I always get a kick out of the fancy music theory names for stuff…<\/p>\n
Modes are a perfect example… Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian – and they all refer to the same 7 notes!<\/p>\n
And whenever someone asks me about why I don’t teach modes in Blues Guitar Unleashed<\/a>, it’s the same deal…<\/p>\n You see, if you mix the major and minor blues sounds together the way I teach in Blues Guitar Unleashed<\/a>, or even more in The Slow Blues Supplement<\/a>, you also get the Mixolydian mode and\/or the Dorian mode depending on how you want to look at them.<\/p>\n Now I don’t mean this to be a theory talk, so don’t worry if this makes no sense… all you have to know is that we’re all talking about the same set of 8\/9 notes at the end of the day.<\/p>\n And when you think about the fact that there’s only 12 notes on the planet – if you know how to use 9 of them does it really matter what you call them?<\/p>\n To some degree, it actually does, and here’s why…<\/p>\n I grew up playing 80’s heavy metal… I played really fast (still do, given the opportunity) and to play that music I use a lot of modes and long, flowing scale passages.<\/p>\n And if I play that way, you know right away I’m in “shredder” mode and it ain’t blues.<\/p>\n On the other hand, if I use those same notes, but I break them up in my mind<\/em> into major blues and minor blues notes… it comes out sounding like blues and not like flashy\u00a0hard rock licks.<\/p>\n Your point of view is everything<\/em> when you play guitar… and the sooner you grasp that and accept it and realize that it’s a tool and not a curse, the better off you’ll be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I always get a kick out of the fancy music theory names for stuff… Modes are a perfect example… Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian – and they all refer to the same 7 notes! And whenever someone asks me about why I don’t teach modes in Blues Guitar Unleashed, it’s the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6645"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6646,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6645\/revisions\/6646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}