Guitar Soloing Essentials

Modal & Melodic Approaches For Soloing & Improvisation

Get this course and 1,000+ more with All Access

Try 14 days free. Cancel any time.

Purchase Individual Course for $19.99

Joe Pinnavaia

Educator

rock

Genres

About this course

TrueFire Foundry courses are independently produced courses presented by a hand-picked selection of top-notch artists and educators from around the world. Filmed in the educator’s own studio, Foundry courses bring fresh educational concepts and very effective teaching methodologies to TrueFire Students. Joe Pinnavaia’s Foundry course, Guitar Soloing Essentials will show modal and melodic approaches for soloing and improvisation.

Hello I'm Joe Pinnavaia — welcome to my TrueFire Foundry course, Guitar Soloing Essentials, which I produced in my own studio.

We will be discussing some ideas on how to improve and expand on Major and Minor line concepts. Some of the most important ideas in a solo come from these essential building blocks. In each section, we'll take a look at some of these building blocks and break down how to approach them. Most players have tackled some of these, but leave out certain ones which can create "holes" in their playing. We’ll cover them in-depth.

Topics will range from understanding harmony and it's uses in modern music; pentatonic and modal scales and how to use them to be more musical; to bebop scales, chord tones, starting lines from specific chord tones, triad uses and superimpositions.

Guitar Soloing Essentials is a complete bag of techniques that every guitarist needs to know, but sometimes it's hard to find them all in a comprehensive layout. That's the goal here, to make sure the essentials are covered with playing examples, teaching, and assignments for you to work on in order to get these concepts down cold.

Ready to get started? Grab your guitar and let’s get dig in!

NOTE! Joe Pinnavaia organized the course into 8 weekly sections for those students that prefer to have a specified regimen of material across a specified time schedule. However, for those students who prefer to work at their own pace, or even skip around you are certainly encouraged to approach the course in that way as well.

What you'll learn

Apply pentatonic scales over chord changes
Use chromatic tones in improvisation
Creating melodic lines using triad shapes
Learning how to insert chromatic notes in different modes
Develop melodic improvisation skills

Release date: 12/01/2014 • 3h 20m runtime

intermediate late intermediate guitar electric guitar soloing improvisation

Start Course

Sample lessons

Week 3: Pentatonic Applications 4

Capitalize on Minor Modes

Week 3: Pentatonic Applications 4

Capitalize on Minor Modes

What's included

21 lessons • 11 charts • 6 Jam Tracks

Guitar Soloing Essentials

Welcome to Soloing Essentials! In this course, we'll be looking at ways of building Major and Minor sounds with single note techniques so that you can make melodic lines easier and so you can build solos with direction and give the listener something to relate to.

Modes - The Whole Ball of Wax!

This is a video regarding ALL of the modes and can be for both beginning and late intermediate students as well as some advanced who need a refresher.

The PDF as well as a really jazzy backing track are included. This is a longer than usual video and you can take notes if you want to!

Pentatonics

Yes that's right! The most used scale not only by guitar players all over the universe but by pianists and wind players as well. It is one of the most useful tools in the arsenal of any guitarist but is somehow not used to its full potential. By that I mean most of the time players only use one or two box positions usually over a minor chord and then that's it! There's more to it than that and we'll start off with all of the positions and some ways to put the scale to use right away. We'll stick with the A minor groove track for our backing track for now but I will be adding more soon so keep practicing the scales over the track and then we will branch out from there.

Bonus Lesson!

This is a quick lesson on taking small parts of scales and practicing them in a way that helps to solidify the interlocking of scales. This is also a great way to help with ways of transitioning between positions.

Week 2: Building the Major Line Over Tonic and Lydian

Soloing over Major chords can sometimes make you feel a little more "happy" than you would like to be! How do you create fresh lines without sounding soft? One way is by use of major pentatonics from the root note as well as the 5th of the major chord.

F Lydian BT - Use Both F major pentatonic and C major pentatonic over the F major 7 chord and then C major pentatonic and G major pentatonic on the second half of the progression, which would be C major to G major.

Week 3: The Minor Mode and Pentatonic Connection

This lesson focuses on the use of minor pentatonic over each minor chord within the major scale. So for an A minor 7 chord, we can use D minor pentatonic over it as well as the tonic A minor pentatonic. Also the mode for that area can be used as well - A minor, A Aeolian, D minor, D Dorian, E Minor, and E Phrygian. Another neat experiment is to take the minor pentatonic a whole step above the root and play the pentatonic and add the minor third of the chord. So for the D minor7 chord you can play E minor pentatonic and add F to the scale. Some very different note choices come forth! Have fun!

Week 3: Pentatonic Applications 4

In this lesson, I jump into the use of pentatonics from the minor modes - Dorian, Phrygian, and Aeolian. I also use the minor pentatonic a whole step up with the addition of the minor 3rd of the chord we are playing over. That means if the harmony is D minor 7th then you can use E minor pentatonic with an F added. This is actually a cool way to add fresh lines to your solos!

+ 14 more lessons

Reviews

2 results

Filter by:

Sort by:

Osokin

Verified buyer

05/14/23

Soloing Essentials!

Joe Pinnavaia is a very advanced guitar player and an excellent teacher, and in this course he presents a variety of essential elements for playing great solos. There is some really good material here for the intermediate player, and Joe clearly communicates all the different approaches.

tjgqbyron

Verified buyer

07/29/20

Essentials and so much More.

I love Joe's lessons. There is so much packed into them. Well worth the price of admission. Very high quality.