GUITAR SYSTEM THE. Beginner

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1 Beginner

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3 GUITAR SYSTEM THE Beginner

4 The Guitar System - Beginner - Table Of Contents Table Of Contents DVD #6 - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Open Minor Chords Changing Between Open Minor Chords Practical Application - Loop Walk-Downs With Open Chords Common Walk-Downs Practical Application - Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along DVD # - Bar Chords Basic Bar Chord Technique Bar Strength-Building Exercise Major Bar Chords Switching Between 6th And th String Major Bar Chord Shapes Practical Application - Loop Minor Bar Chords Practical Application - Ultimate Beginner s Bar Chord Play-Along New Rhythms Eighth Note Rhythms Eighth Note Rhythms With Palm Muting Sixteenth Note Rhythms Practical Application - Loop DVD # - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Basic Lead-Guitar Technique Picking Technique Downstrokes Upstrokes Alternate Picking Single-Note Technique For The Fretting Hand Practical Application - Loop The Minor Pentatonic Scale Sixth String Root Note Minor Pentatonic Scale Shape The Designated-Finger Concept When To Use Minor Pentatonic Scales How To Practice Scales Practical Application Part - Licks Practical Application Part - Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along - Loop Stylistic Lead-Guitar Techniques Muting i GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

5 The Guitar System - Beginner - Table Of Contents Table Of Contents Bending Vibrato Sliding Pick Slides Practical Application - Beginner Solo DVD # - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues 6 The Next Minor Pentatonic Scale Shape Practical Application Part - Metronome Practical Application Part - Licks Improvisation Tips Practical Application Part - Loop The Blues The Shuffle Rhythm The Standard -Bar Blues Progression Practical Application - Standard -Bar Blues Riff Sixth String Root Note Blues Scale The Flat Note Practical Application Part - Licks Practical Application Part - Standard -Bar Blues Play-Along Fifth String Root Note Blues Scale Practical Application Part - Licks Practical Application Part - Blues Rock Play-Along Improvisation Tips DVD # - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Legato Technique Hammer-Ons Pull-Offs Minor Pentatonic Scale Legato Blues Scale Legato Practical Application Part - Licks Trill Exercise Practical Application Part - Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along The Major Scale How The Major Scale Is Made The G Major Scale Sixth String Root Note Major scale Shape Practical Application Part - Licks Practical Application Part - Major Pop Play-Along GuitarSystem.com GuitarSystem.com Copyright Copyright Railroad Railroad Media, Inc Media, Inc ii v

6 The Guitar System - Beginner - Table Of Contents Table Of Contents Improvisation Tips The Minor Scale Sixth String Root Note Minor scale Shape Practical Application Part - Licks Practical Application Part - Loop Fretboard Layout Notes On The D String Octave Centers Practical Application - Major Pop Play-Along CD Track Listing iii GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

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9 The Guitar System - Beginner - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Introduction Minor chords and walk-downs kind of go hand in hand. In this section you ll learn about both and how to use them in your playing. This will really take your rhythm guitar chops up to the next logical level. At the end of this section you ll find the Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along, an awesome rock play-along that uses pretty much everything you ve learned about rhythm guitar so far. If you enjoy classic rock, you ll love that play-along. Open Minor Chords Up until this point in The Guitar System, all the open chords you ve learned have been major chords. Now it s time to add a new color to your chord palette by learning three open minor chords. When compared to major chords, minor chords are often described as having a sad sound. You ll learn exactly how minor chords are made, later on. Until then, remember that they have a kind of sad sound associated with them. A Major Open A, D and E Minor Chords The three open minor chord shapes you ll be learning are A, D and E minor. Each one of these chords is very similar to their open major chord counterpart. As a matter of fact, we only need to change one note in each major open chord in order to turn it into a minor open chord. The first minor chord shape we ll be looking at is the open A minor (Am). Start by making the regular open A major chord shape. Simple, right?! Now you re going to make an open A minor chord. I want you to notice how only one note in the A major chord moves, in order to create the A minor chord. Make an open A minor chord by placing the nd finger on the nd fret of the th string, the rd finger on the nd fret of the rd string and the st finger on the st fret of the nd string. Do you see how you only moved the note on the nd fret of the nd string of the open A major chord back to the st fret of that same string? Don t worry too much about this right now. Just realize that while the chord shape is different, only one note really changed. Now put the A minor chord on and take it off repeatedly, until you re pretty familiar with the shape. Make sure your fingers are curved over and you re relaxed. A Minor GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

10 The Guitar System - Beginner - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Let s move on to getting the open D minor (Dm) shape under your fingers. Make a regular open D major chord. Now place the nd finger on the nd fret of the rd string, the rd finger on the rd fret of the nd string and the st finger on the st fret of the st string to make an open D minor chord. Do you see how the note on the nd fret of the st string moved down to the st fret of the st string? Although the fingering of the D minor chord is quite different from that of the D major chord, only one note changed. Go through the process of practicing the open D minor chord several times. D Major D Minor The open E minor chord (Em) is very easy to make. Go ahead and make a regular open E major chord. Now simply take the st finger off of the st fret of the rd string. That s it! Easy, right?! Now put the E minor chord on and take it off repeatedly, until you re pretty familiar with its shape. E Major E Minor Changing Between Open Minor Chords Now that you know the most essential open minor chords, it s time to work on changing between them smoothly. The following exercises use the three open minor chords you just learned. I ll throw in a few new strumming patterns to keep things interesting. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

11 The Guitar System - Beginner - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Exercise # This first exercise moves between an open A minor chord and an open D minor chord, and its strumming pattern alternates between eighth-note-based downstrokes and upstrokes. Work on making your chord changes and strumming motions as smooth as possible. Am Dm Exercise # Am Dm Exercise # Much like the last two exercises, this one features the A and D minor chords but with a quite different strumming pattern. To play it accurately, you ll need to use muting and the constant strumming technique. The first two strums are quarter notes played with downstrokes. The next four are eighth notes played with alternating downstrokes and upstrokes. The first eighth note strum has to be muted watch out for that. Play this strumming pattern twice for the A minor chord and twice for the D minor chord, before repeating the entire exercise. Am Dm GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

12 The Guitar System - Beginner - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Exercise # This exercise has the strumming pattern from Exercise # but with a bit quicker chord changes. I ve also thrown in an open E minor chord on measure four. Am Dm Am Em Exercise # We re still only using the open A, D and E minor chords in this exercise, but the strumming pattern is a bit different from anything you ve played so far. It starts out with two quarter note downstrokes on an A minor chord, followed by a group of four eighth notes played with alternating downstrokes and upstrokes. On the fourth eighth note strum, change to a D minor chord. This transition happens on the and of beat four. Notice that the D minor chord is tied to a quarter note on the second measure. The tie is telling you to let the D minor chord ring out through the entire first beat of the second measure. Continue strumming the D minor chord on the second beat of the second measure, using a quarter note downstroke. The next group of four eighth notes are played using alternate downstrokes and upstrokes. The fourth eighth note strum, which is tied to the quarter note on the first beat of measure three, is where you change to an E minor chord. The strumming pattern is pretty much the same until you get to the end of measure four. Play a quarter note on beat four of measure four instead of two eighth notes. Now go back to the beginning and repeat the entire exercise. This one can be a bit tricky, so take it slowly, and make sure to pay attention to the downstroke and upstroke indicators. Am Dm Em Am () () () () () () () () () () () () () () () GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

13 The Guitar System - Beginner - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Woodshed Before moving on to the Practical Application, you need to make sure you have all three open minor chord shapes down and that you re able to switch between them without too much trouble. As soon as you can do these two things, you ll be ready to experiment with the next loop. Practical Application - Loop Track # For this Practical Application section I made a simple loop you can use to practice the open A, D and E minor chords. The chord progression in this loop is exactly like the one from Exercise # of the previous lesson. In case you don t remember, the progression is A minor for one measure, D minor for one measure, E minor for one measure and A minor for the last measure. Unlike with Exercise #, chord changes occur on the first beat of each measure. The loop just repeats over and over again. Try experimenting with the open minor chords as much as possible; make up your own strumming patterns and get creative. Walk-Downs With Open Chords A walk-down is a way to transition between chords. It usually uses arpeggiated notes to do so. You may be thinking, What the heck does that mean? Well, it s easier for me to show you what a walk-down is with an example. But before I do that, let s take a look at how a walk-down is generally played. Picking Technique For Walk-Downs Let s take a look at a different kind of picking you ll need to be familiar with, in order to perform walk-downs. You ll be using an open C major chord for the following exercises. There are generally two ways to pick through a walk-down: with only downstrokes or a combination of downstrokes and upstrokes. I use both, but you can use whichever works best for you. Let s look at playing walk-downs using downstrokes, with the help of Exercise #. Exercise # Make an open C major chord. Instead of strumming through the entire chord, pick the th string with a downstroke. Move to the th string and play it with a downstroke. Finally, move to the rd string and play it with a downstroke. Repeat this over and over again. This is the basic picking motion used on most walk-downs. Remember to stay relaxed and use the wrist for most of the picking motion. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

14 The Guitar System - Beginner - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Exercise # The second approach for playing walk-downs combines downstrokes and upstrokes. This exercise is almost identical to the last one. The only difference is that you ll be using an upstroke to play the note on the rd string. You have to kind of hop over the rd string with the pick before actually playing it. Try it a few times. It feels pretty different, right?! Common Walk-Downs Now that you ve been exposed to the picking techniques used when playing walk-downs, it s time to learn some of the more common walk-downs you ll hear in everyday music. Walk-downs are used on the guitar quite often in both acoustic and electric music. This kind of playing is very different from everything covered so far. Take it slowly, and enjoy learning this new skill. Exercise # This first walk-down starts on a C major chord, like the picking exercises you worked on earlier. Make an open C major chord and individually pick the th, th and rd strings. You can use any combination of downstrokes and upstrokes that you like, but the TAB below is telling you to play the th and th strings with downstrokes and the rd string with an upstroke. Once this point in the walk-down is reached, take the C major chord off and place the nd finger on the nd fret of the th string. Next, play the nd fret of the th string with a downstroke, the open th string with a downstroke and the open rd string with an upstroke. Finish off this classic walk-down by strumming an open G major chord. Play the whole walk-down several times. Do you hear how the bass notes sound like they re walking down? This is where we get the term walk-down from. C G () () () () () () 6 GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

15 The Guitar System - Beginner - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Exercise # The walk-down in Exercise # is very similar to the previous one. However, this time I m adding two more notes to the walk-down at the end of the first measure. Start by playing the first six notes of the walk-down in Exercise #. Next, instead of going right to the G major chord, play the open th string with a downstroke and the open rd string with an upstroke. Finish off the walk-down like you did in Exercise #: with a G major chord. C G Exercise # This walk-down starts off on a G chord. Place this chord shape on the guitar and then play the 6th string with a downstroke, the th string with a downstroke and the th string with an upstroke. When you get to this point in the walk-down, take the G chord off and move the nd finger to the nd fret of the 6th string. Once your finger is there, pick the nd fret of the 6th string with a downstroke, the open th string using a downstroke and the open th string with an upstroke. End this walk-down by strumming an open E minor chord. Exercise # In order to play this walk-down, you need to start with a D major chord. Place that chord shape on the guitar and then play the open th string with a downstroke, the nd fret of the rd string with a downstroke and the rd fret of the nd string with an upstroke. Next, while keeping the st and rd fingers where they are, move the nd finger to the rd fret of the th string. Pick the rd fret of the th string with a downstroke, the nd fret of the rd string with a downstroke and the rd fret of the nd string with an upstroke. Leave the rd finger where it is, and move the nd finger to the rd fret of the 6th string. Pick the rd fret of the 6th string with a downstroke and the rd fret of the nd string with an upstroke. Finish off this walkdown by strumming an open D chord. D D GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

16 The Guitar System - Beginner - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Woodshed Before moving on to the Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along, you need to make sure you have a few things down cold: you should be able to play open minor chords and pick through the basic walk-downs in the previous section without any problems. The play-along uses the walk-down from Exercise #, so you ll really want to woodshed that one. Practical Application - Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along Track # If you take a look at the sheet music on the following pages (page -), you ll notice that in this play-along you ll be using open chords, power chords, a walk-down and a lot of strumming to play an aggressive-sounding classic rock tune. Songs like this one prove that you don t have to use a ton of different chords to come up with a great-sounding rock song. We ll go through each individual part so you know exactly what s happening. This is a fun one! The intro to this song is a C-G-D chord progression that s repeated three times, followed by the walk-down you learned in Exercise # of the previous section. The open C and G chords on measure one (page ) are both dotted quarter notes. Remember that a dot next to a note simply means to take half of that note s value and add it to its duration. So, in this case, you ll add an eighth note to each quarter note. This means that both C and G chords are to be played for one and a half beats each: the C chord on one and two and the G chord on and three and. When you get to the D chord on beat four, notice that it s tied to a whole note on measure two. This means the D chord will be held for a total of five beats. Repeat this progression three times before playing the walk-down. Measure eight is the beginning of the verse in this song. Play a G chord for one quarter note before resting for two and a half beats. On the and of beat four, play an F power chord (F) by placing the fingers on the st fret of the 6th string and the rd fret of the th string. Hold this shape out through the first beat of measure nine. Then, take one eighth note rest, followed by strumming an open C chord three times using a quarter note, an eighth note and one more quarter note. Make sure to take note of the downstroke and upstroke indicators. The repeat sign at the end of measure nine tells you to play this G-F-C chord progression eight times. Measures ten and eleven are just a transition into the chorus of the song. Play a D chord four times with quarter notes, followed by eight times with eighth notes. This will lead you into the chorus. The chorus is a pretty simple G-C-F progression. Play a G chord for four quarter notes, an open C major chord for two quarter notes and an F power chord for two quarter notes. Repeat this progression four times. Next, play the C-G-D progression (page ) from the intro of the song twice. Measure seventeen transitions into the second verse with a D chord that s played seven times as eighth notes. Measures - are the exact same as measures -: you re playing through the verse and chorus of the song again. When you get to measures twenty-four and twenty-five, play a D chord 6 times as eighth notes. This is a build-up into the bridge of the song (page ). GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

17 The Guitar System - Beginner - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs The bridge is simply another part of a song, much like the verse and the chorus, and is often referred to as C section. The bridge of this song alternates back and forth between an open E minor chord and an open D chord. The dotted half note tied to the eighth note is telling you to play the E minor chord for three and a half beats, or one and two and three and four. Switch to the D chord on the and of the fourth beat. Seeing this eighth note is tied to a whole note on the next measure, you ll have to hold the D chord for a total of four and a half beats. Play this E minor-d progression three times. The transition back into the chorus is a measure of an open C chord played as quarter notes, followed by a measure of an open C chord played as eighth notes. Repeat the chorus chord progression eight times before ending the song on the open G chord on measure thirty-six. Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along Intro C G D C G D () () () () () () () () C G D Verse G F () () () () C D Chorus G x () () x GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

18 The Guitar System - Beginner - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc D Chorus G x C F D x / () () x C F C G D C G D x () () () () Verse G F x C () () () () x () ()

19 The Guitar System - Beginner - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Bridge Em D Em D 6 () () () () Em D () () () () () () () () C Chorus G C F G x x GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

20 The Guitar System - Beginner - Minor Chords And Walk-Downs Conclusion If you ve made it through all the exercises and play-alongs in The Guitar System up to this point, you should be proud of yourself! In the next section we re going to tackle one of the most useful and feared types of chords: bar chords! Get ready to take your rhythm guitar playing to the next level. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

21 Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords Bar Chords Introduction Bar chords tend to strike fear into the hearts of many new guitar players. This is solely because they re harder to make than open chords and require a lot of strength from the index finger. In this series of lessons you ll learn how to build up the strength necessary to play bar chords as well as some of the most important bar chord shapes. Before you can jump into learning bar chords you need to know what they actually are. A bar on the guitar is when only one finger is used to play more than one string on the same fret. You ve already been using a small bar whether you realized it or not. Make an open E power chord by placing the st finger on the nd fret of both the th and th strings. You re playing more than one string on the same fret with only one finger; that s a bar! Bar chords generally use the st finger to make a bar across multiple strings of the guitar. A bar in chord diagrams is indicated by a thick black line or bar that goes across multiple strings. This will all become very clear once you start making your first bar chords. Basic Bar Chord Technique The first step in learning to play bar chords is understanding how to make an actual bar. Take the index finger and lay it across all six strings on the rd fret; make sure the bar is right behind the fret. Use just enough pressure on all six strings to make a clean sound when strumming them. The thumb should be on the back of the guitar s neck, acting like a clamp in conjunction with the index finger. Make sure to stay as relaxed as possible while still applying enough pressure to move the strings down toward the fret. Many players tend to bend or kink their wrist when learning how to play bar chords. This can cause soreness after a while, so make sure you keep the wrist relatively straight. Making a bar like this may be very difficult for you right now, especially if you re playing an acoustic guitar. Don t worry! It takes some time and practice to build up the strength necessary to play bar chords properly. If you need to, use the nd finger to help push the strings down by laying it on top of the st finger. In the next lesson we ll go over an exercise you can use to really build up the strength in your index finger. Building Finger Strength The main keys to playing great-sounding bar chords are regular practice and building up strength with the index finger. In this section you ll learn an exercise that ll get your index finger strong enough to play any bar chord on the planet. Before getting into it, let me just say that everyone should have their guitar looked at and/or set up by a professional guitar repairman. This will ensure that your guitar is playing as easily as it should. If the string height, or action, is too high, you ll overexert yourself and wear out your fingers for nothing. If the action is nice and low, you ll have a much easier time playing things like bar chords. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

22 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords Bar Strength-Building Exercise Now for the exercise! Make a bar with the st finger over all six strings on the st fret of the guitar, and strum the strings. Next, move the bar to the nd fret and play all six strings again. Keep moving the bar up on the guitar neck. Play it on every fret until you re all the way up on the th fret. Once there, work your way back down to the st fret. Was the sound of all six strings muted and buzzy, or was it clean and clear? If it was clean and clear, great! If it was muted or buzzy, there are a few things you can try doing to fix it. First of all, give yourself some time. It takes quite a bit of strength to make a clean-sounding bar. If you go through this exercise every day over a substantial period of time, you ll notice your finger getting stronger and your bars sounding clearer. The second thing you can do is to make sure the bar is right behind the fret you re playing. This will help cut down on any buzzing. Above all, relax as much as you can. Finding the right balance between relaxation and finger pressure is very important for successfully making great-sounding bar chords. Major Bar Chords The first two bar chords we ll be going over are major chords. The first one has its lowest root note on the 6th string, while the second one has its lowest root note on the th string. Much like the power chords you ve already learned, bar chords get their names from the lowest root note in their shape. Keep this in mind as you move these bar chord shapes all over the fretboard. Sixth String Major Bar Chord Shape In order for you to understand how bar chord shapes are made, we ll start by taking a look at a chord you already know: the open E major chord. Instead of making that chord with the st, nd and rd fingers, use the nd, rd and th fingers. Place the rd finger on the nd fret of the th string, the th finger on the nd fret of the th string and the nd finger on the st fret of the rd string. Now slide the entire open E major chord shape, up by one half-step. You should have the rd finger on the rd fret of the th string, the th finger on the rd fret of the th string and the nd finger on the nd fret of the rd string. Keep those notes in place while you make a bar across every string on the st fret with your st finger, to complete the F major bar chord using the E bar chord shape. The lowest root note on this bar chord is the F on the st fret of the 6th string. E Major E Major F Major Bar Chord GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

23 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords Since there s only one half-step between E and F, moving the E major chord up by a half-step while making a bar with the st finger on the st fret gave you an F major bar chord. Notice that the bar you re making serves as a new movable nut for the guitar. The F major bar chord can be quite hard to play because it s right next to the nut of the guitar. Practice this bar chord by putting it on and taking it off several times, until you start getting comfortable with its shape. The next major bar chord we re going to take a look at is the G major bar chord. Make a bar with the st finger across all six strings on the rd fret. Now finish off the shape by putting the rd finger on the th fret of the th string, the th finger on the th fret of the th string and the nd finger on the th fret of the rd string. This is a G major bar chord using the E bar chord shape. In the following exercises you ll work on mastering this first bar chord shape and moving it all over the fretboard. G Major Exercise # You ll probably hate me by the end of this first exercise. The rhythm is pretty simple, but measures two and four contain whole rests that actually help you develop this first bar chord shape. During those measures, I want you to take the G major bar chord shape off and then put it back on, in preparation for the next measure of strumming. Taking this new bar chord shape off and on is a really great way to help your fingers remember exactly where to go. G GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

24 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc 6 Exercise # Exercise # introduces you to a C major bar chord using the E bar chord shape. In order to play this chord, you ll need to place the bar on the th fret and the remaining fingers as notated on the chord diagram included here. This is a great example of how to move any bar chord shape to any fret on the guitar to play a new bar chord. Here you ll be playing a G and a C bar chord with the rhythmic pattern from the previous exercise. There s a measure of rest between each chord so you have some time to switch from one chord to the other. C Major G C G C G Exercise # This exercise still uses the G major and C major bar chords exclusively, but this time there aren t measures of rest to help you change chords. Measures one, three and four use the G major bar chord, while measure two uses the C major bar chord. The rhythm for the strumming pattern is the same as the one from the previous exercise. However, the way the notes are played is a bit different: there s a muted eighth note at the start of each group of four eighth notes.

25 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords Exercise # Exercise # uses the exact same rhythm and strumming pattern as Exercise #, but this time I m throwing in a D bar chord. Measures one and four use a G bar chord, measure two uses a C bar chord and measure three uses a D bar chord. In order to make this D bar chord using the E shape, you need to move the bar up to the th fret and then complete the bar chord shape with the remaining fingers. The chord diagram for the D major bar chord that uses the E shape is supplied for you here. Hopefully this exercise will make it pretty clear that you can move the E-shaped bar chord around to any fret you like, in order to play a different bar chord. D Major G C D G GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

26 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords Fifth String Major Bar Chord Shape Now that you have the 6th string root note major bar chord shape, or E bar chord shape, working for you, it s time to add the th string root note major bar chord shape, or A bar chord shape, to your chord library. There are two ways that you can choose to play this chord. I ll present both and let you select the one that works best for you. Let s start with a regular open A major chord. Instead of making this chord with the st, nd and rd fingers, try using the nd, rd and th fingers. Place the nd finger on the nd fret of the th string, the rd finger on the nd fret of the rd string and the th finger on the nd fret of the nd string. Now move that chord shape, up by one half-step, to where the nd finger is on the rd fret of the th string, the rd finger is on the rd fret of the rd string and the th finger is on the rd fret of the nd string. Place the st finger on the st fret, and press down on every string except for the low E string. That s a Bb bar chord using the A bar chord shape. Again, playing a bar chord that close to the nut of the guitar can be a bit difficult. A Major A Major Bb Major Bar Chord Next, let s take a look at a C bar chord that uses the A bar chord shape. Move the bar up to the rd fret, and finish making the A bar chord shape by placing the nd finger on the th fret of the th string, the rd finger on the th fret of the rd string and the th finger on the th fret of the nd string. Make sure you don t play the 6th string. Here s a chord diagram to help you understand how the C bar chord is made. C Major C Major GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

27 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords You may feel like the nd, rd and th fingers are too squished together when making the A-shaped bar chord. If this is the case, there s an alternate fingering you might prefer. Instead of playing the notes on the th, rd and nd strings with the nd, rd and th fingers, you can play them with the rd finger. That s right! You can make a bar across all three notes using the rd finger. Check the C major bar chord diagrams on the previous page to get a better idea of how this works. This shape may seem a bit difficult at first, but generally, making a second bar with the rd finger makes it a bit easier to play the A bar chord shape. I really encourage you to learn and use both fingerings for the A bar chord shape. I use both of them depending on the musical situation I m in. The following exercises will help you get used to playing these two new bar chord shapes. Exercise # This first exercise for the A-shaped bar chord uses a C bar chord to take you through a brand new strumming pattern. There s a measure of rest between each measure of strumming. During the measures of rest, I want you to take the C bar chord completely off and put it back on before the next measure of strumming. This should help you memorize this new bar chord shape. Be sure to keep an eye out for the downstroke and upstroke strumming indicators. C GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

28 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords Exercise # In Exercise # the A bar chord shape is moved up by a few frets to make an F bar chord. Start by making a bar across the top five strings of the guitar on the th fret. Then, complete the A bar chord shape for F major by placing the remaining fingers on the frets notated on this chord diagram. F Major This exercise uses the exact same rhythm as the last one, but you ll be alternating back and forth between a C bar chord and an F bar chord. The measures of rest are still there to give you time to switch chords. C F Exercise # This exercise simply alternates back and forth between a C bar chord and an F bar chord. You ll be using the strumming pattern from the past two exercises but without measures of rests between chord changes. C F C F GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

29 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords Exercise # For this exercise I want you to move the A-shaped bar chord up to the th fret to make a G bar chord. You ll be using the exact same rhythm from the previous exercises. Once you get this one down, try moving the A-shaped bar chord all over the neck of the guitar. You can try making up your own new strumming patterns too! G Major C F G C GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

30 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc Switching Between 6th And th String Major Bar Chord Shapes Now that you have the 6th and th string major bar chord shapes down, it s time to learn how to use them together. Using just the 6th string or th string bar chord shapes can really make it hard to get to the chord you need. Instead of jumping all over the fretboard, you ll learn to combine the 6th and th string bar chord shapes to play through a few chord progressions. This makes playing with bar chords much more efficient. Exercise # This first exercise is in the key of G major. You can tell that by looking at the key signature at the beginning of the exercise. Remember that the key of G major has only one sharp. The progression in this exercise is a simple G major-c major. You ll be using the 6th string E bar chord shape to play the G major bar chord, and the th string A bar chord shape to play the C major bar chord. The rhythm is played as eighth notes, and there s a measure of rest between each chord change. Exercise # In this exercise the measures of rest are taken out of the pattern, so there s not as much time to switch chords. There s also a muted strum on the second beat of each measure. Try to play this exercise using both fingerings for the A-shaped bar chord. G C G C G C

31 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc Exercise # This exercise uses the same rhythmic and strumming patterns as the past few exercises but has an extra chord: a D bar chord with the root note on the th string. I didn t include a chord diagram for this bar chord because I want you to try to figure it out for yourself. If you re having any trouble, you can always learn it by looking at the TAB below. Good luck! Exercise # Exercise # is taken directly from the Ultimate Beginner s Bar Chord Play-Along, a track you ll have the chance to play with, further down the road. The chord progression used here is D-C-G-D. The basic strumming pattern is alternating downstrokes and upstrokes played as eighth notes. The strums that occur on beats two and four are muted, so keep an eye out for those. Measures one and two stick to a D major bar chord with the root note on the th string. When you get to measure three, play an A-shaped C bar chord for beats one and two, and an E-shaped G bar chord for beats three and four. The strumming pattern stays the same here despite the faster chord changes. Measure four goes back to a D bar chord. G C D G D C G D

32 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords Woodshed Before moving on to the Practical Application for this section, you need to make sure you can do a couple of things first. For starters, you have to be sure you can make all the major bar chord shapes we ve gone over so far. Once you have those shapes down, you need to be sure you can switch between the 6th and th string root note bar chord shapes without too much trouble. You ve come a long way. Your hand might be tired from making so many new bar chords, but that s pretty normal. Bar chords are some of the most physically demanding chords you can make on the guitar, but once you get them down, your hand will be in great shape! Practical Application - Loop Track # For this Practical Application, you ll be using the 6th and th string major bar chord shapes to play over an eightmeasure loop in the key of G major. You ll use a G major bar chord for the first four measures, a C major bar chord for measure five, a D major bar chord for measure six and another G major bar chord shape for the last two measures. Try coming up with your own strumming patterns for the chords in this progression. You should try both 6th and th string bar chord shapes for each chord as well. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

33 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords Minor Bar Chords Congratulations on making it this far through the Bar Chords section of The Guitar System! Now that you ve become comfortable playing major bar chords, it s time to learn a couple of minor bar chord shapes. In the previous section you used the open E and A major chord shapes to make the 6th and th string root note major bar chord shapes. Now you ll use the open E and A minor chord shapes to make the 6th and th string root note minor bar chord shapes. We ll go through some exercises that ll help you learn and develop these two primary minor bar chord shapes. Once you have the basic shapes down, we ll start mixing up the major and minor bar chord shapes. At the end of this section, you ll see all your hard work pay off in the Ultimate Beginner s Bar Chord Play-Along. This one is a combination of early rock n roll and classic rock. Sixth String Minor Bar Chord Shape The 6th string root note minor bar chord shape should be very easy for you. Make a 6th string root note G major bar chord with the bar on the rd fret. In order to make a 6th string root note minor bar chord, all you have to do is take the nd finger off of the th fret of the rd string. That s the basic 6th string root note minor bar chord shape. Next, make an open E minor chord and then go back to the G minor (Gm) bar chord you just learned. Do you see how the G minor bar chord shape is very similar to the open E minor chord? The st finger just took the place of the guitar nut. Play this chord over and over again until you start getting used to the new shape. G Major Bar Chord G Minor Bar Chord E Minor GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

34 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc 6 Exercise # In this exercise you ll be playing an A minor bar chord using a simple eighthnote-based strumming pattern. The A minor bar chord is made by placing the bar across every string on the th fret. Once the bar is in place, simply complete the E minor shape. There s an A minor bar chord diagram for you here if you need it. Exercise # This exercise works on switching back and forth between a G major bar chord and the A minor bar chord you just learned. The eighth note strumming pattern is the same but without rests between chord changes. Make sure you re trying to find the proper balance between levels of relaxation and finger pressure for your bar chords. A Minor Am Am G Am G

35 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc Exercise # In this exercise the A minor bar chord shape you ve been using is moved up by two frets so you can play a B minor (Bm) bar chord with it. I didn t supply you with the chord diagram for the B minor chord because I want you to try to figure it out on your own. Take a look at the TAB if you re having any issues with the B minor chord shape. Just make sure the bar is placed on the th fret. The rhythm for this one is a little different from anything you ve played before. You re still alternating between eighth note downstrokes and upstrokes, but this time there s a lot of muting going on. The only times you re letting the entire chord ring out are on beats two and four. Make sure you mute one and as well as and three and. The and of beat four is also muted. This exercise may take a while to get down, but knowing how to mute this much will be worth it when you get to the Ultimate Beginner s Bar Chord Play-Along at the end of this section. Bm Am G

36 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords Exercise # The first chord in this exercise is an E minor bar chord. To play it, simply place the bar on the th fret and make the rest of the 6th string root note minor bar chord shape. Remember that the th fret is the octave of the open E string. Okay, I ll be nice and throw in the chord diagram for you this time. You ll be playing an eighth note rhythm for this exercise, using downstrokes only. This gives the E minor-c-g chord progression quite a different feel than it would have if you were to play it with alternating downstroke and upstroke strumming. You re covering a big portion of the fretboard in this exercise. In the next section you ll learn a minor bar chord shape that doesn t require you to move around so much, in order to play progressions like the one in this exercise. E Minor Em C G GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

37 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords Fifth String Minor Bar Chord Shape In the last section of lessons you learned to use the 6th string root note minor bar chord shape that s based on the E minor chord shape. In this section you ll be adding the th string root note minor bar chord shape, which is based on the A minor chord, to your arsenal of bar chords. Exercise # from the previous section had you playing an E minor bar chord all the way up on the th fret of the guitar. Instead of playing this chord on the th fret, you can actually choose to use the th string root note minor bar chord shape to play it closer to the first frets. Start by making a bar across the top five strings of the guitar on the th fret with the st finger. Now check out the E minor chord diagram below to see where you should place the remaining fingers. Do you see how similar this chord is to an open A minor chord? You re using the nd, rd and th fingers instead of the st, nd and rd fingers to make the A minor shape. E Minor Bar Chord A Minor Exercise # This first exercise uses the same chord progression and strumming pattern as Exercise # from the last section. The only real difference between the two is that you re playing the first E minor chord using the th string minor bar chord shape, instead of the 6th string minor bar chord shape. You re also using the th string major bar chord shape to play the C major on measure two. Once you work your way through this exercise, you ll start seeing how nice it is to have a couple of options for where to play a particular chord. Playing the th string E minor bar chord shape in this situation makes shifting to the G and C major bar chords a bit easier. Remember to leave the low E string out of this new minor bar chord shape. Em C G GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

38 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc Exercise # This is the first exercise that uses the 6th and th string major bar chord shapes and the 6th and th string minor bar chord shapes. The progression you ll be playing through is E minor-b minor-c major-g major. The E minor chord uses the th string shape, the B minor uses the 6th string shape, the C major uses the th string shape and the G major uses the 6th string shape. There s a lot of position changing going on in this exercise, so make sure to take it slowly at first. I kept the strumming pretty simple so you can focus on the chord changes. Exercise # In this exercise you re playing through an E minor-a minor-d-g chord progression. The E minor chord uses the th string root note bar chord shape and the A minor chord uses the 6th string root note bar chord shape. This chord progression is played with eighth-note-based alternating downstroke and upstroke strumming. Make sure to use muted strums on beats two and four of each measure. Em Bm C G Em Am D G

39 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc Exercise # This exercise is very similar to four of the measures from the upcoming play-along. The chord progression is G-A-B minor. The B minor bar chord in this exercise is made using the th string root note shape. This chord progression is played with alternating downstroke and upstroke strumming and has an awful lot of muting in it. The only times you re actually letting chords ring out are on the two and and four. This strumming pattern can be a bit tricky, so make sure to practice it slowly at first. Get this one down cold because you ll be using it in the upcoming play-along song. Woodshed Before moving on to the Ultimate Beginner s Bar Chord Play-Along, you need to be sure you ve memorized all the bar chord shapes we ve gone over. You should also be able to switch between the 6th and th string major and minor bar chord shapes without too much trouble. If you feel your bar chord skills aren t quite up to the challenge yet, there s no shame in going back and repeating the previous lessons. Have fun and get ready for a great play-along. G A Bm 6 6 6

40 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords Practical Application - Ultimate Beginner s Bar Chord Play-Along Track # This play-along really conjures up the sounds of early rock n roll and classic rock. You ll be using most of the bar chord shapes you ve learned so far, to really bring these two genres of music to life. You ve already played all the bar chords in this play-along, and most of the strumming patterns should be familiar to you as well. On the first four bars of this play-along (page ), which are labeled Intro, you re playing through a D-C-G chord progression twice. The D and C major chords are played with the th string bar chord shape and the G major chord with the 6th string bar chord shape. The rhythmic pattern is pretty simple, so I ll leave that for you to sort out. Notice you re using all downstrokes for the intro section. The next section, which is labeled Verse, starts off with the exact same D-C-G progression of the intro. If you look closely at measures - and -, you should recognize them from Exercise # in the Switching Between 6th And th String Major Bar Chord Shapes section. Make sure you re strumming muted chords and downstrokes or upstrokes where notated in the music. Measures - (page ) are the exact same as measures -. When you get to measure twenty-five (page ), play the intro chord progression two more times. This will lead you into the chorus of the song. The rhythmic pattern on the chorus should look very familiar to you. It s the same as the one used in Exercise # of the Fifth String Minor Bar Chord Shape section. This particular rhythmic pattern is something you ll hear quite often in oldies or early rock n roll. The chorus starts off with a G-A-D progression using the rhythm we just spoke about. Repeat this progression twice Measures -6 feature the rhythmic pattern used for the chorus, but the chord progression changes to G-A-B minor. This is an exact copy of Exercise # from the Fifth String Minor Bar Chord Shape section, except for the fact that you ll be using a 6th string B minor bar chord shape instead of a th string shape. Finish off the chorus by using the same rhythmic pattern to play a G and an A bar chord on measures thirty-seven and thirty-eight (page 6). Take the Da Segno marker at the end of measure thirty-eight back to measure thirteen, and play all the way down to measure thirty-eight again. When you reach measure thirty-eight for the second time, continue on to measures thirty-nine and forty where you ll be playing the intro D-C-G chord progression four more times. Once you can play this tune all the way through, you should be well prepared to dig into some of your favorite oldies and early rock n roll tunes. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

41 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc Ultimate Beginner s Bar Chord Play-Along Intro D C G D D C G D Verse D C G D C G D

42 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc D C G D C G 6 D D C G D C G D D C G D D C G

43 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc D C G D D C G D Chorus G A D G A Bm G A D C G 6 6 6

44 The Guitar System - Beginner - Bar Chords GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc G A D C G x D x

45 The Guitar System - Beginner - New Rhythms New Rhythms You should be very proud of yourself! Mastering the bar chord shapes you ve learned isn t an easy task. Now that you have all these new chords to work with, we re going to go through new strumming patterns and rhythms. The following exercises feature bar chords, power chords, regular strumming, palm muting, eighth notes and sixteenth notes, so you can take your strumming to the next level. Eighth Note Rhythms In this series of exercises you ll use the power chords and bar chord shapes you already know, to play new rhythms and strumming patterns. There isn t anything super-new happening in the next few exercises, but there are a lot of rests. The goal is to get you used to using different rest values between quarter note and eighth note strumming. Exercise # This first exercise features eighth-note-based alternating downstroke and upstroke strumming. Beats one and four of each measure consist of two eighth note strums. Beats two and three are taken up by a half rest, so make sure to lay out there. Again, the point here is to get better at counting rests. G C G GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

46 The Guitar System - Beginner - New Rhythms GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc Exercise # This exercise is similar to Exercise # but has a bit different chord progression, and a distinct rhythmic pattern on measures three and four. On measure three, strum the rhythm used on measures one and two, but instead of resting on two and three and, you have to rest on two and three because of the dotted quarter rest. This means you ll be playing a C chord on and and. On measure four, beats one, two and three are the same as on measure one. The only difference between the measures is beat four: an F bar chord played as a quarter note. Exercise # Here you re using the chord progression from the last exercise but with quite a bit different rhythm. Measures one and two use the same strumming pattern as measure three from the last exercise. Watch out for that dotted quarter rest. Measure three is still a C chord, but the rhythm has changed to two eighth notes, one eighth rest, one quarter note, one eighth note and another quarter note. Go through this measure slowly, and don t forget about the downstroke and upstroke indicators. Measure four is exactly like the final measure from the previous exercise. It may take you a while to get used to all the different rests, but these exercises are a really great practice for developing your strumming skills. G F C G F G F C G F

47 The Guitar System - Beginner - New Rhythms Eighth Note Rhythms With Palm Muting Let s continue working on your strumming by adding some palm muted power chords into the mix. The next few exercises will use power chords, bar chords and palm muting to help you develop your rock strumming. Have fun! Exercise # This exercise is very similar to Exercise # from the previous section. However, instead of resting on beats two and three of each measure, you ll be playing palm muted power chords using eighth note downstrokes. G G G G G C C C G G G Exercise # The first measure of this exercise consists of palm muted E power chords played as eighth notes. When you get to measure two, switch to a D bar chord for a dotted quarter note, or and. Next, make a C major bar chord. The half note tied to the eighth note takes up the and and and of the second measure. E D C E D C GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

48 The Guitar System - Beginner - New Rhythms Exercise # Just like on Exercise #, the first measure of Exercise # contains palm muted E power chords played as eighth notes. The first three eighth note strums on measure two use a D major bar chord. Switch to a C major bar chord for the following quarter note and three eighth notes. Make sure to follow the downstroke and upstroke indicators. There s some serious constant-strumming technique going on, on measures two and four. E D C E D C Sixteenth Note Rhythms Up to this point you ve been using whole, half, quarter and eighth notes. In this section of lessons you ll learn about sixteenth notes and how to use them in your strumming patterns. Remember how we took the four quarter notes that can occur in one measure of / time, and cut them in half to make eight eighth notes? Now we re going to cut those eight eighth notes in half in order to make sixteen sixteenth notes. That s right, in one measure of / time you can cram in, sixteen sixteenth notes, but what happens when you try to count them? In order to keep up with the sixteen sixteenth notes that ll be whizzing by, you need to learn a new way to count. It s just that the classic one and two and three and four and we ve been using to count eighth notes is inadequate for this new note value. Therefore, for counting sixteenth notes you should use one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a. Do you see how the one two three four and the ands are still in the counting? We just added an e and an a between them. Each beat has four syllables to account for every sixteenth note that can be contained in each beat of / time. Count out loud, one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a over and over again until you get used to it. It may take a while before you re proficient at counting sixteenth notes, but we ll take it one step at a time, starting with the following three exercises. Exercise # If you take a look at the sheet music on the following page, you ll see that this exercise simply alternates back and forth between an A minor chord and a G major chord. You may look at all the notes and think, Holy cow! That s a lot of strumming. How will I ever be able to play all those chords?! Well, if you were to play this exercise at a fast tempo, you might have some cause for concern. However, we ll take this exercise pretty slowly so you ll have plenty of time to fit in all the sixteenth note strumming. The first two beats of each measure are played as four eighth notes with alternating downstrokes and upstrokes. Nothing new for you here, right?! The second two beats of each measure, double the amount of strumming by having you play eight sixteenth notes. If you were to count while strumming the chords, it would sound like this: one and two and three e and a four e and a. Make sure to count out loud and alternate the downstrokes with the upstrokes throughout the entire exercise. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

49 The Guitar System - Beginner - New Rhythms GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc Am G Am G Exercise # In this exercise you ll be strumming power chords to play through a simple D-C-G chord progression. You ll be using sixteenth notes and alternating downstrokes with upstrokes the entire time. The idea behind this exercise is to get you used to counting and playing sixteenth note rhythms. Be sure to count out loud, and get ready for a good workout. D C G

50 The Guitar System - Beginner - New Rhythms GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc Exercise # This exercise really drives home the difference between quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes. The first measure uses quarter notes with a G bar chord, the second measure uses eighth notes with a D major bar chord, and the third and fourth measures use sixteenth notes with a C major bar chord. This exercise isn t really very musical, but it s great for learning how to count sixteenth note rhythms. Exercises like this should really make it very apparent that using the wrist for most of the strumming motion is very important. If you use the elbow instead, you ll get tired much quicker and probably have a hard time keeping up at faster tempos. Woodshed Before moving on to the Practical Application in this section, you ll want to make sure you have a few things under your fingers. First of all, you have to be able to switch between all the bar chord shapes you ve learned up to this point. Once that s taken care of, make sure you truly understand sixteenth notes and how to count them in / time. If you can do those two things, you re ready for the loop in the following Practical Application. Practical Application - Loop 6 In this Practical Application I m going to cut you loose, so you can get creative with everything you ve learned about bar chords and strumming so far. This loop uses a simple G-D-A minor-c chord progression where each chord gets one measure. The tempo is slower so you can try experimenting with sixteenth note strumming. There aren t really any rules; just try to make up your own unique strumming patterns using everything you ve learned so far. You can even throw in some open chords and power chords if you like. Conclusion Congratulations on making it this far! If you ve completed everything up to this point, I d say you re no longer a beginner rhythm guitar player. That s right! You re officially an intermediate rhythm guitar player. In the next section of lessons we ll enter the world of lead guitar. If you think you ve been having fun so far, just wait until you get to the next section. Things are really about to take off! G D C Track #

51 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Into The World Of Lead Guitar Into The World Of Lead Guitar Introduction Up until now you ve only been learning things related to rhythm guitar playing. Now it s time to dive headfirst into the world of lead guitar. Throughout the lead-guitar lessons in The Guitar System we ll take things one step at a time. I m not going to just throw some scales, licks and solos at you and expect you to figure out how to use them. We ll kick things off by taking a look at the proper techniques you ll need to start playing some wicked lead guitar. Once you have some basic lead-guitar technique down, we ll jump into your first guitar scale: the minor pentatonic scale. As soon as you ve learned this scale, we ll explore some of the most important lead-guitar techniques you can use to give your playing its own unique style. Each topic taught throughout this first lead-guitar section has a Practical Application to go along with it. Some sections have loops for you to play along with, others have licks to teach you, while the final section has a serious rock solo you ll learn to play. Get ready for super-fun times as you enter the world of lead guitar. Batten down the hatches and full steam ahead! Basic Lead-Guitar Technique Before you start ripping up some lead-guitar solos, you need to learn about proper picking and fretting technique. Proper technique is a very subjective topic. Just like in the rhythm guitar technique sections, there are a few universal guidelines that ll help you start off on the right foot. We ll cover proper picking-hand technique first and then move on to proper fretting hand technique. Picking Technique The guidelines for proper single-note picking technique are really not that different from the guidelines for proper strumming technique. The three general picking guidelines we ll discuss are, relaxation, efficiency of motion and using the wrist instead of the elbow as the main motor for the picking motion. Staying relaxed when you pick single notes is just as important as staying relaxed when you strum chords. Most guitar players will agree that relaxing is a big part of proper guitar picking-technique. Tensing up when you pick will slow you down and potentially lead to injury. Remember this as you go through the following picking exercises and lead-guitar lessons. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

52 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar When you start going through these picking exercises, try to keep in mind the term efficiency of motion. Efficiency of motion, in this context, simply means you re not wasting any motion with your pick. You should only pick the string as much as you need to in order to make it sound. Larger picking motions will waste time and energy. Smaller, or efficient, picking motions will save time and energy. You ll come to understand more about this in the following lessons. We ll be working on efficiency of motion in several lead-guitar sections throughout The Guitar System. The final general guideline is that you should use the wrist instead of the elbow for most of the picking motion. There are two reasons for this: you can make much smaller and efficient picking motions, and using just the elbow can actually hurt after a while especially if you practice a lot. We ll refine your picking technique in each lead-guitar lesson from here on out. Keep these three picking-technique guidelines in the back of your mind as we move forward. Downstrokes Much like what you did when you began learning how to strum, you ll start learning how to pick using only downstrokes. In this first collection of picking exercises we ll concentrate on developing your downstroke picking. Grip the pick just like you did when you were learning how to strum. Position the pick on the low E string, and use a downward motion with the wrist to pick through the string. You should be relaxed, and the picking motion should only be big enough to make the string ring out normally. Remember to use efficiency of motion! Repeat this downstroke motion several times until you start getting used to it. The following exercises will help you learn how to use and control downstroke picking. You ll be using only open strings so you can concentrate on the picking hand. Exercise # The first picking exercise will have you playing exclusively the open low E string as quarter note downstrokes. Remember that the upside down U symbol at the bottom of the TAB is telling you to use downstrokes. Relax, use the wrist for most of the picking motion, and take the repeat sign back to the beginning of the exercise. Exercise # If you take a look at the sheet music on the following page, you ll see that this exercise exclusively uses quarter notes like the previous one. However, here you re alternating between picking the low and high E strings. I threw in a measure of rest between each measure of picking to give you some time to switch between strings. Picking on a thick string can feel very different from picking on a thin string. The point of this exercise is to get you used to picking on both thick and thin strings. Take your time, and try making every note sound as clear and clean as possible. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

53 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Exercise # Exercise # is the exact same as Exercise # but without measures of rest. Try to anticipate the switch to the next string by looking at the string you re proceeding to, right before you make the move. This will increase your chances of hitting the correct string. Exercise # Now that you have some basic downstroke picking-technique working for you, it s time to increase the speed of these exercises a bit. In this exercise you re still alternating between the open low and high E strings. The only difference is you re using eighth notes instead of quarter notes. When you speed up your picking it s very easy to get tense accidentally. Make sure to stay relaxed even though you re picking faster. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

54 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Upstrokes Upstroke picking can feel quite different from downstroke picking. Many new lead-guitar players tend to use only downstrokes to play their single notes. Don t let that be you! It s important that you work just as much on your upstrokes as you do on your downstrokes. Place the pick on the side of the low E string that s nearest to the floor. Now use an upward motion with the wrist to pick the string. Remember to relax and use small efficient motions. The following exercises will help you start developing your upstroke picking chops. Take your time with these exercises, and enjoy working on this new technique! Exercise # With this exercise you ll be using upstrokes to pick quarter notes while alternating between the 6th and th strings. Every other measure you ll find a whole rest that you can use to prepare for the coming string switch. Try getting most of the picking motion from your relaxed wrist! Remember that the arrow-like symbols at the bottom of the TAB are upstroke indicators. Exercise # This exercise is based on quarter note upstrokes like the previous one, but this time the rests have been removed. Take notice that you re switching between the high and low E strings instead of the low E and A strings. 6 GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

55 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Exercise # This exercise uses all upstrokes to play four quarter notes on the open st string, the open nd string and the open rd string, and four more quarter notes on the open st string again. Try looking ahead to the string that s coming up next. Again, doing so will increase your chances of hitting the proper string with the pick. Exercise # The final upstroke picking exercise works on increasing your speed so you can take your picking technique to the next level. You ll be simply alternating back and forth between the st and nd strings for each measure using all eighth notes. Make sure you re comfortable with upstrokes by the time you finish this exercise, because in the next section you ll be combining downstrokes and upstrokes into a technique called alternate picking. Alternate Picking Up to this point you ve been working on downstrokes and upstrokes separately. Now it s time to combine them into a technique called alternate picking. This technique can be pretty difficult at first, but we ll take it very slowly and develop it one step at a time. There will always be room for improvement in your alternate picking. As a matter of fact, I know of many world-class guitar players who constantly work on their alternate picking. As you work your way through the following alternate picking exercises, keep in mind the three universal tips for picking. You may be more inclined to tense up when using alternate picking, so keep an eye out for that. If you do tense up, stop and relax for a bit before getting back to playing. Alternate picking feels quite different from using downstrokes or upstrokes exclusively. Embrace the difference, and enjoy developing this new technique. You ll be using it a lot throughout the rest of The Guitar System. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

56 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Exercise # The following four exercises still exclusively use open strings so you can concentrate on your picking. This first exercise will have you using alternate picking to play quarter notes on the high E string. Make sure you start the alternate picking with a downstroke. You should use a down up down up... picking motion, without ever playing two downstrokes or two upstrokes in a row. These alternating pick strokes are the key to alternate picking. Notice the alternating downstroke and upstroke markers at the bottom of the TAB. As soon as you start playing this exercise, you should have a better idea of why it s important to use small efficient motions. If you re using alternate picking and you pick a string with a downstroke, you have to come right back up and pick that string again with an upstroke. If you go way past the string with a big inefficient picking motion for the first downstroke, it ll take you longer to come back up and pick the string with an upstroke. This is just something to think about as you work on this exercise. Remember to relax and use the wrist for most of the picking motion. Exercise # This exercise will have you using alternate picking to play four quarter notes on the high E string followed by four quarter notes on the low E string. I added in a full measure of rest between each measure of notes to give you time to change strings. Try making the tone and volume of the downstrokes as similar as possible to the upstrokes. This is probably one of the biggest challenges of alternate picking. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

57 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Exercise # In this exercise you re using alternate picking to play quarter notes on the st and nd strings. There are no rests between measures to give you more time to change strings. Take your time with this one, and keep your eyes on the st and nd strings so you re able to pick the proper string at the proper time. Exercise # This exercise uses eighth notes to help you take your alternate-picking speed to the next level. You ll be alternating back and forth between the 6th and th strings. There can be a big tendency to tense up when increasing the speed of your alternate picking. Try to be aware of any tension that may sneak into your fingers, hand, wrist or arm as you practice this exercise. If you do notice some tension, relax and start the exercise all over again. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

58 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Single-Note Technique For The Fretting Hand You ve been putting in some serious work on your picking hand. However, for all that work to really pay off, you need to make sure you re not leaving your fretting hand behind. With that in mind, we re going to take a look at proper lead-guitar technique for the fretting hand. The general lead-guitar technique guidelines for the fretting hand are quite similar to the ones for making chords. Relaxing, general hand posture and finger placement play an important role in developing proper lead-guitar fretting hand technique. The first guideline for great lead-guitar technique is remember to relax your hand. We ve covered relaxing in quite a few sections so far but it s still important to mention. Just make sure you re aware of any excessive tension creeping up on your fretting hand as you play through the following exercises. Do you remember the hand posture of holding the apple that we covered in the previous sections on rhythm guitar technique? You ll want to start out with this same posture as you begin playing lead guitar. The thumb should be right on the back of the neck of the guitar. There will be times in your lead-guitar playing where the thumb won t be on the back of the neck, but for now, make sure you keep it there. When playing single notes on the guitar, you still need to make sure you re using good finger placement. Remember to play right behind the fret and not toward the back or middle of the fret. This will keep any fret buzzing to a minimum. Playing lead guitar requires a lot of coordination and small muscle development. Don t be surprised if the following exercises take you a while to get down perfectly; you ll be training your hands to do a lot of new and unusual things, so be patient with yourself. Exercise # This exercise has you alternating between the notes on the nd and rd frets of the low E string and then of the high E string using the st and nd fingers from the fretting hand. You re using quarter notes throughout the entire exercise. You can tell which finger you re supposed to play a given note with, by looking at the little numbers next to the actual quarter notes. After the first two measures there s a measure of rest to give you some time to switch to the high E string with ease. Apply the instructions I just gave you, to the nd and rd frets of the st string. Take note of the picking indicators on the sheet music below; you re using alternate picking for the entire exercise. Make sure to relax and use the wrist for most of the alternate picking motion. It may take you a while to sync up the picking hand with the fretting hand, but I don t want you to get worried. It s normal for this to take some time and practice to develop. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

59 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Exercise # With Exercise # you ll be adding the rd finger from the fretting hand into the mix, while still using all quarter notes and alternate picking. Play the nd, rd and th frets of the low E string with the st, nd and rd fingers of the fretting hand, respectively. Play these three notes four times on the low E string before resting and moving them to the high E string. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

60 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Exercise # In this exercise you ll be playing the nd, rd and th frets of each string with the st, nd and rd fingers, respectively. The exercise starts on the 6th string and moves on to the th, th, rd, nd and st strings. You ll be playing two quarter notes and one half note per measure. Between each one of these measures you ll find a measure of rest that ll give you time to accurately switch between strings. Make sure you re using alternate picking regardless of the measures of rest. Using alternate picking to switch between strings can be very difficult at first, but if you practice things like this exercise on a regular basis, you ll get pretty good at it quite quickly. Exercise # Exercise # is pretty much like the previous one but without measures of rest. It can be quite a bit more difficult than the previous ones because you have to move right to the next string using alternate picking. Once the first three notes have been played on the 6th string with a down up down motion, you have to hop over the th string to play it with an up down up motion. Take on this exercise very slowly, and be conscious of your picking-hand technique and alternate picking. I know there s a lot to remember here, so just take it one string at a time and have fun. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

61 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Woodshed Before moving on to the Practical Application for this section, you need to make sure you can do a few things with ease. First of all, you need to be sure you ve practiced and know how to use both downstroke and upstroke picking separately. Once you re able to use these picking techniques, the next step is making sure you can combine them to use alternate picking on one string. The final thing you need to be able to do is switch between strings using alternate picking. As soon as you re able to do all of these things, you ll be ready to test your new skills with the drum loop in the following Practical Application. Practical Application - Loop Track #6 For this Practical Application I ve supplied you with a great drum loop for working on alternate picking. You can use Exercise # from the previous section to play along with the loop or you can make up your own alternate picking exercises. Once you can play along with the loop using quarter notes, try to work on your speed by using eighth notes instead. Remember to stay relaxed even when you bump up the exercise to eighth notes. All this time spent improving your picking technique will pay off in the next section, where you ll be learning your first guitar scale: the minor pentatonic scale. Have fun! GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

62 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar The Minor Pentatonic Scale You ve been working pretty hard to develop your left and right hand technique. It s time to put all that work to good use by learning the first scale in The Guitar System: the minor pentatonic scale. This is the most popular guitar scale on the planet. One of the reasons for this is that it always sounds great in many different styles of music. In this series of lessons you ll learn to read scale diagrams, how to play and when use the 6th string root note minor pentatonic scale shape that starts with the st finger. At the end of this section I ll cut you loose to experiment with the minor pentatonic scale over one of the play-along songs. Remember to use everything you ve learned about lead-guitar technique up to this point. What Is A Minor Pentatonic Scale You might be wondering, What in the world is a minor pentatonic scale anyway? Well, without getting into too much theory right now, I can tell you it s a five-note scale that stems from a minor scale. Don t worry too much about this right now. We ll get into how the minor pentatonic scale is made later on and in-depth. Sixth String Root Note Minor Pentatonic Scale Shape In order to learn the minor pentatonic scale, you need to understand exactly how to read a scale diagram. Scale diagrams are very similar to chord diagrams, except for the fact that you play one note at a time instead of strumming all at once. Take a look at the scale diagram for the G minor pentatonic scale. This particular scale shape has its lowest root note on the rd fret of the 6th string the root notes are in black and the remaining notes are just circles. The numbers in the circles indicate the fingers you should use to play each note. G Minor Pentatonic Notice that each string in the G minor pentatonic scale has two notes on it. This is very typical of pentatonic scales. We ll go through every note in this scale starting on the lowest note and working our way up to the highest. Remember to use alternate picking throughout the entire scale. Start this scale off by playing a downstroke on the rd fret of the 6th string with the st finger. Next, play an upstroke on the 6th fret of the 6th string with the th finger. Move over to the th string, and play a downstroke on the rd fret with the st finger and an upstroke on the th fret with the rd finger. Continue on to the th string, and play a downstroke on the rd fret with the st finger and an upstroke on the th fret with the rd finger. Then, play the exact same notes on the rd and th frets of the rd string. Move on to the nd string, and play a downstroke on the rd fret with the st finger and an upstroke on the 6th fret with the th finger. Finish off the scale shape by playing the rd and 6th frets of the st string with the st and th fingers, respectively. This is the entire minor pentatonic scale shape. Do you understand how to read a scale diagram now? It may take you a while to read through scale diagrams at first, but you ll get quicker at it with time and practice. The following three exercises will help you memorize the minor pentatonic scale we just went through together. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

63 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar The Designated-Finger Concept The designated-finger concept is something you need to be aware of when learning certain scales. This concept basically states that each finger of the fretting hand plays all the notes on a given fret throughout a scale, regardless of the string you re on. This concept may sound strange but you used it when playing through the G minor pentatonic scale. Take a look at the diagram on the previous page. Notice how in the G minor pentatonic scale the st finger plays all the notes that occur on the rd fret, the rd finger plays all the notes on the th fret and the th finger plays all the notes on the 6th fret. If there were any notes on the th fret, the nd finger would have to play them. This concept will be used often as you learn new scales. Just be aware of the basic idea behind it for now. Exercise # Exercise # is the G minor pentatonic scale starting from the lowest note and going to the highest. I ve given you a whole rest on measure four so you have time to get ready to repeat the exercise. Try to visualize the scale shape as you play through it. You should also try to remember what the scale feels like as you play through it. I ve even thrown in the fretting hand finger numbers for your reference. Take it slowly, relax and pay attention to the downstroke and upstroke indicators Exercise # This next exercise is the G minor pentatonic scale starting on the highest note and descending to the lowest. Descending through a scale can feel quite different from ascending. It may feel funny at first but that s to be expected. Notice that the first note of the exercise is played with an upstroke. Be sure to use alternate picking once you get started GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

64 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Exercise # This exercise has you playing up and down the G minor pentatonic scale. You need to have the scale shape memorized very well so you can play this exercise all the way through without stopping. Make sure to use alternate picking exclusively. Switching gears from ascending to descending can be pretty tricky at first. Stay relaxed, and take your time with this one Root Notes Of The Minor Pentatonic Scale Shape There s something I want you to notice about the G minor pentatonic scale diagram: it has three black root notes, or in this case, three G notes. Much like bar chords, you can move scales around to different locations. When you do so, the name of the scale and the root note changes but the actual scale shape stays the same. If you were to move the entire G minor pentatonic scale shape, up by one whole-step, to where the lowest note is on the th fret of the 6th string, you d end up with an A minor pentatonic scale. The movability of scales makes them very versatile and powerful. Don t worry too much about this right now. Just try to memorize where the root notes for this minor pentatonic scale shape are and be aware that you can move any scale shape to other positions on the guitar. G Minor Pentatonic A Minor Pentatonic 6 GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

65 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar When To Use Minor Pentatonic Scales There are many instances in which you can use a minor pentatonic scale to play a guitar solo. In this section we ll go over some of the more common ones, like playing over power chords and minor chords, and in blues songs. If you re playing over a minor chord, you can use the minor pentatonic scale that has the same root note as that chord, for coming up with a guitar solo. For example, if you re jamming to a play-along or song where there s a G minor chord being played, you can use a G minor pentatonic scale to create a solo by experimenting with all the different notes in it to express yourself. The second instance in which you can use the minor pentatonic scale is when you re playing over a power chord with the same root note. For example, you can use a G minor pentatonic scale if someone is playing a G power chord. This is kind of an overstatement but will work for our purposes. There are times when you might not want to use a minor pentatonic scale over a power chord, but you ll learn more about this in later lessons. The third instance where it s pretty safe to use a minor pentatonic scale is when you re playing blues. If you were playing a blues song in the key of G, a G minor pentatonic scale would sound great over it. Keep these three instances in the back of your mind as we move through the rest of The Guitar System. How To Practice Scales When practicing a scale the first obvious step is memorizing its shape. Learning where the root notes are is a great first step to take as well. Once you have the shape memorized, you should use a metronome, play-along or drum loop to help keep you in time as you practice. You should play the scale as slow as you have to in order to avoid making mistakes; the scale should be clean and even-sounding. If you re making mistakes, lower the speed of the metronome or track you re using. Practice the scale until it s clean and perfect-sounding so you can start cranking up the speed on the metronome - beats per minute faster usually works great. We ll talk more about practicing scales, in the future, but these are some good guidelines for you to follow as you learn all the scales and leads in The Guitar System. Woodshed Before moving on to the Practical Applications for this section, there are a couple of things you need to make sure you have down cold. First of all, the minor pentatonic scale shape you ve been working on should be very well memorized. If it s not, you ll probably have some issues with the licks in the following section. You should also have the root note locations on this minor pentatonic scale shape memorized. There are only three of them, so it should be pretty easy for you. Once this is all taken care of, you can move on to learn cool guitar licks that use the minor pentatonic scale. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

66 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Practical Application Part - Licks In this first part of the Practical Application section, you re going to play three licks with the minor pentatonic scale you ve been working so hard on. A lick is simply a small melodic or musical idea that you can play on the guitar. Learning new licks is a great way to increase your musical vocabulary and use the scales you learn. The next three licks use notes from the G minor pentatonic scale exclusively. Lick # This first lick is very simple. You re playing the th fret of the th string, the rd fret of the rd string, the th fret of the rd string and the rd fret of the rd string, before ending back on the th fret of the th string. Try to visualize the entire G minor pentatonic scale shape as you play through the lick using alternate picking. Notice how you began and ended the lick on a G note, which is the root note of the scale. Lick # Lick # uses the notes on the st and nd strings of the G minor pentatonic scale exclusively. Try following along with the TAB and figuring out the lick for yourself. You can always refer back to the video if you need any help. Just remember to follow the finger numbers and picking indicators Lick # If you take a look at the sheet music for this lick, you ll notice I left out the finger numbers and picking indicators. I want you to use your intuition and all the things you ve learned so far, to decide which fingers and strokes to use. You re playing quarter notes here, so the rhythm should be pretty easy for you. Good luck! 6 6 GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

67 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Practical Application Part - Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along - Loop Track # The licks in the previous section were meant to give you an idea of what s possible to do by playing around with the notes in the G minor pentatonic scale. Now it s your turn to get creative with this scale. Pull up the Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along; it features a G-F-C chord progression that makes it perfect for experimenting with the G minor pentatonic scale. There s no right or wrong here. Just try to come up with your own licks and use the G minor pentatonic scale in unique ways. You can even use this play-along to practice moving up and down the scale if you like. In the next section you ll learn about essential soloing techniques that ll bring your lead-guitar playing to life and help you develop your own personal style. Have fun! Stylistic Lead-Guitar Techniques In the following lessons we ll be going over essential lead-guitar techniques: muting, bending, vibrato and sliding. They re very important for helping you develop your own personal style and voice on the guitar. As you get acquainted with each technique you ll learn licks that make good use of them. Once you ve gone through all of these techniques, you ll learn an awesome solo you can use to play over the Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play- Along. Muting Muting while playing lead guitar is quite different from the muting used with rhythm guitar strumming. It refers to keeping all the strings quiet except for the one(s) you re actually playing. You can do this by using either the picking hand or the fretting hand, or both at the same time. We ll take a look at how to mute the strings with both the picking and fretting hands. Quickly play through the G minor pentatonic scale. The strings you were playing, were they the only ones ringing out at any give time or were there some others making noise and bleeding over what you were executing? A good way to keep the strings you re not playing quiet is to mute them with the picking hand. If you re playing on the lower 6th and th strings, you can use the nd, rd and th fingers from the picking hand to mute the higher strings. Pick the 6th string and kind of rest the nd, rd and th fingers on the rd, nd and st strings. This will keep them from making noise if you accidentally brush up against or pick them. You can also use the picking hand to mute the lower strings of the guitar if you re playing the higher strings. Pick the st string of the guitar. You can keep the other five strings quiet by laying your thumb and part of your palm over the strings. It takes a bit of work to get this kind of picking-hand muting down but it does make your leadguitar playing sound much cleaner. If you want to sound like a real pro, you can use the fretting hand to help out too. Sometimes you ll want to let the fingers on the fretting hand brush up against the neighboring strings you re not playing. This will help mute them even more. When you add distortion to a guitar the strings can become quite sensitive. If you re an aspiring rock lead guitarist, you ll need all the muting you can muster to control all that distortion. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

68 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Bending Bending is a technique where you use the finger(s) to push or pull a string up or down to change the pitch of a note. The two types of bends you ll be learning here are half-step bends and whole-step bends. Bending can be pretty difficult and painful at first, so don t get frustrated if your bends don t sound perfect right away. It may take a while for you to build up some strength in your fingers. Once you learn to bend strings, you ll move on to a couple of licks that make use of this technique and that you can apply to a solo later on. Half-Step Bends Let s take a look at how to bend a note up by a half-step. Place the rd finger on the th fret of the rd string and play the note. Now move that finger to the 6th fret of the rd string and play the note. The distance from the th fret to the 6th fret is one half-step. Now, it s possible to play the th fret and get the exact same pitch as you would if you played the 6th fret. You may be wondering, How s that possible? Well, it s possible because of half-step bends. Place the rd finger back on the th fret of the rd string. Pick the string and bend it up until it reaches the same pitch as that of the 6th fret of the rd string. You ll probably want to use the st finger along with rd finger to help bend the string it makes it a lot more easier to perform. Look at the TAB for the half-step bend; it looks like an upward pointing arrow with the fraction / next to it. Practice the half-step bend over and over until you feel comfortable with it. You can move it around to any fret on any string using any finger you like. Double-check the pitch of your half-step bends by comparing their sound to that of the note on the very next fret up. For example, if you bend the th fret of the rd string up by a half-step, you should get the same pitch as the note on the 6th fret of the rd string. The following licks will give you an idea of how you can use half-step bends with the G minor pentatonic scale. ½ Lick # This first lick starts out with a half-step bend on the th fret of the rd string using the rd finger. Notice how the arrow on the TAB goes up and then comes back down. This is telling you to bend the note up and then let it come back down. Finish the lick off by playing the rd fret of the rd string with the st finger and the th fret of the th string with the rd finger. ½ 6 GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

69 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Lick # Lick # starts out with a half-step bend on the th fret of the rd string. Once you ve played that bend, pick the rd fret of the nd string followed by the 6th fret of the nd string and finally the rd fret of the st string. Make sure to pay attention to the finger numbers and picking indicators. ½ 6 Lick # This lick starts off with the same half-step bend as the previous one. The following two notes of the lick are a bit tricky. Play the rd fret of the nd string with the st finger and then roll the st finger over to play the rd fret of the st string. After that, play the 6th fret of the st string with the th finger, and end the lick on the rd fret of the st string with the st finger. Notice you re using all downstrokes to play this lick. I threw this in here to show you that not all licks use alternate picking. ½ 6 Whole-Step Bends The concept behind whole-step bends is basically the same as that of half-step bends, but the notes have to be bent twice as far. For our purposes we ll define a whole-step as any note that s two frets away from the note you re currently playing. For example, play the 6th fret of the nd string and then move to the th fret of the nd string. This is a whole-step. To play a whole-step bend, pick the 6th fret of the nd string and bend the string up until you can hear the pitch of the note on the th fret. 6 full Go back to the 6th fret of the nd string with the th finger. Place the st, nd and rd fingers on the nd string. Now play the 6th fret and use all the fingers to push the string up, until the pitch of the note you re bending becomes a whole-step higher. Using more than one finger makes bending a bit easier. Keep this in mind; it ll become useful if you re having a hard time bending a string. Look at the TAB for the whole-step bend. You can tell it s a whole-step bend because of the little arrow with the word full next to it. The licks on the following page will give you a few ideas on how to use whole-step bends with the G minor pentatonic scale. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc 6

70 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Lick # This first lick starts out with a whole-step bend on the 6th fret of the nd string and is played with the th finger. Make sure to use the st, nd and rd fingers to help bend the string. The remainder of the lick is pretty self-explanatory. Try figuring this one out for yourself. 6 full 6 Lick # Lick # starts out with the same whole-step bend as Lick #. After playing the bend, move to the st string and pick the rd fret, the 6th fret and the rd fret again. The next measure starts with the whole-step bend that kicked measure one off, and ends on a G note on the rd fret of the st string. The finger numbers and picking indicators are included on the TAB for you. 6 full 6 6 full Lick # This final whole-step bend lick starts off with the same bend as the last two licks. After the initial bend, play the rd fret of the st string followed by a whole-step bend on the 6th fret of the st string. Let the string come back down to its original resting position before ending the lick on the rd fret of the st string. Your fingers might be getting pretty sore from all this bending, but the more you practice it the tougher your fingers will become. 6 full full 6 Vibrato Vibrato is something that can really give your playing its own unique style. Just like a singer, a guitarist s particular style of vibrato can be one of the defining elements of their sound. The three types of vibrato we ll go over are, regular, blues, and classical vibrato. Regular vibrato is kind of like repeatedly bending a string a bit. Most of the motion that creates this vibrato comes from the wrist. The fingers and elbow help a bit as well. Try changing how far you bend the string to get a more extreme or subtle vibrato effect. 6 GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

71 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Blues vibrato is generally a bit wider and more exaggerated than the other two. This kind of vibrato requires a bit more strength to perform. Placing the thumb over the top of the fretboard can provide you with a bit more leverage so that bending the string up higher won t be as difficult. Some guitar instructors consider having the thumb hanging over the fretboard at any time as bad technique. I think using the thumb is acceptable and proper for this style of vibrato. Just watch any video where Eric Clapton is playing a solo. Classical vibrato is the most subtle and light-sounding of the three. Play any note on the fretboard and rock your finger back and forth horizontally. This should produce a light-sounding vibrato effect. Try varying the speed and intensity of the vibrato. You don t have to use this kind of vibrato with single notes exclusively. Try using classical vibrato with chords as well. It can give them a really cool effect. I highly recommend trying each type of vibrato out. See if you can work them into your playing because you ll be using them a lot throughout The Guitar System. Lick # This first vibrato lick is pretty simple. The basic purpose behind it is to get you used to seeing vibrato notated on TAB. The black squiggly line that s over the last note of the first measure is what s telling you to add vibrato to it. The note you re adding vibrato to is tied to a whole note on the following measure. That means you should hold that last note you played all the way through the second measure. () Experiment with vibrato and try using different amounts so you can start developing your own unique style. You can even listen to some of your favorite players and take note of how their vibrato sounds. Try to copy the sound of their vibrato and come up with your own variations. Lick # This lick uses the blues style of vibrato. Notice that the vibrato line above the last note on the lick is a little thicker than the vibrato line on the previous one. This is just telling you to use a more intense or pronounced style of vibrato. The last note of the lick is a whole-step bend on the 6th fret of the nd string. Once you bend this note up, you can add some extreme vibrato to it full GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc 6

72 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Lick # Start this lick out by bending the th fret of the rd string up by one half-step, before letting it go back down to its original resting position. Move on to the rd fret of the rd string and finish with the th fret of the th string. Add some tasty vibrato to the last note in the lick. I d pull down on the string using my rd finger to play the vibrato in this situation. Developing a good sound with your vibrato requires a lot of experimentation. You have to find out what sound you like and how to get it with your fingers. Take the time to listen to the vibrato of your favorite players and experiment with your own vibrato technique. ½ Sliding Sliding is a kind of dual-purpose technique: it gives style to your playing and helps you move around the fretboard. Place the rd finger on the rd fret of the th string and play that note. As soon as you do so, slide the finger up to the th fret. That s a slide. You can slide up or down depending on the lick you re playing or what you want to hear. The following three licks give some ideas on how you can start to incorporate this technique into your playing. Lick # Check out the diagonal line between the first two notes of this lick and the slur mark above them. These two symbols are letting you know that you need to slide to the second note after you ve played the first one. So play the rd fret of the th string with the rd finger and then slide that note up to the th fret. After the slide, play the rd and th frets of the rd string. End the lick by bending the note on the 6th fret of the nd string up by one whole-step. 6 full Lick # Lick # starts out by having you play the 6th fret of the st string with the th finger, before you slide that note up to the th fret. The note on the th fret isn t in the G minor pentatonic scale shape you ve been using thus far, but that s okay. After sliding up to the th fret, come back down and play the 6th fret with the th finger again. Next, play the th fret of the rd string, the rd fret of the nd string and the 6th fret of the nd string. End the lick with some nice vibrato on the rd fret of the st string GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

73 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Lick # This lick starts out by having you use the th finger to slide from the 6th fret to the th fret of the nd string. Next, play the rd fret of the st string, bend and release the 6th fret using a whole-step bend and then come back to the rd fret. The slide on measure two is a new kind of slide. The diagonal slash mark in front of the is telling you to play the th fret of the nd string by sliding up from the frets below. Start on the 6th fret of the nd string, and as soon as you play that note, slide up to the th fret. I use my th finger for this slide. There will be plenty of sliding in future licks and solos. For now, get familiar with what slides look like on TAB and try getting used to sliding between the notes in the G minor pentatonic scale. 6 full 6 Pick Slides A pick slide is when you scrape down the thicker strings of a guitar with a pick. This makes a really cool rock n roll sound, especially when you add distortion to the guitar. Try this right now, and make sure you have some distortion on your guitar before running the pick down the thicker strings. The angle between the pick and the strings has a lot to do with the sound you get. Experiment with it so you can find the one that works best for you. Woodshed Before moving on to the following Practical Application section, you need to make sure you can use vibrato, slide from note to note, bend and mute strings effectively. Once you can do all of these things, you ll be ready to continue. In the next section you re going to learn a full-blown guitar solo that you can play over the Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along. You ll be using everything you ve learned about lead guitar up to this point, so get ready for some serious guitar soloing action. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc 6

74 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Practical Application - Beginner Solo Track # In this Practical Application section I ve written a guitar solo for you to play over the last section of the Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along. You ll be using pretty much everything you ve learned about lead guitar up to this point in The Guitar System. The solo is played over the ending chorus progression of the tune. Remember that the chord progression for the chorus is G-C-F. You ll be using the G minor pentatonic scale, some bending, sliding and vibrato to crank out a wicked rock guitar solo. This is a great example of how much you can do with just a minor pentatonic scale. The finger numbers for the fretting hand and the picking indicators have been included in the TAB. That s why I ve left them out of the written description for the solo. Take it one measure at a time and have fun. The first note in this solo (page 6) is a half-step bend on the th fret of the rd string. Bend this note up for about two beats and then let it come back down for about one beat. Finish this measure with two eighth notes: one on the rd fret of the rd string and another on the th fret of the th string. This last note is tied to a dotted quarter note on the second measure, so make sure to hold it out for one and two. Notice the vibrato mark above this note. The remaining notes on measure two are pretty easy. Play the rd fret of the th string, the th fret of the th string, the rd fret of the rd string, the th fret of the th string and the rd fret of the th string using all eighth notes. Measure three consists of three quarter notes and one quarter rest. Make sure to play the vibrato on the third quarter note before resting for measure four. Measures - are almost the exact same as measures -. The biggest difference is the third quarter note on measure seven. Instead of playing the rd fret of the rd string, you ll be playing the rd fret of the 6th string. It s very common for rock and blues solos to have the same lick or melodic idea repeated more than once; this gives the solo a kind of melodic theme. On measure nine you re bending the 6th fret of the nd string up by one whole-step, twice. Hold each bend out for one half note, and don t forget the vibrato. Measure ten starts off with another whole-step bend on the 6th fret of the nd string, but this time you have to hold it for a dotted quarter note instead of a half note. Make sure to hold this bend out for the one and two of measure ten. The remaining notes on measure ten are eighth notes. Try to see if you can play them by following along with the sheet music. Measure eleven starts with an eighth note on the rd fret of the nd string. Next, it features a slide up to the th fret of the nd string using the th finger. I usually start this type of slide, one whole-step below the actual fret for which I m aiming. In this case I d start the slide on the 6th fret of the nd string. Make sure to add in the vibrato! Measure twelve is simply a whole rest. Measures - (page 6) are the exact same as measures -. Measure sixteen is kind of the wrap-up lick for this solo. Start off by bending the th fret of the rd string up by one half-step don t forget to let the string come back down. Now play the rd fret of the rd string, the th fret of the rd string, the rd fret of the rd string, the th fret of the th string, the rd fret of the th string and the th fret of the th string. End the solo on the rd fret of the 6th string. Use this solo as an example of what you can do with the G minor pentatonic scale and all the lead-guitar techniques you ve learned so far. Once you re able to play it note for note, try coming up with your own solos and licks over the Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along. 66 GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

75 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar Beginner Solo ½ () ½ () full full 6 6 full GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc 6

76 The Guitar System - Beginner - Into The World Of Lead Guitar full full full ½ Conclusion Congratulations on learning some of the most critical aspects of lead-guitar playing. You ll use these techniques and concepts in all the future lead-guitar lessons of The Guitar System. In the next series of lessons we ll take a look at another shape for the minor pentatonic scale. We ll also begin to dive into the world of the blues. The blues is a critical style of music for every guitar player to learn. This is because the blues is part of the foundation of just about every style of western music you can imagine. Enjoy your success so far, and get ready to take your lead-guitar playing to the next level. 6 GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

77 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Introduction In this section you ll add another minor pentatonic scale shape to your library of lead-guitar tools and I ll introduce you to some of the fundamental things you need to know to start playing the blues. The blues is an absolutely crucial style of music to learn because of the many styles of music that are based upon it. Get ready to expand your guitar horizons! The Next Minor Pentatonic Scale Shape You ve already learned the 6th string root note minor pentatonic scale shape that starts with the st finger. Now it s time to learn a new shape for the minor pentatonic scale: a shape whose root note is on the th string. The th string root note is the reference point for this particular scale shape. Take a quick look at the G minor pentatonic scale diagram included here. Try playing through this scale on your own. Make sure to pay attention to the finger numbers in the scale diagram. Notice that just like the first minor pentatonic scale you learned, this one has only two notes on each string. In fact, if you remember the first minor pentatonic scale shape you learned, you ll notice this one isn t really that different. G Minor Pentatonic Do you remember the designated-finger concept? For this scale, the st finger is designated for all the notes on the th fret, the nd finger for the note on the th fret, the rd finger for the notes on the th fret and the th finger for all the notes on the th fret. To play this scale shape, start on the th fret of the th string with the st finger, and move on to the th fret of the th string with the th finger. Next, play the th and th frets of the th string with the st and rd fingers, respectively. Move on to the th and th frets of the rd string with the st and rd fingers, before playing the th and th frets of the nd string with the nd and th fingers, respectively. Finish off the scale shape by playing the th and th frets of the st string with the st and th fingers. It s a good idea to play the two notes on the 6th string so that you know the entire scale shape. Just be aware that the lowest root note is the one you play with the st finger on the th string. Knowing more than one shape for any given scale will give you options to choose from when playing solos or making up licks. The exercises on the following page will help you memorize this new minor pentatonic scale shape. You should be getting the hang of reading through scale diagrams by now. With that in mind, the instructions for all the new scales you learn from now on won t be as exhaustive. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc 6

78 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Exercise # This exercise has you going through the th string root note minor pentatonic scale shape starting on its lowest note. Even though you re starting on the th fret of the 6th string, make sure to be aware that the lowest root note of this scale shape is located on the th fret of the th string. I ve left the finger numbers and picking indicators off of the TAB on purpose. Still, make sure to use alternate picking and the fingers indicated on the scale diagram from the previous page, throughout the entire scale. Exercise # This exercise starts on the highest note of the th string root note minor pentatonic scale and descends to the lowest note. Again, I ve taken away the finger numbers and picking indicators. Try to make the scale as evensounding as possible from string to string. Exercise # Exercise # goes all the way up and back down the th string root note minor pentatonic scale shape. Once you go up and come all the way back down to the lowest note of the scale, you ll work your way back up to the root of the scale on the th fret of the th string. This will help you lock into the specific sound of the G minor pentatonic scale and bring the exercise to a nice stopping point. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

79 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Root Notes Of The th String Minor Pentatonic Scale Shape Do you remember when you learned the locations of the root notes in the 6th string root note minor pentatonic scale shape? Well, now it s time to make sure you know the location of all the root notes in the th string root note minor pentatonic scale. Check out the scale diagram one more time. There are two root notes: one on the th fret of the th string and another on the th fret of the rd string. It s important to know where the root notes are because they re the strongest notes in scales. By that, I mean that the root note of any given scale is generally the safest note on which to start or end a lick or musical idea. Try memorizing the root note locations in this minor pentatonic scale shape. You can even practice memorizing where these notes are when you re away from your guitar, by visualizing them in your head. G Minor Pentatonic Woodshed Before moving on to the Practical Applications for this section, you need to know the th string root note minor pentatonic scale shape and be able to ascend and descend through it. It s critical that you re able to do this, because you re about to learn some licks that use this scale exclusively. You should also have the root note locations for this scale shape memorized. Practical Application Part - Metronome In this first Practical Application you re going to woodshed the th string root note minor pentatonic scale shape with some good old-fashioned metronome practice. Start by breaking out your metronome or some metronome MP tracks. Play through the G minor pentatonic scale using eighth notes at about beats per minute. The scale should be even-sounding and perfectly clean. Once you can play it perfectly at beats per minute, raise the speed on the metronome to 6 beats per minute. Continue increasing the speed by beats per minute until you re unable to play the scale cleanly. Once you reach this point, back the metronome down a bit and then try playing the scale again. This is a great way of practicing new scales or any scale for that matter. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

80 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Practical Application Part - Licks It s time to learn some new licks that use the th string root note minor pentatonic scale shape exclusively. Notice how these licks tend to start or end on the root of the scale. I did this on purpose to help you remember exactly where the roots of the scale are located. Remember that root notes are kind of like safety notes. Lick # This lick starts with a slide from the th fret to the th fret of the nd string using the th finger. The rest of the lick is pretty straightforward. Still, make sure you re using the fingers indicated on the scale diagram from the previous page. Remember to use alternate picking and the designated-finger concept throughout the lick. Lick # Lick # starts with a half-step bend on the th fret of the nd string. From there you can just follow the TAB until you end up on the th fret of the th string. That s a G note and it s also the root of the scale. ½ Lick # This final lick is pretty easy. It s a series of eighth notes followed by a quarter note whole-step bend. Here you start on a G note and end on a G note. The last note, the one on the th fret of the st string, isn t a G note, but you re bending it up to a G note. These licks should give you a good idea of how to use this minor pentatonic scale shape to create new licks. full GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

81 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Improvisation Tips Improvising is making up music on the spot. You can use licks, chords, scales, melodies or any other number of musical elements to come up with your ideas. The goal of practicing your improvisation skills is to express yourself through the musical tools you already have. You ve only learned two scales so far, but you can still use them to express yourself and make some great music. One of the first things you need to be able to do to start developing your improvisation skills is to experiment with the scales you currently know. Playing around with scales and seeing how they behave over certain chord changes is a big part of learning how to improvise. Don t be afraid to reach deep inside yourself and let your own unique personality come out through your playing. The second thing you need to work on is emphasizing the root note of whatever scale you re using. We ve been using the G minor pentatonic scale exclusively so far. When you use this scale to improvise, try to be aware of where the root notes are and work on emphasizing them. By that, I mean you should start and end some of the things you play, on the root notes of the scale. Practical Application Part - Loop Track # I ve created a loop for you that only uses a G minor chord. You can improvise over the loop using either G minor pentatonic scale you ve learned. Pull up Loop and express yourself! GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

82 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues The Blues The blues is probably the most critical style of music that any guitar player should learn and understand thoroughly. This is mainly because of the many types of music that have the blues as part of their foundation. In this section of lessons we ll go through some of the essential elements of blues rhythm and lead guitar. We ll start off by taking a look at the shuffle rhythm and the standard -bar blues progression. Once you learn these basics of blues rhythm guitar, you ll apply them to the -Bar Blues Play-Along in the key of E. This playalong is a great representation of the structure many famous blues songs are built upon. In the blues lead-guitar lessons you ll add one note to the minor pentatonic scale shapes you ve already learned, in order to create two blues scale shapes. After you get these two blues scale shapes down, you ll learn some cool blues licks. The play-along at the end of the blues lead-guitar section is more of a rock-based blues tune. You ll be able to experiment with the new blues scale shapes and licks over this song. The Shuffle Rhythm The shuffle rhythm also known as the shuffle is used a lot in blues music. In order to learn exactly what a shuffle is, you need to know what triplets, or eighth note triplets, are all about. To do that, we need to review what eighth notes are and compare them both. While with eighth notes you can fit two notes into a beat of / time, with eighth note triplets you can fit three. Triplets are usually denoted by a and brackets that are positioned just above them. Check the sheet music provided to see what I mean. You can count triplets as one trip let two trip let three trip let four trip let. Try this right now. The shuffle uses eighth note triplets but leaves the middle triplet of each beat out of the rhythm. This creates the feeling of a long first note and a short second note for each beat. Often, you ll see a shuffle being defined at the beginning of a piece of music by two eighth notes, an equal sign and a quarter note next to an eighth note with a hovering over the two notes. This means that although the shuffle is notated as standard eighth notes in the sheet music, it still has to be played with a triplet feel. This type of notation is very typical in the blues. The feel behind a shuffle is much easier to hear and experience than it is to learn from a book. Give the Standard -Bar Blues Play-Along a listen (track #) and the shuffle rhythm will become very apparent; you ve probably already heard it a million times throughout your life. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

83 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues The Standard -Bar Blues Progression The -bar blues progression is a common chord progression that s mostly used as a road map for certain kinds of songs. This progression is built on the st, th and th chords of a given key. This means that if we assume we re in the key of E major, and since this key is spelled E F# G# A B 6C# D#, the st, th and th chords will be E, A and B, respectively. Now that you know this, we can take a look at a standard -bar blues progression chord chart in the key of E major as an example. But before we do so, you ll need to learn how to read chord charts. Chord charts are stripped-down road maps for songs, that tell you when to play certain chords. Their rhythmic patterns can be represented by specific note values or slashes in each measure. The slashes typically mean that you re free to make up your own rhythms for the song in question. Now that you know how to read chord charts, we can move on to the standard -bar blues progression chord chart in the key of E major. Take a look at the chart below. You ll see that it has four measures of E, two measures of A, two measures of E, one measure of B, one measure of A, one measure of E and one more measure of B. Play through it a few times and get familiar with it. E A E B A E B Woodshed Now that you re familiar with the standard -bar blues progression, it s time to play through it using power chords. Pull up the Standard -Bar Blues Play-Along (track #), and try playing through the progression using a simple shuffle rhythm with the power chords. I d use the E power chord with the root note on the open low E string, the A power chord with the root note on the open A string and the B power chord with the root note on the nd fret of the th string this is just a recommendation. If you don t have the -bar blues progression in E memorized, this is a great time to go back and learn it. If you need to, use the previous chord chart to follow along with the progression until you have it memorized. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

84 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Practical Application - Standard -Bar Blues Riff Track # In this Practical Application section you re going to learn a classic blues riff to go along with the standard -bar blues progression. Blues songs use variations on this riff all the time. Once you learn it, put your own unique spin on it for coming up with original blues tunes. Remember that this song has a shuffle feel to it; you can tell that by looking at the shuffle indicator above measure one (page ). The key signature for E major is four sharps, but if you notice, there are no sharps or flats where the key signature usually sits at. Sometimes blues songs are written with no key signature at all that s just another useful fact for you. The -bar blues progression in the key of E, starts with an E chord, so place the st finger on the nd fret of the th string and play an E power chord twice by strumming the 6th and th strings. Now keep the st finger on the same place, position the rd finger on the th fret of the th string and play the 6th and th strings two more times. That s the entire blues riff over the E chord. Once you ve learned this riff for one chord, it ll be easy to learn it for others because you just need to move it to a new location. Keep in mind that this riff is to be played twice for each measure and with downstrokes only. Play the riff over the E chord for the first four measures of the progression. When you get to measure five, switch the riff over to an A chord. Do this by placing the st finger on the nd fret of the th string and playing the th and th strings twice. Leave the st finger where it is and place the rd finger on the th fret of the th string. Play the th and th strings two more times. This is the blues riff over the A chord. Play this four times for measures five and six. Follow along the -bar blues progression, and switch the riff location as the chords change. When you get to measure nine, you need to play the blues riff over the B chord. To do this, place the st finger on the nd fret of the th string and the nd finger on the th fret of the th string. Play those two notes twice. Leave the st and nd fingers where they are, and place the th finger on the 6th fret of the th string. Now play the th and th strings twice. This is how to play the blues riff over the B chord. Finish off the -bar blues progression using this riff. All you have to do is make sure you re using the appropriate riff location with the correct chord. Once you have this basic -bar blues riff down, try coming up with your own variations of the riff. In the next few lessons we ll look at a couple of super-useful blues scale shapes for playing blues leads! 6 GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

85 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Standard -Bar Blues Riff E A E B A E B GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

86 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Sixth String Root Note Blues Scale In order to play the blues, you need to learn the blues scale. All you need to do to learn this scale is add one note to the minor pentatonic scales you already know. This note is called flat and is the one responsible for giving the blues scale its signature bluesy sound. The first blues scale shape you ll learn is the 6th string root note shape that starts with the st finger. Start by playing an E minor pentatonic scale starting on the th fret of the low E string with the st finger. Even though you re only adding one note to the scale to make it a blues scale, there will be two notes added to the scale shape. This is because the new note, or flat, occurs twice in the scale shape. The two notes are placed on the th fret of the th string and the th fret of the rd string with the nd and th finger, respectively. You should be very familiar with this shape by now, but below you ll find its diagram, which I included just in case. E Minor Pentatonic E Blues Scale The Flat Note The flat note is kind of a passing note. By that I mean it s a note you probably won t want to emphasize a whole lot. It s just a great note to pass by on the way to other notes in order to bring out that bluesy sound. The exercises on the following page will help you get used to the blues scale shape. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

87 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Exercise # In Exercise # you re simply moving up and down the 6th string root note blues scale using quarter notes. Take your time here, and really concentrate on memorizing this new scale shape and the locations of the flat note. I ve left the finger numbers and picking indicators off of this exercise. Just make sure to keep the designatedfinger concept in mind and use alternate picking throughout the entire exercise. If you have any questions about which fingers to use for the notes in this scale, you can always refer back to the blues scale diagram that I provided on the previous page. Exercise # In this blues scale exercise I m speeding things up a bit by using all eighth notes. You ll definitely have to have this blues scale shape completely memorized to play it at this speed. Have fun, and get ready to use the blues scale to jam over the Standard -Bar Blues Play-Along. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

88 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Woodshed Before moving on to the Practical Applications in this section, you need to make sure you have the 6th string root note blues scale shape memorized. It s also a good idea to have the locations of the root and flat notes memorized. This shouldn t be too hard for you seeing you ve pretty much memorized the root note locations from when you learned the minor pentatonic scale shape. Practical Application Part - Licks In this Practical Application we re going to go over two blues licks using the blues scale you just learned. As you work your way through these licks, keep in mind where the root and flat notes are located. After you learn these two licks, I ll cut you loose to experiment with the blues scale over the Standard -Bar Blues Play-Along. Lick # Lick # starts with a half-step bend on the th fret of the rd string. Notice that the flat is the note you re bending up. Besides the bend, the last two notes are the only other ones on this lick that you need to be careful with. As soon as you play the th fret of the th string with the rd finger, you have to kind of rock the rd finger over to catch the th fret of the th string. Make sure to play all the eighth notes in this lick with a shuffle feel. ½ Lick # This lick starts off with the th, th and th frets of the rd string being played three times. Remember that the th fret of the rd string is the flat note. From there, play the th and th frets of the nd string, and end the lick on the root note of the scale by playing the th fret of the st string. All the eighth notes in this lick are played with a shuffle feel, much like the previous one. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

89 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Practical Application Part - Standard -Bar Blues Play-Along Track # It s time to unleash your blues creativity on the Standard -Bar Blues Play-Along. Try using the blues licks you just learned, to play over the track. You should also venture out and make up your own blues licks using the E blues scale. There s no right or wrong here, so you can just look at this as a fun way to get more familiar with the 6th string root note blues scale shape. Be aware of where the root notes and flat notes are as you play through the scale. Have fun, and don t be afraid to see what you can do with the power of your own creativity. Fifth String Root Note Blues Scale Now that you know about the flat note, learning the next blues scale shape will be a breeze. Think back to the th string root note minor pentatonic scale shape. All you have to do in order to make this scale into a blues scale is add in the flat notes where appropriate. Check out the scale diagram for the th string root note blues scale that s featured below. Try playing through the entire thing, ascending through the scale at first before descending. Be aware that when you get to the nd string you have to shift up to grab the lowest note on that string with the st finger. Other than that little bit, this scale is pretty straightforward. E Minor Pentatonic E Blues Scale GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

90 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Exercise # This exercise has you moving up and down the th string root note blues scale. Start on the lowest note of the scale, which is the th fret of the 6th string, and after going all the way up the scale, come back down to that note again. You ll end this exercise on the scale s root note: the th fret of the th string. Finishing on the root note will bring you to a nice resting place. This exercise is just a little extra practice to drill the shape into your memory! Exercise # This exercise ramps up the speed a bit by having you play the th string root note blues scale using all eighth notes. This time you re starting and ending on the root note of the scale, which is located on the th fret of the th string. Make sure to use alternate picking and stay relaxed! GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

91 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Woodshed Before moving on to the blues licks in the following Practical Application section, you need to have the th string root note blues scale shape very well memorized. You should also know exactly where the root and flat notes are located. When you have these things down, you ll be ready to learn some more blues licks. Practical Application Part - Licks Before you move on to improvising over the Blues Rock Play-Along in the next section, I want to give you a few blues licks that use the th string root note blues scale exclusively. Once you can play them, try coming up with your own by using this same blues scale shape. Lick # This lick starts off with a half-step bend on the th fret of the nd string. You can bend this string with the rd or th fingers, so choose whichever finger works best for you. Don t forget the vibrato on the last note of the lick. ½ Lick # This blues lick starts out with a half-step bend on the th fret of the th string. The last note of the lick is a slide up to the th fret of the rd string, which I d play starting on the th fret and with the st finger. Take note of the shuffle feel indicated at the beginning of the lick. ½ GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

92 The Guitar System - Beginner - More Pentatonic Scales And The Blues Practical Application Part - Blues Rock Play-Along Track # I m going to throw you a little curve ball in this play-along: you ll be jamming in the key of A instead of in the key of E like the last blues play-along. This Blues Rock Play-Along is still a standard -bar blues progression, but the feel of the song is a lot more rock n roll. Your mission is to improvise over the Blues Rock Play-Along. Even though it s in the key of A, I have every bit of confidence that you can do this. Below you ll find the diagrams for both the 6th and th string root note A blues scales shapes. You re basically moving these scale shapes to where the roots are all A notes. Go over these scales before unleashing your solos over the play-along track. A Blues Scale A Blues Scale Improvisation Tips When playing the blues, it s important to give a lyrical- or speech-like feel to your soloing. In other words, you should make it sound like you re talking to someone instead of just playing through a scale shape. It s possible to achieve this kind of effect through lick or phrase repetition. Instead of playing random notes through the blues scale, try coming up with a lick or theme that you can repeat several times throughout the -bar blues progression. This will help give your solos direction and continuity. Listen to some of your favorite blues players and keep an ear out for repetition and theme. Although this is a very common trait of blues guitar soloing, you don t have to do it all the time. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

93 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Legato Technique Up to this point in The Guitar System, you ve been picking every single note of every scale or lick you ve played. However, you don t actually have to pick every note all the time. The legato technique enables you to pick the strings a lot less than alternate picking does, while making your sound a lot more smooth, fluid and violin like at the same time. The legato technique is a combination of two other techniques: hammer-ons and pull-offs. A hammer-on consists of using any finger to come down on any string pretty hard in order to make it produce a sound. A pull-off is when you pull the finger off of a note you re fretting in order to make the string produce a sound. Look at the TAB for some of the next exercises. You ll see slurs or arcs going from note to note. That s telling you to hammer on or pull off certain notes. Using hammer-ons and pull-offs requires a bit more strength in your fretting hand, but we ll go through some exercises to work out your fingers. Hammer-Ons The whole concept of hammer-ons may sound a bit confusing to you, so let s learn how it works by using a hands-on approach. Place the st finger on the th fret of the st string and pick it. Without picking that string again, come down on its th fret with the th finger. You should come down hard enough on the string to make the note ring out clearly. Think of your finger as a hammer that s coming down on that fret to create sound. Hammer-on, get it!? Do that over and over again until you get used to the hammer-on motion. Try making the volume of the picked note and the hammered-on note as even as possible. Exercise # In this exercise you use hammer-ons on notes from the A minor pentatonic scale shape that are played on the top two strings. Pick the th fret of the nd string with the st finger and then hammer on the th fret of the nd string with the th finger. Move over to the st string and repeat this exact same pattern. This is basically the entire exercise, so repeat those four notes over and over again. Notice the arcs or slurs going from note to note. They re telling you to pick the first note and hammer on the second. Be sure to follow the picking indicators at the bottom of the TAB. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

94 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Exercise # This exercise has you playing through the entire A minor pentatonic scale by going from the lowest to the highest note. You ll pick the first note and hammer on the second one on each string. This will be quite a work out for your fretting fingers, but your picking hand will get a bit of a break. Pull-Offs Let s get you doing some pull-offs to complete the other half of your legato technique. Place the st finger on the th fret of the th string. You re not going to play this note right away, but you need to have it ready for when you do a pull-off. With the st finger still on the same fret and string, position the rd finger on the th fret of the th string. Pick that note with a downstroke and do a pull-off on the string. You should make a kind of down and out motion with the rd finger, almost like you were picking the string with the finger. Once you do the pull-off, the note you re holding down with the st finger on the th fret should sound out. If the note you re pulling off is too quiet, try doing it harder. If it s too loud, try pulling off softer. Repeat this over and over again, and focus on getting consistent-sounding pull-offs. Exercise # This exercise has pull-offs on the rd and th strings. Pick the th fret of the rd string with the rd finger and pull off to the th fret, which is being held down by the st finger. Repeat this same pattern on the th string. This exercise goes through these four notes repeatedly, helping you strengthen your fingers and get you used to the motion of pulling off from one note to another. Try evening out the sound between the pull-offs and the picked notes as much as possible. 6 GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

95 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Exercise # In this exercise you re starting on the highest note of the A minor pentatonic scale and playing all the way to the lowest note. The first note on each string is played with a pick stroke and the second one is played with a pull-off. Minor Pentatonic Scale Legato You ve successfully learned how to use hammer-ons and pull-offs. Now it s time to combine them into the legato technique. In order to do so, you ll basically go up the minor pentatonic scale using hammer-ons and come back down using pull-offs. The only tricky part is the three-note sequence on the st string. You have to pick the first note, hammer on to the second and pull off to the third. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

96 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Blues Scale Legato Applying the legato technique to the blues scale is a bit more difficult than applying it to the minor pentatonic scale. That s simply because the rd and th strings have three notes you have to use hammer-ons and pull-offs with. You need to pick the first note and then hammer on to the next two. On the way back down the scale, you have to pick the first note of the rd and th strings and pull off to the next two notes. Try evening out the sound between the pull-offs and the picked notes as much as possible. Your hand might get a little tired after playing this one a few times. 6 6 Woodshed For this Woodshed section you need to make sure you understand what hammer-ons and pull-offs are and how to use them. Go through the minor pentatonic scale and blues scale shapes you already know, using the legato technique. Once you can do this, you ll be ready to move on to the legato licks in the following Practical Application section. Practical Application Part - Licks In this Practical Application section you ll learn some licks that make use of the legato technique. Each one of these likes uses either the blues scale or the minor pentatonic scale. Once you can play them, try coming up with your own. Lick # This lick has two pull-offs on the st and nd strings and ends with a whole-step bend on the th fret of the nd string. The notes played with pull-offs should be about the same volume as the notes played normally. Try visualizing the A minor pentatonic scale shape as you play through this lick. full GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

97 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Lick # Lick # starts out with three notes on the rd string. Pick the first one and then hammer on the following two. After playing the th fret of the nd string, pick the th fret of the rd string, pull off to the th and th frets and hammer on to the th and th frets. Then, play the th fret of the nd string and hammer on to the th fret. Finish the lick on the th fret of the st string. Lick # You start out this lick by walking up the first six notes of the A minor pentatonic scale with hammer-ons. Then, play the th, 6th and th frets of the th string using a hammer-on. Pick the th fret of the th string and hammer on to the th fret. Finish the lick by picking the th fret of the rd string and the th fret of the th string. 6 GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

98 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Trill Exercise You ve been working pretty hard on your legato technique, and your fingers may feel a bit tired or sore from all the hammer-ons and pull-offs. To help you get your fingers in better shape, I went ahead and included this trill exercise. A trill is when you repeatedly use hammer-ons and pull-offs between two notes. Start off by trilling between the st and nd fingers. Then, continue the exercise by trilling between the st and rd fingers, the st and th fingers, the nd and rd fingers, the nd and th fingers and finally the rd and th fingers. This exercise may be a bit difficult at first but it s really great for building up your finger strength. You ll probably notice that trilling with the nd and rd as well as the rd and th fingers is pretty difficult. These two finger pairs are usually the weakest on everyone s fretting hands. You may want to do some extra trills using these two finger pairs to help get them nice and strong. After you get this trill exercise down, you can move it to any other string on the guitar. The thicker the string gets the tougher the trills are. Use this trill exercise on a regular basis until you feel that your hands are strong and your legato technique is clean Practical Application Part - Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along Track # Now that you know how to use hammer-ons and pull-offs, try improvising over the Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along using your new skills. Try making up your own legato licks using the G minor pentatonic and G blues scales. There s no right or wrong here. Work on getting used to using hammer-ons and pull-offs in a real song. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

99 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques The Major Scale Now that you ve practiced your technique and musicality quite a bit with the minor pentatonic and blues scales, it s time to introduce you to a new scale: the major scale. The major scale is the foundation of every scale and chord we ll go over in The Guitar System. It s super important you thoroughly understand exactly how it works and how it s made. In this collection of lessons you ll learn how the major scale is made, a major scale shape and a couple of major scale licks. Once you have all this down, you ll be able to experiment with the major scale over a new play-along: the Major Pop Play-Along. Learning about this scale is one of the most crucial steps you ll take as a musician, so make sure to stay sharp throughout this section! How The Major Scale Is Made You ve already learned the difference between a whole-step and a half-step, so learning how to build a major scale shouldn t be too hard for you. The major scale is a series of whole-steps and half-steps put together in a certain order. The formula necessary to build a major scale is Whole-Step Whole-Step Half-Step Whole-Step Whole-Step Whole-Step Half-Step. I like to shorten that formula out by just thinking WWHWWWH. That s really all a major scale is. In the next section we ll see how to use this formula to create a G major scale. The G Major Scale Every major scale has seven notes in it. The name of a major scale is taken from its root note. For example, you ll be building a G major scale in this section, so the G is the root note, or tonic note. All you have to do in order to build a G major scale is start on a G note and apply the WWHWWWH formula. Start on the G note on the rd fret of the 6th string. This is the root or of the G major scale. The first thing a major scale formula calls for is a whole-step. To get this wholestep, move up two frets, to the A note on the th fret of the 6th string. Now you need another whole-step, so move up two frets, to the B note on the th fret of the 6th string. If you look at the major scale formula, you ll notice that next you need to move up a half-step. So, move up one fret from the B note on the th fret to the C note on the th fret. Continue through the formula by moving up another wholestep to the D on the th fret, followed by another whole-step to the E on the th fret. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

100 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques If you re thinking of moving from an E to an F note next, that s no good. You see, the formula asks for one wholestep thereafter. If you remember from a previous section, there s only a half-step between an E and an F. You have to force the notes used, to fit in the WWHWWWH formula. With that in mind, use the F# note on the th fret instead of the F note on the th fret. Finish off the major scale formula by moving up one half-step to the G note on the th fret. Great! You just built a G major scale. This scale is spelled G A B C D 6E F# G. Do you see how there are seven notes in the major scale plus the repeated root note? You should get used to thinking about the notes in any major scale as degrees. For example, a G is the st scale degree in the G major scale, A is the second scale degree and so on. Below is a graphic that ll help you understand the major scale formula a little bit better. Anyway, that s the way a major scale is built. I know this is a lot of information to take in all at once, but you ll build more major scales in the Music Theory And Reading Music section (book, page 6) of The Guitar System, so you ll have a lot more time to practice this. The main thing I want you to learn in this section is the formula for the major scale: WWHWWWH. Concentrate on memorizing it for now; the rest will sink in and come with time. G Major Scale G A B C D 6E F# G W W H W W W H Sixth String Root Note Major scale Shape Building a major scale on one string is great for understanding how major scales are made but it s pretty impractical when it comes to playing them. In this lesson you re going to learn a shape for the major scale that has its lowest root note on the 6th string and has to be started with the nd finger. Check out the following G major scale diagram, and think back to the designatedfinger concept from a few lessons back. Any note on the nd fret is played with the st finger; any note on the rd fret is played with the nd finger; any note on the th fret is played with the rd finger and any note on the th fret is played with the th finger. Try playing through the scale shape right now. Take your time and pay attention to the finger numbers on the diagram. The next few exercises will help you memorize and get comfortable with this new scale shape. G Major Scale GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

101 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Exercise # This first exercise will have you going from the lowest root note of the shape all the way to its highest root note. Start on the G note on the rd fret of the 6th string, and follow the TAB below until you reach the G note on the rd fret of the st string. Make sure you use alternate picking throughout the entire scale. There are three root notes in total: one on the rd fret of the 6th string, one on the th fret of the th string and one on the rd fret of the st string. Just be aware of that. Notice that the key signature for this exercise has only one sharp in it. This is the key signature of the key you re playing in, which is G major. Remember when you built the G major scale? The scale was spelled G A B C D E F#. So the sharp at the beginning of this exercise is telling you to play F# notes and instead of F notes. Just another fun fact for you. Exercise # This exercise starts on the G note on the rd fret of the 6th string, and takes you all the way up to the highest note in the scale shape before taking you back down to the fret you started this exercise on. Coming back down this scale feels quite different from going up, so be careful with that. Make sure to pay particular attention to the downstroke and upstroke picking indicators. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

102 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Exercise # (Legato) This exercise is very similar to the previous one but has one huge difference: you ll be using the legato technique to move within the G major scale. There are lots of hammer-ons and pull-offs going on here, so get ready to take your legato technique to the next level. When ascending through the scale, you ll pick the first note of each string and hammer on to the remaining ones. When descending through the scale, you ll pick the first note of each string and pull off to the remaining ones. The st string is where things change a little bit. Once you pick the first note of that string, hammer on the next two and then pull off the remaining two. Make sure to keep track of the downstroke and upstroke indicators. Woodshed Before moving on to the licks in the next Practical Application, make sure you ve memorized the major scale shape we went over in the previous lesson. Ascend and descend through it using both alternate picking and the legato technique. Knowing where to find the root notes in this major scale shape is very important too. Once you can do these things, you ll be ready to tackle the major scale licks in the upcoming section. Practical Application Part - Licks The licks in this Practical Application section were designed to get you used to improvising with the major scale they use notes from this scale exclusively. You ll be emphasizing the root notes to help you memorize their locations even better. Once you re able to play these licks as notated, try coming up with a few of your own. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

103 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Lick # This first lick is pretty simple. It uses quarter notes, eighth notes and alternate picking, to start and end on two of the root notes in the major scale shape. The only tricky part to this lick comes in on the very last note. Instead of descending through the three notes on the rd string, you ll descend through the first two and skip right to the G note on the th fret of the th string. Lick # Start this lick out by picking the th fret of the th string before pulling off to the th and nd frets. Pick the th fret of the th string, and move back over to the th string. Then, ascend through the notes you started this lick with by picking the nd fret and using hammer-ons to play the following two. Move over to the rd string and ascend through the three notes notated. Again, pick the first note and hammer on the remaining two. Pick the rd fret of the nd string and hammer on to the th fret before ending on the G note on the st string. All the finger numbers for the fretting hand are indicated on the TAB if you need them. Lick # This lick uses repetition to really lock the listener to the root note of the G scale. Play the rd fret of the st string with the nd finger, the nd fret of the st string with the st finger and the rd fret of the nd string with the nd finger. Repeat these three notes three times. Then, play the th fret of the st string with the th finger and the nd fret of the st string with the st finger. Finish off the lick by playing the rd fret of the nd string and the rd fret of the st string with the nd finger. You have to kind of roll your finger over from the nd string to the st string to play the last two notes with it. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

104 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Practical Application Part - Major Pop Play-Along Track # In this Practical Application I provide you with a play-along song you can use to experiment the major scale with. This play-along is in the key of G major so you can use the G major scale to make up licks and solos. Use this opportunity to become very familiar with all the notes in the G major scale that you ve learned. Experiment with alternate picking and the legato technique as well. Improvisation Tips There are a couple of tips I want to give you as you improvise over the Major Pop Play-Along with the major scale. Try to leave some space in between the notes. You don t have to play on all the eighth notes or quarter notes while performing solos. You can use whole notes and half notes too. Heck, you can even rest for an entire measure or two if you like. The point I m trying to get across is to use rhythm to make your solos interesting. The second thing I want to mention is that you don t have to play all the notes in a major scale in order. You can mix them up in any order you like. This will help your solos sound less like you re playing through a major scale shape. Later on, we ll take a look at other ways you can choose notes in a major scale. For now, try starting or ending your phrases and licks on the root notes of the major scale shape. This will lock the listener in to the key of the tune. The Minor Scale Just like minor chords, the minor scale is often described as being sadder-sounding than the major scale. In this section you re going to add the natural minor scale to your ever-growing library of guitar scales. In order to build a minor scale, you have to have a good understanding of how the major scale is made. If you have any questions about that, go back and review the previous section. In the following lessons we ll look at how the minor scale is made, by starting with a major scale and changing a few notes. Then, you ll learn a common 6th string root note minor scale shape. We ll end this section by taking a look at a few minor scale licks before I cut you loose to experiment with the minor scale over a loop. How The Minor Scale Is Made You already know how to make a major scale, so making a minor scale probably won t be too hard for you. You see, you only need to lower three notes of a major scale by one half-step to make a minor scale. The notes in question are the rd, 6th and th scale degrees. Using the G major scale as an example, the three notes would be B, 6E and F# seeing the scale is spelled G A B C D 6E F# G. If you lower each of those notes by one half-step, you end up with Bb, 6Eb and F. Remember that the b is the symbol for flat notes. After lowering those three notes, you end up with the G minor scale: G A Bb C D 6Eb F G. Pretty simple, right?! G Major Scale G A B C D 6E F# G G Minor Scale G A Bb C D 6Eb F G 6 GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

105 6 6 6 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques On a side note, you can now say with confidence that the key signature for the key of G minor is two flats. In other words, if you saw a piece of music with a key signature of two flat symbols, you d know it could be in the key of G minor. Sixth String Root Note Minor scale Shape Now that you have a basic understanding of how the minor scale is made, it s time to learn a pretty common 6th string root note shape for the G minor scale. Here s a diagram of the minor scale shape you ll be learning. Notice how it starts with the st finger. Try going through this scale shape on your own, right now. I want to take this opportunity to talk to you about using patterns of notes found within scale shapes to help you memorize them with a lot more ease. Look at the 6th, th and st strings of the G minor scale diagram. They re played on the rd, th and 6th frets with a dedicated finger per fret, regardless of the string. If you can remember that each one of those strings has the same pattern of notes, you ll only have to worry about the notes on the th, rd and nd strings. G Minor Scale Let s take this concept one step further. Look at the notes on the rd and nd strings of the G minor scale diagram. Do you see how those notes use the st, nd and th fingers? Although they aren t on the same frets, they have something in common that can be useful in memorizing them. Look for patterns similar to these ones in any scale shape you learn, because you ll memorize them much faster. Next, I ll take you through exercises that make use of the G minor scale so you can memorize this new shape a lot faster. Exercise # This first exercise starts off on the highest root note of the minor scale shape and descends toward its lowest root note. Notice that the key signature has two flats. The reason behind this is that to make a G minor scale the B, E and F# notes in the G major scale have to be lowered to Bb, Eb and F, respectively. So instead of one sharp, like the G major scale has in its key signature, there are two. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

106 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Exercise # In this exercise you ll begin on the lowest note of the minor scale shape, play all the way up to its highest note and then come back down to where you started. Make sure to use alternate picking throughout the entire scale. Try visualizing the similar patterns on the 6th, th and st strings that we discussed earlier Exercise # (Legato) This exercise is exactly like the previous one, but you ll be playing the entire scale legato instead of picking every note. Be sure to use hammer-ons and pull-offs where the TAB indicates. Once you re done with this exercise, move on to learning some minor scale licks Woodshed It s important to memorize the 6th string root note minor scale shape before moving on to the next Practical Application section. If you re still a little shaky, you might want to go through the minor scale exercises a few more times. You should also know the root note locations for the minor scale shape. When you have these two things down, you ll be ready for the minor scale licks. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

107 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Practical Application Part - Licks In this Practical Application section you ll use the minor scale shape you just learned, to play three new licks. The first two are based exclusively on the minor scale, while the third one combines the minor pentatonic scale and the minor scale. Try making up some of your own licks using the minor scale once you can play the next three. Lick # The first minor scale lick sticks to the notes of the minor scale shape that are on the nd and st strings. Make sure to use alternate picking throughout the lick and to keep your hands relaxed Lick # The rhythm in this lick is a bit tricky. It starts off with a dotted quarter note on the th fret of the th string. This note gets the one and two of the first measure. Keep an eye out for the quarter note at the end of measure one and the eighth note tied to the half note at the end of measure two. This lick is a great example of how you can be creative with the rhythmic patterns used in your licks. 6 Lick # This final lick combines the G minor pentatonic scale and the G minor scale. Start on the 6th fret of the st string, and descend through the G minor pentatonic scale until you get to the rd fret of the rd string. Move on to the 6th fret of the nd string, and descend through the G minor scale shape until you get to the th fret of the th string GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

108 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Practical Application Part - Loop Track # So far you ve learned a 6th string root note G minor scale shape and a few licks to go along with it. Now you need to spend some time messing around with this scale all by yourself. I want you to pull up the G minor loop, or Loop, that you used a while back when first learning the th string root note minor pentatonic scale shape. Try mixing up the G minor scale, the G minor pentatonic scale and the G blues scale to create your own solos and licks. Having multiple scales to choose from can really give you some cool, creative options. Fretboard Layout Getting to know how the notes on the guitar are laid out is very important if you want to really know how to express yourself. In this Fretboard Layout section we re going to take a look at root note locations, the notes on the D string and octave centers. At the end of this section you ll learn the octave riff you heard in the Major Pop Play-Along. Root Notes Knowing the location of the root notes of any give chord or scale you re playing is pretty crucial. In order to better understand where the root notes of certain chords and scales are located, we ll go through an example using the 6th string root note G major bar chord and the 6th string root note G major scale. You can check their diagrams below. I placed s on the bar to indicate the root notes on the rd fret of the 6th and st strings. Do you see that the three root note locations are the same for both the chord and the scale? It s very important for you to be aware of the root note locations of any scale or chord you re playing. They are reference points that help keep your bearings when playing all over the fretboard. Go through some of the scales and chords you ve learned so far and review the location of their root notes. G Major Scale G Major GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

109 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Notes On The D String We ve already gone through the names of the notes on both the E and A strings. In this short lesson I ll add the notes on the D string to your fretboard knowledge. I m not going to walk you through each note this time because I think you have enough knowledge of the E & F/ B & C rule to go through the notes on the D string for yourself. Just take it slowly and deliberately name each note on the D string. Here s the fretboard diagram with the notes on the D string added. E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab A A#/Bb B C C#/Db D D#/Eb E B G D D#/Eb E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab A A#/Bb B C C#/Db D A A#/Bb B C C#/Db D D#/Eb E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab A E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab A A#/Bb B C C#/Db D D#/Eb E 6 Take this opportunity to refresh your knowledge of the notes on the E and A strings as well. Remember, every once in a while you should set aside some time to simply go over the names of the notes on at least one string of the guitar. This will help you a lot in future lessons. Octave Centers We ve covered octaves in previous lessons, but now it s time to put them to use. The Major Pop Play-Along that you used to help develop your improvisation skills with the major scale is a fine example of how you can use octaves to give some color to your rock playing. Let s start by reviewing the octave shape for notes on the 6th and th strings, before taking a look at the octave shape for any note based on the th or rd strings. Octave G Notes All you have to do to find the octave of any note on the 6th or th strings is to go up two frets and over two strings. Check out this diagram for a refresher. This is one of the shapes you ll be using to play the main riff of the Major Pop Play-Along. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

110 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques If you want to play an octave above any note on the th or rd strings, you have to go up three frets and over two strings. This is a little bit different from playing an octave of any note on the 6th or th string. Check out the diagram provided. I usually play the lower note with the st finger and the higher note with the th finger. In order to mute the string in between the two notes, you can kind of brush the st finger against the middle string. Now strum through all three strings. If you re doing this properly, you should only really hear the th and nd strings or the rd and st strings. Octave G Notes Woodshed Before learning the Major Pop Play-Along octave riff in the following Practical Application section, you need to have memorized the two octave shapes you ve learned so far this should be pretty easy for you by now. Go ahead and take this opportunity to woodshed the notes on the D string a little more; you can never have the notes on the guitar memorized too well. Practical Application - Major Pop Play-Along Track #6 In this Practical Application section I thought it would be cool for you to learn the octave riff that first appeared in the Major Pop Play-Along the song you used to experiment the major scale with. The riff is pretty simple: you re basically moving the two octave shapes around, to play a melody. You come in on the second beat of the first measure, so watch out for that. The octave shapes you ve learned are the only two shapes you ll be using throughout this entire riff. Any time the lowest note is on the th string, you ll be playing an octave of that note that s up three frets and over two strings. Any time the lowest note is on the th string, you ll be playing an octave of that note that s up two frets and over two strings. The rhythm to this riff might be a little tricky for you because of the amount of ties and dotted notes. If you can t quite figure the riff out, give the play-along track a listen, and try matching the rhythm by using your ears. This is great practice for figuring out your favorite songs. () () () () () () () () GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

111 The Guitar System - Beginner - Essential Guitar Scales And Lead Techniques Conclusion Congratulations! You ve officially completed the entire Beginner section of The Guitar System. I know you ve put in a ton of work, and you should feel very good about yourself. There are a lot of aspiring guitar players that give up before they reach your level of playing. There s a lot more to learn, but you should be proud of the awesome foundation you ve laid out for becoming an incredible guitarist. Learning to play the guitar is a life-long journey that only gets better as you go. I want to take this opportunity to help you grow as a guitarist in ways that don t have much to do with actually practicing. Of course, you should make sure you re practicing consistently, but you should take some time to be inspired and influenced by other musicians as well. Two of the best non-practicing things you can do to help yourself grow as a guitarist are hanging out with other musicians and going to see live shows. Hanging out with other musicians, especially ones that are better than you, is a great way to stretch yourself. Different people see and learn things in different ways. It s always a great idea to befriend like-minded people and learn everything you can from them. Besides, hanging out with other musicians is a ton of fun. If you haven t been out to see any good live music lately, you should really make an effort to do so. Listening to live music can inspire you to practice more and open doors to incredible styles of music you might ve never considered otherwise. Grab a musician friend or any friend for that matter and go check out a live show whenever you get the chance. You ll be inspired and pumped to learn new things on your instrument. Onward! GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

112 Guitar System - Beginner - CD Track Listing CD CD Track Listing Track # - L - Loop - Am-Dm-Em-Am Progression Track # - P - Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along Track # - L - Loop - G-C-D-G Progression Track # - P - Ultimate Beginner s Bar Chord Play-Along Track # - L6 - Loop 6 - G-D-Am-C Progression Track #6 - L - Loop - Drum Loop Track # - L - Loop - Clip From Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along (With Rhythm Guitar) Track # - P - Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along (With Rhythm Guitar) Track # - L - Loop - G Minor Groove Track # - P - Standard -Bar Blues Play-Along Track # - P - Standard -Bar Blues Play-Along (With Rhythm Guitar) Track # - P - Blues Rock Play-Along Track # - P - Ultimate Beginner s Rock Play-Along (With Rhythm Guitar) Track # - P - Major Pop Play-Along (With Rhythm Guitar) Track # - L - Loop - G Minor Groove Track #6 - P - Major Pop Play-Along (With Rhythm Guitar and No Octave Riff) GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

113 Guitar System - Beginner - Credits And Special Thanks Credits And Special Thanks Written by: Nate Savage Produced by: Victor Guidera, Jared Falk & Nate Savage Director of Cinematography: Victor Guidera Cameramen: Steve Jackson, Nick Metzger & Trent Harms Graphic/Product Design: Dave Atkinson & Nate Savage Book Layout: Dave Atkinson & Nate Savage Book Editor: Hugo Almeida Proofing: Hugo Almeida, Shanna Falk, Gabriela Kettner & Nate Savage Head Post Editors: Jame Falk, Victor Guidera & Nate Savage Assistant Editor: Kyle Trienke, Trent Harms, Steve Jackson, Nate Savage & Nick Metzger Chief Audio Engineer: Victor Guidera Assistant Audio Engineer: Kyle Trienke Mastered by: Victor Guidera Keyboards: Brett Ziegler Guitars: Nate Savage & Steve Davis Drums: Jared Falk & Dave Atkinson Bass: Steve Klassen & Nate Savage Banjo & Mandolin: Paul Savage All music written by Nate Savage except for the Advanced Strumming Play-Along ( Bird Song Written by Practical Shoes [Sam and Angie Wakefield]) Nate Would Like to Thank: Christ, Mom, Dad, Kristi and Gretchen (the fun dog), Sam Wakefield and the Wakefield crew Don, Melody, and Angie Derek Parrott, Jared and Shanna Falk, Natasha Nastiuk, Josh Allard, the crew at Railroad Media, Perry Springman and the Springman Family, C.L. and Lois Brorsen, Autumn Downing, Karly Warkentin, Dr. Randy Snyder, Joel Wetzstein, Steve and Courtney Klassen, Eric and April Brown, Brian Lacher, Ray Solis, Steve Davis, Brett Ziegler, Joshua Mattia, Dave Atkinson, Rick and Gabby Kettner, Jeff Claassen, Jordan Dick, Kenton Hirowatari, Jenn and Elger Krahn, Kyle Trienke, Trent Harms, Jaime and Cassie Falk, Shane at Taylor Guitars, D Addario, Texas, coffee, and Monster! All of my influences and inspirations over the years, specifically Ty Tabor, Tony Palacios, Brett Garsed, Eric Johnson, Monte Montgomery, Greg Howe, Richie Kotzen, Beppe Gambetta, Steve Lukather, John Petrucci, Paul Gilbert, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Satriani, Shawn Lane, Steve Morse, Steve Vai, Phil Keaggy, Ted Kirkpatrick and Pat Metheny. GuitarSystem.com Copyright Railroad Media, Inc

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