August 29, 2005

In this months issue I would like to address a common complaint. It’s one that I see often in online guitar groups and that I hear in person from my students. I am stuck in a rut and I don’t know what to play.

In a recent thread at Wholenote for example the topic of conversation surrounded being stuck in a rut with the pentatonic scale. The exact topic title was...

I seem to be stuck in a pentatonic blues scale rut...HELP!!!

Now I would like to suggest that the problem is not with the pentatonic scale, or the blues scale, or whatever else you are working on. I personally believe it’s a creativity problem.

As some of you may know, I have been playing the guitar for 38 years now. Even after all those years of playing I continue to find new licks and applications of the pentatonic scale. I find it rather confusing when I hear someone say they have the pentatonic scale mastered.

How can that be? The mathematical possibilities of playing through all the combinations available in the scale is staggering. Much more than you could ever achieve in a lifetime, even if you played a new combination every minute of every day, 24 hours for the rest of your life.

So let’s address this issue of creativity. What are some of the ways to be more creative in coming up with ideas? Here are a few off the top of my head.

1. Use what you already know as a starting point. Play licks you already know backwards. Leave out every other note. Combine parts of two different licks to create a new one. Vary the rhythms. There are many ways to create variations on what you already know.

2. Make a commitment to learn a new lick every day and incorporate it into your playing. There are many places on the internet with tab to find transcribed solos. Better yet, pick one of your favorite CD’s and figure the licks out by ear. Then you get the benefit of ear training as well.

3. Check out a different style of music. Listening to players that play a different style from you is a great way to get new ideas.

4. Get together with other musicians and play, play, play! The more you play the more you can increase your vocabulary.

5. When you are playing and you get the itch to pl;ay that same old lick again...don’t! play anything else. You never know what you might stumble onto.

My new book Pentatonic Power addresses many of these issues. It’s a day by day lesson plan with 255 examples in notation and tab. There is an mp3 file of each lick so you can hear exactly how they are supposed to sound For more info go to So ... if your ready to start playing g killer lead guitar ... without risk ... then be sure to check out the site at: www.learn-guitar-online.com/pentatonicpower.html

To you guitar playing success,

Bob