A Minor Scale and Backing Track

[Larryz]

I would hate to see the clams disappear at Pismo...

 

I think they're now a protected species, so no hunting allowed.

 

I looked it up and the Pismo Beach clams now back in abundance...thank God! None of them are the required 4 1/2" yet so don't plan any clam bakes for a while!

[Larryz]

OT: We used to harvest those Pismo Claims found only at Pismo Beach at low tide down by the peer. We used a clamming fork (which is a small pitch fork with thick tines)

 

We had clam rakes and clammer tongs which were like a big rake on both sides and two handles so you would open up the tongs, shove them down in the mud and close them and bring up whatever you grabbed with them. I never used them as I was definitely not going to make my living in the bay, (we lived on an Island 6 miles out to sea and 18 miles long and the bay was 18 miles long & 2 to 6 miles wide) so the bay was very well stocked with fish, clams, crabs, and mussels.

 

While looking into the Pismo beach clams I found they are all over the California coast but just got the name from Pismo beach. They are still legal in a lot of places but were fished out at Pismo Beach for the last 20 years. The small pitch forks worked great in the sand. The fancy ones had a cup near the head of the forks so when you lifted it up the clams would fall into it. I'm glad they have made a come back at Pismo. They make the best clam chowder and I still remember how great they were in a chowder...

[desertbluesman]

When I clammed in NJ the bay, mud was prevalent on the mud flats islands, and the surrounding under water earth was bay mud, I would sink in at least 6" with every step. That is how I was successful treading for clams. I had clammers boots which were locally available from the older island residents, they were made of a sturdy canvas, light enough so you could feel the clams with your toes, & the technique was to wrap your toes around the clams and bring them up the other leg without getting the hair wet. The boots also prevented the blue claw crabs from nipping your feet and drawing blood, although the nip always hurt a bit.

[Larryz]

Last time I said we had over 300 +/- views on this thread so people are hopefully using the OP backing tracks and the two scale pattern charts for the MINOR mother of all scales. We now have 666 views which shows there is still a lot of interest in the subject of combining your minor scale with the pentatonic minor scale. The patterns stay the same no matter where you move them and the guitar layout automatically transposes all the intervals for you when you learn the two patterns as dots (not just notes and intervals). And then play them as sounds and little riffs that come from within (not just scales, notes and intervals). I posted this YouTube lesson long ago which goes into greater detail to include the MAJOR scale and ways to improvise using chord changes, chord tones, etc. I think it's a great lesson worth the time to study. It puts theory and improvisation into a context many players may have already achieved while others (including me) have some catching up to do. Even though it's blues, many players can use these concepts in other genres as well. Have fun with it!

 

 

[video:youtube]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Larryz]

This thread started out with the A Minor scale and backing tracks using interval charts. We had 300 views which then doubled to 600 views and I hope it was due to players reviewing the charts and using the scales to practice with. Well we have doubled the number views to 1,200 now so I'll bump this thread one more time as there is interest and players can find a lot of backing tracks with charts YouTube to choose from. This one is a simple Texas Blues backing track but it's in A Major. Same exact pattern just drop down 3 or 4 frets for minor and use the same pattern. This chart shows the note names in the pattern for you to work off of and learn the fretboard locations. Anyway I hope this thread opened a few doors for some of you out there. Don't forget to line up the 5 major pentatonic positions with the Ionian major 5 positions to get some variation in your lead work. I like to throw in a little melody line to break things up too. Anyway, even though there are few comments on the thread, I think players are getting some use out of it based on the number of views/repeat views...Have Fun!

 

[video:youtube]

 

 

 

[Music With Marky]

That scale generator tool from the vid still is awesome!

https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/scalegenerator/

[Larryz]

@ Mark, Thanks for pointing that out and sharing the link. It is a very cool tool! I'm bookmarking it for future use!

 

 

ps. I went back and played around with the scales, drop downs, left and right section pointers, etc. A super learning tool that I hope everyone who visits this thread gets a lot of use out of! Thanks again Mark!

[desertbluesman]

That scale generator tool from the vid still is awesome!

https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/scalegenerator/

 

Very neat heads up amigo.