Don’t be a prisoner of the pentatonic box. Time to break out!
Beginner
Beginner
• Create blazing pentatonic licks that span the entire neck.
• Understand how to move a motif through the scale.
• Learn how to develop variations on simple licks.
Let’s start with a simple idea in Ex. 1. It consists of four sixteenth-notes from the A minor pentatonic scale (A–C–D–E–G) in the 5th position. Once you get this phrase under your fingers, the rest of the lesson will come together nicely. The picking I use for this lick is a downstroke followed by a pull-off, another downstroke, and then one upstroke. I’ve seen many people start with an upstroke and change it up. It’s your call.
Now that you have the idea let’s break out and head up the neck. In Ex. 2, we move to the 8th position. If you want to think in terms of the pentatonic scale, we are moving each note in the motif up to the next available scale tone, with the same picking pattern. Put the two ideas together and start playing them two times each. We are going to keep going up.
Ex. 3 is based out of the 10th position and begins with a C on the 2nd string. Experiment with fingerings on each one of these. It helps to have a few different ways to come in and out of each escape route.
For Ex. 4, Ex. 5, and Ex. 6 we continue up the pentatonic scale. Learn how to visualize the scale that surrounds each fragment—it will help considerably when putting these into practice. Also, notice that Ex. 6 feels very familiar. It’s our original motif transposed up an octave.
Now it’s time to put everything we’ve learned so far together. In Ex. 7, I’ve written out a longer lick that connects each of our previous examples. As you can hear in the audio, I’ve taken liberties with the phrasing by ghosting some notes and palm-muting others. These come out naturally in my playing, but find the ideas and concepts that pop out in your playing and lean into them. That’s a major step in finding your own sound.
You’ve now made it through five different escape routes moving through five positions of the A minor pentatonic scale. In the heat of a gig you can pull any one of these out as a “repeater” that works up the crowd (think of all those fast licks in “Freebird”) or as a way to seamlessly transition to a different pentatonic box.
I altered our original motivic pattern for Ex. 8. I took our exact phrase from Ex. 1 and expanded it on the second repeat by reaching up and grabbing the A with my pinky. Yes, it’s a stretch, but it allows you to squeeze yet another variation out of this lick. Don’t worry, when you try this out with the previous licks it’s a bit easier since the frets are closer together.
Now, imagine you’re stepping out front to rip a dozen or so choruses on an over-caffeinated version of “Train Kept A-Rollin’” when you bust out Ex. 9, which is simply a “repeater” version of Ex. 8. And the crowd goes wild.
These have been heard in everything from Southern rock to metal and nearly everything in between. Make sure to practice these evenly with a metronome and experiment with them on other string sets and in other keys. Escaping from the box is something we all need to do at various points in our journey. Use this newfound freedom for good. You’ll be glad you did!
Beginner
Beginner
- Develop a better sense of muting with both hands.
- Understand to play within a rhythmic pocket.
- Learn what it takes to riff like James Hetfield.
Open-string notes are arguably the most magical sounding notes available on the guitar. However, there are times when those are precisely the notes we don’t want to hear. We might only want to hear the strings directly beneath our fingers. That’s where muting comes in. It’s equal parts sleight-of-hand magic and surgical precision, but mostly it’s just the result of a clever approach to technique.
What is Palm Muting?
The most common style of muting is palm muting, where you place the side of your palm against the string close to the bridge to achieve a more chunky, percussive sound. One of the absolute masters of palm muting is Metallica’s James Hetfield. In this video below, check out how tight he is with the muting.
The fretting hand has some muting responsibilities as well. It’s in charge of keeping things clean on the fretboard and allow the picking hand to make larger motions if necessary. That will be our focus here. I want to show you how to keep your strumming hand moving while preventing any unnecessary noises—or pollution.
The funkiest rhythm players—Prince, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Nile Rodgers, Al McKay, Jimmy Nolan, Cory Wong—know all about this. Jazzers like Wes Montgomery and George Benson use fretting-hand muting extensively in their brilliant octave work as well.
The basics of the technique amount to laying the portions of your fingers that you’re not using across the remaining strings in order to keep them quiet. Not silent. Just quieter. You’ll hear a percussive attack across the string in addition to the notes that are being played.
Ex. 1 is a deceptively tricky technique that looks and sounds way easier than it really is. Even when you’re playing single notes, all the strings are being strummed the entire time. Take a listen.
Ex. 2 consists of our utilitarian A minor blues (A–C–D–Eb–E–G) scale. While this will be played one note at a time, we’re strumming all the strings so that we hear the intended note as well as a strong percussive sound alongside it. This makes for a big tone and, by constantly strumming alternating up and down strokes, it allows you to stay firmly in the rhythmic pocket. It’s almost like organic quantizing: You can’t play out of time because the strumming hand always chugs along in time with the basic groove, be it an eighth-note shuffle, a 16th-note funk—whatever. First, let’s hear the scale being picked one string at a time.
Ex. 3 features the blues scale with each note played as consecutive 16th-notes using alternate strumming. This is the most basic form of this technique. Practice this ascending as well as descending through the scale. Focusing on one pair or even a single string can be helpful in clean execution.
The purpose behind using this method of muting is to make your notes have more authority: Own what you play. It also allows your playing, whether melodic or rhythmic, to sit in a serious pocket. The same groove that you infuse in your best chordal rhythm playing is injected into single-note or octave playing too.
Ex. 4 features the lead part playing octaves on the 5th and 3rd strings. How many times have you heard this? Think: Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Foo Fighters—it’s a long list.
Another classic use of this technique can be found in the Michael Jackson hit “Billie Jean.” The driving octaves playing the 5 of the chord make for an effective part where the song goes to the IVm chord (Ex. 5). Once you get the hang of using this muting technique, your drummer friends will see you as much more of a rhythmic ally.
The quarter-note comping over a Bb blues in Ex. 6 features most of the strings being muted via the fretting hand while the strumming hand focuses on laying down a strong backbeat rhythm. You can use not only your fretting-hand’s fingers but also your thumb over the top to mute the 6th string. Remember to lean into beats 2 and 4. This works with an overdriven blues tone or on steel-string acoustic when going for more of a hot club jazz manouche vibe.
Hopefully you’re grasping the many uses and contexts in which this valuable, yet surprisingly under-utilized, technique can be employed. It takes practice to get it right but it pays you back in major dividends. Other players will be looking at your amp and pedalboard to see how you get such an amazing tone—but it’s your fingers, as usual, that hold the secret.
Pioneering player and technical innovator Les Paul is a pivotal figure in music history for a lot more than his namesake Gibson. Here’s a look at a few of his most well-known licks.
Chops: Intermediate Theory: Intermediate Lesson Overview: • Develop an understand of basic harmony guitar parts. • Learn how Les used blistering legato runs. • Understand how to outline changes with arpeggios. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation. |
It's impossible to imagine modern music without Les Paul's monumental contributions. It's not hyperbole to say that he's the father of multitrack recording. His pioneering work on the electric guitar itself is legendary. After all, is there a more famous signature model guitar than the Les Paul itself? In addition, we have his considerable influence as a virtuosic electric guitar hero in the 1950s, when he was heard all over the pop charts in his duets with Mary Ford. In this lesson, we'll look at the elements of his style that made him a perennial favorite for countless guitarists that would become guitar heroes themselves.
Let's begin with a famous, intro figure like Paul used on his hit “How High the Moon." This part is comprised of voicings that are fairly straightforward—though here they're being played up in the stratosphere. The blues-inflected double-stops are also hallmarks of Les Paul's style and crop up in many of his solos, so you'll want to have those under your belt as well. The key of G used in Ex. 1 is the more common choice for Les Paul (and others) in his post-Les Pal and Mary Ford years, but the original was two frets higher, in the key of A.
Click here for Ex. 1
Les Paul loved sequences. He could take a simple motivic idea and effortlessly move it through a scale. In Ex. 2, a three-note pattern is shifted down the G major scale (G–A–B–C–D–E–F#). This is the kind of thing he might have picked up from early jazz guitarists, such as his heroes Eddie Lang and Django Reinhardt.
Click here for Ex. 2
You need to know your arpeggios to get a handle on Les Paul's style. In this jazzy lick (Ex. 3), the notes of a G major chord are approached by half-step. It doesn't take long to notice that Paul had a strong command of two- and three-octave arpeggios all over the guitar.
Click here for Ex. 3
Les Paul used sweeping gestures like Ex. 4 quite often, and when he did, he was particularly fond of minor and minor 7 shapes. Notice that there's an Em arpeggio (E–G–B) in the middle of this lick. However, it sounds like a G6 idea because he superimposes the Em triad over the G major triad (G–B–D), yielding the G6 sound (G–B–D–E).
Click here for Ex. 4
Les Paul is a hard player to classify because, while he was playing popular music of his day, his licks run the gamut from Django-style jazz to hillbilly country to barroom blues, as shown in this unison sliding lick (Ex. 5) that everyone just has to know.
Click here for Ex. 5
Ex. 6 is classic Les Paul: virtuosic and flashy. You need a host of repetitive hammer-on/pull-off figures like this in your arsenal. These licks were heard in every '50s household—it's no wonder this kind of lead work appears in the very best classic rock playing of Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. Play it as fast as you can!
Click here for Ex. 6
Paul was expert at blending the flamboyant with the clever. This bluesy progression in Bb wouldn't strike most of us as being an ideal vehicle for using open strings—at all. Key of A? Well, sure. G? Bring it on! But Les Paul devises an ingenious usage of the open strings that allows for virtuosic playing that still make the changes (Ex. 7).
Click here for Ex. 7
Here's a short solo (Ex. 8) that demonstrates Paul's tender ballad playing. He excelled at delicate tremolo bar work for both pitch change and subtle vibrato. We have another example of his wide-ranging arpeggio playing in measure 3. And you can't fully grasp his style without double-stop fourths (the F# and B sliding to A and D). He used these often—in both lead work and accompaniments.
Click here for Ex. 8
Overdubs, overdubs, and more overdubs. We can't discuss Les Paul without confronting his unique multi-tracking work. The complexity of his arrangements, from “Lover" to “Mandolino," particularly in the light of brand-new technology he pioneered, were as remarkable as they were groundbreaking. In 2021, anyone with a laptop and even the most modest audio recording programs can attempt Les Paul's overdubbing style, but imagine trying to do it by syncing up bunch of acetate disk recording machines or a host of reel-to-reel tape recorders!
In this example (Ex. 9), there's a simple A–E–E–A chord progression with a basic melody. This tune is harmonized by a second guitar playing a harmony note along with melody itself in double-stops. OK, that's straightforward enough, but now it gets a little trickier: How did Les Paul get all those super-high virtuoso parts?
If you take your basic track and play it back at half speed, and then record new guitar parts over it, you'll enter Les Paul's dreamland. Double the speed (and thus pitch) of your new overdubs and put them on top of the regular speedbasic tracks and … magic! The newly added guitar parts sound blazing fast and an octave higher.
Click here for Ex. 9
Even with this cursory look at Les' licks you can hear how these have developed into clichés over the last 50 or so years. Although we lost Les in 2009, his fiery playing and personality were on display until the very end. After working through this lesson, I'd recommend digging more into his albums, especially Chester and Lester and Guitar Monsters—both with the great Chet Atkins.