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Hi Active Melody family!
It’s January, 2025 Site Member Challenge time!
Happy New Year everyone! So a few weeks ago our Zoom (live session) coordinator Manfred set up a Zoom call for site members that wanted to participate. It was very beneficial for me because through one of our discussions I’ve learned that it would be ok to mix things up and occasionally offer less content for the weekly lessons, making the content more focused. Essentially, bringing back the MicroLessons and mixing them with the deep dive ones.
The first new lesson of the year ended up being just that. EP601 is a lesson about a simple concept of playing harmonies on strings 2 and 4, and how those harmonies live inside of chord shapes. One idea, that can be applied to many situations.
I thought that would be a great lesson to use for the January Site Member Challenge, because in that lesson I show you how to play both major and minor harmonies over various chord shapes. So you could use that to play just about anything.
So, for this January 2025 challenge, take the harmony concept from lesson EP601 and come up with your own melody. You can use the jam track from ANY lesson to do it, or even write your own jam track if you want. You can also just play a standalone composition, just make sure to work those harmonies into it.
I think this will keep things interesting and give us lots of variety with your submissions.
The submission date for this challenge will be Sunday, February 9 – you can start submitting Friday, February 7
**If you need assistance with how to record yourself and post to the forum see this post**
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GROUND RULES FOR PARTICIPATION:
1. Post your Youtube, Vimeo, or Soundcloud links of you playing your chosen lesson anytime between Friday, February 7, through Sunday, February 9, 10:00 pm CST. Please do not submit earlier. I think it is fun to see everyone’s posts at once.
2. Submit individually in the “Active Melody Member Challenge Response Submissions” forum. Title your posts “January 2025 Challenge Response – [Your AM Screen Name]”
3. Please submit only a single video or audio file for this challenge.
4. Have fun and don’t be intimidated by these challenges!!! Use these challenges to help you set goals and complete them by a deadline. You can also use this as an opportunity to chat with your fellow Active Melody members and share tips or tricks on this challenge that you think are useful.
5. In my opinion, it is better to show progress versus perfection with these challenges. So if you are a beginner and can only play the first couple of measures. That is completely ok. If you play two more measures of the next challenge piece than you did the previous one, you are on track to getting better. This is what these challenges are about…you learning guitar and getting better. Remember we are all here to support you no matter what your current playing level is.
I look forward to seeing everyone’s posts! 🙂
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One of the early EP lessons in key of A used a run-up on strings 2 & 4, but I can’t remember which one. That was the first time I realized you could just keep going on up the neck, and there was a pattern to it all. Your two fingers are either parallel, or the finger on 4th string is one fret ahead. I called the parallel position “P” and the non-parallel position “N”, and wrote the pattern going up from the 2nd fret as:
P N P P N N P P Then it just repeats.
For minor key A, the finger on the 2nd fret is one fret behind, and the pattern is:
N P P N N P P N
(Aha, I found that old lesson: EP027)
Sunjamr Steve
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A HUGE lightbulb for me was to learn that the harmonized pattern simply follows the notes/chords of the scale, so basically you visualize the chords within the scale you play and follow them along. The only pattern I have to remember is: (I)Major – (ii)minor – (iii)minor – (IV)Major – (V)Major – (vi)minor – (vii°)minor* – (I)Major (for the major scale). The Aeolian mode (minor scale) would start with (vi) and so on.
Lesson EP363 explains that well.
*that would be the dim chord but apply minor pattern to it.
🎸JoLa
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Ahh. thanks @sunjamr and @Jola for pointing out these lessons. Great for a refresh…
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Great observation, Jola.
Now to muddy the waters, consider this;
The (I)Major (ii)minor (iii)minor can also represent (I)Major – passing chord – (I)Major…….. BUT
the passing chord could aso represent the V7 ie. it contains the b7 and the 5th of the V7. The b7 of the V is always next to the major 3rd of the I and helps create that resolution. Going from a I to I7 creates the same kind of resolution to the IV, ie the I7 acts as the V7 of the IV. Hope I didn’t confuse myself or anyone else😜.There are so many ways to imply chords with two notes and create resolutions beyond what Brian demonstrated in EP601.
John
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