Beginner Soloing #1

by Darius Wave

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    THE PROFESSOR As you can hear in Darius’ shredtastic solo on this chord progression, using the Harmonic Minor Scale is a great way to break out of the major scale modes, while still sticking within the underlying key at the same time. Master guitarists such as Santana, Al Di Meola and most notably Yngwie Malmsteen have all used the Harmonic Minor to great effect over the years in many of their classic solos, and so it is worth looking into as you explore minor soloing concepts. 

    Learning to play, build and manipulate the Harmonic Minor Scale for guitar is an essential and fun concept to get under your fingers, into your ears and applied to your rock guitar solos in a wide range of minor key situations.

    Hi there folks!

    Welcome to my beginner dedicated lesson. Please, do not underrate the power of details hidden under easy sounding, simple melodies. Lesson is simple in terms of speed but the main purpose here is to focus on every single articulation detail, tone of each note, dynamics and clarity. I advise you to use low amount of distortion to keep the dynamics and get what's best from this lesson - wide tone control directly from the hands. Learning how to utilize this control isn't any easier than mastering any shred lick. Like it's said - "Devil sits in the details", so those details are what I would like You to focus on.

    Try to keep things as clean as possible. Watch for the moments when picking is very soft and when it's powerful. In the chorus section there are a few very popular arpeggios shapes, that can be useful in any future playing (used by many players in many songs). You can feel some neoclassical influence in there.

    Gear used:

    * Hufschmid Headless electric guitar
    * Presonus Inspire 1394 audio interface
    * Poulin LeXTAC vst plug-in with "original impulses/ between" cab impulse
    * Ernie Ball 10-46 slinky strings with standard E tuning.

    Guitar tone / signal chain:

    Hufschmid guitar --> Behringer MIC100 tube preamp (both gain and output 50%, 20dB pad on) --> Presonus Inspire 1394 audio interface (gain 25%) --> LePou LeXTAC vst amp (blue channel, input 50%, Gain 100%, all other knobs 50%, normal pre-eq mode, all mini switches down) --> Kefir impulse loader (mix 100%, gain -19dB, length 4%, original impulses / between) --> Q-filter plug-in (low cut mode 182 Hz :: mid1 355 Hz -3 dB Q 1,48 :: mid2 1068 Hz -3 dB Q 2,81)

    Tuning: standard tuning E-A-D-G-B-E

    Backing track progression:

    4/4 ||: C | C | Am | Am | F | F | Gsus4 | G :||
    ||: Am | Am | F | F | Dm | Dm | Esus4add6 | E :|| Am | Am ||


    Tempo: Main song tempo is 120 bpm. There are backing tracks available in 60, 80, 100, and 120 bpm.

    Time signature: 4/4

    Scales used in this solo:



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