Lesson 4: Transitions

Back to the C major scale and soloing over it. 

 Looking at the scale below 

(which I've duplicated from the most excellent 'all scale looking thing' at all-guitar-chords.com and cut up into patterns below)

all-guitar-chords.com (right mouse and open image in another window to go LARGE)

If you are on the 5th fret and moving up and down in notes in Pattern 5 and you want to get up to the 12th fret and Pattern 3 you can just 'leap' up in there in a single bound like super'fecken'man or you could play other notes on the way up there.

A nice way I was shown to transition between these patterns was to hold 2 notes on the bottom (thinnest) 2 strings and play them at the same time (or close to the same time) and then play 2 more just up in the scale and repeat (with any variation you want) until you get up, or down, to where you want to be next.

Hopefully the image above helps to explain this (but I doubt it!).

Looking at the 5th fret you can hold the 5th fret bottom string and the 6th fret next string up and then ping those 2 notes together and slide or jump up to the 7th fret and then do it again.

You can see that sometimes your 2nd note is 2 frets up, not 1 - as you are trying to 

play notes that stay in the C major scale and sound 'nice' together.

I'll 'YouTube' this one at some point. 

It will take about 10 seconds of video to explain.

Lesson 4: (prequel) It is OK to suck

After listening to Jimmy Page and Billy Gibbons play guitar all weekend (and trying to learn some of it) I remember a HUGE penny dropping leap forward in learning to play Chess that helps me learn Guitar. 

Its OK to be shite at it and total failure is as good as success.

You need to LOVE being shite at it.

Embrace the crapness, the failure, the bung notes, the lack of understanding 

and LOVE it.

Wallow like a pig in shite in the failures.

And learn from it.

I wanted this blog to be about my lack of musical understanding (my diminished guitar reality) and my lessons to improve that.
Bring on the failures!