Practising horizontal scale pattern

This practice regime focuses on horizontal scale playing.  The guitar tab, and technique guidance, are provided at the bottom (scroll down).

Technique challenges

The challenges come in smooth horizontal transitions with your fretting hand, picking accurately, while maintaining strict time-keeping.  This can be played picking every note, or using hammer-ons and pull-offs in a legato manner.

Contents of the practice regime

The regime comes with four tracks, each with one part.  The first track’s part contains a D-Aeolian scale pattern to practice. The three additional tracks (each with one part) provide :  backing chords, bass and closed hi-hat.  (Instructions on how to load and interact with the regime are below)

Here is what you will see on loading the regime. Each black strip, containing some solid coloured circles, is a track part.

 

Instructions to interact with the regime

Click the ear-eye icon to load the regime into emuso (Rhythm-X)

Press “Start” on Rhythm-X.  This will show the notes being played out on the “guitar” and you’ll hear the “guitar” and a closed hi-hat.  The first track you see showing coloured circles holds  the “guitar” part to practice.

(un)Muting

To mute a part, click on the “Part” button from the mute controls to activate it, and then click any of its coloured circles.  To unmute, click again somewhere on that part. Under the guitar track, in order, are tracks for chords, bass, and closed hi-hat.  You can do the same with any of these parts as well, to (un)mute a part. While active, the mute control has a plae grey colour.

Change tempo

Type in the tempo you want into Rhythm-X, and then press “Set bpm”.

Visualisation

If you want to see the chords used as they play back, use the “Visual feedback” dropdown menu, select “link track to active layer“, and click on the part for the track labelled “Chords”.   Do the same with the top most track, to see the scale activity again.

Adjusting visual size of tracks

Notice the red-circled sliders shown. The two sliders on the right can be used to horizontally and vertically scale the tracks appearance. The left slide can be used to shift the tracks right or left.

 

Adjusting visual size of the “guitar”

In emuso (not here!),  experiment with the three sliders shown at the top left of the next image

 

 

Scale being used for practice:

Want to familiarise yourself with the scale?  Click the above eye-ear icon to load the D Aeolian scale (1, b2, 3, 4, 5, b6, b7) onto the “guitar” .  This will let you explore the scale in different layouts, such as 3-nps, 5-region.  Once loaded, you can experiment with the “3” icon (for 3-nps) at the top of emuso, or use the left- and right- arrows for moving the scale through the 5-regions.  This can be done at any time (including after loading the regime)

 

Guitar tab

 

Technique guidance

There are two horizontal positions being used for this technique.   Make sure to emphasise every fourth note.  The last note of the first bar should be played with the 3rd or 4th finger as comfortable, and the hand must then squeeze up slightly so that the first finger is in position ahead of time, ready to play the first note of the second bar.

After playing the last note of the second, with the 3rd or 4th finger as comfortable,  you have to make a quick position shift ensuring you start the first bar again, in time, with your first finger playing the first note of the bar.

This is a very effective exercise for legato, as well, and this is where the hand squeeze needs focus, to ensure the first finger arrives in position before the pull-off is needed, and the pull-off sounds cleanly and accurately.

Rock on!!