Rock Guitar Lesson 2

here you'll learn:

Basic pick motion (downstroke or downbeat)

easy improvisation around new backing track

Basic pentatonic scale on guitar frets

Simple right hand picking technique (downstroke)

It's time to switch on the right hand.

Rock and metal on electric guitar sounds much cooler when you use pick (mediator)

instead of fingers, powerful sound comes out, and there's a plenty of guitar

tricks and effects that pick helps to perform.

Place the pick between the thumb and the forefinger of your right hand as shown in the second picture.

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Tip: if you don't know which pick is yours,

get different types: hard, medium, soft, big, small.

Try to play with every pick you have and stick with the one

you feel most comfortable about, the same relates to guitar strings.

Generally harder mediator and wider strings produce heavier sound.

Now we will begin to play a very simple exercise

First put the hand on the guitar as shown in the picture. And pick the 6th string with the pick moving downwards.

Watch video

Play the same exercise along with the metronome on the different strings.

The most important thing here is to play rhythmically correctly

each note takes same time and has equal volume.

In the pick motion participate wrist, entire arm, and forearm

(you can not use a wrist if it's more comfortable for you),

the fingers hold a pick but don't move it.

It will help later to play real fast.

Motions are accurate and minimized.

When you do it as well as it was in the previous video

begin playing the exercises from the lesson 1, but now with both hands.

Here are some examples:

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Sound should have more edge where was used a pick.

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Apply this new material to the minus guitar track from the lesson 1 accenting some notes by the pick

and feel the difference.

Here is my example

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Notice that I often play same thing differently

(using same notes but with different sequences, timing, accenting, pausing, etc...)

you also could play in your own way that you like the most.

It's where the style makes an appearance.

It's always a good idea to try new material on old solos that you already play well

enhancing and changing them.

You might easily concentrate on bringing new technique to your world and play cooler

instead of being overwhelmed by learning a lot of new things in the same time.

Actually play cool does not automatically mean you should be a monster mastering

all imagined techniques and playing with speed of Mclaren F1.

I listened hundreds of fast speed guitarists and only a few could really play testy.

In the most cases it was frame-saw noise combined with a lot of mistakes,

it doesn't sound very awesome.

The secret is to master at least a few favorite techniques but really master them.

When you'll be fine with the first solo applying the new material to it

download second minus guitar track and improvise around it   Click here to download

Guitar improvisation

A couple of example licks

Watch video

In this lessons we very often play notes from

a minor pentatonic scale also called as a rock scale.

In A minor (Am) key-note in particular.

A Minor Pentatonic Scale

Click here to see extended A minor (Am) pentatonic scale

Also useful to play any simple songs you know to work out downbeat technique

for example Ode to Joy by Ludwig van Beethoven