Main topics: Practise and [fingers] strength building - Build your own chops - Favourites Licks
- Fingerboard notes exercises
- Warming up, with catchy funky riff
- Exercises and strength building. (Basic scales, picking, sweeping, twisted shapes, chromatics, tapping)
- Chop building
- 16th, quintuplets,16th triplets, 32nd notes. Intervals.
- New ideas with the BeBop scale.
- 2 to 5 note arpeggios (sweeping/tapping/ string skipping)
- How to increase your own speed
- Favourites licks
SWEEPING arpeggio lesson (free lesson):
Description: EX1: Sweeping arpeggio (C11)
It's a cool developed C arpeggio with a 7th (Bb) a 9th (D) and an 11th (F).
I wanted a new sweeping pattern easy for my fingers. Something the most symetrical
and vertical possible.
It sounds pretty fusion if you play it with
a smooth distortion and chain it on differents positions toward the fingerboard.
Play it like this when ascending:
Once you start to pick the 2nd string (for ex. the A5th string), remember to mute with your right hand's (RH) palm
the last string played (E low 6th).
To perform a clean sweep shape, it's important to mute carefully the strings that don't "play"
so that they do not ring...
(Be sure to check out my other lessons about sweeping if you need to practice this technique...)
I like this arpeggio because there's no need to move the left hand (LH) across the fingerboard. The LH thumb keeps on position
behind the neck.
Sorry if I do not perform the descending part slowly. It was obvious for me. It is played like this:
EX2: Arpeggio based on A11
Basically it's the same arpeggio but moved to the 5th fret. So the Key is "A".
It's different because I start it with a pull-off / hammer-on on the E low string.
You can consider the Ab as a 7th major or passing note.
I also tapp the 12th fret 6 high with my RH middle finger.
To perform it accurate it helps to move the RH over the fingerboard when you hammer-on pull-off the E(6) high string.
Example how to use this lick in situation:
The A11 lick is incorporated into a 4 bars bluesy solo.
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EX3: Learn a guitar riff
This is the complete backing guitar riff that is in the demo and last 4 bars.
Very simple and basic. Based on A5 with a shuffle feel. The 2 last chords are D/F# and G.
Mute with the RH palm the low strings next to the bridge. It creates a louder and percussive sound with accents
on the A5 chord.
Think to perform the upstroke pickings, on the off-beats, softer than the downstroke ones to create accents. "TABLATURE EX 1, 2, 3"
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Ex4: solo
The trick is that this little bluesy phrase starts off-beat. The 1st finger LH keep on half bar (strings D-G-B) position
during the whole lick. The LH thumb is definately over the neck to mute the low strings.
Keep strongly the neck in your left hand while pressing strings btw thumb and 1st finger (LH) to get that vibrating
bluesy feel. There a shuffle feel in the RH to impulse.
The hammer-ons pull-offs at the end must be fast but in timing. I scored then as 16th triplets. It helps me to count
3 hammer-ons (on the 6th fret, G string) when I play.
The last beat is a rest time beat in order to get really for the A11 sweep lick that comes and that we already saw in EX2...
The 4th rhythm pattern bar is the same than the end of the riff in EX3. Maybe not the most essential part of this lesson.
So play it as you feel it :)
-------- "TABLATURE EX 4"
Hot Texas lick (exclusive rooguitar.com free lesson):
Explanation: I play a lot this kind of chicken-picking with heavy tone. This lick is based on E7 but I actually mix some chromatics notes around the E minor pentatonic
scale and the E major scale. Here, we find in each bar, 3 groups of 16th notes plus a group of 16th triplets. After the E major bended chord at the beginning in the 1st bar, I start this
lick using my 4th finger (Left Hand) to play the slides notes and still use it with the 3rd and 1st finger for the 3 notes per strings shapes. I don't use at all the 2nd
finger in this lick (except in the last 16th triplet chromatics on the E 6th string at the end). To get that "twang" sound I play with the middle finger (Right Hand) the
first note on the E 1st, G and A strings. It's important to notice that I repeat the same pattern on the 2nd and 3rd bar.
[Hint]: Start to memorize slowly all the notes of the 2nd bar. Once you know them, practise them with metronome slowly. Keep the 1st finger of the Left Hand
perpendicular
to the fingerboard in order to move with precision the fingers (1, 3 and 4) and that the same Left Hand moves the shifts accurately as well. The little slides with the 4th
finger (LH) go easier if you slightly move the left hand keeping the finger in position. Don't forget to have a look to your left hand thumb. No, it's not playing but
whatever you play its position is crucial to play accurate. Lots of good guitarists can't play fast mostly because of their wrong thumb position. In the 2nd bar, my thumb
(left hand) is in the middle position of the neck behind the 13th fret. In the 3rd bar, it moves behind the 11th fret.
Remember: No accuracy -> no speed.
