Show Dates and Details:

Thursday, March 29th – Skyway Theater @ Barfly
711 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis, MN, US
Ozric Tentacles + MathGames!
Doors open at 8 pm. Must be 18+ to enter.
$10 per person.
Click here for tickets >>

March 30th – The Canopy Club
708 South Goodwin Avenue Urbana, IL 61801
Ozric Tentacles + MathGames!
Doors open at 8pm. Must be 18+ to enter.
$10 in advance. $12 at the door.
Click here for tickets >>

About Ozric Tentacles:
Ozric Tentacles is a rock band from England, whose music can be described as psychedelic or space rock.
Its music is a highly psychedelic mixture of thumping basslines, sound effects and keyboard and guitar work. Many of the Ozrics’ songs are in unusual time signatures and/or unusual Eastern-influenced modes. There are also moments of straightforward funk-influenced grooves and strong influences from jazz fusion, dub/reggae and ambient music styles. These features are mixed with electronic elements, including densely layered psytrance- and techno-influenced synthesizers. There is a strong influence from dub and ambient music, with many quiet relaxed tracks that balance the frenetic, intense material. The Ozrics use a wide range of instruments in their performances: electric and acoustic guitars, flutes, recorders, and xylophones.

Fareed’s talents are uniquely suited to the Moog guitar, or maybe the Moog guitar is uniquely suited to Fareed’s talents. The guitar allows him to play a chord with three of the strings and while that chord sustains indefinitely Haque can play a jazzy run on the other three strings. The advanced instrument allows the jazz great to play with more than one voice at a time. Fareed may have a powerful ally in the form of his Moog guitar, but he was willing to lay it down and switch to one of his two acoustic guitars when the moment called for it. He also added his own beats to Fundis’ with vocal tabla rhythms.

Fundis’ electric drums can sound like they are bouncing off the moon before reaching the audience’s ears or they can pierce through the air like lasers at the speed of light. Greg does a great job of balancing the styles of acoustic jazz trap drumming with electric percussion. His acoustic solos are clean and articulate, using the digital pads to spice his rhythms. He has a connection with Austin that creates a playground for Haque.

Read the full review >>

MathGames is taking a few months off from the road to finish up the Studio CD, Mathtronica. Our last all night sessions at IV Labs were rippin’! Thanks to ROLLIN WEARY FOR MAKIN IT ALL SOUND SO FAT. We recorded two new tunes including Greg’s first MG tune!

We have one last session scheduled for mid January, and plan to record our little acoustic suite – Digital Country and Digital Cowboy, two pieces based on the Fibonacci Series and our tribute to Dr. Who…as well as a few other new things…

January and February have a few shows in the midwest, especially note Fareed’s Birthday show January 28 at Martyr’s, with guests Mos ‘Scoscious and The Hue! We will also head into the studio to finish up albums by Ann Violet and April Aliosio. Ann is a lyric and melody driven pop singer songwriter. Ms. Aliosio’s record is – well – we call it Tantric Bossa Nova…

Online Guitar Lessons

January 9-12, Fareed is heading down to Florida to:

1. bask in the sun?
2. hunt for alligators??
3. eat good food???
4. record two new courses for TrueFire????
5. all of the above

If you guessed all of the above…YOU ARE CORRECT!! The two courses will complete the ‘Survival Guide‘ series. We’ve already had the Jazz Comping Survival Guide. Now its time for the ‘Be-Bop Survival Guide’ and of course its companion, the ‘Modal Jazz Survival Guide.’

News & Notes

After the recording in Florida with TrueFire, its time for more classical music! Fareed returns to Chicago and performs Haydn, Teleman, and Coste with Dempster ProMusica Jan 22 in Evanston, IL.

In February, MG starts a residency TBA in Chicago… so keep an eye out for that. We have tons of new music to learn before we are ready for the road again.

April hits with B3 master, Tony Monaco! After successful shows at JavaJazz and The Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Fareed, Greg, and Tony will hit with two nights at the Jazz Kitchen and two nights at the Greenmill.

Then in May, MathGames heads to Europe for a few guitar festivals. Also, keep an eye out for Fareed Haque and the Flat Earth Ensemble, as well as a reunion with Fareed’s mentor, Paquito D’Rivera, in Chile.

Hey there fellow MathGamers! Fareed’s latest project continues to pick up steam in greater-than-anticipated fashion, with new shows being added. July has an ambitious tour of the West capped with a festival appearance outside of IL late in the month. August sees the band joining back up with new friend Ray White (Frank Zappa) for a trio of dates in the Northeast. Updates are happening on an almost daily basis, so be sure to keep checking back with the MathGames! Facebook page, and continue to follow Fareed on Twitter. Lots of great MathGames! clips are available for your perusal on Fareed’s YouTube channel.

New Shows Announced!

Tonight MathGames! is hitting up the Oregon Institute of Technology on the 14th to take part in their Summer Music Series. They’ll wrap the West with three more can’t-miss shows in Oregon, with appearances at the Applegate Lodge, the Silver Moon Brewery in Bend, and The Good Foot in Portland. Then their path back East will take them through Salt Lake City UT, some quick stops through Colorado, then a secret show on July 22 where it’s windy, then an appearance at the famed Blottopia Festival July 23. In August Ray White will jump in the RV for a trio of shows including Boston, Saranac Lake NY, and Rhinofest in Plainfield, VT August 4-6. MathGames! has also just been signed on to play at this year’s North Union Farmer’s Market Festival in Cleveland, OH, the Steel Jams festival in Bethlehem, PA and more. Also, Fareed will be playing at Millennium Park on August 26th with a Miles Davis project, and that weekend will be bringing a band t o the Greenmill in Chicago August 26 and 27 and then capping the weekend with August 28 at the Glen Ellyn festival of the Arts.. Ray White will again appear with MathGames! on September 1 at the Founder’s Brewing Company in Grand Rapids, MI.

Online Guitar Lessons

We are proud to announce the launch of online guitar lessons and our partnership with TrueFire.

The launch was last month, and already, hundreds of people are taking lessons from Fareed Haque. The reviews coming in are raves already, and we are happy to announce that this project has been an uproarious success.

This is an amazing opportunity to take guitar lessons directly from Fareed Haque from your computer. This company is top notch and the leaders in the field of online music lessons.

MathGames! Unveils New Facebook Page

Just a couple months ago we launched the new MathGames! facebook page!

Already hundreds of you have gone to the page and LIKED it! Awesome. Those who are interested, please do suggest the page to all of your friends and help us populate this new gathering place for MathGames! Of course, the Fareed Haque facebook page is still the place for all things Fareed Haque including MathGames!, Flat Earth Ensemble, solo appearances and general news.

Most indian and some Middle Eastern stringed instruments are played melodically on only one string. For this example, we’ll play melodies, exclusively on the G string. By staying with one string, you’ll naturally start to phrase more like a sitar player.

This is in dropped-D tuning, which yields a DAD drone on the bass strings. Sitarists use an index-finger pick – a wire thimble of sorts. So instead of flat picking, try picking the G string with index-finger up-and-down strokes. Rest your picking-hand thumb on the A string to index-pick the G and D strings, or for a deeper drone, rest the thumb on the guitar to kick A and low D into action. Back up Ex.1 with any of the chords in Ex. 2.

most rock oriented players would play on a Gm “Blues Scale”:

or a Gm scale

A jazzer might play licks built on a gm9 arpeggio

or a Gm13 arpeggio:

Instead of thinking about a scale, fill in the arpeggio, or add the notes above each note in the arpeggio. Feel free to experiment, just so long as you come back to – resolve to – the notes in the arpeggio you can’t hit any sour notes…

Any chord can become “jazzy” if you use an arpeggio over it. To build your arpeggio, simply find a chord, then play the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th (and 11th and 13th if you’re adventurous) of that chord, from low to high. Always visualize a chord from under each arpeggio and just have fun with the notes in between the notes in your arpeggio. Here are some arpeggios along with their parent chords to help you get started (on most of these play 1 3 5 7 9 then double back to 1 and play 1 3 5 7 9 in the higher octave.):

Don’t feel that if you use these arpeggios you can’t use the blues scale too. This stuff doesn’t replace anything – add this material to what you already know – use it all. Try using the blues scale and then throw in a jazzy arpeggio, then go back to the blues scale. Anyway, here are a few typical jazz licks that will fit right over the arpeggios given above. Feel free to change them and make them you own. Trust your ears and your instincts – if it sounds good to you thin it probably is…

Basically, jazz is built around 7th chords. A 7th chord is a 4-note chord made up of the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th notes of a major scale. There are five families of sevent chords:

Here’s how we’re going to play these on the guitar:

2) Next play the root or 5th on the low E or A string. In jazz, we like to build chords with as few notes as possible – they sound better and are easier to play – so get used to leaving out notes. Never leave out the 3rd or 7th !!! Flat the 5th if you have to

3) Finally, play 9ths, 11ths and/or 13ths on the high E and B strings (Don’t get freaked out – the 9, 11 and 13 are just 2, 4, and 6 octave higher). 9ths, 11ths and 13ths are called extensions. First, try adding just one extension, as you get more experienced expiriment with adding two. Experiment with b9, #9, #11 and b13. We don’t use b11 (same as 3rd) or #13 (same as b7).

The nice thing about this approach is that it allows you to be flexible with how you want to play your chords. You can play just color tones for 2-note chords, play 3-note chords by adding the root or 5th (this is called "Freddie Green" style; Freddie was the grooving rhythm guitarist in [pianist] Count Basie's grous for many, many years); play full chords by playing root/5th, color tones and extensions; or "comp" by playing just color tones and extensions.

Here are a couple of common chord progressions to start with:

I hope this takes some of the mystery and confusion out of jazz chording. Don’t be afraid to use your ear and, above all, trust your instincts.

That whole thing about jazz being complicated and mysterious and intellectiual is just a load of crap invented by musicians/academics who can’t play and want to puff up their own egos by confusing and intimidating young musicians. The truth is that jazz, like all music, is fundamentally very simple – you don’t need any fancy theory or any fancy scales – just a little knowledge, a little common sense (all too uncommon these days) and the courage to TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS.

First of all, forget all that stuff about modes and altered diminished whole-tone depreciated scales. I’ve hung out and played with a lot of the jazz greats and most of them would have a hard time even playing a phrygian mode, let alone using it in their own solos. Jazz is basically about playing melodies over chords. So to play jazz we hav eto know about chords. Once you know how to play chords on the guitar, then improvising becomse simple.

Each 7th chord has a root, 3rd, 5th, and 7th. That basic arpeggio gives yo ufour notes on which you can improvise with absolute confidence. How many notes in a scale? Seven. So with the arpeggio you’ve already got more than a half. All you need to do is add the 9th, 11th and 13th to your arpeggio and you’ve got all seven notes. Move them down an octave and you’ve got your scale – 9 becomes 2, 11 becomes 4 and 13 becomes 6. So you’ve got 1, 2 (9), 3, 4 (11), 5, 6 (13), 7 and 1 again.

If you aren’t sure what notes to play for the 9, 11 and 13 then USE YOUR EAR! Play the chord, then play 1, then play 3, now figure out what note sounds good TO YOU in between 1 and 3 (there may be more than one…). Ttry singing the notes and playing them against the chord. Choose a note that sounds good to you, do the same for 4 and 6 and you’ve got a scale! You may discover more than one scale per chord, but don’t worry, that just gives you more notes to choose from…

Now I know this may seem way too simple, but the truth is that this is how most of the great improvisers did it – the played ARPEGGIOS, not scales, and turned their arpeggios into scaes just like we did above.

One more thing – don’t practice arpeggios separate from chords. Always link each chord voicing you know to an arpeggio in the same position and build a scale from that arpeggio. Learn to “jam” on each chord voicing that you know so that when you think D9, for example, you can automatically think and see the arpeggio and scale that goes with that chord grip:

Don’t worry if you don’t even know the name of the scale you’re playing over D9 – thinking all that theory stuff takes too much time anyway – See D9, think D9, hear D9, play D9 as a chord or as an arpeggio and you’re done. That’s all the theory you need to start playing jazz. Below, I’ve given you a few examples of chord voicings that I use and the arpeggios that I use with them. Check them out, jam on them and feel free to change them – make them your own….

The problem with using scales for improvisation is that they limit us to ONE set of notes from which to make melodies. Unfortunately, most good melodies use all kinds of notes…not just the notes found in one scale. That’s why using scales to create melodies never really works…

But knowing scales as a BASIS for creating melodies and chords is very important. Eventually you must HEAR the relationship between chords and melodies – no amount of Jazz Theory will do that for you – and understanding how scales sound and what they are all about is an important first step.

For the most part there are THREE scales that are the basis for 99% of all western music including almost all of modern jazz and modern classical music. These are the MAJOR scale, the MELODIC MINOR scale and the HARMONIC MINOR scale.

The Major scale follows the intervalic pattern of two whole steps and one half step, then three whole steps and another half step:

1-1-1/2-1-1-1-1/2 in C Major it would be: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C

The Melodic minor scale Simply Flats the third and the major scale. The Harmonic minor scale Flats the third and Sixth of the Major scale.

We create chords on each scale degree by stacknig the scale in thirds. That creates 21 different chords, 7 from each scale. These ar ethe 21 chords that are the basis for almost all western music.

From the C Melodic Minor Scale:

Cm(M7), Dm7, EbM7#5, F9#11, G9b13, Am7b5, B7alt.

from the C Harmonic Minor Scale:

Cm(M7), Dm7b5, EbM7#5, Fm7, G7b9b13, AbM7, Bdim7

To learn how to play these scales on the guitar I suggest the following approach. Keep in mind that there are any number of systems and methods out there that will show you how to finger and learn different scale patterns. The differenc is ithat this approach does force you to think of scales in ‘my’ way or someone else’s way, as most “systems” do – This approach comes from the nature of the guitar itself and will [hopefully!} allow you to explore scale fingerings in your own way.

We will learn major scales in three ways:

1. Two Octave scales fingerings
2. One Octave Scale fingerings
3. ‘Perpetual Motion’ key changing exrecises

TWO-OCTAVE MAJOR SCALES

The open ‘e’ strings on the guitar are two octaves apart. Therefore a natural starting point for practicing scales is to learn them in Two Octave positions, from each note on the low ‘e to the corresponding note on the high ‘e’ or thereabouts. Since the lowest note in the key of C on the guitar is an ‘e’ you wolud begin by playing a two octave scale starting on low ‘e’. For the C major scale play a two Octave C scale from open low ‘e’ to the open high ‘e’. Then play a two octave C scale from the Low ‘f’ to the high ‘f’ on the ‘e’ string and so on.

Next move to the key of F. Since the lowest note on the guitar in the key of F is an ‘e’, your first two octave F scales will stoart on open low ‘e’ and end on open high ‘e’. The next two-octave F scale will start on open low ‘e’ and end on open high ‘e’. The next two-octave F scale will go from F to F, then G to G, A to A and so on. NOTICE that the only thing that has changed between the keys of C and F is that B’s become Bb’s. This is one of the most important benefits of learning scales this way – you will develop a natural awarenes of the COMMON TONES between keys by focusing on what notes stay the same and which ones change from key to key.

Continue aronud the Cycle of Fourths adding flats as you go. From F to Bb you will simply replace E naturals with Eb’s. From the Key of Bb to Eb, A’s become Ab’s, and so on…

MAKE SURE to explore playing these two octave scales with multiple fingerings. Start each scale with each finger of the left hand. you will find that for the most part, three of the fingerings will be pretty easy to play while one of thew will feel pretty uncomfortable. Just discard the fingerings you don’t like and practice the ones you do.

Once you have explored MANY fingerings, choose your favorite ones and try to play all seven two-octave scales in one key WITHOUT STOPPING and at TEMPO. Set a reasonable tempo for yourself – maybe eights at quarter = 96 bpm to start. This wil build security and will help get the scale fingerings into your unconscious…which is where they MUST be if they are to be of any use to you.

ONE-OCTAVE MAJOR SCALES

While one learns a lot from practicing two-octave scale fingerings, the truth is that only occasionally does one use them. Most melodies span no more than one and a half octaves, and most improvisation therefore contains itself to one and one half octaves as well. Ultimately, One octave scales relate more closely to what we actually play when we improvise.

A one octave scale played in one position will span three adjacent strings. To be thorough, practice these on the guitar in each of the 4 three-string ‘groups’: From the low ‘e’ string to the ‘d’ string, from the ‘a’ to ‘g’ strings, from ‘d’ to ‘b’ strings and from ‘g’ to high ‘e’ strings.

Go through the same process that we went through for two-octave scales, going through the cycle of fourths and exploring different fingerings in each 3-string set.

Again, choose your favorite fingerings and try to play all seven one-octave scales in each key WITHOUT STOPPING and at TEMPO.

PERPETUAL MOTION

This exercise will help with changing keys smoothly, and with moving around the fingerboard easily and efficiently.

Start in the key of C and improvise straight eight notes at a reasonable tomepo. For now DO NOT LEAVE THE KEY, but stay in C, playing only scale tones. Try to use different melodic patterns and to shift smoothly from position to position.

A few words about fingering….

While fingering is a huge subject, a basic few tips are useful at this point.

1. ALWAYS play on the tips of the fingers
2. Keep your wrist only very slightly bent away from the fingerboard, with knuckles straight in line with your hand.
3. When ascending try to shift from 3rd or 4th to 1st or 2nd finger, so that you always have somewhere to go.
4. When descending shift from 1st to 2nd finger or 3rd or 4th.

Once you feel pretty comfortable with Perpetual motion in C, try shifting between the keys of C (No flats or sharps) and F (Bbs in the key), still playing straight eight notes at a reasonable tempo. As you will have noticed by now, changing keys from C to F only involves changing Bs to Bbs. DO NOT leap to the next key, but make sure to continue smoothly in the same direction when you change keys. You might also try to keep a melodic pattern ascending or descending while changing keys. Next try shifting between F and Bb (Bbs stay and Es becomes Ebs). Once you can do this try perpetual motion between C, F and Bb.

Add keys slowly until you can shift smoothly between all 12 keys. At first this may seem impossible, but if you go slowly, step by step, you will come to visualize the common tones between keys easily and effortlessly.

The whole process can take a student from 2-6 months of hard work, so don’t be discouraged or overwhelmed. Steady practice is all that is required. If you find yourself away from your guitar with time to kill, try practicing in your head. VISUALIZE the fingerboard and go through different scales, fingerings and all. Don’t underestimate this kind of practice as it is some of the best study one can do. The clearer your mental image of the guitar, the easier it is to play what you want to.

AFTER you are pretty fluent with major scales, flat the third on ALL OF THEM, and you have your molodic minor scales. Then you can go through the entire study again, this time learning melodic minor scales. Of course since by now you are pretty good at major scales, learning these will go much faster.

….and when that is done take all your melodic minor scales and FLAT THE 6 to get all the Harmonic Minor Scales….HA! This ought to keep you off the streets for a while.