Pattern Generation

Tag: technique

  • The Push Home: The Mixolydian Mode and a Blues Shuffle Octave Pedal Tone Exercise!

    It’s kind of interesting that for a scale that has so much in common with the restful and homebody-esque major scale, the Mixolydian Mode couldn’t really be any more energetically different.

    Major/Ionian = home/grounded

    Mixolydian = uprooted/restless

    It is hard to argue that the ungrounded and restless nature of the mixolydian mode and its harmonic partner, the Dominant 7th chord, are what made it the definitive melodic and harmonic material for the blues. The Blues, after all, was essentially the music of a culture of people who were taken from their homes, held captive, made to work as slaves, and we’re essentially powerless to return home. They were stuck in an existential embodiment of the mixolydian mode.

    I hope that doesn’t sound trite because it really isn’t.

    That deeply embedded bluesy quality of the Mixolydian Mode is what made it important to realize this Octave Pedal Tone exercise with a shuffle feel. Technically this requires a right hand/arm physicality that is similar to what the great Stevie Ray Vaughn does to achieve the rhythmic feel of songs like Pride & Joy and Rude Mood.

    Downstroke on the beat and upstroke on the triplet 8th that defines the shuffle, sometimes from the hand/wrist and sometimes from the forearm. Make sure to always stay as loose as possible and put rhythm and groove over string and note accuracy. Let the accuracy come as the physical develops, the physical development will never lead you to groove if it’s coming from a place of cautious accuracy.

    Octave Pedal Tone G Mixolydian TabDownload

    There are a couple of occasions in this mixo manifestation where the moving voice extends into the double octave. I feel these moments sound especially bluesy. But then so do the moments when the ascending voice moves in toward the unison and we hear the flat 7th (F) rub idiosyncratically against the root (G). I guess it’s silly to say that any of the registers sound more or less bluesy than others because it’s all pretty danged bluesy.

    Thanks for caring enough to stop by and grab the tab. Stay tuned for the next step of the scale, the Aeolian mode (or relative minor). Keep in mind that these modal focused OPTs are really just the foundation of all the exploratory pattern generational fun that lies ahead.

    Cheers.

  • pattern generation: the beginning…sort of

    octave-pedal-tone-1-c-major-1Download

    This is the first of a radically high number of possible octave pedal-tone exercises. In this one, we start at the open position C Major scale fingering and sort of inchworm our way all the way up to the high C on the 20th fret of the high-E string and then work our way back down so that we descend into a Unison through the same register we started in. The difference in the last octave sequence as compared to the first octave sequence is that we are now descending to the unison in the 5th position. Some CAGED-style thinkers might C this as the G shape, as opposed to the opening patterns movement through the C shape.

    One possible goal is to create as much overlap and ringing connection between notes as possible. Another equally fine approach is to make the notes as detached as possible. The choice really is up to you and the style you are working within, or towards, or maybe even away from?

    To achieve a strong foundation for future pattern generation development it is very important to keep track of where your moving voice is in the scale. To this end, even more than being aware of the letter names you are playing–though that is pretty crucial at the outset–you will want to practice seeing the notes you are playing relative to their scale degrees. So, for the C Major scale, C = 1; D = 2; E = 3; F = 4; G = 5; A = 6; and B = 7 and C at the octave, above or below = 8. This first exploration expands and contracts only between single octaves and a unisons so there is no need to consider compound intervals though at some point 2=9, 3-10, 4=11, and 6=13 will become valuable.

    Here is the play through for reference. Feel free to play it slower or faster, or with distortion or not. All of these decisions are yours to make. Happy pattern generating.