Improvising guitar lesson. Natural minor scale guitar lesson. How to improvise guitar with the natural minor scale. From the Secret Guitar Teacher: http://secretguitarteacher.com/youtube/intermediate/electric/BQ20b4OZA7U/83848293-improvising-with-the-natural-minor-scale.php This is a sample lesson from the Secret Guitar Teacher website (see link above). Please note, it is not for beginners. But for anyone who has already learnt to improvise using the blues scales (or pentatonic scales) and wants to take their improvising to the next level, this lesson should help point you in the right direction. Here's the abridged transcript: If you have originally learned to improvise using the minor pentatonic or blues scale patterns then the next step forward is to learn to use the Natural minor scale. In the theory lesson on the secret of fretboard mastery we used the Natural Minor Scale Formula as an example so, if you have completed that lesson you will have already learnt something about this scale. But don't worry if you haven't studied that lesson yet as we are not going to presume any particular level of theory knowledge in this lesson. Let's start with a quick review of the basic pentatonic and blues scale patterns. Here's the first position Blues scale in A. To get from there to the minor pentatonic we just drop this note. Now the minor pentatonic is a useful starting point for most minor type scales. To get from there to the Natural Minor we add two notes: In the upper octave of the first position we add the same two notes here... ...and here...Now there is a bit of a trick to the fingering of this pattern. Take a few minutes out now to learn that pattern and get your fingering straight on it. Remember to use exactly the same fingering pattern each time you drill it and drill it both up an down the scale like this: Pause the video now if you'd like to practice that. Now the first approach I am going to suggest using to improvising with this scale is to work it as you have been the pentatonic or blues scales and simply take advantage of the couple of extra notes. For example over a minor ballad like House of the Rising Sun might start by using blues scale..... Then begin to work in the extra notes something like this... Then try drilling the scale in G Minor by dropping it down to fret 3 And take a similar approach to playing over the backing track for Sunny Notice that the different scales produce different musical textures or flavours -- its not really a question of one scale being right and the other wrong -- they just produce nice contrasting sounds. I find that the Natural Minor scale helps smooth things out a bit. I tend to use a lot of hammer-ons and pull-off with it like this: See if you can copy some of these ideas. Ok, well the next step I recommend is to spend an hour or two jamming over the backing tracks that go with this lesson. You can access these from the Backing Tracks Tab on the toolbox to the right of the screen. Getting used to using the natural Minor Scale over these tracks which have a fairly strong blues feel will help prepare your ears and fingers for the slightly more difficult styles covered in the next couple of lessons. Once you feel you're ready, do move on to the next lesson, which introduces you to a way of using these scales to give your guitar playing a strong Spanish Flavour -- it's called Fun with Flamenco! I'll See you then!