...and the final level of this exercise is
your biggest takeaway for today, this is
where things get really interesting!
What's up YouTube community Bernth here, welcome back to another video lesson! Today I
prepared something really special for
you, we will check out the most important
and most powerful exercise we've looked
at on this channel so far concerning
fretboard visualization, improvisation
and writing and arranging guitar solos
in general - so make sure to smash the
like button if you're as excited about
this as I am, let's not waste any more
time and start right away!
The reason why we discuss the topic of
improvisation today's because you guys
and girls voted for it on patreon.com/bernth - in case you didn't know
my patrons get to vote on the lesson
topics that I'm featuring on here - so
today's incredibly important exercise is
all about breaking free from constantly
playing the same scale boxes in the same
positions on the fretboard - after
watching this one until the end it will
be very easy for you to locate the
correct notes you can play over each
chord in a key and you will be able to
come up with some really amazing
arpeggio sections for your songs and
improvised takes without learning tons of
new different shapes - our foundation for
today is a super easy riff in Bb minor, let's have a listen!
So for this one I was just playing
ascending single notes in the key of
Bb minor , Bb on the first fre of the A string, C on the third fret, Db on the 4th fret and Eb on the 6th fret and
I was just playing palm muted 16th notes
to accent the double bass drumming
accordingly!
So far so good, so that is the basic
foundation that we will play over today
So the most common cliche especially
when it comes to rock and metal music
would be thinking - well, those are the
first four notes of the Bb minor
scale so I will just use the scale in
one or two positions and work with some
of my favourite shred licks at the moment - here's how that could sound like!
So that doesn't sound too bad but it's
also not that interesting
The most important takeaway right here
right from the beginning is not just
seeing those single notes, you want to
think about each chord that you would
actually play on these scale degrees so
when we take a quick look at the chords
in the key of Bb minor we see that
we have the Bb minor chord on the
first scale degree of course, we have th
C diminished chord on the second scale
degree which is a really interesting and
dissonant sound right away so we really
want to make sure to accent that in our
improvised solo, we have the Db major
chord on the third scale degree and the
Eb minor chord on the fourth scale
degree - so once again instead of just
seeing those single notes in the riff,
I'm actually thinking about what kind of chords that
would be in this specific key if those
were my root notes - in order to do that I
would just add the third and fifth to
each root note, only working with the
notes that I can find in this scale - so
once again for today's basic riff I
would end up with the chords Bb minor, C diminished, Db major and Eb minor
So right away I don't
just want to limit myself to thinking in
the Bb minor scale when I'm
improvising over this riff, I want to
play some really cool arpeggios over all
those single notes - that way by thinking
in chords and arpeggios right here I can
bring out this really cool ascending
sound of this cadence that you don't
really hear with the riff since those
are just single notes - but how do you do
that without spending tons of hours
learning different minor, major, augmented and diminished arpeggio shapes all
across the neck? Here's the exercise that
I want you to practice concerning that
this one will hopefully open your eyes
to see how easy this actually is!
as always you can download the tabs, guitar pro files and practice backing tracks
for this exercise and for all of my
youtube lessons on patreon.com/bernth
That is also the place where you
can get some personal feedback, coaching
and practice plan advice from me in case
you need further assistance with certain
exercises - so let's check out what this
exercise is about in detail and why it
is so important and powerful - so I'm
seeing the single notes of the riff as
the root notes of the arpeggios and I
started out with playing triad arpeggios
so for the Bb minor chord I want to
play a Bb minor arpeggio, for the C
diminished chord I want to play a C
diminished arpeggio and so on so - to get
started I was just visualizing the root
notes of the chords
and I was switching to playing Bb on the 6th fret of the low E string
instead of the 1st fret on the A string
since that gives me more options
concerning the fingering and after that
I was simply adding the third and the
fifth to those roots, the minor third and
perfect fifth for the minor arpeggios
the major third and perfect fifth for
the major arpeggio, and the minor third
and a flattened fifth for the diminished
arpeggio - so I was playing the root, minor
third for the Bb minor chord, root, minor third and flattened or diminished
fifth for the C diminished chord, major
third, perfect fifth for the D flat major
chord and root, minor third and perfect fifth for the Eb minor chord - so by just doing
this simple thing I can immediately hear
the sound of the cadence because I'm
adding the thirds and the fifths to
those roots that I'm hearing in the riff
so that already sounds nice and melodic
but of course we want to take this to
the next level now - for the next level I
don't have to change anything about the
notes that I just played, I just have to
add another note - the obvious choice is
going for a 7th arpeggio now so I'm
adding a minor 7th to the minor
arpeggios, a major 7th to the major
arpeggio and a minor 7th to D minor 7
n5 or half-diminished arpeggio - so
this is the basic minor triad arpeggio
for the Bb minor chord
To get the minor seventh arpeggio, I'm just adding the minor seventh...
Root, minor third, perfect fifth, minor seventh
then not do the same thing...
the Cm7b5 chord, I'm playing
root, minor third, flattened/diminished fifth
and a minor seventh on top - then I'm moving to the Db major
seventh chord
root, major third, perfect fifth, major
seventh
and then I'm using the familiar shape,
the one that we started out with for the
Eb minor chord - root, minor third, perfect fifth
and the minor seventh on top - so these 7th arpeggios immediately sound
more interesting than the triad
arpeggios and the final level of this
exercise is your biggest takeaway for
today, this is where things get really
interesting - instead of just memorizing
where to put your fingers when you're
learning those big arpeggio shapes that
you need for sweep picking for example
you can just move these 7th arpeggios
that you already learned to the next
octave - so I'm really just repeating the
same notes, the same formula in the next
octave playing the root, 3rd, 5th and 7th
and by doing that I immediately get a
really cool big shape that I can
potentially extend across the entire
fretboard if I want to and by
visualizing arpeggios that way I also
remember which notes I'm playing and
that is very important - so for the Bb
minor 7 arpeggio I'm just playing the
root, minor third, perfect fifth, minor seventh
and then I'm just thinking in octaves
so my next Bb would be right here
and then I'm just doing the exact same
thing, I'm playing the root, minor third
perfect fifth and the minor seventh so
this is really easy to memorize and to
visualize across the neck - this big
arpeggio shape is simply just starting
over on the D string!
When you download the tabs, guitar pro files and practice backing tracks on Patreon
that I made specially for you, you will
just start out by playing the basic
triad arpeggio for each chord in the
cadence, then you will add the seventh to
each shape and then you will just repeat
the shape in the next octave and when
you just do that for five to ten minutes
every single day in your practice
routine for different cadences, you will
see the entire fretboard in a completely
new way and this will make improvising
much, much easier - I really hope that you
will include this important practice
approach in your personal routine, if you
are not subscribed to the channel make
sure to do that right now so you never
miss another video lesson like that
again and of course you can leave a
comment below this video in case you
have any more open questions! If you
would like to get this shirt that I'm
wearing today that says SHRED
you can order it in the official
teespring store for the channel as
always I left the link in the
description - thanks a lot for tuning in
today and for your continued support, I
will hopefully see you again in the next
video lesson all the best and have a lot
of fun working on this!
you
