Do you want to play scales, licks and runs faster, but yet still maintain the same good control over all of your ideas like you have when they're played slower? Then you're in luck... In this video, I’m going to show you the best way to do that... 




When you perform your licks or runs fast, they generally work out better when they are;

• across multiple positions
• have well planned fingerings
• applying repetitive phrasing techniques

In this lesson, I’m going to break out two “example methods to play faster" using Pentatonic and Natural Minor scales - putting them head to head so you don’t waste any time learning this.

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In this lesson I want to help you determine how you should be approaching your scales so that you can increase your speed.

A lot of times, students of guitar want to increase their speed but they’ll end up feeling like they’ve got two left hands.

The flow of notes won’t feel smooth, the way their lines come across won’t feel very organized (and all this confusion) will create a poor performance.

So, in getting started, I want to begin by showing you a great way to connect scales along the neck for playing faster.




CONNECTING SCALES (PENTATONIC):
There are a lot of different ways we can play a scale and there’s a lot of different types of scales, but for playing fast, one of the best scale layouts to start with are shapes that relate to the “Multi-Position Pentatonic” layouts.

In my first example, I’ve taken an “A Minor” Pentatonic and placed it on the neck from the 6th string root at the 5th fret. Here’s how it’s laid-out on the guitar...



In the pattern above, we’ve got the sale laid out as 3rd position into 5th and then up higher into 7th. And, from this layout, we can start applying ideas that will help us move through this shape faster.

One the easiest is sliding. We can make the position shifts faster by simply applying a couple of position slides on the 5th and 3rd strings.



We can also double up on some of the notes located at the central region of our pattern to produce more activity within the pattern, making the same group of notes sound more busy.



Phrasing scales so they get stretched out more (laterally) will offer us a chance to rapidly shift along the neck using slides as well as, other techniques.





CONNECTING THE NATURAL MINOR:
Connecting scales laterally builds fast sounding phrases. So, let’s try this idea one more time by taking a layout for the Natural Minor Scale and applying this concept with a seven tone scale crossing through multiple positions on the guitar neck.

"A" Natural Minor Scale:



The pattern above moves from the 6th to the 3rd strings shifting from the 5th-Position all the way up to the 12th-Position.

Next, by applying slides, we can increase the speed and the fluid sound of the scale.



We can also try a similar approach (like we had used with our last phrase), by focusing-in on the central area of the scale shape and doubling up on tones in order to spice up our part.

Here’s an example of how to enhance this, key of "A" Natural Minor scale pattern, through the addition of some doubled up scale tones using hammer-ons and pull-offs.


Notice how we are once more focused upon the central core scale tones (as seen in our Pentatonic example). This area of the scale layout can be used to zero in on tones that could operate as repetitive phrases.



EXERCISE:
Spend time organizing notes more laterally along and across the fingerboard from both the Pentatonic and from the full 7-tone scales. Create some of your own patterns that can be effective for speed studies (as shown within this lesson plan).




INTEGRATING THIS TECHNIQUE:
When it comes down to playing "fast scale runs" these ideas are not like playing regular scales that you’d learn out of a guitar scales text-book. You need to plan these differently.

You have to understand how these scales will sit on the neck and how you’ll organize the notes over the neck for the speed you want to have involved with playing the patterns.

If you don’t understand the;

• goals you have for the scale
• how you want to achieve the speed
• how you’re going to organize the scale on the neck 
• how to develop the best fingerings 

Speed is not about just moving from point A to point B of a scale. It’s about the set-up of the notes and the way you plan out playing through all of the notes that you select. That’s how you achieve speed. 





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Are you weak when it comes to your knowledge of the guitar fret-board? Do you lack the ability to easily join together scales, licks and riffs all along and across the guitar neck? If this sounds like you, then you'll want to check out this lesson to fix that...




In this lesson I’m going to show you something you can do every day to build a strong awareness of the guitar notes and start getting rid of the confusion that can keep you from your knowledge of how scales and musical ideas really work on the guitar.

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This is going to be an incredibly helpful video because I’m going to show you what you need to do every single day to build a stronger awareness of the guitar neck. You’re probably thinking “Every Day,” what is this, and how long does it take, if I’m going to be doing it every day.

Most of us play guitar every day, but for a lot of guitarists there’s one thing that’s missing and that’s building a fret-board relationship for transitional shapes that operate to connect our guitar neck together.

Once you learn to navigate along the neck with all your shapes, it’s going to make playing; scales, licks and riffs a whole lot easier.

The concept of this entire process is all based upon searching for easy to spot geometrical shapes and using them as your link when within a key center.

For example, if you were playing music in the key signature of “C Minor” there would be recurring shapes and patterns within that scale layout on the neck as the scales notes move all around the fret-board. Let me show you exactly what I mean.




ESTABLISHING WORKING PATTERNS:
Let’s start by playing through a very common fingerboard layout for the scale of, “C Minor.” Here’s our pattern, it is based upon the first six tones of the "C Minor" scale, built off the 6th-string root at the guitars 8th fret…

Shape 1).
8th Position six-tone "C Minor"



From that 6-note shape, I want you to focus on the 10th and 11th frets of the 6th and 5th strings.

Focus Tones: 8th Position
6th and 5th string location




Those "focus tone" notes (red outline) are the ones that we’re going to use as transition tones to link this scale to another pattern that falls toward the head-stock. Here’s how the new location for those tones will re-locate on the neck.

Focus Tones: 5th Position
5th and 4th string location



Notice how those transitional tones are applied once again, but this time they’re located on the 5th and 4th strings at the 6th and 5th frets.



This will allow us to use those notes as a way to transition over to another fingerboard area and still apply the same tones, within a different fret-board location.

Check out how our new pattern looks, played from the 3rd position, of 5th string.


Focus Tones: 3rd Position
5th and 4th string location


Notice how the transitional tones exist in both the 5th position pattern, as well as, in our 3rd position pattern. Both patterns are linked using the transitional tones location.







TRACKING MUSICAL IDEAS:
As you can tell from the shapes above, when you view any type of similar shape sitting within a; scale, arpeggio, chord or anything really - when the shapes are viewed as a group of transitional notes that can be relocated, those notes will act as an excellent way to learn how to visually track any type of musical idea around the neck.

And, once you get good at using various kinds of recurring “shape and pattern” ideas you’ll be able to find new locations for pretty much anything that you’re studying on the guitar.

IMPORTANT:
Keep in mind that this entire process operates around a 5-fret transitional principle.

Once you discover your primary location, jump over to the next string (lower or higher), and you’ll have the same shape under your fingers five frets out. It’s really easy, try transitioning a guitar lick elsewhere using the next exercise in "D Minor."






TRANSITIONING LICKS TO NEW LOCATIONS:
Here’s a “D Minor” lick in 3rd position from the 5th-string.



Visualize the transitional region of the shape on the neck.



Since this idea is located off of the 5th string root, move up five frets and jump to the next lower string. At that location, you'll have the same lick available once again, but this time  it will be played at the guitars 8th position.


 Visualize the shape in the new neck region.



ORGANIZING TRANSITIONAL SHAPES:
To organize these ideas all over the guitar, I’d highly suggest grabbing a pencil and start drawing out a new fret-board pattern on a piece of guitar fingerboard worksheet paper every time you practice.

After awhile you’ll get so good at doing this, you’ll be able to do it in your mind in literally seconds. And, after you practice this for a few weeks, it’ll take no time at all for you to understand the note layout, visualize it, and then apply it to several other fingerboard areas.






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The result is the most comprehensive guitar course that covers every aspect of beginner to advanced playing ideas to help you improve your playing.

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The study of modes can be one of the best exercises for building a strong awareness of scales and chord harmony, but only if you avoid the common mistakes people make when studying them...




If done properly, you can use the study of modes as a way to more effectively target specific scale tones in your guitar solos.

Modal study also helps with incorporating unique harmonic ideas within your backing chord progressions.

If done incorrectly, the study of modes will leave you feeling like you just can't seem to make their sound come together properly. You'll be left feeling like the modes are more of a mystery to you, rather than your doorway to fantastic musical sound.

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HEARING MODES:
Do you know how to hear modes properly? If you want to build a better awareness for their sound and their application, you’ll need to understand how a mode is musically established.

Modes are one of the most often misunderstood topics for guitar players and the problem that I always encounter is that there are certain things that you gotta do in order to be able to hear modes.

Once you get these areas properly understood, you’ll be able to put any mode to work in music, because I think that’s our end goal - we want to be able to hear and apply modes in songs that we listen to, and in the songs that we’re composing as well.




MODAL DOMINANCE:
The first area that we need to comprehend is how a mode dominates the sound of a musical situation where it gets applied.

When we initially learn about modes one of the first things that we’re often told is that a mode is just a major scale played from off of a different step.

So, how does that different major scale step dominate musically over the basic major scale, so that the mode takes over? That’s the key question in this scenario and once you understand that element, modes will begin making a lot more sense.

Let’s look at some basic scale theory next, so that you can start to more fully comprehend how a mode actually becomes the principle sound and takes over the musical situation that it’s applied within as the music’s key-note musical direction.





MODAL HARMONY:
We’re going to use the notes and chords found from within the “G Major” scale as our core key signature to work from.

With the notes of that key, we’ll establish the mode of Mixolydian.

In this diagram below, you can see that the harmonized key signature of “G” major, has all 7 chords listed which relate to all the roots of each scale step.



If we wanted to build Mixolydian, we need to focus on the 5th scale degree of our major scale, (which in this case is the “D” Major chord).



Then, we lay out “G Major” scale from the “D Chord,” and establish a new series of chord relationships to form the harmony of Mixolydian.


NOTE:
Try doing the process shown above with another mode. For example, you could try it with the fourth major scale mode of "Lydian." The tones of Lydian are built from the 4th step of the major scale.

This would mean that the, "A Lydian" Mode would come from "E Major." The structure of tones from "A Lydian" comes from starting the "E Major" scale from the new modal root of "A." That's all there is to this method.




CREATING MODAL JAMS:
At this point of the process, I’m sure you’re wondering, hey, ya know, there’s nothing going on here. All we did was take the chords from “G Major” and line them all up from off of the “G” scales 5th note, ( of “D” ), and nothings really changed – has it?

But, here’s the part you need to understand… chord harmonies operate in generally the same ways regardless of what root notes we designate. Have a play through to the chords of this jam…

1). D – Mixolydian Jam: "I - V - IV"



This chord progression above, moves through chords of the key of “G Major.” But, the way we hear it musically, and the way we would play a melody (or compose a guitar solo over these chord movements), would not end up being focused on that “G” chord or the “G” root.

Instead, the musical sound-scape - the musical direction of this jam focuses on, and is dominated by the, “D” major chord.

And, that means even if you didn’t play “D Mixolydian” (as your lead guitar sound), the other option would be “D Major Pentatonic.”

This holds true even if we change up the chords in our example by swapping out that “A Minor” chord in the third measure with its relative harmony chord, the “C Major.”
Have a play through of that idea…

2). D – Mixolydian Jam: "I - VII - IV"



What’s really cool is that you can do this process (that I just ran through here), with any mode across any key. Because all we did here with Mixolydian is simply establish it as our primary tonal direction.

After that, we constructed a basic progression from off of the modes “I-IV-V” chords. Then, to expand on the sound we swapped out that “V-chord” with a relative harmony idea to (in this case, bring in the modes “VII-chord”), and that offered us another sound option.

You can do this exact same process with any mode. Try it with; Dorian, or Lydian, or Phrygian - and you’ll see for yourself.

By simply focusing on the original harmony, related to the new modal layout, and then, by going ahead and building a jam-progression from the modes new “I-IV-V” chords, you’ll do more than simply understand the modal sound, you’ll actually start hearing the modes chord and melody ideas come out of the scale – and you’ll be hearing it - properly. 





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If you found this video helpful make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up below.

If you’re looking for a step by step guitar program that puts real – tested methods into a proven guitar course, (not just random YouTube videos), it’s all available over at Creative Guitar Studio.com.


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Remember... you don’t want to miss any of my guitar lesson videos - so turn on those notifications and subscribe to the channel.


• VISIT THE WEBSITE:
If you’d like to learn more about topics like this one and many others, join my members site as a free member and start looking through my, “Guitar Courses.”

I’ve spent over 25 years working with hundreds of guitar students creating thousands of detailed step-by-step guitar lessons for both my website members and my private students.

The result is the most comprehensive guitar course that covers every aspect of beginner to advanced playing ideas to help you improve your playing.


• LIMITED TIME OFFER: 
If you join my site as a Premium member, you’ll receive a FREE copy of my popular Guitar Technique eBook.

My Guitar Technique eBook is 28 pages of jam-packed exercises, drills and studies for mastering all of your technical skills at playing Guitar.

Common picking problems are an area that I work on repeatedly with my private students. In fact, there are three areas of picking hand technique that I need you to start paying a lot more attention to if you want to develop better; accuracy, picking comfort, as well as, faster picking ability. Mastering these areas will benefit picking single notes along with strumming since they work to produce more feel and a more accurate strumming style...




Nobody is born knowing how to properly pick and strum a guitar, it has to be learned. And, if it doesn't get developed properly, the chances are that you're going to develop bad habits.

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When it comes to developing picking, there are 3 areas that need to be addressed, and I’m going to discuss them all for you in this post.

As a matter of fact, I’m going to break down each one of these areas in detail so that you'll have better results without the risk of poor performance and even injury that can often come when you play guitar for a long time with bad technical playing habits.





1). FOREARM ANGLE:
One of the worst of these bad habits, is holding the forearm at the wrong angle when picking. This creates poor relative motion between the body and the pick attack and it adds more tension throughout your hand movement.

Over time, improper forearm angle can cause repetitive motion injuries through the hand wrist and arm due to increased tension.

If you're doing this - then I want you to STOP doing it - seriously.


The picking arm’s angle over the guitar’s body controls the way that your guitar pick will sit at the guitar string when you’ll want to pick or strum.

I want to begin by getting you to take a look at some photos of just a few of the world’s best guitar pickers.

In each image, pay attention to four things, their; angle of their elbow, their forearm position across the guitar-body, as well as, their wrist in relation to their forearm, and any levels of tension.

Al Dimeola:
In this image you can see how his elbow is only bent slightly, his forearm is resting across the top back edge of the guitar’s body.




Notice how his wrist angle allows for a perfect coverage of the guitar strings @ primary picking area for the style of guitar he’s playing. You’ll notice that these areas will be very consistent among the players we analyze.

Steve Morse:
This super picker (as you can tell) shares many of the same trademarks we had noticed within Al Dimeola’s hand and arm posture.




Notice the slight curve of the elbow, the forearm resting on the top rear edge of the guitar’s body, and the slight wrist angle for an accurate pick placement over the strings.


Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen:
Next, let’s look at a side-by-side photo of two other super pickers, “Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen.” In this image, take a close look at the similarity for each of their hand wrist and arm angles.



It’s more of the same forearm posture elements that we’ve been noticing from player to player, (the slight curve of the elbow, the forearm resting on the top rear edge of the guitar’s body, and the slight wrist angle for an accurate pick placement over the strings).



Joe Satriani:
Lastly, I wanted to show a resting image of guitar great Joe Satriani. In this image, he's sitting down with a guitar in between playing examples during an interview.



Notice the same factors are all present again, even when a great player like him is not even performing anything.





2). PICK GRIP AND PICK ANGLE:
The next area I want to get into is how guitarists hold the pick. This is an area of picking technique that often gets lost in the details, because for the pick to operate most effectively, (and you can double-check this against any of the world’s most respected players), we need to have the pick held between two fingers, the index and the thumb...

between the thumb and index finger

The most important element of holding the pick actually has to do with the pick’s angle at the guitar strings combined with the amount of force that you create when you’re gripping onto the pick. this produces the control over "dynamics."

pick angle and dynamic control are part of one process

The grip that a guitarist develops for picking a melody or a scale, is generally tighter. However, if you’re strumming chords, the grip will tend to be looser and more relaxed (between the fingers), so that the pick will actually be flexing between the fingers as you strum and help provide a smoother sounding strumming effect across the guitar string groups that you’re striking.

As far as the pick angle, you’ll want to focus on having the guitar pick at a slight angle into the strings, so that the edge of the pick is striking the strings from its side and not directly into the guitar body.

pick angle is generally 30 to 40 degrees

As you could imagine, this all takes a great deal of time to perfect. But, the key to success is awareness. If you want accurate smooth /fast picking and strumming you’ll need to focus on the grip on your pick, along with the angle of the pick into the guitar string to make this happen.





3). TENSION:
The final area I want to discuss is hand, wrist and arm tension. And, how important it is to keep tension low in your body as a musician. When tension levels are high it affects playing ability and this is why it is critical to have low tension for playing success.

What I’ve noticed over the years, is that for musicians: tension really likes to creep into the muscles of the hands, wrist and arm unconsciously. It's a stealth problem that we often catch far too late.

What’s even more interesting is where tension will start in the body. The body creates tension from the Central Nervous System (CNS).

When we’re stressed, we get chemicals in the form of Adrenalin and cortisol rushing through us through our CNS. It happens quickly and it starts revving up our blood and in turn tightening our muscles causing stress.

stress produces a rush of chemicals to the adrenal glands

An adrenal gland rush of cortisol may be fine in an emergency, but playing a scale as perfectly and as quickly as possible isn’t exactly a life-threatening emergency.

For the very best performance, we need to keep stress and tension down and we need to stay relaxed while playing guitar at all times.

When it comes down to staying relaxed while playing, you’re best bet is to focus on the music’s dynamics, and its timing.


Feel the Music - Become the Music:
As you perform your guitar parts, you’ll want to learn to pay maximum attention to how you breathe with the flow of the rhythm parts that are being played by the bass, drums, and rhythm guitarist.

The biggest cause of tension is when you start to listen only to the sound of your own guitar, and only to the musical ideas you want to hear come from it.

When / if you ignore the feel of the music’s flow (generated by the rhythm section), you separate yourself from the larger musical experience. This separation - in turn - adds tension because you're out of sync with the entire musical function.

Zoning in on the music is going to make a huge difference to how relaxed and balanced you are musically.

If you can manage to stay more relaxed through the whole song experience, not only will you play better, but you’ll play music that is more balanced.

This "balance" means you’ll be better able to tap into what you want to have come from your instrument since you’re more in-step with the entire musical flow.





SUPPORT THE PROJECT:
If you found this video helpful make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up below.

If you’re looking for a step by step guitar program that puts real – tested methods into a proven guitar course, (not just random YouTube videos), it’s all available over at Creative Guitar Studio.com.


SUBSCRIBE TO THE YOUTUBE CHANNEL:
Remember... you don’t want to miss any of my guitar lesson videos - so turn on those notifications and subscribe to the channel.


• VISIT THE WEBSITE:
If you’d like to learn more about topics like this one and many others, join my members site as a free member and start looking through my, “Guitar Courses.”

I’ve spent over 25 years working with hundreds of guitar students creating thousands of detailed step-by-step guitar lessons for both my website members and my private students.

The result is the most comprehensive guitar course that covers every aspect of beginner to advanced playing ideas to help you improve your playing.


• LIMITED TIME OFFER:
If you join my site as a Premium member, you’ll receive a FREE copy of my popular Guitar Technique eBook.

My Guitar Technique eBook is 28 pages of jam-packed exercises, drills and studies for mastering all of your technical skills at playing Guitar.