tones for Changes Playing | TOM QUAYLE LESSON

hi there guys tom quayle here hope everybody's doing very well out there as ever so today i'm going to be starting a new series for my youtube channel i'm going to be uploading one of these videos a month and this is all about how why what i practice when i'm trying to get better at the guitar could be things to do with improvisation things to do with technique it could be anything really but hopefully useful information for you guys as to the specifics of some of the things that i practice to get better at this instrument now for this first lesson of first practice uh session or information we're going to be talking about how i visualize chord tones on the guitar when i'm improvising or when i'm practicing to improvise now chord tones are the absolute core of how you want to learn to improvise over chord changes no matter whether you're talking about the simplest of chord changes where you're in a single key and you're just outlining the chords in that key or whether you're dealing with even the most complex of fusion and jazz compositions where you're playing over very very complex chord sequences the same general practice or practices apply in terms of how you think about and manage the information on the fretboard so in this video i'm going to be talking about how i practice to be able to visualize hear and see chord tones all over the fretboard okay and this is going to stand you in incredibly good stead for being able to visualize and play over pretty much any chord sequence you're going to find yourself playing over for this particular video i'm going to be utilizing my app solo because it's such a good way of cataloging and organizing our practice here and it allows us a confirmatory tool that's going to tell us when we're getting the stuff right visualizing and playing these core tones correctly you absolutely as i've mentioned in a few of my lesson videos before where i have used solo you do not need the app to get the most out of this video the difference is that you're going to have to do all of the cataloging and mapping out the material you're going to have to retain it in your mind and make sure that you're getting it right because you don't have a confirmatory tool to tell you when you're doing so without further ado let's jump into this we're going to be thinking not about positional playing or about kind of visualizing large shapes i want to show you an efficient way that you can utilize each of the fingers on the left hand as starting points to visualize and catalogue all of the different chord tones thirds fifth and seventh all the different types of chord tone that will come up on the fretboard in a very efficient way that's going to enable you to practice and develop all of this information in a way that you can access it very quickly and manipulate it in real time so let's dive in zoom in on the fretboard and get going okay let's get started here so what we're going to be doing is essentially mapping out all of the basic chord tones that we could ever need for playing over all the standard chord types that we would want to be or would encounter when we're playing over chord changes so what we're going to do is we're going to be mapping out thirds fifths and sevenths because those are the general chord types that we're going to come across all the chord tones that we're going to come across generally it's going to be either a flat third or a major third flat three or three it's going to be a flat five a five or a sharp five okay depending on the chord type or it's going to be a flat seven or a seven so we need to be able to play all and find of course all of those intervals within one octave ascending and descending from a given root note on the guitar because if we can play them within one octave provided we can find the root note anywhere on the fretboard we should be able to then play the arpeggio that we need for that particular chord or find all of the relevant chord tones surrounding that root note ascending or descending through one octave and of course if we can do it through one octave we can ascend through multiple octaves to play larger structures what we don't want to do is map out large structures as a giant shape like this [Music] and then get stuck and limited by that because it's very hard to manipulate i've talked about this on my channel before so how are we going to do this how are we going to tackle this well as i mentioned before i'm going to be using solo for this to organize our practice material you absolutely don't need to of course i've already mentioned that the reason i'm using solo is a because i think it's a brilliant practice tool of course i would because you know i was one of the creators of it but i also think that this is a fantastic way of organizing practice material for you guys and it also confirms when you're getting things correct that's really really important if you're at the stage where you're not 100 sure that the note that you're playing is the third for example or the flat third or the sharp five or whatever if you think you might be getting it wrong solo will let you know that you've not played the right note which is super super important okay so the way we're going to do this is we're going to think about starting with the root note from each finger on the left hand the traditional way of doing a lot of this stuff is to think in positions i'm not going to do that okay you can do that later down the line i see that as being slightly more advanced actually and slightly more challenging for most players what we're going to do is we're going to position the root notes for each of the chord tones that we're going to work on on one of the fingers of the left hand starting with the first finger then the second then the third and then the fourth generally the third and fourth will net you very similar results but you'll see this as we go along okay so i'm going to go into solo and i'm going to come into the changes trainer here because that allows us to practice playing over chord changes the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to select a basic major 2 5 1 chord progression in a single key we're going to be dealing with a standard 2 5 1 in the key of c which is the chords d minor 7 to g seven to c major seven we're going to be finding chord tones over this basic chord sequence you can use any chord sequence no matter how simple or complex it is you could even work with one chord to start with okay so long as you're able to map out the intervals that are required or the chord tones that are required for that chord or chord sequence uh you can do this the great thing about solo is it's going to map those chord tones out for you okay it's going to tell you which chord tones it wants you to find and then it's going to tell you whether you've got them right or not okay so once i've selected it in this case a basic major 251 i'm going to come into the level here and i'm going to select root and third okay solo is going to ask me to find both the root note and the third for each of the chords in this sequence d minor seven g seven and c major seven okay so at this point what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna start the workout it's gonna repeat round and round and round this chord sequence there we can see d minor seven and it's asking me for the root notes and the flat three it's a minor third in this case solo knows it's a flat three okay if you're not using solo you have to know that information it's pretty basic information to know it's a root and a minor or flattened third okay here's the deal with the way we're going to practice i'm going to put my first finger on the root note at this point we're going to start with the first finger and it's going to be placed on the root note so in this instance i'm going to go for the lowest d i can find on the fretboard here at the fifth fret of the a string that's my root note i'm going to play it solo's going to go yep that was the root note see there it actually recognized the d and went yep you've played the root note i'm going to gray that out okay if you're not using solo you're going to have to just know that that's a d and be sure you've got that right okay fairly basic to do of course now using this first finger as the root i'm going to have to find the flat 3 physically where can i play it within one octave ascending and i can find it at the eighth fret of the a string this is the flat three okay now i could find the flat three at the third fret of the d string as well but because i'm using my first finger for the root note i can't reach back physically we're talking about the physical makeup of the guitar here this is how we're going to catalog where we can play these chord tones against the root note so i'm going to physically play the flat 3 with my little finger here or my third finger depending on what how far i want to stretch so here's the flat 3. look at the shape it makes 1 to flat 3. now you see there that solo cataloged that and said yep that was correct you played the flat three i'm going to move on to the next chord if i played a different interval it wouldn't have moved on okay now again it wants me now to find the root note for g7 g of course and then it wants me to play the major third or three in this case so i'm going to find the lowest g i can find on the fretboard with my first finger here at the third fret of the low e and again my job is to find within one octave ascending where can i play the major third well i can play it at the seventh fret of the e string i can't really reach it anywhere else within one octave ascending because i can't play it here at the second fret of the a string because that's i'd have to physically move my finger back now of course in real life when you're playing you can do that this limitation that i'm setting here is to enable us to limit ourselves to where we can physically find this third when we're starting or any chord tone of course whether it be the fifth or the seventh relevant to the chord when we're starting with the root note on the first finger okay so i'm going to play one to three here's the one again notice solo catalog that if i played the flat three by mistake of course if you're not using solo you're gonna have to make sure you don't do that solo is gonna not move on because that's not the right third here's the third look at the physical representation of that interval listen to the sound it makes okay play it physically and then listen to it as well and then we're going to move on so first finger on c in this instance c major 7 that triangle means major the seventh so c major seven i'm going to play the one the lowest c i can find with the first finger again then i'm going to locate that major third because the shape is the same as it was for g because it's still a major third okay now i've gone right the way through the chord sequence if your chord synthesis longer go all the way through the chord sequence finding the relevant thirds starting on that with the root note on the first finger okay i've come back round what i'm going to do now is i'm going to find all of the places on the guitar that i can put the root note and utilize my first finger for that root note so here's another d let's do it here one to three flat three in this case one flat three one always starting on the first finger three let's do it from here one flat three here's a g again it would be there for you guys but because of my weird tuning it's here for me this is a g three one to the flat uh sorry to three okay let's go for this d up here again fifteenth fret for you guys one to flat three one two three one two three always with the first finger on the root notes okay one flat throat so yeah flat three one three one three okay now when you've done that what we're now going to do is we're going to do exactly the same exercise but starting on the second finger of the left hand with the root note always ascending always within one octave okay so in this instance if i put my second finger on the d here this lowest d on the guitar i'm going to play it again solos recognized it again if you're not using solo just make sure you get this right now at this point it's a bit of a stretch to grab this flat 3 here so i'm going to try and locate it somewhere else and i can find the flat three at this the third fret of the d string now it might take you ages to work that out okay how you work that out is entirely up to you okay just so long as you get the right answer and of course the great thing about using solo is it's going to tell you whether you've got the right answer if you play the wrong note it's not going to move on until you get that flat three now look at the shape it makes one ascending to flat three within one octave okay make sure you catalog that shape right now we're going to do the same thing starting on the second finger for g one and the three is here at the fourth fret now let's do the same thing for c second finger starting on the root note there's my three go all the way through the guitar playing all of the root notes for each of these chords and play with the second finger and find the relevant third one to flat three one three one three second finger is on the root note then i ascend to the third okay one flat three one three one three one flat three again your shapes will differ because of standard tuning i mean all fourths tuning that doesn't matter you just need to catalog these you know various chord tones on the guitar one three and then one three now of course do the same thing ascending starting on the third finger and you'll find the result is almost entirely the same one flat three one three i can use my second finger for the three here one three which will be there for you guys same thing i'm gonna go all over the fretboard third finger one flat three one three ascending one three okay now when i've gone through and i've done all of the four fingers on my left hand ascending within one octave the obvious next thing to do is to again go through each of the fingers on the left hand starting on the root note but descend if possible to the relevant chord tone in this case the third okay so we you can run into some problems here not problems but some things you need to think about so if i put my first finger on this d here let's start with that first finger on the root note there is physically no way for me to grab the flat three descending going down to the flat three of this chord or the minor third i can't physically reach it it's actually this note here down here this f okay but there isn't an f that i can get to if that's the case just play the ascending version for now so one to flat three ascending okay this g here well if i play the if i put the first finger on the g i can descend physically down to the major third of this chord one to three see there that solo recognized that i played the three if i'd played this g here with the first finger there's no way of descending down to the major third i've run out of range and strings on the guitar so again i would have ascended to the major third instead okay because we want to be able to find the third ascending or descending from every position one opposition but every finger on the guitar when our root note our first finger is on the root note second finger third finger fourth note are all on the root note now i'm going to continue through so here's my c i'm going to descend down to the major third for this chord one to three okay again i'm going to do this all over the guitar one first finger on the root note down to flat three one down to three one down to three always starting with the first finger on the root note i'm then going to do the same thing starting on the second finger so let's grab this d here with the second finger just arbitrarily one down to flat three let's grab this g one second finger down to three one down to three or do the same thing all over the fretboard now with the third finger and the little finger we get a different setup so if i start with my little finger let's say on this d here one i can now grab the descending flat three down here okay then little finger or third finger whichever one you're working on on the root note descend down to the three i can no longer grab this three here physically it's impossible for me to do it without shifting my hand now again in real life when you're improvising you are totally free to do that this is a physical limitation i've placed on your practice in order that we're gonna you know find every permutation of each of these chord tones from a given root note so one down to three one down to three do that all over the guitar one flat three little finger on the root one three one three so on and so forth okay so we've now done the ascending major and minor third or three and flat three from every single finger on the left hand ascending and descending within one octave there shouldn't be a single chord that you would come across now where no matter which finger you have the on the root note you cannot find the relevant third ascending or descending within one octave super powerful okay now that might take you weeks of practice it might take you a few hours depending on what level you're at what you would now do is you would come in to solo or if you're not using solo you would just mentally do this you would select root and fifth repeat the process using the root and the fifth start with your first finger on each of the root notes and ascend to the fifth so one to five first finger on the root notes one five one five do this all over the guitar one five one five one five one five one five one five ascending now put your second finger on the root note one five one five it's the same shape different fingering one five okay now put your third or little finger on the root note now this is a big stretch now so i'm going to play one to five one to five one to five slightly different fingering okay repeat this round and round ascending all over the guitar ascending from each finger to the relevant fifth up one octave then of course do the same thing descending from each finger so one five one five one five repeat this process over and over again from each finger just as we've been doing with thirds all over the guitar when you get good at that come back in and select root and seventh and do the same process start on each finger and find the seventh one first finger on the root flat seven and then one flat seven one natural seven start with the second finger one flat seven one same fingering of course or same shape i should say different fingering one seven okay so on and so forth now if you've gone through this process for every single finger put the root note on every single finger and then find the relevant third fifth and seventh for each of these chord types work through lots of different sets of chord changes work through all the different chord types you should find that there isn't a single chord that will come up of course we've not worked through sus4 chords and some other chord types but the basic chord types that you will see in jazz popular music blues funk rock whatever there shouldn't be a single chord where if you place any of your fingers on the root note you can't find all of the relevant chord tones ascending and descending through one octave and at this point you are not relying on any large shapes and solo has helped you to work through this and catalogue this information for you the next step is to come in and start working on all four chord tones including the root note of course which is the easy one we're going to skip over working on just the root third and fifth or the third fifth and seventh we're going to go straight to all four chord tones which you can do here in solo now of course again if you're not using solo just make sure that you're cataloging and mapping these intervals correctly okay i'm going to stick with the major 251 here you could work through minor two five ones you could work through jazz standards you could work through any chord sequence you like it might even be a modal chord sequence or you know something by your favorite rock band something in a in a single key whatever it is we're working with these chord tones okay now in this instance what i'm going to do is i'm going to start this workout and now solo is asking or if you're mapping this out yourself you're asking yourself for the one the three the five and the seven relevant to each of these chords ascending from each finger on the left hand so i'm going to start with the first finger here i'm going to put the first finger on the root note and map out each of these intervals or chord tones or as we call them in the app intervallic functions throughout these these arpeggios the point here is i'm not playing giant shapes that i get stuck in and i'm not just playing a physical shape i'm thinking about each of these chord tones how they relate to the root notes so here's the one start on the first finger here's my flat three i've done the work to map out what that looks like and feels like physically where can i play it physically and what does it sound like one to flat three okay here's my root note to the five so let's tick that off here's my ruler again where's the flat seven so that gave me okay now we put the first finger on a g and play one three five flat seven put the first finger on c one three five seven do this all over the guitar start not position based but starting on each on the first finger so one everywhere there's a d everywhere there's a g everywhere there's a c flat three five flat seven one three five flat seven always starting on the on the first finger one three five seven okay i had to do a little position shift there okay so you've mapped out from the first finger ascending through one octave okay the great thing about doing this through one octave is say for instance uh we now do the same thing starting on the second finger okay so we've got one flat three five flat seven one three five flat seven one again second finger on the root three five seven then we do the same thing starting on the third and fourth fingers so one flat three five flat seven let's go to this g here one three five flat seven again you can see i'm not thinking about positions i'm just thinking about always starting on the same finger one three five seven now you've mapped out ascending from the root note from every single finger what the arpeggio looks and feels like to play you might be thinking well how do i connect these together well of course if you start on the first finger and you play through one flat three five flat seven let's say you wanted to continue that arpeggio well the next root note starts on the second finger just play the arpeggio starting on the second finger now from this root note and you can see where those intervallic functions or chord tones are i can see the one then the flat three the one and the five of course these shapes are different in standard tuning and the one and the flat seven because i've done that work in the prior section where i was mapping out my threes my fives and my sevens ascending the same thing would happen if you wanted to descend for example descend through the arpeggio starting on the one in this instance if i just come out of here a second let's say i wanted to start on the first finger and descend through the arpeggio one flat seven five flat three now i do the same thing starting on the g so one start with my first finger flat seven five three okay now one for the c major seven one first finger again seven five three [Music] solo can do all of this as well you can descend or send through arpeggios change the order of the intervals now let's say you've gone through this entire process as well weeks and weeks months and months of practice where you are you know going through and working on each of these arpeggios through one octave ascending and descending from every single finger paying very close attention to where each of the intervals or chord tones are in relation to the starting point what you can now do with solo and of course again if you you want to do this yourself you can do this too so just catalogs this for you very well as you can do the same thing but start on a different chord tone now this is really powerful because it gets rid of that root note bias for visualizing and playing through the arpeggio okay whilst not relying on these giant shapes so now if i start the workout it's gonna start on the flat three or the relevant third for each of the chords okay so again do exactly the same process but start on the first finger and play through the arpeggio or each of these chord tones thinking very specifically about where each of these notes is or each of these chord tones so okay here's my flat three i'm going to start on the first finger and i'm going to visualize each of these intervals as where i can play them still going to visualize from the root note but my first finger is on the flat 3 now so flat 3 there's the root note and the 5 then the flat 7 and then the one do the same thing for g7 start with the first finger three there's my root note g five flat seven one same thing for c major seven three five seven one so on and so forth now do the same thing starting on the second finger so if i start with my second finger on the flat three let's say i start here okay so here's my root note d second finger on the flat three three five flat seven one which would be there for you guys so on and so forth now for g7 start on the second finger let's do it here three five open string flat seven and then one open string okay now same thing second finger on this third here for c major seven three five seven one go through start on the third finger then the fourth finger do this ascending descending this should arm you with no matter where you end up on the guitar no matter which finger you end up on any chord tone you can see and find and hear your way through the arpeggio descending or ascending you're never ever going to get lost whilst looking at thirds fifth sevenths or root notes of course root notes are a given i would hope if you're working through this kind of exercise again with sully you could come in and you could say okay well let's go to the next level here and do oops let's do fifth seventh root third so this is the next inversion if you like start from each finger work your way through the arpeggio ascending and descending starting on the fifth instead of the uh the root or the third now do the same thing starting on the seventh now what's really cool about some of the stuff that's built into solo is it will actually randomize these inversions for you as well we have this level here root third fifth seventh randomized inversions so in this instance it will randomize the inversion that it's asking you to play so i'm going to do all of these starting on the first finger so i'm going to play 1 flat 3 5 flat seven now it's asking me to play from the flat seven and i'm going to choose to ascend so flat seven one three five again starting on the first finger now one three five seven and then starting on the first finger again so on and so forth okay what you can also do is you can come in and you can select root third fifth seventh the basic level and then you can randomize the order of the intervals okay now this is where it becomes very powerful because you can start to really have to negotiate your way through these chord terms and arpeggios without relying on specific ascending and descending shapes so here we've got the flat three okay i'm going to start on the first finger flat three five one flat seven oh sorry one see i got caught out there flat seven now let's start with the first finger on the root note one let's go to the flat seven to the five and then to the three and now let's you know so on and so forth you can work your way through you know starting on each finger with the the relevant uh first chord tone when you've done all of this this is where i would suggest you start getting into positional bass playing okay where all of this information and and visual prowess that you've armed yourself with will really start to help you uh in this positional base playing where you're limiting yourself to say five frets the first fifth fret or the fifth to ninth fret or the second to sixth fret for example we go through that in the app ways that you can utilize that but this is the approach that i use in my practice when i'm working through either a new set of changes if i want to really strengthen my chord tone playing and then when it comes to actually improvising over things let's say i was going to improvise over autumn leaves for example something very basic the chord sequence goes c minor seven to f seven to b flat major seven to e flat major seven a minor seven flat five to d7 to g minor seven to c to g7 very basic [Music] there's the sequence i can see and hear my way through chord tones in this chord progression and construct melodies based off these chord tones no matter which position or area of the fret body find myself in no matter which finger i find myself utilizing i can always see the chord sequence so i can play simple things like [Music] so there we go guys i hope that gives you a good insight into some of the things that i practice when it comes to visualizing the fretboard cataloging chord tones working through arpeggios i'm really not into working through large structures working through these giant shapes you know they're good for technique practice but they're not so good for actually improvising and playing through a set of chord changes no matter whether it's a simple set of chord changes which sometimes can be harder to be honest or whether it's a more complex perceived complex set of chord changes that's also how you can utilize solo in your practice so i hope you enjoyed kind of that overview of how useful it is as a practice tool of course you can totally as i mentioned many times now practice without it but it gives you a bit of an insight into why it's useful for this kind of practice and actually why we created it because you know this is how i practice and i wanted a tool that would enable me to do that in a very structured confirmatory way almost like gamifying the process if you like so if you do want to check out solo of course you will find links in the description below for the ios and android versions it's out on android now of course as well works on all ios and android devices if you've got android version 8 and above and works on m1 apple silicon max as well because they support native ios apps click check the links in the description below and of course go over to the solar website to check out more information on that if you want to support me or you want to check out any more of my lesson content i am going to be doing more of this kind of how i practice material but if you want to check out any of the video lessons that i've done on legato technique on you know visualizing the fretboard on improvisation theory jazz theory kind of fusion improvisation modal theory melodic minor harmony all those kind of things check my lesson store in link in the description below as usual check that out and you can support me that way or check out any of the lesson material that's on there there's lots of good good stuff on there thanks for everyone who's checked those out in the past and of course click the like and subscribe buttons below and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you never miss any more of my content alright guys thanks for watching i hope you get a lot out of this good luck with your practice and i will see you all in the next one bye

Channel: Tom Quayle

Views: 246,251

Keywords: electric guitar, tom quayle

Id: fhzrQgPROxg

Length: 33min 7sec (1987 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021