Playing Modal Made Easy

TrueFire Foundry courses are independently produced courses presented by a hand-picked selection of top-notch artists and educators from around the world. Filmed in the educator’s own studio, Foundry courses bring fresh educational concepts and very effective teaching methodologies to TrueFire Students. David Walliman’s Foundry course, Playing Modal Made Easy will show you how to flavor your solos with creative modal approaches.

Hello I'm David Walliman — welcome to my TrueFire Foundry course, Playing Modal Made Easy, which I produced in my own studio!

One of the most requested topics I've had in my 20 some years of teaching guitar has been modes. A lot of information can be found on modes, but let's face it — they can still be confusing! I put together this course together to demystify modes for you and clear up all of the confusion.

I will share with you everything you need to know to fully understand modes and most importantly how to use them musically. I like to see modes as different alphabets that can be used to express ideas. By approaching modes like a set of different letters, we can quickly start use them according to the type of speech we want to use on our instrument.

This course is a very hands on where students will be given specific assignments to complete. These assignments are designed to help you apply what you've learned. First, we'll go through the theory and define what modes are. This step is fundamental as it will help you understand which notes to target to sound modal.

Next, we'll go through all the scale and arpeggio positions you'll need to improvise. I will show you how to create killer licks using simple tools such as the pentatonic scale and basic arpeggio shapes. We will also learn the basics of creating chords progressions that will work over specific modes. By the end of this course, you will have a much better grasp on modes.

The course comes packed with custom backing tracks that you will use in your assignments. Each track was specifically written to accompany this course and will speed up your learning progress. Key examples are tabbed and notated for your practice, reference and study purposes. You’ll also get Guitar Pro files so that you can play, loop and/or slow down the tab and notation as you work through the lessons.

If you feel that your improvisations are staling and need fresh ideas, then grab your guitar and let's get dig in to Playing Modal Made Easy!

NOTE! David Wallimann organized the course into 8 weekly sections for those students that prefer to have a specified regimen of material across a specified time schedule. However, for those students who prefer to work at their own pace, or even skip around you are certainly encouraged to approach the course in that way as well.