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Pentatonic Workshop - Blues and Rock
Lee Nichols
Preview course

Pentatonic Workshop - Blues and Rock

Escape the pentatonic rut and improve your guitar soloing. Audio and TAB course.
Blues · Jam · Rock
Preview course
$14.99

Like most things in life, it isn't what you do - it's how you do it! For many, if not most rock / blues guitar solos, the pentatonic scale dominates - yet many guitarists struggle to make it sound any good. I've been there myself and like many others, mistakenly came to the conclusion that the minor pentatonic scale is boring. Read full description…

Like most things in life, it isn't what you do - it's how you do it! For many, if not most rock / blues guitar solos, the pentatonic scale dominates - yet many guitarists struggle to make it sound any good. I've been there myself and like many others, mistakenly came to the conclusion that the minor pentatonic scale is boring.

This leads to the usual progression into seeking out more pentatonic positions, more exercises and licks, yet things don't really improve that much. This is when we're in the so called pentatonic rut and in an attempt to fix things we go on a quest for more scales and, dare I say it, the dreaded modes! Doing so might make things sound different for a bit, which we mistake for "better" only to realise some time later that our solos still aren't quite cutting it.

Here's the thing with scales: it's not the amount of notes you have, it's simply how and when you play them that matters. Think about it; if you are using a seven note scale such as the major scale or any of the modes, if you try to use all seven notes with each phrase then you'll ultimately end up with a solo that gets very boring very quickly. If we try to fix this by not using all seven notes with every phrase ... er, you see where this is going!

The bottom line is this: Whether you have a seven note scale at your disposal, or five, or even just four for that matter, if you find yourself quickly tiring with all of them, then scale choice is not your problem, you're just lacking in ideas and experience.

How do we fix this? Obviously we need to have a good grasp of the common techniques such as bends, vibrato, hammer-ons etc. That's something we can understand and just improve with practice. The rest of it is just practice with examples until it becomes a part of the way you play. It really is that straightforward. Trying to apply this to a formula does not work, we need to learn by example, as humans it's what we're best at.

Throughout this course we are going to build our knowledge and experience one thing at a time, almost from the ground up. What do I mean by "almost"? Well, this isn't a beginner course. It's assumed you already have some experience with playing (at least) the minor pentatonic scale in one position and you don't need an explanation of how to use common techniques like vibrato, string bending, hammer-ons, pull-offs etc (although some basics will be included). You don't have to have already mastered these techniques but you need to know what they are because this course isn't going into that sort of detail. Besides that, there are countless tutorials available all over Youtube if you need that kind of detail - repeating all of this in an intermediate course is unnecessary.

This course is a progressive workout packed with TABs, audio and examples that will take you out of the rut and show you various ways on how to play the pentatonic scales, minor, major and more, in the style of blues and rock that sounds more like a solo and less like a bunch of scale exercises strung together. This is not a video course, just text, TABS and audio examples that takes advantage of the incredible Soundslice system that allows us to follow along at our own pace and zoom into the TABs with precision detail.

Full course

Primer - Let's first cover some basics.
01: Getting Started - The Five Positions
02: Pentatonic Positions - Things to think about
03: So Why Bother With Positions?
04: It's not the notes you play, it's how you play the notes
05: Upstroke, Downstroke and fretting hand fingers
06: Accents
07: Hammer-ons and Pull-offs
08: Slides
09: String bending
10: Vibrato
11: Palm Muting
12: Dead notes
13: Staccato and Legato
Noodling and Experimenting
14: Experimenting - Part 1
15: Experimenting - Part 2
16: Experimenting - Part 3
17: Experimenting 4
Workouts and Exercises
18: Workout 1
19: Workout 2
20: Workout 3
21: Workout 4
22: Workout 5
23: Workout 6 - Licks n Phrases
24: The Blues Note
25: Workout 7 - Licks with blues note
26: Workout 8 - A bit more rock
27: Workout 9 - a few more licks
28: Workout 10 -16th note Licks
Soloing and Chord Tones
29: Soloing Tips
30: Slow Minor Blues
31: Adding Chord Tones
32: Combining Arpeggios and the Pentatonic
33: Chords out of key
Major and Mixolydian
34: Major Pentatonic
35: Major Pentatonics - Part 2
36: Major soloing
37: Mixing major and minor
38: Arpeggios and the Mixolydian Scale
39: Piecing it all together
Jam Tracks
Bluesy Groove 120 C
Bluesy Groove 120 CFG
Country Rock D
Dominant Blues - A
Dom Blues - A only
Dom Blues - ADEA
Minor Blues with b67
Minor Blues with b6Maj7
Punk 170 12 Bar - C
Punk 170 C
Rock 135 C
Rock Ballad - Cm
Rock Ballad Loop C-F
Slow Minor Blues - C
Slow Major Rock D
Tex Rock 125 Cm

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