Free Online Guitar Lessons

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?