Combining Scales

Hello GMCers! In this lesson I wanted to show how you can create interesting solos by combining different scales. The chord progression played here, allows for you to play in Minor, Major, Mixolydian, Blues. You just have to be careful on certain notes that you should avoid when playing over certain chords. Let your ear be the judge when experimenting with this.

Although most times you might one to stick to one of these through out the whole solo, I decided to use them all, most times when doing something like this, I listen to the chord progression and start experimenting, but not thinking about scales, I rather try to think them and then play them, then I try to figure out why a certain note sounds good, and what scale I am playing.

Remember that there are many ways to look at the same thing, this is just my point of view, just like I saw that I could play pentantonic major over this chord progression, someone could look at it still like a mixolydian removing a few notes, whatever makes the most sense to you.

The solo is mostly slow licks and bends, but I put a few fast runs to make the solo more interesting. These fast runs in 16th triplets should help the intermediate player that would like to develop his or her alternate picking, at 130 bpm it is fast enough to make it a challenge.

Take the backing tracks an practice these fast licks by themselves over and over, then incorporate them with the rest of the solo.

See you next time!