Community Challenge | 70
Community Challenge | 70

Polish a Previous Challenge

Your personal skill level, comfort zone, and free time are all important considerations when approaching a Community Challenge - I’m not asking anyone to write a full song! I’m asking for whatever you have the time, mental bandwidth, and skill to accomplish in roughly two weeks.

If you end up writing ANYTHING, I consider that a huge success. Write SOMETHING. It could be just a simple chord progression you put together or a riff you came up with using a pentatonic scale. Use the writing prompt to guide you and watch my video if you need more ideas.

POST WHAT YOU’VE WRITTEN HERE ON THE COMMUNITY FORUM.

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Community ChallengesScott JohnsonCommunity Challenges 61-90
Office Hours | 139
Office Hours | 139

Office Hours Q&A

Here are this week's questions:

Mark was having problems with maintaining tuning between multitrack recorded guitar. 

Craig was looking for some picking and finger exercises to help build up dexterity and speed. 

Frank needed guidance on getting started with loop pedals. 

Barry asked for a brief overview of walking bass lines.

Frank asked about powering pedals on pedal boards and staying on rhythm while looping.

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Live Stream ArchiveScott Johnsonlive streams 121-150
Community Challenge | 69
Community Challenge | 69

ONLY Write a Chord Progression

Make it as simple or interesting as possible. If you're just joining us, pick a few chords you like in a key! No melody, noIf you don't know how to do that yet, choose a few chords from one of the sets below:

G Am Bm C D Em F#°
C Dm Em F D Am B°
D Em F#m G A Bm C#°

If you're more advanced, try playing around with more interesting voicings, secondary dominants, modal progressions, and whatnot.

Your personal skill level, comfort zone, and free time are all important considerations when approaching a Community Challenge - I’m not asking anyone to write a full song! I’m asking for whatever you have the time, mental bandwidth, and skill to accomplish in roughly two weeks.

If you end up writing ANYTHING, I consider that a huge success. Write SOMETHING. It could be just a simple chord progression you put together or a riff you came up with using a pentatonic scale. Use the writing prompt to guide you and watch my video if you need more ideas.

POST WHAT YOU’VE WRITTEN HERE ON THE COMMUNITY FORUM.

Read More
Community ChallengesScott JohnsonCommunity Challenges 61-90
Live Lesson | 07
Live Lesson | 07

Melody Making Magic

We're going to explore some cool melody making concepts using the attached PDF.

This would be a great lesson to come back to after watching my Melody Making series

If you’re watching later and you still have questions, feel free to comment below or ask on the next Office Hours, every Thursday at 10am Pacific.

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Live LessonScott JohnsonLive Lesson 1-30
Office Hours | 136
Office Hours | 136

Office Hours Q&A

Weezley asked asked how to avoid sproingly brassy sounds while picking

Ronnie asked how a mode can be a major key 

Rich asked if triad voicings always need to have a root note 

Jeff had a question about what notes to play when doing double stops 

Brian was having issues getting fingers to the right place on a C chord 

Boro asked if its a good idea to memorize riffs when learning to solo 

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Live Stream ArchiveScott Johnsonlive streams 121-150
Live Lesson | 06
Live Lesson | 06

Spooky Music

In this lesson we discuss a symmetrical scale consisting of R w 2 h 3 w 4 h 5 w 6 h 7 w 8 h R - resulting in two nested fully diminished chords. It creates an eerie tonality with no home.

Then we dive into the whole tone scale, frequently used in dream sequences in movies and TV, and on shoes like the Twilight Zone and plenty of others. It gives you augmented chords to play with.

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Live LessonScott JohnsonLive Lesson 1-30
Community Challenge | 68
Community Challenge | 68

Write Something in 20 Minutes

Your personal skill level, comfort zone, and free time are all important considerations when approaching a Community Challenge - I’m not asking anyone to write a full song! I’m asking for whatever you have the time, mental bandwidth, and skill to accomplish in roughly two weeks.

If you end up writing ANYTHING, I consider that a huge success. Write SOMETHING. It could be just a simple chord progression you put together or a riff you came up with using a pentatonic scale. Use the writing prompt to guide you and watch my video if you need more ideas.

POST WHAT YOU’VE WRITTEN RIGHT HERE ON THE COMMUNITY FORUM.

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Community ChallengesScott JohnsonCommunity Challenges 61-90
Live Lesson | 05
Live Lesson | 05

Chord Clusters!

I'll be talking about chord clusters, which is just a fun way to think about playing all the chords in a key within the space of just a few frets. I'll give you a sense of the concept, why its important/useful/fun, and a couple ways to practice and use the concept. 

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Live LessonScott JohnsonLive Lesson 1-30
Live Lesson | 03
Live Lesson | 03

Fun with Roman Numerals!

This week we're talking Roman Numerals - specifically how to think about crafting chord progressions, bass lines, and melodies with loose chords in mind instead of very specific chords. It's amazing how much freedom there is within the Roman Numeral system with this mindset.

If you can't make it live, you can always watch later!

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Live LessonScott JohnsonLive Lesson 1-30
Live Lesson | 02
Live Lesson | 02

Letting Go with Writing and Improvisation

In this live lesson, I tackle the nuanced and tricky topic of how to practice growing your comfort zone to get into that mode where soloing feels effortless. I talked about Thinking Mode vs Feeling Mode and how important it is to deliberately hang out in one place or the other - one for performance, writing, soloing, and the other for detailed problem solving, deliberate and specific practice, and music theory clarification.

In my opinion, if you are deliberate about bouncing between these two modes, they'll gradually start to overlap, which lets to focus more clearly on the parts that aren't overlapping!

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Scott Johnson