Great points Ursin, I used to practice 4 hours per day, it took a while to build up to at 2 hour intervals of practice, breaks are important and also staying focused is important, you can accomplish a lot in 4 hours if you have your routine laid out in advance and don't let your mind wonder, I used to use the last 30 minutes to jam as a reward rather than stopping in the middle and noodling, just me. Of course if you have 8 hours to practice - go for it!

I would also highly recommend transcribing and ear training exercises of recognizing scales, intervals and chord progressions and rhythmic recognition such as what is available with solfedge.org and other programs.

I like Pebber's suggestion of just doing picking if your left hand is tired, or switch from picking to right hand finger style if you are tired of picking.

In one of Pebber's videos he teaches how to use octaves to fill out the fretboard diagram and then complete the diatonic scales from there, I can't remember which one though, this is a great system.

hey jimclaptoncarl I like this got it down at 84 bpm no looking

Thanks for sharing all of that Ursin it is helpful, do you have any suggestions for a good warm up routine? I jammed my picking thumb over the winter and was really worried about the joint, it seems to be better now. Any tips for reducing the chances of getting arthritis are much appreciated.

@Blayze - have you used Logic Pro for guitar notation?

Hey Mark - I know what you mean it was a bit of a stretch to call it the Lady Bird sequence but that is what I hear and the sound is what reminded me of that turn around. A lot of contemporary gospel musicians go into extended substitutions and they have no idea why - just sounds good - amen to that!

here is another tune - So What by Miles Davis - more legato and long lines, same construction, you can also hear the blues and bebop scales in there with the b5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4TbrgIdm0E

To your question about using the modes in music, I would like to give an example using John Coltrane's Impressions a song which is made up of two chords played for 16 bars each dm7 and ebm7 using a dorian mode as the tonal center. Consider that the melody confirms to the dorian scale as it is played over each chord. As the chord changes a new tonal center is established. In order to create a solo simply use the d dorian and eb dorian scales accordingly - this is the basic approach.

This song is really written as a "modal" composition, a lot of shred type music is also written this way so that extended phrases can be played in a single mode. If you have an existing song that has a more traditional chord progression please post it and I can help you figure out what modes might apply, once you know the key that the chord progression is in the modes pretty much follow the diatonic chords if you are using a standard tune.

If you listen to the song, especially when McCoy Tyner plays piano you can hear many alternate chords being played over the underlying dm7, on an advanced level modes can be overlayed to create new sounds so the fact that there is a tonal center established allows the soloist to go "out" into alternate modes and keys of their choice and then eventually come "home" to the tonal center.

You may find that you can go back and forth between the d dorian and eb dorian to produce this effect even while the underlying chord is still the dm7. Also note that Coltrane almost immediately echoes the same phrases in both modes to establish another form of continuity.

I offer this example as one form of modal usage, your own can be as simple or complex as you like, Trane spent alot of time exploring this.

Impressions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CmDq4GKSLw

part 2 - coltrane's solo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JChB1KjX4M&feature=related

Sweet vid Chris thanks, this is exactly the type of musical ability that I aspire to attain! BTW I believe the discussion around Mike Barr gravitates toward his composition style, no doubt he is fast but his musical context is unique.

Rob

I've been using the dunlop jazz II forever and now that I'm working on Pebbers picking stuff I find they slip so I'm trying cat's tounge http://imperialguitar.stores.yahoo.net/brainpick.html they are very grippy.