The Simple Way To Add Riffs & Licks Between Your Chord Changes - Guitar Lesson

most guitar players have a disconnect between their lead playing and their Rhythm playing when they want to play chords they go into Rhythm mode and then when they want to play a solo they go into lead mode in this video I'm going to show you how to flow between these two modes and start adding riffs and licks between your chord changes as always the fretboard diagrams in this lesson will be oriented to match my fretboard in the video if you do want the flip diagrams those will be available over on my patreon and if you like the videos I make here on YouTube and want to help support what I do here make sure you go check out my full length guitar course Listen and play where I'll teach you how to find the chords to any song by ear links to all of this stuff and more will be at the top of the description all right so if you've seen this video over here then you're going to be perfectly equipped to do just about everything we're going to learn in this lesson but if you haven't I'll go over this stuff really quickly right now so the main tool that we are going to be using to combine our lead and our Rhythm playing is something I call the chord road maps and all these are our major scales stretched horizontally across the low strings of the guitar and we do this so that we have all the root notes for our bar chords to be able to play in any key and not have to learn any new shapes so for example the chord road map for the key of G major would look like this we'd start on a g note down here and we' play G which is number one a which is number two B 3 C4 D number five E number 6 and then F which is number seven now each of these notes serves as the root note for our regular bar chords the ones that look like that there's the minor version and those are the ones that are rooted on the a string and to know which of these chords are going to be major and which are going to be minor we use something called the major minor formula which tells us that chords 1 4 and 5 are going to be major 2 3 and six are going to be minor and then that seventh chord is going to be diminished so if we just apply that formula to the numbers of the note in this G Major scale for the key of G major that would mean that our G our C and our d are all going to be major chords and then our a our B and our e are all going to be minor chords and then F sh is going to be a diminished chord so we'll apply our basic bar chord shapes to all of those notes G major a minor B minor C Major D major E minor and then that F diminished don't worry if you don't know the diminish shape already it's not super super important especially for what we're going to be learning today all right so that's going to be chord road map number one and we can shift that up and down the fretboard to play in any key the problem is once you get up to maybe like the 10th fret the eighth fret it starts to get a little bit awkward to play these bar chords right so what we have to do is we have to look at a second chord road map and this one has the initial root note of the first chord in this key on the a string so for example if I start on this note right here that is a d note I can also create a chord road map from that and for that we have to do something a little bit different and instead of going up to the next string when we get to the fourth note we go down to the lower E string so it looks like this D is 1 e is 2 F sharp is three and then we go down to the low E string here for four G is four a is five b is 6 and then we get C sharp right here for our seven once again we apply that major minor Formula 1 145 major 2 3 6 Minor 7 diminish and we apply our regular bar chord so we get D major for 1 E minor for 2 F Shar minor for 3 G major for four a major for five B minor for 6 and then we get this C Shar diminished for R seven all right so these chord road maps that we are looking at are not only giving us the chords we are allowed to play in these Keys they're also giving us the notes that we're allowed to play in these keys and what we're going to be doing here is something that's very similar to the the way that I would teach improvisation in general right when you're soloing so what I will usually do is I will say okay we're going to put on a track and as each chord comes along you're going to hit the root note of that chord and then you are going to play one or two or however many notes from the corresponding major scale that aren't that chord tone and then you are going to land on the root note of the next chord as it comes along we're going to do something very similar here the only thing we're adding is that we have an actual chord that we are landing on so for example if we stay in the key of D major here right if I have a chord progression and let's say it's going from a G major to a B minor we're going to go nice and slow here to a D major to an a major well what I'm going to do is as I land on each chord I'm going to play that chord right imagine the band is all landing on the chord together okay now I know that before I go to the next chord which is going to be the B minor which is my sixth chord in this key I can play any of these allowable notes from the key that are in my road map and it might feel a little awkward at first because you're moving horizontally but the idea is eventually over time you actually can use them to flow from one chord to the other so we could do something like [Music] this right so all I did was added those notes from the chord road map and then landed on that B minor chord and then it's time to go to the next chord right to go to that D so I let I'm [Music] here it's going to feel very very random at first and that is the whole point you can play any of these notes but that is kind of like our starting point before we start breaking out out into vertical scales because basically we can just be thinking about one thing right we're playing rhythm guitar we're using bar chords we're using the chord road maps all we have to think about is instead of thinking I got to go play this scale and this scale I'm still just thinking about the chord road maps and instead of thinking about them all as individual chords I'm thinking about them as notes right now we only have one of each note inside this key of D major but we can actually add some repeated notes as well so that it's a little bit more comfortable and we know that we can go to some other spots as well so right here below the one we still have our seven right that's the same as that then we can go even lower all the way down here and we have our six that b note is right there and there so for example if you are down here on that four chord and you want to hit that b note you don't have to go up here if you want you can just go you can play those right there we'll also add two more notes here and those ones are all the way up on the 10th fret here so when we go 1 2 3 we're usually going four to the G down there we can actually also play an octave of that g which is also the four all the way up here on the 10th fret and right below that we actually have our one right cuz this would be 7 1 7 1 okay now let's quickly add some notes to the first chord road map remember I know there's a lot of stuff going on here but you can get these diagrams over on patreon if that's going to be easier for you or feel free to screenshot them if you like this orientation more so for this chord road map I'm actually going to shift from G up everything up to Frets to the key of a major just cuz it's going to give us a little bit more room and what we can do is we can add some stuff below our one right here so we can go 1 7 6 all the way down there okay we can also go 4 3 two all down there and not only is this going to be useful for playing those in between notes but sometimes too if you want to play the six chord you might not want to play it all the way up there now you can also play it with a different bar chord shape for that minor 6 okay so that's it for the extended road maps remember that it doesn't matter what key you want to play in these chord road maps are going to stay the same structurally and obviously the numbers for each chord are going to remain the same you're just shifting this road map up or down the fretboard so let's dig a little bit more into the actual application of this whole idea to reiterate basically what you want to do is you want to land on a chord with the band then you want to fill the in between space instead of just strumming on that same chord you want to play random notes from the chord road map and then when the next chord comes along you want to land on that chord and then fall back into those random notes from the chord road map again and you just kind of keep doing that etc etc as you're going through the chord progression so let's take a chord progression that is very very standard what we would call a 1564 and we're going to do this in the key of D major this one's nice just because everything's very Central on the fretboard so if I play a D major which is the one chord to an a major which is the five chord to a B minor which is the six chord to a G major which is the four chord I don't want you to worry about doing this to a metronome or track yet all I want you to think about is those are my chords and I know what my chord road map says I'm allowed to play in between so let's go to that first chord and then you need to play a random note I'm going to do this one and then I'm going to go to the next chord okay now my next chord is going to go up there so I want to play another note but I'm going to play that one down there before landing back on my next chord now my last chord is this one down here let's try doing two [Music] notes okay it's probably not sounding too musical yet but what I want you to do is kind of cycle through this a few times at least play through this core progression and play one maybe two notes in between once you kind of start to get the hang of it you can add a little bit of Rhythm to it so that there's some consistency [Music] that so what we're going to do next is we're going to throw on a Jam track and we're going to do this along to actual music now I don't expect you to be able to do all of this immediately but I kind of want to show you a real world example so I'll kind of talk through it as we go okay so I already know the core progression of this song it's going to go from an F major to an A Minor to a C major to a G major this isn't the key of A minor or C major so I'm going to play those chords in between I'm going to use my chord road map to play one random note it's a little bit boring at this point right but that's [Music] okay right as I get more comfortable I can add some more notes and then it moves into a different core progression in this particular Jam track this core progression is D Minor to C major a minor to G major same Key C major a minor uh and we're just using different chords from that key we can do the same thing random note in between some are going to sound better than others that's fine the idea is to just get you [Music] moving and at this point you're only obviously adding the notes in between it's going to sound a little Bare Bones that's totally fine but as you get more comfortable you are going to be able to incorporate some of the other things that you learned maybe from my other lessons one of those things which going to talk about after this Jam track which is adding the minor pentatonic scale to this but just to give you a quick idea along to the track of what it might sound like back to the verse progression [Music] here so that track right there is one of the tracks from my slow pop Jam track Track Pack which you can download totally free there'll be a link somewhere at the top of the description if you do want to try it now the next thing that you can do here is you can start breaking out into vertical scales the great thing about these cord road maps is that they are literally attached to the basic minor pentatonic scale shape that I love to show everybody I usually call it the home base because it's a great spot to always fall back on if you ever get lost or anything like that so let's start with the chord road map for the key of D major because we've been using that key a lot right so 1 2 3 4 5 6 and then we've got our extra notes that we've added on well there's a reason I wanted to add these notes up here the reason for that is because right here is our regular minor pentatonic scale [Music] shape that means when you are playing a chord progression in this key let me actually just grab a pick here if I'm playing a CH progression in this key and I land on that sixth chord I'm right in the perfect position to just rip a little pentatonic [Music] leg I'll also show you where that minor pentatonic scale shape attaches with the other chord road map as well so let's go to the key of a major so we got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and the reason I wanted to show you the notes behind this shape is because that is where that minor pentatonic scale shape lives all right so as far as what you should watch next I actually have the perfect lesson it's literally a follow-up to everything that we worked on here today it is a little bit more on the Upper Intermediate side so be on the lookout for that if you want to check it out I will have it linked up in the middle of the screen for you now thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Andrew Clarke

Views: 46,874

Keywords: guitar lesson, guitar fretboard navigation, andrew clarke, andrew clarke guitar, how to play guitar chords, bar chords, barre chords, guitar lesson for beginners, intermediate guitar lesson, beginner guitar lesson, rhythm guitar, rhythm guitar lesson, guitar chords, guitar chord lesson, guitar tutorial, connect chords and riffs, guitar riffs, guitar riff lesson, how to play guitar riffs, music theory, easy guitar riffs, improvisation, play between chords

Id: kGe1jg6r3RQ

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2024