The BEST WAY to STOP Random Playing (and Instantly be More Musical)

when I learned the solo I learned the minor pentatonic scale and back in the dark ages of the 1970s that was great for learning all those Jimmy Page and Billy Gibbons licks but when I tried to play my own solos they sounded kind of random well today I'm going to show you what I think is the easiest and most enjoyable way of breaking that noodling habit [Music] yeah I found most of the time when I soloed especially when I improvised I was just noodling playing through scales randomly starting from nowhere and ending up nowhere at first I thought that if I learned all five of the pentatonic positions that might help but it didn't really help me all that much it just gave me more areas of the fretboard to Noodle over and then I thought maybe learning new scales would help so I learned the major scale and all of the modes all over the neck but that just gave me more notes to Noodle over so I finally decided I would try and find the source of the noodling and you know what it was I was just thinking hey what scale do I play and then ignoring the chords I figured as long as the chords were in the same key it didn't really matter I could just play over the scale and everything would work out you know what though that's pretty much the recipe for guitar noodles of course knowing something is not enough I actually had to find something to fix the noodling here's the simplest thing I came up with connect chords to scale sales I'll show you what I mean let's start with an e major scale with its root on the a string seventh fret as shown here there's a lot of notes here and you can noodle for a long time next let's take a look at the c-shaped E major chord again with its root on the a string seventh fret you can see it's shaped like an open c chord and now let's embed that c chord into that scale those are the notes that we want to hit so the basics are that you use the chord embedded in the scale to know where to land so instead of noodling like this instead of doing that you might do something more musical something like [Music] something like that but that in and of itself was not enough to get me to stop noodling over an entire solo so here's the real meat and potatoes of the method and believe me this did not come instantly to me even though it was obvious in retrospect so first we're going to take a look at an entire progression let's have a quick look and listen to the progression [Music] thank you and then it just repeats now one of the scales that works well over this progression is the a minor pentatonic so let's just use that but we're not just going to turn off our brains and wail over the scale let's map out the chords first we've got an A Minor we've got a C we've got a g we've got a D we've got an F we've got a g and we've got an A Minor this may seem overwhelming at first mapping all of the chords onto the same area of the scale but believe me after you do it maybe four or five times it gets a lot easier and the bonus is that you get to learn all these new corded versions so it makes your Rhythm play better now you may be concerned about playing all those chords because they're kind of difficult to finger but I often play just little pieces of those chords and it works out great here's a quick improvisation over the progression I'll break it down line by line afterward and I'll share a little secret with you that's going to make all of this a lot easier so make sure you watch it till the end foreign [Music] now let's quickly go over it line by line and I'll let you in on a little secret here's the first line [Music] you'll notice I end on a chord tone of the a minor chord and now here's the next line [Music] [Applause] you'll notice I play a double stop both of those tones are in the c major chord again a chord tone now over the G again that's a chord tone right chord tone of the G chord again I land on a chord tone this time of the D let's finish the progression now the last three chords give a rising action kind of like Freebird it'd be nice to put that in the solo so here's what I came up with over those three chords that's a chord tone of the f [Music] that's a chord tone of the G and then [Music] that's a little bit trickier because over that a minor I'm bending to an a note right there I'm not just playing it out right and then I'm playing a little bluesy lick to end it [Music] ending on an a as well on the D string seventh fret so that's the thing and your lines on chord tones now once you've mastered that feel free to break that rule but being able to end on chord tones you'll be amazed at how much control it gives you over your solos but now you might be thinking oh no do I really have to do that think about every chord that's too overwhelming and believe me I totally understand because that held me back for years but here's the secret and it's good news if you just do this four or five or in my case maybe 10 times I'm a little bit dense the magic starts to happen and the real magic doesn't happen on the fretboard it happens here your ears get a lot stronger you start to anticipate chord changes taking pauses where appropriate and voila your solos start to sound like music so do this and stop noodling and if you want to apply it to the blues and take it to a whole other level click here because in that video I show you how to make your blue solos a lot more interesting and a lot more fun to play so click here and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Mark Zabel

Views: 554,461

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Id: 5h-3Dq9yYb4

Length: 6min 53sec (413 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 01 2022