Steve Stine Guitar Podcast

Fretboard Mastery for Creating Dynamic Guitar Solos

• Steve Stine

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Ever struggled to make your guitar solos soar? Look no further, because in this musical masterclass, I'll guide you through linking scales to chords to ensure your solos are always on point. We start by examining the A minor chord and its best friend, the A minor pentatonic scale. I'll show you how to accentuate chord tones, like the root note A, crafting solos that dance perfectly with the chord progressions. As we encounter new chords, I unveil strategies for navigating these changes, such as when to emphasize different notes within the same scale or when it might be time to switch scales to match the harmonic shifts. All of this comes alive on the fretboard, where I demonstrate how to glide from A minor to G major pentatonic scales without missing a beat.

But what about those tricky non-diatonic progressions that threaten to throw you off your game? Fear not! I break down the process of playing over chords that don't fit neatly within one key. You'll learn how to stay flexible and move along the fretboard, experimenting with different positions whether you're shifting from A minor to G minor or A minor to A flat minor. Starting with simple exercises, you'll build the confidence to expand your soloing vocabulary and approach each progression with a positive mindset. So, grab your guitar, and let's get your solos flying high above the fretboard with finesse and musicality.

Tune in now and learn more!

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Links:

Check out Steve's Guitar Membership and Courses: https://bit.ly/3rbZ3He

Steve:

When you're learning how to solo, learning how to connect to the chords and the changes that are happening becomes really, really important. There's a lot of different ways that you can do this. What I want to do today is just show you a really easy way that you can approach this if you know a little bit about your scales. So let's go ahead and get started started.

Steve:

All right, so let's start off with something very straightforward, like the A minor and the A minor pentatonic scale.

Steve:

It's okay if you don't know this stuff great or you're not really fast at it or anything, it's perfectly fine. But that's what we'll start with is just understanding. We have a chord and we have a scale that corresponds to that chord. Now, if you know other scales, you obviously you can use all kinds of different things, but let's just start nice and easy here. So we have a minor and then we have the a minor pentatonic, all right. So let me switch camera angles here. So let's say we have something change. Let's say we have a chord come up something else. So let's say the next chord that comes up in the sequence is this G, all right. So what are we going to do about that? Well, there's a couple things that we could do. If we were in A minor and let's say we know some of the notes that we're actually playing inside this A minor pentatonic, which the notes we'd be playing would be A, c, d, e and G, okay. So over this A minor chord, we might be directing our movement toward the note A, which makes sense. And again, it's okay if you're not fast at this or anything like that, but you get the idea. So, over the A minor chord, I'm directing my motion toward A. Now that would mean I need to know where A is. I'd need to know I have an A here and here, and certainly here, and maybe you know, you could bend this note and get an A, you know, whatever. So here comes the G chord. So what are we going to do over that G?

Steve:

Well, we have a couple things we could do. We could stay in A minor and simply try and move ourselves toward the note G Right there. So we could stay in A minor but move to the G. So we have this A See, and then I move myself toward the A again, and it works really great to do something like that. But there are some other options depending on how comfortable you are with what you're learning on the guitar. One thing that we could do is, over this, a minor Again, play in A minor, like we just did, a minor pentatonic. But when it goes to the G, we go to G major pentatonic and we solo in G major. Now I could play that here and that's perfectly fine and I could solo in there. But what I want to show you is I I'm gonna move to the next position right here, okay, instead of playing here.

Steve:

I'm gonna move up.

Steve:

And play in what I'll call the second position of G major pentatonic. So instead of playing it here, I'm gonna play over this position. Why? Because I'm putting the two positions in the same spot on the guitar. That way I have A minor play over this position. Why? Because I'm putting the two positions in the same spot on the guitar. That way I have A minor pentatonic here and G major pentatonic sitting right here, which would be 3, 5, 3, 5. Excuse me, 5, 7, 5, 7, 5, 7, 4, 7, 5, 8, and then 5, 7.

Steve:

And of course, my G would be right there. So I still want to know where my Gs are. I'd have a G down here, which is a bit out of the position, but it's there, okay. Then I'd have G there and G there, okay. So what happens is because I'm playing a different scale, the notes are a little different, so I have A minor.

Steve:

G and especially this note right, because when we were playing A minor, pentatonic I was playing this note, which is C Okay if you don't know that, but that's what that is and when I was playing G major, I was getting this note, which is B. So for me that becomes a really important note because the ear hears that and it responds to it. So if I'm playing A minor, then here comes G it sounds really nice, okay, and we could keep going with this idea. Let's say, we went to an F, okay.

Steve:

So now we had this position, the first position, then our second position would have been sitting right here, but now we want to be up here. So now I'm gonna move to what I would refer to as the third position of major pentatonic, and again, it's okay if you don't know this. So I'd be playing 5-, 8, 5, 8, 5, 7, 5, 7, 6, 8, and then 5, 8. And you can see why it's important to know these pentatonic positions. But I could put that over the top of so, over this, a minor.

Steve:

G E Okay.

Steve:

Now, if that seems way too much for you, take a step back to the first thing we talked about, where you could just stay in A minor pentatonic the entire time, but change the note that you're emphasizing. So when that G comes up, well, when A minor is being played, we go to A. When the G major comes up you go to G.

Steve:

But here's the discrepancy when F comes up, there's no F in this, a minor pentatonic. So we'd have to add it in and that's okay. We could just add that F in over that particular chord. Where this doesn't really work is when all of the chords that you're trying to play over are not part of the same key. We call it non-diatonic. So what I mean by that is, let's say you were playing something where you're playing A minor and then it goes to G minor instead of G major.

Steve:

Sometimes, when the chords start stepping outside a little bit, or, even weirder, we go from A minor to A flat minor. You see, you can't just stay in that position anymore and hope it all works out. You'd actually have to move a little bit, like we were talking about where I would follow that chord around. Okay, you don't have to follow the positions or anything. It just depends on what's comfortable for you, but it's something to think about. On what's comfortable for you, but it's something to think about.

Steve:

So what's most important here in this lesson is grab something of any of those ideas that makes the most sense to you and just explore them a little bit. You don't need 15 different chords. You might just use two chords, just A minor and G major, and just move back and forth between those and figure out what works best for you in what you can visualize, what you understand, and then also what is the next thing for you to work toward. All right, so take care, stay positive, do me a favor, like, share and subscribe to this. It always helps me out, and if you're looking for any guitar lesson materials, always head over to GuitarZoomcom and check out our all-access membership where you can get all of my guitar courses, my VIP lessons, all of sorts of things have.

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