guitar playing tips needed for band practice

DarkSymphony

ok so I've been playing guitar for a few years, I'm pretty good but not amazing or anything. However, I'm getting back into band practice for the first time in a couple years and we're going the pop-punk style. It's fun and pretty easy, but I'm looking to spice up the current workings of the songs they had written previously. Basically this is what we have:

chord progressions for a whole song, but I'm looking to see how I could lay over some single note picking ontop of the chords we have. Like, a good example of what I'm talking about can be found in this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpuDUTPJZL0

It's a coheed song. At the 1:11 mark, you hear them playing a line of chords with a riff being played over it and it, well, working quite well. I understand that the riff you play has to be in the same key and generally the same scale you're using, but I want to make it really effective, much like in this song. It's something you end up remembering and kinda stays with you.

If anyone has a good idea of what I'm talking about, I'd love to hear some suggestions. I'm just looking for basic rules to follow for writing stuff like that. Like, for X chord progression you can use X notes within the same scale. If that makes any sense. I dunno if I'm explaining it right.

Anyways, thanks for reading regardless.

stah

I'm not a player, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

I know John Petrucci has some videos on Youtube that teaches some of his playing techniques. I saw some of my friends watching them sometime. He might not talk about what you're asking specifically, but it's def. worth a watch if you're into prog. music. And Coheed is def. progressive during some of their songs (The Crowing and Welcome Home to name a few).

Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8Mr9ZQdGAM

Might help?

---

Side Note: Love Coheed. Seeing them live next Friday!

garroad_ran

Having a comprehensive, or even basic understanding of music theory will go a long way toward helping you make up stuff like that.

But what constitutes "really effective" is purely subjective. Apart from learning the theory, you should be concentrating on transcribing songs that you find are "really effective," then analyzing them and composing your own material using the same ideas.


EDIT: it's also worth noting that you should analyze things rhythmically, just as much as you should harmonically. That particular riff in the video is pretty cool not because of the notes, but because it's a 3/4 rhythm superimposed on the 4/4.

Mitsuhide

Not sure if this will help, but try humming a melody to the chords the band is playing, and find that on the guitar.

If there's a good way to improvise or phrase over music, it's doing it away from the guitar where your playing habits will repeat themselves.

I hope that made sense. :P

Bendery It Like Beckham

arpeggio (arpeggiate?) the chord ad nauseum

Epi

If someone's playing a chord and you want to solo over it, just pick one of the notes in the chord and play around on the chord's scale, using that note as a jumping off point or a focal point for the melody.

Start really easy and stay in rhythm with the chord strumming, playing note at a time and when you get comfortable with a simple pattern, bump up the complexity.

Visti

Humming a melody on top of the chords being played it defintely a good help, if you have an idea of what you want to do. If you don't dissect your chords and maybe branch them out with sevens, ninths etc and play around with the chords notes. Look into the inversions of your chords, find the relative major/minor for some added flavor, find some notes that are unique to the specific chord that's being played and some that are repeated in chords. Basically, dissect what's being playing and then when you have an understanding of what's happening jam until something sticks.

Pheezer

The root and fifth are basically always safe. Just transpose up an octave, either by playing a couple strings up or by playing above the 12th fret. If this is insulting to your intelligence I'm sorrybut to be clear, the 12th is one octave above the open note of whatever song you're playing. So move one fret up (to the 13th) and you're playing one octave above the first fret.

If you're playing in normal tuning, for your bottom three strings (the ones you probably play the most), the fifth is always one string up and two frets over. Other intervals will work but they all have more explicit aesthetics tied to them that may or may not be appropriate to the mood of whatever you're playing. Start with the root and fifth as your go-to notes and experiment with overlaying different notes.

The best way I've found to work that sort of thing out is to get the band to just play the section of the song you want to add to on repeat, while you experiment with different things.

DarkSymphony

this is all very good advice, thank you. I do know a bit about theory and how major scales are made up, how the root, 3rd, fifth, 7th, 9th etc. work. I find the fifth or seventh orwhatnot by playing out that scales Ionian if it's the first chord in the progression and work my way up to the 5th, etc. of the scale. I'm a little rusty being that I haven't been in a band for a little while, but this is all very good info. i really appreciate it.

projectmayhem

Something I use to do which would work out well for trying new riffs.

I would find a riff I like from some random band, lets say um,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypCdGNe3Bvs&feature=related

Little fill riff at 0.29

I would take that then find something I wrote, loop through my computer or have a friend play it (of course have what you wrote be in the same key and all that jazz) then put said riff on top while messing with it until it became my own.

Obviously you cannot write every song like this but it help me get a feel for riffs over the rhythm guitar sections.

I havent played like a year so, take it all grain of salt and jazz.