How to Go Beyond Pentatonics

How to Go Beyond Pentatonics Hey everybody it’s Will Kriski from OnlineGuitarCoaching.com we’re going to start the Q&A session in the lesson now so if you guys have any questions on anything from chords, scales, theory, strumming, technique feel free to post them here and borrowing that I’ll be talking about some various topics. I’ve been working on my beginners course adding a whole bunch of new lessons taking it to all your basic open chords so you got your C, B, G, A, Am, E, Em. The F chord which is pretty tricky usually gives people some problem that kind of thing and then we get into I start teaching in course some sus chords so you got your D sus 4 sus 2. [Demonstration] As you check the level here that’s pretty good. So we got the D sus 2 sus 4 chords and the A same thing sus 2, sus 4. I go through all the various chords dominant chords, open A7. [Demonstration] G7, D7, that’s your C7, B7, E7, backup so you can see both hands. Then I get into strumming I’ll show you learning the notes on the fret board so you got open E so you’re going to know your notes of strengths E, A, D, G, B, E. E, A, D, G, B, E you got to know all that and we get in to E, F, G 3rd fret. F, E, F, G, A, E, C, D & E up on the tall fret and then we go A, B, C, D, E, so it’s really critical that you learn the notes on the MAC so that you can figure out the first soloing or even just records of you’re going to play a bar chords. So I get in to bar chords. [Demonstration] That’s a G major bar chord because just notice G on the bottom 6th string here and for pirate chords as well. It really make sense to understand that’s an easy bar chord and the D because this is the E note, this is D. What else do we look at so you got your chords so basically the level one is going to be your chords and your strumming so down so that I’ll show you some basic strumming techniques and you work on changing your chords. I’ll show you some tricks like if you want to go to Am to a C you can just move your ring finger up like this. I’ve got a chord library which is all the videos, every individual chord there’s a special video just for that with close up and a diagram that shows you how to do that and then we’re going to get in to you know as we advance we’ll get into adding little hammer-ons to chords so… [Demonstration] So doing hammer-on pull off like… [Demonstration] So just adding a little sort of like how you get the— [Demonstration] So instead of just playing the one ¼ all the time you know you can embellish it with somebody, you got to get into the hammer-ons and pull off and that’s going to kind of lead towards you know eventually getting soul and if you want to— [Demonstration] Okay so I just want to give you a little basics on the some of the things that we look at in the beginners course so we got types of picks, types of guitars to get acoustic or electric, how to hold a guitar, how to hold a pick, how to tune the guitar and stuff like that and then we get into some more advanced things. I put my acoustic down over here and I was talking about see how all of that goes with the level. [Demonstration] So we’ve added some distortion here with my electric guitar. I wanted to sort of explain how I teach guitar as far as soloing goes. I just use a, using 5 simple shapes and a lot of people will get into you know I find that just tends to really complicate things quite a bit so basically the last I want to talk to you about today is using Em pentatonic so if you’re a beginner this might be too advanced for you but you know feel free to check it out and listen to this. One of the first things you learn especially rock guitar and blues and stuff like that is the Em pentatonic scale that’s a 5 note scale. Now the way I look at it is everything is based off of the major scale and then pentatonics are a subset of that so that’s a normal major scale you know you got 7 notes pentatonic would be just 5 notes so if you take the pentatonic Em this is common pattern here. [Demonstration] So we’ve got the 12th fret E, turn it down a little bit and we got G on the 15th fret. Here we got A on the 12th fret 5th string A, B 14th. Here we got the 12th to 14th fret on the D string the same thing again 12 or 14 G, A on the G string. We got B on A 12th Fret second spin and then we got D 15th fret on the B string and then on a high E string 12th Fret up to 15. 15, 12, 15, 12, 14, 12, 14, 12, 14, 12, 15 ,12. Now if we move this down to like Am pentatonic on the 5th fret it’s exact same shape so okay. So what I’ll do, what I’m going to explain to you guys is if I’m doing a two that uses the Em chord and or say an E7 anything like that, I’ll start with the pentatonic as my basis and then I’ll use notes surrounding that so I want to explain why I don’t really teach the modes is because they can get really complicated. I’ll actually combine notes around the pentatonic and basically you know it’s so many modes all at once that you really like you know you might go on practice with a bunch of modes but you’re going to practice each one separately and you’re going to use it maybe in a different scenario but I’m trying to show you that it’s really too complicated and especially if the chord start to change you’re better off just using a real simple approach so that’s the Em. [Demonstration] Now I’ll add a typical thing, the first thing that actually happens if you’re going to do some bluezy stuff additions is to add the b5 so that would be a Bb so in this case. [Demonstration] So when the G-string, the third string from the bottom here and there’s one up here and the 13th fret so they call that the blue scale so I go 14th Fret up to 15 on the third string so the 14th Fret on the D-string. You can go up to the B in the 12th fret. [Demonstration] So what I’m doing there is hammering on to all 14, 15 of the third string then up to the B back down. If you want to get a lot of speed and you want to pick like when you go from the second to the third string you can hammer on onto the third screen so Greg Howe called that hammer-on from nowhere. This is the first time you’ve hit that string so I’m actually only picking the B-string. Pick, hammer, pick, hammer-on, pick, hammer-on pull off, hammer-on. [Demonstration] So if you want to get the fast legato sort of thing so that’s using the, that’s adding one note that’s the blues note. The next thing I’ll do if I’m over an Em 7 or E dominant 7 type of thing like in the blues or whatever. I add the G sharp so that’s the 3rd major third of this of the E7 chord. 13th fret on the G-String so one thing I’ll do is I’ll encircle it so the G I’ll go from A 14th fret kind of 12th and up to 13 so I go like. So you see right there because I’ve got the G&A normally in the pentatonic adding the G sharp on occasion and also the Bb blues note. [Demonstration] You can see how they’re all chromatic notes now so right away you’ve got pentatonic blue scale. G sharp in there and you can you know there’s other, you know if you’re thinking G sharp you could say we’ll I’m using E Mixolydian mode say… [Demonstration] Okay so right away I’ve shown you that those are three different you know scales or modes that you know in the typical conventional thinking whereas I’m just sort of adding amend as spices you know at certain times. The other thing you can do is sort of a passing tone approach so now we’re going to have another note so from E 14th fret, D string I can add the Eb in there. So from D, Eb, E. [Demonstration] So that it all goes now passing note and the G sharp, okay so now we’ve added the Eb in there. [Demonstration] So those are passing tones and circling another couple of notes you’ll notice which you can consider part of the Dorian mode but like I said I don’t really think that way. F# so instead of going from 15 fret down the 12th. We had the 14th fret in there plus the F# and then from the 15th on the 12th on the B string add the C sharp. So that will be considered part of the Dorian mode. Now like I said if you’re going to practice modes you’re probably going to play the scale up and down in every individual scale and you might be tending to use that for a period of time in your solo but and then the other trick is if you practice a bunch of different scale just like we’ll how do I connect the scales. How do I go from one scale to the next? This is even more important like if we get into more court changes and key changes where you need to line that kind of goes across a bunch of chords. You know if you’re thinking modally, you’re thinking what do I do over this chord just people kind of thinking of the chord and the key, and then you know you got guys like Miles Davis you know create some tune that you know there’s like 20 bars of one chord and so then you’re thinking well what do I do you know so then they start thinking well I’m going to play Dorian mode for a while and then I’m going to play alien or frigging or whatever and the basic idea behind that is you’re mixing different sounds. You’re using different notes over top of that chord because you have such a long creative time but the most songs that we play, you got a certain number of chord changes and so you want to play in the key in the key, you want to target some chord tones and then these notes can be considered you know both side in some cases or just colorful tones so with the F# and the C# what I would do a lot of times is go, so I go 12, 14, 15 down on the second string 15th fret. Back to the 12th fret on the E string back to the B string. [Demonstration] Now the way I get that real smooth is I hammer on that 15th fret without picking. So my pick is only this. Now I move that same pattern and start the blues all 14, 15, 12, 13, 14, 15. Okay so we’ve pretty much added almost every note that you could possibly play like there’s 12 notes in a music system. There’s basically about 12 half steps so you’ve got a couple of other notes I didn’t talk about right now is F and C for example. So if I go so there’s that C so I did a C sharp then you add a C that’s on the 12th and 13th fret and then you got the E to the F so instead of going E to F#. [Demonstration] One thing I would like to do is what you would consider a half whole diminished. We’ll check the tuning on this thing. I’m doing like an Em7. I’ll go so that’s getting a little bit outside what I would consider some of these have a real nice melody sound but so here I’m going E, F, G, Gb, back to the E. [Demonstration] We all like to think about that. I think about I basically think about 4 notes and then ½ steps above that so E to F, G to G# so you got those two and C# up to D and Bb up to B so you got… [Demonstration] So if I’m doing like… [Demonstration] So you’ve got sort of an inside section and then going out a bit so you got your… [Demonstration] So I’m combining that’s like so what I’ll do is kind of go inside and I’ll go like so I’ll go… [Demonstration] So there’s like a temporary shifting to the outside and all I think about is the E to G, Bb going up to B. C# up D, E, F, G. So it’s good to know your notes on your fret board so I go like… [Demonstration] So right there I’ve shown you how you can use all 12 notes that are possible in order one court now if you’re doing another way to get outside is to go up a half step from the pentatonic. So if I’m full fret let’s go like sick little pattern. [Demonstration] Just shift it up a half step 13, 15, 13, 15,13, 15 on the fourth and third string. So if you’re going, so you see how, so you go temporarily… [Demonstration] You see how I just did the pentatonic up a half step. [Demonstration] So that’s another way to get outside it’s just when you can do it from below take that… [Demonstration] Go down a half step from where you’re playing and just approach the note that you’re trying to target. So if I’m trying to target the E here Take that just start up a half step from the 12th and 15th. Okay, so I just wanted to show you the idea behind my teaching method is that I get you learning the C major scale in five shapes and the pentatonics that are inside of those and when you’re playing a song with a bunch of chord changes you just stick to the key and it’s real simple because you can just stay in one shape and then you just try to target the chord tones so you’re thinking about the chords that are going by and I just found that practicing modes up and down not only do you become just scaler type of player but your going to have trouble like how do I connect this, how do I… And every time I look at a song you’re going to like what mode do I use over this and if you’re playing a song like I just did over one actual chord you’ve got all 12 notes available to you know using them with taste you can combine them all so and I use a bit. We can go up to the G up to the A in chromatic way D to E talked about… [Demonstration] So there’s a lot of chromatic notes you can put in there to so mix and match them and use them you know use your urine and check it out and try give it a try and like I said, if you guys go to Online Guitar Coaching.com I’ve got a membership sight where you can join and there’s a whole bunch of courses from beginners so you can learn how strum how to play chords, how to connect them, all the different things that you know when you’re first starting the guitar bar cords, learn your favorite songs that way and then you get into soloing. And the way I do it both the beginner chords and the fret board mastery in a soloing is all systematic so you go step by step and you make sure that you can do some one thing before you move on to the next and I’ve got check points along the way we all say you don’t get at this point you should be able to do this and that so instead of checking a bunch videos and randomly trying to learn guitar you can follow a really good system so check all the online guitar coaching.com. I’ve got a— I’m going to put up another thing here so this is the first link here is the Facebook Fan page so if you guys want to get some free lessons and see the upcoming events check out the Facebook fan page. There’s like 175 people that right now as of near the end of November here. Twitter.com/Will Kriski so basically I do a lot of post on guitar little tips and that and links to stuff so you can follow me on Twitter and YouTube I got a whole tone of free lessons. If you’re not ready to sign up to the coaching program you can check out some of the free lessons. I’ve also got some free lessons on the online guitar coaching.com if you check the top menu bar there’s a free lesson tab which are some of the courses in my summer lessons from my program but I encourage you guys to sign up I love to see you in the coaching program and with these live Q&A sessions and lessons you can get continuous feedback so a lot of other sites you know you’re pretty much on your own and maybe you can post some questions in a forum but this is a great interactive video live you know so you can basically ask me anything you want and I’ll make sure you guys don’t get stuck in anything and you keep progressing. So until next time see guys later and I hope you enjoyed that.