Lesson 2 - 4 Ways To Know Your Pitch Patterns

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hi welcome back to absolutely understand guitar I'm Scotty West today we delve further into the fascinating world of pitch you're all interested in learning

about scales and chords well these are just patterns of notes patterns of pitch but first we're going to get just a little bit scientific about pitch in order to begin to see how the guitar

actually works this is lesson two so make sure your booklet is open to page two all set here we go hi welcome back got a lot of stuff to

cover uh this week uh amazing stuff um remember last week we are your very first lesson we actually learned that music is a language and it has six parts of speech these are the six main areas

of Music Pitch Rhythm camber Dynamics technique and notation well in order to be a real player you got to make sure that you can answer yes to those six different questions over there A lot of

people are only fooling themselves into believing that they're playing music you can look back at tape number one and memorize all that stuff we got too much to talk about today to really do much of a review I just wanted to remind you

that the largest body of information that you have to learn about in music is this stuff about Pitch what is pitch about well remember as most of you know pitch is about high and low but high and low what well the first word we learned

to associate with pitch is it's all about what notes you play and um we take these notes and we arrange them in various patterns and that's what chords and scales and Melody and Harmony

and intervals and progressions and arpeggios all the very things you want to learn about that's all about pitch and that's the stuff that we're going to be talking about today okay let's flip the page here and the first thing we're

going to do with pitch is we're going to get just a little bit scientific about it so what do we know about Pitch so far well we know that pitch

is about High and low but high and low what well the first word as I said that we learned to

associate with pitches is all about what notes you play but the other big word that you want to learn to associate with pitch is the whole concept of frequency

this is the scientific word for what pitch is all about now some of you might remember a little bit of this from science class at one time or another you know about sound waves and you know that

everything that's making noise is vibrating and it's sending out waves through the atmosphere well um in a sense that's all your guitar basically is it's just a sound wave

generator it just generates sound waves and you can very specifically control the frequency and what is the frequency of the sound wave well you know that everything that's making noise is vibrating and it's sending out waves

through through the atmosphere and so let's say that we're we don't have to look at the keyboard here let's say um I play this note on a piano keyboard

This is a low pitch node isn't it and let's say we could actually see what sound waves look like there is a device called an oscilloscope that's kind of like a computer screen and you could look and you can see what this sound

wave looked like so I play this low note on the piano here and we look and we see a sound wave that goes by and it's looking like this and this sound wave is traveling in a specific Direction let's say it's

traveling in this direction right like this now what they'll tell you the frequency of the sound wave is is the number of wave Peaks why the Peaks well it's just a convenient place to measure

from but it's the number of wave Peaks that pass a fixed point in a certain amount of time and maybe that fixed point is your ear so let's say there's your ear right there and the

sound wave is entering your ear frequency is the number of waves that enter your ear in a certain amount of time usually measured in cycles per

second or in units called Hertz now at one moment we're hearing this low pitch note like this and we see a sound wave that looks like this

now the next moment let's say I play a high pitch note up here on the keyboard that's a high pitch note isn't it we look back at the oscilloscope again and we see a sound wave going by that looks like this

now obviously these wave Peaks are much closer together than these are looks like it's somewhere in the vicinity of about ten to one here now so what that means is a lot more of these sound waves

are going to bump into your eardrum in a second than these are up here so this would be considered low frequency and this is high frequency

and low frequency means low pitch and high frequency means high pitch so it's all about how far apart the waves are from one another that determines the

frequency of the sound well as we said really you know we keep calling the guitar the dumb machine and we're going to be covering how it works in the next lesson but you know now it's time for us to actually understand what

kind of a machine it is a a musical instrument is nothing more than a sound wave generator and and all it meant to do is is generate these sound waves not only that it generates sound waves a

very precise and controllable frequencies but how does it do that well different instruments do it in different ways but you're here to learn about the guitar which is a stringed instrument

what that means is you've got a piece of wire stretched between two points and what you do is you pluck that wire and you cause it to vibrate back and forth

like that those are the vibrations of the string well string goes back and forth is what puts the wave Peaks where they are so the

speed of the vibration of the string is what controls the frequency if that string is wobbling back and forth fairly slowly it tends to send out waves that

are further apart but if that string is vibrating back and forth at a million miles an hour it sends out waves that are closer together like that so for our basic lay purposes just to understand

how the Guitar Works pitch is about frequency which is all about the speed of vibration of the string it's the

speed of the vibration of the string that determines the frequency of the note but what we said was you can actually control the frequency you can control

the pitch you can control the vibrating speed of the string on a guitar how do you do that well we humans control the speed of vibration in stringed instruments using three different

factors the first factor is the mass of the string that's why if you look at your guitar strings they aren't all the same thickness are they if you've put your

strings on properly which is very important um you you'll notice that the uh the low pitch strings are thicker than the high pitched strings are so therefore they're going to vibrate slower and send out

waves that are further apart that's so when you put your strings on your guitar you got to make sure you put them on in the right order and there's stuff to know about string gauge and stuff like that we can't go into that right now now that's Factor number one what's the

second factor that we use to control the vibrating speed of the string it is the tension that you stretch the string too

so that's why you've got your tuning machines on your guitar up there these are these things that you tighten and loosen the strings with and that's what tuning the guitar is all about

just a quick word about tuning too if I haven't mentioned this before the best way and really the only way that you're going to want to think about tuning your guitar is get yourself an electronic

tuner and my recommendation is get yourself an electronic Chromatic tuner an autochromatic tuner and uh we'll be talking about this later in the program but that's really the only way that

you're going to want to try to tune your guitar tuning the guitar by ear is just too difficult for beginners and you will waste too much time and and and not get the result you want anyway so get

yourself an electronic Chromatic tuner and be done with it right there so that's what tuning is that's the second way that we adjust the vibrating speed of the string is by tightening or loosening them to certain shall we say

culturally agreed upon pre-prescribed vibrating speeds and that's what tuning your instrument is but really it's Factor number three down here that's really the big one when it comes to

actually playing songs on your instrument the Third Way That We manipulate the vibrating speed of the string is by controlling the length of the string and people go huh wait a

minute how does that work well I'll show you on my guitar here um it's Moment by moment it's the length of the string how do you actually play

different notes on a guitar well what you do is you move your fingers around on the neck of the guitar on these things called frets

[Music] I'm moving my fingers around up here what am I doing when I do that well I'm

changing the length of the string if I pluck my low E string here with none of my fingers on the neck at all it's vibrating along its entire length from where it connects to the instrument up here to where it connects to the

instrument down here at the bridge it's vibrating along its entire length but if I were to put my finger say here on the neck of the guitar I'm forcing the string against that piece of wire right there that's called

a fret right there as you probably already know I'm forcing the string against that piece of wire and I'm stopping the vibration of the string at that point so that means this part of the string up here isn't doing anything

anymore I've shortened the length of the string it's no longer this long it's only this long and the further I move my hand up the neck the shorter I'm making

the string well the shorter the string is the faster it vibrates the closer together that the waves are that it sends out and we humans have this

experience of the pitch getting higher see I just am continually making the string shorter and shorter and therefore the pitch is getting higher and higher that's how you actually manipulate pitch

to actually play songs on your instrument so the three factors involved in controlling pitch on stringed instruments is the thickness of the

string how tightly they're stretched but most notably the length of the string and that's what fretting is so when you're moving your fingers around on your Frets okay that's basically all that you have to know about the science

of pitch in order to understand how your Guitar Works the next big question that we're going to ask ourselves is a huge question I love to get people to understand this question so many people

have misconceptions about this if you don't understand about this you don't really you're not going to get anything really about music I know they explain this different ways different places but you got to trust me this is really

particularly as you go through this program you're going to see this is where you're really going to see how pitch Works in music so this is our first we just talked about the science

of pitch this is our first big thing on the actual Aesthetics of pitch and Aesthetics what does that mean that's that's the Artful usage of something it's about how we use something in an art form um

so this is the first real aesthetic question about how pitch Works how we use these pitches in the art form that we call music and it goes like this you know that music is a language right

and like any language music has an alphabet and long before they can teach you how to use anything in in a language at all they have to teach you how the alphabet works and the first thing that you need to understand about that

alphabet is how many basic units there are in it for example you know that in the English language you have an alphabet that consists of 26 units and to form all these different words and

sentences and stuff like that you select units out of that 26 unit alphabet and you arrange them in different patterns what do we call these patterns we call them words and you know that all the thousands and thousands of words that

you know in the English language are all created out of this same basic 26 unit English alphabet well the same thing is going on in music music is a language and it has an alphabet as well and we

would like to know how many units it has in it and the reason for that is is all the music you've ever heard from Bach to The Beatles to Bush and Back Again including don't tell let anybody tell

you that like Indian Muse music or African music or Chinese music is like really that different from ours yes it is different yes it has some significant differences but the truth of the matter

is the similar similarities far far outweigh the differences and so essentially all the music you've ever heard is constructed out of this same basic alphabet in music and you first

question that you need to understand is how many units are there in that alphabet or in other words how many basic notes are there

so many notes now you know that they repeat again in different octaves we'll be talking about what that means too but in the musical alphabet how many basic units are there take a moment even if

you want to pause the machine even for a moment and think about it and I'll give you the answer well let me tell you let me start by telling you the most common wrong answers by far the most common wrong

answer is eight and I go wrong and they go wrong what do you mean aren't there eight notes in music you know they taught us that pattern back in kindergarten didn't they give us that idea that everything was made out of

those eight notes well the first problem with that is we repeated doe twice we began with dough and we ended with dough so we we repeated one of their notes so can't be eight second most common answer

then is people go well then okay seven and I go wrong and they go wrong what do you mean a b c d e f g

seven nobody's heard of an H or an i or a j or a k no it's it always seems to just go up to G's a b c d e f g seven what's wrong with that well I go the

problem with that is a through G those are just the white keys on the piano what about the Black Keys up here and people go well those are the sharps and flats right and I go yeah and they go

well I was kind of given the impression that the sharps and flats are somehow different than the white keys on the piano and I go I know why you think that because that's kind of the dumb way they usually try to teach music but in the end nothing could be further from the

truth you're going to find out that the Black Keys are just as common just as important and do not reflect any different kind of phenomenon than the white keys do people go but wait a minute that's a and

that's a sharp right there isn't a like the real node and a sharp is like the some weird modification of that and I go no actually nothing could be further from the truth and the only thing that ever made us think there was some kind

of hierarchy there is a kind of a strange system that they created over the centuries to assign names to these notes but in the end they just decided to call that a and they just decided to call it a sharp by the way people go

well then why did they color code it like that why if all the notes are equally important why didn't they just make them all the same color where did this black and white color coding system come from and I go it really doesn't

have much to do cosmically with music it really just has more to do with human visual perception I can look I can practically look at the ceiling and go okay I'm going to play an A and I swivel around and I can go right to that note

like immediately because I have memorized that for example a is just to the right of Center in the group of three black keys so really it's just a convenience for your eye to see where you are and it's left everybody with

this impression that The Black Keys are different than the white keys and they aren't um and some people go but wait a minute I took piano lessons for a while and and all we ever did was play the white keys and my question then to people is well

how long did you take piano lessons for and they go ah a couple of weeks couple of months a year or so I go we'll see that's it if you'd stuck with it longer gradually they would have just uh included more and more of the Black Keys

until you just found out that that you use the Black Keys just as much of the white keys now I know you're here to create guitar lessons here I am showing you the keyboard again but remember remember this does exactly basically exactly the same thing that your guitar

does and sometimes it's just easier to see music theories on the keyboard and then we're going to translate them as we go uh into uh onto the guitar

so what is the answer how many notes are there in the system of pitch that we use in the western world uh to play music well the answer is seven white keys and five Black Keys there's a group of Two

and a group of three before they begin to repeat seven white keys five Black Keys the answer is twelve there is 12 notes in our pitch system

and that's going to come as a surprise to a lot of you but trust me you got to believe what I'm talking about and you want to think of this as your alphabet in the language of music

you will never really understand music at least in any kind of modern context at all if you don't look at music that way it's a language it has an alphabet and that alphabet has 12 units in it and

then all we do is Select units out of that alphabet and form them into different patterns and type them if you will on our typewriter over here remember our analogy of music is a language then a guitar is just something

like a typewriter and that's what all your various finger patterns are about and so in the English language if we selected those units and put them in patterns we would call those patterns words wouldn't we and remember there's

all different types of words there's nouns and verbs and adjectives and pronouns and prepositions and all this kind of stuff like this well in music we have our 12 unit alphabet we select units out of it and form them into

patterns but we don't call them words we call them things like chords and scales and Melody and Harmony and stuff like that and that's what so much of this program is going to be about is learning

how to create these patterns and I might have said last week that there's about 50 basic patterns 50 different words in the musical language that you have to understand something about and that's what this most of this whole program is

all about so there you go huge things about Pitch the physics of pitch and the first aesthetic question how does it work as an art form you have 12 notes in your

alphabet okay now this stuff that we're going to cover right now I always say I think this is the most important stuff that you're ever going to learn from anybody on the subject of Music in some

ways this is the most important part of this entire program what we're going to talk about now and once again it's about Pitch

and what do we know about Pitch so far well we know for example that we have 12 notes and we're going to kind of think of this

as our alphabet in the language of music and over the next few hours I've got to teach you how

to form like 50 different patterns out of these uh out of this 12 note alphabet and these patterns are very much kind of like the words

in the language and they have Spellings out of this 12 unit alphabet as I mentioned before when you're moving your fingers around on your guitar you're typing these words

out of this 12 known alphabet down there so you've got to learn these 50 patterns just to control any language you got to have a vocabulary in the language you've got to learn these 50 different patterns

if you're interested in how these 50 break down by the way I didn't quite Leave myself enough room to write this up here here it is here's how the number 50 breaks down there are three big

categories of intervals that you have to know about chords which I'm sure you've heard about scales which I'm sure you've heard about and intervals interestingly enough is the third one a lot of people haven't heard of those which is kind of

strange again because if you don't understand intervals you'll never really understand scales and chords um and the number 50 breaks down something like this you have 13 different intervals that you have to learn

14 different scales that you have to learn and somewhere in the vicinity of about 20 different chords that you have to learn to play popular music remember that's the promise I make everyone around here we're not going to stuff your head with full of a bunch of dumb

junk that you don't need to know this is just about pop music about that's what most of you are interested in if you wanted to play classical music or Jazz the more complex styles of music you would have to know all this stuff

anywhere anyway but for example then that number 50 I'd say about have to Triple that to play any style of music you you have to know about 150 different patterns but and we're going to look at

a lot of those just basically but there is a core group of these 50 different patterns that you have to know in order to get yourself started in order to understand basic popular music so you've got to learn these 50

different patterns but and here's the big stuff coming right now one thing you've got to understand is each one of these patterns exists like simultaneously in like four different

dimensions each one of these patterns has four different aspects four different faces and you need to learn to recognize it no matter which of its four faces it shows you

um so what I always say is there are four ways to know each pitch pattern and this is a hugely

misunderstood thing in music but this will if you understand this this will set the tone for the whole rest of your musical career this in a sense is all

you have to do you've got to learn these 50 different patterns and you have to learn each one four different ways you want to know the really cool thing about this is once again this is not weird

abstract alien information that you don't know anything about because I'm going to suggest that you know every single one of your patterns in the English language the same four ways this

is not just specific to music this is how you use your words in any language and if you look at it that way this will help you understand music because you can look at music exactly the way you

look at any any language you speak and mostly we're talking about English here aren't we um um you know every word in the English language these same four ways and if you visualize it that way it'll help you

kind of understand how music works and and you'll be able to really just zip through this stuff and really understand what I'm talking about now most of our friends only know their patterns like one way which I'm going to suggest is

kind of like completely a dead end and if they know their patterns at all it's usually this way down here number four but we're going to start up at the top here this is kind of the linchpin uh all the other ones will start to work if you

basically understand this one up here and here we go this might be the most important stuff you ever learn about music you have to know each pattern four ways think of any word you know in the English language and I'm going to

suggest that the first way that you know any word in any language is you have it in your mind you are able to think

in the language isn't that true the only way that I'm able to speak to you right now is because I already have all these words in my mind right these words aren't just flying out of my mouth

I'm constructing these sentences in my head and then I am speaking them you have to have the language in your mind first before you can do anything with it right now in a musical context let's say

this then the first way you have to know your chords and your scales and your intervals is you have to have them in your mind remember my great quote is you don't play the guitar with your fingers you play it with your head you play it

with your mind the finger stuff is just the typing stuff so the first way that you need to understand your pitch patterns is you need to understand them

as Concepts that's the first way you have to be able to think in the language you have to know your pitch patterns as Concepts this is the whole world of

Music Theory now this is a word that strikes Terror in a lot of people's hearts they've tried to take music theory classes at school they've tried to read books and

they oh my God this stuff is really confusing and complicated and it just isn't it's just music as you're going to hear me say is the worst taught subject of all times are you having any trouble understanding what I'm saying so far in

lesson number one and in this lesson I hope not if you're not then you're probably not going to have any problem with any of this it doesn't get any harder than this it's just usually they explain music in the wrong order that's I think what I've figured out and

hopefully I'm giving it to you in the right order now nonetheless a lot of people try to avoid learning their music theory because this is the part that's a little bit like school you know and I

mean you're gonna have to spend some time and it's not necessarily going to be the most fun part of your career you're going to have to spend some time and you're gonna have to memorize some

stuff that's very much like spelling and vocabulary and stuff like that people go oh no am I really going to have to do this and the answer is yes if

you want to satisfy yourself you're just going to have to do a little bit of work remember it's only 50 lousy words the alphabet only has 12 units in it what's the big deal you know what I mean if you just resign yourself to doing a little

bit of school type work the benefits will be there now long before they could teach you any words in a language they have to make sure that you know the alphabet so the first thing that you've

got to do in any language is you have to make sure that you know the alphabet so let's check in with that for a moment

you know now that the musical alphabet has 12 units in it what are those units called a lot of you probably have a lot of kind of confusion about that too

let's get that nailed down once and for all now here's 13 little boxes that I made up along the top here you're going to see now you know there's 12 notes you'll see in a moment why I made 13 boxes we humans have come up with

several different sensor systems over the centuries to assign names to these 12 units in our pitch system we're going to talk about several of these as we go on but the only one we're going to talk about for today is the one that you

probably know a little bit about already it's Loosely based on the English language um you know each of the 26 units in the English alphabet has a name right and as

you know the first unit in the English alphabet is a and so it is in the musical alphabet as well now if we can look up over here at

this other end what's the name of this 13th note up here remember there's 12 units but this is the 13th note this is also a that's where it starts over again at

that point you know there's more than 12 keys on a piano you're going to find out the guitar plays more than 12 notes remember these 12 notes repeat in different octaves and and what do you call this

distance between one note that has a particular Alphabet letter like a and and then you jump over the other 11 notes and you land on the 13th note up here that has the same Alphabet letter as the one you started on what is that

distance called that is what is called an octave you've heard that word before but you might not have exactly known what it is an octave is a particular interval by

the way it's the distance between the first node and the 13th note up there it's uh from one a to the next or from One D to the next higher D than that that's what we know is an octave now let

me ask you this what's the name of the very next note higher in Pitch than a it's not B interestingly enough B is actually right here

there's another note in between a and b and one way we can see that is by looking up here at the piano keyboard here's a on a piano keyboard and a is always the note that is just to the

right of Center in the group of three Black Keys there's the three black keys right there and you'll notice just to the right of Center is a right there

well here's B right here but notice in between A and B is one of these Black Keys this is one of those sharp and flat notes

um now do you know what the words sharp and flat mean a lot of people are confused about this it's very very simple what do the words sharp and flattening they're just very old words

they evolved in some other culture I really don't know where they came from they don't mean the same things to us that they mean that they meant to the culture they originally evolved in they

are simply I kind of compare them to like port and starboard on a boat you know these are old words that sailors use to talk about left and right you know port and starboard you know what I'm talking about they don't mean the

same thing to us anymore well the words sharp and flat are just like that in the musical language um they just tell you what direction to go in now what directions do you go in in

Pitch up and down right high and low up and down that's all these two words mean

sharp which has a symbol like a pound sign which you've seen before simply means higher in Pitch that's all it means a lot of people think it has some

magical meaning it doesn't a sharp just means higher in pitch and flat which has a symbol like a lowercase b

like that simply means lower in Pitch so if we can take a look back up here again here's a in our musical alphabet and here's B these were both white keys

on the piano in between there was this black key in between A and B there was this black key up there what's the name of that note well sometimes it's more convenient to think of that as the next

note higher than a so we call it a sharp but what a lot of people don't understand is in an equal number of contexts it's more convenient to think of that as the next note lower than b so

we call it B flat a sharp and B flat are exactly the same note for all intents and purposes there are some tiny little times that you're going to find out about later on where

that's not strictly true but this is the way you want to look at it for now a sharp and B flat are two names for the same note and when do you call it a sharp and when do you call it B flat I'll tell you about that later on

um uh we don't have time to talk about that right now for now it doesn't matter what you call it just remember that a sharp and B flat are the same note um now it gets even stranger here's B

right what's the name of the next note higher than b and people go well based on that wouldn't it be like B sharp or C flat and I go you would think so wouldn't you but interestingly enough it

doesn't work that way again look at the piano keyboard up here here's a here's a sharp B flat here's B look what happens next there's two white keys in a row

there is no black key in between B and the next note so interestingly enough the very next note higher in Pitch than

b is C there is no sharp and flat note in between B and C people go wow this is weird I go well yeah a little bit it's going to take a little bit of getting

used to uh some of you have tried to learn about this stuff before and didn't quite see how it works and you're confused um hopefully I'm showing you this in a way that you just won't be confused about it and anymore another thing to

understand is you know what this means as musical pitches A and B are not the same distance apart that B and C are B and C are only half as far apart As A

and B are remember each all of the notes in our 12 note pitch system are all the same distance apart from the ones on either side of them it's an interval by

the way called a half step you might have heard of that before a half step is when you go from one note say to the note right next to it it doesn't matter

what color they are on a piano or what they're called that's always a half step B and C are only a half step apart in Pitch But A and B are what's called a

whole step apart half steps and whole steps these are other examples of intervals and we're going to be talking about those intervals later on when we study the subject of intervals not all

of the whole alphabet letter notes in the musical alphabet are the same distance apart and I've had people that have been confused about that for years B and C are only half as far apart As A

and B are now what's the name of the next note higher than C well here's C on the piano right here we do have a black key after that what's the name of that note well it's a little bit higher than

C so we call it C sharp but it's a little bit lower than d by the way which is your next node up there that's our next white key right there there's C and there's D in between is this note it's got two names sometimes

it's better to think of it as the next note higher than C that's C sharp other times it's better to think of it as d flat C sharp and d flat are the same note now

what's the next note after that after d we have another black key that of course would be D sharp or E flat now after D sharp E flat we have another

white key that's e remember this is just going along right in alphabetical order isn't it now now it gets interesting again here's e on the piano but look what happens next there is a second

place on the piano where there's no black key in between two white keys the very next note higher than e is actually F and remember all of this stuff is going on on your guitar neck too I know

we're looking at the piano and you want to take guitar lessons but this is so much more linear to understand the concepts in music we best look at it at the uh on the keyboard first and next week we're going to be talking about how

the guitar actually uh plays these 12 notes after F there is another black key that would be of course F sharp or g flat two names for the same note after

that black key there's another white key that of course would be G and then finally we have one more black key right there the middle black key and

the group of three would be G sharp or a flat and there it is that's your 12th note right there and then you find yourself right back on a again

and that's an octave higher than this other a down here that we originally started on down there they're in the same place just to the right of Center in the group of three

Black Keys and how many notes are in between one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve and then the 13th note and then you can go another octave in those alphabet letters

and Sharps and flats would just go again up into another octave like that and higher and lower than that we're going to be talking about all this stuff more as we go on so there is your musical alphabet there you've got to make sure

once and for all you get this down they are 12 notes and they're all a half step apart from one another as you go through them in a sequence they're always a half

step apart b and c and e and f are not the same distance apart that for example f and g and G and a are those are whole steps G and a are a whole step apart because you've got that other note in

between but E and F and B and C are only a half step apart you've got to memorize your musical alphabet the best way to do that I guess at least initially would be to uh to to remember that they all have

Sharps and flats in between them except b and c and e and f so you sit there and you go b c e f b c e f b c e f do that a few times those are the places where

there's no Sharps and flats you'll have your whole musical alphabet down so there remember now what we're talking about is the four ways to know your pitch patterns and the first way you have to know any word in any language is

you have to have it in your head you've got to be able to think in the language you've got to understand your pitch patterns as Concepts that's the whole music theory stuff and in order to do that you got to make sure you know the

alphabet first now doesn't that make sense and and a lot of this program we're going to be talking about music theory don't worry about it it's fascinating music theory is fascinating if it's presented the right way it's not

the least bit boring remember there's four ways to know each pitch pattern though and that's only the first way the first way you have to know any word in any languages you have to be able to think it right now let's go on to number

two what's the second way that you need to know any word in any language well the answer is you have to be able to recognize it when you see it represented

by graphic symbols on a piece of paper in other words the second way that you have to know any word in any language is you have to be able to read it you have

to be able to read in the language you know now not everybody knows how to read in the English language do they but it's an awfully tough way to conduct yourself in society if you don't know

how to read some people can do it but it's certainly not the best way to go about it um in any language you've got to know how to read so if we put this in a musical context the second way you need

to know your scales and your chords and all your pitch patterns and stuff is you need to understand them as notation you might also recall that notation is one of the six main areas of Music isn't

it that we talked about last week um Pitch Rhythm camber Dynamics technique and notation you've got to know on some level how to read music how are you going to learn those uh uh songs

you want to play from the song book if you don't know at least something about how to read music now later on in the program I believe it's lessons nine and ten we're going to be showing you about learning how about reading music there

are several different styles of notation that we use for the guitar there's standard notation which many of you have come across before if you've taken other music lessons you also know something

about tablature some of you uh who have already played for a while and stuff like that also those there's those little chord boxes and things like that that you know that you've seen where they put the little dots you know there

to show you where to actually put your fingers many of you have seen these different styles of notation so um we are not going to really talk about reading music in this particular thing because I've got I got so little time

here and we've got to go on to number three here because this is actually the big one but on some level you may know that a lot of rock and roll players do not know how to read standard notation on the guitar uh and so we're not going

to force you to learn how to read standard notation in this program but certainly if you ever want to be one of the world's great guitar players if you want to play jazz or classical music you've got to learn how to read standard

notation for the rest of us maybe uh tablature might be good enough um and and and and we'll be putting that more in perspective later on but anyway the second way that you need to know any

word in any languages you have to recognize it when you see it on paper you have to be able to read at least on some level in the language now on to

number three down here this is the big one and this I swear I think this is the most important stuff you're ever going to learn from anybody on the subject of music right here I hope they carved this

on my Tombstone if I can get people to understand this I feel like I've done my job you got to think in the language you got to read in the language but isn't it true wouldn't you say that the most

important way that you know any word in any language is you recognize it when you hear it you know what it sounds like third and probably most importantly you

need to be able to hear in the language you need to be able to recognize what your different words sound like

you can do exactly the same thing in music the third way I mean music is an audio art form isn't it isn't the most important thing about it how it sounds

you know what I mean so we put this in a musical context the third way that you need to know your chords and your scales and your intervals is you need to know

what they sound like you need to know them as patterns of real sound this of course is the whole world of

playing by ear and everybody wants to play by ear don't they we all have friends that that claim to play by ear and stuff like that but

what you're going to find out is there's two different ways to play by ear there's a smart way to play by ear and there's a not so smart way to play by ear and most of the people that you've

ever met who play by ear play by ear the not so smart way and and I'll show you what that is you you walk up to the sky and he's playing this Pearl Jam song off the radio and you go wow that's that Pearl Jam song off the radio how did you

learn that and he goes I figured it out by ear and wow we're impressed you figured that out by ear wow but there's a few things that guy isn't telling you first of all he's not telling you how

long it took him to figure it out now for example it might have taken him hours or days or weeks to figure out that Pearl Jam song by ear because the

way a lot of people play by ear is they kind of stumble around kind of trial and error on their instrument some people can actually get to a point where they can do that fairly well and figure out

some reasonably complicated stuff but the way most people's play by ear is they just sort of stumble around on the instrument and hope for the best and might take them hours to figure out Pearl Jam I usually know how to play the

whole song by the time the song's over three minutes five minutes I can figure out a Pearl Jam song might have taken this guy five hours or five days so the first thing that guy's not telling you is how long it took him to figure out by

year the second thing he's not telling you is he tried to figure out 10 other songs this week and he didn't get anywhere with the other ten he's playing you that Pearl Jam song because that's

the only one he had any success with there were 10 other songs that he they were just too hard he couldn't get a grasp he couldn't figure out how they worked and the third thing he's not telling you is there's a list of about

500 other songs that he'd like to be able to play that he'd like to be able to figure out by ear but he wouldn't even try because he just knows he couldn't do it wouldn't he wouldn't even try they're too complicated yeah maybe

he can figure out Pearl Jam but can you figure out more complicated bands like fish or like Dave Matthews or like Steely Dan or like or like Primus or King Crimson

um you know it's easy to figure out certain styles of music but more complex styles of music a lot of people could never begin to play by ear if they play by ear that not so smart way

so how would you like to be able to figure out anything just by listening to it a few times wouldn't that be cool well in order to do that you've got to learn to play by ear the smart way and

that involves this concept right here all real musicians go through a program known as ear

training ear training ever heard of it ever heard of ear training out of a hundred students a year that I have I can generally only

count on about a half a dozen people having ever even heard of ear training yet alone no knowing what it actually is um those are the two most important

words as far as I'm concerned that you're ever going to hear anybody say on the subject of music if you want to be a real musician you've got to get trained ears and what does that mean well what ear training is all about is about

working out with a coach who already knows what these 50 different patterns sound like and you're given clues about what to listen for in order to get to the point where you can recognize what

they actually sound like all of these 50 patterns sound like something and they sound different from the other 49 patterns as surely as the word cat

sounds different than the word dog and with a certain amount of work you can get to the point where you know what all of your 50 patterns sound like and then it's not a matter of stumbling around trying to figure out what that song is

this stuff comes out of the speaker and you're going oh I know that chord oh I know that scale oh I know that riff just like you're learning from me in the English language right now because I'm speaking to you right and you're going

oh I know that word oh I know that word oh I know that word oh I know what this guy's trying to say imagine if you could do the same thing with music you put the disc in hit the play button oh I know

that chord oh I know that and then the only thing finally that you have to know then is you have to know the finger pattern so that you can play that stuff yourself and let's do a quick segue in down here into the fourth way let's get

this one out of the way we're going to come back and talk some more about ear training in a minute but just because of what I just said right there you've got to be able to think in the language you've got to be able to read in the language you've got to be able to hear in the language but finally the last

thing is you have to be able to turn around and you have to be able to make that noise yourself don't you you have to be able to speak in the language and there it is the four ways to know your

pitch patterns think them read them hear them speak them isn't that true you can do that with any word in the English language can't can't you over your course of your music career you've got to get better and better at doing your

pitch patterns that your scales and your chords and everything these same four ways now you're going speak wait a minute I'm a guitar player what's that got to do speak what do you mean well um this is number four down here the fourth

way that you have to know your patterns in any languages you have to be able to speak them now this one's a little abstract let me suggest that whenever you speak in a language you use some

kind of machine like it might be this machine right there that's a machine isn't it and somebody had to teach you how to use that machine or maybe it's a a typewriter like we said before you use the typewriter to speak for you or maybe

you use sign language and you know how to sign you use your hand as the machine to speak with well it's just in music we use one of these kinds of machines to

speak with and particularly since you're here to learn how to play the guitar let me suggest that the way that you learn to make your machine speak for you is

you learn how to manipulate the machine with your fingers the fourth way that you need to know your scales and your chords and everything is you have to know them as finger

patterns and you know that's what an awful lot of people think that's all there is to playing the guitar is learning more and more of these different finger patterns that in many of you that that's the way

that you've been doing it so far you've been buying these chord books and stuff and you've been learning where to put your fingers and all but that's really not where it's where it's at you know what I mean in the language that that's

just like the typing part of the language you know but as we said before the typewriter doesn't write the book does it you write the book with the command of the language in your mind but then yes you've got to know about your

fingers patterns too in order to make your machine speak for you you have a lot of practicing to do you're going to have plenty of exercises and scales and and stuff that you're going to need to learn how to play on your guitar that's

the finger pattern stuff that's speaking in the language but let's go back up here we got to finish up our thoughts on this ear training remember I said this is the two most important words you'll ever hear me say most people have never

even heard of ear training and that's so weird once again because you know like I say there's like real musicians and then there's people that are just kind of like pretend musicians um now I'm not

saying you have to go to music school to be a real musician but it sure as heck doesn't doesn't it doesn't hurt and of course they go to Music School you've got to read and and the other thing that people don't understand is ear training

most of us who have never even heard of ear training ear training is the second required course at Music School and and so funny that most people have never even heard of it ear training is

the second required course at music school right behind music theory everybody seems to understand that they're going to go to music theory class and learn about those alphabet letters and those Sharps and flats and all the conceptual stuff about music what so few people understand is

probably around 11 o'clock your theory course is going to be dismissed and you're going to go down to room 204 and that's going to be the ear training lab and you're going to spend several hours in there with your ear training coach

now get yourself trained ears and here's all the amazing things that will open up for you first of all you will be able to listen learn

that is any song you want to play you'll just be able to listen to it a few times and and you'll figure out how to play it now that's a skill that takes some time to acquire but but if you work at it

you'll be able to do it the second thing you'll be able to do is you'll be able to compose music everybody wants to know how to write songs well the the best way there's there's people who don't really

have trained ears although I shouldn't say that because everybody in this modern era has trained years to a certain degree because the mere Act of listening to music is actually a form of

ear training um but if you ever really want to get to the point that you can uh compose your own music you really have to get your ears trained and we'll be talking about that more as the program

goes on finally the third thing and one of the coolest things that you'll be able to do if you get trained years is you'll be able to improvise [Music] people go really and I go yeah that's

almost completely where improvisation comes from and I'm going to show you that in just a second but before I do let me give you a couple little more examples of how ear training Works um ear training as I said is you work out

with a coach who gives you clues about how to recognize what these different patterns sound like remember I said they all sound different from from one another just like the word cat sounds different than the word dog and I'll give you your first example of that

right of right now so you can see what I'm talking about um you've got these 20 different chords that you have to learn and and you have to learn them four different ways think them read them hear them speak them you gotta learn what they sound like you've

got to recognize them by ear here's your first little ear training clue there's a lot of different types of chords but I'm oversimplifying a bit but they all seem to fall into one category another there's all these old other there's all

these chords over here that are called major chords some of you already know about this and there's these other chords over here that are called minor chords how do you tell by ear the difference between a major chord and a

minor chord there's a lot of subtle things that you listen for more about the various notes that are in them in other words in in other things like that but one really cool thing to realize is that they just sound different and they make you feel differently

here's your first clue for recognizing the difference between major chords and minor chords most people would agree that major chords sound happy and minor chords sound sad

so what am I playing right now can you tell me is this a happy sounding major chord or a sad sounding minor chord take a second [Music]

what do you think now a lot of you are going to have troubles first you're not going to necessarily be able to do this instantly that is a happy sounding major chord listen to it again

now I'm going to turn it into a minor chord and notice how it sounds sad sad sounding minor chord there's the happy sounding major chord here's another one is this a happy sounding major chord or a sad sounding minor

chord what do you think hopefully you said that that's a sad sounding minor chord and you'd be right now here's a major version of the same chord

and happy music generally has more Happy chords in it and um sad music generally has more minor chords in it [Music]

so there you go that's the difference between major chords and minor chords we said there are 20 chords that you have to learn the sounds of you got 18 more to go what's the big

deal some chords sound like fear some chords sound like surprise some chords sound like uh uh ecstasy they sound even beyond happy and and I think that's the way I identify a lot of my chords is

basically by how they make me feel and of course there are a lot of other tricks too ear training is a big process it takes a long time to get your ears trained and we'll be putting that in perspective more as we go on in the

program another whole aspect of ear training is all about singing a good ear training coach makes you sing various patterns and various relationships the

reason being that that the singing of the pattern is the only proof that anyone ever has that uh that that you actually know what these different patterns sound like I'll give you an example of that here's a note on the piano

can you hum that note I can uh foreign [Music] that would prove to my ear training coach that I actually know what that

note sounds like uh some of you are going to have trouble with that you know what I mean you may have to work at that for a little while in your your first couple of hours of your training now what the rest of your training is all about is your your training coach

quizzes you on what different patterns sound like and the only way that he can tell whether you know what they sound like or not is is being able to sing them now for example we were talking a few minutes ago about an octave right

that's when you go from one note in our pitch system up to the next one that has the same Alphabet letter up there well an octave is a pitch pattern that you're going to want to learn the sound of and the only way your ear training coach

will know whether you know what an octave sounds like is if you can sing it now I play this first note here uh and he'll go to me uh okay you know what that note sounds like can you can you

sing the note that is the next octave higher than that and here I go I'll sing the lower one first uh now here's the higher one uh uh

uh now let's see if I'm right [Music] foreign he goes fine okay you know what an octave sounds like let's go work on some other pattern and eventually you work

your way through all your 50 patterns and you convince your your training coach that you know what the stuff sounds like by being able to sing them for you for it and people go oh God that's going to be hard that's going to

be embarrassing I go don't worry about it you know what I mean it's just something you gotta face up to and and ear training once you get in there it's you'll you'll see you'll start to go oh my God this is the whole thing if I

could do this with music I can do anything I want I can figure out songs by listening to them I can write my own music and the last thing I want to show you about today is about improvising

this is huge a lot of you are interested in styles of music like blues and jazz and rock and these styles of music all involve an element of improvisation you

uh some I'm surprised about how many people don't know that but particularly in styles of popular music like Blues you know when that guy gets up there and plays that guitar solo in the middle of the song You Know oh right that that he

doesn't play it the same way every night he plays it differently each night and that is one of the most fun things I know a lot of you already know about this and want to be able to improvise this is what jamming is all about you go

over to your friend's house and and you're you're making up the music right on the spot that's what improvising is all about how do you improvise you improvise by having trained ears a lot of people don't understand that they think that

learning to improvise has to do with learning more and more finger patterns and learning more and more music theory and it's true both of those things are important but it's not really where the

improvisation really comes from the improvisation comes from having trained ears and one and you know that singing thing I was talking about believe it or not a lot of you are going to have a lot of trouble believing what I'm saying

right now but I'm going to play you an example in just a second um my great quote is you are never going to play a better guitar solo than you can sing

and people go huh what the heck nobody's ever said anything like this to me before that's because I'm telling you the truth and I'll show you what I mean um I'm going to play you a little bit of a tune that I wrote right here

um this is a piece I wrote so it's kind of a funky Jazzy kind of tune and um uh so you'll see a little bit of my ability to compose this is just a little practice tape I have and over the top of

that I'm going to improvise and I think you'll think it's pretty good and then I'm going to show you where that improvisation came from ready here we go it's like kind of you'll like this I think kind of a funky Rocky Jazzy bluesy

thing let's see how I do [Music]

all right [Music] thank you [Music]

[Music] [Music] pretty good huh I'm a little old this is a little early in the morning for me but wouldn't you like to be able to

improvise at least that well maybe you'd like to be able to improvise better than that now a lot of people think oh you did that because you learned more and more finger patterns and stuff like that but that's not where it came from you want to know where that solo came from

it came from my mind and I'll prove it you'll never play a guitar solo better than you can sing you want to hear where that solo really came from came from right here now it's just that most people would

rather listen to the guitar than my crappy voice so all I do is I know where to put my fingers in order to create the notes that I hear in my head so here's the whole solo together

[Music] see it's all ear training the two most important words you'll ever hear me say we have so much more to talk about all that stuff I I can't believe I even managed to get this in in an hour but

they're showing me that we're out of time for now hopefully you got it it's all in your support material too so we'll see all you guys next week okay and we'll talk more about this stuff have fun bye bye

[Music] [Music]

thank you [Music]