The Dorian scale makes for an interesting twist you can use in a 12-bar blues. Yes, that’s right, you can use the Dorian scale over the I and IV chords of your average 12-bar blues…
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There are literally endless things you can do with pentatonic scales in music and especially on the guitar. We all love them, so why not milk them for all they’re worth? The idea of modal…
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If you’ve been playing or studying modes for a while now, you might have overlooked the Phrygian mode in favor of the more usable minor modes such as Dorian and Aeolian. The Phrygian mode was…
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This is something that a lot of players dismiss because they think they must learn 5 or 7 patterns for each scale in all keys, which if you think about it is probably not the…
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I often get students who like the idea or the sound of modes but are put off by the theory, and as modes are a fundamental part of soloing in many styles, I try to…
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A student once asked me if there was a foolproof way not to get lost when soloing on guitar and as I didn’t really have a magic bullet answer, I thought I’d get into it…
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You can find tons of stuff on modes right here on the blog, but I’d like to share this quick exercise which tests whether you’re really hearing them or not. One of the major drawbacks…
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This is a common problem among guitar players: they get very good at getting some great licks and runs from major and minor pentatonic scales, then decide to learn modes and it all goes to…
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If you’ve learned the modes using the parent scale method, which we went into in depth in this article, you might be having a hard time bringing out the sound of each mode; or if…
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When you start using the modes, it can be a little tricky to get a handle on phrasing and avoid playing stuff that sounds too generic. In this article, we looked at breaking arpeggios and…
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