Thursday, September 26, 2013

Guitar Lesson -- Turning Scales In to Licks

Licks are based either off of scales or arpeggiated chords. An arpeggio is a chord played note at a time. As far as scales are concerned, there's major scales, minor scales, pentatonic scales & blues scales. There is also what is called modal scale playing. But in the finish, they are still scales.

When playing lead guitar Effects pedals, it is not  to stand or sit there & play scales. You require to generate a library of "licks" that you can use in all keys.

How lots of people start out generating licks is to make use of the melody line of the song. You can do this in long melodic lines or short small blurbs of the melody line. Then start messing around with the melody -- again generating lines of long & short lengths & anything in between. Keep in mind that you have all of those scales as well as arpeggios at your disposal.

Start adding guitar tricks such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, string bending & double notes.

Keep in mind also, that in the event you are learning licks for an electric guitar, you have your amp to think about -- as well as any effects pedals you may have. Practice with all of this stuff. The sound is different then in the event you were playing "clean".

Now what you require to do is practice your new lick at a high register, a low register, & an in-between register. (High, low, mid-range tones).

Next practice any new lick that you generate in several other keys.

Practice the living daylights out of every lick you generate & look for new ways to expand on them. Keep trying to make them sound better. Try them out with different effects pedals.

Use your imagination, & build a massive library of licks that you can keep at your beck & call.

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