Blues Lead Guitar: Linking Positions #17of20 (Guitar Lesson BL-027) How to play

Justin's Completely Free, Blues Lead Guitar Lesson BL-027. Lesson 17.

In this guitar lesson you will learn about linking scale positions together.

Find the related course notes on the following link:
http://justinguitar.com/en/BL-027-LinkingPositions.php

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

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Have fun :)

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This lesson today is about how to change between your different positions of the Pentatonic Scale.

So, it still works for the Blues Scale, and I might introduce a Blue Note, or two.

But mainly I want to talk about just
the bare Minor Pentatonic Scales.

Because if you can change between them, then adding in that Blue Note,

or adding in the other Dorian notes, which we're gonna come to in the following lessons,

makes a lot more sense.

So let's get our heads around the Pentatonic first.

So there's a number of different
approaches that you can use.

And the first one I want to talk
about is sliding between notes.

Now of course, before you get into this you need to know all five positions pretty well.

Or, if you're
just moving between two positions,

like say, position 1 and position 2, you need to know those positions really well.

So, let's have a little talk about sliding.

Now, of course sliding can
be done with any finger,

on any string, from any
1 note of a position,

to any other
note of any other position.

So it's a pretty versatile technique.

Now, just using my first finger, you can get,
there's quite a few really,

really cool little tricks you can do.

So, for example, if you were in position 1,

starting in Position 1, and you want to get somewhere further up the neck,

it's OK to slide the whole length of
the neck if you want.

So, if I play in Position 1, and the
slide I'm going to do

is from 1st finger, in the 5th
fret of the 3rd string,

gonna slide all the way up to the 12th
fret of the 3rd string,

so then I would be up in Position 4. So
I might go like ah,

♪

So I slid, or I went, and then 1st finger,

♪

straight up into another lick in Position 4.

So you can see that it's, as long as you know where you're going,

it's actually no trouble to get there.
But there's a little trick

that I want to share with you. Which is always look to the fret that you're going to.

Don't try and watch your finger as it slides up, or you'll invariably miss the note,

that you're trying to hit. So the idea would be,

while I'm down here I'm looking at that note, if
I'm looking at the guitar.

And then when I know I'm gonna slide up to the 12th fret, I'm looking at the 12th fret,

and I can watch my finger get to
it, and then stop it.

Rather than trying to watch, watch it go up. Because it's really hard to judge then,

when you're finger gets to the right fret.

So that's the first thing. Always look at the fret that you're going to.

Don't watch your finger as it slides. Now, that was one example,

to take us from Position 1 all
the way to Position 4.

But it can go any which way, and it's, quite a fun thing is sliding up and back down again,

and then up and back down again,
to different notes each time.

So I might go, using a similar kind of approach, I might go from the 5th fret,

slide up to the 9th fret, then
back to the 7th fret,

then up to the
12th, back to the 9th,

up to the 14th, 12th, 17th.
You end up with this.

Quite a nice little -

♪

And I've only actually had to pick that note once. But you could pick it lots of times.

♪

Doesn't really matter. You can pick 'em
as often as you like.

Or you can just slide around without
having to pick each time.

So this is a really, really useful little trick, and of course it works on any string.

You could be on the 1st string
and go 3 to 8,

to 5 to 10, to 8 to 12, and have - that'd be a
pretty cool lick as well.

There's infinite number of combinations
far too many to go through,

unless I was gonna do a whole DVD about all of these different slides,

and that of course was just, so far, using just your first finger,

but of course you could slide with another finger, like say your 3rd finger would be a good one.

If you're in Position 1,

and you finish there with your 3rd
finger on the 8th fret,

like you were gonna do a bend, you could just then slide that up 2 frets,

and now you're in Position 2. Then you might use that same finger to slide up to 13th,

♪

and I used my 2nd finger
on the 12th fret there,

and then why not move/slide it up
another 2 frets to 15,

and that way I just crossed, let my finger lay
over onto the 1st string,

the 7th fret.

♪

It's infinite, combinations of these things that you can try.

So, using slides is the first really, really
good way to do it.

It's something that you
should definitely be experimenting with.

Now as well as slides you
can also do direct shifts.

Now what I mean by that is, you might remember back from one of our earlier lessons,

we did in the position shifting, one of the licks
I gave you was this,

♪

now, you can do that any direction,
you could start in 1,

♪

and move back to 5, and then up to 2,

♪

now if you want to move that one up again,

you have to go 13, ah sorry, 12, 10,

13, 10, because of the shape of the notes.

The next one would have
to be 15, 12, 15,13

♪

and then we're back at the
octave of the first one.

♪

Now, for that kind of thing, the thing that you want to use is a complete neck fingerboard diagram,

which has got all of the notes
of the scale on it.

So you can start to extract say,
one of my favourite ones,

is to look at two strings, say,
usually the thinnest two strings,

if you look at all of the notes in Am Pentatonic,
on strings 1 and 2,

and look at different ways you
can try and combine them.

There are, again,
there's lots of different choices.

It's up to you to try and figure out what way you might want to do it.

The little trick of looking for notes that are on the same fret but on different strings is a good one,

because in Am Pentatonic
you can have 3rd fret,

5th fret, 8th fret, 10th fret,

the next one you can't because
it'd be 13 and 12.

But then
we're back to it again.

And there's all sorts of little...

Straight away I've writ a real cool
lick and it's really simple.

♪

And we've travelled all
the way from Position 5,

Up into position
1, up into position 2.

So that's also a really, really, really ace trick that you can kinda play about with.

Now another... all these tricks,-
What am I a magician?

Another trick that you can use, is to do the, again it was a concept I talked about in an earlier video,

which is looking at the same note on different strings. The lick I gave you before was this,

going from A, 5th fret thinnest string, to
A 10th fret 2nd string.

Well, why not
go from there to say,

D, ah, C on
the 8th fret thinnest string,

to C, 13th
fret on the 2nd string.

So there we've got,

then D maybe,

E,

♪

and now you can
see we've shifted quite far,

we've gone from down here, to right
up the dusty end again.

So it's a really, this kind of trick of using the
same note in different places,

is also a really, really
good way to get about.

But it doesn't just have to be on the 1st
string to the 2nd string,

it could be on the
2nd string and 3rd string, you could,

♪

Doesn't really matter. Just
experiment yourself a little bit,

Find the same note, see if you can find a way to slide to it, generally,

if you were gonna do that lick, the 1st note would be played with your 1st finger,

and the next note would be
slid with your 3rd finger.

♪

There's a whole
heap of different ideas here.

But that's kind of the most basic of those concepts that you might like to try out.

So, that's
plenty of talking from me,

now it's time for
plenty of playing from you.

Because, you can only play yourself into
a new way of thinking.

You can't think yourself to
a new way of playing.

A great quote from an old friend
of mine called John Thezorakis.

John, if you're out there hello.

So, it's really important that you realize that you can only play your way into these new ideas.

Don't just think about it.

A lot of people spend too much
time thinking about playing guitar,

and not enough playing guitar.

So have a good
play with those different ideas.

When you feel cool with that,

we're ready to explore out this interesting
thing called the Dorian mode.

A nice big Greek name for you.

So, I'll see
you for that sometime soon.