Easy Guitar Phrases _ Learn to Phrase in 14 Days _ Essentials of Soloing _ Guitar Zoom

Hi , my name is Steve Stein from Guitar Zoom .

And I wanna talk to you a little bit about the concept of phrasing and the importance of that in your guitar soloing .

A lot of times when we play , we're so bent on , you know , licks and , you know , patterns and technique and all these things and not that those aren't really important to our playing , but we forget to learn how to actually sing on the guitar .

And I wanna show you something that's really , really effective and really easy to use if you can visualize chord shapes on your fret board .

Now , again , if you know your theory and you know , all your notes and all that stuff , this is gonna be even easier , but I want to make this nice and simple so you can use this effectively and immediately .

Um And I'm also gonna offer you a jam track so you can actually try this on your own .

So let's go ahead and take a look at this .

My chord progression is GDE minor and C and I'm gonna use a technique that I call plotting points .

And what I'm gonna do is I'm simply going to connect the dots relative to the chord shapes that I'm using .

And then once I've got that established , I'm gonna start expanding from there .

So let's do this .

Let's take the D open chord shape and let's go ahead and move that up .

Defg we're gonna move it up till we get to G .

So I'm on the seventh fret and the eighth fret making the D shape .

Now , those three notes make up the D cord , DF sharp and A .

But even if you didn't know what the notes of the chord are or you didn't know the scale or anything like that , you would still be able to create a plotted point by trying to emphasize one of those three notes when the G chord is being played , it's ad shape that's moved up and up to the 7th and 8th threads .

It gives us the sound of G .

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to the eighth fret of the second string and I'm gonna play that pitch , which is G over that chord makes sense right ?

Then the D cord comes up .

So I got D , so what I do is I move from this note right here up a whole step to a .

Now if you know your theory A is part of the D cord , OK ?

But if you don't , it's OK .

I wanna show you something really cool .

What you can do is you can move up to the 10th fret of the six string and make a major bar chord .

Now again , any one of these notes is available to you to emphasize or to plot a point .

So you'll notice that the 10th threat of the second string is part of part of that cord .

So I'm moving from here up there .

Then my third chord in the sequence is E minor .

Now again , I could see E minor anywhere on the fret board and it would be fine , but I'm using the fifth string bar cord , E minor , which is located at the seventh of the fifth string .

So again , any one of those notes would be able to be emphasized by me or a plotted point .

Well , you'll notice that my middle finger of this E minor chord is on the eighth thread of the second string , which is where I started from .

So I went from eight up to 10 .

Now I'm going back to eight .

Now my last chord is C .

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to a six string bar cord on the uh eighth fret major .

And this is C .

So again , any of these notes could be emphasized .

So I'm choosing the ninth fret of the third string right here .

And this note right here is E in ac chord , the E note exists within that chord .

It's the third .

But again , if you didn't know that it's OK , you're simply visualizing G D E minor and see .

So when we get to that C cord , I'm emphasizing the ninth of the third string .

So now my melody looks like this .

My plotted points are this and back and then now I've just created a basic functional melody that works over all four chord changes .

One of the big mistakes that people make when they learn how to solo is that they're not thinking about what's being played underneath them .

I , I tend to think of it like this .

They're playing alongside the music , but they're not really interacting with the music .

That's what I want to teach you how to do .

OK .

So instead of just moving around and playing and playing a bunch of licks and moving around and again , don't get me wrong .

We need to do those things to , to color up what we're doing .

But if we don't create some sort of melodic idea , our solo really has no purpose .

It's just to move around the guitar , you know , practicing scale shapes or , you know , licks or whatever it is that we're learning .

So , what I'm doing now is I've created just a basic melodic idea , right ?

So I've got , now I'm gonna rely on either my ear or my fretboard knowledge to give me some other things to color this up .

OK .

This is what I refer to as rephrasing , which is you take an idea , a melodic idea or a phrase which I've now created and I'm gonna try and start spicing it up a little bit by doing some things to it to make it more interesting .

So for instance , when I go from this note right here , which is G to A , if I know anything about my scales , whether it's pentatonic or diatonic , don't , I can start implementing those in between my melodic creation to make it more interesting .

So maybe I go and you see right there .

What I did was I moved from G up to the note B which is in the scale .

So right there , I'm playing the notes of G major .

I'm playing G ABC de and that's enough for now .

And again , if I don't know that scale , I could , I could use a Pentatonic , I could have used coral shapes anywhere on the fret board .

But I want you to explore this idea right now and see what you can do with it .

If you don't know your scales , it's OK .

If you try to play something like this , you might like that sound or you might dislike that sound .

Now , of course , that note that I played was the 11th of the second string , which is not in the key of G , but that doesn't mean it can't be functional .

If you like the sound of it , you can use it .

That's half the fun of the exploration of your fret board .

OK ?

Right now I'm gonna stay real constant .

I'm gonna stay within the , the context of the , the key of G here .

So I'm going from here , you going out and then I know I wanna go back here , but maybe I'll try something else .

Maybe I'll go .

So you see what's happening now as I start adding in some notes around my melodic creation , my plotted points and then boom , all of a sudden I start adding some uh vibrato .

I add some bends , some things to give it more human nature .

You see ?

So that's what I want you to start working on is the basic function of creating four chords and plotting points with those chords .

Now , you don't have to do exactly what I just did .

Although maybe that's a nice place for you to start .

So you're gonna start plotting those points over those four chords .

Then you're gonna start adding in some embellishments , some rephrasing ideas by adding in some human elements , you're gonna be using the scale , you're gonna be using vocal techniques like bending of vibrato on , pull off slides , whatever it might be to make it more realistic .

OK .

The next time , what I wanna do is I want to show you how to take everything that we've just done and bring it to another level to really add some human and realistic sounds to the way that you're actually soloing .

What I would really appreciate from you is some feedback .

OK ?

If you can post some comments , you know , how are things going ?

Um You know , is it comfortable ?

Is it easy ?

Is it difficult ?

Let me help you with that , but you gotta let me know how things are going .

So I'll see you in the next video .

Um By that time , hopefully you've got a basic outline of what you're gonna be doing and then we're gonna take it to the next level .

So I'll see you in a little bit .