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.
Video Problems? Watch directly on YouTube
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!
Video Problems? Watch directly on YouTube
A good lead guitar player must, and I’ll repeat that -- MUST -- pay attention to the rhythm.
That means knowing the rhythm part intimately yourself, even if you’re not the one playing it. Know the chord changes, because ideally, you should be working off of those changes in your solo.
As you’ll see in the video, a safe place to end each phrase is to end up on the root note for the chord that is being played… So it becomes important to know your notes, or a least a quick way of finding them.
Anyways, let’s get down to business -- go on and hit play!
