Hammerhead Blues, Pentatonic Scales Options

[Hammerhead]

AJ,
just kidding... Adam,
I have been playing guitar for over 20 years. I've just blown the dust off of my guitars after a great 10 years of family with two children, and NO TIME. My children are 10 and 7 now and I find that with work and family and exercise , I can now squeeze in some time each week for practice. If I'm pushing it, but realistic 2 hours a week for now is doable. I have some breaks coming up ( I teach) so I can put in extra then.

I don't really listen to much music now, so I'm not sure who inspires me at the moment. Two names come to mind for current picks though: Joe Satriani & Steve Vai. My goal is to play melodically like they do, with shredding skills and sound knowledge of theory. Now I know that they put in more hours each day than I can in a month... so I'm realistic about how much I will improve, but I don't mind the striving.

I was a huge RUSH fan (still am), and I also have listened to my share of metal, and even some punk. ! Now that I'm older, I'm not so angry so metal and head banging is not my thing nowadays.

I am trying to strengthen my voice and my ear. I know that both of these will help my music overall.

I take the whole approach to my guitar:

1. I play guitar because I love music!
2. If a skill pertains to music (voice or ear training, eventually reading music...) Then I will try to improve myself there.
3. It's not ultimately about being able to play at a certain level, it's about enjoying the music along the way.

Anyway what I was thinking of starting with the Major and Minor Pentatonic scales. I just discovered the relative major of the minor scale. I am now playing (I-IV-V) each scale over the chords to try to hear each voicing. I'm only working with the first 3 positions (or boxes) at the moment. I don't even know/ remember any scales. When I listen to Buddy Guy tear it up on a song, I want to be able to "tear it up" too, so right now I'm trying to hear/ understand what makes these 5 notes sound the way they do? needless to say I plunk around on those same notes & I get Nadda...ZERO!

I want to really hear music.

I also want to understand the Theory pieces, for example the relative Major... is it the Third on the minor scale? Does that work in reverse, the relative Minor is the 5th????

Last but not least is the SPEED, yes I want to play long fluid blazing solos! So I need help with speed exercises.

I hope this is enough to start with

I look forward to meeting all of our troop!

P.S. My input jack to my lap top Just broke! My recordings buzz off and on at the moment... so I'm looking at investing in a USB audio interface. Since I plan at some point to work with MDI, this will be MIDI compatible. Of course I started looking and I realized a nice pre-amp couldn't hurt (all the voice work I want to accomplish could use a nice sounding mic) and so I'm looking at different equipment right now. A long story to say that I have no way to record @ the moment. I am considering the Kontrol 1 interface. It's full blow, which means I wont need to upgrade down the road.

http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/2009/...are-Bundle.html


Tons of software as well...any thoughts are welcome,

Aloha

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