Table Of ContentPlay guitar text pages 7.qxd:Guitar text 12/2/08 21:16 Page i
Play great
guitar
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“The guitar is a small orchestra.
It is polyphonic. Every string is a
different colour, a different voice.”
Andrés Segovia
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Play
great guitar
Brilliant ideas for getting more
out of your six-string
RIKKY ROOKSBY
brilliantideas
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Copyright © The Infinite Ideas Company Limited, 2008
Music copyright © 2008 Rikky Rooksby
The right of Rikky Rooksby to be identified as the author of this book has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2008 by
The Infinite Ideas Company Limited
36 St Giles
Oxford, OX1 3LD
United Kingdom
www.infideas.com
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of small passages for the
purposes of criticism or review, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or
otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing
Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP, UK, without the
permission in writing of the publisher. Requests to the publisher should be
addressed to the Permissions Department, Infinite Ideas Limited, 36 St Giles,
Oxford, OX1 3LD, UK, or faxed to +44 (0)1865 514777.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978–1–905940–56–1
Brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective owners.
Designed and typeset by Baseline Arts Ltd, Oxford
Printed in India
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Brilliant ideas
Brilliant features.................................................................................................................xii
Introduction.........................................................................................................................xiii
1. It’s a classical gas, gas, gas..........................................................................................1
You play guitar, so what is more important than choice of instrument? First brilliant idea:
get a new guitar. Go on, admit it … you hoped I’d say this, didn’t you?
2. This machine kills boredom...........................................................................................5
Walk down a city street anywhere in the world and the chances are if you meet a guitar-
wielding busker they will be singing to the backing of a strummed steel-strung acoustic.
3. Tune up, plug in, turn on...............................................................................................9
So you think electric guitars are only for unwashed youths in low-slung denim who like noise
with a capital N and have band names like Unholy Doom tattooed on their knuckles?
4. Cop a capo.....................................................................................................................13
Think of Paul Weller’s ‘Wild Wood’, Oasis’ ‘Wonderwall’ and Travis’ ‘Why Does It Always
Rain On Me’ … you’ll never get any of them to sound right on guitar without one of these.
5. A rule of thumb............................................................................................................17
They may be digitally challenged in the finger-length stakes – but hey! Equal rights for
thumbs now! Your music might occasionally need a fretting thumb.
6. Going offbeat................................................................................................................23
Here’s a quick way to make your guitar playing take off. The clue to playing many songs
in folk and blues fingerstyles is the offbeat (syncopated) pattern.
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Play great guitar
7. Flatpicking – best of both worlds..............................................................................27
You know about playing guitar with a pick or playing with your fingers.
But why not do both at once? Think you can’t do both at once? Read on.
8. The art of strumming...................................................................................................31
As famed French hot-jazz guitarist Des Cartes once said, I strum, therefore I am.
Strum well and the whole world strums with you (in an air guitar kind of way).
9. Learn some new chords...............................................................................................35
If harmony is a continent of sound and emotion, each chord is a village. So why not go
travelling occasionally and find other places to make your own.
10. Get flat – stay sharp....................................................................................................41
Think of a piano keyboard. It has two colours, white and black. Chords are that way too,
on piano or guitar. So come and meet the five flats and sharps.
11. Seventh heaven............................................................................................................45
It only takes one extra note to move from the vanilla world of major and minor chords
to the chocolate chip tub of the sevenths … and in four flavours too!
12. Be diverted – get inverted!.........................................................................................49
Strum any major or minor chord. It’s a familiar sound. But did you know there are two
more shades of the same colour contained in what you’ve just heard?
13. Exotic stacks.................................................................................................................53
If Idea 11 was seventh heaven, then step up now for cloud nine. Here are some ninths and
elevenths – chords that are seriously stacked.
14. Triads you can trust......................................................................................................57
When it comes to chords, size isn’t everything. Three-string friends to beginner and
experienced player alike, here are the triads – the harmony gang that’s on your side.
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Brilliant ideas
15. New light on ‘power-chords’.......................................................................................63
Did you know that music harmony has its own neutral zone? It’s true – a strange dank
realm of drooling zombie flesh-eating chords that emerge as neither major nor minor.
16. Lift a finger/add a finger.............................................................................................67
There’s one reliable fall-back for finding new sounds and ideas on the guitar. Sometimes
all that is required is ‘adjusted original digital technology’. In other words, move a finger!
17. No holds barred, or no barrés held?...........................................................................71
Here’s your free upgrade to the ‘adjusted original digital technology’ of the previous
section, called ‘digital removal software’ … otherwise known as lifting a 1st finger that’s
holding a barré!
18. Move on up, move on back.........................................................................................75
One way to find new sounds on the guitar is to take an open string chord and move it
up or down. Get ready for hideous, kinky, startling and terrific.
19. The one-note shift........................................................................................................79
Altering one note at a time in a chord leads you down new musical paths. Let your fingers
reshape themselves into new chords and go places you haven’t been before.
20. Instant blues.................................................................................................................85
Blues is like a universal language. Everybody recognises it, everybody can follow where a
blues is going, and for decades the guitar has been its main mouthpiece.
21. Sweet blues..................................................................................................................89
Woke up this morning … Dang! You know, my lover she ain’t gone! Must be celebration
time, and to celebrate on guitar you need another set of five notes.
22. You hexy thing..............................................................................................................93
You’ve heard of that old black magic so many blues guitarists claim to know? Well, put
aside that shredded bat wing and the voodoo doll, and grab some musical magic.
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Play great guitar
23. The not so famous five................................................................................................97
There are five-note scales that don’t get played as often as those used in blues and rock.
Here’s a chance to explore some of these not-so-famous five.
24. Seven up (and down).................................................................................................103
Is there life beyond pentatonics? Does everything go in fives? Will our caped guitarists
escape the hex and find the missing two notes? Tune in to this section’s exciting episode!
25. Magic numbers, magic changes.................................................................................107
With a threeand a fourand a twelveand a … You might have heard people say that music
has a mathematical element. Well, maths was never this much fun.
26. It’s the reel thing........................................................................................................113
Here’s a new musical avenue to explore that may see you in future years in the corner
of a boisterous pub playing folk tunes with others, your fingers a blur.
27. The twang’s the thang................................................................................................117
Before Hendrix and Clapton, the guitar came to the forefront of popular music by doing
what singers do: it carried a melody – but in its own twangy way.
28. Two notes from one...................................................................................................121
It’s 3 a.m. In the lounge bar the barman sets you up another drink.
There’s no sign of her. You sigh, grab your guitar and play … octaves!
29. Two voices, two fingers.............................................................................................127
With only two notes you can create the illusion of two voices and even whole chords.
Do what two singers do when they harmonise, but lay it on the fretboard.
30. Riffing out...................................................................................................................131
Heard of ‘carbon neutral’? Heavy rock wants to be tonalneutral. There are no major
or minor chords in the lost, dark dimensions, just a two-finger fifth.
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Brilliant ideas
31. A hand full of weather...............................................................................................137
The sky changes, the land stays still. Make a low open string your land and let your
fingers make weather. Here is the dramatic foundation of the pedal note.
32. When a note stays the same.....................................................................................141
Imagine music where one note stays the same regardless. Where one note stays the same
regardless. Where one note … Let’s hear it for the drone … drone … drone.
33. A touch of retuning....................................................................................................145
Let’s twist again … with those tuning pegs. They can do more than just keep things in
tune. With a turn of even one peg, new music beckons in ‘drop D’.
34. A sneaky rocker..........................................................................................................149
‘Drop D’ tuning is not just for folk-style fingerpicking and gentle acoustic singer-songwriters.
It’s a motherlode of heavy guitar riffs. GrrrROWWLL!
35. Voyage to the bottom of the C..................................................................................155
Take the 6th string down even further but add a new dimension to the result by putting
on a capo. Result: deep bass, and new sounds from common chords.
36. Top down a notch.......................................................................................................159
Guitar retrieved from baggage hold yields new music after long flight? Can it be true?
Yes it can. Find some new chords with this one easy tuning change.
37. Through a harmonic rift.............................................................................................163
Remember those nasty sharps and flats? Time to seek out new musical ideas, and to
boldly go into the harmonic rift and into the Kingdom of the Enharmonics!
38. Look Ma, no hands.....................................................................................................167
Wouldn’t it be great if you could just play guitar with one finger … no more struggling
with four-finger chord shapes … but wait! There is a way …
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