Electric Guitar Lesson 5

 We will now take at look at basic improvisation on the guitar.

Most people tend to start off with the minor pentatonic scale when looking at improvisation; so called because it has 5 notes.

It basically consists of A, C, D, E and G; your 5 notes. In order to hear how it sounds a good way is to play a bar A minor chord at the 5^th fret or get a friend to do it, and then play the scale. So you’ve got the 5^{th fret}, 8^{th fret}, 5^th and 7^th 5^th and 7^th 5^th and 7^th 5^th and 8^th, 5^th and 8^th. You can see that the first finger plays the 5^th fret of each string as you cross over.

A lot of people try to fit in as many notes as possible when starting improvising. It is better to do something slow to begin with. The wonderful thing about the pentatonic scale is that you can play this note here for example which is the D and bend it up to E, same from G to A and from the C. Now we are going to hear a tune from repertoire book B called ‘Slow Blues in A minor’, which mainly uses notes from the minor pentatonic scale.

Andy Johnsons website