Electric Guitar Lessons

Electric Guitar Lessons - There are a lot of great online resources for learning the electric guitar. I've chosen not to duplicate that information, focusing more on some neat approaches to things I've discovered, plus cool licks. Click on the electric guitar category for related posts.

Tip 1 - Learn music theory on the guitar.

Tip 2 - Learn the 3-note per string major and minor scales (modes), pentatonic scales, blues pentatonic scales, harmonic minor scales, and applicable arpeggios. Then, improvise a lot using these scales.

Your early influences or chosen genre will steer your guitar playing in a big way. Growing up, I loved Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, Tony MacAlpine, Eric Johnson, and Paul Gilbert. So, I would learn many of their tunes and snippets from guitar solos. If one of my favorite players came out with a lesson program, I'd work hard on that, for example, Paul Gilbert and his Intense Rock series. I built a lot of alternate picking and arpeggio chops by working through his examples and sequences.

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When practicing, I try to combine scales and arpeggios in unusual or purposeful ways, trying to avoid the ol' stand-by licks you get accustomed to playing. Here's an example, where I wanted to combine a G Major Arpeggio with pieces from a blues pentatonic scale. 

I like to warm up with anything legato (using hammer-ons and pull-offs), then move on to something with string skipping or arpeggios. Here's a short example using diminished arpeggios.