[Free Video] How To Play 5 Cool Pentatonic Guitar Licks
Wish your pentatonic guitar licks had more variety and sounded more expressive?
Good news:
I've thought of 5 cool licks you can use next time you play a solo or as the basis for countless new blues and rock licks.
Sound good?
Let me show them to you right now.
Watch the video below to learn how to play pentatonic guitar licks that sound awesome:
Click on the video to begin watching it.
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Using the approachess you learned in the video, your future licks and solos will sound emotionally captivating and memorable for anyone listening.
Now that you understand cool new ways to create cool pentatonic guitar licks, what else can you do to improve your lead guitar playing?
Use this additional advice to improve your lead guitar licks for blues and rock:
Lead Guitar Tip #1: How To Give Your Pentatonic Guitar Licks More Feeling
Want your pentatonic guitar licks to have more feeling vs. sounding like the same stock licks over and over?
Try this simple approach:
Stay with your guitar licks longer before moving on to play a new lick. Don't make the mistake of moving on too quickly out of an urge to add more notes.
Try this out:
- Think of a short guitar lick or take a few notes from a lick you've memorized.
- Play the lick but change the last couple of notes using any notes from the scale/key you were already using.
- Play the lick, but instead of the last couple of notes, change notes in the middle of the phrase by:
Ornamenting them with legato, speed picking, bends or any other techniques you know.
Switch up the note rhythm to make some notes held longer or shorter.
If the lead guitar lick is part of a sequence of notes, make it a different sequence (Ex: use sequences of 4 instead of 3).
This gets you into the habit of playing lead guitar with intention using just a few notes rather than hoping to eventually run into one or two good notes. This is the process for learning how to play notes with feeling.
Of course, this is just one of many ways to train your lead guitar playing creativity.
Try thinking of several more creative approches for practicing playing guitar licks with feeling by isolating your focus on specific licks like sweep picking licks, tapping licks or anything else you want to play more expressively.
Whenever you play a note, try to think:
“What do I want to express with this note?”
Then choose the technique you use to express this accordingly.
This helps you select the most appropriate direction for the lick to go in so everything flows smoothly together.
Lead Guitar Tip #2: Become A Master Of Vibrato Technique
One of the main mistakes that guitar players make with pentatonic guitar licks is not using excellent vibrato to create expressive phrases.
Here's how to make your pentatonic guitar licks sound awesome using vibrato:
Listen to musicians from different musical genres who have good vibrato and observe their phrasing with the technique.
It’s easy to improve your vibrato technique when you listen to the difference between your guitar playing and the playing of one of your favorite musicians. Once you master vibrato technique, practice it by playing it on every note in a scale to make each one sound great.
Eventually you will use vibrato in your lead guitar licks in a much more expressive and natural way.
Question: Is It Better To Improve Lead Guitar Technique By Yourself Or With A Teacher?
Every guitar player eventually hits a wall in their playing and wonders if there is a better/faster way to improve.
So which is faster?: Taking lessons with a guitar teacher or just learn on your own?
Answer:
Every guitar player can experience massive, fast results in their playing when they take lessons with an experienced teacher.
Without a guitar teacher, it's easy to get stuck in your guitar playing and simply not know what has to get done to improve. This is one of the biggest reasons why many guitar players end up giving up and letting their skills stagnate.
Getting better at guitar should be an easy ad fun process.
This is precisely why I encourage all guitarists take lessons with an experienced guitar teacher - no matter what genre of guitar playing you play in.
This step is critical for helping you make fast progress, because a decent guitar teacher is successful at getting you to identify your mistakes, fix poor playing habits and get a new perspective on guitar playing that you would not have thought of on your own.
Not only does this make learning about guitar more fun, it removes the frustration that comes with not knowing the next action needed to get better.
When you are ready to take your lead guitar playing to a new dimension, get a guitar teacher. Doing this gets you results like what my students are getting:
“When I first heard about Tom Hess, I saw that he was a teacher that was very dedicated and serious about it, and that drew me in immediately. That this is a guy that has a plan, has a goal and really if you’re serious about learning guitar, this guy is equally as serious in a way. So it resonated with me straight away.”
I started out just learning by myself and as many others I got stuck. I had a few issues I wanted to get by, but when I met Tom and talked with him and started lessons with him, he opened up a whole new world of possibilities of what guitar playing can be.
I feel very grateful that I found lessons from Tom since I then did what worked from the very beginning. Many guitarists I see that played way longer than I did, they have build up many bad habits. That from the very start, there was clear instruction of how to practice correctly. You build the ability for high speed and whatever you want from the very beginning and you don’t waste time doing inefficient things. So I’m very grateful that I did that, and now I really feel I am able to reach whatever level I want.
The reasons why I think I feel so motivated all the time is because I know that the thing I’m working on is relevant for me and it’s exactly the direct thing I need to get.
The forum just kicks ass. The people in the forum - it’s just like unconditional help all the time. They love to help out, and you also get very inspired by seeing someone just really getting speed really quick and then you say if he can do it, I can do it. It works on the mental side of being a guitarist and that of course that’s the most important thing. Just being around other musicians like that, is just you learn so much faster, is so much less frustration when you can see that all the people are having the same issues that you do, not anything special or anything. It’s just part of learning process, so it kicks ass.
Magnus Gautestad, Norway
“I found Tom Hess on the net through articles, and I read quite a few of those before I went to Tom’s website. Even though I’m not a metal player at all, and Tom is obviously a metal player, I could still see that his ideas and way of teaching could really benefit me. So I pretty much signed up for online guitar lessons with Tom straight away once I’d gone through the website, and it’s just been a real eye opener with the way he teaches…”
... the integration of concepts that he’ll give you and having a really structured strategy… not just week to week lessons, but things that - you can see from one lesson to the next - really develop and continue to work on your technique and your theory and aural skills and those types of things. So I’d played a long time… 20 years before I really caught onto Tom, and I’d had a lot of lessons, and I’d taught and played but I can really see improvements in my technique, sweeping, and picking which weren’t strong parts of my playing.
I feel like Tom has a good gauge of where you’re at as a lead guitar player and what you need, and there just seemed to be so much more stuff in the lessons week to week than what you’d ever get in an hour or so in a one on one lesson… way more. So yeah I think that and the forum. I think, I’d pay the money just for the forum. That alone would be fine… I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all. So that alone is massive!
The price for the lessons, that’s nothing... nothing. You know, I think it’s, pretty cheap to be honest. I don’t mean that in a bad way, cheap. Cheap is not a good word, but I just think it’s great value… awesome value. I mean, you know, you could pay that for one-to-one lessons and you just don’t get the same results and support of the forum and the content and the strategies.
Other teachers I’ve had have been good players, and some have become good friends too. But when I’ve started lessons with Tom I’ve got something to compare that to and a lot of it is just sort of teaching songs from week to week… a lot of the lesson will be left up to you… you’ll go to your lesson and they’ll be like what do you want to do today? At the time I said, oh do this song or that song, but with Tom you start to realize that you know, there’s more to it… the goals and you know he’s sort of more in contact with what you want to be able to do as a player, because he’s asking you the questions and then setting up the strategies, so I find that really good.
Yeah I can see more results in 18 months in a lot of areas in my playing than you know 20 years. So it’s sort of, you know, would’ve been great 20 years ago to have met Tom.
Simon Candy, Melbourne, Australia
When I started learning from Tom, the main thing that made him different from other teachers was that he was showing me how to excel in all aspects of my lead guitar playing by applying the skills that I already knew together with the new material that I was learning from him.
He made me aware of both strengths and weaknesses in my playing that I did not even know I had. From there he gave me the knowledge, tools and guidance to literally transform my lead guitar licks by enabling me to overcome things that were preventing me from becoming a truly creative and self-expressive guitar player. These were the kinds of things that none of my previous guitar teachers and books I studied were able to do for me.
After Tom made me aware of all the things I was missing in my guitar playing and provided me with the strategy and tools for solving them, I began to make very fast progress in all areas of my guitar playing.
I can now write my own music and can create lead guitar solos that I am happy and fulfilled with. I also have the technical skills to confidently and easily play anything that I want to express. I have overcome all of the lead guitar challenges that I struggled with before, and increased my guitar speed to virtuoso levels. More importantly, I have the knowledge and understanding of how to continually improve my lead guitar licks and musical skills to higher and higher levels to continue expressing myself with my music. Overall, I have definitely transformed in a huge way as a musician and as a person through my lessons with Tom Hess. I am grateful to him for guiding me towards becoming the guitarist I always wanted to be!"
Mike Philippov, Indiana, USA
Learning to play pentatonic guitar licks is fun, but there is much more to becoming an excellent lead guitar player than this - Take your lead guitar playing to the highest level with these guitar lessons online.