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This Metal Licks free weekly guitar lesson series is by Scott Allen, who currently has an interactive TrueFire classroom called the “Metal Shop.” Tune in there for more from Scott, or subscribe to this series for more!

Video Guitar Lesson:

If you are like most self respecting rock guitar players you started out playing blues inspired solos. And why not, it seemed to work just fine for many of the greats like Clapton, Hendrix, Page, Blackmore, Iommi, Beck, Young, and Stevie Ray. But at a certain point the comfortable confines of our good ole pentatonic box begin to feel a little constricting. We see the magic that players like Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, Steve Vai, and Joe Satriani can squeeze out of the blues box when they mix it with a slightly more sophisticated scale like the natural minor or Dorian. Just by adding a couple of notes you can open up a lot of doors that you didn’t even know where there in the first place!

For this example we will be using the venerable A minor pentatonic box and combine it with nearby notes from the A natural minor scale and the A Dorian scale. By combining some bends, hammer ons and pull offs and some diatonic sequences we take this lick to a place where it would be equally at home on an Allman Brothers record or an Ozzy record. This also functions as a stepping stone to using the diatonic scale for improvisation for those who maybe aren’t as comfortable with stepping out of the box. And on top of all that it doesn’t sound so darned traditional. Much like putting a GPS into a 67 Mustang it brings this classic into the modern age in style!

This Metal Licks free weekly guitar lesson series is by Scott Allen, who currently has an interactive TrueFire classroom called the “Metal Shop.” Tune in there for more from Scott, or subscribe to this series for more!