Aerosmith Tour Dates

Wed, 06/10/09    Verizon Wireless Amphitheater St Louis Maryland Heights, MO
Sun, 06/28/09    Mohegan Sun ArenaUncasville, CT
Wed, 07/01/09    Riverbend Music CenterCincinnati, OH
Sat, 07/11/09    Ford Amphitheatre At the Florida State Fairgrounds Tampa, FL
Mon, 07/13/09       BankAtlantic Center Sunrise, FL
Wed, 07/15/09    Lakewood Amphitheatre Atlanta, GA
Fri, 07/17/09    Woodlands Pavilion Woodlands, TX
Sun, 07/19/09    Superpages.com Center Dallas, TX
Sat, 07/25/09    MGM Grand Hotel Las Vegas, NV
Sat, 08/01/09    Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre Englewood, CO
Mon, 08/17/09    White River Amphitheatre Auburn, WA
Wed, 08/19/09    Sleep Train Pavilion At Concord Concord, CA
Sun, 08/30/09    Verizon Wireless Music Center Noblesville, IN
Tue, 09/01/09    Sprint Center Kansas City, MO
Tue, 09/08/09    Xcel Energy Center Saint Paul, MN
Thu, 09/10/09    Blossom Music Center Cuyahoga Falls, OH
Wed, 09/16/09    The Palace of Auburn Hills Auburn Hills, MI

Metallica Tour Dates

Mon, 09/14/09    Sommet Center Nashville, TN
Tue, 09/15/09        U.S. Bank Arena Cincinnati, OH
Thu, 09/17/09        Conseco Fieldhouse Indianapolis, IN
Mon, 09/28/09    AT&T Center San Antonio, TX
Tue, 09/29/09        American Airlines Center Dallas, TX
Thu, 10/01/09        BankAtlantic Center Sunrise, FL
Sat, 10/03/09        St Pete Times Forum Tampa, FL
Sun, 10/04/09        Philips Arena Atlanta, GA
Tue, 10/13/09        Target Center Minneapolis, MN
Thu, 10/15/09        Quicken Loans Arena Cleveland, OH
Sun, 10/18/09        Time Warner Cable Arena Charlotte, NC
Mon, 11/09/09    Van Andel Arena Grand Rapids, MI
Sat, 11/14/09        Madison Square Garden New York, NY
Sun, 11/15/09        Madison Square Garden New York, NY
Sat, 12/05/09        Mandalay Bay Resort Las Vegas, NV
Tue, 12/08/09        ARCO Arena Sacramento, CA
Thu, 12/10/09        Honda Center Anaheim, CA
Sat, 12/12/09        HP Pavilion At San Jose San Jose, CA

AC / DC Tour Dates

Tue, 07/28/09        Gillette Stadium Foxborough, MA
Fri, 07/31/09        Giants Stadium East Rutherford, NJ
Sun, 08/16/09        The Palace of Auburn Hills Auburn Hills, MI
Tue, 08/18/09        Van Andel Arena Grand Rapids, MI
Sun, 08/30/09        Tacoma Dome Tacoma, WA
Wed, 09/02/09        HP Pavilion At San Jose San Jose, CA
Sun, 09/06/09        San Diego Sports Arena San Diego, CA
Tue, 09/08/09        Honda Center Anaheim, CA

Again, if you want a good deal on tickets, and want to avoid Ticketmasters hefty fees, be sure to check out StubHub. It’s a great place to get deals on concert tickets!

I really like Todd’s lessons, and we’ll probably have a few more of them here at FretFeed. check out the video!:

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Guitar Rising aims to take the flying colored dots of Guitar Hero, and apply them to an actual guitar. It also includes varying difficulty levels, and the ability to slow down songs or sections of songs to make them easier to learn. The game will supposedly be fun and challenging for the non guitar player all the way up to the expierienced shredder.

So will this game be fun? I think it can be, if done properly. Details are a little sketchy on how exactly it will detect the notes your playing (their site says by USB chord or  microphone.) This kind of game could be easily ruined by poor note detection. However, if they do that well, this game has a lot of potential.

Can this game make you a good guitar player? I think that if you play it a lot and work up the difficulty levels, this game could make you a better guitarist, but I don’t think you’ll become great by just playing this game.  If you are the kind of person that enjoys keeping score and having definable levels to move up, then this could be a great tool for you.  This could also be a great way to younger kids into playing guitar.

So, do you think this game will be fun, and help people improve as guitarists? let us know what you think. Here’s the trailer so you can see it in action:

What is Pitch Axis

The concept of pitch axis is using multiple keys or modes that all share the same root note. This means that if we were playing in the key of A minor, we could switch to A Major, A Dorian, A Phrygian, etc. You can hear an example of this Joe Satriani’s song Not of This Earth, which has a chord progression of Emaj13 - Em7#5 - Emaj17 - E7sus4. His playing goes through the keys of E Lydian, E Minor, back to E Lydian, then E Mixolydian.

Pitch Axis and Songwriting

A common method of using the pitch axis is to use different keys in different parts of the song. The most common way of doing this is to the have the verses be in a major key, and the choruses in a minor key. Another good application is to have all of the song except for one section be a certain key, and then have one standout section such as a solo or bridge.

Using Pitch Axis in Soloing

When soloing over chords, you can use some pitch axis in your playing even if the other musicians are not. This is best when you are playing over a one chord vamp. If you are playing over a Gm chord for example, you could start throwing in some licks from G Dorian and G Phrygian. If you wanted to make it really interesting, you could also use some non-diatonic scales, such as G harmonic minor and G melodic minor.

So, what are some of your favorite songs that use pitch axis? Did you find this article helpful? What would you like to see in future Think Outside The Box Features?

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C Major
Completely Pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naïvety, children’s talk.

C Minor
Declaration of love and at the same time the lament of unhappy love. All languishing, longing, sighing of the love-sick soul lies in this key.

Db Major
A leering key, degenerating into grief and rapture. It cannot laugh, but it can smile; it cannot howl, but it can at least grimace its crying.–Consequently only unusual characters and feelings can be brought out in this key.

C# Minor
Penitential lamentation, intimate conversation with God, the friend and help-meet of life; sighs of disappointed friendship and love lie in its radius.

D Major
The key of triumph, of Hallejuahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing. Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key.

D Minor
Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood.

Eb Major
The key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God.

D# Minor
Feelings of the anxiety of the soul’s deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depresssion, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key.

E Major
Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E Major.

E minor
Naïve, womanly innocent declaration of love, lament without grumbling; sighs accompanied by few tears; this key speaks of the imminent hope of resolving in the pure happiness of C major.
F Major
Complaisance & Calm.

F Minor
Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.

F# Major
Triumph over difficulty, free sigh of relief utered when hurdles are surmounted; echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and finally conquered lies in all uses of this key.

F# Minor
A gloomy key: it tugs at passion as a dog biting a dress. Resentment and discontent are its language.

G Major
Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love,–in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key.

G Minor
Discontent, uneasiness, worry about a failed scheme; bad-tempered gnashing of teeth; in a word: resentment and dislike.

Ab Major
Key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction, judgment, eternity lie in its radius.

Ab Minor
Grumbler, heart squeezed until it suffocates; wailing lament, difficult struggle; in a word, the color of this key is everything struggling with difficulty.

A Major
This key includes declarations of innocent love, satisfaction with one’s state of affairs; hope of seeing one’s beloved again when parting; youthful cheerfulness and trust in God.
A minor
Pious womanliness and tenderness of character.

Bb Major
Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope aspiration for a better world.

Bb minor
A quaint creature, often dressed in the garment of night. It is somewhat surly and very seldom takes on a pleasant countenance. Mocking God and the world; discontented with itself and with everything; preparation for suicide sounds in this key.

B Major
Strongly coloured, announcing wild passions, composed from the most glaring coulors. Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart lies in its sphere.
B Minor
This is as it were the key of patience, of calm awaiting ones’s fate and of submission to divine dispensation.

What this tutorial covers:

• Time Signature basics, and the common 4/4 measure
• Length of Notes
• Triplets
• Dotted And Tied Notes
• Simple and Compound beats
• The Difference between */4 and */8 signautres
• Constructing complex time signatures

4/4 And Time Signature Basics

Most songs (and our first few examples) are in 4/4 times. The bottom number tells us what of note division we are using, usually 4 meaning quarter note or 8 meaning 8th note. The top number tells us how many of that type of note we are using. Therefore, 4/4 means we are using 4 quarter notes in one bar.  We can count them in the following manner:

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and . .. (repeat)

You can count this way to most music. Try counting along with your favorite band, provided your favorite band isn’t Tool.

Length of Notes

• Whole Note - These are 4 quarter notes. In 4/4 time, this is one whole bar, which can be an easy way to remember it.
• Half Note - 2 quarter notes, or half a whole note. Using our previous way of counting, “1 and 2 and”, “2 and 3 and” , “and 3 and 4″ could all be half notes.
• Quarter Note - One fourth of a whole note.  This is usual measure of one ‘beat’.
• Eighth Note- half of a quarter note. In our counting, this is any one single syllable.
• 16th note - half of an eighth note, or a quarter of a quarter note. To count 16th notes, it is standard to count in the following manner: 1 ee and uh 2 ee and uh 3 ee and uh 4 ee and uh .. (repeat) where each syllable is one 16th note.

This pattern can continue down a similar pattern 32nd and 64th notes, but these aren’t used as much.

Triplets

Triplets usually replace eighth notes. When playing triplets, you are divided a quarter note into 3 notes instead of two.  We can count these like so:

1 and uh 2 and uh 3 and uh 4 and uh

To get used to the feel of these, try setting a metronome to a fairly slow speed, and try alternating between both counting methods in an even fashion, making sure that you are saying a number at each click of the metronome. Notice that triplets are shorter than standard eighth notes.

If you subdivide it further, then they are called sextuplets. Sextuplets are the 16th note equivalent of triplets.

Dotted And Tied Notes

Dotted Notes are notes that equal to one and half times their usual length. For example:

Half note:  1 and 2 and

Dotted Half: 1 and 2 and 3 and

It is considered improper notation to have notes be longer than the bar that contains them. You could not have two dotted half notes in a bar of 4/4, because that would be the same a 6 quarter notes. To solve this issue, you can use tied notes. Two notes that are tied together are played once, but held for the duration of both notes.  A dotted half note, and a regular half note tied to a quarter note are the same length. The order is also not important; a half note tied to a quarter note and a quarter note tied to a half note are functionally the same.

So in our previous example of two dotted half notes, you could use a dotted half note, then a quarter note tied to a half note that would start on beat 1 of the next bar.

Simple and Compound Beats

Everything we have discussed up to the point has been in 4/4, and it has been using simple beats. a simple beat is simply using quarter notes as your beat. A compound beat uses a dotted fourth note as the beat. Notice that a compound beat and playing triplets is NOT the same thing, even though they both have three notes. If you played both at the same BPM, the one with simple beats would be faster, because a quarter note is still shorter than a dotted quarter note.

The Difference Between /4 and /8 Time Signature

Time signatures are almost always in */4 or */8 form. (where * is any number).  You may be thinking that 4/4 and 8/8 would be exactly the same, but that’s not entirely true. Time signatures in /4 form only use simple beats, where signatures in /8 form use either compound beats or a combination of simple and compound beats.  While 4/4 and 8/8 have bars of the same length, they would have the beats accented differently.

One way to think about it is to think of simple beats as groups of 2, and compound beats as groups of 3. then, think about how you can add them to get the total number of eighth notes in a bar, and that is how you count them. the 2s are counted as “1 and” the 3s are counted as “1 and uh”

Example: In 4/4, we can only use simple beats, and there are 8 eighth notes in a bar. There is only one way to get 8 by adding 2s: 2 + 2 + 2 + 2.  So we would count “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and”.

In 8/8, since we can use 3s and 2s, there are a few different ways to get 8 (because order matters) so there are a few different ways to count and play 8/8:

3 + 3 + 2   ==  “1 and uh 2 and uh 3 and”

3 + 2 + 3 == ” 1 and uh 2 and 3 and uh”

2 + 3 + 3 == “1 and 2 and uh 3 and uh”

Constructing Complex Time Signautures

Once you understand how to count simple and compund beats, you can just play around with different combinations and come up with various time signatures. While 4/4 is the most common,  3/4 , 6/8 , 7/8, 9/8, and 10/8 are also common in various forms of music. they setting a metronome and playing in these different beats. It will feel strange at first, and odd time signatures are definetly not for everyone. But if you ever do encounter a song with them, Now you’re much more well equipped to handle it.

Here is an online metronome if you want to use it to practice.

What Are Inversions?

A chord inversion is when you play a chord where the root note is not the base note. These are notated with the chord name, then a slash and the base note. for example, E7/G#  is an E dominant chord, but the bass note is a G#.  With 7th chords, there are 3 possible inversions: inversions on the 3rd, the 5th, and the 7th.

Relation between 6ths & 7th inversions

the 3rd inversion of a 7th chord can also be written as the root version of a 6th chord.  Let’s look at Am7 for example; the chord formula is A-C-E-G, or (1 - b3 - 5 - b7).  the 1st inversion of this would be C-E-G-A, which could be thought of as  Am7/C, or as C6(1 - 3 - 5 - 6). this also means that Am7 could be interpreted as C6/A.   Here are the relations between all of the 6th and 7th chords:

• major 7th (1 - 3 - 5 - 7)  == minor b6th (1 - b3 - 5 - b6)
• minor 7th(1 - b3 - 5 - b7) == major 6th ( 1 - 3 - 5 - 6)
• dominant 7th (1 - 3 - 5 - b7) == diminished b6th (1-b3-b5-b6)
• minor 7b5 ( 1 - b3 - b5 - b7) == minor 6th (1 - b3 - 5 - 6)

Chord Chart

here is handy chart of all the inversions and root shapes of the 7th chords:

click on the picture to see a full-size image

chart courtesy of guitarsphere.com