Putting My Misery on Display

[snarf]

Name of the song, and what I'm doing here. I've missed several months with my face teacher due to work, and started back with him a couple of weeks ago. We decided to take a little different approach to what we had been doing, and he's assigning me a song a lesson to break apart and figure out before the next lesson. First lesson back was Back in Black. Easy peasy. Key of A with a tonal center of E. Solos are lots of E minor pentatonic. Got the basic song down, so now to work on the solo portion on my own.

This lesson, he assigned me Putting My Misery On Display by Gary Allan. This one has me scratching my head. I've got the chords, and can play through the song. Doesn't hold to the standard harmony rule at all. Key of A, then to a C# chord (not C#m), then to a D chord, then sometimes to a Dm chord, then A, then to an E, before resolving back to the A. It doesn't always follow that that exact pattern, but it's some form of it throughout the song. That part I get. The solos, however, are a conundrum to me. What are they doing? Is that some mode of A or is he just stealing notes from the C# scale and Dm scale when he's on those chords.?

Prior to him assigning it out to me, we were working on just that, modes vs just stealing notes from another chord tone to fit the song. We haven't been through modes enough (and I still don't understand them enough) for me to tell the difference. I really feel like he's just stealing notes in this song and not actually switching modes because the rest of it sounds like 90's/early-00's country music to me (with a little Van Halen thrown in).

 

[Paleo]

First the "structure" to start off the discussion.

Intro Lead Guitar:
A/// C#/// D/// Dm///

Verses 1&2:
A/// C#/// D/// A///
A/// C#/// D/// Dm/// A/// E/// A///

Chorus:
C#/// D// A//
C#/// D// A//
C#/// D/// E///

Lead Guitar:
A/// C#/// D/// Dm///

Verse 3:
A/// C#/// D/// A///
A/// C#/// D/// Dm/// A/// E/// A///

Chorus:
C#/// D// A//
C#/// D// A//
C#/// D/// E///
A/// C#/// D/// E/// A///

Then the solos at the "end" (3:45) run through a continuous cycle (4x's) before ending on A:

A/// C#/// D/// A///
A/// C#/// D/// Dm///

A couple things to think about:

A C# D is similar to the beginning of "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay" which would go from there to B instead of back to A.

And Griff has a lesson in his theory course about the Beatles iv chord, in this case D to Dm.

Never heard this song before. I really like it.

 

[Paleo]

The solos, however, are a conundrum to me.

I would start with the A Major Scale (A B C# D E F# G#) and see how many notes you hear that are NOT in that scale.

 

[artyman]

I had a quick noodle over the song in A major and some bending

 

[snarf]

Been playing around with it off and on this afternoon so far and here's what I'm thinking at the moment. The solos are beyond my skill level at the moment I think, but that doesn't mean I can't try to scale them down some.

I think they're staying mostly in the A major pentatonic patterns whenever they're playing A, D and E, and just stealing notes from the C# scale and D minor scale. I don't think they're staying, for instance, on the C# chord tones long enough that they're switching to a different mode, because it's only a quick run of notes and he's back to the A major pent. I think the notes that are throwing me are the G# when they hit the C# chord. However, the G# note is common to both A (the 7) and C# (the 5), so that's what they're using to get that chord to work instead of a C#m.

Then there's the F that's being played over the Dm chord. Not in the A scale, but they're not on that one long enough to switch modes, so it's just stealing a couple of notes for it. If they're switching to another mode, I think it would be Aeolian (b3, b6, b7), but I thought that mode was supposed to work over the relative minor which would be F#m in this case. So, at least for now, I'm sticking with the whole just stealing notes so that the Dm fits.

Do I sound like I'm on the right track or am I smoking crack?

 

[Paleo]

If they're switching to another mode, I think it would be Aeolian (b3, b6, b7), but I thought that mode was supposed to work over the relative minor which would be F#m in this case.

A Aeolian is minor. It's Parent Major is C. (A minor is the relative minor of C Major)

F#m is the relative minor of A Major.

A Aeolian works over the Dm, but I would consider it D Dorian, even though it's the same notes. (D E F G A B C)

And the A Major pentatonic scale has a C# (A B C# E F#) and the "complete" A Major scale has the G#. (A B C# D E F# G#)

"Technically" you are changing scales, but you can think of it as "What note is different?".

 

[snarf]

A Aeolian is minor. It's Parent Major is C. (A minor is the relative minor of C Major)

F#m is the relative minor of A Major.

Now that you mention that, that's part of what we've talked about the last couple of lessons. I apparently made a note that doesn't make sense in retrospect. It says "Ionian - major scale and Aeolian - relative minor." I guess it should just say Aeolian - minor and drop the "relative" part. D Dorian...I'm going to need to sit down with my guitar and play the notes for it to make sense.

Granted, I've not gotten past the first chapter or two in MU (I really need to work on it more while my face teacher is covering modes), but tell me if I'm headed the right direction on this one or if I need to keep studying. My thought had been that, since the song is in the key of A (not necessarily this song...any song), then any mode that is played within the song would be the A <insert mode here> scale. From what you're saying, the mode would actually be against the chord that is being played? For instance, since the chord is a Dm, the mode would then become a D <insert mode here> and not an A-something. Does that sound right?

Understanding modes isn't being my friend at the moment. I like learning stuff that I don't have to work too hard to figure out. You know, the stuff that just kind of makes sense. Call me lazy, I guess. This stuff I'm having to sit down and think through and figure out and write it out and look at it on the fretboard (or keyboard), and just about the time I think I'm beginning to understand part of it, I realize I still don't have a clue.

 

[BoogieMan]

I think they're staying mostly in the A major pentatonic patterns whenever they're playing A, D and E, and just stealing notes from the C# scale and D minor scale.

I just took a quick look at the short solo at 2:05 and I agree that A major pentatonic (box 4) is the main scale used as well as notes from the C# chord. I would call this targeting chord tones as opposed to stealing notes from the C# scale. Major box 4 works nicely over the Dm as well as D.

When that solo begins there is a nice little run beginning with a hammer on from fret 7 to 9 on string 5 and ending with a slide from fret 9 to 11 on string 4 (C# note) which is the 3rd of the A chord being played. The same slide is then repeated but this time the chord has changed to C# and that note is now of course the root of the chord. The 7th of the C# chord is also occasionally targeted after a short descending chromatic run is some places.

Very nice tune with some really nice guitar fills. Thanks for posting.

 

[Paleo]

Now that you mention that, that's part of what we've talked about the last couple of lessons. I apparently made a note that doesn't make sense in retrospect. It says "Ionian - major scale and Aeolian - relative minor." I guess it should just say Aeolian - minor and drop the "relative" part. D Dorian...I'm going to need to sit down with my guitar and play the notes for it to make sense.

Here's where we can get confused and bogged down in "correct technical" terminology.

In modern terminology, we can have modes of any scale by simply starting on any note other than the first one.

We are usually talking about modes of the Major Scale. So in C Major we have:

CDEFGAB = C Ionian
DEFGABC = D Dorian
EFGABCD = E Prhygian
FGABCDE = F Lydian
GABCDEF = G Mixolydian
ABCDEFG = A Aeolian
BCDEFGA = B Locrian

All of these modes are relative to each other, which simply means they have the same notes.


For the ancient Greeks, these were NOT based on a Major Scale. That concept hadn't been "invented" yet.

The Major/minor system evolved much later from the Ionian and Aeolian modes and the others were all but forgotten.

Now, we consider Ionian and it's relative Aeolian to be the same as Major and it's relative minor.

For our usage, C Ionian and A Aeolian modes = C Major and A minor scales. (Major and relative minor)


When playing over the progression A C# D Dm A E A, we could consider playing A Major over A, C# Major over C, D Major over D, D minor over Dm and E Major over E. That involves too much brain power for me.

If all the chords were in the Key of A Major we could just play A Major over the whole thing.

So I would look for any chord that has notes NOT in A Major and make "adjustments" to the A Major scale over those chords.

One note is F in the Dm chord.

So you might think of playing D minor over that chord.

However, D minor has a Bb.

(You could try D minor Pentatonic, which doesn't have the Bb, but that's not a mode.)

So, I'd try D Dorian, since it's also minor and has D as it's root (D E F G A B C).

But, D Dorian has all the same notes as A Aeolian (A B C D E F G).

So you could think of it as changing from the A Major scale (A B C# D E F# G#) to an A Aeolian scale (A B C D E F G), rather than changing from an A Major scale to a D Dorian scale (D E F G A B C).

You're not going to play the whole scale either way. It's just for one measure. You just want to be sure to get that F in somewhere. (And maybe the D E A or B, which they also have in common, but NOT the the C# or G#).

(Clear as mud?)

All the scales are now Parallel, i.e. they all have the same root A; A Major, A Major Pentatonic and A Aeolian.

So if you are thinking A Major Pentatonic, you can now just think about what notes have to be added or changed.

You add the G# of the C# chord to make it A Major and play the F of Dm (= E# of C#) to make it "Aeolian". (The C# of the C# chord is already in the A Major pentatonic scale.)

That's a lot fewer "mental gymnastics" than changing scales over every chord.

Two different approaches:

1) Think of playing a different scale over every chord.

2) Play the scale of the key over chords in the key and add notes to it from any chord that has notes not in the key.
(Which, in effect, is the same as #1).


Which leads to another source of confusion, which comes into play when we start talking about a whole progression being in one mode vs. modal sounds changing every time we change chords.

For more on this, check out Lesson 13 in Griff's theory course, Page 59, the section titled "Why you can't just use a major scale over a major chord?".

Understanding this short section was the "key" for me to bringing all this "mode stuff" together.

Yes, this is a lot to take in all at once. And it gives a lot of people fits. But once it "clicks" you will be surprised how simple it is....in principle.

It's another thing all together when you start trying to understand how to apply it.