In this episode of Shredding with the Alien, guitar legend Joe Satriani shares his thoughts on blurring the lines between major and minor. Go here for the TAB from this lesson:www.guitarworld.com/joe-satria...
Don't know your age but at mine, 52, I'm still amazed of the power of the Internet even after all these years of RU-vid. So saying "I'm taking lessons from Satriani", Is a true miracle for me. I feel great joy.
I hope someday I will break the barrier of just being good and become great. My understanding of music isn't quite where it needs to be yet. I'm sure others feel the same way I do.
+TheSamuraiApocalypse I'm the same as you in that regard. I try every single day to get better at something about the guitar, whether it's learning to play the scales I know in different places all over the neck, spotting the different inversions of basic arpeggios, my rhythm playing, or just learning some cool new lick ideas. The only thing that gets me about Satch a lot of times is that, despite how much theory he knows and how much he studied when he was younger, his influences tend to be guys that were/are great, self-taught and probably didn't/don't think much about theory at all. I'm sure that The Lydian Mode never even crossed Van Halen's, Jimi Hendrix or Billy Gibbons' minds.
+TheSamuraiApocalypse Sometimes you just have to put the guitar down and read a lot of music theory books. I read the idiots guide to music theory, then read tons of Wikipedia and borrowed my friends college jazz music theory book and read a pocket sized music theory book. I also read a book on music theory written for guitarists.
There's a guy named Desi Serna who writes some good guitar books. They're helped me out a lot in the last year. He knows how to take some pretty complicated subjects and write about them in plain English.
He speaks in a way that makes you understand his thinking behind note choices, even if your understanding of music prohibits you from being able to reach those conclusions on your own. I haven't watched many tutorial videos of his yet, but I can tell he is an excellent teacher.
If I could take lessons from one guitar player on the entire planet, it would be Joe. I have loved him since I was a kid. I have been following this guy before there was an internet and I would buy his books and read every word he wrote about each song. Keep rockin, Joe and thanks for all the lessons. Hope to one day meet you in person, I feel like I already know you though lol.
Great lesson, now is amazing to see how the guitar responds to Joe's desires, with the noise examples. I tried but my guitar is not that obedient. lol great video thanks.
The hair joke was pretty funny because on your early albums you had the super long hair thing going. It's nice to hear a rock star with such a humble and refreshingly good sense of humor!
That tune at the end is great, its like his classic stuff, If he can still write stuff that melodic he should, even if he hasn't got the hair for it anymore. I like that it's a more structured melody than some of his newer stuff which seems more improvised and like it was written in a meditation or like hes really pulling every interesting note out of every melody all the time.... some of his newer stuff just feels a bit too drawn out in the melody compared to his earlier stuff.
Joe was on Headbangers Ball and gave a lesson. The lesson was "The Funnier Face You Make, the Better Guitar Player You Are." It can be found here on youtube.
Yes! Just the question that's been on my musical mind - thank you for answering it Master Satch :DHe says: "if you're hanging out with me or Steve Vai..." and I'm sitting here wishing so much I could be (**,)
Joe knows the answer to this question but gives us the Satchel answer instead. Ok, the only two things that help here are the comments about playing a major or minor 3rd and rock noise when appropriate. In my limited knowledge, I do have a few fairly simple ways to view this. Try thinking major scale and then alter it to fit the music. Do you want a dark or bright feel to the melody? Dark is typically minor 3rd and bright is major 3rd. You can also play inside the chord changes which should have you jumping between major and minor feels. To blur the lines though, I think your ear is your best guide. Country guitar is full this blurring with chromatics tossed in for added spice.
+Disco Tex haha here is some of my thoughts...one example in blues is blues scale played over all dominant 7 chords has minor 3rd in the melody and major 3rd in the harmony which gives blues music one of its characteristic sounds. In generally all of music, its acceptable to have chords borrowed from the parallel scale. Like if you're playing over C major chord progressions but it has a few minor 4 chords which is F minor instead of F major, you can play notes of C minor over that F minor chord that fit well because F minor is from the C minor key.
In Joe's example at the end the root note of the second chord is the minor third of the first chord, the first chord however was major. So in this case playing a major third of the first chord works with the first chord and a minor third of the first chord works with the second chord. I think he left that for us to descover.
It’s interesting that I went to the Satriani concert and was telling some girls about this before the show. These were women in their 20’s and they had absolutely no idea who Satriani was. It’s getting to the point that even the most popular guitar players, ones who have been around for 30 years or more, are practically unknown except by aging dinosaurs.
Whenever I see videos like this, I'm always: "Hm, you can actually know beforehand, more or less in detail, what should work?". Myself, I kind of just start and then improvise and play the tones that sound sweet to me. Needless to say, though, I do not play live :-) I tend to wander off and use tones that are not so sweet, and I have to "go back" and redo that part.
keep them coming, another Chickenfoot recording would be great, the first 2 are very good although not much radio play, why i do not know but as they say third time's the charm !
"I don't have the hair for that"...hahaha...laughed my ass off...Joe...you don't need hair for the level of awesome you're at!! Thanks for the great lesson!! Just the fact that I could follow what you were saying proves your lessons are paying off...haha!
+y0sh1100 listen to the solo from you shook me all night long and you'll know what I'm talking about... it's a separate thing that he doesn't really actually know much about scales anyway.
+Ameen Singh Angus Young only knows his blues scale. However, Jimmy Page was the most notorious for actually mixing pentatonic/blues scale, pentatonic natural 3/mixolydian omit 2 & 6 scale, and as well as natural minor scale. Blue notes are mostly only the b5 and b3, then I could actually go into more details, but that's the general idea. Check out when early songs of the British Invasion such as The Kinks. They were not realizing it then, but the big classic song You Really Got Me, all the chords are played as Major chords, yet solo comes in as minor pentatonic (of which the term pentatonic is already assumed to be minor nowadays, except if "major" gets added). This is an important sound of rock and roll, even the great Chuck Berry did it, even the Blues greats did with their Blues. Interesting color, yet a simple concept nevertheless. It's the simple things or details that we always seem to notice anyway. Anyway as I mention Jimmy Page was notorious for a mix of the three scales I mentioned of which are similar. Check out his live performances of when he plays How Many More Times for example and see he clearly states one idea with this major sound from only using the maj3rd from that "pentatonic natural 3/mixolydian omit 2 & 6 scale" of which I believe it probably has some sort of Indian or Japanese name that goes along with this pentatonic scale, yet I do not know. It is an amazing sound nevertheless. Then he would switch to minor pentatonic and so forth. Anyway go check out Pat Metheny, and see how incredible his playing is! Amazing player to start out with when listening to Jazz. Cheers!
+LinkBulletBill Hendrix was also fantastic at mixing major and minor and incorporating mixolydian - the solo from Bold As Love is a great example. Page is a brilliant player as well, the boogie chillun section from Whole Lotta Love always puts a smile on my face. Peace.
I never understood the morons who try to argue that Satriani has no feel. The guy oozes feel. He's not a blues guitar player but he is pure inspiration and improvisation when he's creating. You don't have to be a classic rock blues based player to have a great sense of what the blues taught us which is how to marry chords with Melody in the most heartfelt way possible. I think Joe does it just fine
He definitely plays with a ton of feel, just not in the blues-based way typical rock guitar players do. And that is totally fine for me too as long as the music he is making is wonderful (and it is).
That last melody was very Beck inspired almost sounded like a modernized version of Beck's bolero. But like one of your listeners I thought the rift did sound very much like rats lay it down in the general sense although lay it down had a lot more going on. Very cool to watch him I wish that he made longer lessons
Can anybody explain how, at 1:54 after he dials in the volume knob from what looked like zero to 2 or 3, is he getting that sound without touching the fretboard or the strings near the bridge ?? Yes, he started off with dropping in on the whammy on a note but he completely turned off the volume then where is that sound coming from at 1:54 ???? 0.0 Guitar Alien !
