23/01/2019 17:00
Subscribe on YouTube to watch more lessons
Lesson Video Transcript
Welcome to part 2 of the SFS Pentatonics Crash Course!
First of all, I want to thank everyone who made comments on the first lesson and to those of you who contacted me by email. It’s really nice to get some reaction and feedback from you. Many times your questions and ideas help to really refine my teaching and make it more effective. Thanks also to those who shared the course on Facebook. I’m really trying to reach out with this, so thanks for your help!
In lesson one, we got a very general idea of how SFS works, but now we will get into the kind of practice that can really impact your playing and boost your creativity. You see, with SFS you get free from the memorized box shapes, and in this lesson, I’ll show you how to move everywhere on the fretboard and construct a pentatonic scale on the fly, while controlling the sound in a creative way.
Actually, this last one is the first topic we’ll talk about. So today we are going to cover 3 points which may seem elusive to many players, but with SFS they actually become very easy:
1. How to control the sound and be melodic in your soloing
2. How to jump around and improvise freely on the fretboard
3. The 3 string shortcut to fast navigation
But before we get started with this 2nd lesson, I wanna make sure that you have gone through the videos in lesson 1, because everything we do here builds on what we did before. I mean if you didn’t have time to practice the assignments that’s ok, but at least watch the videos so that you can gain the most out of this lesson. So if you haven’t done that, there’s a link to lesson one on this page. Go back, watch the videos and I’ll be here when you come back.
So let’s talk about this elusive concept of sounding melodic, or controlling the sound of your playing. Those of you who took my Linear Freedom Course remember that I talked about this subject there as well, only from a slightly different perspective, but the point is the same. So before I get into this I want to show you a couple of messages that I received on this subject. The first one is actually from back when I was developing the first online version of this system and this message kind of woke me up and reminded me to appreciate the value of SFS as a tool to help you control your sound because I had been using the system for so long for myself and my private students that I kind of took this for granted and forgot how difficult it is to improvise and sound good when you try to learn scales the traditional way.
This is actually the reason why most players end up just playing pre-composed licks instead of actually improvising. Of course, learning licks can be a good thing and has its uses, but that’s another story...
So the first message is from Cazz, one of the very first EMP members. He was actually part of the testing team that got the chapters of the first version of my SFS Pentatonics Book, as I was writing them! And in this message he said:
Thanks for the information that you sent. I really appreciate what your doing and eagerly wait for your upcoming PDF files. You have a GOOD system ( I have tried all of the systems out there) and this one makes sense and most of all SOUNDS GOOD.
Thanks again, Cazz
You see I was expecting excitement for the potential to learn the fretboard but forgot about the musical benefits which are actually more important.
I got several comments and messages along these lines since then, but I chose this next one because it brings me exactly to the point I wanna teach you here.
This one is a YouTube comment from someone called “The Book Incarnate” who looks like Kermit from the muppets, but he made a very interesting comment: He said this on one of my demo improvisations from SFS Melodic Minor Modes, where I was playing using the Dominant b6 mode. And he was impressed by how I made the b6, which is usually hard to handle, sound so musical.
And the answer I gave him leads me to what I will teach you in this part. You see, when you memorize a big scale shape, you have no practical way to identify the degrees of the scale within it. If you try to memorize the degrees it gets very frustrating even before you begin to learn how they sound. That’s why most players just learn where the Root note is and that’s about it.
Well, with SFS we start with the Root Note so we have that covered already. We know it’s home base. It’s the most stable sounding note. But as we gradually add String Fragments, and keep practicing the system, something amazing begins to happen. The fact that we are practically relating everything to the Root note produces a consistency that our ear can grasp on and learn the sound. So without doing any ear training and without even learning any theory on scale degrees, we start to control the sound. Let me give you an example. Let’s say I play a phrase using 3 string fragments [play]. It would be very hard to locate the same notes and play the same phrase within the 5 memorized boxed shapes. But if I think in terms of SFS, I just go to every A on the fretboard and do the same thing. With SFS, where you play on the fretboard makes absolutely no difference. There is an inherent consistency that allows you to learn the sound and be able to sing your improvised solos.
And if you are the exploring type like I am, and you want to go deeper and learn degree numbers or do ear training or any of that stuff, then all of that is much easier, again because of the system’s consistency. You see the reality is that there are no 5 different shapes, it’s really an illusion. SFS helps you realize that, and understand that there’s just one system that can be applied everywhere on the fretboard.
So all this brings us to the second point I’ll cover today, which is the importance of root notes in helping us jump freely around the fretboard. When you see players moving freely, not boxed into shapes, they usually have a good awareness of the actual notes they are playing, not just geometric shapes. The good news is that you don’t have to be a computer and think of every single note. The fretboard is geometric and shapes do have a part to play, just not necessarily through memorization. You see the 5 string SFS I gave you is a shape as well, just one that is flexible and dynamic so that it can be moved everywhere. Well, the freedom to jump around depends on your ability to locate all Root notes quickly. So in our example of A minor Pentatonic, we need to get fast at locating all the A’s. An added bonus you get from practicing this way is that you learn the notes on the fretboard in a fun way, and knowing the notes has many many long-term benefits.
This brings us to your first assignment: Play through all the A’s on the guitar as fast as possible starting on the 6th string and ending on the first. Depending on what kind of guitar you are using, most strings will have a 2nd A in the high register as well so you can add that to your practice if you want: [play x2]
Do this for a few minutes trying to increase your speed. Then do the same thing backwards, starting on the 1st string. Try to get as fast as possible with these 2 drills, and then slow down and start to jump randomly to any A on any string.
But you may be wondering, even if I jump to any area on the fretboard, how can I construct the system quickly, on the fly? Well, this brings us to the 3 string shortcut to fast navigation:
The way I normally teach SFS is to start with just 1 string fragment and gradually add more in a process that allows us to add improvisation tips and ideas while really learning the system in and out in a fun and creative way. But that’s a longer process that cannot fit in a crash course although I will give you more info on that in the following lessons.
Thankfully there’s a shortcut we can implement right away and that will give you the freedom to jump around immediately, even before you master SFS completely. Let’s just use string fragments 1, 2, and 3: These 3 string fragments actually contain one octave of the whole scale [play]. So even though you are missing some fingering choices, all the notes are there. Now let’s place this 3 string SFS on every possible A. Just remember to shift up when you cross from string 3 to string 2. Obviously, in the last two options we run out of strings so our system is more limited, but still… You see how easy it was to go everywhere on the fretboard?
So you can use this shortcut until your ability to build the entire system is fully developed. I’m including a demo from the intro lesson of the full SFS Pentatonics course, of me playing using just these 3 string fragments. Check it out and get an idea of the potential of this shortcut. The only difference is that I did that in C minor, and also that I used an extra note, the Blue Note which we will not deal with in this crash course.
So your 2nd assignment is to watch the demo as many times as you want, maybe stop it and see exactly what I’m doing, and then use the included backing track playlist to do the same yourself in A minor. If you learned your A’s in the previous assignment then this should be fun and easy. You just go to every A, build the system with just 3 String Fragments and improvise. If you have trouble improvising melodies on the spot then just do what you can, experiment with these notes and you will soon get the hang of it.
In the following lessons, we will talk more about how to build your own improvisation language, especially in lesson 4.
In the next lesson get ready for a special ninja technique that will allow you to beat the challenge that is many guitar player’s worse nightmare: Navigating and improvising over Chord Changes!
So until then have fun with these assignments. Your guitar journey is full of challenges, but these challenges can be fun if you have effective ways to tackle them. Your target is to play beautiful music, make the guitar sing, which of course requires knowing your scales. SFS is an organized and effective system that helps you achieve that so that you can become truly free in your soloing.
You can use the comment section to voice any questions or observations, and please help me spread the word by liking and sharing on Facebook.
I’ll see you in a couple of days!