Arts & Entertainment, Music

Theory: Unlocking the Fretboard

Lesson time 16:42 min

In the next step on your soloing journey, Tom teaches you his methods for soloing in any key, anywhere on the neck.

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Topics include: Minor Scales: Solo in Any Key • Incorporate These Scales in Your Jamming • Same Notes, Different Key • The Phrygian Mode • Apply Your Personality to Technique • Modes: Putting Names to Feelings • Use Modes and Scales to Write

Tom Morello

Teaches Electric Guitar

In 26 lessons, Grammy-winning musician Tom Morello will teach you the guitar techniques, rhythms, and riffs that define his signature style.

Preview

And now the time has come at last to unlock the neck, to unlock the fretboard, to learn how to solo all over the fretboard in any key. The way that I came to it was this. We've learned how to solo in A pentatonic. We've learned how to solo with an A blues scale. So now, let's do the first step to unlocking the neck-- let's learn how to solo with an A minor scale, what I call first position. Here it is here. I'm going to play it. It should be up on the screen. You play it along with me. It's going to play the-- it's also the Aeolian mode. We're not going to worry about modes right now. We're just going to call it the first position for now, the A minor scale. [PLAYING NOTES] And then back to the root note of A. [PLAYING NOTES] What we're going to do now is learn those notes all over the neck. So it starts here. We've already played it. [PLAYING NOTES] They begin again. [PLAYING NOTES] All right. So check it out. Here's the first position of the A minor scale. It says Aeolian there, which is the mode, but don't worry about that right now. That will all come later. These are the notes. The notes that are circled are the root note, in this case A. So everywhere you see the circle, that is a note that's A. That's the scale. We play it across and back. These are the notes. When we start at A and we hear A minor with a chord progression, play these notes, and they should fit snugly and sound like you're soloing like a fledgling genius on the guitar. All right? We're going to now play the second position of the A minor scale. [PLAYING NOTES] And now the third position. Again, these are the same notes, just we're moving up the neck. In the third position, the identical notes, just a little bit higher in pitch. [PLAYING NOTES] The fourth position. [PLAYING NOTES] The fifth position. [PLAYING NOTES] Sixth position. [PLAYING NOTES] Seventh position. [PLAYING NOTES] And what would be eighth position is back to first position, one octave higher than we began. First position, again, one octave up. [PLAYING NOTES] So just as we used the notes in first position to solo along with our chord progression, and it fits snugly, those are the same notes up and down the neck. So what I've done is I've memorized those seven positions. So I know where each of those positions and each of those note groupings are of the same notes are all over the neck. So we're going to use the notes of the A minor scale, no longer just in first position, but using all the positions to play a solo over the same chord progression. Let's go. [METRONOME TICKING] [MUSIC PLAYING] So what you're seeing is the same sequence of notes all the way up and down the neck, starting at different points. Each of the positions teaches us where they are at that particular part of the neck. The relative positions always remain the same. That's how you solo up and down the...

About the Instructor

Tom Morello is a two-time Grammy winner and one of Rolling Stone’s "greatest guitarists of all time." In his first online guitar class, the co-founder of Rage Against the Machine will teach you the riffs, rhythms, and solos that launched his career and sent his music to the top of the charts. Tom will share his approach to making music that challenges the status quo and teach you how to create your own musical style.

Featured MasterClass Instructor

Tom Morello

In 26 lessons, Grammy-winning musician Tom Morello will teach you the guitar techniques, rhythms, and riffs that define his signature style.

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