How To Solo On The Guitar: A Step-by-Step Improv System (Beginner / Advanced)

1. Course Introduction: If you've been playing guitar for a while, you probably know a few chords and scales. Perhaps you learn the minor pentatonic scale, maybe a few modes, and you can play along to your favorite songs. But when it comes to improvising and creating solos and moving across the neck, you get stuck. Perhaps you can hear what's going on in your head, but you can't apply it to the guitar, or you're stuck in those boxy scalic shapes, and you can't make your solo sound melodic and phrase nice. And I get it. You want to use scales in our peggios in a musical way so you can express yourself. We're going to start really simple with the minor pentatonic. I'm going to teach you how to play what you hear in your head, how to build phrases, how to sound musical and melodic. And then from there, we can build on things with the major modes to add extra color into our solos. I'll teach you licks along the way and give you backing tracks so you can improvise at your own. Once we've added some color into our solos with the modes, I'll then teach you some advanced skills so you can learn some head turning licks that really add some spice into your playing. I'm going to teach all of this in the most musical way possible. All of your lessons are going to have downloadable tabs and backing tracks so you can play along at home and really apply what we learn in lessons. Now, as you go through the course, you're also going to find some mini assignments. Now, these are put in place to really help you apply what you're learning. You can record some solos using the scales we discuss and then submit them to me for feedback. I'm going to keep these lessons into small bite size chunks, which are going to be perfect for those of you with busy schedules. 15 minutes a night is way better than 3 hours on a Monday, ignoring your guitar, and then picking it up for another 3 hours on a Saturday. Now, if you feel stuck at any point, don't worry. You can always email me and I'll pop my email on the screen. But that's enough for me right now. So go grab your guitar, grab a coffee, and I'll see you inside the first lesson. 2. 1.1 - Your First Solo: Okay, so let's get started. Like I said in the intro video, we're going to start with the minor pentatonic. Now, don't worry if you don't understand what that means. I'm going to talk through it in a second. All guitar solos, all sort of solos. Most things, to be honest, are around the pentatonic scale. It's a nice, easy scale that everybody likes the sound of. There's no wrong notes. It's really familiar. So it's a really nice starting point for us to learn how to improvise. So here's the scale in a minor just so we can hear it. On the lower E string, we play 58. On the A string, it's 57. On the D, 57, 57 on the G, 58 on the B string, and 58 on the high E string. Now, if you already know that skill, fantastic. If you don't, pause here and go practice it. Really get it under your fingers because you really want to be able to visualize that shape on the guitar to be able to proceed to the next step. So if you do need to learn it, pause, go learn, come back, okay? Because we're about to start talking through how to use that in a solo setting. Right, so one of the easiest ways to start improvising and sound musical is to use a call and response framework. Bibi King is amazing at this, and he's my go to guy, ifever I want to sort of sound human, sound melodic, sound musical in my solos, because that man can do so much with just three notes that it just proves that you don't need to shred and play 1 million things at once. You can just play three notes, keep it simple, keep it melodic, and have a conversation with the guitar, and it sounds amazing. So he does that through using call and response. And what I mean by that is you play a short phrase, and you think of that as a question. And then you respond to that question with an answer, your response. And that goes back and forth, back and forth. And what that does is it structures your solo, so it's not random. Everything's purposeful, and it's in short little phrases, so there's not endless endless notes with no breaths. When you solo, you want to think about your solo to be like a vocal, right? Like singers when they sing, they don't sing forever, they pause to take breaths. Like when you're having a conversation with somebody, you speak, you stop, you breathe. They speak, they stop, you breathe. It's back and forth, back and forth. And that's how we want our solos to sound for them to really be intentional and musical and melodic. So let me give you a quick example of what I mean by that. Here's a basic question, a basic call. You can then respond to that with an answer. And hear then how it sounds like a completed phrase, right? If I play them together. You can then repeat your first phrase. And then develop your solo by playing something different. And you can see already how that's starting to sound musical, okay? We're not just playing through the scale randomly. We're thinking about short little snippets that we can use to have a conversation with ourselves, essentially. And that's going to give so much more intent to our solos. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to give a quick example of this in action with a back and track, and then I'm going to talk through how I play it, teach you guys how to play it, so you can start using it yourself, and then give you some extra little tasks to do after that. Now, I'm just going to mention in this solo, I'm going to keep it really, really simple. Going to limit myself to just a handful of notes in the scale. Now, this is a really great way to train yourself to be musical with limitation. If I have three notes, then I have to make that sound musical. I have to think about phrasing, rhythm, how I approach everything. It's not just then randomly playing through a scale. So I'm gonna keep it really, really simple. Play just a handful of notes, so you guys can start to understand the call and response system, learn it for yourself, and then we'll develop it from there. One of the things you might notice in that solo is that I keep returning to one note specifically. This one here. And the reason I do that is that's because it's our root note. Now, a root note is the key that we're in. So if I'm in A minor, like we are now, that is an A. Same as if we were in G, my root note would be G, if we were in E, my root note would be E, okay? It's a really strong sound. Now, within the scale, I've got three A notes, okay? I've got here at fret five on the Low E string. I've got here at fret seven on the D. And I've got five and the high E string. Now, those three notes are really strong sounding within our key. So I'm going to resolve as many of my licks as possible to that note, so it sounds intentional. What I'm gonna do just to really bring that home is I'm just gonna play a quick lick where I resolve to that A, and then I'm going to play the same lick where I don't resolve to that note. And you'll hear the difference and you'll hear why it sounds finished. So hopefully you can kind of see there what I mean by that. When I land back on that root note, my phrases sound intentional and finished. So it's really something important to keep in mind when doing that call and response. So let's break down that solo I played so we can learn a few licks and understand how this call and response system works. So I open the solo with a call, that question, and I'm sliding from fret five of the D string up to our root note on fret seven. It's leaving it open, okay? There's my question. Really simple. It doesn't have to be complicated. I'm then answering that phrase like Z. We're leaning back on that root note, it sounds finished. Core response really simple. Nothing complicated right now, but it sounds musical and intentional. I'm then gonna develop on that and slightly change my first phrase, okay? It's gonna evolve as the solo goes. It sounds like l. Again, really, really simple. Slide from the five to the seven on the D, five on the G, back to the seven on the D. And then slide to seven on the G string. It's a new question. It sounds different, but it's not totally alien to what we've played before. So everything still sounds like it's part of the same solo. Now, to answer that question, I kind of play the lick in reverse. Again, landing back on that a note. So it sounds resolved and finished. Really important to do when you're writing your own solos. Okay, so the next part of this solo is, again, another call and response thing, and I'm following the chords as they change here. Don't worry too much about that right now because we'll do that in a later lesson, but I just want to sort of touch bass to know that I'm doing that anyway. So my first little phrase it sounds open. It leaves it open for a response. Again, very simple, just a couple of notes, but sounds melodic. I'm leaving breaths in between each phrase so it can live. I can breathe. No, I'm not tearing up and down that scale. I'm keeping myself restricted to just a few notes to practice that call and response thing. Now, as the chord sort of turned back round again, I'm gonna play a small little phrase that again resolves on that a note. That in itself could be a resolved response, but I build on that a little bit further. With a few string bends in there. Again, I keep repeating myself, but it's so important. It's core response. It's simple. Nothing complicated going on here. And this is going to really help you understand this scale, learn the sound, and start playing musically and intentionally. So what I want you to do now I've sort of broke down that little piece of the solo is I want you to pause, download the backing track that's included in this lesson, and have a little go yourself. Record yourself so you can listen back and then have another attempt. Record, listen back. Restrict yourself, if you can, to phrases that have got three notes in them, okay? Three notes. Next phrase, three notes. Next phrase. Not trying to sound flashy here. We're just trying to practice short melodic phrases with a call and response style so we can start crafting a structured solo. So give that quick, go for yourself and then come back to this lesson. Okay, so now we're going to take this a little bit further. I'm going to play another little solo that takes that call and response idea and uses some of the rest of the scale to show you how far you can really go with it. You can use this concept to create a whole breadth of solos. So I'm going to put the tabs on the screen whilst I play through so you can teach it to yourself. And then I want you to take some of your favorite licks and apply them in your own solos, okay? Improvising is kind of like copying, still like an artist. I advise everybody to learn their favorite songs, which has got solos in them, and then break that solo apart. Take those licks and put them together so you've got little chunks that you can use to craft your own solo. And we'll do that ourselves a little bit later in this module where we'll teach you some licks, and then you can put them together to create your own solos. But as we go through, take what you like and apply it yourself. So here we go. Mm hmm. 3. 1.2 - Play What You Hear In Your Head: Playing what's in your head is one of those challenges that a lot of guitar players face. And that's what I'm going to talk about right now in this. Lesson now, the way I combat this with all of my private students, and the way I was taught to combat this myself is to sing what's in your head and then apply that to the guitar. Because when we sing, we deliberately sing melodically with pauses, with breath, and that can sound really nice when we then put that on our instrument. Cause one of the common problems with soloing on the guitar, because it's shape based is that we tend to just blaze up and down these shapes, not thinking about breathwork, not thinking about phrasing, not thinking about being melodic. And then when we then compare that to, let's say, a saxophone solo, which is beautiful. It's melodic. It's crisp but it has breathwork, it has pauses. We think, why don't we sound like that. And that's because a saxophone player has to pause. It has to breathe. It has to think about where it's going to start in the phrase because you can only hold your breath for so long. We can play and play and play and play and play while it's breathing, so we don't have that problem. And that causes then the problem of sounding just like non stop playing diarrhea, you know, it just doesn't stop. So what we're going to do is we're going to learn how to play what we hear in our head by singing. Now, we're gonna stick with our minor pentatonic scale, and I want you to start, first of all, by just humming the root note, which we've already discussed is A. A humming that is gonna help keep you inky, alright? Because sometimes you can hum something. You're like, Oh, it's all sorts of random notes. To help keep us within our scale, I want you to hum that note and hum through the scale as you sing it, okay? Just to start off with. It's gonna sound weird, but trust me, okay? Do it. Bob B B B. It doesn't have to be perfectly in pitched, but it's just so you get the idea of the scale. Oh, boom, Bob. B, bu bu bu. Like I said, I'm no singer, but it gives you an idea where the scale goes, okay? Now, keep that in mind, and then let's hum a phrase. B, B. And then let's find that on the guitar. B, buh, buh. Sounds pretty close. B, bu, ba. And when you're doing this, I want you to keep your call and response phrasing in mind, okay? Keep it short. So we've got B, B, da, da, da. Let's find that. Da da, da, da, da. Da Da, da. There it is. So we've got Ba Da. And then play that back. Oh. Hopefully, you can see already how that's going to help you play what's in your head, right? If you can start to remember where those notes are, where those sounds are, you're going to be able to find them easier when you're looking for them when you're improvising. And then it's just going to speed that whole process up of, Oh, I hear this solo for this song or I hear this lick idea. How do I find that? You know, it's just going to start building that muscle memory, building your ear to connect it all together. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to hum a quick little solo. Play through all the licks, put it to the back and track. See how will that work. See how it crafts a solo. We're going to do it on the camera live. And then I want you to pause the video and go do it yourself, okay? Use the backing track that's down below for you to download and hum something. Hum it, record it, hum it, record it. And then you'll start to see that that's going to build a solo in itself, which you can then listen back to, play in its entirety, et cetera, et cetera. So let's do it. I'm going to load up the back and track. Play a little bit, hum and idea, record it. Play a little bit, hum and idea, record it. And we're going to go from there. Okay, so here comes the backing track. Do Doja da ta, da, da ta. Okay, so let's find that on the guitar. D D There it is. Da da ta, ta, ta, ta ta. Da, da ta. Da, da, da, da da da da. Da, da, da, da, da ta. It's trial and error, but the more you do it, the more you'll work it out. And the more when you sing, you'll start to sing the notes of the scale, so it gets easier. So from that exercise alone, we've got Okay, let's listen to track again. Let's see what comes next. So we had DT, ta, ta, ta, ta ta. B, data. That note is deaf, turn, data. Okay, so let's again find that on the guitar. So we had B, da, da, da, da, da. Da, da, da, da, da. Get the idea. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna record those four little phrases over the back and track so you can hear the solo in its four. There we go. So hopefully, that gives you an idea of how to start playing what you hear in your head. Like I've said, keep it really simple for now because you want to build up this muscle. It's something new. You can also be developing your ear at the same time. So it's a really great exercise. Start small, start with short little three, four note phrases, and remember to think about your call and response. Build on the lesson previously. Like we said in the intro video, we want to compound what we're learning here. So we've learned call and response. We've then learned how to hum and sing along with the scale. And now what you're going to do is hum and sing call and response phrases to start building melodic solos. So give this a go, download the backing track, give it a go for yourself, record it, listen back, edit, go again. Do this a few times throughout the week, and hopefully you'll start to develop the skill and better hear the sounds from your head and play them with your own hands. So give it a crack. 4. 1.3 - Common Pentatonic Licks: Explored a call and response style solo, and we've also talked about humming ideas in your head and then putting them into the scale, playing them on the guitar, playing what you hear. I now want to teach you a few common, well known A minor pentatonic licks, which you can use in solos. Now, these are licks that everybody uses. They're not original to me. They're taken from, you know, Jimmy Page, Jimmy Hendrix, slash, et cetera, and every guitarist uses them. And that's kind of what I want to teach you here that you can steal licks from other artists from other solos and use them yourself, right? Think of a lick as a short little phrase, a short sentence that you can use again and again and again over a song to help craft a solo, right? It's a safe place. You know it. You can play. It sounds musical. It's perfect. So I'm going to play them at full speed with a tab on the screen, and then I'll play them again slowly just so you can sort of really get to grips with them. And then I'll give an example at the end of how I can use those licks in a solo setting. So here we go. Okay, so there's a few licks there for you to experiment with. Practice them loads and really get them under your fingers, okay? You don't have to learn all of them to choose your favorites. The ones that really resonate with you. You'll notice every time I finish a lick, I end it on the root note, that a note here or here. Now, remember, like we talked about before, I'm landing on that note because it's nice and strong. It sounds resolved and finished. So every time I play a phrase, I land on that a note and it sounds complete. It sounds like a complete sentence with a four stop at the end. There's no ambiguity. There's no like, Oh, where's that going? It's just Here's my statement. Boom, there it is finished. Really, really great for just chaining loads of licks together because everything sounds complete. So what I'm going to do now is use some of those licks over the back and track that you can download below, just to show you how they can all piece together to create a solo. Now, I want you to do this yourself. Download the backing track and record yourself using these licks over the top. Use them in any order you like and mix them up, you know, Experiment, play around with different orders to create different sounding solos. Combine that then with your call and response and your humming ideas, and you're really gonna start to develop a nice repertoire of licks to improvise with. So here we go. So now, grab the backing track and give this a go for yourself. Steal some of the licks I used in that solo and use some of the ones I've taught you earlier in this lesson to see what you can construct yourself. 5. 1.4 - How To Get More From Your Licks: Talked a little bit about phrasing already in this module. Now, for those of you that are still a little bit unsure, what I mean by that is it's the way you deliver your lick. Think about when you're having a conversation with someone, when you're speaking, your rhythm changes, okay? You don't speak in one continual rhythm. You have pauses, you have breaths. You emphasize certain words and certain syllables. The same goes for when you improvise on the guitar. Like we've talked about before, it's like having that conversation, that call and response. So you want it to sound human. And this is going to really help those of you that struggle with that robotic sounding solo. So what I'm going to talk about right now is starting your phrase on different beats of the bar. And what that's going to do is going to allow you to really get the most out of these licks. If I play every lick starting on beat one, it's going to sound really boring. It's going to sound like I'm talking in the same way all the time, saying the same thing, the same cadence, the same rhythm. If we mix that up, we can recycle that. It sounds interesting. We can use it in different ways, play around with the beat and really emphasize different notes. So what we're going to do is we're going to take one of our simple licks that I taught in the previous video. And we're going to start placing it in different beats of the bar and start playing around with it rhythmically, just so you can see how it really affects the sound of the lick. And what I want you guys to do is go away and take your favorite licks and experiment with that. Put on a backing track and start moving the beats, start on the of beat one, start on beat two, maybe put a break or a little pause in the middle of the lick to mix it up. And that's going to really sort of break you out then of the idea of Oh, licks, licks, lick, licks licks and give you a little bit more creative freedom to develop things yourself and be a little bit more expressive. So let me play your ok lick over a backing track, and then I'm going to start playing around with that rhythm so you can see how it sounds different. So the lick I'm going to use in this example is this one here. Now, currently, that lick starts on the end of beat one, three, four, one. So what I'm going to do is start the lick on the end of beat one as normal, and then I'm going to experiment moving it backwards and forwards, right? I'm gonna start it on different beats. I'm gonna put rests in the middle just to see how we can get different sounds out of it, okay? So you can really see there how I'm playing the same notes, the same lick, and yet I'm getting so many different sounds out of it. I'm messing with that phrase. And it's a perfect way to, like I said, recycle those old licks. Think about when you learn a language, okay? When you learn to speak English, you learn the words. You kind of know what they mean, you kind of know what order to put them in, but you're not able to express yourself freely. The more you practice playing with words, playing with language, the more you're able to communicate how you feel. And that's exactly the same here on the guitar. The more you play with these licks and learn how to move them rhythmically, how to play with your phrase, the more expressive you can be, and the less robotic your solos are going to sound. So download the back and track and give this a go with your favorite licks. Start with one lick at a time and really play with the feel of that lick, where you slide in, where you put a rest, where you emphasize a new note. You're going to start to really develop and connect with that back and track and as I said, play expressively. Try it with a few different licks, and then try different combinations of them together so you can develop new solo ideas. Another thing you can try is playing around with different techniques within the lick. So things like slides, bends, hammer ons, pull offs, all those common guitar techniques, take a lick and see how you can develop it or evolve it by using some different techniques to sound more expressive. Just a quick example of that, I'm going to take exactly that same lick and then play around with some different techniques to emphasize my point here. If you're already familiar with your five pentatonic shapes, you're going to notice that you can adapt these licks easier in some shapes more than others because the way the notes are laid out. So perhaps if I play that lick down here in first position. Because I'm using open strings that might lend itself more to hammerns and pull off, Whereas in fifth position, slides sound a little bit better. Perhaps if I play it somewhere else, bends might be a little bit nicer. So have a little go with that yourself, as well. Experiment and see how you can develop your licks and your phrases to sound really musical and expressive. 6. 1.5 - Assignment: Okay, assessment time. Don't worry. It's going to be nice and easy. What I want you to do is download the backing track below. It's the same backing track we've been using for the last few lessons. I want you download that and record your own solo. I don't mind whether it's completely improvised or whether you sit down, you think about it, you write it, and you develop it. But what I want you to do is use some of the licks I've taught you, use the call and response framework, and even maybe hum some ideas to craft your own solo that sounds musical and expressive, okay? Play around with rhythm to come up with different ideas, use different techniques to sound expressive and adapt what you hear in your head, and explore that minor pentatonic box. Now, if you know your other five shapes and you want to move up and down the neck, totally fine. Go ahead and do that. It's not going to give you bonus points. I just want you to solo to your ability right now, okay? It doesn't matter whether you're a little bit more advanced or a little bit more beginner. It's totally fine. I want to just hear how you're getting on. So record your solo, record yourself filming it, and then submit it to me, and then I'll email you with some feedback, and we can get an open communication loop going and help you along your solo journey. And if there's anything you're struggling with so far in this module, pop that in the email as well, and I'll get back to you so you can have some nice feedback going. So, good luck. And I look forward to hearing what you come up. 7. 2.1 - How To Follow The Harmony: Okay, I now want to start going a little bit deeper. So far we've looked at how to construct solos, how to phrase them, and how to start sounding musical with our skill. But I now want to start adding some intention into our playing to really start following the chord changes. Because when you follow the chord changes in a solo, you sound intentional. You sound like you're playing with purpose. We call improvising over the top of chords, not following the changes. We call that the blanket scale method. That's just where you throw one scale over the top, improvise away, and have no care in the world to what's going on underneath your solo. And that's totally fine, and that's the perfect way to get started, and it's how I got started solo in too. But if we want to start leveling things up, we now want to follow that harmony. Before we do that, I'm just going to put the backing track we've been using on and talk you through the chord progression. It's a common standard 12 bar blues using chords one, four and five in A minor. Now, don't worry if you don't understand what 145 means. All I need you to know is our chords are A minor D minor and E minor. Or if you're more into your open chords, it's A minor here. D minor and E minor. So I'm going to put the backing track on now with a chord diagram, just so you can see the structure of the backing track. So as I said, we want to start following the harmony with our solos. Now, to do that, we're going to target chord tones. It's not a load of theory jargon, so don't worry. Think of chord tones as the notes used to spell a chord. So if I was to spell a word, let's say spell and AND, those letters A N and D would be the notes for that word, the notes for that chord. So in my A minor chord, the A minor chord uses notes A, C and E. So when we're solo in and we end our phrase, if we end on one of those notes, A, C, or E, our solo is going to sound really intentional because we're highlighting those notes within the chord. Now, that same thing applies when we change chords. So when we go to our D minor, the notes in D minor are D, F and A. So again, if we highlight some of those notes, it's going to sound like we're following the chord changes. And the E minor, it's E, G, and B. Don't worry if you don't know the notes on the fretboard. I'm going to show you where those notes are within the scale so that you can understand how it sounds, where it sits within the scale. And this is translatable to every key. So as you just move the scale into different positions on the fretboard, those notes, those positions stay exactly the same. So when we've been improvising currently, we've been ending all of our phrases on an A note, this note here. Okay. And I said, we've been doing that because that's the root note. So it sounds resolved and finished. What I want to practice doing now is when we transition to that dechord we then instead land on a D note. So it sounds like we follow the harmony. Now, that D note is here at fret five on the A string. Or there at fret seven on the G string. A Now, an easy way to start doing this is to take the licks you already know, and instead of ending on an A, you end on a D. So let me take that lick we were using previously. That lick ends on that A note there. Let's instead end on the D note so we can follow the harmony. For now, it really is that simple. We're just gonna change our last note, and we can recycle all of our licks to end on that D. So I'm just gonna play a few different examples from the licks I showed you earlier, all resolve into that D, so you can use them in your solo. So I'm now going to put that backing track back on, improvise the solo over the top, resolving to that a note when we're on the A chord and then resolving to that D note when we hit that D chord. So hopefully, you saw there how I changed the end of my phrases to hit the root notes of each of those chords. So when the backing track moved to a D chord, I targeted a D note. And likewise, when it went to the E minor chord, I targeted that E note. So give it to go for yourself. Over the backing track, try and highlight the harmony as it changes. If it's a little bit easier, rewind back to when I put the chord diagram on the screen so you can see the chords physically changing as the progression moves forward. Eventually, your ears are going to develop so you can hear these changes. But for now, just do whatever you need to do to really start highlighting the root notes of those chords. In the next lesson, we're going to explore some of the other notes we can use to target that and a few peggios to really highlight those changes. 8. 2.2 - Using Arpeggios To Find Chord Tones: Last lesson, we touched on chord tones and how we can use those to follow the changes in the harmony to sound intentional when we solo. I want to expand on that now and talk about our peggios. No, and our peggio is the spelling of a chord. We talked about before how chords are built up of multiple notes, like how a word is built up of multiple letters. And arpeggio is essentially the spelling of that. It's like a mini scale that spells the chord. So what I'm going to do is teach you the minor arpeggios for each of our chords, A minor, D minor and E minor. We can then explore where they are in multiple positions on the fretboard and then how we can use those notes to highlight the changes as we improvise. So here's the A minor arpeggio in the current position we've been playing in fifth position, so we're nice and comfortable and familiar with that area of the neck. Okay, here's the D minor arpeggio. And here's the E minor arpeggio. Now, what I'm going to do is just play those arpeggios over their corresponding chords, just so you can hear how it properly highlights the sound. You can see there how those arpeggios are going to outline the sound of our chords. Now we can use all of those notes as target notes when we end a phrase, so follow the harmony. What I'm going to do now is quickly outline the chord tones within those arpeggios, you can see where they sit within each scale, and then we can talk about improvising with them a little bit more. So as we've mentioned, an arpeggio is going to outline the notes within a chord. Now, our A minor chord has notes A, C and E. Apeggio is a repeating pattern of those notes. We start on A, There's C, it's our third. And there's E, it's our fifth, because in a chord, we usually spell it one, three, five. That's the notes from Mischel. It's a little bit theory heavy. Don't worry about it right now. Just know it's one, three, five. Okay, that then repeats. Five, one. Now, when we solo and we end our phrase on one of those notes, it will obviously sound like an A minor chord. But what we can do is change up the sound of our phrase endings by landing on a different quartne. So at the moment, we've always been landing on the A, but we can change up the sound of that to make it a little bit more interesting by landing on the third or by landing on the fifth. So I'm just going to play a quick lick ends on the root. Then the same leg ending on the third, and then the same leg again ending on the fifth, you can hear it sounds different. Oh. You can see that all of those target notes work to end a phrase on. Some sound more resolved than others, but they can be great to keep that conversation going at times as we've discussed with that call and response kind of idea. What I want to do now is explore where these arpeggios are in various points on the neck so you can start up, play freely and hit the chord changes everywhere before we get into properly solo in and using those arpeggios in a solo. So what I'm going to do is play each arpeggio in multiple positions, starting with the A minor, and I'm going to play various inversions as well, so you can play them up and down the neck. And So here's a few of the D minor arpeggios in various positions on the neck. And here's a few E minor arpeggios on the neck. Spend some time exploring the neck to find various positions for these arpeggios. It's really going to help you unlock the fretboard and move around freely. But what I want you to do is put the backing track on and just practice changing arpeggios. We're going to play up and down through the A minor, and then when it changes to the D minor, go to the D minor arpeggio, and then likewise for the E minor. And it's going to start training your ears to start moving, start changing scales, start changing notes slightly to follow those chord changes. Remember, this isn't about sounding musical right now. It's just about moving between scale shapes. Okay. I'm now going to play a complete solo where I use some of those arpeggios to follow the changes so you can see how they can be used in a musical context. You don't always have to when the chord changes play up and down through the arpeggo, it's just going to sound robotic and scalic. Instead, use those notes as reference points, visualize the arpeggio, and then see where you can hit those notes to sound like you're following the changes. So, have an experiment with those arpeggios and get nice and comfortable with them in various positions across the neck. Remember to use them musically and not like a scale. Target those char tones when you change phrases to make it sound intentional as you improvise through the back and track. Download the track below and give it a crack for yourself. 9. 2.3 - Arpeggio Solo Breakdown: Okay, so in this lesson, I want to break down that solo I played just then and just talk through my thought process. I'm using a mixture of the minor pentatonic and s arpeggios to follow the chord changes, whilst thinking about that call and response thing all the time. So let's break it down. I'm gonna pop the taps on screen as we play through. So I start the solo on my root note here. All minor pentatonic so far. And then I really highlight that A minor chord by using the arpeggio. That's all A minor arpeggio there. So we're really solidifying, on the A minor chord. But that minor arpeggio there is within our pentatonic anyway. So, you know, it's nothing new. It's no new scale shaped here. I then play one of our well known minor pentatonic licks. But I resolve that on a D note our harmony changes across to the D. And then just to highlight that I'm really on that D to sort of really follow that harmony, I play the third of the D, which is within our arpeggio. It's outside of the pentatonic, but it's with inside that D minor arpeggio. So it sounds right. I then come back into the minor pentatonic and land on an A, the chords change back into an A minor. So the D. And in resolve back to that A. Now, the next section goes to an E minor straight to a D minor. It's quite quick. So I'm just going to outline an arpeggio here with a lick I quite like to use. So we go up into the E minor arpeggio. E minor arpeggio. Which comes from this shape here. Down to the D minor arpeggio. And then we're back then on our A as we roll back round. And then it does go back one more time to an E minor. So you can slide up to that E and hit other notes there within the A to outline that chord change. The whole time when I play through that, I'm visualizing where these shapes are. I'm thinking, Okay, A minor, I'm going to be using the A minor sound. And then just as the chord changes, I'm staying within my pentatonic. But just hitting that Dene. Add some ge, little spice, then with that arpeggio. You can hear when I'm soloing. Even without the chords behind me, you can hear us the chord changes. You can hear the harmony change even without the chords behind me. You can't go back to the A there. You don't have to be that complex with it. You don't have to, like I said, use those arpeggios. You can just find those target notes. At one point in that solo, I highlight the E. There's the third. Down to the D. And then resolve into the A. It's something that might take you a little while to get used to, especially if you're really familiar with a blanket scale method where you just rip over that A minor pentatonic and not worry about what's going on. But I promise this is going to really help to start your solos to sound intentional. You're going to start thinking about things differently. And then the more you're familiar with that, the more expressive you can be because you can start coming up with your own little lines that follow the changes. So give it a go, download the backing track, record yourself experimenting with these arpeggios, and then see how it goes. 10. 2.4 - The Blue Note: Okay, I want to add something extra into your color palette. It's called the blue note. We're currently improvising over a minor blues scale. So to sound stylistic and add a little bit of spice, I want to add something called the blue note. It's essentially the flat five within the scale, but don't worry about that. It's a little bit they heavy. All we're gonna do is move our finger, one fret. So within our A minor scale, we're currently playing this shape. Our blue note is the flat five. Right there at fret six on the aString. And then it can also be found right there at fret eight on the G. So just by adding one extra note, you get a real stylistic blue sound. So, what I want to do now is teach you a couple of licks that include that blue note, and then I want to set you guys off on a task where you try and incorporate that into your solos. So you can hear within all of those licks that I'm not lingering on that blue note. It sounds a little bit clashy, but it's great to use as a passing note to play something quickly pass through, add a little bit of spice. If you know all five of your pentatonic shapes, then fantastic because you can find that blue note within all of them. So it's really worth experimenting, finding where they are. Take the licks. I've just taught you in position one and see how you can apply them to various positions on the fretboard, so you can really add that blue note sound into your playing no matter where you are on the neck. Download the backing track below. It's exactly the same one as we've been using before. So it's exactly the same 12 bar changes. Include your arpeggios and now throw that blue note in as well. See where it fits, see if it sounds nicer over one chord than another. See what works for you and what licks you can come up with using that extra note. 11. 2.5 - Assignment: Okay, assessment time. I want you to record a brand new solo over the backing track we've been using in the previous lessons. It's a 12 bar blues, and I want you to outline those chord changes using the arpeggios and the chord tones that we've talked about. I also want you to throw that blue note in there for an extra little bit of color. So play around with some of the licks that we've discussed, come up with some of your own, and remember to use the call and response kind of framework that we discussed back in Module one. Use as many techniques as you like, bends, hammer ons, pull off, slides, et cetera, be expressive and come up with your own ideas. As always, email me the recording, and I'll get back to you with some feedback to help you improve. Good luck, and I can't wait to hear what you come up with. I Now, so far, we've spent a lot of time working on an A minor blues, using the A minor pentatonic and some minor arpeggios to navigate some of the chord changes. I now want to look at a major blues because the scales are going to be different. So I'm going to talk you through the major pentatonic, some of the major arpeggios that we've got in this fifth position. And then we're going to sort of go a little bit further and start exploring how we can blend different scales together to get a really nice, sort of bluesy sound start mixing things up a little bit more for us. So we're not stuck in a strict major or minor box. So for those of you that are onshore, the major pentatonic is still a five note scale, and I'm just going to teach you real quick right now before we dive into some of the other stuff. So there's your A major pentatonic. On the low E string, we've got 57. On the A string, we've got 47, 47 on the D, 46 on the G, 57 on the B, and 57 on the high E. So that's your A major pentatonic. If you know your five pentatonic shapes, some of you might also know that as shape two. Both are valid because they actually connect together the pentatonic shapes, but we'll touch on that in a slightly later lesson. So before I talk about how to use this scale in an improv setting, let's just go over the back and track for this new set of scales. It's still 12 bar blues, so it's still only using chords one, four and five, but this time, they're major chords. So the chords we've got in this back and track are a major. D major and E major. And I'm just gonna throw the backing track up with a quick chord diagram just so you can guys see how the changes work. So like we discussed with the minor pentatonic, you want a call and response style solo, and if need be, hum some ideas in your head to familiarize yourself with the scale. You know, hum it, play it, hum it, play it, and really learn how this scale sounds. We also are going to cover a couple of major scale licks, which we can use, but we can also use our minor licks. As I said earlier, these scales do connect. Now, our A major shape is here at Fret five. That actually connects to a minor pentatonic starting down here at fret two. So we've got minor pentatonic starting from fret two. And that connects to our major pentatonic up here at fret five. So, along with using our major pentatonic licks, which I'm going to show you shortly, we can use all of our already known minor pentatonic licks down here at fret two. The only thing to be aware of is our root note is moved. Because we're still in the key of A, our root note is no longer here in our shape. It's actually here. So keep that in mind when you're ending your licks because you're going to have to end those phrases on a different note than what you're used to playing up here in A. So let me just show you a few major pentatonic licks, which you can use in a solo, and I'll give you an example of them being used in real time. So, like with my A minor licks, I'm resolving all of those back to my A note because it's a strong chord tone. But you don't have to always end there. Like we've said, you can end on the major third or you can end on the fifth. And to highlight some of those chord tones, let me just play through the major arpeggio for you, too. Now, like we've done previously in the minor blues example, we want to follow the chord changes as we improvise. If you want to just get used to that major pentatonic, that's fine. Use the blanket scale method and just play around with it to get familiar with the scale. But if you really want to push yourself, we also want to highlight that D major chord and in the E major chord. So I'm just going to show you where those arpeggios sit within our scale, and then give you a live example of a solo where we can land on those chord tones to highlight the chord changes. So for our D major chord, I've got my root. I've got my third, and I've got my fifth. Then got the octave of my root again. My third. And you can see how that sits within the A major pentatonic scale. Then for my E major arpeggio, I can play it that way or to keep it more within the fifth position. So I've got my root, my third, my fifth, my root, and my third. And again, you can see how those sit within our A major pentatonic scale. So I'm now going to play an A major Blues solo, and I'm going to keep tabs on the screen so you can learn the solo for yourself if you wish. I'm going to keep it nice and simple just to show off some of those A major licks and show how I move between some of the arpeggio notes to hit those quarnes. So hopefully, that's given you a good idea on how to use the major pentatonic and some major arpeggios. There's a few licks and a solo in there for you to work out for yourself. The backing tracks are available to download below. So give it a download and like before, record a few solos, listen to them back, and start developing some repertoire for this major blues. We're going to next move on to how we can blend between major and minor to have a really authentic blue solo. A 12. 3.1 - Soloing Over A Major Blues: So far, we've spent a lot of time working on an A minor blues, using the A minor pentatonic and some minor arpeggios to navigate some of the chord changes. I now want to look at a major blues because the scales are going to be different. So I'm going to talk you through the major pentatonic, some of the major arpeggios that we've got in this fifth position. And then we're going to sort of go a little bit further and start exploring how we can blend different scales together to get a really nice, sort of bluesy sound, start mixing things up a little bit more for us. So we're not stuck in a strict major or minor box. So for those of you that are onshore, the major pentatonic is still a five note scale, and I'm just going to teach you real quick right now before we dive into some of the other stuff. So there's your A major pentatonic. On the low E string, we've got 57. On the A string, we've got 47, 47 on the D, 46 on the G, 57 on the B, and 57 on the high E. So that's your A major pentatonic. If you know your five pentatonic shapes, some of you might also know that as shape two. Both are valid because they actually connect together the pentatonic shapes, but we'll touch on that in a slightly later lesson. So before I talk about how to use this scale in an improv setting, let's just go over the back and track for this new set of scales. It's still 12 bar blues, so it's still only using chords one, four and five, but this time, they're major chords. So the chords we've got in this back and track are A major. D major and E major. And I'm just gonna throw the backing track up with a quick chord diagram just so you can guys see how the changes work. So like we discussed with the minor pentatonic, you want a call and response style solo, and if need be, hum some ideas in your head to familiarize yourself with the scale. You know, hum it, play it, hum it, play, and really learn how this scale sounds. We also are going to cover a couple of major scale licks which we can use, but we can also use our minor licks. As I said earlier, these scales do connect. Now, our A major shape is here at Fret five. That actually connects to a minor pentatonic starting down here at fret two. So we've got minor pentatonic starting from fret two. And that connects to our major pentatonic up here at fret five. So, along with using our major pentatonic licks, which I'm going to show you shortly, we can use all of our already known minor pentatonic licks down here at fret two. The only thing to be aware of is our root note is moved. Because we're still in the key of A, our root note is no longer here in our shape. It's actually here. So keep that in mind when you're ending your licks because you're gonna have to end those phrases on a different note than what you're used to playing up here in A. So let me just show you a few major pentatonic licks which you can use in a solo, and I'll give you an example of them being used in real time. So like with my A minor licks, I'm resolving all of those back to my A note because it's a strong chord tone, but you don't have to always end there. Like we've said, you can end on the major third or you can end on the fifth. And to highlight some of those chord tones, let me just play through the major Arpeggio for you, too. Now, like we've done previously in the minor blues example, we want to follow the chord changes as we improvise. If you want to just get used to that major pentatonic, that's fine. Use the blanket scale method and just play around with it to get familiar with the scale. But if you really want to push yourself, we also want to highlight that D major chord and in the E major chord. So I'm just going to show you where those arpeggios sit within our scale, and then give you a live example of a solo where we can land on those chord tones to highlight the chord changes. So for our D major chord, I've got my root. I've got my third, and I've got my fifth. Then got the octave of my root again. My third. And you can see how that sits within the A major pentatonic scale. Then for my E major arpeggio. I can play it that way or to keep it more within the fifth position. So I've got my root, my third, my fifth, my root, and my third. And again, you can see how those sit within our A major pentatonic scale. So I'm now going to play an A major Blues solo, and I'm going to keep tabs on the screen so you can learn the solo for yourself if you wish. I'm going to keep it nice and simple just to show off some of those A major licks and show how I move between some of the arpeggio notes to hit those quarnes. So hopefully, that's given you a good idea on how to use the major pentatonic and some major arpeggios. There's a few licks and a solo in there for you to work out for yourself. The backing tracks are available to download below. So give it a download and like before, record a few solos, listen to them back, and start developing some repertoire for this major blues. We're going to next move on to how we can blend between major and minor to have a really authentic blue solo. 13. 3.2 - Blending Major And Minor: We've explored how to use the major pentatonic over a major blues, but we can make it sound nicer. I want to start blending the major and the minor pentatonics together to give us a real stylistic blue sound. Now, to do that, we're just going to start real simple at first with the major and the minor third. Let me just break that down for you just so that makes sense, and you're not lost in the theory. So here's my minor pentatonic, like we've talked about before. My minor third is this note here on the G string. That's the note that makes my chord sound minor. My major pentatonic. That's the major third. Which is that note there one note apart, one fret apart. Minus third. Major third. Is a major chord? It's a minor chord. One note difference, okay? So what we're going to start doing is blending between that major and the minor third, okay? Really easy, just like so. It really can be that simple. So if I just play a lick that includes that, you'll hear how bozy it sounds. You can see it adds a really nice color into the solo. And if I blend that with the blue note, as well that we learned earlier. Add that in as well. We're gonna get some really nice blues licks. So you can see how great that's all gonna sound together. It sounds really, really busy. What I want you to do now is pause this and download the backing track. Just experiment blending between that major and the minor third. Get comfortable experimenting with that before we extend out into the rest of the scale. Okay, so hopefully you're comfortable blending that major and minor third together. Let's just take a look at how we can blend between our major and minor on the other strings, too. I'm going to start up on the low E string, right? Our minor pentatonic is these two notes here. My major is there. We've got one note difference. So all I'm going to do is blend them together. On our A string, here's our major. And a minor it's like so, so we've got to get one note difference. So we've got like so. Same applies to our D string. There's the milor. There's the major. Blend them together. Now, on our G string, here's our major. And here's my minor. So all of that is available for us there on the G string. On the B string, there's your major. Where is the minor. We've just got twos difference again, so. We can blend them together like so. So altogether, we've got this. And you can start blending between the major and the minor like so. So let me just pop on a backing track and give you a real example of how that works in practice. H Now, one of the really great ways to highlight chord changes and introduce a different sound into your solos when you're doing this is to use the major pentatonic over the A chord and then switch to the A minor pentatonic when it changes to the dechord. That A minor pentatonic highlights a lot of those decord tones, so it's going to outline the chord change, and it's also going to sound completely different where I contrasts from the major, right? So let me give you a quick example of that. I'm going to play the A major pentatonic over the A and then switch to the A minor pentatonic over the decord. So hopefully that you can hear how changing to the minor pentatonic over that decord gives us just a new color to our solo. We're strong in that major sound, and as it goes to the D, we switch to minor. You can obviously keep blending between the two item when you please, too. So you can kind of experiment with this and see what you like, see whether you prefer to split them or merge them together over the A, entirely your choice. Either way, I want you to give this a go right now, record a few solos and play around with some different ideas. Remember to blend between that major and the minor third for some real obvious blends and add in that blue note, too. So give that a crack and I'll see you in the next lesson. 14. 3.3 - Changing Positions To Follow The Harmony: Previous lesson, we started to explore switching between different scales to give us different sounds. I want to take that just a little bit further by using the major pentatonic in various positions on the neck. It's going to start to get us used to bouncing around the neck for when we really start to unlock it in the next module, what we're going to do over the same back and track we've been using is we're going to play the A major pentatonic over the A chord. When we go up to the Dcord, we're going to switch to the D major pentatonic. Now, this is going to get us used to switching scales when the chords change. We've kind of touched on this already with chord tones and our peggios. I just want to give you another option to explore, just so you've got various things to play around with. So that A major pentatonic we play here at Fret five. And as I said, we're gonna play that over the A major scale. Now, instead of staying in this position, I now want you to start thinking about moving positions, and we're going to play D major pentatonic over that D major chord. That's up here starting at fret ten. Exactly the same shape, just in a different position. So you can recycle all the licks that you use down here and just place them up here instead over the D. Same thing applies with the E. We're going to play that here at fret 12. So we've got A. We've got D. Now we've got E. Now, you can obviously play the scale shapes down here as well and stay in position, but we'll touch more on that later in another module. For now, I just want you to get used to moving up and down the neck, recycling those same licks so you can start really following changes. I'm going to put the back and check on and give you a quick example of that. So you can see there how you can use exactly the same licks over those different chords to follow the changes. It's all about working smarter, not harder, okay? Let's not memorize 1 billion different licks and 1 billion different note placements and all that kind of stuff. Let's just take one shape and let's move it around the neck to start following changes sound intentional and remain melodic throughout. Remember, repetitions great in soloing, so there's no harm at all in repeating those licks. 15. 3.4 - Exploring The B.B Box: I want to introduce the BB box. It's a small little scale position that blends the major and minor pentatonic together. I was used really, really frequently by BB King, and it sounds beautiful over that first chord because it just gives you some great little blues notes that sound very BB King like that blends together that major and minor. So let me just show you how to play it, and then I'll teach you a felix and we'll apply it to our back and track. So, I like to think of the BB box as playing a variation of the major pentatonic from the fourth chord. So in the key of A, A is one, or four is D. Now, if I was to play my D major pentatonic That would put me up here, right? So, I like to sort of visualize that. No matter what key I'm in, if I'm in the key of G, my fourth is C. So I know my Bb box is around the C major pentatonic, right? That's how I like to visualize it. And it really is just a couple of notes. That's it. You can see there. It's essentially the D major pentatonic. But we've added that little note in there. And that's gonna sound really, really bloozy when we improvise over that a major chord. Let me to give you a quick couple of licks, just on its own. Sounds nice in country, that one. Mean to give you a quick rundown over the back and check. So, nice that sounds over the A major chord. And you're already in that D major pentatonic kind of position. So when it does change to the D, you don't have to move anywhere. You're already in that slot. And then when it goes up to the E, you're only up two frets higher anyway. So it's a nice little box to play around in. What I'm going to do now is add that into my solo jam. I've got a blend between my major and minor pentatonics, and I've got my BB box. I might start on the BB box and then move down to the A minor pentatonic over the four chord to add a little bit of contrast. And then maybe I'll use some arpeggios over the turnaround of Cord five to chord four, just to really outline those chord changes. So let's just give it a go. So, give it go for yourself over the backing track. It's something that definitely only works over a major blues, but I want it to sort of make you aware of it as it's nice little color to add to your solos. Play around and see if you can mix it into your solos with the blending between the major and minor and add that blue note, you're going to have a really nice sounding blue solo there. So give it a crack for yourself. 16. 3.5 - Assignment: It's assessment time, again. Let's go back and apply everything we've learned together. I want you guys to use the back and track record a brand new solo using the major pentatonic and the minor pentatonic with the blue scale, and if you like the BB box. Now, I don't want you to think of this as a tick box thing of, Oh, I have to play this scale, then this scale, and then play this here. It's too many rules. Think about it it's colors. If I play here and just move my finger up one fret, it sounds really nice. It clashes. It's got a little bit of tension and release, which is beautiful for solos. So same as before, record a solo, blend between major and minor over this back and track, and then submit it for some feedback. 17. 4.1 - Opening The Fretboard: Thing we've explored so far has been around one part of the fretboard. But what I want to start doing now is open that up so we can improvise freely up and down the neck. I teach things this way because I think it's important to first understand the sound of a scale, how to use it, understand how to construct a solo, where you can move your fingers to get some slightly different sounds. I think it's really important to master that in one place before you try and do it everywhere on the neck. But I want to open that up now. We're going to explore the five pentatonic shapes. Some of you may already know them. That's totally fine. I'm going to teach them here really quickly and then talk about how we can take these ideas that we've learned and move them to different parts of the neck. So let me just break down the five pentatonic shapes super quick with some tabs for you, and then we'll talk about improvising with them. Now, these five pentatonic shapes are five different scale positions or for our A minor pentatonic. Now, they're transferable into any key. Once you've learnt the shape, you can just move it anywhere around the neck any key. So I'm just going to chip in A minus to keep it nice and easy for us. We already know shape one, so I'm minor pentatonic. No, no. Now, shape two starts on your second note. It's going to start on our next note, and it's the major pentatonic. Shape two, the scale we've looked at previously. I think I touched earlier on how they connect together those two, so you can start blending between those two scale shapes that you already know. Shape three then sits up here at fret ten. Then we go to Shape four. And then shape five. Now, all of these shapes connect together. I first want you to practice playing down through one and up through the next, just to get used to playing them individually, and then we'll start connecting them together after. Let me just show you what I mean by that, and then you can practice it for yourself. So to practice these shapes, I literally want you to play down through one. And then move to the next position and play back up through that. And then just worry about connecting two shapes for now. And then once you're comfortable doing that, flip the order. You get the idea. I want you to do this with all five pentatonic shapes just to start joining them together. Once you've learned those five pentatonic shapes, we then want to learn how to break out of those scalic boxes. You might have heard that before from other players that they're trapped in a box. What they mean by that is they're trapped running up and down those same shapes. They're not fluidly playing up and down the neck. Now, I like to do that by using a number game. So let me just jump down to the guitar. Okay, so let's stay with our minor pentatonic moving up to the major. What I'm going to do is I'm going to pick a number 1-8, so I'm going to say five. Going to play through my skill and count as I go. One, two, three, four, five. I'm then go to move up to my next position. So now I'm in my major scale. I've done another five. I go back down to my pentatonic. Three, four. So you can see how you're starting to move between those scale shapes in random places, and it's going to break you out of playing down through one, then up through the next. Now, another way to blend these shapes together is to play through them horizontally like sail. Again, this is gonna help break you out of playing up and down in this vertical motion and get you start playing horizontally. So give that go and spend some time moving between those five pentatonic shapes. Get nice and comfortable with them. In the next lesson, we'll talk about how we can actually use them in a solo and apply what we've already learned to them. 18. 4.2 - Soloing With The 5 Pentatonic Shapes: We now know our five pentatonic shapes, but we need to start improvising with them. So one of the easiest wins we can have is to take licks we already know in position one and then learn how to play them in the other four positions. And that's going to open us up to solo in pretty much anywhere. So I'm going to take an easy lick that we learned earlier in the course. Now, the task here is to play that in each of the other positions. So you can see how I'm starting to recycle those licks, right? We don't have to learn loads of new ones. We can just learn how to play our same licks in different positions. So no matter where we are, we've got some go to phrases to use over a solo. So your first task is to pause this video. Take some of your favorite licks and then play them in each of the five pentatonic shapes. It might take you a little while to do if you're not familiar with the notes on the fretboard, but it's okay. It's going to be a good ear exercise for you if that's the case. It's going to really familiarize yourself where all those notes are. Okay, so I assume you've now got a few of your favorite licks, and you're able to play them in multiple positions on the neck. We want to do now is limit yourself to each of the positions. So we're going to put the backing track on, and we're going to solo only in position one. Then we're going to do it again, and we're going to solo only in position two. Again, only in position three, in position four, and in position five, and so on. You get the idea. Get comfortable with the note placement in each of those shapes, because it's not always the same. Your root note is going to be in different places. So you need to find where they are so you're comfortable across the neck. So let's just do a couple of quick examples where I solo in one position at a time. And then once you're comfortable with that, we can then start blending between all of them to solo across the neck in its fall. So hopefully you're starting to get the idea. If you can play a few licks in each of the positions, you can then slowly start to blend between them using slides and bends and octave jumps and all those kind of things. So download the backing track below and give it a go. This is quite challenging at first, so it's going to take a little while to get used to, but I promise it's going to do leaps and bounds for your playing once you master it. So best of luck. 19. 4.3 - Exploring Chord Tones Across The Neck: Just explored how we can use the pentatonic shapes across the fretboard to improvise freely. And we've talked about how in practice, you should play through each shape individually to get comfortable with it and then try connecting them all together. But the problem we've got right now is we've gone really in depth on shape one. We've looked at our peggios, we've looked at rear tones. We've looked at how we can follow changes around that shape. But we've not done that for all five shapes. Now the same principles apply. We want to take a look at our arpeggios in that shape, find our chord tones, play around with that shape, and come familiar with all five of them. And I understand how big of a task that is. In an ideal world, we could do that in Ochs really easily and blaze through all of our different arpeggios and different positions and improvise and follow all changes. Everyone gets there. It just takes time and a lot of practice. But after a while, the patterns start to become really, really familiar in your head, and it gets easier and easier the more you do it. So what I want to do in this lesson is just break down some of those arpeggios and chord tones in the other shapes so you can find them. I'll put some diagrams on the screen to make it look a bit easier for you visually, too, and then play around again over the back and track in each of those positions to locate the chord tones as we go to make sure we're following the harmony. So let me just go through the A minor arpeggios that are available to us across all the five shapes. Okay, so shape one, we know this one already. We've touched on this before. We're quite comfortable with that one now from our previous lessons. Shape two, then, our major pentatonic. We want to find an A minor arpeggio around here now, so we can, like I said, stay in this box, come really familiar with this far part, the fretboard. So our arpeggio here would be So once you've become familiar with where that arpeggio is within that scale shape if peggio. There's the scale shape. You can then put the backing track on and have a little improvise and try and hit your cartons, right? Think where they are. We've got third here to the fifth to the root, to the third, to the fifth to the root to the third. Now, I appreciate that might be way too much theory for some of you, and that's fine. If it is, just remember that these are the notes you want to end your phrases on. So for each of your scale shapes, if this is a little bit too much for you right now, just locate all of your root notes. So our root notes would be A, D, and E for our different chords. So just find all of those notes. There's A. Where's my next A? There's A there. Okay. So I know when I'm solo in box two, I can end on there. When I'm sling in box three, I can end on those notes. And build it up that way instead if the arpegos are a little bit much for you right now. So that was shape two. Let's go on to shape three. So we've got an A minor arpeggio right here. And that goes over our shape three pentatonic. Okay. Shape four was this? Or peggio Sits there like so. Now, our last one for shape five sits here. So the aim now is to do this with the other two chords we've got in our back and track. So that's a D minor and an E minor. I'm gonna let you pause this video and try and work them out for yourself because it's really good to help you try and navigate that fretboard if you work it out for yourself. But if you get stuck, I will put the tabs down below for you as well. So hopefully, you've just run through the arpeggios in each of the five pentatonic shapes for our three cords, A minor, D minor and E minor. I understand it's a big task, so don't worry if that's not committed to memory right now. Just throw 10 minutes into your practice routine as you warm up, play through each of those arpeggios. Remember, the same rules apply for when you're learning scales, play up them, play down them, connect them, blend between them. You want to be able to fluidly play up and down between them for true mastery. But even the greats, you know, dedicate years and years and years of studies to this, so it's an ongoing process. Don't worry if you don't get it straight away. But what I want to do now is I'm going to put on a backing track. I'm going to improvise over each of the pentatonic shapes again on their own. So just shape one, shape two, shape three. And then I'm going to use those arpeggios to help me target chord tones, so I'm following the harmony as I improvise. Again, remember this is all about being able to play freely up and down the neck, being able to know at all times where you are, where you can go. Oh, the chords changing, so I know I can go here, if I move my finger here. I can get this sound if I do this. It's a process, but stick with it, Okay? So I'm just gonna give a quick little example of that now. Now, one extra little bonus thing you can do in practice to get used to using these arpeggios and following the harmony is to just play them over your back and track, play in one position down through your A minor arpeggio, was the A minor chords playing, and then switch in that position to the D minor and then switch to the E minor and so on. It's not going to be musical, and that's not the purpose. The purpose is to locate those quartnes. So then when we are musical, when we are developing phrases, we know where to go, where to land them, which direction, which scale shape we need to kind of navigate to, so that we follow those chord shapes properly. Again, remember, in all of this, no matter where you are within this course, the aim is to be musical. Can throw our peggios at you. I can throw chord tones at you. Oh, here go here and do this to do that. At the end of the day, as long as it's musical and you're being expressive, that's what's important. So don't get yourself bogged down on all these different techniques and rules and concepts. If it's just too much, then just use the blanket scale method, be expressive and throw the other little color in here and there. A you get the idea there. Just play through your arpeggios. You don't have to keep them really boring and robotic. You know, make them musical, put a bounce and a swing to them, slide between notes, hammer on between notes, practice making them sound musical whilst you're practicing changing between them to follow the chord changes. There's a load of exercises within this lesson, so do take your time with it. Don't rush forward, spend a little time, work it out, get really familiar. Once you're familiar in this key, we can then start looking at moving those shapes elsewhere to really navigate across the entire fretboard in various keys. 20. 4.5 - Adding Extra Colour To Our Pentatonic Shapes: We've just explored how we can use quartons and our peggios up and down the neck for our minor blues. But what if we're playing over a major blues and we want to blend major and minor together? We want to add a major and minor third like we did previously or we want to throw in the blue note and that kind of stuff. Well, all you have to do is run through those skills and find, again, where those notes sit and then familiarize yourself, and that becomes translatable later. So let's just do that quick with a couple of shapes, just so you can really see what I mean by this. So previously we were using major and minor pentatonic to give us a real nice blue sound in position one, right? We're doing a lot of those kind of licks. We've got the blue note. Blend between the major and minor third. To give us a real stylistic kind of blue sound. What you want to do then is take those licks and those notes and find them in other positions. Within shape two, it would be. For our blue note. And then you can also play around with the major and minor third and find that within shape two. It's a C sharp. Just that note there. So within our scale. So then combine that with our blue note, as well. We've got a few different options to play around within shape two. So if you're really comfortable with the minor pentatonic stuff, spend some time finding these extra notes within your shapes. Your blue note, your major third, your minor third. It's really going to help unlock that fretboard a little bit further. But like I said before, remember, it's not all about theory. It's not all about I need to hit this quaron here and this here. It needs to be expressive. So if you like that blue note sound, just worry about that. Don't worry about the major minor third, if you don't like. Use what's unique to you, what allows you to be expressive. I love that blue note, so I look for it all over the fretboard. The major minor third thing, I'm kind of okay with knowing that in just one or two positions because I don't use it that often. So it all comes down to personal preference and what you want to explore. But I want it to make you aware of it so you can explore those different colors and be expressive in your solos. 21. 4.5 - Assignment: Okay, assessment time. I want you guys to download the backing track. This time, it's your choice, major or minor, whichever you prefer. And I want you to write and record a solo using all five of the pentatonic shapes, okay? I want to see you guys moving in and out of them, whether that's horizontally, vertically, jumping around, whatever works for you guys right now. All I want to do is see you guys moving around the neck. Highlight the chord changes, and if you'd like, throwing those blues notes or mix between the major and minor two. Your choice. But like I said, the main task here is for freedom to move up and down those pentatonic shapes. So record that and submit it to me via email, and I'll get back to you guys for some feedback. 22. 5.1 - Soloing Over Diatonic Changes: Now, so far in this course, we've touched a lot on improvising over a blues turnaround, that typical one, four, five, especially in a minor. But what happens if your core progression is in a blues, which, let's be honest, 90% of the time, it's not gonna be. We need to be able to improvise over different core changes and in different keys. Now, in this lesson, we're going to talk about changes, and in the next one, we're going to talk about improvising in different keys. So I've picked a backing track which you heard before in C major. Now the relative minor is A minor, so you can still use all your A minor pentatonic licks over this, which is why I've chosen that one. But the core progression is slightly different. Now, the core progression is C, A minor, D minor, and G. So that's cords one, six, two, five. The principles that we've covered before still apply. You still want to use your basic licks, use corner response, be melodic, and you still want to highlight those chord changes with chord tones. So there's multiple ways you can go about this. You can either go through the fretboard and learn all your different arpeggios, like we did in the previous lessons, or you can start to visualize where those chord shapes sit, if your cage system on the fretboard and use that to help you find target notes. Before we get into any of that, let me quickly throw the back and track on and put the chords on the screen just so you can hear where the changes line up. What we're going to do right now is pause this lesson down at the back and track, and just play over the top. Use your A minor pentatonic shapes, use your bluelicks, all that kind of stuff, and just try and improvise over the top. Don't worry if you're not following the changes right now. Key thing I want you to remember is to be melodic. I find it's really important outside of a blue setting to be as melodic as possible. Play nice little lines that repeat, play lines that flow and are vocal. And there's a few times in that example where I'm just playing up and down one string. If you know the fretboard well enough and know how to navigate through your pentatonic shapes, try moving up and down across one string, do little interval leaps and those kind of things because it sounds beautiful when you do it right. So pause the video, download the track, and give it a quick play through before you come back to the rest of the lesson. So as I said before, you want to be able to improvise and follow the chord changes, and that can be harder when you've got multiple chords in a progression. But let's break it down systematically, right? We said our chords were chord one, C, Cord six, A minor, Cord two D minor, and chord five G. Let's first take a look at what notes are within those chords, and then we can find them on the fretboard. So our C chord, has notes C, E and G within it. So we want to target those notes when we're over that C major chord. C, E, G. We then move to A minor, which we've talked about before. We know our A minor peggio. And we know we want to target A, C, and E. No, it's that you've got two common notes. We've got C and E, which is also in the C major chord. So you've got two notes there shared between the same chord. Then moving on to our D minor. Again, we kind of know this from our previous lessons. We've got D, we've got F, and we've got A. And in our G major chord, we've got G, B, and D. What I want you to do, first of all, is just run your minor pentatonic scale and then see where all those notes sit within it. Okay? Where are all of those arpeggios? So, as I said, you want to be able to find those ure tones within our A minor pentatonic scale, right? We'll use our A minor pentatonic because we're already really familiar with it now. So let's not complicate things. Let's start strong, right? So our A minor pentatonic. Where's our C within that? Right there. And you can see how that sits within our skill. So when you're playing those licks that we've talked about before you can end on one of those notes from C. And that's gonna highlight that chord. Moving to A minor, we already know from the previous lessons. And you can see within the arpeggio there. I actually shares a lot of the same notes as C. So you can kind of just duplicate what you're doing there. Moving to D minor. Again, we know this from our previous lesson. See how those sit within our A minor pentatonic. And then finally, we've got G, this one's new to us, right? So, G, we can play like so. Put a G chord right here and right here. So again, you can see where they all sit within that pentatonic scale. You've quite a few familiar notes there. So, again, that part of the chord progression, when you hear the changes go through, you'll be able to target all of these notes. So I'm gonna throw the backing track back on, I'm go improvise over the top, and then I'm going to kind of talk you through it as I'm improvising, okay? So you know what I'm thinking as I'm playing. We'll do it live on the camera. So I'm gonna start with an A minor pentatonic lick. Land want to C. That works for you. Minor two. Go to the D. To the G. To the A minor D. HejiPegio. But that C sounds finished. Let's wear pen section, so it sounds bed. Love appear in those sections. Always been melodic by a melody. Nothing wrong with throwing the fast pen tonic lick in there, too, the fast blues lick, to really spice it up and turn its head, right? Mix it up. Me melodic, throw something fast. Double stops to mix it up. So you get the idea that as I talk through that solo, I'm deliberately being melodic and repeating ideas, but then I'm also throwing in a fast blues lick here and there just to keep it spicy and turn heads. Now, that's just one approach. Obviously, you can be as expressive as you like, and you may express yourself differently than I do, but I want you to start getting used to playing over different chord changes. So I've put a backing track down below, experiment, record, play over the top, and be as melodic as possible. 23. 5.2 - Soloing In Different Keys: So we've previously touched on improvising over different chord changes, and that will go in more depth in later parts of the module, but I want to introduce it now just so it's not completely alien concept as we go through. What I want to talk about next is then improvising over different keys, okay? We're going to keep all of this pentatonic for now because that's what we've been working on. But at the moment, we've mainly been in A minor. Now, not all songs are in A minor, unfortunately, so we need to be able to play in multiple keys and translate what we've learned into different areas of the guitar. It really is quite easy on the guitar because everything's shape based. So if you know the shapes of your five pentatonics now really well, all you have to do is move them to different positions, and then you can just play exactly the same licks, exactly the same order. Your root notes are in the same place within the scale. It's just shifting those patterns. So I've got a new blues backing track this time in the key of B. So all I have to do is shift all of my licks, all of my scales up to frets to the key of B. If you don't know the notes of the fret board, again, you might struggle here to then be able to play in different keys. I'd really advise taking a minute to just learn some of the notes along the top E string, then all you've got to do is move that pentatonic shape around on that top E string to find your notes, right? Let me just show you an example of that, so it makes sense. So previously, we've been playing our minor pentatonic here at fret five in the key of A. If I want to move that to a different key, all I have to do is just move that shape. So like I said, our backing tracks in B minor. So instead of playing here at fret five, we're instead gonna play at fret seven. The scale is exactly the same. And you can use all of your same licks. It really is that easy to just move things around to different keys. Where it might get tricky is remembering, if you're doing your arpeggios and your quartons where that all sits everything shifted. But the more you do this, the more you play in different keys, the easier it's going to become. So I'm going to now improvise over the back and track. And then what I want you guys to do is give it a go for yourself using the downloads below. So here we go. So give this a go for yourself. There's a few backing tracks down below and different keys. I want you to just move your pentatonic shapes and move your licks up and down the fretboard and get used to experiment and playing in different keys and different positions on the neck. Exactly the same thing applies to harder chord progressions outside of the blues. It's the same thing. Your chord shapes, your peggio shapes, they're all exactly the same. You just move them around to adjust for what chords you're playing. So give it a go and see how you get on. 24. 5.3 - Assignment: Okay, it's time to bring this all together for one final assessment. Down below, I've got a selection of backing tracks for you to choose from. I want you to choose three and record three very different solos for me and then email them across for feedback. I want you to remember everything we've talked about in this module, calling response, humming ideas and then applying it to the guitar, using the blue note with major minor third if it's appropriate for the backing track, being melodic in following chord changes, using chord tones in our peggios, okay? Aim overall, of course, is for you to be expressive. So I don't want to throw rules at you here, but just know that I want you to think about the things we've discussed to develop your own expressive melodic solos. As I said, record three solos, submit them to me via email, and I'll get back to you guys some feedback and see how we can help you improve. So good luck, and I can't wait to hear what you come up with.