In this lesson, I’m going to demonstrate string-skipping with the A minor pentatonic scale, for this exercise we are using all five patterns of the pentatonic scale in A minor. These patterns are easy to link up with all the other keys, and I think you’ll find them very useful for adding some flash into your riffs and solos.

It is one of the most widely used scale patterns in all of western music. You will find yourself using this scale often when improvising in genres from rock and blues to bluegrass and jazz. Now, all we need to do to turn this scale into a finger-busting string skipping exercise is rearrange it to include playing on non-adjacent strings. CLICK HERE FOR THE PAGE TO THIS LESSON.

In this tapping arpeggio exercise I want to cover share a trick based around a concept that will add some sophistication to your improvisations (while also being sure to turn heads with its attention-grabbing coolness!): three octave major and minor 7th arpeggios. CLICK HERE FOR THE PAGE TO THIS LESSON.

For this lesson we are trying to connect the five patterns of the E minor pentatonic scale with the seven patterns of the E minor scale. This is a useful way to improve your knowledge of the fretboard as well as giving you a ton of new options for playing melodies and soloing in a minor key. In this example we are doing all of these in the key of E minor.

I am numbering the five patterns of the pentatonic scale as the note fall in the key. The E minor scale is E F# G A B C D E.

The E minor pentatonic scale is E G A B D E, which is the same scale with the second and fourth notes removed. Pattern one of the scale just simply starts on E, Pattern three starts on G, Pattern four on A, and so on.

For the E minor scale patterns I am taking the pattern numbers from the G major scale. If you see that the G major and E minor scale are each others relative major and minor, you also see that these two scales share the same notes. G major scale is G A B C D E F# G. E minor scale is E F# G A B C D E. Same exact notes. For the sake of consistently and trying to keep things simple I group relative major and minor scales together. it’s pretty common that guitar players tend to learn pentatonic scales as minor and major scales as major. Learning how to relate relative major and minor will close those gaps between these two worlds quite easily. CLICK HERE FOR THE PAGE TO THIS EXERCISE.

One of the biggest hurdles many guitarists face early in their development is being able to connect chords, scales and arpeggios in their playing without having to jump all over the fretboard between shapes.

Always having a scale under your fingers for every chord shape you use is a great way to learn the fretboard, providing you with soloing material at the same time. This exercise will help get you into this way of thinking with seven diatonic chords on both the 6th and 5th strings, as well as the seven scale shapes that fall under each chord. This will be an amazing tool to help you learn many aspects of the guitar, and improve your soloing. CLICK HERE FOR THE PAGE FOR THIS EXERCISE.

A target tone, as its name implies, is a melodic destination point that harmonically coincides with a particular chord. These are the notes you’ll cadence your phrases on. Players that are new to soloing, regardless of the style, have a tendency to play more notes than needed. I believe this is due to the fact that new players often don’t know the notes they are playing, or how they relate to the chords they’re playing over. In this exercise we will practice how to land phrases on the root note using C minor pentatonic scales in each position of the scale.

There is a series of notes that are being worked around each C note in each position here. Learn each set of licks with the videos and tablature, and then use the backing tracks to practice your own soloing ideas. One thing that we guitar players tend to do is play too many notes in just the root pattern on the pentatonic scale. This is an awesome way to help you break out of just playing in that one pattern, as well as to help you get a better understanding of where the root notes fall in all the other patterns as well. CLICK HERE FOR THE PAGE TO THIS LESSON.