Moving Past The Pentatonic Scales

  Pentatonic scales are a great way to start improvising on guitar. Pentatonic patterns are simple and easy to memorize, and they remove some of the riskier note options, essentially ensuring that every note choice will land safely. However, those riskier notes that the pentatonic scale removes can also be some of the most effective note choices when used well. So while the pentatonic scale is a g

  Two-handed tapping is a fun technique that allows you to grab ahold of notes generally outside of your reach and often leaves audiences dazzled by its flashiness. While you shouldn’t learn tapping purely because it’s flashy, most guitarists would be lying if they told you that it wasn’t at least part of the appeal. But for all the awesome things a solid tapping technique has to offer, a surprisi

  It’s often said that most improvised solos can either be categorized as “vertical” or as “horizontal”. These designations refer less to objective musical elements, and more to the mental approach taken by the improviser during the solo, which is why you will sometimes hear these concepts referred to as “vertical thinking” and “horizontal thinking”. But whatever way you like to frame it, the conc

  Tapping is a dazzling guitar technique with tons of flair that’s an awful lot of fun to play. But despite all its flash, tapping can be a tricky technique to integrate organically into your playing. There are many different exercises, tricks, tips, and techniques to help guitarists overcome this challenge, but in this piece, we’re going to looking at one of my favorites. There isn’t a good forma

  When we first learn how to play guitar solos, we’re generally taught to stick to the confines of a specific scale shape. As we progress, we learn how to break out of that initial scale shape and into other shapes all across the fretboard. Yet, no matter how many different places across the guitar we learn to play in the key of A-minor, there is still this somewhat unquestioned conviction th

Hammer-ons and pull-offs are a pair of closely related guitar techniques that involve playing notes that smoothly blend into each other, creating an effect known as legato. Legato playing allows you to create buttery guitar lines where seamlessly bleed into each other in a way that, when done well, can be quite beautiful. Hammer-ons and pull-offs aren’t the only ways to achieve a legato sound on g

The recent and seemingly sudden passing of guitar icon Eddie Van Halen has left the music world stunned. In the eponymous band he co-founded with his drummer and brother Alex, Eddie trailblazed a dazzling, virtuosity-centered approach to the electric guitar that completely redefined the sounds we associate with the instrument. He quickly rose to become one of the world’s most influential players,

  There is something about open-position guitar riffs that makes them impossible not to love. The sound of a ringing open string mixed with the punch of the low-end range of the guitar has made open position riffing a staple of just about every style of guitar-oriented music, from blues to death metal and everything in between. But despite how cool open-positon riffs may sound, many guitarists who

For those who don’t know, an arpeggio is the pitches that make up a chord played one at a time as individual notes. Essentially, arpeggios take harmonies and cut them up into melodies. If you’re interested in the more technical/theory-oriented side of that stuff, you can learn more about it here. A Brief Introduction While arpeggios are sometimes used as warm-ups or theory exercises, guitars playe

If there’s one technique that proves that guitarists will always strive to find new ways to play their instruments past what their creators intended, then it’s probably tapping. Tapping is a guitar technique where notes are played by pressing directly onto the fret with one finger instead of being traditionally strummed. Tapping can involve both the left and right-hand in the fretting of notes, an