Etobicoke Guitar School

It’s important to be aware of what scale degree (or interval) you are on as you play through your scales, regardless of the formation you’re using (1 string, 2 strings, 3-note-per-string, CAGED, etc.). This will help you remember where they are so you can target them as you play specific melodies and licks with the scale. In particular, STARTING your licks/melodies on specific scale degrees is a good way to practice memorizing them, and seeing what sort of melodies you can create with them. Start your licks on the 2nd, the flat 3rd, on the flat 6th, etc.

Learning others’ songs in your preferred style can be a big help for improving your own song writing. How so? Because it gives you insight to seeing how that artist constructed the song, from how the riffs were written, to the nitty-gritty transitions, and the overall arrangement of ideas and WHY they were arranged that way.

Vibrato in lead guitar is a performed as multiple string bends in succession, and there are different types of vibrato with different sounds. If your bends are small, you have what is called “narrow” vibrato, and if your bends are large your vibrato is considered “wide.” This, along with the speed of these bends, all affect the overall sound of your vibrato. While you can change your vibrato from note to note, it’s generally best to keep the vibrato on a single note consistent in both how large the bends are, and how fast they’re happening.

Easy way to discover new chords: take your open chord shapes, and slide them all over the neck. You’ll find some chords that sound ugly, but others that sound gorgeous. Play around with it!

“Timbre” is the tonal character of specific instruments, or the KIND of sound they have (e.g. a saxophone and a piano may play the same note, but you’ll be able to tell which sound is coming from which instrument). The strings on your guitar all have slightly different timbres as well, and you can use that creatively. For example, if you don’t want the twangy sound of your open G string, consider playing a G note on the 5th fret of the D string to get the same note, but a more muffled or reserved tone.

A chord is not a handshape, but a collection of notes played at the exact same time. The hand shapes you learn are merely a means to an end. If you know the notes that create that chord, you can find them all over the fretboard and discover a virtually infinite number of ways to play the same chord. This not only drastically improves your fretboard knowledge, but allows you to find new chord voicings that give you more variety, and an overall breath of fresh air so you’re not just playing the same chords all the time.

The end goal with knowing your scales is to be able to navigate them in all directions. In other words, use the entire neck at your leisure while staying in key. This means using not only knowing your typical box formations, but travel horizontally along 1-2 strings, shift between positions as you ascend and descend (“diagonal”), mix your ascending and descending as you shift positions (“zig zag”), making large jumps along the fretboard on the fly, and more.

Playing the right notes in lead guitar is one thing, but how do you keep the other strings quiet?



The strings higher than what your playing are often muted by the fretting hand fingers (they come down in a way where they properly fret the intended note, but dampen the other strings as well), and sometimes with the picking hand fingers.



As for the lower strings, some players use palm muting to keep them quiet, while others use the thumb of the picking hand. Both are viable techniques and can work very well, and one may come more naturally to you for a variety of reasons (or you may use a mixture of both depending on the context). They’re simply different methods that lead the same goal.