Pentatonic Workshop - Blues and Rock

Like most things in life, it isn't what you do - it's how you do it! For many, if not most rock / blues guitar solos, the pentatonic scale dominates - yet many guitarists struggle to make it sound any good. I've been there myself and like many others, mistakenly came to the conclusion that the minor pentatonic scale is boring.

This leads to the usual progression into seeking out more pentatonic positions, more exercises and licks, yet things don't really improve that much. This is when we're in the so called pentatonic rut and in an attempt to fix things we go on a quest for more scales and, dare I say it, the dreaded modes! Doing so might make things sound different for a bit, which we mistake for "better" only to realise some time later that our solos still aren't quite cutting it.

Here's the thing with scales: it's not the amount of notes you have, it's simply how and when you play them that matters. Think about it; if you are using a seven note scale such as the major scale or any of the modes, if you try to use all seven notes with each phrase then you'll ultimately end up with a solo that gets very boring very quickly. If we try to fix this by not using all seven notes with every phrase ... er, you see where this is going!

The bottom line is this: Whether you have a seven note scale at your disposal, or five, or even just four for that matter, if you find yourself quickly tiring with all of them, then scale choice is not your problem, you're just lacking in ideas and experience.

How do we fix this? Obviously we need to have a good grasp of the common techniques such as bends, vibrato, hammer-ons etc. That's something we can understand and just improve with practice. The rest of it is just practice with examples until it becomes a part of the way you play. It really is that straightforward. Trying to apply this to a formula does not work, we need to learn by example, as humans it's what we're best at.

Throughout this course we are going to build our knowledge and experience one thing at a time, almost from the ground up. What do I mean by "almost"? Well, this isn't a beginner course. It's assumed you already have some experience with playing (at least) the minor pentatonic scale in one position and you don't need an explanation of how to use common techniques like vibrato, string bending, hammer-ons, pull-offs etc (although some basics will be included). You don't have to have already mastered these techniques but you need to know what they are because this course isn't going into that sort of detail. Besides that, there are countless tutorials available all over Youtube if you need that kind of detail - repeating all of this in an intermediate course is unnecessary.

This course is a progressive workout packed with TABs, audio and examples that will take you out of the rut and show you various ways on how to play the pentatonic scales, minor, major and more, in the style of blues and rock that sounds more like a solo and less like a bunch of scale exercises strung together. This is not a video course, just text, TABS and audio examples that takes advantage of the incredible Soundslice system that allows us to follow along at our own pace and zoom into the TABs with precision detail.