I’ve decided to start a series of videos for the guitar riff lessons. Hence the name “Cool Guitar Riffs #2.” Mostly because I’m running out of things to call them, so why not start giving them numbers?
I once had one of those Siamese fighting fish as a pet, and I wasn’t sure if he would live very long, so I named him Louis, in case I needed to start a dynasty…
Anyways, guitar riffs are a lot more fun than dead fish, so back on topic here! Today I’ve got one for you that uses fourths, and the A pentatonic minor scale. That’s the first riff in the video, and I’m sure you’ve heard this style of riff all over the place. It’s a pretty classic sound. Keep in mind that these riffs can sound very different if you simply turn off the talent button and play clean for a moment, or if you just change up the timing a little bit.
The second riff comes out of the A diatonic minor scale, root 5 -- also known as the Lydian scale if you like being technical about it. I find it more intuitive to talk about these scales in terms of what they are (A minor diatonic) and where they start (root 5 = 5th string… think about it… that means you’re starting on the 5th string, 12 fret, where you find the A). I’ve never related well to the technical terms like Lydian, Dorian and all the rest, and by and large I don’t find the terminology particularly helpful.
But there’s my rant for the day -- go ahead and hit play, watch the lesson, and then leave a comment below the video when you’re done!
Here’s another lesson for you riff-hungry rocksters out there!
One cool way that you can start looking for new chords to use is to examine the top few strings of the bar chords. Here’s a tip -- if the notes are used in a chord, then they’re going to sound great together in a solo!
In fact, using different intervals that come from chords is a great way to break out of the rut of sticking too close to the scale when you’re improvising.
So without further ado, here’s today’s guitar tip.
If you’ve watched my Guitar Scale Patterns lesson, you’ll know that one of the things that I mention in there is the octave pattern. I think I’ve mentioned this in previous lessons as well. It’s a super handy little tool to find notes on the fretboard, without having to memorize the whole neck right off the bat.
Apart from that, octaves also sound good. If you play bass, I recently did a little lesson on using octaves on the bass. Pretty much any instrument you’re on though, octaves are going to sound great.
So today I’m going to show you very simply how you can use that octave pattern and make up some of your own riffs using it.
Check it out, then leave a comment and let me know what you think.
If you look at your scales, and actually dissect them to see what notes are in each scale, you’ll see that in many keys, some of the notes you’re playing are also available to you as open notes.
This lesson is more to open you up to the idea than it is to show you in close up detail what my fingers are doing (no closeups today). So once you can get the general idea of plucking an open string, then one of the notes from the scale you’re in, then you’re pretty much set to go nuts and try this out on your own.
One of the coolest things about this soloing technique is that you can use it to sound like a much faster player than you actually are. You can pull this one out of your bag of tricks and make it sound like you’re really shredding, but in reality you’re only moving around between a couple notes. Pretty slick eh?
As with all improvising, there isn’t really a right or wrong way to do this -- as long as you’re using the right notes!
Two excellent places to start with this soloing technique are in the A minor scale and the E minor scale, as in both scales you can use all the open notes (talking about the diatonic scales here). Once you’re comfortable doing this, more on and start looking at other scales, like B minor and C# minor and see how you can use the same technique in there. Hint: you won’t necessarily be able to use all the strings anymore!
