Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course
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ORANGE ROCK GUITAR INTERMEDIATE COURSE Grade 3 - Grade 5 Orange Rock Guitar - Intermediate Course GRADE 3 - GRADE 5 THE 5 POSITIONS OF THE A MINOR Version 1.2 July 2019 3 PENTATONIC SCALE 47 Improvising with the A minor Pentatonic scale 47 OPEN CHORDS - PART II 4 The 5 positions of the A minor Pentatonic scale 49 Chord extensions 4 Staccato 5 BENDING 50 1-string bending 50 COMPOUND INTERVALS - A BRIEF Double-stop bending 51 INTRODUCTION 6 Unison bending 51 Lil’ Licks! 8 Vibrato 52 Open chords - part II 9 Bonus - songs you can try 52 Lil’ licks! 53 INTERVALS OF THE MINOR SCALE 11 Bending 54 Chords and intervals 13 Compound intervals - In more detail 14 PERFORMANCE PIECES 55 Choose your own 55 BAR CHORDS 15 Crescendos and diminuendos 17 AURAL DEVELOPMENT 56 Key signatures 19 Harmonic recognition 56 Bonus - songs you can try 19 Interval recognition 57 Lil’ licks! 20 Melodic recall 58 Bar chords 21 Harmonic recall 60 Tips 62 KEYS AND CHORDS 22 Chords within a key 22 SIGHT-READING 63 Chord progressions 24 Tips 66 Relative keys 25 IMPROVISATION 67 TAPPING 27 Key 68 Tapping with hammer-ons and pull-offs 27 Time signature 68 Tapping arpeggios 28 Style 68 Time signatures 30 Chord progression 68 Lil’ licks! 33 Structure 68 Tapping 34 Tips 68 POWER CHORDS - PART II 35 EXAM SPECIFICATION 69 b5 power chords 35 Technical Palm muting 36 Technical Exercises 69 Repeats 37 5 positions of the A minor Pentatonic scale 69 Volta brackets 37 3-note-per-string Major and minor scales 69 Lil’ licks! 39 Tapping 69 Power chords - part II 40 Bending 69 Technical Studies 69 THE 3-NOTE-PER-STRING MAJOR AND Open Chords part II 69 MINOR SCALES 42 Bar chords 69 Major and minor 3-note-per-string shapes 42 Power chords part II 69 Key signatures 42 Performance piece 70 Ionian and Aeolian 43 Sight-reading 70 Tied notes 44 Aural 71 The 3-note-per-string Major and minor scales 46 Improvisation 72 Theory 72 CONTACT DETAILS 73 Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course 2 Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course Grade 3 - Grade 5 Version 1.2 July 2019 Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course 3 Open chords - part II Click here for this lesson’s audio playlist › Chord extensions A chord extension is when we play a chord in a different way, by either adding or replacing specific notes to create new intervals. • Added 9: Shortened to ‘add9’, they are constructed using a • Half Diminished/minor 7-b5: Shortened to ‘ø’ or ‘min7b5’ root, Major 3rd, Perfect 5th, and a Major 9th. constructed using a root, minor 3rd, diminished 5th/flat 5th • Major 7th: Shortened to ‘maj7’, constructed using a root, (b5), and a minor 7th. We will learn about minor and Major 3rd, Perfect 5th, and a Major 7th note. diminished intervals later in the course. • Dominant 7th: Shortened to ‘7’, constructed using a root, • Suspended 2nd: Shortened to ‘sus2’, constructed using a Major 3rd, Perfect 5th, and a minor 7th/flat 7th (b7). root, Major 2nd, and a Perfect 5th. In this case, the Major 3rd • Suspended 4th: Shortened to ‘sus4’, constructed using a of a standard Major chord is replaced with the Major 2nd. root, Perfect 4th, and a Perfect 5th. A suspended chord is created when the 3rd of a chord is replaced with another note in the scale (usually either the Perfect 4th or the Major 2nd intervals of the Major scale). Experiment with chord extensions in your playing to create colourful, interesting chord progressions. Check out the following songs for some interesting examples of chord extensions: New Found Glory/Sixpence None The Richer - Kiss Me › New Found Glory’s cover of this song uses some of the shapes featured in the course material. The opening chord sequence is D - Dmaj7 - D7 - Dmaj7, which gives an unusual chromatic flavour. Blur - She’s So High › The main riff of this song (which repeats throughout the whole song) uses a Cadd9 chord and very briefly adjusts the standard A Major open chord shape to create a suspended 4th sound. Radwimps - Keitai Denwa (携帯電話) › This song is rife with A7 and D7 chords, and features folk-style strumming patterns and open chord progressions. Alice in Chains - Nutshell On the more somber side, the chord progression for this song is entirely Cadd9 - Em - G - D. Try playing this progression replacing Cadd9 with C, and you’ll notice how powerful the chord extension is here. Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course 4 Staccato Staccato can be considered the opposite of legato. Legato means that the notes are smooth and connected together, and staccato means that notes are played quickly and detached. Staccato is notated by placing a small dot above or below the note head: Be careful not to confuse these with dotted notes! Remember a dotted note has a dot placed to the side of the note head, whereas a staccato note has the dot above/below the note head. Listen to the chord progression (using chords from this lesson), which uses a combination of staccato and accents for an almost percussive effect: Staccato riff › Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course 5 Compound intervals - a brief introduction There are 8 intervals in 1 octave of a scale. For instance, a major scale has the following intervals: Root - Major 2nd - Major 3rd - Perfect 4th - Perfect 5th - Major 6th - Major 7th - Octave Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course 6 Any chord extension using a number above 7 refers to an interval more than an octave above the root note of the scale, known as a compound interval. As we know, the octave interval is the same as the root note but an octave (or 12 semitones) up. So the 9th note of the scale is in fact the same as the 2nd note, but an octave up. For instance, both the Major 2nd and Major 9th above C is D: A Major 9th is also known as a compound Major 2nd. You’ll learn more about compound intervals later in the course. The course materials of this lesson introduce a new key signature, D Major, which has 2 sharps - F# and C#. This means that every F and C throughout the rest of the piece should be played as an F# and C# (unless specified otherwise using a natural sign), and that the piece of music is based around the D Major scale: D Major scale › Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course 7 Lil’ Licks! Welcome to lil’ licks! At the bottom of some of your lesson pages, you’ll find a short piece of music (or lil’ lick, as we prefer to call it) that will show you how what you learned in that lesson can be used on your journey to guitar mastery! Don’t worry - these are just for fun and won’t appear in your exam! This lesson’s lil’ lick is a short extended open chord progression, featuring some legato and staccato playing, and some left-handed muting. Pay special attention to the pianissimo dynamic marking - play this too loud and it’ll lose its magic! Lil’ Licks - Open Chords part II › Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course 8 Open Chords - part II NB In your exam, you will only have to play progressions 1,2 and 3 of this lesson’s course materials. For a full-on workout, play all of the progressions. Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course 9 Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course 10 Click here for the Open Chords part II course material recordings › Click here for the Open Chords part II course material backing tracks › Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course 11 Intervals of the minor scale Click here for this lesson’s audio playlist › The intervals of a scale are calculated as the distance between the root note and any other note in that scale. We refer to the first note of any scale as the root note. Here, we will examine the intervals used in the Natural minor scale. Here are the intervals of the A minor scale, from the root (A) to the other scale degrees: Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course 12 So, the order of the intervals in any Natural minor scale are: Root - Major 2nd - minor 3rd - Perfect 4th - Perfect 5th - minor 6th - minor 7th - Octave It can be helpful to think of intervals in terms of semitones and tones. Here is a list of the number of semitones/frets in each interval: Major 2nd - 2 semitones/frets minor 3rd - 3 semitones/frets Perfect 4th - 5 semitones/frets Perfect 5th - 7 semitones/frets minor 6th - 8 semitones/frets minor 7th - 10 semitones/frets Octave - 12 semitones/frets The Natural minor scale shares intervals with the Major scale, namely the Major 2nd, Perfect 4th, Perfect 5th. The intervals that differentiate the minor scale are the minor 3rd, minor 6th, and minor 7th. Chords and intervals Minor chords are made from the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the natural minor scale. This can be translated to become a root note, a minor 3rd above the root note, and a Perfect 5th above the root note. Minor chords made up of these 3 notes alone are known as minor triads. Minor chord construction › Orange Rock Guitar Intermediate Course 13 Compound intervals - in more detail Intervals that are a larger distance than an octave are called compound intervals. These larger distances are considered ‘compound’ equivalents of the smaller intervals. For instance, an interval that is equal to an octave + a Major 2nd can be called a compound Major 2nd. However, it is far more common to think of these intervals using larger interval numbers.