In these lessons he gives us a demonstration of how to play Under The Bridge from the album Blood Sugar Sex Magic.

John Frusciante

He also talks a bit about his youth and how [...]]]> Here’s a couple of great guitar lessons I found from the legendary Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante.

In these lessons he gives us a demonstration of how to play Under The Bridge from the album Blood Sugar Sex Magic.

John Frusciante

He also talks a bit about his youth and how he first encountered and began to develop his signature playing style which allows him to fill the air with licks, trills, chords and lead melodies in a combined fashion giving the listener the sense of listening to two or three guitars at once. This technique was pioneered by the godfather of funk Curtis Mayfeild and adopted by the late great Jimi Hendrix who was a major influence on John’s playing style.

This video really does help the listener deal with the age old problem of which way you should play your bar chords i.e using your thumb by wrapping it over the top strings or by barring your first finger across all six, an issue which I know many beginner guitarists including myself have had many sleepless nights over.

I think at the end of the day it basically comes down to your style, and what sort of music you play. As I tend to play a lot of covers during my live sets and when out busking, I deal with the problem by playing my bar chords both ways, depending on what song I am performing at the time.

At least you now know, if you want to play Chili Peppers stuff the way John Frusciante does, you’ll need to get frisky with your thumb.

The video above shows him performing the song with his electric guitar, but for those of you out there who think there’s no way they’ll be able to achieve this on an acoustic, here’s another video showing how he does just that.

Slightly more difficult but still playable.

Keep practicing.

More lessons from famous guitarists coming soon.

Posted 14.08.09

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The most obvious feature of the blues scale is that – you [...]]]> Scales – Part 8

Probably the most widely used scale in the whole of modern day music. The blues scale is used extensively in rock, jazz, blues, metal, funk, country and almost every other type of music you can think of.

The most obvious feature of the blues scale is that – you guessed it – it sounds ‘bluesy’.

Just about anyone, no matter how rubbish you are at playing the guitar, can have a go at twanging a few notes of the blues scale and instantly feel like you’re sitting on a porch in Memphis, dog by your side, watching the sun go down and singing how your girl left you cause you got no dough !

That’s the great thing about the blues scale and why it appeals to so many. When played over a basic 12 bar blues pattern, it almost plays itself.

Obviously, to become a really good blues player takes an awful lot of skill and years of dedicated practice, but if you’re a beginner guitarist and just want to have a bit of fun with minimum effort, this is the scale for you.

The blues scale is simply a minor pentatonic scale with an added note (which happens to be the b5 note or #4 note of the minor pentatonic).

If you are up for learning a section of this scale to mess around with in future, then go ahead and check out a couple of positions I’ve laid out below, but if you are intent on learning the whole scale across the entire fret board and more minor and pentatonic scales in the future, then I suggest you take a look at parts 1 to 7 of this sites ‘No nonsense guide to scales’.

Learning the blues scale and then going off and learning the minor and pentatonic scales later will effectively triple your work load as you’ll be working backwards, where as if you choose to learn the natural/pure minor scale first in its entirety (i.e. all 7 positions) you will then find it pretty easy to take away a few notes from the minor to form the pentatonic minor. Then you can simply add one blues note to the pentatonic minor to create the blues scale.

In doing this and following my guides, you will also be able to use the minor scales to easily form the minor, major and major and minor pentatonics in any key as well as the blues. So think about that before you take on the blues positions below.

It’s like learning to play snooker first as it hugely increases your ability to play pool in the future.

Below are the 5 positions you need to know. As usual, start with position 1 and do not move on to position 2 until you know it off by heart along with the orange root note positions and can play it forwards, backwards, sideways and anywhere on the fret board.

As before, in each position, learn the whole pattern of notes across all 6 strings. You don’t necessarily have to learn the names of the notes, just learn where the root notes are positioned in the particular pattern you are playing.

e.g. For position 1, the root notes are situated on the 6th string – 1st finger, the 4th string – 3rd finger and the 1st string – 1st finger.

This will allow you to move any of these fingering patterns up and down the fret board, and play the same pattern in a different key. i.e Playing the blank pattern below starting on say fret 5, would make all your root notes A’s, meaning you would now be playing an A blues scale.

Here is the minor pentatonic to compare with the blues scale below it.

Pentatonic Minor Position 1

Blues Scale – Pentatonic Blues Position 1

Blank Fingering Position 1

This blank position shows you can play these patterns anywhere on the fret board. Note the position of the orange root notes. The numbers correspond with your 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers.

Pentatonic Minor Position 2

G Blues Scale – Position 2

Pentatonic Minor Position 3

G Blues Scale – Position 3

Pentatonic Minor Position 4

G Blues Scale – Position 4

Pentatonic Minor Position 5

G Blues Scale – Position 5

The 5 blues positions then repeat themselves starting with position 1 again played on fret 15 and so on. You can see this in the whole scale diagram at the top of this page.

Front Porch Blues Painting by Kerry Burch

A good way of practicing these blues scale positions is to Google ‘free blues backing tracks’. You will find hundreds of sites with free tracks or midi files to download.

Pick a backing track in G first and mess about with that for a while. When you’ve got the hang of it, transpose the scale into another key by moving the whole pattern up or down a few frets to a new root note like C, A, F or E. Then try and play along with another backing track in your new key.

If you’re in it for the long run, make sure you take a look at my other scales guides first.

Posted 14.05.09

Other Posts of Interest

No Nonsense Guide to Scales
Guitar Chords Made Easy
Scale Runs and Exercises
Chromatic Scales and Exercises

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The tab shows pretty much the same run (with slight alterations at the endings) [...]]]> Now we are going to take our previous run highlighted here in blue, and play it in various other G root note positions and at different octaves on the fret board, indicated in yellow and red.

The tab shows pretty much the same run (with slight alterations at the endings) but starts from different G’s so the pattern of notes you play as you ascend is exactly the same as before. If you have the previous ascending pattern memorised then you shouldn’t even need the tab.

One thing you have to keep an eye in this first example on is when you play the ending few notes. As you cross from string 3 to string 2, due to the nature of the way the guitar is tuned, you have to remember to step up one fret on string 2, and instead of playing frets 15, 17 and 19, you play 16, 18 and 20.

The last exercise on the page takes the same run again and transposes it to Em. Without having to work anything out, just move the whole thing down to fret 0 on strings 5 and 6. Easy.

Here’s the Em scale.

Try playing it at all the other E root notes as well.

In fact, have a go at playing this all over the fret board, in keys of Cm, Am, Fm, Bbm, Dm and any other key you can think of. The more you mess around with any run or lick you learn, the more versatile you will become. While you are doing this and transposing into various keys, you are also learning where all the different root notes are on the fret board which will really put you in good stead for your future playing.

When you’ve finished messing around with these, have a go at moving and transposing the descending run you learned on the previous page, and then make up a run or two of your own. That should keep you busy until my next post.

Loads more stuff to come..

In the next lesson we’re going to mess with this some more, alter the picking patterns, change it from minor to a major scale and just about anything else I can think of.

Kier

Other Posts of Interest

Chromatic Scales and Exercises
No Nonsense Guide to Scales
Strum Like the Pro’s
Guitar Chords Made Easy

Posted 11.04.09

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First we’re going to take an easy minor scale run on strings 5 and 6. [...]]]> Below is a full scale diagram of the G minor scale. We are going to work on some runs from one end of the fret board right the way to the other and back again.

First we’re going to take an easy minor scale run on strings 5 and 6. You can see from the diagrams below that once you have got the pattern sussed starting from the root note G on the 3rd fret, the pattern repeats itself in most other places on the neck where you find the same root note.

This means that you can easily move it around to almost all the other G root notes on the fret board. This is shown by the coloured zones in the diagram below.

The only string you can’t do this on is when you place the pattern on a root note on string 3. This is because the pattern crosses strings 2 and 3 which due to the way the guitar is set up are out of symmetry by one fret.

The great thing about any run or lick you make up in a certain key is that it can easily be used in any other key you like by simply keeping the same shape and pattern of the run and moving the root note to a new one.

Take a look at this Em scale below.

I have used the exact same colour map and run as in the Gm and simply placed it over the E root notes. It now becomes an E minor run.

Here’s a tab exercise of a G minor scale run. Start with your first finger on the 3rd fret, 6th string and using alternate picking and preferably a metronome, play 3 notes per string, making your way up to the 17 fret. Start the exercise at a slow manageable pace until you have got it sussed and then gradually increase your speed until you are playing it as fast as and as accurately as you can.

Once you are at your top speed, work on getting it cleaner and faster over the next week or so. You will soon find your speed and finger strength noticeably improve.

These exercises sound best when played with some mean distortion and a bit of delay, but you really should try and get into the habit of playing them with a clean tone and as little fx as possible as they tend to mask what’s actually going on with your playing. Just switch off your racks or pedals every once in a while just know whether your playing is messy or accurate.

G Minor Scale Runs

Note : These scale runs are designed to be relatively easy to learn and great for building speed, strength and picking skills etc. They are not supposed to be amazingly technical, flashy, or melodic, but they are great starting blocks and should get you into the habit of creating your own runs and licks in your favourite keys and scales once you get used to it.

Feel free to improvise with these first 2 exercises and vary them as much as you like. Try making up your own start or finish to each run.

Over the next few sections we will be working through these and other simple runs and exercises, moving them around, changing keys and varying the patterns to give you and idea of how you can mess with ideas and take them anywhere you like across the fret board. The main aim is to get you used to doing this and for you to feel comfortable in making up your own more complex and better sounding runs and licks in the future.

Once you’ve got the hang of the exercises above, try the next section where we are going to shift these runs to different root note positions, like in the Gm colour map, and then change the key of the runs, as in the Em example.

Moving and transposing the scale run.

Other Posts of Interest

Chromatic Scales and Exercises
No Nonsense Guide to Scales
Strum Like the Pro’s
Guitar Chords Made Easy

Posted 05.04.09

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Now you’ve got the hang of the first few exercises, here are some more combinations that start with your 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers.

Keep practicing these with your metronome, or on-line metronome and remember to improvise with your own techniques such as string skipping, hammer on’s and pull offs [...]]]>

Now you’ve got the hang of the first few exercises, here are some more combinations that start with your 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers.

Keep practicing these with your metronome, or on-line metronome and remember to improvise with your own techniques such as string skipping, hammer on’s and pull offs etc. wherever you can, but only do this once you have got the hang of the exercises shown. Don’t run before you can walk. Start with alternate picking and continue as before.

Obviously, I’ve only tabbed the first few bars of each exercise, take them as far up the fret board as you like and back down again.

Chromatic Exercises 8 – 13

Chromatic Exercises 14 – 19

Chromatic Exercises 20 – 24

Posted 10.03.09

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The chromatic scale consists of 12 half step or semi tone intervals and comprises of every note in the common musical scale.

As you [...]]]> Chromatic scales play a huge part in building a guitarists finger strength, speed, agility and co-ordination and their importance should not be underestimated.

The chromatic scale consists of 12 half step or semi tone intervals and comprises of every note in the common musical scale.

The Chromatic Scale

As you can see, there’s not much to learn as it includes every note on the fret board.

As a beginner, I used to think there wasn’t much point in practicing chromatics as after spending 5 minutes playing them, I concluded they were so easy that they were probably not worth bothering with. I never realised the importance they play in training your mind and fingers to be able to cope with the much more difficult and strenuous tasks a guitarist encounters as he or she progresses up the skill ranks.

If I had spent a little more time and delved a little further into the subject, I would have realised that once you get passed the first couple of obvious ones they become a complete nightmare, and to master them, your brain must be trained to work in perfect harmony with your fingers, and at high speed.

The great thing is, once you get to grips with them, which doesn’t take long, you’ll find your playing really starts to gain a fluidity and your timing, co-ordination, agility and finger strength will become much stronger and more synchronised with your thoughts and movements

The exercises shown below start of with some very simple chromatic runs and build to provide almost every four finger combination possible.

These exercises should be performed using alternate picking, and ideally you should use a metronome set at a pace you feel comfortable with at first until you get used to the patterns. This should then be gradually increased bit by bit over the next few weeks as you gain finger strength and speed.

Set your metronome to tick once or twice a bar and make sure you are able to comfortably strike the notes on each beat before you increase your speed. There is no point trying to play as fast as you can if your timing is out. Just be patient and get each exercise right before you move on.

If you do not own a metronome, Google ‘on line metronome’ and you will find many free ones to choose from.

Feel free to improvise with these exercises as much as possible, play them anywhere you wish. Take them as far up the fret board as you like and back down again.

Notice the string skipping technique in exercise 2. It’s a good idea to try and apply this to each of the more difficult chromatic exercises as you become more confident in your practice.

Try and memorise the patterns from as many exercises as you can, and when you’ve got them sussed, play as many combinations as you can every day for 10 – 15 minutes before you start your main guitar session.

Once you have got a few of them under your belt and have practiced them regularly for a couple of weeks, you should notice quite an improvement in your playing, and instead of being a chore, they should become quite fun.

Chromatic Exercises

This next exercise involves string skipping. As you progress through these exercises, try and implement the string skipping technique in all the other chromatics as you become more advanced and start to improvise your own patterns and routines.

This is where the exercises start to become slightly more tricky and really start to test your finger strength and co-ordination.

Our next section contains more chromatic exercises using different combinations starting with your 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers.

You may think that once you’ve got the hang of chromatic exercises 1 to 7 there is no point in repeating the same sort of exercises with fingers 2,3 and 4, but it is important you get used to these other combinations as most riffs, licks and solo’s don’t conveniently start on your first finger.

Although similar, you will find the next set of chromatic exercises more challenging and you’ll need to get used to combining them with the exercises above to achieve the best results and increase your speed and agility to great levels.

More Chromatic Exercises

Posted 08.03.09

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