It’s Hot Outside is a weekly video guitar lesson series by Jeff Beasley, author of several TrueFire courses. This series focuses on performing with depth in the most stressful environments, and throughout Jeff will give you tips on how to step outside your comfort zone to take your playing to a whole new level. Be sure to subscribe!

Video Guitar Lesson

Several years ago I decided to find a way to give guitarists a resource that would enable them to perform with depth, in the most stressful environments. You know, like when the local guitar slinger is in the audience, or your favorite potential girlfriend, maybe even your guitar teacher? After some serious thought, I realized that most rock/blues/country players have a safe place when they improvise, and are under pressure…the old pentatonic box! That’s the place where most of those guys run to if they’re uncomfortable.

I’m a classically trained musician so I decided to inject some “outside” of the pentatonic box ideas, into the pentatonic scale. When I began to do that with my students locally and nationally, so many players said “hey, that’s what I’ve been looking for”! It was one of those “aha” moments for me and I’ve been expanding on that concept since. In this Truefire blog series, I’ll demonstrate several out-of-the-box ideas that are easily incorporated into the typical pentatonic boxes.

I’ll cover diminished, augmented, diminished 7th, augmented 7th, b9, #11, and various combinations of these into tasty, bite-sized melodic ideas that can be utilized in a difficult situation for the player. The melodic ideas are also ear-grabbers/attention-getters for the audience, and will enable the guitarist to leave the doubting Thomas’s wondering, “Wow, what just happened”? More importantly, it will empower the guitarist to show depth in a melodic sense even when he/she feels intimidated or insecure about their playing skills due to environmental factors.

In the first lick of the series, I’ll inject a diminished 7th arpeggio into the pentatonic minor blues scale. The diminished 7th arpeggio contains the 1-(A),b3-(C),b5-(Eb),bb7-(Gb), and is quite the ear-grabber! The arpeggio is based on the b5 of the blues scale, the tone that is considered the “blue” note. It jumps the scale waaaay out of the box, and resolves back into the box for a cool walk on the wild side!

It’s Hot Outside is a weekly video guitar lesson series by Jeff Beasley, author of several TrueFire courses. This series focuses on performing with depth in the most stressful environments, and throughout Jeff will give you tips on how to step outside your comfort zone to take your playing to a whole new level. Be sure to subscribe!