Free Online Guitar Lessons

If you are interested in more free online guitar lessons, check out the article I wrote for squidoo.  It talks about a bunch of great online tools to help you be a better guitarist.

Check it out!! 

Free Online Guitar Lessons - Online Tools on Squidoo

Any comments? 

Free online guitar lessons - getting beyond the Pentatonic rut

In this next installment of free online guitar lessons, we are going beyond the pentatonic scale, to add more flavor to our leads.  As we discussed in our previous lesson on the Pentatonic scale.  The Pentatonic scales are made up on very safe note that will very rarely conflict with the Key and Chords we are playing against; and that’s a good thing.  Yet because of this safety factor our leads can become very predictable and mundane if we are not careful to change things up a bit.

But how?

I am glad you asked

A great way to add flavor and a more vertical feel (by vertical i mean greater tonal jumps like the root 3rd and 5th of a chord) to our playing is to mix in arpeggio triads , to our pentatonic scaled solos.  Let me explain.

For example:

If we are playing in the key of A minor with A minor pentatonic as our base, we can add greater depth to our musical sound be integrating A minor and E minor triad arpeggio to our solos.  The reason an E minor triad works well in this example is because the Em is the 5th chord in the key of Am.  So the notes of an Em naturally fit in this situation.

So lets try these triads mixed with E minor pentatonic, and see how much more interesting our solos will sound.

Any comments? 

Speaking of free online guitar lessons.  There is a group of poeple out of Florida, who are providing free lessons to our troops in Iraq.

Well That is just cool!!  Anything that can be done to make there service and sacrifice a little easier is just fine with me.  If you want to read the full story check out the link.
 

This charitable effort is in tune with the troops — OrlandoSentinel.com

 Any comments?

In our first installment of free online guitar lessons, we will be looking at understanding the Pentatonic Scale

As you may or may not know the Major and Minor Pentatonic scales are the foundation of many lead rock, blues and country guitar solos.

In a truly technically sense, any scale composed of five notes can be called a pentatonic scale (penta = five and tonic = notes). In reality however, two different pentatonic scales will cover almost all of the playing situations that you will ever encounter encounter. These two scales are referred to as the Major Pentatonic and the Minor Pentatonic scales.

The major Pentatonic Scale is built on These note:  (1 Root) + 2 3 5 6

 

So in the key of C the note would be (C Root) + D E G A

 

The minor Pentatonic Scale is built on These note:  (1 Root) +  b3 4 5 b7

 

So in the key of C the note would be (C Root) + bE F G bB

 

If you would like a great layout of how the pentatonic scale looks on the fretboard do a Google search for the term "mode master" and you will find a great interactive tool that shows the whole keyboard in every scale you can imagine.  It is very helpful.

The Pentatonic Scale is our best friend when we are first starting out with lead guitar.  Learn them inside and out and they will take you a long way in you lead guitar playing.  In my next lesson for free online guitar lessons I will be talking about how to take our leads to another level from the Pentatonic scale.  Check it out!!

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