Moving to guitar?!/Learning chords & construction/dissonant riffage

[Bit-Crusherrr]

Here's the deal my subsonic brethren:

My guitarist is annoying the hell out of me... why? He won't practice at home, so his skill (predominantly) and songwriting are becoming stale and slowing down, and he's have trouble writing new material. I've written him out exercises, offered theory and teaching books (for two years, and over the course of TWO different bands, feck I played keyboards for the last one), but nah, this summer, multiple seasons of shows on DVD and Bishock on the 360 hold more appeal, and he's threw my help to the dogs.

So I feel as though I should take matters into my own hands, because when your chief songwriter admits that his bass player (me) is better than him at guitar, wouldn't you be worried?

I'm planning to write my own material for when he grinds to an inevitable halt, but instead of making a complicated bass arrangement, I'm planning to pick up guitar as well... One problem. I'm a note kinda guy (as expected with bass), but, since I've never really had to take up lead before, I'm rusty in a few areas. Sure, sweeps on bass as well as tapping are transferring over, but these two things are beginning to cause hassle:




Chords...

Every time I try to learn more about 'em, I fall flat on my face. There is SOOOO much to look at it's intimidating and can become off-putting, but I know it'd help my writing to no end. Does anyone know of a good way to start and continue on learning chords and their construction? All I know is basic triad construction, inversion and the like... that leads me to the biggie for my chosen genre:





Dissonant riffs...

You know when you listen to the likes of Dillinger, or The Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza, or Sikth, or See You Next Tuesday, and you hear these demented, "jazzy" riffs that sound completely devoid of key, but "brutal as f***"? I wanna start developing my creativity with them. Tired of the same major/minor scalage, and I don't wanna overuse the whole tone/phrygian stylistics. Would anyone have tips or exercises on these also, or could point me in the direction of a good tab site so I can learn first hand from some of the above artists?

I know I can expect to be Pin or anyone that quickly, but I suppose I need to make a start eh?

Any help would be majorly appreciated.

Thanks again!

Connor

Edited July 30, 2008 by Bit-Crusherrr

[GonzoBass]

[quote name='Bit-Crusherrr' post='250974' date='Jul 29 2008, 01:59 PM']Chords...[/quote]
Lots of chord charts are available on the web if you Google up "Guitar Chord Chart"
but this one looks pretty extensive-
[url="http://www.guitarnotes.com/guitar/notes2/ultimate11.shtml"]Ultimate Guitar Chord Chart[/url]


[quote name='Bit-Crusherrr' post='250974' date='Jul 29 2008, 01:59 PM']Dissonant riffs...[/quote]
You might want to look into the diminished scale:

(or it's brother the augmented scale)
Lots of tension to be found there!

I hope this helps.

[Cernael]

For chordage - pick up a book or something on the CAGED system. Derives all manner of chords from five basic shapes - all in all, an all-encompassing, systematic approach.

Guitar Techniques has been running an article series on it recently; issue 147-152 (jan-may 2008), so if you happen to know someone who subscribes, see if you can borrow them and have a look.

[The Funk]

Warren Nunes' [i]Guitar Chord Bible[/i] - buy it now.

Go through all the modes, Melodic Minor modes, Harmonic Minor modes, Harmonic Major modes, Diminished and Wholetone scales and see which dissonant chords you can put together. I'm sure you'll find plenty to keep you busy for a while.

[JonD]

Another book worth a look is Arnie Berle's Chords & Progressions for Jazz & Popular Guitar - it forces you to think which notes are which within different inversions and the chord's construction (rather than simply showing you the shape/name), and there's lots of progressions to drill through - takes a jazz approach of generally avoiding doubled notes, barre chords get dropped very early on.

[joe_bass]

Is doing this some thing you really want to do out of your own interest? Or is it to make up for the lethargic guitarist?


If it's the second one then just forget about him, there's plenty of guitarists out there ready to go!