Paint By Numbers Creative Guitar Part Two

In our last post we looked at a piece of guitar tab with no notation and I asked interested guitarists out there to create their own guitar licks using the notes provided. Here are a couple licks using the notes and sequence of notes from the first part of this post.  If you want the powertab notation you can DM me on twitter @jimifan

Here are a couple of different licks using the previous notes:

Win Win - Guitar Tab From Songsterr

Guitar tab gets a bad rap sometimes. I know I am guilty of taking shortcuts and don't spend enough time ear training but sometimes it is nice to pick up a guitar, grab some tab and just play a few songs. I think as with many things in life and music moderation is sometimes the best choice. A primary deficiency with a lot of internet guitar tab is the lack of rhythmic notation. Modern rock guitar can be notoriously difficult to correctly convey the appropriate rhythm. Songsterr is a relatively newcomer to online tab that solves this problem by tabbing out the rhythm and also giving you the option of hearing the tab. This makes the guitar tab much more useful. If you use this referral link below you  (and I) get two free weeks of their PLUS service that allows access to added features on the site.

http://www.songsterr.com/a/wa?ref=165148

Paint by Numbers - Creative Guitar

Ok in this guitar lick I'm going to force you to add your own rhythm kind of a musical paint by numbers. So here is the guitar lick but with no rhythmic instructions or notation, or slurs or legato notes.

See what you can come up with and I will post the notation indicating my original guitar lick based on these notes later.

Guitar Exercise 8ths and 16ths

This guitar lick expands on a lesson Paul Gilbert wrote in the latest Premier Guitar see a few posts back for the link. In this guitar exercise I am using just four notes notes D and C and A and G  in two different locations on the neck. The first set is the D at the third string 7th fret and the C on the 5th fret the A and G are on the same frets just on the fourth string. The second position for these notes is the 7th fret G string and 10th fret 4th string for the D and C and again up to the 4th and 5th string for the A and G notes. Now in this exercise you are going to play D,C,A,G first in eight notes with a downstroke and then the same combinations for 16th notes. Then you switch to the next position and do the same just begin with an upstroke. Start slowly with a metronome and see if you can alternate two beats with eighth notes and 2 beats with 16th notes.

A great lick that starts off with the first sequence is a solo section from the live version of "Suicide Solution" by Ozzy and Randy Rhoads. A more recent song that also uses a similar sequence is "Ravenous" by Arch Enemy.

Ok here are the notes in the two positions shown in guitar tab:

Guitar Exercise: C Major Scale & Legato

This is a great guitar exercise for learning the fretboard, scales and practicing legato at the same time. I used the B string and C Major scale as an example but you can apply this exercise to different scales, strings and positions on the guitar fretboard. Basically you use all legato no picking. The sequence is hammer on from nowhere, pull off hammer on hammer on and then pull off pull off then move up to the next sequence of three notes and keep going within the notes of the C Major Scale. The tab notation should make this clear but let me know if anyone needs more explanation. In the guitar tab example below I started with the C note at the 13th fret B string and moved the sequence down the neck. Once you get used to this guitar exercise try moving the sequence up a few times then down at random while staying within the notes of the scale.

Pole Vaulting with Paul Gilbert

Thought I'd share this article from the latest Premier Guitar issue. Paul Gilbert gives some great exercises and licks to develop string crossing picking and legato guitar playing.

Shred Your Enthusiasm: How to Practice Pole-Vaulting

Guitar Exercise - Alternate Picking Altered Tuning

Today's guitar lick is in the same detuned guitar tuning we have looked at for the past couple of days. Check the other posts if you need a further explanation but the tuning is detuned from low to high DGDGGD. This guitar lick has a kind of piano sound to my ears. It is all 16th notes and makes a great alternate picking guitar exercise. Start slowly and work through the lick with a metronome gradually increasing the speed as you can play perfectly at each successive tempo. Try to use strict alternate picking. Here is the guitar tab: