Bill's Guitar Mentor Café – November 2010

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Hi {FIRSTNAME}

Welcome to Bill's Guitar Mentor Café where each month accomplished musician Bill Schnare will share helpful hints to help you advance your playing skills.

This month he'll be sharing with you some new and interesting ideas when soloing over Minor chords. So grab that coffee or favorite beverage and let's get right to it...

New and Interesting Ideas When Soloing Over Minor Chords

Most beginner and intermediate musicians find it very difficult to generate new and interesting ideas when soloing over Minor chords.

Here's an example. Imagine that you are searching for a solo idea while playing over Bm, in the Key of A. We know that an A major scale will work but we also know that continuously using this idea would quickly become very boring for you, and the listener.

Every Minor chord has a relative Major chord. We're now going to build on that basic idea.

The relative Major chord of Bm is D Major chord. This means that you can play many interesting things based on D Major chord while the Bm chord is occurring in the Key of A. Of course, all this is covered in great detail in the Guitar Mentor Lessons.

–	One idea would be to play a D Major Pentatonic scale using either The Car method or The Blue and Yellow Box method.
–	You could also play an A Major Pentatonic scale using either The Car method or The Blue and Yellow Box method.
–	Another idea would be to play some D Major Pentatonic Double Stops.
–	You could also play various pieces of a D Major chord, perhaps embellished with some bends.
–	There are several chord arpeggios that would work as well. For example, Dmaj7 arpeggio would sound very interesting. There are many other possible chord arpeggios that would work as well. This technique creates the need to learn how to properly play a variety of interesting chord arpeggios.

This same technique would work very well for F#m in the Key of A.

All of these techniques are described in detail in the Guitar Mentor Lessons.

If beginner musicians want to understand totally what they are doing, I strongly recommend that they start at the very beginning of the Guitar Mentor Lessons. Actually, I recommend that you start at the very beginning of the Guitar Mentor Lessons, regardless of your previous experience. There are some very important basic principles covered that would give you an excellent review.

If you take my advice and you progress through the lessons in the order I suggest, you will then understand each successive concept. Unless you are already a highly trained musician, it would not be a good idea to study the Guitar Mentor Lessons in random order.

Stay tuned because next month I'll have more useful tips for you at Bill's Guitar Mentor Café.

Until then, Rock on!

Bill Schnare
Guitar Mentor