Learn the Fretboard the Joe Bonamassa Way ft. Ballad Of John Henry
Most people who are trying to learn their pentagonics haven't yet learnt their octaves. And you've gotta be able to find, if I say a note like E, you've gotta be able to find 6 E's per 12 frets. Otherwise, you're not gonna be able to use, even if you can remember the five shapes in a minor pentatonic or one shape, you're not gonna be able to target notes and make it sound any good. That's the real trick. So when we're in E, think of your E octaves, and a riff like this. All I Absolutely perfect to that because one great thing you can test yourself with before trying to learn the solos or trying to learn how to improvise over it, just try and play that riff in as many different positions as possible. OK, let's reduce that riff down to. Just the root notes at the bottom, so for example. There it is, in his nets one logical position for it. That's 7 and 9. Another logical position is here, 12 ret and 14. Notice one thing I'm doing there is suddenly starting to play lighter. Something Bonamassa does all the time. Harder position doing it here. Mhm. What else have we got? We got here? Mostly in shape 5. Going briefly up to shape one. What else can we do it? Perfect way of doing it. And then another thing Bonamassa, probably what he's most known for with like solos, and we'll cover this bit in the last few songs we'll look at, is like find a lick and repeat cycling licks. So when he does like a fast run, he'll often like. Like repeat it too long. And um let me show you with a little bit more gain. And do this I do it way too much and do it sometimes quite. Much more of this stuff is covered in my lead guitar courses and also intermediatele. We've started to cover a lot of this now. There's more to come in the remaining modules, but a lot of it's already there, it's just your positions of your pentatonic, octave finding, how to improvise in the key of E and A. E minor pentatonic superhighway, A minor pentatonic superhighway. That'll get you through most of it, that will get you.
In this video
Want to get more confident playing all over the guitar neck?
In this short lesson, Andy explores some Joe Bonamassa-inspired blues guitar techniques to help you move beyond simply memorising pentatonic scale shapes.
We'll look at why learning your octaves and root notes is so important, then take a blues riff and play it in different positions across the fretboard.
You'll also learn how Bonamassa uses repeated licks to build exciting blues solos.
In this lesson:
Find the same notes in different places on the guitar neck
Use octaves to understand the fretboard
Move a blues riff through different positions
Connect pentatonic scale shapes
Use repeating licks to create Bonamassa-style lead guitar phrases
>> Further learning: Learn the neck with octaves
>> Further learning: E minor pentatonic superhighway lesson video
Practice challenge: Take one riff you already know and see how many different places you can play it on the neck.
For more on these techniques, check out Andy's Lead Guitar and Intermediate Electric courses.
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Try this course - Early Intermediate Roundup
In this level we cover a roundup of key early intermediate concepts and techniques.