Solo Guitar – The Blues Scales

You have to know which notes you can play when you play a solo. A scale is set of notes. Not all notes on your fretboard would give a nice sound if played in one song; it must fit to the song and the chords.

We don’t have a choice the classical music theory is not well suited to describe the Blues. Blues is crazy and wrong from that point of view – playing dominant major 7th chords all over minor pentatonic scales, using a 5 tone scale instead of the accustomed 7 tone scales, using chromatic scale pieces for intros and turnarounds, adding notes that don’t belong to any scale – and these stupid chord progressions, so it’s only an attempt to describe what we call the Blues. Take the guitar: the frets are made for equal intonation, to play classical music. To get the notes between you need techniques like a string bend or a slide. The best ways to describe the Blues scale with standard music theory is using a pentatonic scale.

How to Play Lead Guitar

These are master class lessons that dive into the facts of how to build a musically viable, crowd pleasing solo.

Intended for the intermediate level guitarist who is looking to expand upon their beginner guitar lessons, or the advanced guitar player eager to review the basics and learn some new killer licks, these lessons include sound principles that you will use every time you pick up your guitar.

Everything is covered from how to breakdown the chord changes you will be playing to which scales work best for to create the mood you wish.

Then you will learn how to build your own solos from the start; you will learn how to play electric guitar with the elements of phrasing, how to end your solos with maximum impact, and even how to add a little flash that will have everyone say, “Wow, that was cool!”

You will play electric guitar solos with the easy confidence of a seasoned pro, and pick up more than 500 tasty guitar beats along the way.

Guitar Scales

Knowing the scales on the guitar is a important for anyone learning to play guitar. A lot of guitarists try to skip over in learning the scales only to get “box in” when it’s their turn to solo.

Playing “box” patterns which are often taught in beginner guitar lessons is like painting with just a couple of colors, compared to having the various scales at your disposal gives you an unlimited palate of colors to choose from at your fingertips.

With these scale studies, you will learn to play electric guitar with the entire neck of your guitar. Not only will you be able to solo from the lowest notes to the highest notes on your guitar, but you will also be able start your solo virtually anywhere on the fingerboard.

Moreover, these electric guitar lessons also cover the pentatonic scale and its various inversions, as well as the chromatic scale with its entire valuable “in between” notes.

Mastering these scales will make your solos more melodic and will have you playing comfortably anywhere on the neck of your guitar.

Guitar Scales

For any type of music in the world, scales form the foundation. Have you ever wondered why some love songs sound sad and moody? The type of scales used would largely determine a song’s genre in song writing. Being able to understand guitar music scales would also allow you to have a better knowledge of guitar solos that are played by other people.

A guitar scale is basically a series of notes that follows a determined pattern within an octave. The scale pattern dictates the intervals between notes that are played. Now, there are tons of different guitar scales in guitar playing. Hence, GuitarPlayerWorld.com has dedicated one whole section of its lessons just to cover the different scales. In order to learn guitar scales more effectively, most of the guitar lessons in this section will have a “mini jam track” for you to practice and learn guitar scales. Be sure to download them and practice over them. This does wonders to your lead guitar playing.

The guitar lessons would touch on quite a bit of music theory and if you get confused at some point of time, it is perfectly normal. Take your time to understand and read through the lessons again. Approach the friendly guitar forum and guitar community for help if you ever get stuck.

In order to effectively learn guitar scales, you will need to PLAY them. Always put into practise what you have learnt! Simply inject some guitar riffs, short guitar solos into your everyday playing. In this way, you would also slowly get your creative juices flowing. One final piece of advice: DON”T GIVE UP.

Pentatonic Scale

The Pentatonic Scale is a scale that consists of 5 notes such as Minor Pentatonic Scale or Major Pentatonic Scale. You may wonder why you should use a scale with such a small amount of notes. The reason is that Pentatonic Scales offer a small margin of error when you are playing over a chord progression of the chords that go with the scale. Another reason to use the scale is if you are looking to find that rock sound.

It is important to learn the patterns below all the way up the neck so you can use this scale at any time when you are playing.

The Major Scale

The most important scale of all is the Major Scale because all modes are derived from this scale. Modes are distorted scales. In simple words, you make some notes sharp or flat. Each mode like the major scale has a quality. The major scale’s quality is happy and upbeat. These qualities which are more prevalent when you integrate the chords are shown above into your playing. There are 5 patterns.

You may be wondering why you are learning 5 patterns instead of one. This is so that you can alter to a different scale when playing without making a big jump on the fretboard. In this way you will know all the patterns and the notes of the fretboard, You will always have the scale you want within reach.

With these patterns you can change to many different modes and have the same patterns!!

The Pentatonic Scales

Pentatonic scales are the most commonly used scales in music. Learning the pentatonic scales has been an introduction to scales and modes for almost every guitar player.  Most rock, blues, and heavy metal are based on the minor pentatonic scale and you can find most country, country-rock, R&B tunes are based on the major pentatonic scale.

When we go further on pentatonic scale lessons you will be able to find very useful information on how to learn pentatonic scales. There are certain pentatonic patterns that relieve your work when learning, studying, remembering and practicing the pentatonic scales.

When you learn the scale well, turn on the radio or the player and try to find what key the song is in when you get it, try pentatonic scales in that key; minor pentatonic scale , major pentatonic scale or blues pentatonic scale. Probably, the one of them will work!

Major blues scale

The major blues scale is a variation of the major pentatonic scale just like that the minor blues scale is a variation of the minor pentatonic scale. This is the reason why they are sometimes referred to as pentatonic blues scales. By adding the b3 “blue note” to the major pentatonic scale, the music will have that familiar bluesy sound.  The blue note usually used as a passing note and if you hold this note too long it sounds like off key.

The formula of the major blues scale is 1 2 b3 3 5 6

However the major blues scale consisting of six notes still has all the facilities of the pentatonic scales; easy to remember and play fingering patterns, good over many chord progressions and so on. Also, major blues scale can be played interchangeably with the major pentatonic scale.

The scale has a cheerful sound and finds itself used in musical styles like country and bluegrass.

Perfect Pitch (Absolute Pitch)

The skill to distinguish a musical note without a reference point is unusual even amongst trained musicians, commonly known as ‘‘perfect pitch’’ or, ‘‘absolute pitch’’. To those with perfect pitch each sound has a name and nuance that is familiar in isolation just like colors; you do not need to see red to recognize yellow.

Within the scientific community the genetic basis for perfect pitch or absolute pitch has been vocally debated for over a century: one side of the argument are those people who believe that it is learned early in life by ear training, and the other, those people who believe it is innate. Although characteristics of perfect pitch differ from one person to other, genetic basis of perfect pitch cannot be disregarded.

Positions of the Major Scale

In your growth as a lead guitarist, it becomes increasingly important to learn to solo in more than one position. If, for instance, you are soloing in the key of C major, and you only feel comfortable playing in the few frets surrounding the eighth fret, then you are restraining yourself unnecessarily.

The primary position of the major scale is the “standard” way of playing the major scale, which a lot of guitarists know. If it looks new to you, play through it. This is the “do re mi fa sol la ti do” scale you probably learned in school. Begin the scale with your second finger, and do not alter your hand position while playing the scale. Make sure to play the scale backwards and forwards, slowly and evenly, until you have it memorized.

Next Page »