Should I learn SCALES, ARPEGGIOS, and TRIADS, or only work on TUNES?

[@jeffrose8338]

Great stuff Andy. I find those triads to be building blocks in coming up with my own breaks on vocal tunes. Those lessons that I took from you were gold and I’m ready for some more!

[@ermancroney3805]

Thanks Andy for urging us on to expanding our methods and approach in playing the guitar. I really appreciate it. God bless you.

[@johnlarkin8226]

Sweet! And yes, I love fancy licks and theory, but they only stick if I find a way to use them in a song. I had found a great blog by the jazz pianist Jason Lyon that had a bunch of cool bebop licks. The ones I still remember are the ones I immediately used in a swing tune, or in one case, in the turnaround to Beaumont Rag. The others, I need to go back and relearn, and find a way to use so they stick.

[@jeffmcdonald7882]

Andy drops yet another perfect golden nugget of a lesson. Then proceeds to crush an improvisation of cuckoo’s nest. So dang good.

[@olben58]

Bravo Andy. Such a smart teacher

[@jimmccarley9609]

I love this, very practical.

[@davidrobbins8941]

No boundaries, you can do it all my friend. 👍

[@mikereilly5]

Well done, Andy. You rock!

[@jameswinterbottom8430]

Based on my experience, I feel like the law of diminishing returns kicks after you have learned a number tunes and can play them cleanly. Maybe 50 tunes? Idk. After a certain point, learning more tunes starts to feel like your just learning more tunes, and not learning more about the guitar. Learning tunes is always good ear practice though. It can help motivate. That’s where I’m at. I’m stuck

[@keithchilvers7434]

If you learn to lay bricks you can build any size or shape of house you want, the same goes for music - get the scales and triads under your fingers and you can go forward and play any tune that's in your head. The thing is to get those scales and triads under your fingers in a usable way - not just playing up and down a scale doh, ra, me.... because aside from the fact it's boring you've never actually heard a tune that goes like that! The next thing once you've got to know where the notes are is to start practicing scale sequences (which you can find many of on the internet) and then you start to recognise bits of those sequences in tunes you know (or want to know). Another really good exercise that a lot of jazz players use is to play up and down a two octave scale in thirds (ie play a note, skip a note) Playing it this way it becomes much more melodic and starts to sound like something you might actually play. For example a scale of G major, starting on the low E string 3rd fret would look like G b d f# a c e G, then you could just skip up to high a (top E string 5th fret) and play back down a f# d b G e c a. This sounds melodic for the reason that you are now playing various inversions of the main triads of the key - G b d, D f# a, A c e, (A minor), C e g, and back down a f# D, d b G, b g E (e minor), g e C, e c A. Hope this gives you some ideas to help get unstuck (I did the same as you at one time, just learned tunes, so i know where you're at.)

[@oddshot60]

It's almost that old give a guy a fish - TEACH that guy to fish thing. If you learn a tune you will have some momentary pleasure, if you learn CAGED scales, arpeggios and triads you will have a LIFETIME of joyous musical possibilities. I started learning "songs" back in the mid 19and60's ... and now, at 74 years of age, I'm wishing I had learned MUSIC FIRST instead.

[@Anton_Chigurh_2007]

I'm a little younger than you, but had much the same experience banging away on guitar and playing songs by rote memory. The main difference might be that I also played band instruments in the 60's, so I know how to read sheet music. But that never taught me anything about where the notes came from. However, I've spent the last 4 years studying music theory and now I understand how chords and arpeggios are constructed from scales and how the diatonic chords work. That opens up a whole new level of enjoyment and power. The deeper you go, the more you understand about why Western music of all genres sounds like it does, it was all figured out close to 3 centuries ago. I am not saying that you have to understand all of this stuff in detail to enjoy playing music, just that if you know how to find the notes that will sound right because of the rules, you can go from there. And then, if you want to, you can do things like substitute a G9 for a G7 in a song (because you know how to build a G9 without having memorized a chord shape) and see if you prefer it. Most of the tabs available online for free don't reflect the full array of chords that studio musicians are playing on recordings and you'll never figure it out if you don't understand what their options were.

[@Fishandguitarpuns]

Yes