Most of us have grown up listening to music characterized by the familiar time signatures of 4/4 or 3/4. 4/4 is the most common time signature in rock, blues, country, funk, and pop while 3/4 is often used for country & western ballads, not to mention waltzes, minuets & scherzi!

Both of these time signatures are considered ‘simple time signatures’. But what about ‘complex time signatures’?

When I was very young, I listened to a lot of pop, rock and folk. Almost all of it was written in 4/4 time. When I turned 14, I was introduced to the progressive rock bands King Crimson, Yes, Genesis and Gentle Giant. One of the first things I noticed was that I could not easily tap my foot to some of the tunes. When I tried to count them out, I realized that many of these songs were written in complex time signatures and some even used mixed meters, moving from 9/8 to 4/4 to 13/8 etc.

As my internal clock became familiarized with these new meters, I eventually became very comfortable with them and as I began to write songs, I found that I often gravitated towards 7/8.

To me, 7/8 is a wonderful time signature in that it is not necessarily locked to a solid down beat. As I tend to focus more on melodic phrasing than meter, I found that 7/8 was a wonderful pallet on which to compose and improvise because it allows me to play extend melodic phrases.

The following piece called Cogitation is a raw sketch for a song I have yet to finish. I hope you will enjoy it. I offer it as an example of the musical possibilities offered by 7/8 (Don’t mind the cheesy drums and very average mix..remember it’s a raw sketch!)

Cogitation (click to play)

One other thing I will mention about 7/8 is that its possibilities are greatly expanded by where you place the accents. Cogitation is counted with the accents emphasized as follows:

1  2  3  4  5  6 7

However, I also have written pieces with the following accents. (Try taping them out emphasizing the bolded number)

1  2  3  4 5  6  7

and

1  2  3 4  5  6 7

If you want a wonderful example of 7/8, have a listen to the long synth solo in the song The Cinema Show by Genesis from the album Selling England By The Pound. Here is a live version of that solo from YouTube though personally, I prefer the studio version.

Have fun with 7/8!!

P.S.

Here is a good article from Wikipedia on Time Signatures ..

© Gil Namur, 2009

I, on the other hand am a terrible sight-reader. When I was learning to play the guitar, I learned everything by ear. The internet was not even imagined at that point and tablature was just starting to show up in publications.

When I was 17, I was a huge Yes and Genesis fan. I loved their guitar players, Steve Howe & Steve Hackett. Both wrote and played some lovely solo acoustic pieces. My favorites were ‘Mood for A Day’ from the Yes album Fragile, ‘The Ancient’ from Yes’s Tales of Topographic Oceans, and ‘Horizons’ from the Genesis album Foxtrot.

It wasn’t easy, but I learned all three pieces, by ear. There are some great advantages to doing this:

1. It forces you to use your ears and try things in different places on the neck of your instrument. It’s a great exercise. Not only will it develop your ears but it will also teach you to trust them.
2. Each time you learn something by ear, your ears will improve at picking things out and subsequent pieces become much easier to learn.
3. Ultimately, it will help with your improvisation skills. Imagine being able to play ‘what you hear’ as you improvise instead of relying on a repertoire of licks.
4. It helps you to memorize the song. I found it easiest to memorize the song first so that I did not have to constantly hit play and rewind on a tape deck or worse, lift the needle from the record over and over and over. Memorizing the song will also cause you to pay more attention to the subtle nuances of the performance. I found that this gave me an even deeper appreciation of the musician.
5. Often, the tablature you will find is not accurate. Your ears know that so you have to work it out for yourself anyway. For example, I want to add Paul Simon’s ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’ to my repertoire but the tabs I have found are not close enough to what I want. What I want is to replicate those great piano inversions, on guitar. I will learn it by ear. Maybe I will tab what I learn for you one day

I am not suggesting that you stop using tablature or sheet music. If I felt that way, there would be no tablature at this site! What I am suggesting is that you pick a few songs you really like and learn them by ear.

A few years ago, I decided to re-visit and polish two of the songs I mentioned above. The Ancient, and Horizons. If you have come here looking for the tab for those songs, sorry, I am not tabbing them out, but, I did record them and have placed a link to each one below. These are not simple tunes so I hope they will inspire you to use your ears and learn some challenging pieces. If you do, you will realize a great sense of satisfaction and you will become far more confident in your musical abilities.

Horizons

The Ancient

If you are stuck, try a combination of tablature and using your ears. Do what you can to use as little of the tab as possible. As well, seek the help of other guitar players. A very good friend of mine (hi Mark!) helped me learn some pieces and I helped him as well. I recall those learning sessions with a great deal of  fondness!

If you know these songs, and have a good (accurate) source for the tabs, feel free to leave them in a reply to this article.

Good luck with your playing and the development of your ears!

Visit Steve Howe’s Web Site

Visit Steve Hackett’s Web Site

Photo Credits

Steve Hacket Live © Jean-Luc

Steve Howe Live – public domain photo from Wikipedia

© Gil Namur, 2009

The chords for this progression can be found in the page of all the chords used at this site.

For the Bb13, play the A13 chord block shown on that page but play it on the 6th fret.

For the E9, play the D9 chord block shown on that page but play it on the 7th fret.

For the F9, play the D9 chord block shown on that page but play it on the 8th fret.

Click the progression to download the sound file you can solo over. It is 3.8MB.
It is 4 minutes and 23 seconds long. You wont be disappointed.

A longer version is available here that is 8 minutes and 43 seconds long. It is 6.1MB.

Click here for an Improvisation example: 815 KB – 1 minute 9 seconds

Here is an example of some improvising I did over this progression. I stayed within the A Minor Pentatonic scale but I did throw in some accidentals. For now, think of accidentals as notes that are in between the notes in the scale as represented below in the diagram with red dots. As an exercise, experiment with all the positions of this scale shown in the A Minor Pentatonic lesson and find accidentals that work for you.

Click here if you’re not sure how to read the scale blocks.

Let your ears guide you, be creative, play, play, play, and above all else, have fun!

© Synaptic Systems Inc., 2001

(Over the Am7)
A (Jazz) Melodic Minor .. Same pattern as the G (Jazz) Melodic Minor scale shown in lesson but played 2 frets higher.

(Over the Am7)
A (Dorian) Minor .. Same pattern as the G (Dorian) Minor scale shown in lesson but played 2 frets higher.

(Over both chords)
C Major .. Same patterns as the G Major scale shown in lesson but starting on the 8th fret.

Also, work in the harmonized G Major scale ( see that lesson ) over the Am7 chord and the same pattern moved up to the 7th fret becomes the C Major scale harmonized works great over the FMaj9 chord.

Click the progression to download the sound file you can solo over. It is 2.54MB. You wont be disappointed.

© Synaptic Systems Inc., 2001

Literally, volumes have been written on the subject of improvisation. These are some of my thoughts on what I find to be one of the most pleasurable and satisfying aspects of playing music.

Be Musical:

Being musical is a very difficult statement to try to quantify for everyone. The reason of course is that there are so many different types and styles of music that it is almost impossible to make a definitive statement about what being musical means. But regardless of style, when I think of being musical, I think of the following as tools one can use very effectively to become more musical in their approach. In the coming months, we will offer some lessons on all of these points.

1) Listen to the song

The song’s the thing. So many players just listen to themselves that they forget that what they play must fit into the framework of the song. Listen to the other players. Think about what you can do musically to enhance the song and compliment their playing. Follow your rhythm section. Work WITH them. If you listen to the greatest bands, you will find that each song has flow and purpose. The musicians have developed synergies with one another that are to be found in every song. Great players know this. Great players listen to one another.

2) Think dynamics

Just because its time for your solo does not mean you should just turn up your volume and wail away. Let volume be another tool. Play ..  soft..hard     loud..quiet     slow..fast     high..low     saturated.. lean. Create spaces. The notes you don’t play are just as important as those you do play. Artists know of this as negative space. Listen to Larry Carlton. One of his many great abilities is his mastery of dynamics.

3) Develop musical ideas

Rather than just playing up and down a scale or playing all of those standard licks, come up with a hook, a small melody. Even 2 notes. Develop it. Keep coming back to it. It’s like taking the listener (and yourself by the way) on a journey that weaves in and out of its original starting place. It will cause you to be more intentional in your playing rather than just aimlessly executing a series of notes that say so much less. I like to think about it as telling a story with the notes.

4) Think tension and release

Music is very much about tension and release. Do you remember the first time you listened to a diminished chord? If you are like me, you might have said .. yikes .. that’s a weird and ugly sounding chord. By itself, to my ear, it is. But, (depending on the progression) the diminished chord moves beautifully to a Minor 7 or Major 7 or any number of chords that are easier on the ear. Tension .. release. When played together, these chords make for very interesting musical statements smoothly leading the ear from one place to the next. The same is true in improvisation. Go out there .. play a wrong note. By wrong I mean a note that is dissonant and clashes with the song. Then play it again and resolve it to a note that is more melodic. This is actually a great trick if you make a mistake while soloing, play that mistake again and what you are doing is being musical IF you resolve it properly. (I have often not, but hey .. one learns by ones mistakes). Do this often enough and you will find yourself actually looking for those tense notes that resolve nicely. You will find this to have enormous impact on your playing ability and also on the amount of freedom you have on your instrument as you will no longer think about those notes as mistakes but rather as opportunities to make an interesting musical statement.

Listen to Pat Metheny. I can’t say enough about Pat Metheny. It is my opinion that years from now, musicians, not just guitar players, will look back at much of his work and consider it genius.

Technique:

Technique is a wonderful tool. Speed, used effectively, can be hypnotizing. There are some marvelous examples of guitar players with great technique who are also very musical. John McLaughlin, Steve Morse & Al DiMeloa (especially his earlier work) are just a few names that come to mind. These players by and large take technique to the limit yet have the ability to remain interesting and musical. On the other hand, there are many incredible technical players out there who in my opinion have allowed their great technique to compromise their musical output. You listen to one song and are amazed. Then the next is just more of what you just heard in the first song. A constant barrage of notes with little thought given to melody, dynamics and the whole concept of tension and release.

Don’t get me wrong. Great technique is a good thing. Just don’t expect technique to make you more musical. Use it as a tool to achieve more complex musical elements. Consider this. Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven are considered by many to be the greatest improvisers of all time. All three had incredible technique but all three achieved levels of musicality not realized by many other human beings. They were always musical.

Choices:

By choices I mean having an ever expanding musical vocabulary and being able to play that vocabulary on different parts of the neck. Having command of a large number of scales and chords is very empowering to your ability to improvise. Think about this. If you are like many guitar players, the first scale you started soloing with was a pentatonic scale probably in the key of A. When your solo would come, you would play up and down that scale and soon find that you were running out of idea. I remember the thought of playing a 30 second solo to be very intimidating. Then, you learn a new scale that works against the same chord progression. Now you have 2 choices, 2 colors to paint with if you will. The more choices you have, the more freedom you have and the more confident you become as a player.

Freedom on the instrument is a marvelous feeling and it comes with practice and the willingness to reach into the uncharted waters of your playing experience.

(This document is a work in progress and I would love to hear your feedback or any suggestions on the
subject that you think would be of use to guitar players seeking to become more adept improvisers.)

© 2001, Synaptic Systems Inc.