Simple ways to improve your blues phrasing when improvising on guitar - Blues guitar lesson EP420

all right so this lesson we're going to be talking about phrasing blues phrasing in particular so we have a blues composition that we're going to be playing here in a minute which is a standalone minor key very slow and simple and i think you're really going to like it but before i got into that i just wanted to just mention to those you that feel like you're overwhelmed by trying to learn how to play and feel like there's so many good players out there and every time you see it it's frustrating this is a good lesson for you because we're going to be focusing on the emotional side of it this is not about being a technical player it's really more of a headspace than anything so i'm just going to be sharing some of the things that i've learned through the years and little things that i've picked up on that can really help improve your phrasing so by the end of this i i think you're going to walk away with a whole new set of ideas and if you haven't seen any of my videos before my name is brian and i have a website called activemelody.com and it's 10 years worth of in-depth lessons just like this one which are all designed to help you become better at improvising jamming on the guitar writing your own music that's really what they're all geared towards and it's the good stuff the roots kind of stuff you know old school country and and rock and blues and that kind of thing none of the cheesy you know kind of metal stuff that's just really not my thing and probably not yours if you're watching this so if you're interested in that style of music check out active melody but in this video we're going to break down the composition which i'm about to play we're going to break it all down note for note i'll share all of my phrasing ideas and if you want to get the extra material like the tablature which you can print out and access later or access to the on-screen tab viewer which is interactive you can highlight sections and loop it and have all of that you can get those things by going to activemelody.com go to the weekly lessons page and do a search for ep420 [Music] all right so the first thing i want to say regarding phrasing is sometimes it's the things that you don't play which say the most so phrasing is all about uh you know making little statements and telling a story and bringing emotion into your playing it's not about being the fastest gunslinger in the west you know there's a time and a place for that but most of us that's only a top you know the top one percent of guitar players that get to that level of being super technical they have all the god-given talent you know that good ear they've got the right tendons their fingers are long enough and all of that i'm not talking about those people i'm talking about the rest of us and i'm not a very technical player myself i know how to express myself with a guitar and i know what my limits are and i do try and push them i mean you should always try and push yourself a little bit but i've it's taken me years to become comfortable in in that space and so one of the first things i noticed that when this is listening to albert king bb king is probably the best actually uh but if you listen to the pro players jimmy vaughan he's another one i just love but listen to the way that they phrase things they'll make statements you know but it's not a run-on sentence it's just a [Music] it's simple but as a listener i can hear that and i can feel comfortable it doesn't feel uh make me anxious as a listener it's actually a great story and i want to hear more of that story so you have to remember as a player when when you're learning to phrase things that you're telling a story and so it takes the pressure off you you don't have to try and impress somebody with with you know burning up and down a scale anymore now you have to try and think about a different way of impressing someone and that's to tell a really meaningful story and sometimes just a single note [Music] that kind of thing can can really turn heads more than somebody that's going all over the place and just remember it's a good thing to stop and pause a vocalist does that they stop and they catch their breath before they go on to the next phrase you should do the same thing you're singing with your fingers when you're playing lead and so when you're working on these phrases [Music] you hear that it's is technical there at all i'm just minor pentatonic scale playing a few notes we're going to go through all this here in a minute but i just wanted to start off by saying it's okay to pause the other little point i wanted to make and then i'm going to reiterate these points as we break this down is it's okay to repeat yourself just remember that it's okay to repeat phrases repeat licks even as you're doing them for example little triplets like that i mean how many blues songs have you heard with that kind of thing in it right this kind of thing go back to it again or repeat it again a lot of uh i see a lot of beginner players that don't they're not taking advantage of that and it's because you're nervous when you're when you're just getting into it you're especially if you have an audience and you know people you haven't played for your maybe you're trying to impress somebody or trying to even impress yourself i don't know but you get nervous and when you get nervous it's kind of like even when you're talking you just tend to have you know ramble on like i do sometimes i get nervous when i put on these cameras but but that's what happens is we tend to ramble and we do that when we're playing but you have to remember stop take a breath repeat yourself that's okay it's okay to go back and repeat looks like that and phrases like that all right so let's break down this song now this song is an a minor and there's three chords in it there's an a minor which is your one chord think of it as a minor one chord the four chord is a d minor it's a minor four chord so minor one minor four and then the the five chord is major and it's an e it's an e seven in fact so we have an a minor a d minor and an e seven and that's what we're playing over very basic structure but the first thing i want to talk about is you need to know the three minor chord voicings there's three main ones now i realize when we get into triads you can play them all over the place but let's just simplify this let's not make it complicated there's three main minor chord voicings that you you definitely need to know and this will totally change your your playing if you if you don't know these this is going to be a major breakthrough but let's think about the chords down in first position those first chords we learned g chord c chord d if we think about the three minor chords you learn in first position you learn an e minor right then you learn an a minor and then what's the other one it's a d minor so the reason i'm showing you those is everything that i'm going to be playing and actually every minor chord that you play up and down the neck is some version of those three chords the e minor shape the a minor shape and the d minor shape now the one thing with the d minor shape that makes a little different than this for example where we have just three fingers here is i use four fingers when i'm doing this so i play a d minor shape with my pinky on the third fret second string instead like that so that i can put my ring finger on the third fret fourth string and this note is just a repeat of this note so you're just doubling it up it just fattens up the chord and by adding that ring finger it just makes it easier to slide that chord around all right so those are the three minor chord shapes the main ones now that means if i were to go from an e minor to an f minor for example i just slide everything up i bar with my index finger where the nut was so i'm obviously caponing with my finger that's an f minor there's a g minor and so forth you can see how that works right same is true with the a minor you're just going to have to bar where the nut was so that means we can play these you know these shapes these three shapes down first position anywhere on the neck so why am i saying all this well we're gonna go back to this song now so this song is in a minor and so the first thing i want you to do just to get familiar with this let's look at the three a minor chords that we can make using those three shapes we just talked about well here's the first one which is the bar on the fifth fret and that's using the e minor shape and then if i come up here i'm playing an a minor using the d minor shape and then if i come all the way up here to the 12th fret and now we're to bar and play that's hard to do so i'm just going to play the top three of that the triad there that's an a minor up here using the a minor shape so hopefully you understand where those a minors are coming from e minor shape d minor shape a minor shape all right so now that you have those three minor chord voicings now we're going to connect the minor pentatonic scale to those chord voicings you know how you have the different patterns of your minor pentatonic scale you can connect those patterns back to these voicings so the e minor shape we have pattern one [Music] hopefully you can see how this a minor chord here using that e minor shape fits into minor pentatonic scale pattern one so what that means when we're playing these licks is i can be connecting them to chord shapes so i can i can go back and forth between a lick and the chord it's all right there in the same neighborhood same is true up here when i come up to this the d minor shape you but playing the a minor i've got pattern two of the minor pentatonic right and so really what that's doing is kind of i mean if you think of the chord shapes that's just what an arpeggio is arpeggio is just the notes in the chord so you're really connecting the arpeggio to the the minor pentatonic scale but it gives you a nice framework same up here you've got your pattern four right and then you've got your a minor up here using the a minor shape all right so now we have all the background information out of the way let's break down this song so i started this on the five chord which is an e7 and i played it like that now this e7 chord here is just like playing a c chord if we take our c chord but slide it up so that your ring finger is on the seventh fret but then put your pinky down on the seventh fret third string and play the middle strings you're not playing the high uh one string there but that's what i played actually i i did hit the low six string open e so i started with that and then [Music] right into the a minor pentatonic scale now most of this is going to be minor pentatonic scale mixed with these chords so [Music] let's look at this lick sli uh barring the first two strings here on the fifth fret one two and then we're gonna go seventh fret fifth fret on the third string and then seven five on the fourth string and then we land on the seventh fret uh fourth string now the note you land on or highlight is also very important and you're going to want to make sure you're landing on one of the notes in the chord right that's that's the general rule of thumb just any of these notes and there's only three in a minor chord it's the one the flat three and the five of the major scale so any of these notes are going to work if you land on the root note or the a note which is in these two spots it's going to sound probably the best the next best would be playing the third or that flat third rather which would be this you can land on that which we're going to do but that's the opening leg and then i went and played the a minor chord right there and i played it using that e minor shape what's nice about this is there's really no open string so you could play this in any key right in fact once you learn this i would encourage you to do that to transpose it all right and then the next like goes all right another little simple phrase just a simple little statement so again minor pentatonic scale pattern one starting on the fifth fret second string and then we go seventh fret third string full bend and then i hit the fifth fret first string and i used my ring finger for that so i've got the bar there on the first two strings in the fifth fret and i went [Music] now you could pick that first string if you want but i find it easier to pick on the third string and pluck the first string and then watch this so that's a bend and release on the seventh fret third string and then a pull off so that i can play that fifth fret third string remember i said you can land on the notes and the chord that would be landing on the flat third but but this is like an albert king technique where when you're playing that note and you hit the vibrato [Music] you can push that a little sharp because you're going into the major you're not going all the way but just it just gives it enough of a an uneasy feeling it really works in a minor chord so that leg goes and then i went and came down and hit the a minor down here [Music] you could play it up here too if you want all right so this next phrase sounds like this all right let's learn this [Music] now where this is coming from would be an a minor add 9. so this is another thing i should mention when i talked about connecting the the chord shapes the a minor chord shapes to the pentatonic scale that's true but you can also connect any other version of a minor chord so you could do an a minor nine an a minor seven an a minor six you know there's all these different variations um and so what i'm doing here is and it's called an a minor add9 i just love that sound in fact i ended this song with that sound it's kind of an uneasy thing but this note would be the nine that'd be like the if we're going through the the minor scale we would go up to the ninth interval it would be that note and so when i played [Music] and and landed on that note and sort of focused on that note that's why is because i was connecting it in my mind to this minor nine sound chord okay so it's fifth fret second string eighth fret second string fifth fret first string then we go to the minor nine there which is the the add nine rather seventh fret uh first string so this is how i do it as i play it and i slide up a fret to the eighth fret and then back to the seventh fret and then do a pull off to the fifth fret so all of that was picked once [Music] now i see other players do this kind of thing like this so they're doing like a pull or a hammer on pull off pull off it just depends on what's easiest for you if that's too difficult just skip it go that would be fine too you know don't let one little technical thing throw you know throw you off completely or shut you down rather always work towards it i'm not saying just bypass something if it's too difficult but but don't let it stop you from finishing a song right okay after that i slid up into pattern two of the minor pentatonic scale and played another a note but we're playing it now on the tenth fret second string and then eighth fret second string and then watch this this is middle finger on the ninth fret third string index finger on the eighth fret second string and this is blues 101 this is the the pattern two of the minor pentatonic scale but this little harmonized third here you hear that all the time in blue triplets it's used single node like we're doing here lots of different uses for it but just know where that is uh in relation to your you know pattern one or pattern two however you can see it but just you can use that and you let that be a go-to thing that you know back to our phrasing ideas first of all like i said it's okay to repeat a night [Music] a phrase but just get this into your vocabulary so if you ever get lost when you're soloing it's a great go-to uh you know until you can get your head and head back in gear that's what i do i have a lot of little spots in the neck that i can go to when i get lost and it happens all the time okay [Music] so that's how we conclude this [Music] so we're playing just strings three and two there and using that little shape and then sliding back into pattern one seventh fret third string fifth fret and then down to the seventh fret fourth string and while that note rings out which is an a i hit the a on the fifth fret first string that's a very common blues lick [Music] it works for a minor song and for a major right and you hear that a lot of chicago blues it's even in delta blues it sounds really good with over really heavy overdriven guitar as well okay let's take it from the beginning and play up to that point [Music] all right so now the song goes to the d minor which is our minor iv chord and so what i played to get into that was so let me let's look at that seventh fret fourth string strings two and three on the fifth fret and then we're sliding back into that same lick that we were just playing now i'm using my middle finger ring finger to do that that's that pattern two bottom part of pattern two right same thing so but then i'm gonna slide that down two frets now some of you're going wait why this note that's not in in your minor pentatonic scale pattern one [Music] and you're right it's not but it's in the d minor chord so look we're playing the d minor chord like this using the a minor shape you're seeing if i play just strings three and two [Music] these two notes ah okay so what i'm doing is i'm highlighting the notes in the chord right [Music] and then i slide it up and then back into the chord this is a minor uh little a minor chord trick you can remember going forward anytime you're playing a minor chord it doesn't matter if it's over the one quarter the four chord you can always slide up two frets this direction towards the body of the guitar and then back down with that minor chord using any of those voicings i just showed you okay so what i mean like if i was playing an a minor here right and then you go to the four chord [Music] right it's a great little vamp and then to get us back into the a minor from that d minor i went right little kind of uh aggressive lick kind of fits into the phrasing thing where it goes back into the emotional part of it i'm just you know i'm not doing anything [Music] technical but i wanted to throw that in just to give you ideas so i'm just doing a bend you know it's nothing elaborate with my left hand my right hand is just doing down strokes picking string three there so seventh fret third string and where i'm at mentally in terms of scale as i'm back in minor pentatonic scale pattern one right even though the song was still transitioning to that one chord you can go ahead and play ahead of the chord a little bit this happens all the time in in when you're playing lead so after i played the bin release fifth fret third string seventh fret fourth string seventh fret third string so you can see my ring finger covered both of those strings back to the fifth fret third string and then you land on the seventh fret fourth string so actually it was a half bend when i did it wasn't a full bend sounds a little more uh more bluesy or aggressive when you just do a half bin [Music] just practice that i remember having a hard time doing that when i learned to do but you can do it in 15 minutes if you just keep practicing this kind of thing until you get comfortable with it [Music] and then play your little a minor thing there let's back it up from the beginning and play up to that point [Music] foreign [Music] and then the next lick was [Music] albert king kind of lick we're back in minor pentatonic scale pattern one just barring strings one and two on the fifth fret that's kind of chuck berry right [Music] that's a another must-know area so you've got up here and then you got this in terms of playing two notes two strings at once um this is just another one you gotta know fifth fret first string uh and second string at the same time and i went so slid into it on the second string one two and then eighth fret first string back to the fifth fret first string [Music] so [Music] all right now the sun goes to the five chord and i went [Music] right into the e so i'm now dropped down to the second string still minor pentatonic scale pattern one but i'm in uh um i start on the fifth fret second string i come up to the eighth fret full bend release and then it did a pull off down to the fifth fret um second string now this note is a must must-know note you have to think about this note anytime you're playing a blues and you're going to the five chord this note get it in your head from your minor pentatonic scale pattern one so when you're in pattern one this note that's your that's the note for your five chord also an octave lower down here so you've got the two spots so you can do whatever you want but try and land a resolve on that note [Music] right so that's why that sounds so good because i'm playing the e note and then i go into the v chord which is the e [Music] okay so um [Music] so once i hit that then i hit the low e which is the open sixth string and then this is another blues lick that you gotta know most of you know this probably by now but you play your e chord and then just take your index finger off play the open third string and hammer it on it sounds so cool and then you can do an upstroke on the open e string from the one string pinky on the third fret second string to give you an e7 alright so you have how bluesy is that it doesn't get any more bluesy than that and then we go back to the four chord [Music] and i just slid into pattern one for a minute seventh fret fourth string fifth fret third string seventh fret third string slide up to the ninth fret third string and then watch this now i'm back into the chord shape this is why i started off this this thing breaking down these chord chains it's your d minor chord but i'm playing the triad just the top three strings you gotta know this it's easy to play because it's a little stair step fifth fret first string uh sixth fret second string seventh fret third string but know where that comes from that triad it's your a minor shape you're just playing the top three strings and like i said before you can take your minor chord and go up two frets this direction so that's what i was doing just rocking back and forth going up two frets and then watch this i came all the way up here 12th fret first string 13th fret second string 14th fret third string what is that pause the video if you don't know and just pause it right now and work that out figure out what's going on there well i went back to the a minor chord right we went back to the one chord so that's your a minor just the top three strings of it and there's this is used inside like the uh what is the john male song [Music] you know that has that lick in it right but now you know where that lick comes from it's just the minor chord you're just picking the notes out of it out of that triad but how cool does that sound robert cray uses that and i'm just you know playing the chord but giving that vibrato so i played the a minor and then i went came back down into the kind of the muddy waters like down so that's seventh fret third string this is just minor pentatonic scale pattern one band and release pull off and then seventh fret uh fourth string and then i hit the open one string and then watch this that's how i ended it how cool is that that ending there just because of that chord the chord is what makes it that's the a minor add 9 that we talked about when i played that note right there so it's just an a minor chord but i've got my pinky on the seventh fret first string and then i slid that down one fret and slid into it and that's really the whole composition and now you have something you can sit down and practice with you don't have to get on a jam track and so that's why i put this together is to give you something that you can just think about the phrasing think about the fact that you're playing a then you're stopping right none of it is very technical it's very straightforward from from a technical standpoint but hopefully you understand these chord shapes you can see them now you can see the pentatonic scales are connected to them it gives you options for playing and improvising all right i hope you've enjoyed that if you haven't subscribed to my youtube channel i would encourage you to do that you can just hit the subscribe button and then click that alert bell then you can be notified when i put out new lessons like this which i do every week alright we'll see you next week for something new you

Channel: Active Melody

Views: 345,973

Keywords: blues lead phrasing, blues phrasing guitar, guitar phrasing, guitar lead phrasing, blues guitar lesson, guitar lesson phrasing, phrasing guitar tutorial, improvise guitar, how to improvise guitar, online guitar lesson, blues guitar tutorial, online guitar teacher, music education, guitar education, blues guitar education

Id: BlDdmGg8HbE

Length: 30min 10sec (1810 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 03 2021