by Jude Gold & Pat Martino (in collaboration with Guitar Player Magazine)
If there’s one common misconception people have about geniuses, it’s the notion that these stellar intellects engage only in the most strenuous of thought; that in order to even hold a conversation with one of these brainiacs you need an Ivy League PhD, an IQ of 200 or more, and a bulbous cranium that makes you look like a character from Star Trek.
In reality—as brilliant inventions such as the wheel, the light bulb, the magnetic guitar pickup, the TV dinner, and the Pet Rock all so vividly prove—the most ingenious ideas are often the simplest. And if the mark of true genius is the ability to find simple, head-slapping, gosh-why-didn’t-I-think-of-that solutions to complex problems, then Pat Martino is truly one of the guitar’s cleverest minds.
In this guitar lesson, the jazz legend shares with you an inspiring re-mapping of the fretboard that is radically different from what is typically taught in private guitar lessons or at music schools.
“The guitar is structured like no other instrument,” states Martino, “and it unveils itself in a unique way. Like the piano, it has its own fully unique temperament. But the communal language of music that all musicians share—that is, the language of scales, theory, and intervals that we all use when explaining or communicating music—really has nothing specifically to do with any instrument other than the piano.”
But guess what, guitarists: It’s now finally time to describe music from our point of view. And there’s probably nobody more qualified to step up to the podium and demonstrate a guitar-centric vision of the musical universe than Martino, because he has written a mesmerizing treatise called The Nature of Guitar that may forever change how you visualize the way harmony, melody, and improvisation all function on the fretboard. And yes, Martino’s genius ideas are almost childishly simple. Read on for the full guitar lesson complete with audio, charts, power tab, and more…
Oh, and if you like this guitar lesson, then you’ll love these courses: Howard Morgen’s Fingerboard Breakthrough and Joe Dalton’s Fretboard Epiphanies
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Duane Allman and slide guitar: To many devotees of his playing, with and without the Allman Brothers, the two will forever be inseparable. Duane had a fluid, expressive style that was his alone. Eric Clapton, asked about his own slide playing, said, “I think what really got me interested in it as an electric approach was seeing Duane take it to another place. There were very few people playing electric slide that were doing anything new; it was just Elmore James licks, and everyone knows those. No one was opening it up until Duane showed up and played it a completely different way. That sort of made me think about taking it up.”
