GUITARHABITS

Free Quality Guitar Lessons

Chord Progressions For Minor Pentatonic Soloing

By 2 Comments

The minor pentatonic scale is the most used scale for soloing and it is used in a wide variety of music styles like pop, rock, country, metal, blues and more. It’s a great scale because it’s fairly easy to play which makes it a perfect beginner scale for soloing, but it also has the functionality to develop, expand, and improve your skills to high levels of advanced playing.

Once you know how to play the minor pentatonic / blues scale and how to use it for soloing purposes, you want to know over what chord progressions you can play the scale. There are a few ways to go about this.

Let’s dive in!

MINOR KEY CHORD PROGRESSION

Like the natural minor scale, you can also use the minor pentatonic scale to solo over a song or chord progression in a minor key. We will use the chords derived from the natural minor scale to build your minor key chord progression.

Here’s the formula to find the chords to your progression:
I=minor, ii=dim, III=major, iv=minor, v=minor, VI=major, VII=major

For instance, if you want to use an A minor pentatonic scale to solo over a song or chord progression in the key of A minor you start with filling in the notes of the A natural minor scale to the formula.

For example:
A natural minor scale (A Aeolian mode) = A B C D E F G
Formula for finding the chords = minor – dim – major – minor – minor – major – major
Chords for the progression: Am – Bdim – C – Dm – Em – F – G
Continue Reading

3 Cool Blues Guitar Licks for Soloing (50CBLI)

By 1 Comment

3 Cool Blues Guitar Licks for SoloingToday I’ll show you 3 cool blues licks from the 50CoolBluesLicksImprovisation Course. (See below this post for more info).

Blues licks are an essential part of learning to solo and improvise on your guitar. They are small parts/fragments of an entire solo. You can see them as the beautiful words that spice up your story line, bringing drama, elegance, juice, soul, and excitement to your soloing. You can incorporate licks into your solos, copy them, learn from them, rip them apart, and rebuild them to create your own.

Building a vocabulary of licks expands your musical ideas and insight, and gives you greater flexibility in your soloing and improvisation.

Know that blues licks are not just for blues music. They are used widely in rock, country, jazz, pop and many other styles of music. They are beneficial to your playing in every way.

So let’s get started.

Enjoy!

blues lick 34

blues lick 11

blues lick 41

If you want to learn more cool blues licks, how to create your own, connect licks together, learn to solo and improvise all over the neck, and dive into the scale shapes, tricks and tools to really master the Pentatonic / Blues Scale inside out, check out:

The 50CoolBluesLicksImprovisation Course

Get Your Soloing and Improvisation Skills to the Next Step!

What Scales to Play over a Song in a Major Key

By 9 Comments

what scales to play over a song in a major keyThere are so many songs and so many scales. So what scales do you need to solo and improvise over a song in a major key? And what chords can you find in a major key?

First, when a song is in a major key, it means it’s based on a major scale. The song usually conveys a bright, happy or cheerful mood. There are seven chords that you can derive from that major scale. We’ll look into that in a few seconds.

To be able to improvise over a major key you also need a major type scale. The two most commonly used scales are the major scale and the major pentatonic scale.
Continue Reading

The Brilliant Benefits of The Blues Scale

By 6 Comments

The Brilliant Benefits of The Blues ScaleThe pentatonic scale is a great scale to start out with when you’re learning to play lead guitar. But once you got that under your belt you can quickly move on to the blues scale. Even for guitar players who have kept their chops limited to the pentatonic scale for years, it will be enlightening to see how the blues scale can help out.

Although the blues scale doesn’t look that different from the pentatonic scale, the benefits are tremendous and can have a great impact on your soloing and creative expansion.

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons that make the blues scale such an important and valuable scale. We’ll show you how to play the pentatonic scale and the blues scale in different positions. And further we’ll explain how it can benefit, grow and open up your playing.
Continue Reading