Guitar help

Dave77

Dave77

Dave77

Associate
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
679
Location
Nr. Glasgow
Hello,

I have have been trying to learn guitar for a few years now but never seem to get to the point where I can pick it up and play some decent licks. I have a satin standard strat which is great but I just cant seem to get anything good out of it. I can play many chords, barre chords etc. I can play the minor pentatonic up and down but struggle to improvise anything from it... I watch all these youtube vids of guys playing little licks/solos's purely on this scale but what ever combination of notes I try just sound crap...

Is it just a case of practice practice practice? I have never had any proper lessons with a teacher and was wondering if this might help? Or could it be that i'm just crap and cant improve?

Thanks,

Dave
 
I was in that kinda situation until I got a proper guitar tutor, those lessons are very good, but it's best to have someone to show you and that can access what your doing.
 
It's definitely a case of practice but if you're not naturally musical it may take things longer to progress. Improvisation requires a good 'feel' for music and melody in general and this is something that usually will not come as easily for some.

The more you practice and the more you listen to inpsiration the more you will improve. Gradually as the guitar becomes more natural to you, you should find it much easier to express yourself with it. I definitely recommend listening to as much as you can which is similar to how you'd like to play, as your brain should pick up ideas for licks etc, and hopefully piece them together as you play.
 
I depends what sort of improvisation your going for. If you want total mastery of the pentatonic i would recommended looking at the works of BB King. You will never see the major pentatonic in the same way again :) However, very very few guitarists will want to rely on such a simple scale. You need the 3rd in there if you want to give your playing any sort of emotion.

Here are a few songs with solos in that you should take a look at if you want to improve your improvising ability:

Metallica - Nothing Else Matters
Ozzy Osbourne - Goodbye To Romance
Guns N Roses - Knocking on Heavens door
Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
AC/DC - You shook me all night long
 
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Try learning the pentatonic in all its different positions and link them together, not just playing the first position. You could look for Tory Stetina's Metal Lead Guitar 1 and 2. I've found those and his speed mechanics book very helpful (still working through them). It's very dated, written in the late 80's when west-coast (glam) metal was big (with frequent mentions of George Lynch!) but none-the-less a very good book if you want to learn to solo in metal. Not sure whether other members of the forum have tried his books and what they think about and whether they'd stretch beyond metal.
 
Actually, in my opinion the secret to pentatonic soloing is be as messy as you like and throw in as many ways of playing the same thing as possible. Basically throw your guitar around like a rag doll and have the confidence to really strike a string rather than pick it.
Take the following tab:
D|-------5---7---5-------|
You could play this in so many different ways. Hammer ons, pull offs, slides, bends, curls, palm muting, vibrato, you name it.

Start off by playing slow. ‘Sing’ a phrase in your head, and put it down on your guitar. Answer that phrase and put that down, then look at what you have got and see how you can jazz it up. Slide into notes, or slide out of them, put vibrato on a key note that is held. Bend a common note rather than fretting it precisely.
Example:

Ok, lets take the phrase ‘Overclockers rocks my world’. Sing it to yourself, then whatever melody comes out translate to the guitar:
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|----------5------5---7---5-----------7---5-------5-------------------------------------------------
|--5---7-----7----------------------------------9-------9---5---7--------------------------------
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Next, take the melody you have created and space it up with rhythm/ coloring or moving notes, or just playing with it
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|----------5b--------------------------------ph--------------------------------------
|----------5b------\5/---\7p5-----------7~pb-----------ph-----------------------------------
|--\5~--7-----7--------------------------------------/9~--9b10b9--10---7~~\--------------------------------
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To practice, pick one of your favourite styles of music, guess its key and just mess around in a pentatonic shape. For me, I would pick a cheesy rock ballad and go crazy :)
 
You want to be able to alternate pick of some variety if you want to pull off some licks/improvise your own. Can you do that? Once you don't have to think about plucking the strings then you can concentrate on your fretting hand and doing the above.
 
If your getting into improv, get some form of basic blues backing track and use said pentatonic minor - start of playing very slowly, and seeing what feeling you get from the different notes in the scale.
 
Fantastic, I been playing Breath trough my cube and it sounds great. I will play a longa floyd now.

Cheers.
 
Backing tracks are an extremely good idea, when I used to have lessons my tutor used to give me shed load of tracks on tape. They help a lot.
 
Clinkz said:
Here are a few songs with solos in that you should take a look at if you want to improve your improvising ability:

Metallica - Nothing Else Matters
Ozzy Osbourne - Goodbye To Romance
Guns N Roses - Knocking on Heavens door
Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
AC/DC - You shook me all night long
Click to expand...

Totally agree. All pretty simple solos that can be improvised over, especially Knocking on Heavens Door and Nothing Else Matters.
 
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