[Music]
Hey
hey this is Steve Stein from guitar zoom
and if you're ever in a situation where
you're dealing with more hard rock or
metal situations and you need to solo
over the top you know what I want you to
think about a little bit is expanding
your pentatonix to include some things
that again may or may not necessarily
make sense in the music theory world and
this is something that I explore to a
great detail in a course that I have
that deals with guitar soloing kind of
from a cheaters perspective where you're
thinking about kind of from a bird's eye
view of when to use what when you're
approached with a particular chord
progression or a major key or a minor
key or a rock kind of song what's the
best thing to use when you don't have a
lot of time to figure out the right
scale right so when you're dealing with
something that kind of gives you the
sense of metal hard rock and metal we
know predominantly we're going to be
using minor somehow so we might be using
minor pentatonic or we might be using
the Aeolian scale if you know that and
again we'll talk about all these things
in the course but a really neat thing to
do to have some fun with this is to
simply expand your pentatonic if that's
kind of where you are by adding in some
really neat things now the first thing
we'll talk about here that I want you to
mess around with is just adding in
unusual bending places and usually what
you can do is you can bend from just
about any note in your pentatonic from a
half-step down okay and it B gives it
this element of exotic sound so what I
want you to do is just focus on a couple
of things here the first one is if we
were in E minor pentatonic you to go up
to the 14th fret of the third string now
normally we would Bend that up a
whole-step that would be our our usual
Bend that we would use our traditional
sort of rock band which is great we can
we can still use that but what I want
you to explore here is moving to the
thirteenth fret which is not pentatonic
and it doesn't fit in the Aeolian scale
or anything like that okay
I want you to explore here is bending
that up a half-step
[Music]
now what I'm doing is I'm going to play
the 14 and then right after I play that
14 I'm going to play the 13 and here's
kind of the trick to it is when you when
you go to play the 13 already be kind of
pre bending it a little bit so you don't
have far to go to hit the the bend which
all I'm doing is bending it up to a 14
[Music]
okay and then adding a little bit broto
on there so the trick to making it sound
more exotic is don't start what you
can't start all the way down you
certainly can what sounds really good if
you do that if you start all the way
down on the 13 give it a nice big screen
[Music]
but if you start a little bit above
sounds even more bizarre then give it a
nice wide vibrato and it breaks up the
monotony of that pentatonic scale okay
so that's a really nice place of being
able to do that and you can do it
anywhere another really neat place to do
that is on the route itself so if you
have this do the same thing there right
so I play you know when I bend it right
after sounds kind of neat so if I was
soloing that's what it sounds like okay
now sometimes again there's no rules to
these there's no right or wrong you just
have to explore things when it comes to
playing the e or the route what I like
to do is oftentimes I won't play it and
then play the 13 right before it I'll
play the 13 instead so I have I'll do
that instead
[Music]
and again it gives it this kind of
bizarre sound you have to mess with your
bending a little bit and I still think
like having a nice wide vibrato sounds
really nice over the top but that's a
personal preference and of course you
can explore these sorts of things
anywhere on the fret board so it doesn't
just have to be those two it could be
anything but I'm just showing you those
two sound quite exotic and quite bizarre
okay now the cool thing about this note
right here is that when we add that note
in we're actually playing a kind of the
beginnings of what we call harmonic
minor okay so we can actually use that
note instead of bending it we could
actually just play it and where I want
to show you that is up here on the top
so normally we'd have 1500 and annika
what we're going to do is we're going to
add in the 11 this is the e right here
[Applause]
cool that sounds
so it makes for again a really neat
sound so I could bend that like was just
rocking up the other thing that's really
neat about is I could just play it so
I'm not locking myself into thinking
while I'm in this scale or I'm in this
mode or I'm in a harmonic minor again
I'm just trying to have some fun with
the sounds that I'm making and not just
saying well this is what I have and
that's all I get
there's nothing wrong with that either
right but it's for you to have some fun
exploring some of these sounds ok so
those are a couple things that I'd like
you to think about a little bit and and
see if you can utilize if you like that
kind of sound and you're more of a hard
rock or metal player see if you can
utilize those in your playing a little
bit you can always check out my course
my guitar course and see if that helps
you a little bit in moving the bar up
even further and giving you some
confidence in being able to choose the
right answer right away right so if
you're with other people or you're
jamming you know in whatever situation
you might be in knowing when to play the
right the right scale you know if you're
like me you know you wind up playing
with a lot of different people using a
lot of different things so sometimes
you're in major sometimes you're in
minor
sometimes you're playing blues sometimes
you're playing rock and it's just nice
to know what's going to work when you're
in that situation so you don't play the
wrong thing
so anyway take care hopefully this helps
you a little bit stay positive in your
practice and we'll talk to you soon