E Minor Rock Instrumental Jam Track
Artists like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani are great at soloing over brooding, atmospheric minor jams. Vai’s “For The Love of God” comes to mind. Here is a E Minor rock jam track in that style:
The main backing guitar part jazzes up an Em to C progression with some colorful extensions:
Some scale suggestions:
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Fingerboard Aerobics - Major Scale in 3rd Intervals
Knowing the sound of a scale starts by playing it ascending and descending (see my post on Four Scales You Should Know). But an infinite amount of music can be found within scales by changing the order of the notes and creating patterns. Today’s exercise moves through the Major Scale in ‘3rd intervals’, skipping every other note in the scale. This exercise in the G Major scale will workout your fingers and help you hear new melodies in this hopefully familiar scale pattern.
Hear it in action, first at 50 Beats Per Minute (BPM) then at 100 BPM.
Start slowly. Only when you can keep an even tempo throughout should you speed up!
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The “Secret” Pentatonic Shapes
The Minor Pentatonic scale is one of the most widely used scales in improvisation in every musical style so it makes sense to know it well all over the guitar neck. When it comes to moving beyond the first pattern learned (see my lesson on 4 Scales You Should Know) the next step is usually to introduce five overlapping patterns, each staying strictly in position on the neck. In reality, most Blues and Rock soloists connect these patterns in very repeatable ways creating just two patterns that cover the entire neck. These are shown below in the key of A:
From the fingering you can see that you play these patterns with just two fingers, sliding every other string. I would recommend practicing these patterns descending as well, usually sliding back with the index finger.
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Techno-Rock Guitar Jam Track
Rock music will live forever! I know this because it readily accepts other music styles and fuzes them together to create ever evolving rock hybrids. Jazz-Rock, Country-Rock, Blues-Rock, Rap-Rock. The list will keep evolving.
This looping jam track in B minor takes techno/electronic music elements and fuses them with a rock feel.
This jam track is taken off of my Jeff Beck Style lesson series. Starting with Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop, Jeff has increasing had a ‘electronica’ element to his tunes.
Some cool scale choices:
As a added bonus, here is my intro video to this lesson from the series! I think most of the licks I use are in the lesson series but, if I remember right, I just improvised this take and tried to squeeze the licks as best I could.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
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4 Scales You Should Know
When it comes to guitar soloing, there are four scales that can be applied more often than any others. They are the Minor Pentatonic Scale, the Natural Minor Scale, the Major Scale and the Major Pentatonic Scale. Following are the most common patterns for each type. They include an easy-to-find root note on the heaviest (6th) string. These examples are all in the key of A.
Practice these patterns from the lowest-pitch root note to the highest note. Then descend from the highest note to the original root. This teaches both your ears and your fingers the full range of the pattern. Once you can do this, wander through and explore the sound of each scale. Or try them over appropriate jam tracks.
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‘Funk E’ - Rock Fusion Jam Track #2
This has a feel reminiscent to the Miles Davis track “Jean Pierre”. Great for open-ended, anything-goes jamming in E. It is basically a static E7 chord with some extensions thrown in for “jazziness”.
Here are a few scale suggestions:
The F Diminished scale give you the E Half Step/Whole Step Diminished Scale which is gives some nice color notes against the static Dominant chord.
Popularity: 6% [?]
12 Minor Keys Jam Track
Changing keys is a challenge presented by jazz and jazz-rock styles. Today’s jam track exercises your key-changing prowess.
It back-cycles through the Circle of 5ths every 2 bars through all 12 keys. A great way to workout your ear and all those scale patterns you’re learning on GuitarTeacher.com!
Popularity: 5% [?]
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Rock Shuffle Jam Track
Here is a fun backing track for your endless-jamming pleasure. It is a rock shuffle jam in the key of A.
The chord progression is: |A - - - | G/A - - - |D/A - - - |A - - -| . The way to read ‘G/A’ is ‘G over A’ and means a G chord is played with an A bass note. Essentially the bass rides or ‘pedals’ an A note the entire progression as the chords change over it.
Some suggested scales for improvising:
In an upcoming lesson I will revisit this progression and show how to use different triad shapes in your rhythm guitar work. Have fun!
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Latin Guitar Jam Track
Hey, six-stringers! In the change over to the new website format I know alot of the old content is now unavailable. I will repost old favorites as I can with plenty of new content to come!!
Today’s post is a looping jam track with a Santana flavor.
You can play standard rock and blues licks but the track’s use of the Fmaj7 chord strongly implies the Phrygian mode.
Instructions
1. Press play on the audio player above (Adobe Flash Player needed).
2. Solo over the backing track (audio will continuously loop).
Try this scale:
Other suggested scales:
- E Minor Pentatonic/E Blues
- E Phyrgian
- E Half-Step/Whole-Step Diminished Scale
Suggested Listening:
- Carlos Santana
- Al DiMeola
- Larry Carlton
- John McLaughlin
Have fun!
Storm Stenvold
GuitarTeacher.com
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