Play INSTANT Solos with Just ONE Little Shape!
If you don't have the basic skills, combined with the knowledge of scales, keys, and modes, not only will the melody lines of your solos suffer, but you could wind up frustrating yourself as you attempt to have success with doing any soloing at all.
That said, imagine if you had a quick weapon in your practice arsenal that allowed you to quickly make the pain of not being able to play a solo go away. What if there was a practice method to help you start soloing that would allow you to successfully play lead guitar? Well, you're in luck because I’m going to show you exactly that in this video.
WATCH THE VIDEO:
You’ve probably experienced the feeling of not knowing how or where to start when it comes to playing a solo. And, I’ll bet that in the last year you’ve experienced not knowing what to do when it comes to playing a guitar solo that applies different tonalities – like; Major, Minor and the Modes.
There’s nothing more crushing for your guitar practice sessions than when you just can’t get anything good to come out as you’re trying to make up a solo. But, the good news is that today, we're going to actually do something about it.
TAKE STOCK OF YOUR SKILLS:
If you can’t play a solo, there’s likely a series of ideas that you need to examine more closely in your playing before going any further.
These ideas would be things like making sure that you know about how the musical keys relate to both chords and to the notes of a scale. If you don't know the basic theoretical framework, it's going to be tough going.
Also, ask yourself, are you good at properly playing notes so that they sound clear, and that they have a good sense of feel and phrasing? If you lack phrasing skills, connecting musical lines will be difficult.
The last area to focus taking stock on is all about how good your sense for rhythm is along with how good your feel is overall for the musical groove of the beat in time.
If you think that you’re already doing well with these ideas, then you’re probably ready to move up to the next level.
HITTING THE BEST NOTES:
When it comes to playing a really nice melodic guitar solo, the next level of work, (after becoming clear on the points I’d mentioned a moment ago), will involve training your ear to be able to hit the right note at the correct spot in your music.
To do this, you have to build the skill for learning how to anticipate the arrival of the best note – at the best time during your solo. I know it sounds like its complicated. But the way that you learn this is you train your ear how to naturally hit on the best scale tone for the chord being performed at a select point in time.
One of the best ways to learn how to do this is with a small scale shape, (not with big scale shapes, but with small scale shapes). Let’s learn exactly how this works on the guitar by using one scale shape and then shifting the root note across the scale to affect the tonality.
MAJOR SCALE:
Our first example is going to use the sound of “Major.” The small shape that we’re going to learn looks like this…
Small Shape: Major
Shape Application:
The next step is to be able to start training your ear so that it has the ability to listen to and also match up with the sound of any key to create a melodic guitar solo.
You need to be able to practice applying the sound of the key so that the associated scale connects into the backing chord harmony.
Jam-Track (Major):
I’ve set up a simple jam-track chord progression in the key of “C Major” to help you learn how to study this kind of soloing practice. Here’s how it all comes together when we practice applying these soloing ideas.
Learn how the example progression below operates and develop your skills for performing it on the guitar. Then, start studying what it’s like to jam over the chord changes so that you begin to compose well formed melodic phrases over the jam-track chord harmony.
I wanted to take a minute to let you know, that if you want to learn even more about scales and theory I have a great offer for you.
With any donation over $5, or any merchandise purchase from my Tee-Spring store, I’ll send you free copies of THREE of my most popular digital handouts.
One is called, “Harmonized Arpeggio Drills” (it’ll train you on developing your diatonic arpeggios).
Another one is my “Barre Chord” Handout which includes a page showing all the key signatures along with a chord progression that applies barre chords.
Plus, you’ll get my Notation Pack! It has 8 pages of important guitar worksheets for notating anything related to; music charts, guitar chord diagrams, and TAB.
As a BONUS, (from my "Over 40 and Still Can't Play a Scale" video), I'll also throw in a breakdown of all of the chords that are diatonic to the "F Major" scale.
As an EXTRA BONUS for my Phrygian Dominant video, I'll also throw in a breakdown featuring all of the chords that are diatonic to the Phrygian Dominant scale.
Just send me an email off of the contact page of CreativeGuitarStudio.com to let me know about either your donation or your Merchandise purchase and I’ll email you those digital handouts within 24 hrs.
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Our next example is going to be using the sound of “Minor.” And, the small shape that we’re going to use - looks like this…
Small Shape: Minor
Minor keys are actually related to the original “Major” key. In music theory we call this idea, “Relative” scales. When learning how to play Minor ideas, one of the first things that you'll notice is that the minor scale looks exactly the same geometrically as the Major scale.
The difference is in two areas. The first, is which note we focus on as the “Root Note.” In the specific case of our example the note of "A" (4th string /7th fret), has become our focal point for the creation of minor tonality.
The second area of importance, is the way that the chords will come together under the backing track harmony to function in a way that creates a strong harmonic backdrop in the Minor Tonality.
Jam-Track (Minor):
Below is a short chord progression that we can use as our "A" Minor Tonality backing track. Our work will be focused on learning to properly apply the sounds of the “Minor” scale shape over this key of "A" Minor tonality jam-track to help train us to build a melodic guitar solo.
Our next example is going to use the sound of a popular mode called “Mixolydian.” The small shape that we’re going to use looks like this.
Small Shape: Mixolydian
Mixolydian mode is another related scale. It’s based upon our original geometrical pattern of “C Major” (that we had started with). And, just like with our use of the “A” Minor shape (which took the note of “A” on the 4th string as the root to create Minor), Mixolydian takes the note of “G” on the 4th string to allow for the creation of the sound of Mixolydian.
This is an interesting concept when learning musical keys because the notes can all stay the same but when the roots (scale start points) shift they produce a new melodic direction.
Everything is tied to the chord progressions that are performed as backing tracks. The resolution points of the progression will always point to the quality and formation that will ultimately establish what scale idea to use for soloing.
Jam-Track (Mixolydian):
Below is a short chord progression that we can use as our "G" Mixolydian Mode backing track. Our work will be focused on learning to properly apply the sounds of the “Mixolydian” scale shape over this key of "G" Mixolydian mode (Major tonality), jam-track.
Then goal is to help train yourself on how to build a melodic guitar solo using Mixolydian.
DORIAN MODE:
Our final example is going to use the sound of another popular mode called “Dorian.” The small shape that we’re going to use looks like this.
Small Shape: Dorian
Dorian mode is another related scale that’s also based upon our original geometrical pattern of “C Major.” And, just like with our use of the “C” Major shape (which took the note of “C” on the 3rd string as the root to create Major), Dorian will take the note of “D” on the 3rd string to allow for the creation of the sound of Dorian mode.
Next let’s learn how we can establish a backing chord progression that will help us to play solos in Dorian.
Jam-Track (Dorian):
Below is a short chord progression that we can use as our "D" Dorian Mode backing track. Our work will be focused on learning to properly apply the sounds of the “Dorian” scale shape over this key of "D" Dorian mode (Minor tonality), jam-track.
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Get Good Now!
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