A Guide To Soloing

Beginner, Guitar October 25th, 2007

Improvising, yes that is the dream that every beginner has, how can i make my own solo?  how can i make my own melody? how can i build more on what i already play? The answer to this is a lot of practise and learning all the scales possible. i will break down the whole process in three simple steps, and these steps will help you get started

Step-1-Scale
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over here the quest is the A minor pentatonic scale. This is one of the most widely used scale in rock music. Breaking it down, Penta means “five” and tonic refers to tones. So, we have a five-tone minor scale. Play this scale a few times to get it memorized and till the time that u can even play it if u are sleeping!!!

Step-2-Rhythm
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take the chords that lie in the scale, and make someone play them in the background. Over here we have a A minor pentatonic scale and its parent scale, A natural minor, contain the notes to build several chords. The A minor chord that is found among the scale is an ideal chord to play along with this scale.
So get a backing track over which u can solo

Step-3-Time to Play
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Now that you know the scale and have someone to play in the background, its time to make our solo
1)with the chords in background, just play the scale up and down and listen to what it sounds like
2)now play the same scales but this time, let a few notes ring a little longer and play some of the notes faster than others
3)apply bends, slides, vibratos in the notes and see how the sound changes
4)now mix up the notes, play anything u want keeping yourself in the scale, be creative
take a look at this example

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Just remember you don’t want to play a scale up and down again and again, you want to improvise over them and make some music. Remember, it’s not magic. You can do it, and before you know it, you’ll be soloing like an old pro.

Rock on! And for more ideas, don’t forget to check out the site again!!

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Chords to get you Started

Beginner, Guitar October 5th, 2007

Chords are formed by combining notes and playing them together. Now we have a lot of variety of chords, there are major chords, minor chords, dominant chords, suspended chords, augumented chords, and many more. But here we will only talk about some of the major and minor chords that are of most importance at a beginners level, these chords positions should be memorized and in time you should be able to move your fingers from one chord to the other one, without any gap of time in between. The chords we will cover here will also cover most of your favourite numbers. So lets take a look at them.

Chart of Em Chord
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This is a chord chart. It is a picture or graph that represents where you need to position your fingers on the fretboard to form the chord. Remember, many people say that there is a correct positioning finger pattern, but i personally don’t believe in that, you should use whatever pattern fits you and helps you. Though it is still advised to follow the regular pattern. From left to right, they are the 6th (low E, the thickest one), 5th (A), 4th (D), 3rd (G), 2nd (B) and 1st (high E, the thinnest) strings. This will almost always be the case in any chord chart that you look at. This is why, whether you play left handed or right handed, you can read the same charts. The horizontal lines are the frets, and the dots show where you need to put your finger. If you see a “0″ above a particular string, then you play that string as an “open” string. This means that you do not have to put a finger on it at all. An “X” means that you do not play the string at all.

Also remember to place your tip of the finger on strings and not flat fingers. Now when we go to the chart of an E chord you will notice that there is a difference of just one note, so what u do is that u keep your previous fingers as it is and just add one more finger playing that third note. Now play them one after other and see the difference yourself.

Chart of E Chord
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Chart of Am Chord
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Chart of A Chord
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Chart of D Chord and Chart of Bm Chord
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One last quick note - sometimes, particularly on TAB found on the Internet, chord charts will be replaced with something that looks like a serial number. read from left to right as chord charts are, complete with “Xs” and “0s.”

Em - (022000)
E - (022100)
Am - (X02210)
A - (X02220)
D - (XX0232)
Bm - (XX0432)
C - (X32010)
G - (320003)

I hope this lesson helps you in getting started

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