The Whalenator's Blog

Classical Licks: J.S Bach and C.V Alkan

2011-06-14T23:54:00.000-07:00

Here are the tabs corresponding to the "Bach and Alkan Licks" video I recently posted on YouTube. The contrast is noteworthy: on one hand you have the melodically generous offerings of Bach, and on the other you have whatever I could manage to play from Alkan! I'm quite surprised I could find anything playable in Alkan's 'Scherzo Focoso' Op. 34; the piece has a demonic drive but has a somewhat inflated reputation because of Ronald Smith's claims. The arpeggiated climax is action-packed but stretches on far too long for most (if not all) guitarists to handle.

The licks are presented in the same order as in the video!

If there are any questions about certain fingerings or picking patterns feel free to ask me on YouTube or at keithwhalen@gmail.com I don't always have the time (or patience) to plot all the individual fingerings.

The Problem with Exposing Rebecca Black

2011-04-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

The mishandling of Rebecca Black is the latest, and perhaps singlehandedly, the furthest reaching example of where the music industry and its organizers have failed their audience and (dare I say) talent. The premature and permanent musical expenditure of Ms. Black - coinciding with a supplementary dose of viral harassment - is of serious concern, especially when the product of such hasty treatment is a 13 year old girl-child. The anti-hit single, Friday, should be known as the commodity sadistically written by Patrice Wilson and produced by Clarence Jay. The acceptance of ARK Music Factory to entertain the ambitions of this unprepared youngling, and their subsequent work-shy composition have ruined what should have been a work-in-progress. The de rigeur dismissal needed was foregone, and instead replaced by the old ‘college try’; this implicates the authors, as well as the financiers. Equally at fault are the exploitive television icons, such as Stephen Colbert et al, who have fed their own egos while concurrently driving the online battering that Black is undoubtedly aware of. The drive for hit singles, the idea of internet stardom and the utilization of music as a vessel for corporate gain have contributed to the subversion of music as an art-form.

The hit-single phenomenon and the attempts to artificially create instantaneous musical success can only be seen as a byproduct of a disingenuous and greed-driven model. From the insincere visual offering, to the banal lyrical content of Friday, there is the semblance that the luminaries were trying to make their creation onto the airwaves by complete stultification of the mind. Or by a disgusting degree of familiarity; don’t we all recognize and love Fridays? It’s not an entirely novel device either: Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night is by no means challenging, with its repetitive chorus and mechanical recommendation to spend it up as an aide-mémoire for club conduct. Admittedly, the latter does enjoy a higher degree of juxtapositional complexity. However, if there exists a challenger who wants to substantiate their claim about a so-called ironic recipe behind this latest concoction, I admire their understanding of the concept to begin with. Tommy Wiseau would have done a better job with her music video. “You’re tearing me apart, Monday!”

On to the concept of internet sensations; I have much experience in the field, being one myself… I suppose my 313 (last I checked) subscribers and 300, 307 views sans promotion isn’t quite as extraordinary as the Star Wars Kid, Numa Numa or the One Night in Paris videos (the night-vision assisted coital showcase by the beloved heiress) who share 900, 700 and 400 million views respectively, and counting. In the case of the former, the young Canadian (native of Trois-Rivieres) filed a harassment lawsuit against four of his former classmates, citing cyber-bullying, and an out-of-court settlement was agreed upon. Gary Brolsma, the star of Numa Numa fame, enjoyed the favourable reception of his terse, yet widespread online recognition. The obnoxious scion, the talent and garment-stripped Paris - in direct variance with the fate of Black - has been presented with additional and gratuitous support; and as tormenting as her sexual showcasing may have been, I purport that she was aware of its eventual release. We can see conclusively that Paris has not been victimized; her public romping has invigorated her infelicitous career as a social elite and paved the way for various supplementary celebrity exhibitions. A secondary example of her willingness to give?

Unfortunately in the latest case, we see the most militant campaign to tear down this young songstress by unsophisticated and surreptitiously unidentifiable users, whose online contributions include: flaming, name-calling and the frequent usage of the ‘dislike’ button. Their zealous detestation has reached pandemic proportions, and Friday has netted a superlative number of ‘dislikes’ and hateful comments for any viral video. To give you an idea of the magnitude: her video has earned 216,557 likes, 1,706,960 dislikes and 1,696,413 comments, the majority of which are pure evil. We must now accept that any degree of online identity for Black, which is now structured into the lives of modern teenagers, is virtually terminated. She is not to blame. I have not browsed for the possibility of a Rebecca Black Facebook page, but only because I’m frightened by what lies behind the binaric curtain of separation. In the case of Justin Bieber, who receives an offsetting dosage of admiration and contempt (the latter for his follicular options), we have been presented with a pop-star who has showcased the modest amount of talent and market value necessitated for entry into the business. The kid can still sing, he can still dance, woo an audience of young girls, can respect meter/play the drums and can also play guitar, though cursed as a lefty. Lady Gaga, the contemporary queen of pop superstardom, can extemporize at the piano, is said to have been classically trained (to what level I don’t know) and has demonstrated at least a talent for quasi-neoteric composition. She is another example of an artist who fits-the-bill and needs little support from the industry nabobs. Black is but a template for tasteless art and for a feigned experiment in musical persuasion; every angle of perception fortifies the claims against her artistic readiness. The internet is but one avenue of exposure; Black may now have the capacity to fill a venue, but she doesn’t have the expertise to win over a paying crowd. She has but one miserable song attributed to her name, and it has already ruined her.

A lack of musical talent is not an uncommon characteristic and no practicing musician needs to be reminded of how difficult acquiring skill is. The unfortunate outlook of many young talents is one of corner-cutting, marketability and of expedient career-building. The insult felt by many serious musicians trying to garner attention through artistic means is not negligible, and they rightfully proclaim that music is an art form of the highest caliber. We see reduced support for the unripened talents in writing and painting who need to acquire their chops to have a career in the first place; what about a premature stint in the world of architecture? The popular music industry has become an arena for trial and error; a place where new artists exceedingly demonstrate a slim grasp of music theory, history, and business savvy. Even those who know their way around the business don’t always have the capital or influence to call the shots. With the ever-widening scope of online access we see what abuse can be assumed by precipitously introduced names . Hopefully in this case we do not lose sight of the victim, a vulnerable adolescent. I consider this a crime and an insult to the consumers. Furthermore, it compromises the integrity of the art-form and blemishes the history of its most pellucid genre. The pop idiom should not be shunned for its lucidity but for the attempted annexation of music from its original intent and its latest hollow efforts. No one need remind me of how art and film are used as vessels for corporate permeation; I am fully aware of the model and the notion is equally execrable.

Indigenous, classical and jazz music will always be at the zenith of musical creation, and the genres have inborn standards. Classical music has also had its financiers, except the aristocracy and elite of the day were interested in contributing to an ancestry of religious and spiritual art. The composers were well-versed in the theoretical and historical aspects of music (most were multi-instrumentalists) and many would have preferred a solitary life of musical creation, as opposed to being congested by self-agrandisement. Chopin embodied the mentality and is quoted as saying, “I’m a revolutionary, money means nothing to me.” The French virtuoso, and Chopin’s neighbour in Paris’ Square D’Orleans, Charles-Valentin Alkan, notoriously sequestered himself from the populace to pen some of the most sophisticated and passionate opuses for the pianoforte. Mozart was catapulted into early fame, and composed his first piano opus at 5 years of age. Although there exists a farcical imbalance between Mozart and Black, we understand that being musically inclined is not a whimsical choice, rather it is a privilege and responsibility. In fact, for most of us it is our life’s struggle. The regression of music standards has never stripped me of being moved by my favourite works, but I am ashamed to live in a society where the majority remain unaffected by the numinous and transcendent beauty of our euphonious past.

If our society has any chance of flourishing we need to prefer craft over trend and art over rubbish. A reduced admiration for the arts is an alarming exemplification of where we have been weakened by inculcation. No one needed Rebecca Black the artist, and the frivolous campaign behind her is a blunder that should not go unnoticed. Patrice Wilson, Clarence Jay and the parents of Ms. Black are infinitely guilty of stripping this young girl of her decency and so are we.

Ulysses: Episode 17, Ithaca (an excerpt on astrological and biological inquiry)

2011-04-01T19:33:00.000-07:00

He believed then that human life was infinitely perfectible, eliminating these conditions? 

There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct from human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the necessity of destruction to procure alimentary sustenance: the painful character of the ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of birth and death: the monotonous menstruation of simian and (particularly) human females extending from the age of puberty to the menopause: inevitable accidents at sea, in mines and factories: certain very painful maladies and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and congenital criminality, decimating epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make terror the basis of human mentality: seismic upheavals the epicentres of which are located in densely populated regions: the fact of vital growth, through convulsions of metamorphosis, from infancy through maturity to decay.  

Why did he desist from speculation? 

Because it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute other more acceptable phenomena in place of the less acceptable phenomena to be removed.  

Did Stephan participate in his dejection? 

He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational reagent between a micro and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of the void.  

Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom? 

Not verbally. Substantially.  

What comforted his misapprehension?  

That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void.  

In what order of precedence, with what attendant ceremony was the exodus from the house of bondage to the wilderness of inhabitation effected? 

Lighted Candle in Stick borne by 
Bloom. 
Diaconal Hat on Ashplant borne by 
Stephen   

With what intonation secreto of what commemorative psalm? 

The 113th, modus peregrinus: In exitu Israel de Egypto: domus Jacob de popula barbaro.  

What did each do at the door of egress? 

Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put his hat on his head.  

For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress? 

For a cat.  

What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden? 

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.  

With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his companion of various constellations?  

Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in incipient lunation, approaching perigee: of infinite lattiginus scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius (alpha in Canis Major) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.  

Were these obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast? 

Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratification of the earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed in cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the incalculable trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the universe of human serum constellated with red and white bodies, themselves universes of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies of which each was again divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division till, if the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never reached.  

Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result? 

Because some years previously in 1886 when occupied with the problem of the quadrature of the circle he had learned of the existence of a number computed to a relative degree of accuracy to be of such magnitude and of so many places, e.g., the 9th power of the 9th power of 9, that, the result having been obtained, 33 closely printed volumes of 1000 pages each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper would have had to be requisitioned in order to contain the complete tale of its printed integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions, the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of every series containing succinctly the potentiality of being raised to the utmost kinetic elaboration of any power of any of its powers.  

Did he find the problem of the inhabitability of the planets and their satellites by a race, given in species, and of the possible social and moral redemption of said race by a redeemer, easier of solution? 

Of a different order of difficulty. Conscious that the human organism, normally capable of sustaining an atmospheric pressure of 19 tons, when elevated to a considerable altitude in the terrestrial atmosphere suffered with arithmetical progression of intensity, according as the line of demarcation between troposphere and statosphere was approximated, from nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration and vertigo, when proposing this problem for solution he had conjectured as a working hypothesis which could not be proved impossible that a more adaptable and differently anatomically constructed race of beings might subsist otherwise under Martian, Mercurial, Veneral, Jovian, Saturnian, Neptunian or Uranian sufficient and equivalent conditions, though an apogean humanity of beings created in varying forms with finite differences resulting similar to the whole and to one another would probably there as here remain inalterably and inalienably attached to vanities, to vanities of vanities and all that is vanity.   

And the problem of possible redemption? 

The minor was proved by the major.  

Which various features of the constellations were in turn considered? 

The various colours significant of various degrees of vitality (white, yellow, crimson, vermillion, cinnabar): their degrees of brilliancy: their magnitudes revealed up to and including the 7th: their positions: the waggoner’s star: Walsingham way: the chariot of David: the annular cinctures of Saturn: the condensation of spiral nebulae into suns: the interdependent gyrations of double suns: the independent synchronous discoveries of Galileo, Simon Marius, Piazzi, Le Verrier, Herschel, Galle: the systematizations attempted by Bode and Kepler of cubes of distances and squares of times of revolution: the almost infinite compressibility of hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive and reentrant orbits from perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin of meteoric stones: the Libyan floods on Mars about the period of the birth of the younger astroscopist: the annual recurrence of meteoric showers about the period of the feast of S. Lawrence (martyr, 10 August): the monthly recurrence known as the new moon with the old moon in her arms: the posited influence of celestial on human bodies: the appearance of a star (1st magnitude) of exceeding brilliancy dominating by night and day (a new luminous sun generated by the collision and amalgamation in incandescence of two nonluminous exsuns) about the period of the birth of William Shakespeare over delta in the recumbent nerversetting constellation of Cassiopeia and of a star (2nd magnitude) of similar origin but lesser brilliancy which had appeared in and disappeared from the constellation of Corona Septentrionalis about the period of the birth of Leopold Bloom and of other stars of (presumably) similar origin which had (effectively or presumably) appeared in and disappeared from the constellations of Andromeda about the period of the birth of Stephen Daedalus, and in and from the constellation of Auriga some years after the birth and death of Rudolf Bloom, junior, and in and from other constellations some years before or after the birth or death of other persons; the attendant phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar, from immersion to emersion, abatement of wind, transit of shadow, taciturnity of winged creatures, emergence of nocturnal or crepuscular animals, persistence of infernal light, obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor of human beings.  

His (Bloom’s) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and allowing for possible error? 

That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the known to the unknown: an infinity, renderable equally finite by the suppositious probable apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and of different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilized in space, remobilized in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its future spectators had entered actual present existence.  

Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle? 

Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in the delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the satellite of their planet.  

Did he then accept as an article of belief the theory of astrological influences upon sublunary disasters? 

It seemed to him as possible as proof as of confutation and the nomenclature employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean of fecundity.  

What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and woman? 

Her antiquity in proceeding and surviving successive tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant implacable resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible.

Blumenfeld - Etude Op. 3 No. 1

2011-01-15T06:38:00.000-08:00

This is the etude that I ripped off for my 'Counterfeiting Blumenfeld' blog post, and I say that proudly. On top of being a revered conductor in his day, Felix Blumenfeld is recognized as Vladimir Horowitz' piano teacher also. I sometimes wonder if Horowitz knew any of his etudes, which I consider very beautifully written but can be very daunting. When trying to adapt the opening arpeggios for guitar, I had been practicing them on the piano as well. You definitely need quite the finger span to get these to sing at the required tempo, but as with most of Blumenfeld's etudes, the beauty is worth the duty! If only I had a bit more pianistic talent.

I highly recommend the channel under the username 'Hexameron', which is named after the collaborative variation set initially written in 1837 by Franz Liszt and thickened up with the help of Frederic Chopin, Sigismund Thalberg, Carl Czerny, Henri Herz and Johann Peter Pixis. The channel is filled with great piano compositions and encompasses many different styles and eras; most notably the era of the Russian musical repression (1900-1929). I urge you all to peruse that great channel!

Yuja Wang - Prokofiev Concerto No. 2 "Cadenza"

2011-01-15T06:17:00.000-08:00

Here is an incredible clip of Yuja Wang playing the cadenza from Prokofiev's second piano concerto. I have a penchant for the grotesque when it comes to piano concertos and I've yet to hear anything more colossal than this cadenza. I've been stuck on this video for at least a week's time now, so I had no choice but to post it. The arpeggios at 3:05 are just killer and although they escape the highest register of a 24 fret guitar I'm trying to transcribe the section. At worst I will attempt to use the progression and capture the spirit while staying in the boundaries of the instrument. Check out the Horacio Gutierrez audio recording as well, as it's considered among the best for the Op. 16 concerto.

Sweep Examples

2011-01-11T10:46:00.001-08:00

Legato modes with sweeping

2010-12-03T08:07:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdlHzuRei88
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX0bJ6-VBwY&feature=related

Pentatonic Groupings: Give It The Middle Finger!

2010-12-02T03:47:00.000-08:00

Learning the pentatonic positions is an imperative endeavor for any guitar player. All of the great guitar players over the past half-century have used these scales; some players, like Eric Johnson for example, are almost exclusively pentatonic users. A simple way to fatten up your pentatonic vocabulary with little effort is learning how to connect the positions effectively; in this case, we are dealing with groupings of four notes and connecting two adjacent positions.

One advantage to playing the guitar is the ability to choose where you want to play a given note. In the tablature below, we are opting to stretch into the adjacent pentatonic position when playing groups of four. For those who see things more visually, as I do, we are lessening the vertical aspect and opting for a longer horizontal approach; we are also condensing two groupings of four to two strings instead of three. Less string jumping is always desirable, and if we were to maintain one position playing groups of four, we would eventually run into a group of four which travels three strings and has the bottom and top string only carrying the burden of one note respectively. This is inefficient and can really bog down the speed in which you can express a pentatonic phrase.

There is one minor catch to employing this technique, and it's the abandon of traditional fingering. In the jazz realm, most of the players bar fourths and roll their fingers to avoid making a double stop sound. When playing pentatonics in groups you inevitably encounter fourths. With this technique every note gets an independent finger, and although this method can be awkward at first I assure you it makes barring fourths look compromising.

Let me assess the technique and fingering behind the first exercise. It is replicated in the later examples as well.

Example one deals with the minor pentatonic scale and it's adjacent position. Both scales are given, and it would be wise to start seeing pentatonic scales side by side, two at a time; even more if you can handle it. Looking closely at the first group of four exercise, we see that the fingering is immediately different. We are playing the first minor third with a 1&3 fingering as opposed to a 1&4; we are preparing ourselves for the stretch to come. The first group of four in A minor is A, C, D and E, which is played on the E and A strings. The second group of four (C, D, E and G) will be changed. The E string has only one note in the second grouping (the C on fret #8), and the G string which would normally be played on the D string is moved horizontally onto the A string and played on fret #10. This is what now constitutes two groups of four, or 8 notes. See how we are covering those 8 notes on only two strings now?

The difficulty lies in the way we are going to finger and navigate the next sections moving upwards. We are using a 1, 2 & 4 fingering for the D, E and G notes on the A string. The next group of four starts on D on the A string, we will play D and E (a major second) with the 1 & 3 fingers and then G and A with the same exact fingers on the D string. This fingering reveals itself when we fret the A note (an octave from our beginning) with the third finger and then drop our middle finger down to play the E note on the A string a fourth below. This isn't a constant, we didn't employ this method for the first two groups because our minor third fit a different fingering but when playing fourths it is favorable to use the third finger for the higher string and drop down a fourth using your second (middle) finger. This will take some getting used to and isn't the easiest thing to explain without demonstration. Take refuge in the fingerings given and you will see the benefit of the seemingly demented fingerings. Shawn Lane used this method because it increased his dexterity and speed, and we all know what a monster he was. There is also the video I've uploaded which demonstrates the examples being played at a moderate tempo. It can be found under: Keith Whalen - Groups of four and the middle finger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3nQU8Vth94

Whalenarpeggiation: A naive salutation. (circa 2002)

2010-11-04T19:25:00.000-07:00

Every aspiring guitarist or songwriter will eventually have to provide an answer to the extemporaneous questioning concerning influences. A cultivated musician will (more often than not) supply you with a profusion of names that traverse style and stumble upon one another, but I believe that a musician's primary influence is ineradicable from his/her approach and sound. In my case the culprit is none other than Jason Becker. How did you miss it?

Marty Friedman's speed-metal venture, entitled 'Cacophony', was my initial introduction to Jason's ability as a guitar player. Marty is an incredible guitar player but when I heard the newcomers opening solo in the song 'Concerto' my musical life changed forever. Never before had I been exposed to such high caliber playing; a sound that combined musical proficiency and a preposterous degree of dexterity. The duo performed on a level that rivaled Paul Gilbert and Bruce Bouillet of Racer X but won my favor with their classical suggestiveness. 'Concerto', 'Speed Metal Symphony' and 'Images' were my top three songs, and all of them contain some of the wild sweep-picking I was beginning to be infatuated with.

Jason's solo records are probably the best place to examine his musical breadth. 'Perpetual Burn' was aggressive and passionate; 'Perspective' no less so, but saw his depth soar to new heights. During the recording of 'Perspective' Jason was already dealing with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (commonly named after Lou Gehrig); his physical capabilities had been diminished but his soul and compositional brilliance are apparent in every cut. 'End of the Beginning', which features Michael Lee Firkins on guitar, was my immediate favorite with its mixture of classical form and uplifting guitar melodies. We can only imagine what Jason would have sounded like playing through 'Serrana' and 'Life and Death' in their entirety. I remember the first time I saw him playing the arpeggios from the former, it was unreal; it was exultation I wasn't to experience until I saw Shawn Lane play for the first time. That experience led me to the resulting tablature you see below.

At that stage in development, as a musician and as a guitar player, I wasn't entirely familiar with sweep picking. After spending a few months learning his songs and eventually the Serrana arpeggios, I became completely obsessed with the technique. When I got my hands on a copy of Guitar Pro I began keying in arpeggio exercises that I had written down by longhand. I was never (and still not) very adept at time signatures and musical notation, so I just found ways of stringing my exercises together in a mock perpetuum mobile method. At one point I had named the file "Must Add One Arpeggio Exercise Every Day Until I die". A little excessive, perhaps. 372 bars, 17 pages and many months later I decided to stop. But I assure you that the inspiration I took from Jason has never left me dry for ideas. I continue to write in that dramatic and impetuous manner to this day, and oftentimes I will blog about it.

Thank you Jason Becker, for your gentle demeanor, your sense of humor, your unsurpassed guitar playing and for your contributions to our art. You have my own personal reservation (Marty Friedman's as well) alongside the masters of the classical realm and will always be at the zenith of my guitar heroes. Now let's sweep away!

Counterfeiting Blumenfeld

2010-10-29T22:04:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while folks. In fact, the longer the hiatus the more burdensome finding inspiration becomes; at times it felt like there wouldn't quite be a return to form. Considering the illuminating investigation (and musical translation) of the Slonimsky text, it has proven to be difficult to offer something as novel or singular. Working on something new - especially amidst work responsibilities, social and romantic endeavors - is sometimes near-impossible. For the delay, my sincerest apologies.

Although I haven't denuded the Holy Grail of guitar lickery, I did stumble across a beautiful slew of arpeggio ideas while digesting Felix Blumenfeld's piano Etude Op. 3 No. 1. In all sincerity, I can only attribute the first example to the etude, but with the beauty of the work resounding in my head I went on a hunt for new sounds. At new costs, too.

One thing of significant importance is to look for stimuli outside of guitars, guitar playing and guitar players. Or, at times, even outside of music! How will I tackle the arpeggio formations of Paganini or Wieniawski? Is Blumenfeld, Henselt or Alkan playable on our instrument and how? How can I duplicate piano, violin or vocal ornamentation? All of these questions are valid and will arise as you broaden your musical intake, especially if you attempt to translate the language onto the guitar.

I'll explain each example in sequence and try to simplify their hazards. They expand in length and laboriousness toward the end; the last two are 32 note patterns! Don't mind the time signatures of 22/16 and 32/16, they were implemented to force perfect repeats in GuitarPro. I implore you to make use of any information imparted here, no matter how small. Take what you need and shed what you do not.

Etude exercise:

Exotic Modes

2010-08-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

For the sake of argument, I would consider most scales outside of the harmonic major/minor modes to be pretty exotic. I still have a hard time remembering the tensions and names of all 7 modes of the melodic and harmonic scales; it's a lot of material. Why introduce new material then, you ask? Firstly, because the sounds are nothing short of provocative. Secondly, after practicing exotic modes, you will return back to the simpler minor modes and they will seem very approachable. The honest truth is that you don't NEED to assimilate every scale and mode possible into your musical vocabulary, but becoming acquainted with the sounds and shapes of new modes is never a bad endeavor.

The format is simple: I have four scales to introduce, each containing 7 diatonic modes - except the 8-Tone Spanish - who's bebop oriented architecture has 8 notes. The tabs will show the scales ascending the fretboard in 3 note per string patterns, which is favorable to memory and practice, although it's not the standard academic approach toward scale playing. It also offers a good challenge and stretch, something I think everyone should work on. In the final bar of each mode is the corresponding chord written in symbol form.

Neopolitan Minor: The Neopolitan minor differs from the natural minor in two places, it has a flattened 2nd degree and a raised 7th; you can also view it as a harmonic minor scale with only a flattened 2nd degree.

Neopolitan Minor: 1, b2, b3, 4, 5, b6, 7
Lydian #6: 1, 2, 3, #4, 5, #6, 7
Dominant Augmented: 1, 2, 3, 4, #5, 6, b7
Hungarian Gypsy: 1, 2, b3, #4, 5, b6, b6, b7
Locrian natural 3rd: 1, b2, 3, 4, b5, b6, b7
Ionian #2: 1, #2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Altered bb3, bb7: 1, b2, bb3, b4, b5, b6, bb7

Neopolitan Major: This scale differs from the Ionian mode (natural major scale) by a flattened 2nd and 3rd degree. Visually, the first 3 notes resemble the Locrian scale, while the rest fits into place with our naturally occurring major scale. Its only distinction when compared against the melodic minor scale is the flattened 2nd.

Neopolitan Major: 1, b2, b3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Lydian Augmented #6: 1, 2, 3, #4, #5, #6, 7
Lydian Dominant Augmented: 1, 2, 3, #4, #5, 6, b7
Lydian Minor: 1, 2, 3, #4, 5, b6, b7
Major Locrian: 1, 2, 3, 4, b5, b6, b7
Altered natural 2nd: 1, 2, b3, b4, b5, b6, b7
Altered bb3: 1, b2, bb3, b4, b5, b6, b7

Persian Scale: The Persian scale is very cool and offers a very distinct sound; it is heavy on chromatic (half-step) intervals. Its closest relative is the 3rd mode of the harmonic minor scale: the phrygian dominant. The Persian scale has a flattened 5th and a natural 7th by comparison. I have yet to find modal names for the scales.

Persian scale: 1, b2, 3, 4, b5, b6, 7
Mode 2: 1, #2, 3, 4, 5, #6, 7
Mode 3: 1, b2, bb3, b4, 5, b6, bb7
Mode 4: 1, b2, b3, #4, 5, b6, 7
Mode 5: 1, 2, #3, #4, 5, #6, 7
Mode 6: 1, #2, 3, 4, #5, 6, b7
Mode 7: 1, b2, bb3, 4, b5, bb6, bb7

8-Tone Spanish Scale: The addition of an extra note causes a great deal of confusion. Some people may say this scale is the 7th degree of the minor bebop scale but I visualize it as a Locrian scale with an extra chromatic note. So we can double up on the third and have both the flattened 3rd and natural 3rd. Either way, this scale is very fun to play and in the examples I went to town playing the modes in thirds.

8-Tone Spanish Scale: 1, b2, b3, 3, 4, b5, b6, b7
Mode 2: 1, 2, b3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Mode 3: 1, b2, 2, b3, 4, 5, 6, b7
Mode 4: 1, b2, 2, 3, #4, #5, 6, 7
Mode 5: 1, b2, b3, 4, 5, b6, b7, 7
Mode 6: 1, 2, 3, #4, 5, 6, b7, 7
Mode 7: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, b6, 6, b7
Mode 8: 1, 2, b3, 4, b5, 5, b6, b7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eZHQu5oBjc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra4rDtiD3Yg

Happy woodshedding!

Prelude Op. 2 No. 1 - Open String

2010-08-05T21:13:00.001-07:00

As promised, the tablature to my new Prelude Op. 2 No. 1. I intend to complete a set of 12 etudes and 12 preludes, so stay tuned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj6rS5-wGjw

"Some Blog Licks" tabs

2010-07-04T23:53:00.001-07:00

Lick 1 (0:00 - 0:10) : When I first started experimenting with writing my own music and exercises I started a notebook called the "Licktionary". I've filled three notebooks so far (the newest one being quite large) and the first two augmented licks here are taken from them. Augmented exercises are great for stretching and the intervals are uncommon compared to the standard things most of us practice. The short triad burst played on the G string is alternate picked but as for the notes on the upper E string, your best bet is to play with a legato touch.

Lick 2 (0:11 - 0:24) : The motive is revealed on the high E string and you can see how I wanted to play a similar lick higher up the fretboard. Here we can opt for a sweeping approach and I like to split it in halves. See it as a sweeping attack on two sets of three strings; the first shape is on the E B and G and then you'll descend and finish off on the low E A and D strings.

Lick 3 (0:25 - 0:39) : Essentially I created the next few arpeggio licks only to double up on the triad shared on the A and D strings; each pattern descends and has a repeated motif there. Eb minor and A minor share an appearance, and being a tritone apart gives this lick a very menacing tone. By the way, if anyone is interested in hearing a great piano work relying heavily on tritones you should look into Franz Liszt's Dante Sonata.

Lick 4 (0:40 - 0:54) : Same concept but here we have B minor and F# major. I like to use an aggressive upstroke on the A and D strings to play the repeated motifs. It is important to harmonize the rigid upstroke technique with the fluidity in the right hand during the sweeping motions.

Lick 5 (0:55 - 1:08) : The crux of this lick happens on the G string, where you will be playing F and F# twice but with two different fingerings (check the tablature). Why would we want to do such a thing? The descending pattern is in groups of 4 and that always requires some weird fingerings, I actually think some of the most obscure fingerings work best in these situations. If we didn't opt to switch to the first and second fingers the second time we would be stuck playing the next note with our pinky, which is always an inferior choice when we're looking into speed playing. Freeing up the right fingers is a crucial aspect of playing fast and if you go over my tabs on the blog there are many occasions when the exact same scale sequences are played with different fingerings. Absolutism does not exist in fingerings; we should choose wisely and develop proper habits. However, unconventional matters require a fresh approach.

Lick 6 (1:09 - 1:22) : An incredibly tasteless and tedious example which may or may not impress your friends. The object here is to spread your wingspan and keep the motion consistent, which is actually pretty tough to do. Big diminished stretching going on here, with the outermost notes being tapped with the right hand - index or middle finger, the choice is yours.

Lick 7 (1:23 - 1:30) : This is similar to the tritone arpeggio mix found in lick #3, except we're moving down a whole tone (or major second) each time.

Lick 8 (1:31 - 1:42) : This is probably my favorite of the bunch because it has more musical appeal. The lick mixes the earlier doubled-up triads and it also benefits from the modal climbing approach I love so much. If you look at the modes of the Eb harmonic minor scale you will see where the notes were plucked from and why they fit well. Sweeping on the descent works best; try and aggressively play that motif on the A and D strings and the climbing is done with a mixture of raking and picking as per the instructions from the mode climbing blog.

Lick 8 (1:43 - 1:50) : Ah, my favorite major scale, the Lydian. We're off racing in groups of fours this time and we have a good stretch up on the B string. There are some weird fingerings lurking about but I guarantee that they'll work best once they become assimilated.

Lick 9 (1:51 - 2:03 : Although there are more examples in the video this is all I have for tabs. This last one can be climbed using hammer-ons or even hybrid picking if you want a good challenge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWTd6fj3Jsw

Melodic Minor and Harmonic Minor Modes

2010-06-24T22:55:00.000-07:00

The melodic and harmonic minor modes function exactly like their major counterpart, except the intervals vary slightly and the modal names are significantly harder to memorize. The Ionian scale, which is the modal name for our universal major scale, is the parent to 6 other scales which are considered modes. The easiest way of envisioning and understanding the way modes work would be to play the C major scale on a piano: playing C to C would be your Ionian mode (W-W-H-W-W-W-H), playing D to D while still remaining on all the white keys would be your second mode, the Dorian mode (W-H-W-W-W-H-W). Inevitably these scales (while containing the same notes) will have a different feel because the intervals have been shifted into new places; for example C Ionian has a major third and the D Dorian mode contains a minor third and is a minor scale. Also, the chords which fit underneath the scales can be found by playing the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th notes of the mode, the relating 7th chord. If we were to take the 1, b3, b5 and b7 of the Locrian scale we would have a m7b5 chord, which is exactly when we would opt to play the Locrian scale. Here is a list of the major modes and their tensions as reference:

I - Ionian - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (M7) *(Alterations are based on the major scale)*
II - Dorian - 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, 6, b7 (m7)
III - Phrygian - 1, b2, b3, 4, 5, b6, b7 (m7)
IV - Lydian - 1, 2, 3, #4, 5, 6, 7 (M7)
V - Mixolydian - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, b7 (7)
VI - Aeolian - 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, b6, b7 (Natural minor scale) (m7)
VII - Locrian - 1, b2, b3, 4, b5, b6, b7 (m7b5)

Now I'll write out the tensions for the Melodic and Harmonic minor modes. The tablature provided also has the chords and a few chord-melody examples for the two modes. The Melodic minor is actually just the major scale with a flatted 3rd but obviously it creates a hugely different feel over the course of 6 additional scales. The Harmonic minor is exactly like the Aeolian mode but has a raised or natural 7th.

I - Melodic Minor - 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, 6, 7
II - Dorian b2 - 1, b2, b3, 4, 5, 6, b7
III - Lydian Augmented - 1, 2, 3, #4, #5, 6, 7
IV - Lydian Dominant - 1, 2, 3, #4, 5, 6, b7
V - Hindu/Mixolydian b6 - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, b6, b7
VI - Locrian natural 2/Aeolian b5 - 1, 2, b3, 4, b5, b6, b7
VII - Super Locrian - 1, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, b7

I - Harmonic Minor - 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, b6, 7
II - Locrian #6 - 1, b2, b3, 4, b5, 6, b7
III - Ionian #5 - 1, 2, 3, 4, #5, 6, 7
IV - Dorian #4 - 1, b2, b3, #4, 5, 6, b7
V - Phrygian #3 - 1, b2, 3, 4, 5, b6, b7
VI - Lydian #2 - 1, #2, 3, #4, 5, 6, 7
VII - Altered bb7 - 1, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, bb7

There are many more scales that make great and usable modes: the Harmonic major, Neopolitan major/minor, Hungarian major/minor, etc. I'll get around to posting those ones soon enough.

Aren't Arpeggios Awesome?

2010-06-16T23:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl_SgiyvUDQ

Tritone Examples

2010-06-13T21:05:00.000-07:00

When I first delved into Slonimsky's Thesaurus I was particularly absorbed by the work that was done in the dividing of octaves and in tritone progressions. Nevertheless, the examples were not well-suited for the guitar and I began to explore the possibility of creating symmetrical passages that were conducive to my style of play. I posted a video of my findings on YouTube and erroneously called it Tritone Slonimsky Stuff. And although the licks are all based on the principle element of the first chapter of the book, the material that I came up with has little to do with replicating any specific examples found within it.

My mission was to create as many bizarre examples as possible and have them all move up and down the neck in tritones, or, an augmented 4th/diminished 5th. I've created even more examples since then, the options you have are almost boundless, but for the sake of concision I've tabbed only the examples that are to be found in my video. I'll explain each of the 15 examples individually.

1. A 3 note per string whole tone scale. The ascending motif is always alternate picked and starts with a downstroke, the descending part is a mixture of 4 picked notes and a quick 3 note pull-off. I use this kind of picking mix because it makes for a fluid sound and is much quicker.

2. Stretchy lick. You can look at this two ways: 1) the lick is a root and major third going up in tritones and grouped into 4's or, 2) you're playing a 4 note (r, 3, b5, b7) scale in groups of 4. Either way the sound is awesome and the example is tough. Ascending is a mixture of hammer-ons and picking, the descending is much easier for the example and uses strict alternate picking.

3. Stretchier lick. This is the same exact pattern except only ascending and the notes are (1, 4, b5, 7) this time and the lick is a bit wider. Be careful not to overexert yourself on this kind of lick, you can easily end up with tendinitis like I once did. If you were to extend this type of lick another chromatic step and respect the tritone movement you'd have a weird doubled-up octave and b5 lick (1, b5, b5, octave).

4. 1, 2 and b3 going up in tritones. Alternate picking all the way to the short rest on the high E string and then you're off to a sweeping/pull-off lick that travels diagonally and chromatically across the fretboard. The double upstroke on the sweeping is more of an aggressive picking approach, you have to really dig in to it.

5. 1, 2 b3 again but the picking pattern changes a little bit. Similar descending movement but the shape is more of an augmented one.

6. 1, 2, b3 in thirds and always moving to a tritone on the next string. The descending part moves symmetrically and doesn't really adhere to a tonality. The final ascending area begins on Eb and moves up like example 5.

7. This one gets all four fingers involved. The pattern is four notes per string, three strings up and one string down, all the way to the top.

8. Same movement but a different fingering.

9. Slides! One pick stroke per string. The pattern is a half whole diminished.

10. I see this one as sliding into a major scale 3 note pattern, you repeat this on every tritone interval up the neck.

11. In this one you're sliding with your pinky, what a blast.

12. You can either pick this one or play it all with slides and hammer-ons; it's tabbed as the latter.

13. Another slippery variation of the half-whole diminished scale. All done in hammer-on and pull-offs.

14. This symmetrical lick is so fun to play and, once again, that aggressive double upstroke comes back into play. When you reach the bottom section of the lick it moves over chromatically and sweeps its way back up to be repeated yet again.

15. The exact same technique is used here but we're moving diagonally downwards to the lower left half of the fretboard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4opSRRPGvo

Chord Inversions Aplenty

2010-06-12T02:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a pretty interesting array of chord inversions. All of the chord inversions are 7th (1,3,5,7) chords and feature a root chord and three inversions (3rd, 5th and 7th). I didn't have the room to write all of the information but consider the bottom note of each chord to dictate which inversion is being played - you can always compare that note to the root note and find it in your corresponding scale. I started the inversions as close to the top nut as possible, so you're not always starting on the root chord. Some of these sound really slick.

Alkan 'Perpetuum Mobile' Op. 30 Transcription

2010-06-09T23:36:00.000-07:00

Before we get into the music side of things, I'd like to congratulate the Chicago Blackhawks for winning the Stanley Cup and not letting it fall into the hands of the Flyers and the viking-bearded Scott Hartnell. My prediction was that the Hawks would win the series decisively, either 4-0 or 5-1, but Philly came out to play and matched their intensity in every game. Props to them for making it so far, although I would have preferred our Habs to have competed for the Lord's trophy. Anyways, let us move on to some music talk.

I've had this Alkan piece on my mind since the initial consideration for a blog page and it happens to be one of my favorite piano transcriptions. Although the transcription remains my basic note-for-note translation of the work, the issue with rendering music (especially from the piano) to the guitar, is the necessity to make all the legerdemain look and feel natural. Luckily, here, we have the piano part which is entirely melodic; if we were to take a more harmonic oeuvre from Alkan, such as the 'Symphonie Op. 39 No's 4-7,' we would certainly need to write for multiple guitars. The need for fluid transitioning, which should respect both picking and fretting, should not be overstated. Alkan's works are not insurmountable, even by the guitar's standard, but if we cannot negotiate the changes with grace the music falls apart and loses its appeal. Keep in mind that this kind of duplication offers a myriad of choices - the majority of notes on the guitar can be played in a multitude of places along the fretboard. Op. 30 is a tricky piece written in perpetuum mobile (perpetual motion) but, along with every other Alkan work I've ever heard, it is not without musical merit. I could never justifiably navigate the subtle and misconstrued history of the composer, however, the late Ronald Smith's 'Alkan: The Man, The Music' and Jack Gibbon's insightful essay entitled 'The Myths of Alkan,' are the best possible places to start.

Hold on to your socks!

N.B: Seeing as the transcription is almost 200 bars, I decided to add fingerings rather than picking instructions. Fingerings are easier to agree upon, whereas picking (unless specified for the exercise or etude) isn't always going to remain constant. For the sake of getting through the piece I use a bit of everything but for the areas with open string passages I've included the words 'hybrid picking' and use a combination of the pick (thumb and index) and my middle finger to pluck the open strings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reSU7AvaK2k&feature=related

Keith Whalen - Etude Op. 1 No. 1

2010-06-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

I've decided to upload my first ever completed etude, which is almost 2 years old now. I guess you can say that it's influenced somewhat by the Chopin Op. 10 No. 1 and the soaring effect of that etude; it also resembles the up and down arpeggiated format as well. The purpose of the piece is to abandon the sweeping technique and to accommodate a new method for playing arpeggios throughout several octaves. Here is the description I gave when I first posted it on YouTube in 2008:

"This arpeggio etude is based on triads being played in 3 octaves without using the traditional sweeping right hand technique. The fingerings are very important and cause for leaps to each octave, helping position switching and horizontal movement. To give you an idea of the shape of the arpeggios, the second triad at 0:03 seconds into the piece outlines a Dmaj7. It's fingerings are D and F# on the low E and then the seventh (C#) is played on A string. The shape then moves to the D an octave higher on the 12 fret of the D string, the shape repeats and finally you will use the same notes of the arpeggio starting from the D on the 15th fret on the B string. All the arpeggios are designed in this fashion, two notes then one note a string higher and then repeated throughout the 3 octaves."

Hopefully the tab provided will grant some insight into the technique and helps when following the music. The intent was a mixture of beauty and duty and hopefully the piece has enough musical merit to stand alone outside of the technical nitpicking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v7SFM0RMLY

Descending Minor Pentatonics

2010-06-06T22:35:00.000-07:00

I think it would realistic to assume that all guitar players have encountered the minor pentatonic scale in one form or another. Whether purposefully applied to your soloing techniques, or simply being aurally consumed during your favorite rock song, the scale is known to virtually everyone; Bobby McFerrin even demonstrated how even non-musicians can sing the scale with relative ease. After playing through many examples from Jason Becker and Shawn Lane (both of whom used elaborate note groupings) I decided to create a few exercises that would be fun to play through and optimize the alternate picking approach. As a famous Swedish rocker once said, "Sometimes less is less and sometimes more is more!"

There are 10 examples given, all of them assess a grouping of some sort and offer a new variation to the standard two note per string descending pattern. The groupings are written into the tablature; there are descending 4's 5's and 6's and some examples have obvious chromatic passages added into the mix. The fingerings adorn the tablature and ALL examples begin with a downstroke, followed by strict alternate (up/down/up) picking. You can elaborate even further if you wish, this is only but a small fragment of what is possible with the scale, and we're barely scraping the surface of what we can do with an 'outside' approach and applying it to progressions. Then there are the other 4 positions available to you, which can also be treated in the same fashion. I hope you find the examples worthwhile or, at a minimum, cure a day's worth of your idleness.

Slonimsky's 'Thesaurus' - Part 2: Bitonal Arpeggios

2010-06-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

Bitonality, or the use of two distinct musical keys simultaneously, is a technique which has been used since the Classical era and seized the interest of many twentieth century composers. Igor Stravinsky, Ferrucio Busoni and Kaikhosru Sorabji were all very much involved with this approach and the latter's Transcendental Etude No. 10, a display of polytonal arpeggios, is an effective and vehement melange. His etude is strictly arpeggiated, which led me to believe that the examples from the Thesaurus can not only be musically relevant but may form the basis of a musical piece if one wishes to be so bold.

The focus of the bitonal arpeggio section in the Thesaurus is to exhibit the combination of the C major triad (C, E, G) with each of the 23 major and minor triads available. Some of the results are fascinating (CM+F#M, an implied Petrushka chord), others are musically consonant (CM+DM) and a few are slightly harder to appreciate (CM+C#m). The exercises, when played on guitar, can be beneficial in a couple of ways. Primarily, they are great for training the ear to hear triads; the alternation between the two distinct chords trains the ear to differentiate and focus on where the switch takes place. And of course the exercises are really taxing (at first) because of their bizarre shapes, and they demand larger than normal stretches in the fretting hand. I have included my preferred fingerings for each example but I have chosen not to include picking patterns because the examples are all played against C major and they change dramatically. I strive for the sweeping approach because it sounds a lot better if you can get it under the fingers, but at times there are two note per string patterns present and need to be approached with your choice of hammering or picking. I usually alternate pick more often than not but my personal choice in these exercises is the hammer-on because it mixes well with the sweeping that can be done when the triads align in their conventional form. One last thing before the examples - the T with the fingering numbers means a tap is required and there are exercises with three notes tapped in a row, this is treated as a tap-slide. But if you want to get crazy you can always manipulate the fret hand but be sure to avoid anything painful; I've already had a bad bout with tendinitis. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMHfNAFv9vk

Slonimsky's 'Thesaurus' - Part 1: Pentatonics

2010-06-04T02:49:00.000-07:00

Nicolas Slonimsky's 'Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns' is one of the most astonishing and puzzling books in the entire musical library. Having been studied by the likes of John Coltrane, Allan Holdsworth and Frank Zappa, the book has garnered much attention but still remains an obscure venture for the average musician. The book has little text and a myriad of musical examples (over 1500) which are defined by some quite outrageous terms: Interpolation, Ultrapolation, Infra-Inter-Ultrapolation, etc. This is something that constantly impedes further study of the book but can be understood with a bit of effort; many other segments of the book are easily accessible to the modern guitar player, the pentatonic one is especially rewarding.

Considering the entire book is written in standard notation (the Achilles heal of many guitar players) I have tabbed out all 49 pentatonic examples. I've also included my own fingerings and converted each example into an exercise of ascending and descending groupings of 4's. The lengthier exercises are great for hearing the tensions in context and, of course, they are very demanding in terms of dexterity and stamina. Each example is listed by its number in the Thesaurus and the tensions are given for the 5 notes of the scale in relation to the major scale. All examples begin on C, so if a minor pentatonic were to be played the resulting tensions would read: 1 (root), b3 (minor third), 4 (perfect fourth), 5 (perfect fifth) and b7 (dominant 7).

Slonimsky's encyclopedic efforts offer us a vast range of possible pentatonic examples. Exhausting, or rather, exposing almost all the possible examples seems to be the foundation of his efforts. Let me quote the final segment of Nicolas' introduction, which is both compelling and optimistic about the future of music:

- John Stuart Mill once wrote: "I was seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations. The octave consists only of five tones and two semitones, which can be put together in only a limited number of ways of which but a small proportion are beautiful: most of these, it seemed to me, must have been already discovered, and there could not be room for a long succession of Mozarts and Webers to strike out, as these have done, entirely new surpassing rich veins of musical beauty. This sort of anxiety, may, perhaps, be thought out to resemble that of the philosophers of Laputa, who feared lest the sun be burnt out."

The fears of John Stuart Mill are unjustified. There are 479,001,600 possible combinations of the 12 tones of the chromatic scale. With rhythmic variety added to the unbound universe of melodic patterns, there is no likelihood that new music will die of internal starvation in the next 1000 years. - Nicolas Slonimsky, 1 January 1947 Boston, Massachusetts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHbFu0q_2Vw

Climbing with Alkan!

2010-06-03T00:57:00.000-07:00

After posting the climbing with modes examples, I immediately thought of this excerpt from Charles-Valentin Alkan's Piano Trio Op. 30. This section comes from the blistering finale in 6/8, which is a prolonged perpetuum mobile for piano, violin and cello. Alkan was an extremely interesting personality who composed many novel works during his lifetime (1813-1888) and was a close friend of both Chopin and Liszt.

Like the modal climbing, this can be played with a combination of raking and alternate picking. The ascending passage hovers around the key center of Bb major, the relative major to the opening G Minor, and goes through a few scales. The first G Aeolian then, A Locrian, Bb Ionian, C Dorian, D Phrygian, E Lydian, a modulation to an F# Altered bb7 (7th mode of the Harmonic Minor scale), G Minor, A Locrian #6 (2nd mode of the Harmonic Minor scale) and finally a diminished passage to top it off which we can say for argument's sake is in the key of C. The opening segment comes back into play after that passage a perfect fifth higher in the key of G Minor.

This time the preferred fingerings are in there and so are the picking instructions. The tempo is around 130 Bpm but I would start slow and build it up to speed, the ending can be tricky because of how limited your fretting space becomes. The key here is evenness.

Here is a post of mine where I play the piece in its entirety, although I recorded it in two segments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reSU7AvaK2k

Climbing with Modes

2010-06-02T23:16:00.000-07:00

I've always liked the feeling of ascending through scales with a sweeping technique. The smooth sound, the ease on the wrist and the deftness with which you can reach distant intervals. But what about those who like an aggressive pick stroke here and there? I'm surely not the inventor of this approach, there's a long history of excellent guitar players before me, but I have made an effort to make this approach both logical and also a fun (I use the word loosely) way to explore new modes.
I will post a picture of the technique applied to the G Ionian scale and I will cover the basic movements involved.

For the most part, you would probably opt to avoid starting a phrase so predictably on a root note but for the sake of all the examples we will in fact be starting on the tonic note. So here we have the G Ionian scale played in ascending arpeggios and descending in the typical 3 note per string rock format. All of the examples are derived from this 3 note per string style because it fits the exercise very well but you will see the stretches becoming more exerting when applied to Hungarian modes, etc.

The root note will always be played with a downstroke followed by a hammer onto the third of the given scale, in this case we are playing G and hammering onto B. The next two notes, D and F# respectively, are played as a rake (two more downstrokes); the exercise is geared towards playing diatonic arpeggios in this fashion. Once you reach that note, (F#) on the third string of your arpeggio, you will quickly be snapping an upstroke to the furthest note of the 3 note per string fragment that is played on that particular string, in this case it is (A). Treating (A) as your anchoring note to switch into alternate picking, you will play the descending notes on that string, in this case the next two are G, an octave higher than we began and F#. This is basically the 'unit' you will be thinking of at all times when playing through these examples. A rake through the triad and switching to alternate picking to descend on the top string of that triad. The next rake is an E minor triad starting of the 7th fret of the A string. Once again you will rake the three triad notes (E, G and B) and will be playing a descending three note pattern from the furthest of the three notes on the G string.

If we look at it symmetrically, we are starting a rake from the 3rd note on our bottom string, middle note of the next and finally the first note of the three note pattern on the top string of the triad. Once we reach the top of the rake we are simply reaching to play the descending scale fragment from the furthest of the three notes so we get them all. The idea is to vertically climb 3 strings with the triadic rake and then use alternate picking to play a 3 note descending motif on that string. It makes for an ambiguous mix of climbing quick and descending slow; the triad's intervals are large and then the scale fragments less so. This approach is applied diatonically, you are always looking for the same patterns (3 note per string) but the notes will obviously adhere to the alterations of the scale in question.

Hopefully with the myriad of applications here it will seem less daunting and make a bit more sense. I believe that the theory is hard to explain but the natural application for your fingers will pave the way to understanding the technique. The picking motion demonstrated in the G Ionian example is the same for EVERY mode of EVERY scale. I did not include fingerings because it would take way too long and because I believe that everyone is comfortable with their own habits.

You can listen to me playing through the examples here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SOdcZVe-yc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqcST108LBk

Welcome to my blog!

2010-06-01T23:54:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen,

This inaugural post needs to begin by thanking you all for visiting my page, regardless of how you may have stumbled upon it. My name is Keith Whalen and I am a self-taught guitarist living in the beautiful Canadian metropolis of Montreal. After many years of toiling, composing and noodling on the guitar and piano, I have built up an expansive repertoire of musical exercises ranging from the quaggy cadence to the finger-busting ultra-stretch arpeggio passage. I've been sharing snippets of my work on my YouTube page for a couple of years now and I'm very humbled by the kind words many of you have expressed; I've also been asked on the occasion to share tabs, which I will be able to do with relative ease here.

The exercises I am most solicitous in sharing are relatively new and are principally geared toward the moderate to advanced guitar player, although in many cases the insistence is concision and simplicity to acquire the desired effect. I plan on including exercises in economy picking, hybrid picking and certainly arpeggios, all of which will reflect my personal musical proclivities. I have also done a lot of research into the highly acclaimed Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns by Nicolas Slonimsky and intend to share my findings with you all. I may also use the page periodically to share my thoughts on music that I enjoy.

What kind of influences will make a clandestine appearance? There will be no escaping my penchant for Shawn Lane's guitar playing. He is without a doubt my favorite guitar player of all-time and many thanks to W.J for introducing me to his music. Jason Becker is the other guitarist who fueled my desire to improve and practice like a madman; from him stems my early interest in classical music. I'm also very fond of transcribing Bach and Alkan pieces to the guitar and I hope you will enjoy the transcriptions I intend to share.

Stay tuned and leave me a message or comment here if you wish: youtube.com/keithwhalen11

Keith Whalen