SYSTEM NINE

Introduction To System Nine

In the Guitar Daily Workout, the first 4 Systems provided the FOUNDATIONS that most guitarists need to be professional-level musicians: the scales, arpeggios, and techniques that form the core of a guitarist’s understanding and vocabulary. We mastered the CAGED system for arpeggios, pentatonics, and major scales, learned all of the three-on-a string modes, all arpeggios in one position.

Systems 5-8 developed INTERMEDIATE skills with more sophisticated scales, arpeggios, and approaches; moving the student from solid foundational techniques to a true mastery over the guitar neck. We learned all 7th arpeggios-major 7 arpeggios, dominant 7 arpeggios, minor 7 arpeggios, m7b5 arpeggios and diminished arpeggios. We also learned all of the major hexatonic and minor hexatonic scales, and learned the dominant pentatonic scales. And we learned how to play all of the arpeggios on three string sets, and learned the major scale and pentatonic scales on both three and two string sets.

In Systems 9-12, we will explore ADVANCED concepts-less commonly used scales and patterns–ones often found in jazz, fusion, and more complex musical styles.

Most guitarists could have a great career just by having mastery of the concepts in the first 8 systems. Many guitarists have been very successful not even knowing all of that information.

With Systems 9-12, however, you will develop skills that will allow you to understand and play more harmonically complicated music.

We will cover Harmonic Minor, Melodic Minor, and their Harmonized Arpeggios for harmonic and melodic minor scales, as well as the Diminished scale, Whole-Tone scale, the Coltrane Pentatonic, and Barry Harris’ 6th Diminished scale. We will also delve into single-string playing and Wes Montgomery-style octave playing.

Keep at it and work hard and you should find a whole new world of musical vocabulary opening up to you.

As with all of these systems, application is key. However, these exercises should give you muscle memory, dexterity, ears, and understanding of the scales and arpeggios that will allow you to access music with very sophisticated musical vocabularies.

Finger Gymnastics

System 9 Finger Gymnastics is a broken chromatic exercise. I first heard about this concept from the guitar great Joe Diorio. The concept is simple. You take a common scale or pattern and change the octaves of each note. Rather than moving through the scale in the normal order in just one octave, you will change the octave of each note. So in this exercise, you will play a simple descending chromatic scale, but each note is changed by an octave. If you write the note names, you’ll see it is just a chromatic scale, but it becomes very exotic-sounding (and complex to play) by simply displacing the notes by octaves. You can make just about any pattern more interesting by displacing some notes by an octave.

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Coltrane Pentatonic (m7b5 Pentatonic)

This is a scale that has been used by many jazz, blues, and funk musicians. Nick Homes of Jazz Duets called this scale the Coltrane Pentatonic because Coltrane often used this scale. The Coltrane Pentatonichas been popularized by other jazz greats like Kenny Barron and McCoy Tyner and is even used in other cultures (e.g., the Japanese Kumoi scale and Indian Shivranjini raag).

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Arpeggios

The standard way of learning arpeggios is in the box forms. This was the way we learned arpeggios in the first 8 systems, and it is the most common way to approach them. In System 9, arpeggios will be based on 2 string sets. Each arpeggio set will then be played symmetrically across 3 octaves. For instance, we could start a Cmaj7 arpeggio on the 7th at the 7th fret playing B,C,E,G on the low E and A string. Then we could take that exact same arpeggio shape and play it on the D and G string in the 9th position one octave higher, and again over the B and high E string, 12th position. It’s one arpeggio shape crossing over 3 string sets and 3 octaves. To make a C7 arpeggio, you’d simply lower the B to a Bb and again play the same shape over 3 octaves. So in a way, it makes seeing arpeggios much easier! It will be tricky to learn, but once you do it will be very helpful in both visualizing the arpeggio shape and covering a lot of range.

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Harmonic Minor

The harmonic minor scale is a commonly used scale in many different styles of music. It consists of the intervals R, M2, m3, P4, P5, m6, and M7. Rather than having a lowered 7th of the natural minor scale, The harmonic minor scale has a major 7th.

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Major Scale

In the first 8 systems, we learned all of the modes of the major scale, the CAGED system, 3-on-a-string, and how to play fragments of scales on 2 and 3 strings only. In System 9, we will play the modes on ONE STRING ONLY! This is challenging, but it’s a great exercise for moving laterally across the neck. Most great players often move along the neck this way. With this exercise, you will learn how to play well up and down a string, which will help you escape from “box” playing.

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