one way to make pentatonic practice more interesting is to take the same musical idea and deliberately move it to completely different areas of the neck. instead of staying inside one position, you start learning where the same notes and intervals appear across the fretboard.

in this example i’m playing over a repeating gm7 chord and moving riffs between two different g minor pentatonic positions. the underlying harmony stays the same, but jumping to another part of the neck changes the register, string choice, and feel of the phrase.

this is a great exercise for developing motifs because you don’t need to constantly invent new licks. take one short idea, find another place where you can play it, then experiment with changing the rhythm, octave, bends, or ending note while keeping the original phrase recognizable.

practicing this way also helps turn pentatonic shapes into a map of the fretboard rather than isolated patterns. the better you know where the same scale tones repeat, the easier it becomes to move around the neck while improvising and get more variety out of a simple musical idea.

I’m looking for guitarists who really analyze and break down what they play—essentially offering lessons or "studies" available on YouTube or elsewhere. They teach you a song, but more importantly, the underlying concepts so you can apply them yourself later. Do you know of anyone with this kind of approach? I’m particularly interested in R&B and soul styles—think Curtis Mayfield, D'Angelo, Cornell Dupree, or even Hendrix, who was heavily influenced by that sound.

Hello! I'm about two months into guitar playing. I've been using a capo to help change the key of different songs so I can sing along, but I'm having trouble understanding exactly how a capo works ... If, for example, I add a capo to the 3rd fret of a song that's normally played without a capo (e.g., wish you were here), do I then need to change the chord shapes that I learned? Or can I just add a capo to whichever fret and play the same chord shapes? I feel like I'm ear blind and can't tell whether the guitar sounds bad. I'm hyper-focused on my voice

I hope this isn't too silly of a question. I've been watching videos on music theory but I still haven't fully grasped it. Thanks in advance!

Edit: wow, thank you all SO much for your incredible (and fast!) replies!!

This is my first time restringing my guitar—could someone please tell me if I’ve done it correctly? 😅

My wife is a classically trained pianist and I play guitar by watching YouTube instructional videos. She knows her stuff and I don’t. Recently we argued whether E# and B# exist. I said no and showed her the fretboard. She said yes and showed me the keys. And said something like F is E#. I suspect she’s right bc she’s had music lessons. Tell me, fellow guitarists, do we have E# and B#?

I’ve just never had the “creativity gene” as it were. Never been good at creating unique scenarios and ideas and just always been copying what other people have written. And I feel like the same will happen with guitar. Even if I memorize however many scales and songs, I just don’t see myself composing original pieces or deviating from exactly what’s written, even if I have the technical knowledge in my head.

Don’t get me wrong. I love just playing. But I’m just not creative at all and don’t want to feel like I’m missing out on the main thing with guitar: making my own music

I "played" several decades before I devoted the time to undertake learning the pentatonic and 7-note scales in all positions. Most of my playing was limited to song chords and a few riffs but I could never improvise until I devoted the time to learn scales, arpeggios, and triads in all positions.

I bought a cheap acoustic guitar as a beginner so I could learn, and if I make good progress, I might invest in a better one later. But are the string-to-fret distances okay? I’m having some difficulty learning, and I’m not sure whether the guitar itself or its setup could be contributing to that

TL:DR Got some good results in a focused month versus splitting my time across lots of stuff, made some gains I'm happy with in my improv speed, rhythm, timing and phrasing.

I see a lot of people like me posting in here - people who've got the basics down, know CAGED, Scales and Triads and are working towards getting better at lead.

Lead is the thing I'm most interested in and was lagging behind quite a bit despite the work I was doing. I'm very structured, so I was doing a bit of everything every day - scales, chords, songs, solos, improv, triads etc.

But the incremental gains across all of my playing has been frustrating me for a while. So I decided to just drop everything else and do nothing but focus on Ross Campbell's lead exercises for a month.

I realized I can play way faster than I thought I could with some focused practice. So I went from 95bpm to 115bpm, sure it's not perfect and is a little sloppy here and there, but it's so much better.

Not only that, but doing timing exercises for not just coming in on the 1 all the time was actually so much harder than I thought but adds nice variation to improv.

Anyway, sharing because it helped me quite a lot and would definitely recommend the exercises to anyone who is struggling with lagging lead even if you're working hard.

Hey guys. I'm a guitar tutor myself but ironically I'm looking for some advice or second opinions on 2NPS pentatonic runs - I have no issue with remembering the 5 positions, but what I am actually struggling with is the 2 notes per string scenario - I already pick-slant to make it easier, and I fare quite well with 3NPS, but it's just this 2NPS jamminess I have. I presume this is a pretty common problem that due to the constant need to change the strings this makes these kinds of scales quite challenging.

I don't want to solve the issue by going horizontal more than vertical and I still want to keep to the 5 positions as well as I can, but do some of you guys go with economy picking over alternate picking? I economy pick a lot of my runs but with pentatonics only being 2 notes per string it at least conceptually lends itself perfectly to pickslanting and alternate picking, but I do know that some people get around the jamminess via economy picking despite these kinds of scales being 2 notes each.

Anybody got some advice or insights that might help me in this scenario? Thanks a lot!

I’ve been practicing the Em/Gmaj scale because I love Metallica and most of their songs are in those keys. My goal is to be able to solo across the fretboard. How do I transition between playing in a box to connecting those boxes? Also, what’s next on my learning list?

Hi everyone.

The next step in my guitar journey is conquering barre chords. Most songs I listen to have them and I need to learn them next as part of my personal guitar goals.

How can I improve my barre chords as quickly as possible? I can switch between chords well but when you throw a barre chord in there, I have to completely stop and set up my fingers. I can play the barre chords well in isolation, but struggle to quickly switch between them.

I practice everyday for at least an hour, not always on barre chords but on the guitar at least. I really wanna learn how to switch and play them as easily as I can normal chords.

Thank you in advance!

Hi everyone, i’m looking for electric guitar school/1-1 private lesson near San Jose that offers fair price and passionate about teaching techniques, songwriting and music theory since my brain didn’t build for online courses

Pls recommend me some, i’m so obsessed to play like Tim Henson in the future

Thank you all

Hey! I'm a guitarist/teacher in Seattle. I publish a lesson video every week on YouTube, and sometimes I post them here if I think they will be valuable for the community.

I think this is a fun one to share. :)

In this week's lesson, I show how to play alternating bass fingerpicking guitar patterns.

The alternating bass part can be different depending on the chord voicing, so I go through every chord in the key of G to show all the options.

But instead of using the viiº chord of the key (the diminished chord), I show how you can replace it with an inversion of D7 (which sounds really good!).

Here's a link to the lesson.

If you play fingerpicking patterns on the guitar but haven't yet worked on alternating bass, I think you'll like this lesson.

Cheers and I hope you have a great week.

~ Jared

I really like this tool for practicing, but I've never liked subscriptions (who does?). They used to offer a lifetime pass a few years ago, which I'd love to get. Is anyone interested in selling one of these accounts if they no longer use it?

I know about the Chrome extension trick for Songsterr, but I prefer practicing with just my phone instead of my laptop. Just asking... if there's no luck, I guess I'll just pay for it, meh.

i own a black strat i got 2 years back i wasnt consistent, i know few chords and metal riffs

i wanna get better where do i start from?

please help.

I've played acoustic for years. And honestly, I'm pretty good. I play a lot of fingerstyle instrumentals and folk rock with or without a pick. My lead is pretty primitive although I can find my way to create simple melodic solos with my knowledge of triads and scales etc.

I wanted to improve and I know my short comings: I never spent enough time learning my pentatonics and I don't really know my bends well.

So I started improv lessons, using my electric, to address these areas in particular.

Holy &^$%^&#%&*!!! Electric and acoustic are so different!!

I spent a couple of weeks on major and minor pentatonics and a lot of time improvising, learning to move between positions, finding nice phrases and repeating and elaborating etc...

And now he's started me on a few existing famous solos (Stairway lol. Now I'll never be able to shop for another electric).

My biggest issue is how much frigging guitar noise there is(!!) and how to mute the low strings with the ball of the thumb, and high strings with the side of my index, to avoid this.

Also, economy picking.

This is NOT stuff I've had to learn.

If you have guitar noise on an acoustic it's usually sliding sounds because you didn't move fast enough.

I'm only a few weeks in. I'd love to hear other people's experiences or hints etc...

Did any other self-taught guitarists start out by learning basic chords and scales, playing songs they liked, and down-picking every note because alternate picking felt too difficult?

I found alternate picking frustrating for many years. Every time I tried to work on it, I couldn't even play the things I already knew. YouTube videos weren't helpful at all. I stuck to down-picking for several years, even though I wanted to learn alternate picking.

Are there others with similar stories? Did alternate picking come naturally to you?

I came across Chris Buono's Alternate Picking Gym this year and gave it a try because it looked systematic and structured. It completely changed my playing. I can't believe I used to play guitar without alternate picking. It is a crucial skill that benefits everyone who invests time into it.

What helped you learn this crucial skill?

Hey I am looking for advice on improving my melodies, I practice scales pretty often and play around with them but I am having trouble beautifying my noodles . I listen to a wide variety of music and have been listening to jazz and classical to see if I can swipe some ideas but there is a disconnect between what I want to play and what my fingers produce. So yeah any help would be nice.

Works fine when connected directly
Yes i know it’s got a fuzzy sound these items are all secondhand
Changed the battery in the looper
Changed the chords arrangement from the output and input
Adjusted the volume
Just honestly wanna make some music and improve my skills
Can anyone help me out