“Free yourself from the rut and finally get a grip on your guitar soloing with this ground-breaking new reality check … er, I mean secret method!”

 

Let’s get something straight, if you have been struggling to make your solos sound any good, or just struggling to understand how to make proper use of scales – then there’s a reason for it. It has nothing to do with the pentatonic scale being boring or limited, it has nothing to do with needing to learn exotic scales or modes, or your lack of knowledge about the Hungarian minor dominant flat five super static Appalachian tonal system (OK, I made that one up).

What’s more, there are no secrets the pros don’t want you to know; no revolutionary methods, no tricks, no ”ten reasons why you suck,” and there are no breakthrough undiscovered systems that will suddenly enlighten you and transform your playing overnight – including mastering anything in seven days, or fourteen … etc. I could go on, but you get the picture!

What there REALLY is, is this: Bad advice, confusion, a whole load of noise (especially on the Internet) and even more bullshit that plays on your confusion and struggles with false promises about why you are doing everything wrong, and how to solve it. Among this noise, all the good advice, which is out there, gets lost.

There’s another reality, dare I say it … you either don’t know how to be a musician, or you just can’t be bothered to become one. A musician loves music, loves playing, loves learning and believe it or not, absolutely loves practising – sometimes to the point of obsession. A “can’t be bothered” musician might love music but hates all of the above. If that’s you then I’d say find a way to love it, or give up. There’s also a third possibility, which is probably the most likely of all – you would enjoy all of the above if you felt you were improving, understanding and making sense of things more with each day that passes … And this is where I think the biggest problem lies for the struggling guitarist – you’re just confused and lacking proper information.

If you don’t understand something, or see no benefit from practising something that seems too simple or pointless, then it’s no surprise that you’ll skip it and go on to find something else that will hopefully make sense – a never ending quest hoping for some kind of epiphany. This is where the bullshit predators lie in waiting for you, ready to pounce with their magic guitar dust that you put under your pillow and wake up a guitar God. We’ve all been there, I’ve been caught out once myself in desperation of wanting to improve, thinking there must be something I’m missing.

However, all I was missing during this time was a reality check and somebody to tell my why, which is this: some things are very difficult to explain, even harder to comprehend – but our brains have a wonderful ability to decode this confusion, over time, by repeatedly subjecting it to the things that work and the things that don’t. Don’t look for instant answers. Instead, feed your brain regularly with what it requires to figure things out all on its own … much like we teach an infant to speak. We point at things, make gestures, keep the words simple to start with and repeat over and regular. If you are a parent, how did you teach your kids adverbs, determiners, prepositions etc? You probably didn’t, they figured it out all by themselves through hearing them included in sentences. Try to explain to somebody, without using language, the meaning of words like “to”, “can”, “be”, “if” … all very difficult to explain, yet you think nothing of using these kinds of words hundreds of times per day.

Teaching music can be just as problematic and this is not helped by the amount of conflicting information and misleading bullshit out there.

When I first started playing guitar I learnt mostly from books. Yes, I’m that old – we didn’t even have video players back then! I bought, or borrowed from the library, countless books on the subject, especially those on lead guitar playing (which is what we’re talking about here). All of them pretty much added up to the same thing which was two hundred pages of “here’s a major scale,” and “here’s a minor pentatonic scale” … “Go learn ‘em – Goodbye!”. Great if you don’t know them already, but once you did, there wasn’t much else that would help you get to the next level.

So how did any self-taught guitarist ever get beyond this level? This is only my opinion but I think it’s connected to left-brain, right-brain thinking. I’m one of the so-called left-brain thinkers. Logical, analytical etc. Everything needs an explanation for me to be able to process it and move on. The right-brain thinkers think more creatively and artistically. This doesn’t mean we’re all divided, you might be good at both, but the way we decode information is where we might differ. The right-brain types are more likely to not care about the “why or how” and just be happy with the result.

For example, they might learn the scales, memorise them … and they’re done, they move on. They just want to create music so they learn songs, figure it out the best they can and move on to the next. This is how many of the guitar greats from years ago did things. They played along to records because there wasn’t many other options, they couldn’t afford a good teacher. Without realising it, they were doing what it takes to unravel the mystery of of playing lead guitar – repeatedly and regularly feeding their brain with musical ideas that work and already sound good.

Eventually, without really trying, they begin to recognise the connection between scales, chords and actual music. They build their knowledge and experience in the opposite direction from what us left-brain thinkers do – and their way works better because it’s almost the only way. Much like learning to speak or understand language. We need to continually drip feed the words with gestures and sound until eventually we see a pattern emerge before we can make them into sentences. Right or left brained makes no difference to our ability to absorb and unravel all this information, I believe we’re all the same – it’s just us “left-brainers” are too slow in feeding the brain with what it needs.

Once you begin to see music in the same way as learning a language, it’s at this point you will begin to improve and start making sense of things. We need to subject ourselves to a variety of ideas repeatedly and regularly until they become internalised. You will come across all sorts of conflicting advice arguing that you shouldn’t waste time with pentatonic scales, you must learn the modes, you shouldn’t learn licks, it’s all about the “feel” (my pet hate) and you’ll find an equal amount of views that say the complete opposite – on and on it goes.

There’s actually only one reality. For the majority of Rock and Blues music, it’s based mostly around the pentatonic scale when it comes to soloing. If you haven’t been able to make that work, then everything else will just add to your problem, not solve it. Don’t confuse this with meaning “rock and blues only use the pentatonic scale” – a lot of music in these styles will use all sorts of scales and note choices, but learning to use the pentatonic scale more effectively will get you right where you want to be, because it dominates the style. Once you’ve figured this out, everything else will begin to fall into place, like an add-on. If your pentatonic playing doesn’t sound any good then neither will the major scale, or the natural minor or any other scale for that matter.

The Pentatonic Workshop

So how will this course help solve these problems for you? Well, let me say up front that it will only help if you put in the effort and aren’t on a quest for overnight success or magic fairy dust. What it does do, however, is focus on what I think are the problem areas, which is mostly about learning to break away from scale pattern thinking. Scale patterns should serve as a framework that musical ideas are built on – not a pattern of notes to just play around with randomly. Apart from good phrasing and technique, this is what I think is one of the biggest problem areas for most guitarists in a rut. All we get told is to use this scale or the other, mix major and minor over a major blues, use Mixolydian over dominant chords … do this, do that. Everything is geared towards making you believe that all you need to do is learn your scales – this is all bad advice, or at best, only half the story. My goal here is to fill in the gaps and make you start thinking differently by giving you some explanations with many ideas and examples to listen to and experiment with – including:

Some Basics
First we take a quick look at some of the techniques like vibrato, slides, bends, palm muting etc. and how they can make a basic idea or lick sound much more interesting. This is more of a quick reminder and explanation of things you should already know but still be working on to improve.

Experimenting
How to noodle and experiment with the pentatonic scale, improve phrasing and learn your way around the fretboard.

Workouts
A few workouts that you can follow along to and practice moving around the five pentatonic positions more musically than just playing up and down scale patterns. We gradually build on the ideas to include the blues note and some licks.

Soloing tips
How to break away from predictable scale playing and make things sound much more interesting by taking the same ideas but using phrasing, space and create a sense of the solo moving around with the chord changes.

Chord tones and arpeggios
How to use arpeggios and chord tones to add more melody and colour to the pentatonic scale and begin to imply the chord changes within your soloing.

Out of key chords
How to deal with out of key chords with the use of chord tones and arpeggios.

Major pentatonic
Although the minor pentatonic is very versatile, some songs and styles really need that major sound. Here we take a look at using major pentatonics more effectively and how to avoid them just sounding like the minor pentatonic simply moved down three semitones. We’ll also learn to use them as building blocks to move around with the chord changes for a more country or southern rock sound.

Mixing major, minor and the Mixolydian
Here I unravel some common misunderstandings for soloing over a blues using all dominant 7th chords. This is probably the most difficult style to grasp because it’s so often taught too simplistically with a lot of necessary information left out. Mixing the major pentatonic with minor and adding chord tones will lead to a Mixolydian sound – so we get told to use that scale over each chord. It’s not quite that simple – here I explain why and explain how you should approach this style by just combining what we’ve already experimented with in the previous chapters.

Soundslice
The course is available with interactive audio and TAB on Soundslice. If you don’t already know about the Soundslice system then you should check it out – it’s probably one of the best ways to learn and practice. The audio and TAB are synchronised, giving you the ability to stop and start wherever you want, loop, slow down and even transpose – the ultimate way to practice and play along.

The best way to get a feel for it is to check out the preview samples. Click the link below and scroll down just past the course description where you’ll find two preview chapters.

Click here to view at Soundslice

!! Or Better Still !! …
Buy for $5.99 if you already own my book Pentatonic Scale Fluency

How? You’ll need a promo code. Here’s how to find it in the book.

Go to the chapter titled “Breaking Up the Box Patterns”
In the first sentence where it says: “In my opinion, learning the traditional hidden Box Patterns is”
Find the word that sits between “traditional” and “Box” and use it for the coupon code which can be applied by clicking on “Enter a promo code” right below the Add to Cart button on the course’s main page (in the link above).

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That’s all folks! Well done if you read this far. I’m too lazy and uninterested in filling this sales page with images, colours, massive sub-headings, quotes, tons of misused ellipses (although I’ve used a few) and other crap designed to make you read on … and in the true sense of non-conformity – I’m even going to allow comments here (for a while) – so if you feel the need to ask a question or just want to call me out on some of my opinions and tell me I’m wrong … go for it! 🙂