- Hi, my name is Steve
Stine from GuitarZoom.
I have taught literally thousands
of beginning guitar
players how to play guitar.
And what I wanna do for
you is I wanna help you
with a really awesome trick to learn
how to do some cool
soloing, even if you thought
that you could never learn how to solo
because it just seems so hard.
I'm gonna show you a trick,
in literally five minutes,
you can start learning how to do some cool
little solo features to
impress your friends,
and do whatever it is you
want to do with your band,
or whatever it might be.
All you need to know is some open chords,
and if you know some open cords,
you might know A or D or
G or something like that,
as long as you know some open chords,
you can learn how to do some
cool soloing skills with it.
So what I call this is The
Six Note Solo Technique,
and it works over anything,
over any chords, pretty cool.
So what you need to do is,
let's just take an easy chord like A.
Let's just take your A
open chord for instance.
Okay, what you need to
do is you need to be able
to find A on the sixth string, okay?
So the first thing I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna show you how this
works and then at the end
I'm gonna show you what
the notes actually are
in the six string, you can
memorize those if you want to,
But you can also do this by ear.
So what I do is I take my A chord,
I play my lowest note
which is the fifth string.
And I find that on the sixth string,
okay, which is at the fifth fret.
Okay, so when you're on this A chord
and you're jamming out
and having some fun,
(guitar music)
doing your thing, what your gonna do is,
you're gonna go to the A on
the sixth string, fifth fret,
and you're gonna go directly below that
onto the fifth string and you're
gonna play these six notes,
you're gonna play five, seven,
and you notice I'm using my first finger
and my third finger.
And then you're gonna do the
same thing on the next string.
And you're gonna do the same
thing on the next string.
And that's it, you're gonna
use those three strings
that one shape, just...
Okay?
So let me show you kinda
what you can do with that.
So I'm playing an A chord, right?
My song is in A or I'm on the A chord
and I wanna do something cool,
got this A chord playing.
So I come up to those six notes,
now the reason I'm playing those six notes
is because A is on the fifth
fret of the sixth string
right here so I'm going
just directly below that
onto the fifth string, and that's where
this pattern sits right below that.
So here's A, I go down
there and here's my notes.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
So I have A, alright so let's listen to
what that sounds like.
(guitar music)
Okay, so over that
chord, over the A chord,
now for the rest of your life
you'll be able to do this,
okay so it's not just a beginner thing,
it transfers to anything but it's just
a really easy shape for you to memorize
because it's just using the
first and the third fingers,
and it's just a whole step apart.
So you're just moving from five to seven,
to five to seven, to five
to seven, over that A.
Now when you're playing those six notes,
the most important note that you wanna try
and kind of play more than the others
is gonna be on the middle string,
'cause you have the fifth string,
fourth string and third string.
We wanna be on the fourth string,
and it's gonna be where
your third finger is,
because that note is the
root, that note is the A.
So when you're going like this
and you're moving around
playing these notes,
that note right there is the
A that matches that chord.
That's all you have to do,
those are the six notes that you play.
When I first start
teaching people how to solo
it's not that you have
to know a bunch of licks
and things like that, the
first thing you need to do
is you just need to learn
how to, what I call, meander.
Which is just moving
around, playing those notes
in different orders, with
different rhythms, okay?
It is just the first place to start
and believe me when you get really good
at playing guitar and you
learn how to solo really well,
you're still gonna use this technique,
you're just gonna use lots
of other techniques as well.
But movement is something that we need,
so it's not like you have to feel like
you can't do this because you
didn't learn how to do this,
or you don't know the notes on the guitar,
or you don't know your theory,
or you don't know, don't
worry about all that stuff.
You'll learn all that, right
now the most important thing
is you have some fun with this.
So you got your A chord sitting here.
Here's your notes.
And the most important note,
the one you wanna target a lot,
is that one right there
'cause it's your root.
So you might think, okay well
what if I'm on a G chord?
Okay, a G chord.
The root of G, the note G,
we're gonna find it on
the sixth string again.
Well luckily we're already
playing it aren't we,
it's the third fret right here.
Okay, so third fret of the sixth string,
all I'm gonna do is drop right below that,
and I'm gonna play that same shape.
And my root again is right here.
Now again, don't worry about speed
and all those kind of things,
don't worry about any of that.
Just start exploring those
six note by meandering,
by moving around, trying
some different things.
Remember to play, you
know, play loud, play soft,
play high, play low, play fast, play slow.
You know, play, don't play.
Always learn how to
kind of contrast, right?
So you're not just going,
(guitar music)
have some fun with it, like think.
(guitar music)
You can do all kinds of cool stuff.
So here's the chord right,
you might have a buddy
playing along with you
and you're playing G.
And you go in there and you go.
(guitar music)
Notice how I use some repetition there,
I'm playing the same note.
Okay, repetition is great,
like playing the note
over and over and over
or the same pattern,
right as you're meandering you might go,
oh I like that.
(guitar music)
Same, it's three notes out
of our six notes right?
Then I start making a pattern
out of it, I start going.
(guitar music)
Or maybe I change the rhythm of it and go.
(guitar music)
See there's so many great
things that you can do
to start learning how to do
basic fundamental soloing,
even though you don't know
all of the other stuff.
And this is something that
I've always tried to teach
to my beginning students is that when you
first start learning how to play,
don't feel like you can't have
some fun with these things
because you're not far enough
along in your guitar playing
or whatever that stuff is,
don't worry about any of that.
You gotta learn to have some fun,
and you gotta learn to start
thinking about rhythms right?
You gotta start learning
how to pick single notes,
right at first playing
these single strings
is kinda weird and takes
a little bit of time.
So that's how we do this on any chord.
So let's say I went to a D chord right?
I gotta D chord.
Well now I gotta find
D on the sixth string,
so I think about my lowest note
of D chord I would strum four strings.
So I'm gonna pluck that
fourth string there.
So that's at the tenth fret,
so D's at the tenth fret.
So over this D chord,
I come up here,
(guitar music)
and boom I got my six notes again.
Same shape, that's the beauty of guitar
is everything is movable, okay?
It's a system, no matter where you go,
you can do the same thing as long
as you move it to the correct place.
Okay, so that's the first step for you is,
you don't have to know all
twelve notes on the six string
and all that sort of
thing in the beginning,
eventually you're gonna know all that.
But to begin with, start
with just a couple of chords,
you know, just get used to A for instance
'cause you probably know
how to play an A chord
and if you don't
obviously you should learn
how to play that because
it's pretty important.
But you'll learn A,
and you'll learn that A
is at the fifth fret, okay?
A is really important to guitar players.
So once you make a
correlation in your head
between the A chord, and
going to the fifth fret,
and then finding your
six notes and exploring,
just do that for a while.
That way whenever an A chord comes up
for the rest of your life, you'll have
that little position that you can go to.
Whether you're playing
acoustic or electric
it doesn't make any difference okay?
Then once you get comfortable with that,
then maybe try G, go to the third fret
and do the same thing.
Now it is the same thing no matter where
you go on the guitar, but
that doesn't mean that
it can't get confusing if you
don't know where you're going.
That's why what I want you to do
is think about taking it slow, right?
Learn A, go to the fifth fret,
and explore that, just A.
Just have your buddy or if you
can record yourself playing,
just play an A chord.
(guitar music)
And then just play that little spot.
(guitar music)
Over and over and over just
to get comfortable with that.
Once you've got A and
it's feeling pretty good,
then try G, go to the third fret, try G.
Once you get comfortable with that,
go to D which is at the
tenth fret, and try that.
Okay, another one that would
be really good for you to do
is C if you know how to play a C chord.
Whether it's a C add nine
a lot of people call this,
or a regular C like this,
again whatever works for ya,
I don't care about the shape of the chord,
whatever you're doing, even
if it's an easy C, okay?
But C is located at the eighth
fret of the sixth string.
So again you just drop
directly underneath it,
and you play those six notes.
And you do that over your C chord.
(guitar music)
Over that C chord, okay?
So that's the first
step is just being able
to understand that when you're on a chord,
you can move to the right position
and we're gonna give you a little chart
that shows the notes of
the sixth string, okay?
So I don't confuse you even more,
you can just use that chart for now
if you don't know the
notes on your sixth string,
you can go, okay I need
A it's at the fifth fret.
That little chart is gonna tell you that.
Or I need G, oh I need
to go to the third fret,
that's where that little chart is.
So we're gonna include
that as well for you
to use to figure out how this goes.
Now the next question is,
what if you have a bunch of chords, right?
What if you're playing A, G, and D
all in one chord progression which
obviously happens in music, right?
So you might be going like this.
(guitar music)
And you might be playing like three
different chords together, A and D and G,
over and over and over, okay?
So the trick here then is
we have to try and either,
number one, move with
each chord as it happens,
which can be kinda confusing 'cause if
the chords are moving
fast, that's pretty tough.
If the chords are moving nice and slow
and you got a lot of time, that's okay.
Like you could be playing A.
(guitar music)
And that would be okay, you could do that.
I refer to that as chord chasing,
you're chasing the chord around the guitar
so every time the chord changes,
you switch to a different spot.
But as you get better at this,
what you do is you start
using your ear to decide,
maybe I'll just stay in
one of those spots, right?
But the trick to that is
you have to figure out
which one of these chords
between the A that I'm playing,
the D that I'm playing,
the G that I'm playing,
which one feels like it's the main chord?
Okay, which one am I
spending more time on,
which one am I playing at the
beginning and end of my song?
Or the beginning and end of that section,
or you know, which one is
being played more often,
whatever it might be.
And again that's not
always the right answer,
but it's a good place to start
just to have some fun, right?
You don't have to worry
about, it's not like
if you don't know, you know, 17 times 58
off the top of your
head you can't do math,
of course you can, you
can still explore things
on a lesser level and that's what
I want you to understand here.
So let's say we took the A, the D, the G,
and then the A that I'm playing,
and I'm deciding that A is
kinda the most important
chord of those three right?
(guitar music)
So it's moving around.
So what I do then is I go in there,
and I'm gonna decide to
just stay in A this time,
instead of chord chasing,
I'm gonna just stay here,
and I'm gonna play, so here's my A.
Here comes D.
G.
A, and it sounds awesome,
sounds just fine right?
So you could learn to
just stay in one place,
now could you try D, sure you could.
Could you try G, of course you could.
You can explore all of these things
because the point of this is
to have fun and to make music.
If music always made sense, we
would not have rock and roll.
We just wouldn't, there's
a lot of things about
rock music that just
doesn't make any sense
but you know what?
It doesn't make any difference
because it sounds great,
and that's really the point.
So that's what I want you to explore,
I want you to think
about learning the notes
on the six string and
again using our chart,
where if you don't wanna memorize them,
you can at least look at the chart
to figure out where it is.
You start with just one chord
and learn how to mess around
with that one chord in the right position,
then try another chord,
then try another chord,
and then after a while you'll get
really comfortable with
knowing where they are.
Then maybe you put a
couple of chords together,
you start trying to move from A to D.
So you're moving from here
fifth fret up to the tenth fret.
You're just exploring that a little bit,
and remember I call that chord chasing.
Just moving around following those chords.
If the chords are moving
too fast, if I'm going,
you're not gonna,
you're not gonna do
that, that sounds crazy.
That's when you start
just taking all the chords
and putting them together
and go, you know what,
instead of chord chasing, I'm
just gonna stay in one spot,
and I'm gonna start making something.
And the easiest way to do
that is just to make a choice.
Which chord out of those
chords that you're playing
seems like it's the main chord?
Don't worry about key signature,
and how many sharps and flats,
don't worry about any of that right now.
Just have some fun and use your ear, okay?
Make sure you check out our GuitarZoom
community page on Facebook,
if you have any questions
or comments or you wanna
chat about this stuff,
I'm there, there's just a
ton of great guitar players
world wide that are on that site,
and we talk about guitar and
guitar related stuff all the time.
Keep it very fun, we
keep it really positive,
you know we're not there to
judge where you're at in your path.
Everybody's somewhere right?
So you can check that out,
and you could also check out
GuitarZoom.com we have tons
of great guitar courses
on there to help you along your journey.
In learning chords or
scales or rhythm or theory,
or any kind of thing that
you might be interested in.
So again, thank you for
checking out this video
and your time and welcome
to the GuitarZoom family.
