Daily guitar and musicianship practice ideas, part 1 (of 4)

Diatonic harmony from the perspective of a songwriter

Firstly I want to give some overall context to this four-part article, and also a summary of what to expect in each of the four parts.

My aim is to provide a glimpse into what and how I practice guitar daily. It’s not intended as a structured guitar practice course, aimed at some particular level.

More or less I’d describe myself as an experienced singer-songwriter, with many years of experience in recording and playing live. I’m quite a good guitar player and all-round musician. I’m not super-talented, or uber-accomplished, and for that reason, I still practice the basics, a lot! I do have a university bachelor’s degree in music, so, by default, I had to study music theory in depth (it was an obligatory requirement). I was a recording engineer and served a several-year apprenticeship to become one. And I was signed as a jobbing songwriter to a major music publishing company. I’ve been in several bands. Why I am highlighting all of this? Well, just to underscore that my guitar practice/musicianship regime comes from many years of experience, and is principally aimed at keeping me engaged and in shape for my craft — songwriting, and performing songs. It’s not aimed at becoming a virtuoso guitarist or perfecting a particular guitar style. It’s about understanding and actually using the fundamental musical building blocks needed to create the musical element of a song.

I’m certain that if anyone wants to zoom in, analyse, hone, and perfect ANY specific element of guitar playing, then there will be an easily available video about it on YouTube, made by a far more skilful guitarist than I! The same goes for guitar courses, aimed at all levels and styles, they are out there, and easily available. The quality of these ranges from sheer brilliance to utter snake-oil bollocks.

My aim here is not to go into masses of fine detail. I intend to provide a framework, that anyone interested (and who already has quite a firm grasp on music theory and can at least fluently play basic guitar chords) can use to then go off and do the necessary research and digging to get to the exact fine detail that they individually need to improve in the direction they want. I personally don’t believe in shortcuts with this stuff. I don’t believe you can pay your $100 subscription to some guitar guru online who claims they have a quick simple secret system that means you don’t need to learn theory and scales, and that you’ll be the next Eddie Van Halen within a week or two. I think you have to do the work (unless you are simply a naturally super-gifted musician, and they exist). I’m willing to be proven wrong about this, however, so far no one has shown me a system that made me think ‘Why did I waste all those years studying?’ Also, my experience is that the biographies of all great guitar players and songwriters show that at some point they put in the slog, they put in thousands of hours of practice. You have to do the hard work, and you have to keep doing it.

---

As stated this article will be in four parts.

• Part one will cover diatonic harmony from the perspective of a songwriter, in particular, the different types of chords that diatonic harmony generates, and the different approaches to improvising over these chords. Being able to theoretically understand, and then to be able to actually play around with improvisational ideas over chord progressions is the wellspring of all melodic ideas — of great riffs, catchy hooks, and blinding solos. For a songwriter, it’s the bedrock.

• Part two will cover how to approach learning and practising scales and modes, in particular pitch intervals, ear training, and singing these scales as you play them. Learning to play different scales and modes in different ways (for example in different positions or on a single string), whilst singing them in different ways (for example by note name or by interval name) eventually creates an instantly accessible internalised guitar fretboard matrix, which allows you to be able to play what you’re hearing. It also helps develop and train your musical ear (so what you’re hearing is actually musically reliable), and trains you to be able to accurately sing what you hear, and when you sing it to be able to play it at the same time.

• Part three will focus on the topic of a deeper understanding of guitar chords, in particular chord-spelling, arpeggios, double-stops, basic triads, basic tetrads, inversions, suspended chords, diminished chords, augmented chords, extended chords, and how to play all of these all over the fretboard. This will include a glimpse into different ways to approach understanding guitar chords (for example the so-called CAGED system) and the basic principle behind chord substitution.

• Part four will cover chord progressions and ways to approach improvisation, in particular, understanding and using chord numbering systems (to keep track of where you are within a key centre), and how to begin to develop a musical vocabulary with which to be able to improvise, and, equally importantly, to be able to communicate ideas to other musicians with. This will begin with the importance of being aware of musical key centres whilst improvising, and include the basics of how to embellish rhythm guitar parts (to make them more interesting), through to micro-planning a guitar solo (phrase-by-phrase) over a particular chord sequence, all the way to the adrenalin-rush of live unrehearsed freestyle improvisation. In this final part of the article, I’ll also briefly go into the equipment and situations that I use for guitar practice, including using a looper pedal, using metronomes and drum machines/loops to hone timing and rhythm, playing over pre-recorded ideas, practice amps, and apps, going to local open improvisation sessions, and open mics, and, finally, how to go about practising specific songs for a specific event/pending show.

In all four parts of this article, I’ll also provide relevant links to some of my favourite songwriters, online music teachers, and the real guitar gurus, not the snake oil brigade!

---

Generally, I try to do at least an hour of guitar/musicianship practice a day. Sometimes I just practice one thing from everything I’ve listed above. Sometimes I practice five minutes of several different things, at different times of the day. It just depends on what’s going on, how I feel on the day, where my focus takes me, and what I’m trying to specifically improve at that time. More or less my practice is focused on understanding and internalising everything I’ve listed above, and then being able to use it all on-demand in real-life musical situations. For me developing this musical vocabulary is an ongoing process, a never-completed endeavor… there’s always something I need to improve, or that I realise that I still don’t fully understand… Ultimately it’s all about taking all of this acquired theory, and hours of practice, and actually using it creatively and expressively — without thinking too much about it, and without it becoming a barrier or a limitation. I think that this is probably the over-arching aim of most active musicians — to be able to really musically express how they feel, or how they interpret a musical idea, or clearly communicate with another musician, or to make you, the audience, feel how they want you to feel, or a combination of all of these. The ultimate goal is to really be able to communicate music musically.

---

Part one (of four)

Diatonic Harmony from the Perspective of a Songwriter

In particular, the eight different types of basic chords that diatonic harmony generates, and the different approaches to improvising over these chords.

Being able to theoretically understand, and then to be able to actually play around with improvisational ideas over chord progressions is the wellspring of all melodic ideas — of great riffs, catchy hooks, and blinding solos. For a songwriter it’s bedrock.

!! Quick heads-up — this is the only part of this article that is not totally focused on guitar, but is 100% focused on the fundamental basics of music theory. It’s NOT intended as an in-depth music theory or music history lecture/diatribe from the ground up. What follows is a whirlwind tour of the main chords derived from the modern diatonic heptatonic-scale system. It sets out to demonstrate why and how these chords can be grouped into coherent chord progressions, and then how using diatonic harmony, melodic improvisation can be approached in different ways.

This whirlwind tour pre-supposes quite a strong grounding in modern Western music theory and the principles behind diatonic harmony, for example, the Circle of Fifths, sharp and flat keys, basic key relationships (e.g. adjacent keys, relative keys, parallel keys), key modulation (maybe using pivot chords or secondary dominant chords) etc etc.

Seventh chords in the key of C Major.

---