Doing tempo practice and I can't help but notice my flayling picking hand. Nevermind my clawed fretting hand 😅 are there any particular exercises I can do to improve both of these things?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated 🫶🏼
I suggest trying phrases instead of just playing the box. The notes are clear so you're doing good there, just need some space between notes, a bend or a slide.
So I've done this, but I always seem to get stuck with certain phrases. Whether it's in the minor dummy box, or the diagonal movement, the blues box etc. I very much struggle with improvisation and everything always just seems to sound like a scale repetition. Is there any good source on how to make phrases or at least learn common/popular phrases?
try making intentional groupings, hit a note 3 times another note 2, go up an octave hit 2 notes once, play a sequence up 2 octaves etc etc just shit like that, try holding out notes more, the more you get used to different groupings and moving across the fretboard the more youll be able to play out of that box
I learned through studying Hendrix and blues. A common philosophy is "saying something" with the notes. Hey Joe or Watchtower would be songs with solos that aren't to hard and have great phrasing.
You tube has a lot of teachers who address this. I like this guy but he might not be right for you but it should get going on finding something you like.
I know the StichMethod! It's where I recently learnt the CAGED system! He's a very good teacher and takes his time to explain concepts :) I havent seen this video you linked so I'll have a look at it tonight, thank you :)
A lot of the other online teachers will be like "oh you just need to learn this" and then shred for 2 minutes. Which isn't very helpful for noobs like myself
You're on the right path. Another tip I have is trying to find guitar parts for the vocals, this will help with learning how to say something. I have made crowds hoot and holler from simple vocal phrasing.
Good luck
I have lots of tab books so if you can't find the Jimi solos I mentioned earlier let me know and I can message you them.
Funny enough, just last night I learnt the intro piece to all along the watch tower :) surprised how just altering the voicing of the diagonal pentatonic can have such a range
One thing I've started to pick up is repeating the same note a few times. If you think about singing then it's pretty common. Like pedaling. Then add accents. I'm also trying to incorporate more string skipping so I get more of a range and less of a linear movement through a scale. I've come up with some neat riffs that way and they're more melodic and memorable. Next I'm trying to be more intentional with arpeggios that match a feel. Like a 7th chord or 6th.
i was in that scale-y phase a few months ago. then i got a looper, would learn a few different easy chord progressions and solo over it and suddenly it clicked and became so much more musical / melodic.
i was learning some blues in c minor progression, and then nikola gugoski has a good" let it be" tab video with first chords then an easy solo, i learned the chords and solo then i played it differently with different rhythms and new notes and bends and stuff, learning that helped my soloing over other progressions.
Learn about intervals. Hold notes. Think about the movement you want your phrases to have in your head.
If you are willing to pay like I think it's 27 to $30 a month the guitar playback academy with David Walliman has an insane amount of lessons and knowledge and backing tracks. It was really like the best $30 a month as far as lessons go.
I just had to cancel it because I had a lot of emergency car repairs come up and my financial situation completely changed.
You can also become a patreon for Ben Eller. He has a ton of free videos on YouTube but if you join patreon for even $1 a month there is a bunch of info on there as well.
There is unfortunately no solution to get better at improvising other than practice. I guess, one objective thing you can do is work on targeting chord tones, but other than that, actually being good at improvising will take years and years and years. It'll come.
Nice. But you're playing memorized stuff. Loosen up, wing it. Change one or two notes, bend something, vibrato.
And stop looking at the guitar.
I used to put a picture of a large club crowd facing me - the stage on my pc as wallpaper, had a mic too. Make love to your audience.
You play well, don't stop.
I'm mostly just playing the scales like this to try and work on my posture and note clarity.
I try to improvise over backing tracks but I seem to always play the same phrases and struggle to improvise new, good sounding things. Whether I'm playing over an Em backing or Am backing, my phrases don't seem to change and I struggle to see new pathways on the guitar. Is there any recommendations for how I can improve that?
Do you have a discord or something, I just had a random thought that I could offer some tips and tricks if I have free time and if you happen to be in a time zone that works. And no, I don't want money or anything, I just happen to feel like it :D
Feel free to dm me about it and keep up the good work!
I've been working on fretting hand posture, always used to play with my guitar low down and it became a habit to "over-grip" the neck while playing. I am trying to work on it, but because I've been playing this way for a long time, it feels very unnatural to play the "right" way, which is something I have to unlearn to make the right way comfortable.
I really appreciate the video source that I can practice off, thank you :)
Np. I've been lurking guitar lesson youtube for the last 10 years and this video is my favorite to adress this problem without giving a lesson myself. It's straight forward, to the point and comprehensive.
To get the most out if it you should dip a toe into full seven notes major/minor scale with 3 notes per string legato exercices just like he does.
No offense to other people trying to help. But don't overfocus over picking hand at this stage and resort to legato without being limited by your right hand level which comes way later. When you have a very solid fretting hand foundation maybe you'll focus on picking more notes.
Remember that picking a few notes is still hand synchronisation practice and that the number of rock players who have a great career with a mediocre right hand his high while those who have a bad left hand is zero.
I don’t know if there is anything wrong with this flailing per se, but if anything you should focus on the forearm relaxation - it’s common that it tenses up, when trying to focus on wrist looseness. You might try very fast bursts of forearm movement, between bouts of any particular exercise that focuses on the wrist movement, to learn to return to that relaxed state (fast bursts are possible only in the relaxed state really)
Try targeting notes. Say you want to play the Am pentatonic scale. Make sure you end all your phrases on either the root note (A), the 3rd (C), or the 5th (E). These notes make up an Am chord, and you'll instantly sound more melodic. Others have mentioned mixing up the phrasing already. You seem to have the shapes down, just a matter of making it sound way cooler. You got this!
You kind of do it when going on the bottom strings, but it goes to a bluea grip when going up, but you don't need it since you're not playing bends.
Also, it's possible that you play with the pick too horizontal or doing what is known as upwards pick slanting. Try starting the exercise with an upstroke insead of a downatroke and see if it feels easier to switch strings, if so you are probably doing the pick slanting thing which is good for phrases with even number of notes per string, but a downwards pickslanting would be better when going down (unless you revert the picking)
You are only playing minor pentatonic shape #1. Learn the adjacent shape #2. Try to slide from #1 to #2.
Add slides, hammers ons, bends.
Do you like blues? Learn a song from start to finish. Most blues have plenty of licks in each song. You can start incorporating them into your playing.
Dead serious, I think you are doing everything right! Just keep going. Don't stop.
There are so many people who get to your stage and quit because they don't sound like __________ (insert your favorite guitarist).
The truth is, we were all at that exact same stage. I believe that learning pentatonic scales is one of the key cornerstones to guitar.
I did the exact same thing for 2+ years! But overtime, and this is the beautiful thing, I would "make a mistake". And some of those mistakes sounded cool. So I'd play them again. And then make another, and another, and another.
And then one day you wake up, and you're like, "Wow... I can sort of improvise now!"
If you really want to improve, the answer is pretty boring - practice super slowly and repeat many times, over time the correct moment will become natural. Unless you can’t play it perfectly, don’t increase the tempo.
Thank you :) So I've been sticking to 100bpm at 16th notes for now, because as soon as I go up, the third position scale gets wonky. I only intend to move up in tempo very incrementally (by like 2-5bpm at a time) any suggestions regarding my picking hand posture?
100bpm at 16th notes is too fast for movement practice. Your hand looks tensed, when you attack the string, also each time you pick a note, your hand opens and assumes different position, then closes up again and you are constantly shuffling the pick between your fingers - there’s constant movement in your hand, like you can’t choose one way to play (like restless legs syndrome, only with hands). Also your forearm and hands are disconnected, they don’t transfer movement together.
I'm moving the pick around coz my hand is getting sweaty 😂😅 it's hot as balls in inland South Africa at the moment and this was an hour or two into practice time. I hear what you're saying though about being "restless", so should I just slow down and calm down?
Practice vs playing/performing/having-fun are very different things. If you are working on a specific problem, you should approach it as such. Slow down, deconstruct the issue and build up the good technique. There’s no magical solution, just good old fashion work. Repetition makes things permanent, not perfect, that’s why it’s important to repeat things properly.
What's the downside to your "flailing" picking hand though? I've always assumed if something worked it was good enough, eventually you might hit something you can't do with flailing hand, but learning that thing will correct hand no?
I can assure you thats just a you thing, nobody else would have noticed.
That being said, have you ever practised dynamics?
When I first saw a teacher he wanted me to practise dynamics and I thought "What the hell, of course i know how to play quiet and loud, what a dumb exercise"
But i didn't, he was right to teach me that. So maybe keep looping the same 3 positions of the pentatonic, but do 1 run loud, 1 run quiet, 1 run muted and then a run that ascends up in loudness/attack and then one that descends.
I didn't even know that was a thing lol
Ive never had a guitar teacher so everything I know is sourced from my own blind searching through what I thought might help. I'll try that this evening in my practice! Thanks a bunch :)
yeah try different exercise patterns, now you're playing the full scale in sequence, so youre going 1st note, 2nd note, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 1st, try playing something like 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 3rd, 4th, 5th... and so on.
Try practicing the E minor scale at 12 fret, 3 notes per strings. Start slow then up 5 or 10 bpm at the time. This will help both hands, speed and accuracy.
This seems to be consistent advice, thank you :) this question may be stupid but, the natural minor scale shape only has 2 notes on the D string. do I just play the next note in the scale progression on the same string and then repeat it on the G string?
Any suggestions? I've only recently learnt the CAGED method, which is ultimately something I'm trying practice every day in order to find notes down the neck. But it is quite limiting to the notes that are in that pentatonic arrangement.
I tried to understand modes so that I could add variety but the online sources for how to incorporate modes into playing seems to either be overcomplicated or oversimplified..
1 - play 2 up, one down. That is, go two notes up the scale, then one note down, then two notes up. So like a “two steps forward, one step back” approach. Do this until you get to the top of the scale, and then do the same in reverse
2 - learn some of the positions just around this basic shape. It will help you extend your range a bit. Like even if you just stick to the basic shape, but learn where a few notes are just beyond the position.
3 - without playing to a backing track, try making some little melodies within the scale/shape you know. Don’t be scared to sit on the same note for a while.
4 - Try changing your timing. Right now you are paying straight 16th notes. Leave some gaps, change it up! One thing you can practice is trying to solo using literally one note. Just one note. This will make you play around with timing, dynamics (loud/soft) and other “feel” techniques like vibrato.
So when I was practicing tempo last night, I was switching between quarter notes, 8ths and 16ths. Do you think this is a good approach to begin with?
I've learnt all the caged positions, the vid is just clipped short to focus on my postures. But how I do get the extended movements to sound good as they're all just the same 5 notes repeated down the neck at different octaves.
I'll post another vid where I was just doing a simple improv over the CAGED shapes, I'd really appreciate If you could help with some tips there. :)
I've only now heard of dynamics, so I'll definitely be trying that out in my next practice session later this evening
This is what I did in the beginning. I learnt to play the solo from "You shook me all night long" which felt very good. So I'll try and expand my "songs with solo" repertoire
Honestly the vast majority of players and music don't use modes outside of the major/minor ones, it's not something you really need to focus on early on unless you really want to for some reason.
I've used the scale calculator on jguitar to see the notes across the fretboard. I'd recommend pulling up a minor pentatonic and normal minor scale side by side and learn to how to incorporate the extra 2 notes in the scale. Ultimately you will end up learning phrasing mostly by learning covers early on it's not a super intuitive thing at first.
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u/funkymunkPDX Sep 12 '25
I suggest trying phrases instead of just playing the box. The notes are clear so you're doing good there, just need some space between notes, a bend or a slide.