Guitar improvisation is among the most important aspect of lead guitar playing and without improvisation you will never be able to make the type of impact you would like to make while doing a live gig.The better way to master lead guitar improvisations is by understanding the various scales and the different techniques that are used. But guitar improvisation is definitely not easy especially when you are learning on your own. If you are a self taught guitarist then you can use books, e-books and video guitar lessons from cyberspace, download guitar tools from the internet, and practice using guitar tabs and guitar backing tracks.

All of these techniques will help you to learn about the guitar, the fretboard, the minor and major scales, the blues scale, and the chromatic scales. But when you progress from the basic to the advanced stage then the only way you can learn guitar improvisation is through practice. For a guitarist, practice is a never ending routine. The more you practice, the better you are with guitar improvisation. Whether you are rehearsing with the help of a book or with tabs and lessons available over the internet, you need to know that if you have complete control over the minor and major pentatonic scales then guitar improvisation will be like a walk in the park for you.

For example: if you are using G-major pentatonic then it will be: 2-4, 1-4, 1-4, 1-3, 2-4, 2-4 at the 3rd or 15th fret for G major pentatonic. In G, A, B, D, E, G, you will notice that the G major pentatonic as well as the E minor pentatonic share exactly same notes. If you play the G major pentatonic scale in the open position then it will be like this:

—————————0-3– ———————-0-3——- —————–0-2———— ————0-2—————– ——0-2———————– -0-3—————————-

The fastest way to guitar improvisation is through learning how to play the pentatonic scales to perfection. The minor pentatonic scale consists of 5 notes, which are the same as in major pentatonic. The only difference is that the tonic of the scale in major pentatonic is different from that of minor pentatonic.

Let’s take a look at an example:The C-major pentatonic scale is C - D - E - G - A - C and it will become an A-minor pentatonic scale which will be A - C - D - E - G - A. All you had to do was select the note ‘A’ as the tonic note. Let’s take a look some of the minor pentatonic scales as mentioned in the Circle of fifths.

# C minor pentatonic scale C - Eb - F - G - Bb - C

# G minor pentatonic scale G - Bb - C - D - F - G

# D minor pentatonic scale (Down - Up - Top) D - F - G - A - C - D

Every so often, we decide to dive into a new aspect of playing guitar that many are either afraid of, or just simply have no idea what it’s all about. We’re going to tackle one of the more feared issues evolving around guitar… Transposition.

Join us as we teach you the most simplistic and easy ways to transpose your music.

Getting That Riff In Your Favorite Key!

How many times have we composed a riff that we absolutely love, or perhaps found a song that we really enjoy playing and wanted to put it into a new, original song and truly make it ours? Chances are that we’ve all wanted to at least try it out once or twice but always came across one roadblock… Keys.

As mentioned in our last article, the probability that two riffs will be in the same key is very low if you are writing a lot of songs or wish to link two well known songs together. This is where you need to transpose one of those riffs so you can connect them together and put them in that song.

Another scenario is that you just wrote an awesome riff that you envision going into one of your band’s songs… The only problem is that it’s in the wrong key! With transposing, you can still use that riff and play along with the rest of the band.

If you’re a true band nerd, like myself, you have probably been around transposition since the days of Jr. High or Middle School. Now, if you’re still like me, you didn’t have two clicks on how to do it either. I was always amazed to see how my teacher would take a trumpet part and transpose it so I could play it on my sax and still be in the right key!

With guitar, this is invaluable. You can take a sax part and transpose it to your guitar. If you happen to have a sax player around, you can now play along with that sax and still be in the proper key.

One of the most unique things about playing guitar is that we have a number of tools available to us to use for easy transposition. Many other musicians envy us for this and call us cheaters in the game of music theory, however, if you can use it… Why not?

The tools that you can use.

One of the most common tools used to transpose music on the guitar is the capo. The capo is essentially a piece of rubber that is glued onto two pieces of metal with a spring placed in between. When clasped onto the neck of your guitar and placed behind a fret, it acts as a new nut (AKA the “zero” nut.) This new nut raises the pitch of your guitar, therefore changing the key.

Most guitarists use them so they can make really complicated chords into easy open chord shapes. This is where the whole joke about cheating comes in. Instead of actually practicing those really hard chords and getting your technique down, you can transpose that chord using the capo and turn it into an open chord shape such as an E Major or an A and still have the same chord.

While I don’t recommend that you always do that because it’s always good to know how to play a song if your capo breaks, it’s great for live performances where you want to minimize the risk of messing up a complicated chord. If you’re a lead guitarist, you can still use a capo but in all honesty, it’s far easier to find the key that everyone else is playing in relative to the capo and just use the scale that suites the song best.

In most cases, it’s actually quicker for a lead guitarist not to use a capo and just find a scale. Switching a capo around the neck of your guitar can cost valuable seconds between songs.