What's up YouTube community Bernth here - welcome back to another video lesson!
Today I want to show you an amazing
system that will improve every single
aspect of your guitar solos so it
doesn't matter if you want to work on
your improvisation skills or if you want
to take your writing and arrangement
skills to the next level - this will be
really beneficial for all of that. So
let's get started right away!
The main reason why I'm recording this
lesson is because you guys voted for
metal music theory once again on the
lesson wish list on Patreon for this
month and I try my very best to feature
every single topic until the end of the
month - so since we discussed chords, riffs
and songwriting in the first episode of
metal music theory I think we should
move on to shredding - with today's lesson
I want to introduce you to an amazing
and very helpful system that will give
you a quick and super effective overview
of your scales and arpeggios across the
entire neck - we will combine all of this
theory knowledge in one position instead
of seeing chords arpeggios and scales as
those completely separated topics, that
way you will see much faster and more
musical progress with your guitar solos
and improvised takes and those very
annoying blind spots on the neck will
slowly start to disappear over time for
today's exercise and practical example I
picked one of the most common keys in
rock and metal music the key of E minor
We will only stick to this one basic
shape for the E minor chord right here
starting on the seventh fret of the A
string and we will build the basic minor
arpeggio. the minor 7 arpeggio and the E
minor scale step by step and then I want
to show you a short practical
demonstration, a pretty cool and quite
creative lick that I came up with by
using the system!
As always you can download the PDF tabs, guitar pro files and practice  backing
tracks for this exercise on my patreon page patreon.com/bernth - I upload these files for every
lesson I post on youtube and I'm in direct contact with
all my members of the shred guitar
community over there - so before we move
on to the practical demonstration I want
to talk about what's going on here in
detail - as you could hopefully see with
my note overly graphics everything was
based on this basic E minor chord shape
those were the notes in red - you probably
know this basic voicing already we're
starting out with the root E on the
seventh fret on the A string then we're
playing B on the ninth fret on the D
string, the perfect fifth
then we're playing E once again so the
octave - then we're moving to G on the
eighth fret on the B string, that's the
minor third, and we're playing B once
again on the seventh fret on the E
string - the first thing you can do
instead of learning huge arpeggio shapes
all over the neck is just extending this
basic chord that you already know a
little bit to get the E minor arpeggio
shape - as you might already know we have
the same notes in the E minor chord than
we have in the e minor arpeggio so
instead of playing a chord we see them
as single notes similar to a scale - so in
order to get my first basic arpeggio
shape for this chord I just stick to
this position to this section on the
fret board but then I try my best to
find the notes E, G, B, the root
minor third and fifth in more positions
on the neck here sticking to a maximum
of two notes per string so we only want
one or two notes per string to form this
arpeggio - so, first of all, I can visualize
B here on the seventh fret on
the low E string so I'm adding it to the
arpeggio I'm starting out with the
perfect fifth then I'm playing E the
root then I can see that I have G right here
so I can add it as well so that's the
beginning of my arpeggio, then I'm sticking
to the basic minor chord shape I'm
playing B once again, E, G and B once
again here on top of the arpeggio so once
again I'm just visualizing this basic
chord that I already know right here on
the fretboard and I'm extending it with
the notes that I'm actually playing
already in the cord - E, G and B, the
root, minor third and perfect fifth - but I'm
adding them in different positions on
the neck to get a full arpeggio shape so
whenever I'm playing this basic
E minor voicing in a song i can
immediately move into a melody because I
can also visualize the arpeggio shape
right here
The next step to move to more
interesting phrases harmonically is
adding the minor seventh, that way we get
an E minor 7 arpeggio and we actually
don't have to change anything about what
we just learned, we just have to add one
more note so the minor 7th of E is the
note D so I'm just adding D in all the
positions I see fit
to build my E minor 7 arpeggio so when I
visualize that I'm starting off with B
and then I can already add D with a
hammer-on on the 10th fret of the low E
string so I get a symmetrical pattern on
the E and A string which is always nice
then I'm moving to B once again the
perfect fifth on the ninth fret on the D
string and then I get another chance to
add the minor seventh D right here on the
seventh fret on the G string, I'm playing
D right here before I hammer on to E
once again so up to this point...
So I'm not changing anything about the
previous arpeggio, I'm just adding D
in two position so far and then I'm adding
G on the eighth fret on the B string
once again the minor third before going to
B and one last time up to D the minor
seventh here on the tenth fret of the high
E string - so the full arpeggio sounds
something like that... sounds pretty nice!
So once again I want you to make sure to
remember the connection between those
two arpeggios, you just have to add or
remove the minor 7th here - the next step
would actually be the pentatonic scale
since we only have five notes in that
one so we only have to work with one
more note but in our case I want to go
straight for the three note per string
position of the E minor scale since we
talked about shred guitar playing a lot so
if you also want to include some cool
shred phrases in your solo this is the
shape you want to go for!
When I'm playing this scale phrase right
here I'm still visualizing the E minor
chord right here and I'm basing this
scale phrase on this position - what I
mean by that essentially is that I can
break out of this chord in an improvised
context for example and play an arpeggio
phrase like I demonstrated with the
previous example or I could go into a
scale phrase, I can just visualize all
that when I'm playing the E minor chord
shape right here so this is the biggest
takeaway from this lesson and the first
step to really mastering the fretboard
of course you still have to cover a lot
of different chord shapes all across the
neck, you have to consider the modes
exotic scales and so on but today's
example and exercise serves as a great
introduction to all of that - now here's a
short but very fun practical
demonstration, this is a lick that I came
up with by working with the system!
You can also find the tabs and guitar pro files of this lick on my Patreon page
patreon.com/bernth in case
you want to learn it - I was basically
just starting out thinking in the E minor
seventh arpeggio shape - then I was
visualizing the three note per string scale
phrase with a little chromatic twist - and
then I make sure to include the original
chord voicing to utilize every step we
learned about today!
I really hope that you enjoyed this
lesson and that you learned something
about visualizing chords arpeggios and
scales all across the neck in a guitar
solo or improvisation context - in the end
make sure to subscribe to become a
member of this guitar community today,
that way you also always get notified
whenever I upload a new guitar lesson,
leave a like if you enjoyed this lesson
that always helps me out a lot and a
comment in case you have any questions
about the system - as always a try my best
to answer as many as possible! I will
hopefully see you again in the next
video lesson all the best and have fun
practicing until then!
