Andy Wood: Strengthening interval recognition

For tabs and text of this video lesson, see the September 2024 issue of Guitar World -

THE WOODSHED by Andy Wood
ELEMENTAL VISION
Welcome to Andy Wood's first Guitar World column! Andy starts off with an essential element of musical understanding, which is the knowledge of intervals. To illustrate, he cites a passage from his song “Believe,” from his album, Charisma.
An interval is the distance between two notes, measured in half steps and whole steps. “Believe” offers a great way to examine intervallic relationships, as there’s a repeating, droning root note throughout the opening melody, and it’s helpful to be aware of the intervallic relationship between the root and each individual melody note.
#andywood #intervals

[williamhurrelbrink]

Listen to everything Andy has to say. He’s the real deal!

[jfrog]

Holy smokes man I think I just had a friggin epiphany with this🤘😦brilliant my friend, and you play absolutely beautifully🥹🎸you have a brand new fan in me dude!😁👍

[InsolentMusicalPeasant]

And here I've been banging my head against the wall of trying to memorize the notes... Intervals seem a lot more useful in the moment. Certainly a whole lot easier to remember. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

[juanfelipealzate]

Andy wood Is a phenomenal player. Great lesson.

[donaldblankenship]

Fantastic lesson 🎸 thank you so much! I downloaded Charisma and I’m learning so much just listening to you rip. 🙌🏽

[DB-ufmd]

one of the best today, plus a tremendous teacher!

[huffdm]

Congratulations Andy on the Guitar World column and the new album! Rock on! 🤘😎

[Dan-zqwt]

This is a fantastic lesson. It clears up a lot of confusion for me. Thanks Andy!

[guitarhvac]

Beyond valuable lesson. Just to add something that I had to think about as an intermediate player…. At 6:00, you need to realize what he’s doing is using an Open D string and then relating everything (an octave higher)to that. Sometimes the 2 would be called a 9 in that case….. just trying to help keep confusion down. He kinda mentions that, but he’s got this stuff down so well that I think he(and other advanced players) forgets/doesn’t realize it has to be broken down a little further and clarified for beginner and intermediates. But what I’ve learned from Andy is that intervals is the BIG PICTURE in any style of music!!

[nightguy]

Just came across this channel and subscribed. Perfect for where I’m at. Thanks.

[jbonez]

Nobody explains music theory as it applies to guitar better than Andy. Thanks for your contributions my friend!

[SixStringRacer]

Absolutely beautiful. Thank you Andy

[jaysmoreymusic]

Excited for where this is going! Good stuff that's often overlooked.

[mykneeshurt]

Three and Seven and eight. always hugging each other. Friends for life.

[warp]

As a person who plays both guitar and piano I think it's really interesting to see the fact that while the guitar is clearly a chromatic instrument, I (we?) always always think about being in a key, and then, I ask myself, about changing keys. But if instead I was to say, what intervals might sound good in this piece, sometimes those intervals will include notes that aren't in my chosen "key". And when I figure out what it is I'm doing (oh look, I've re-discovered the harmonic minor scale), I think to myself, maybe us guitar nerds should be reviewing the piano nerd teaching system and stealing from it. I think when it comes to scales and modes, the keyboard/piano people have been teaching this more effectively than the guitar community.

I love the idea of minimizing workload. To offload work from my brain, I just need to do a thing without thinking about it. Muscle memory. Habit. Ingrained skill. Better than playing scales, for me, is improvising over chords. For hours. Hundreds of hours. Eventually thousands of hours. But before I could do that, thousands of hours of scales and exercises and licks. So much work, all to minimize workload and make me able to do effortlessly now what I couldn't even do with a maximal effort at first.

I like the idea of working in degrees of a scale. I think we should work with the names also. Tonic being the root note, and supertonic, and so on. This lets us think functionally.

[KRayxKodessA]

Guitar World, you've been sleeping on Andy!! You should try and get Dan Sugarman as well, incredible player/teacher.

[barruzza]

Suhr Andy Wood Signature Series Modern T HH Electric Guitar - Whiskey Barrel

[uberjam-sam]

A lesson that could have been by Derek Trucks. Not the same as Derek but I really hear Derek in Andy's playing...it's a singer's approach as much as a guitarists.

[godsinbox]

Tell me how this relates to life?

Because when I get a bill, I hear the minor scale?