Chris Evans - Beginners Phrasing Help SI Lesson

Introduction

Leading on from your improvisations you need to add some colour and other elements to make your solo's sound cool, you can do this to begin with by using some simple techniques. All these techniques (and as you grow as a guitarist you will add more) will give your solo`s some nice "phrasing" and thats what I'm hoping to intoduce you to with this small lesson.

So what's "phrasing"?, think of phrasing as in the way we speak, when we talk our voices vary in pitch and we emphasis words in different ways using our voice, we can say one word or a sentence in different way depending on what type of emotion or message we are trying to get accross to somebody else, you can do this with the guitar also, by attacking a note, giving notes a different rhythm etc we can make them sound very different.

Main Video

Heres the main spoken video, hopefully explaining this to you a little better.

Spoken Vid: Phrasing_Introduction_Vid.wmv ( 8.99MB )

On top of this I thought about things that I missed when I was first starting out and learning some of these things, the almighty GMC (nor the internet for that matter user posted image ) was not around back then so I learned a lot of these things from listening and learning solos and songs of my favourite groups at that time.

One thing I would have liked was some simple solos to play and mess around with, so I decided to make a little exercise lesson, hopefully fairly simple, but there is a degree of difficulty in it, I believe that everything needs an element of difficulty to make it interesting.

As described in the main vid there are three main techniques for you to pick up on in this, Alternate Picking, Vibrato & Bending.

I hope this has been of some help to you, your welcome to ask me anything if you wish, and again, if you like this video approach then let me know and I'll do some more, maybe one giving you some "licks" to practice would be good?

All the best
Chris

Here's the video with the full solo, if you keep the vid window smaller then actually the quality isn't too bad

Main Vid: MainVidPhrase.wmv ( 2.21MB )

Scales

Key is in D changing to E half way through and then switching back to D, to keep things simple I'm only using eighth notes from each major scale, I added in a key change to get you used to switching to different keys in songs.

Ths is part of the D major scale I'm using:

And part of the E major scale:

Parts

Part 1: Phrase_Part_1.wmv ( 760.15K )

E|-------------------------------------------------
B|--7--8--10--10b12--10--8--7--8--10----7-8
G|-----------------------------------------7------
D|------------------------------------------------
A|------------------------------------------------
E|------------------------------------------------

Part 2: Phrase_Part2.wmv ( 839.08K )

E|------------------------------------
B|--7--8--10--10b12--10--8--7--8--10---7--7b8-
G|------------------------------------------7-------
D|--------------------------------------------------
A|--------------------------------------------------
E|--------------------------------------------------

Part 3: Phrase_Part_3.wmv ( 821.52K )

E|---------------11b12--11--9---------------------
B|--9--10--12-------------------11--9--10--9b10-
G|---------------------------------------------------
D|---------------------------------------------------
A|---------------------------------------------------
E|---------------------------------------------------

Part 4: Phrase_Part_4.wmv ( 966.3K )

E|--12--11--9-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
B|--------------12--10--9--10--12--10--9--------------9--10--12----9--10--9---------------
G|--------------------------------------------11--9--11--------------9------------9-11-11b13-
D|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part 5: Phrase_Part_5.wmv ( 1.18MB )

E|-------------10--9--7--------------------------------------------------------
B|--7--8--10-----------10--8--7--8--10--8--7------------7--8--10----7--8-
G|-------------------------------------------------9--7--9-------------7-------
D|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

E|--------------------------------
B|--10--8--7-----------7--8----
G|-------------9--7--9-------7-
D|-------------------------------
A|-------------------------------
E|-------------------------------