Canadian Musician November / December 2019 | Page 25

PHOTO: @BRADFORDHUNTERWRAY
GUITAR
Dru DeCaro is a Grammy-nominated guitarist and producer. He owns and operates a studio in Los Angeles and has worked alongside
Snoop Dogg, Miguel, Will.I.Am, and Andy Grammer. Dru has a jazz performance degree from Cal State University and endorses Paul
Reed Smith guitars, Westone in-ear monitors, Clayton Custom picks, and Monster products. For more from Dru, follow his band
Falconry or tune in to his online lesson series, “Drutorials.” www.drudecaro.com, www.falconryjones.com.
By Dru DeCaro
Rhythmic Symmetry
Rhythmic Symmetry
T
he problem we’re
going to tackle this
issue is so woven into
our understanding of
Western music that
you may not have ever given it a
second thought. It is an idea we
all have likely practiced so repeti-
tively that unlearning it can be a
little trying but very freeing. I’m
talking about the major scale.
(Heck, also the minor scale, and
pentatonic, too, while we’re at it.)
Yes, the major scale – the build-
ing block of all melody, harmony,
and modality, aka the lifeblood of
the entire tonal music thing as we
know it.
Structurally, I’ll admit that “two
whole steps followed by a half
step, three whole steps, and an-
other half step” is about as sturdy
a sequence as they come. (For
proof, just consider the modes
of the major scale and all of the
myriad colours we create with
that single sequence.) It took
centuries of experimenting with
assorted divisions of the octave to
arrive at the modern seven-note
scale we’ve all hammered into our
brains and digits, so who am I, you
might ask, to question it?
My beef with the five- and
seven-note major or minor scales
lies in how I just described them:
they have five and seven notes.
Huh? I’ll explain…
Getting Even
In a world of halves, quarters,
and eighth notes; of 12- and 16-
bar blues, double choruses, and
AABA song forms, so much of
the rhythm of music is in even
numbers. (Yes, great music can
be made in groupings of three or
five or seven, but let’s agree that
the fundamentals are squarely in
fours or eights.)
What that means when playing
these scales is that, if playing eighth
notes, there is no obvious way to
play a sequence two bars in a row.
Every time you get to the end of a
bar, you are one note short!
Sure, there are lots of different
ways to make up for that empty
eighth: you could hold one tone
for a quarter note duration, play a
note twice, play a neighbour tone,
and the list goes on, but with an
interest in practicing the scales
quickly across several octaves and
in a cadence that sounds more like
a melody than an exercise, here’s
what I’m proposing for practice
this month: Slight mods to the
pentatonic and major scales to
give them an even number, allow-
ing us to run scales at blistering
speed and keep that rhythmic
symmetry.
In Practice
Let’s lay out quick ground rules for
what we’re after, which is a musical
approach to scale practice and an
updated take on the most road-
worn scales.
1. We aim to play strong notes
on strong beats (i.e. chord
tones on downbeats, rhyth-
mic emphasis on consonant
sounds).
2. We’re after patterns and con-
sistency – a sound that we can
play through at least two oc-
taves with some ear-worming
repetition.
Ex. 1 skips the fourth scale degree in the key of C (F natural) and adds
a minor third and flat sixth (E and A ), giving us eight notes total,
coloured with a familiar blues tinge courtesy of the minor and major
third. Play it through several octaves and notice all the beats have nice
chord tones!
Ex. 2 highlights the “bebop scale” (a major scale with minor and major
sixth). I love this movement because with a little finesse, you can change
direction on a dime and always end up in a cool cadence. Play this
forward and backwards and see how far it goes. Also note that the major
sixth falls on a downbeat, a chord tone that was super prevalent in the
bebop era and throughout Motown but which is often overlooked!
Ex. 3 outlines the minor pentatonic scale, this time adding an extra
note (the ninth) and overshooting the root by a note or two to give
us that eight-per-bar symmetry. For extra points, start on any note in
the phrase and follow through two octaves; the colour really changes
depending on which note you place on the all-important downbeat.
Ex. 4 is our first descending exercise. It sounds killer at high speed and,
with only one added note, helps the chord tones fall in place and the
common minor pentatonic sound to evolve from a simple reflex into a
nice melody.
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 25