Have you ever wondered how the great guitar players like Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn and others seem to pull off amazing guitar solos without breaking a sweat?
How they absolutely dominate the fretboard, shredding up and down and every direction with careless abandon…?
If they had to think about every single note they played, you’d see smoke coming out of their ears onstage!
The truth is, once you’ve learned a guitar scale pattern, you will no longer need to think about individual notes. Your brain kicks into a whole new dimension, and things that you previously had to agonize over now become as automatic as brushing your teeth. You’ll be able to compose new riffs and solos on the spot…
I know… ‘house pattern’ sounds pretty weird. But I could have just as easily have told you only that I’m looking at a house, and you would intuitively have known that it had a door, windows, roof, etc.
That’s because you’re familiar with the overall concept of a house, so I don’t even need to talk about the facts of the house!
The good news for us guitar players is that there are scale patterns all over the guitar. By mastering those patterns we can learn a whole chunk of notes all at once, rather than one at a time. In my playing, I mostly use only three main scale patterns that let me cover the entire guitar neck.
Then I take it a step further, and use a couple of connecting scale patterns to make them all flow together into one seamless solo.
Are there more patterns than this? Of course. There are probably hundreds of patterns on the guitar, and I don’t know of anyone that has completely categorized every single one. But these ones that I use and teach give me full access to the guitar, with minimal memorization.
I first picked up a guitar more than 15 years ago. However, personally I found that my guitar playing really started taking off once I began identifying the patterns that exist on the fretboard. It takes all the complicated theory right out of the equation!
Does that mean you don’t need theory? Of course not! Theory is critical to your guitar playing. But I’ve found that by relating to theory in terms of patterns, my brain is able to act on information far faster and more accurately than if I only think about the theory.
As I began to recognize the power of these guitar scale patterns, I began looking at them more closely, and to my great satisfaction, as I identified more patterns on the fretboard, my playing took off to a whole new level!
Most beginner to intermediate guitar players that I’ve met have been trained, intentionally or otherwise, to be glorified jukeboxes. Yeah, I know, that’s going to get a lot of people hot under their collars, but it’s the truth.
What do I mean by that? Simply that many guitarists have a small arsenal of guitar licks and tricks that sound really cool, but at the end of the day they don’t have any understanding of WHY those licks and tricks work, and why they sound so cool. As a result, they have trouble adapting them to different situations and styles of playing. This type of player usually knows quite a few songs, and can play them pretty well… and perhaps you find yourself in this position too… but they long for a deeper understanding of their guitar. They long to be able to get creative on their own, and come up with their own licks, riffs, and melodies!
I’m not going to insult your intelligence by promising that after watching my lesson you’ll suddenly begin riffing-out like Eric Clapton while sleep-walking around the house in your pajamas. Or find yourself partying like a rock star after watching 20 minutes of my lessons. That would just be silly – it takes hard work to truly master your guitar. BUT – I believe that fretboard mastery is within reach of anyone with a working set of fingers and the willingness to learn.
If you can master just one of the simplest patterns that I will show you, I will guarantee that you will begin to see a marked difference in your playing ability.
If you’re ready to break out of the mold, and learn how to truly play anywhere you want on the fretboard – in any key – then the lesson on guitar scale patterns that I’ve recorded was created with you in mind.
You see, once I saw the power of this pattern-based approach to learning the fretboard, I decided to create a guitar lesson to share these golden nuggets of guitar goodness. This knowledge is so powerful, I really believe this can be the key that unlocks your ability to play anywhere you want on the guitar…
Most people learn easier and faster face to face, rather than from a book. With that in mind, this is a straight up video-based guitar lesson. It’s 2 full hours – 122 minutes – of pure content. This is as close to a one on one guitar lesson as you can get without physically going to a studio somewhere.
Seriously though – I’ve condensed the most essential guitar scale patterns into a handful of handy cheat sheets, all color coded so that you can see the patterns at a glance, and how they relate to the bigger picture.
These bonus cheat sheets will give you a visual representation of the fretboard. Print them off and keep them in your guitar case!
In addition, at the end of the video training, I give close up video examples of how each pattern is played so you can be sure your practicing is on target. These short videos are the perfect companion for the Cheat Sheets.
Ideas will… Read more…