Are you wanting to learn how to play guitar solos? Are you struggling through without really knowing the notes that your landing on? I may have a solution for you...
We're always taught the importance of learning scales on the guitar, and i have to agree that there's no getting around it - scales will improve your playing more than you realize. The thing i want to share with you here is Scale 'shapes', and how they work. You may have always played scales in such a way that you just play a run of notes up and down the neck, over and over again, sound familiar? While this is a great way to know the notes of the scale and improve speed and picking skill, and i'm all for this, you still have to work out where to play what scale in your solos. That's where scale shapes come in...
If you've never learned how to play guitar solos, bear with me and i'll break this down as simply as i can.
A scale shape is a pattern or formation on the neck of the guitar, that can be used to give you a framework when playing solos. Just like when using blogger here, there are templates that you can use to give you a framework to work within, scale shapes on the guitar give you a framework or a template to work out where to put the notes.
For the purpose of this article we'll look at the 5 Pentatonic Scale shapes to give you a brief overview of how they work, and don't worry if you don't get the hang of it straight away, it takes a little while to learn how to apply them. Basically, after you have found the root note you want to play over, you then find the root note in these shapes to work out which shape to use on which part of the neck.
Please click on the image to view a larger size!
Here we have the 5 pentatonic shapes in order of how they run (after shape 5 it goes back to shape one, just like a scale). The circles with the white dots are the root notes, so you can see where it fits in the different shapes.
When playing through these shapes, use the low E string as a guide and start the next shape where the first one left off. As an example, the first image of shape 1 has the first root note on the low E string, followed by the next note in the sequence 3 frets up from the first, so start shape 2 from this note, and use these reference points for each shape. When you get to finish shape 5 it goes back to shape 1 again.
I know it sounds complicated and without me sitting there in front of you teaching it can be hard to know what i mean, but just choose a note and follow these shapes from that note, starting with the first note being that root note you just chose, and after a while you'll start seeing where to play notes over any chord progression... this will give you so much freedom when playing solos and the possibilities will be endless!
To find out more tips and guitar solo advice, check out this site: how to play guitar solos
