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Seems like all I can pull of is Major Pentatonic.

Sounds to happy.

I want to sound moody.

Aside from the obvious; how do you guys pull that off.

Downtune, just a little usually for me. C# standard is a pretty cool/moody tuning without going too terribly low but most of my guitars are in Dstan. Sadly, I don't know or utilize much in terms of scales or theory, never learned to play that way and I'm too lazy to start now.

Also, I try to learn as many songs as possible to break me out of my playing funks/habits. This is probably best for me, forces me to look at the fretboard differently.

Got my tele d in c#/drop b and got my acoustic in drop c to learn some White Pony tunes but when the song ends and I noodle, I just err to major pentatonic. I just gotta get out of this habit.

(edited it's Drop B not Drop D)

Play minor scales and/or more chromatic notes

Minor def brings the "moody".

Mixolydian. Major scale with a flat 7. Still major but a bit moodier, so all over dream pop and shoe gaze stuff. (The harmony is a little trickier than just altering the 7th might imply: I=Dom7, II=Min7, III=Min7b5, IV=Maj&, V=Min7, VI=Min7, VII=Maj7. The diminished III is weird. The chorus of Medicine's Timebaby II nearly falls apart when it comes up.)

You can just throw the flat 7 in as a passing tone to your current major pentatonic pattern if you don't want to mess with that pesky 4th.

For whatever key your in, play the root power chord, the move the fifth up one fret. Continually experiment with a "happy" sounding scale / progression and throw in this note pitch (it's an augmented 5th / minor 6th).

kbithecrowing wrote:For whatever key your in, play the root power chord, the move the fifth up one fret. Continually experiment with a "happy" sounding scale / progression and throw in this note pitch (it's an augmented 5th / minor 6th).

This. Is the best interval.

Also keep using the original 5th and 6th along with it to create dissonant semitone intervals. You can do this with any note that isn't in a scale though, using only 7 pitches really limits the amount of variety and tension you can provide in any kind of music.

hollowhero wrote:Play minor scales and/or more chromatic notes

This the obvious. In reality I just need to woodshed more,...but I was just wondering what the best direction to go in would be so I'm not just floundering about.



It just seems like everything I do is just so happy and bouncy sounding and for some reason I'm not okay with that. I want to shake myself out of happy hippie jam mode and focus on darker more aggressive sounding stuff. Even my Barre cords trend to the major but that is a result of my habit for throwing that major 3rd interval in there. So to combat I'll flat that 3rd quite often.

Some good advice has popped up on here. The 6th is one of my favorite intervals to use on the bass guitar so why I haven't applied that to my guitar playing is beyond me. To be clear I often times would just use it in a 2 chord progression as I'm not really remembering the voice leading I learned and can't quite remember where to resolve or move to after the 6th; except back down to the root.

Gone Fission wrote:Mixolydian. Major scale with a flat 7. Still major but a bit moodier, so all over dream pop and shoe gaze stuff. (The harmony is a little trickier than just altering the 7th might imply: I=Dom7, II=Min7, III=Min7b5, IV=Maj&, V=Min7, VI=Min7, VII=Maj7. The diminished III is weird. The chorus of Medicine's Timebaby II nearly falls apart when it comes up.)

You can just throw the flat 7 in as a passing tone to your current major pentatonic pattern if you don't want to mess with that pesky 4th.

While I'm definitely getting the flat 7; I'm getting lost on the "Scale Degrees=****". Are those chords correlating to the scale degree. Also can you clarify the bolded text? I'm not sure if that's a typo or vocabulary that I'm not familiar with.

The whole Dom7 Min7b5 stuff I'm really really hazy with as I've never really had to worry about chords as a play the roots and throw a few passing tones in bassist.

When modes crop up I shut down. There seems to be a bit of confusion for me. I hear that a mode is pretty much just the same notes of a particular scale; just started out on a different scale degree. But it seems way more complicated than that.

Thanks for helping me out and inspiring me to make some breakthroughs guys.

I'm not much of a theory guy but I have a real soft spot for Melodic Minor.

Get some black sabbath backing tracks. Improvise your own riffs to go with them. Then run with it.

warwick.hoy wrote:

Gone Fission wrote:Mixolydian. Major scale with a flat 7. Still major but a bit moodier, so all over dream pop and shoe gaze stuff. (The harmony is a little trickier than just altering the 7th might imply: I=Dom7, II=Min7, III=Min7b5, IV=Maj&, V=Min7, VI=Min7, VII=Maj7. The diminished III is weird. The chorus of Medicine's Timebaby II nearly falls apart when it comes up.)

You can just throw the flat 7 in as a passing tone to your current major pentatonic pattern if you don't want to mess with that pesky 4th.

While I'm definitely getting the flat 7; I'm getting lost on the "Scale Degrees=****". Are those chords correlating to the scale degree. Also can you clarify the bolded text? I'm not sure if that's a typo or vocabulary that I'm not familiar with.

The whole Dom7 Min7b5 stuff I'm really really hazy with as I've never really had to worry about chords as a play the roots and throw a few passing tones in bassist.

When modes crop up I shut down. There seems to be a bit of confusion for me. I hear that a mode is pretty much just the same notes of a particular scale; just started out on a different scale degree. But it seems way more complicated than that.

Thanks for helping me out and inspiring me to make some breakthroughs guys.

The IV should have read Maj7. Whoops. Yep, those are the chords that go with the scale degrees if you go beyond the major/minor/diminished triads and add the seventh degree of the scale you're playing in. So a I-IV-V sequence in C Mixolydian would be Cdom7-Fmaj7-Gmin7.

Dominant 7 is a major triad with a flatted 7th. Min7b5 is easier if you start from the triad, which is a diminished triad: root, minor third, and flatted fifth. Add a flatted 7th and you're there. That chord won't play nice with fuzz, but knowing that explained that chorus in that Medicine song to me. Just going tritone (root and flat 5) might be the easiest way to get through needing the III chord. Generally, I'd ignore the 7ths at least to start, but if you're noodling and something sounds off in the mode, you may answer why when you check in on the 7ths.

I am only lately a light theory guy. Modes spun me out when I was a kid and I ignored them for a long time as a result. The explanation that they are just the major scale starting at different places was not helpful. The thing about modes is you're altering how a major or minor scale sounds and feels and things about the harmony go off from expectations. Where the half step intervals in the scales lie is critical and when futzing with this stuff it is helpful to use fingerings that you are very aware of where the half steps are, rather than have them fall in the transition to the next note on the next string; at least for me, I am much more aware of those half-steps that way and I learn to use the sounds and the feel of the scales much more quickly.

I started figuring out modes when I figured out they were key building blocks of music I love. Shoe gaze, dream pop, psych, Beatles, all delve a bit in. The music doesn't sound theory-heavy or like jazz or Vai or anything.

Oh, and if you want a relatively happy minor key, Dorian mode is nice. From the perspective of a major scale, it has a flat third and a flat 7th; from the natural (Aeolian) minor scale, it has a sharp 6th. I=Min7, II=Min7, III=Maj7, IV=Dom7, V=Min7, VI=Min7b5, VI=Maj7. Scarborough Fair is Dorian.

Oh, post-script. Pedals can be helpful in exploring modes. Loop or freeze the I chord (like a G maj triad for G Mixolydian) and futz with the mode over that. For G Mixolydian that'll keep noodling from sounding like a straight C major scale.

backwardsvoyager wrote:

kbithecrowing wrote:For whatever key your in, play the root power chord, the move the fifth up one fret. Continually experiment with a "happy" sounding scale / progression and throw in this note pitch (it's an augmented 5th / minor 6th).

This. Is the best interval.

Also keep using the original 5th and 6th along with it to create dissonant semitone intervals. You can do this with any note that isn't in a scale though, using only 7 pitches really limits the amount of variety and tension you can provide in any kind of music.

Stop playing like a guitar player for a predefined period of time, channel your inner horn dude.

Big, dramatic steps, don't allow yourself anywhere near the box.

Play each note like your life depended on it and take lots of rests.