I need some advice with just pentatonic/blues scale soloing for now. Watch this vid http://www.youtube.com/wa...J3saIcWHW4 and please lend me some advice such as techniques, ideas, or w/e. Oh and tell me what you liked about it too! Thanks a bunch!


P.S. Excuse the sound quality and tuning.

well u guys are helpful..

You seem to largely know the key pentatonic minor patterns. I have the following suggestions to make:

1) Slow it down - this is the biggie - I had the feeling that you were playing a long way out of your comfort zone tempo-wise. Play at a speed where you make no mistakes, and you feel in control of the sounds you're making. Playing beyond your speed is putting flaws into your technique (overbends, choked notes, over-slides) that will take a hell of a lot of work to correct if they're established. Be slow and accurate in practice. I know its tempting to try and shred, but it takes a lot of slow practice to get to that level.

2) Relax - you seem super-tense, and you're absolutely hammering those strings. Relax your shoulders, your arms, your hands. Try to play with relaxed power - look at videos of advanced guitarists - see how it looks effortless. You don't need to pick and press down that hard to fret the notes accurately.

3) Look at how you're holding the neck. I think that it would benefit you to play with the pad of your thumb against the back of the neck, lower than its position on that video. It will give you more power and range across the fretboard, although you have really long fingers, which would allow you to get away with not doing this better than most could.

What is good to see, is that you're using all of your left hand fingers to fret. So many beginners shy away from using their little finger. You're working from a promising start, and you seem to have a feel for the principles of improvisation, along with a willingness to travel around the fretboard. I think the major thing you need to focus on next is working slowly to perfect your technique and fretboard confidence to express your improvised ideas.

I think one of the things to do is work on the vibrato... I think the fingers should move less, and the wrist should rotate more...

Try to play every note on the beats for now... I know part of improvising is loosening up a bit and playing off the beat... but I think for now it is important to stay on the beat as much as possible...

Don't pick that hard unless you're trying to accent the note... listen to the tone of the sound when you pick...

instead of picking every note try more hammer-ons and pulloffs... and maybe sliding your fingers to go to the next note...

I agree with Rowdy that slowing down is the biggie... not just for you for everyone (including me). Steve Vai once said, the trick to play fast is to start really slow.

I think you've gotten a good feel for pentatonic improvisation. Taking from Rowdy's post, if you relax a little speed-wise, and picking wise, it will be awesome.
[Edited 11/6/07 15:09pm]

Thanks a lot for the reply. To be honest, that was me slowing it down . But i guess a few more notches wouldn't hurt. Well, yea i'm a bit nervous. Getting bashed by the youtube ppl will be fun, but you see i've been playing for 3 years (on and off) and I just dont think my abilities don't showcase that. My first teacher (for about 2 1/2) years really jeeped me. And, that holding the thumb behind the neck thing is hard as hell

coolcat said:

Out of all the things to do, that's definitely up there in the hardest to overcome. Not long after i started playing, my fingers always did the majority of the work opposed to the wrist. But so far so good, you guys are really helping!!

MajesticOne89 said:

yeah, it really is... just gotta start slow... I used to do the vibrato with my fingers also for a long time... then just stopped and did it with the wrist really slow and worked on it... took a few months to get used to it, but it was worth it.

Work your ideas. If you have a good line, say it, say it again ... and if it's really good, say it a third time.

Regarding working ideas, work toward being able to play your licks in every pattern. Granted, some licks will not be as effective in some patterns as compared to others, but there is no better way of learning those patterns inside and out than being able to play an idea in multiple positions. Plus, you can really get some extra mileage out of your licks by moving them to different octaves.

Another thing is to know your chord tone locations. Knowing the patterns is a start, but you also have to know where roots/thirds/fifths and color tones 9's/11/13s are.

For your backing track, it sounded like the opening progression was Bm/A/G/F#m. As an exercise, start and end your phrase with the root of the chord from your pentatonic scale. B, A and F# are all in B minor pentatonic. For the G chord, start and end on B (the third of G). Rhythm is everything in this exercise, so keep your lines simple to start and nail that starting/ending chord tone for each chord. When you've got the hang of it, add some syncopation to your lines so they are rhythmically interesting (not just straight quarter or eighth notes).

Once you can do this comfortably, pick different chord tones to start your lines like the third/fifth/seventh, etc. And as always, be able to do this in any of the five pentatonic patterns.

One last idea. Joe Pass recommended that you play eighth notes over a progression with no rhythmic embellishment (i.e. no changes in beat division like 16th notes, triplets, etc). By eliminating rhythmic variance, you really have to hit the right notes to keep your lines interesting (and to not sound like you hit a clam). I found this was a really good exercise to see where i was weak with regard to chord tone use and use of licks (it seemed i pulled licks out everytime i ran short of ideas). Give it a try.

Good Luck!

See man... it aint just me!
Didn't i tell you all this stuff before? lol

EmbattledWarrior said:

lol you did. but i was hoping someone else might point out something different or w/e.

MajesticOne89 said:

Me, too. I get the impression that you have to have a tight, firm, yet misleading grip onto the fretboard and strings. Maybe, I was wrong....."PERHAPS!!!?!"

FarrahMoan said:

You never need a tight or firm grip with a guitar neck. Forget about the musical aspect of things for a second, and just consider the physical demand and movement of pressing a very thin wire down over a distance of 1 millimetre. It requires no effort at all, but so many people picking up guitars hold the things like they're trying to crush them. Economy of effort and movement is the key to playing a guitar well, and its well worth evaluating your technique every now and again to see whether you're really achieving that.

Strings sound old, out of tune, and either very very low action or very very high action. Or maybe it's the amp, but it sounds like the strings.

Your picking hand is your weakness I think. You're hitting the strings but the pick is catching them too much and not just picking them but pulling them. That's great sometimes, but it sounded like you were having problems hitting the strings with the right amount of pickage.

Keep your thumb folded over the fretboard. MILLIONS of amazing awesome brilliant legendary guitarists fold their thumb over the fretboard. There's ME, Hendrix, prince, Stevie Ray, Carlos, Clapton, hell if you name a guitar legend, you're probably naming a guy who never ever kept their thumb on the back of the neck. It's important if you're playing classical or jazz guitar, it's futile if you're doing anything else.

And just keep playing. Listen to Chuck Berry. And listen to Angus Young. I know, he's not funk or blues, but his solos are nothing but blues. Go get Back In Black - I learned a lot from that one record, as far as soloing. It's all pentatonic, it's mostly first-position box-pattern solos, but he is a master at when to play slow and when to play fast.

I recorded this last night.

[Edited 11/15/07 5:32am]

beauhall said:

The strings are new, it was my first time changing strings on a floyd but idk and yea the guitar was out of tune, i didnt bother tuning it to make the vid. You're probably the first person to tell me to keep my thumb folded over the fret board. Someone else mentioned my "over picking" also so I'll work on hitting the strings lighter as well. Nice track btw!
[Edited 11/18/07 16:10pm]