Bluesland #1

Hi GMC-ers!

This is the first part in series of lessons in which I will show you how you can use the different positions on your guitar neck in the blues pentatonic scale. I lot of my students had problems with the different positions. Most of the time students tend to use only the main pentatonic scale, and forget about the different degrees. When it comes to other positions, they are likely to be stuck not knowing what to play, of what different shapes or phrasings can they use.

All the positions have their own typical shapes and motives that sound good. We have separated the modes, and we will be concentrating on that single particular scale.

In the first part we will be focusing on the first two degrees of the E blues pentatonic scale.

The fist scale contains the open strings on your guitar. The motives played here are used widely by blues players, namely Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmy Page, Gary Moore, etc. Using the open strings you'll have a very special sounding scale, but at the same time you canot play some motives that are played in all the different modes.

The critical parts are the second, the third and the fifth mode of the scale. If you learn these modes and the shapes you can use in them, you'll be having the typical blues sounding.

The second part of the lesson the second mode dominates. Most of the time guitarist tend to play only the part of the scale which are on the G, B, and the E string. If we learn to play the whole mode and we use the different motives, we can have a great bluesy sounding solo.

Techniques used in this lesson includes the following:

Bends
Vibratos
Slides
Hammer-ons, pull-offs

Have a good time practicing!
-Laszlo