Ultimate Lead Player Guitar Tips

Intermediate guitar players will be familiar with root notes on both the 'E' and 'A' strings. The system works by having a scale shape which begins from each of these root notes. This makes the system useful for improvising over challenging modulations as it makes finding the new key (major scale) relatively easy.

The system consists of four 'three note per string' scale shapes. Two of these shapes are initially placed on the root notes of 'C', 3rd fret 'A' string and 8th fret 'E' string, and the other two shapes are placed on the root notes of 'A', 5th fret 'E' string and 12th fret 'A' string. What this gives you, is two shapes for the C major scale and two shapes of the A minor scale. It is worth mentioning that all four of these shapes can be regarded as the C major scale or the A minor scale depending on whether they are used over the keys of C major or A minor.

This system helps to simplify the fret board by reducing the number of shapes considered during improvisation.

Most guitar players will be familiar with the pentatonic scale as it is used in so many musical styles. Because of this, it makes for an effective bending exercise in that, while improvising, the pentatonic shape acts as a reminder as to what bends are available.

It also prompts a guitar player to use bends they may not usually use such as the minor 3rd bend.

The exercise works by bending each note of the pentatonic scale, starting with the third finger. As the top two strings, 'E' and 'A' are close to the edge of the guitar neck, these will require a downward bend or 'Pull Bend'. To simply this, I use 'Pull Bends' on the first three strings, 'E', 'A' and 'D' and 'Push Bends' on the second three strings, 'G', 'B' and 'E'. This also makes things even in terms of practice.

Advanced guitar players will have come across various arpeggios such as the standard Major and Minor. By moving the 'third' of these arpeggios up to a fourth, or down to a second, you can create either a sus4 or sus2 arpeggio.

These shapes are more challenging to play as they contain larger stretches but are rewarding as they give a less common sound to your playing.

In lesson One we learned four 'three note per string' scale shapes that can be regarded as either C major or A minor. If we regard them as A minor, then all we need to do is change all the notes of 'G' to 'G sharp' in order to construct the harmonic minor scale.

This means that, essentially, we still have the same four scale shapes but with one note different. The harmonic minor scale has many uses and opens many doors for new sounds, but it is often used to play over the V7 - i chord progression. In the key of A minor, this would be an E7 chord resolving to an Am chord.

In this lesson, I use the song 'Blue Bossa' as its chord progression consists of two keys. Conventionally, Blue Bossa is regarded as starting in the key of C minor, but in terms of major scales, it uses the scale of Eb major. Viewing the song from the perspective of Eb major makes navigating the fret board much simpler during improvisation.

This is because, when the song modulates to Db major, it means that, visually, you only have to think about moving the major scale (Eb) down a tone to Db. In addition, Major scales are usually quite familiar to most musicians making them the logical choice to focus on.

There is one other brief modulation that occurs in Blue Bossa known as a 'secondary dominant'. This chord is G7 and requires the harmonic minor scale when soloing.