The Guitar Diaries #5

Last week's lesson was something of a reality check, in the sense that, for the first time since starting these lessons, I had the feeling of not having done enough practice since the previous lesson. Partly as a result of this -- and partly because my abilities at this stage are, frankly, pretty limited -- I foundered badly when called on to play rhythm on the "mixolydian blues" track from last week. 

This was meant to be a chance to try out the new voicings for 7th, add 9/11/13 that I had been shown. 

Instead, I froze like a deer in headlights and reached lamely for the standard root 5 7th chord voicing. To compound things, I then proceeded to strum a weak, half-hearted rhythm so tepid that it would make a beginning student of Ernie Ball's "Easy Big Guitar Chords" blush. My feel sucked, my tone sucked... enfin bref: I sucked.

I wasn't able to offer much in the melody department either: I limped through two repetitions, stuffing up in several parts and relying on the sheet music/tab in front of me. But I'm not going to beat myself up too much about that one: it is a fairly challenging piece and, IMHO, doesn't actually sound that good even when played well, i.e. by teacher (though perhaps that was just lousy my rhythm playing putting him off...).

As I say, it was a bit of a reality check: a far cry from the heady times of last week's comparatively decent rendition of "Model T Ford Blues", and a wake up call that I have a lot of practicing to do if I'm to get the kind of results I want. The good news is that I feel like my newfound self-awareness of my suckiness is in itself a step forward. I'm getting a much clearer idea of what I need to practise, and how it should sound. 

Anyway, after the demoralizing review of "mixolydian blues", we covered the harmonic minor scale and the harmonized 7th chords you get from it. This is really cool: alter that one note (minor 7th -> major 7th) and you alter the 4 chords containing it. Thus (in the key of C minor/harmonic minor):

Root Minor Harmonic Minor

I C min 7 C min/maj 7

II D min 7b5 (unchanged)

III Eb maj 7 Eb maj 7#5

IV F min 7 (unchanged)

V G min 7 G 7

VI Ab maj 7 (unchanged)

VII Bb 7 B dim 7

Note the VII chord goes from dominant seventh to diminished seventh as you move Bb up to B. The main effect, though, is that the V chord is now a dominant, rather than minor, seventh.

As an application of this, we are using the jazz standard "Mr PC" (John Coltrane), which is is a great little tune. The idea is to improvise using different scales during different parts of the chord progression. The harmonic minor scale is to be used over the II-V-I part since the chords already fit this: D min 7b5 - G 7 - C min 7 (hmmm, apart from the last one...).