Transcription
Heat. Heat. [Music] You've been playing guitar for long enough to know your way around scales, triads, and maybe even a few modes. But when it comes time to actually play musical solos, everything seems to fall apart. Your solos either circle box one of the pentatonic, or they collapse into scale runs that sound more like exercises than music. You struggle to land on the right chord tones for the chord changes. Your phrases don't flow in real time and rhythm feels like guesswork. You're hoping everything will sound okay instead of knowing that it will.
Meanwhile, all the knowledge you've built, cage shapes, arpeggios, modes, it just sits in your head disconnected. You can play it, but you can't apply it. It's not internalized. And the result is solos that sound stiff, repetitive, or just plain boring. But here's the thing, it's not your fault. Modern guitar instruction typically drowns you in the 80% of theory and flash that looks good on paper or on YouTube thumbnails, but leaves you stuck spinning your wheels for years or decades on end. The real progress, the 20% that unlocks fluid fretboard visualization, chord tone targeting, rhythmic confidence, and melodic phrasing get swept under the rug.
If any of what I just described hits a little too close to home, you're not alone. Most guitarists, even after decades of playing, still wrestle with the same frustrations. The good news, this master class is designed to fix exactly those issues. So, welcome to the 80/20 lead guitar masterass where you'll learn the practical musical approaches to soloing with the four modes that actually matter in genres like classic rock, blues, country, and pop. Yes, seven modes exist, but in the styles you want to play, only four consistently show up. The rest is clutter. So, instead of drowning you in scales you'll never use, I'll show you how to focus on the four that unlock 99% of the solos that you hear and love. That way, you'll stop wasting practice time on things that don't move the needle and finally gain the tools to outline chord changes with confidence. To create phrases that sound melodic instead of like scale pattern exercises to connect scales, triads, and arpeggios into one fluent fretboard language, and develop timing and phrasing that make your solos feel like real music.
Here's the four modes we'll cover today and how I'll teach you to solo with them. First, we'll cover the Aolon mode. You'll learn how to use the five note minor pentatonic scale as your framework and blend in Aolon's two extra notes for richer melodies. We'll target arpeggios inside Aolon to highlight chord changes in a 12 bar minor blues. And I'll share my favorite spicy triad hack from harmonic minor to instantly elevate your minor solos. From there, we'll move on to the Dorian mode. Similar to Aldian, but with a fresher, funkier flavor. Think Santana. You'll see how to build solos by layering Dorian's color tones over the minor pentatonic patterns. I'll also show you a pair of triads that create flowing head turning lines, plus a melodic minor twist that adds tension and release to your Dorian solos. Next, we'll look at the mixelyian mode, which is the backbone of classic rock, southern rock, country, and blues. Here you'll learn my mixelyian note pallet concept which blends major and minor pentatonics into one powerful soloing approach. We'll work on fretboard visualization so that you can see this pallet clearly in relation to the minor pentatonic patterns. And lastly, we'll look at the Ionian mode, the major scale. You'll learn how to use major pentatonic patterns as your foundation and blend in Ionian notes for added depth. I'll also show you how to apply triads to target the chord tones for every chord change in a major progression. By the end of today, you won't just know these four modes. You'll finally understand how to use them musically on the spot in a way that makes your solo sound like you.
So let's start with aolon. [Music] The solo you just heard was played over a minor blues in a minor. I used the A aolon mode. And before we dive into soloing strategies, we need to address one of the biggest traps that intermediate players fall into. Now, that trap is skipping over the chord progression. Most players see a backing track on YouTube called minor blues in A minor, and they immediately think, cool, I'll just use a minor pentatonic. And sure, that works on a surface level, but if you don't actually know the chords and structure, your solos will sound like you're running scales, not like you're creating music that locks in with the chord progression. This is why so many players feel stuck in box one or say their solos sound repetitive or boring. Without chord awareness, you're hoping your note choices will work instead of knowing exactly which notes to target and when.
So, let's break this down. The minor blues progression uses three chords. A minor 7, D minor 7, and E minor 7. The 1, four, and five from a Aolon. So the structure goes like this. We've got four bars of A minor 7, two bars of D minor 7, two bars of A minor 7, then one bar of E minor 7, one bar of D minor 7, and two bars of A minor 7. Now, here's the first concept. Use the minor pentatonic as your framework. Then blend in Aolon's extra color tones for more expressive lines. So, Aolon has seven notes. 1 2 flat 3 4 5 flat 6 flat 7. The minor pentatonic has five notes. 1 flat 3 4 5 flat 7. So, the minor pentatonic is basically baked in to aolon. Now, instead of trying to memorize full aolon scale patterns, I prefer to visualize the familiar pentatonic boxes and then study vocabulary to learn where to find those additional Aolon notes, the natural second and flat 6th. Let's start with the natural second. This note instantly adds a melodic quality to your lines, and it's a favorite of players like Eric Johnson, Carlos Santana, and Joe Bonamasa. So, here's a lick that shows you how to take a simple pentatonic phrase and make it sing by adding in that one extra note, that natural second. [Music]
Now, that lick you heard is one of 10 Aolon pentatonic lines I teach inside the Aolon vocabulary vault, which is one of the bonus modules in AT20 lead guitar mastery. So, let me drop in the exact lesson from that module where I show you how to weave Aolon's natural second into those minor pentatonic positions to make your lines sing. [Music] This line also blends a A aolon and a minor pentatonic, but this time it leans a bit more into expressive phrasing. We're playing over the same first eight bars of the minor blues progression. That's four bars of A minor 7, two bars of D minor 7, and then two more bars of A minor 7. Let's listen to the full line slowed down with the tab on screen before we break it down. [Music] Here's [Music] the first part of the line that we'll look at. This is working out of position three of the A minor pentatonic. But as you may have already noticed, we're sneaking in that natural second from a Aolon at fret 12 on the B string to bend up to the flat third. So for that bend, you pick fret 12 and bend up a semmit tone. Then pick the bend and release it before picking fret 12. [Music]
Okay, now let's move on to the second part. [Music] So this starts out in position two of the minor pentatonic and it shifts down to position one. It also incorporates another natural second from a aolon on the G string. You start out with these three notes from position two. And then you've got a slide from nine down to seven on the G string with a pull off to five. And that's the part where you shift from position two to position one. You can see that right after that you simply pick fret seven on the D string. Then four on the G string which is that natural second. You bend and release by a semmit tone. And then you're going to pick that A root note fret seven on the D string twice. Let's move on to the third part of this line. [Music] Very simple, right? This part is where the chord change from A minor 7 to D minor 7 occurs. And it's all played within position one of the A minor pentatonic. But as you might have noticed, we have the addition of the flat five from the A blues scale at fret 8 on the G string. Right now, just so you're aware, the flat five from the blues scale is always an option anytime you are using the minor pentatonic. Even though they are on paper technically different scales, I don't really think of the minor pentatonic and the blues scale as separate from one another. Like I just said, anytime I'm soloing with minor pentatonic, I'm sneaking in that flat 5 from the blues scale just for some additional bluesy flavor and character. Right? So anyway, that was it for part three. That was a very simple part of the line. Let's move on to the fourth and final part which goes like this. [Music]
So this part starts out over the D minor 7 chord and it leads us back into the A minor 7. We've got a similar pool of notes going on with the initial phrase that is mostly a minor pentatonic based, but it also throws in that flat five from the blues scale at fret 8 on the G string. And then we bring back the natural second from a Aolon at fret four on the G string. Now, that note at fret seven on the D string, as you might have noticed, is the note A, and it's played right as the chords change back to A minor 7. So, of course, landing on the root of the chord as and when it appears in the progression sounds very intentional. So, let's piece all of that together and play through the full line together at a slow tempo with the tab on screen. [Music]
The next aolon soloing concept we want to talk about is using minor 7th arpeggios to highlight like the chord changes in this 12 bar minor blues progression. Let's put the chord chart back on screen and look at the last four bars. This is called the turnaround. And here we've got one bar of E minor 7, the five chord, one bar of D minor 7, the four chord, and then we return to the A minor 7, the one chord. Now, here's the important point. All of those chords are built directly from a Aolon. And because of that, we can use arpeggios to lock onto those changes and make our solos sound intentional, like we're connected to the chords and aware of them rather than just noodling with a static scale shape. You can think of arpeggios as a chord broken apart and rearranged across the fretboard in a way that's more lead guitar friendly. I mean, if you literally solo using a chord voicing like this, it sounds a bit clunky and weird. But if we break that same chord into an arpeggio, suddenly the exact same notes sound fluid, melodic, and perfect for a solo. So, to demonstrate, I'm going to pull two more lessons from the Aolon Vocabulary Vault. Each one gives you a line that targets minor 7th arpeggios for the E minor 7 and D minor 7 chords and then resolves back into Aolon pentatonic phrasing when the progression returns to the one chord to the A minor 7. [Music]
Okay, this first aolon arpeggio line is actually very similar to part of the solo you learned in the Aolon soloing mastery module, but I wanted to take this line and get you to practice it in isolation, too, because it's very musical and usable for minor blues turnarounds, right? So yeah, this is played over the last four bars of the minor blues turnaround, which just to remind you in the key of A minor is the chords E minor 7, D minor 7, and A minor 7. So this line uses E minor 7 and D minor 7 arpeggio shapes on the first string set that are identical. They both have you ftting the root note with your third finger on the G string. So here's what they look like. E minor 7, D minor 7, and let's just take a quick look on screen to see how these two arpeggios naturally fit within the notes of the A aolon mode. And towards the end of the line, I actually throw in some A aolon and minor pentatonic vocabulary. So, it's not entirely arpeggio based. First, let's listen to the line at a slow tempo with the tab on screen. And then I'm going to walk you through my note choices. [Music] All right. So, starting out with the E minor 7 arpeggio. This is how I phrase it. I'm ascending from the root up to the flat 7th. Then picking it again, pulling off and descending the rest of the shape. [Music] Then I move down to the D minor 7 and ascend to the top note. And from there I play this aolon/minor pentatonic line that starts out with a little semmit tone bend from the natural second in a aolon and ends with that sequence of a minor pentatonic notes that I just played. [Music] So that's it for arpeggio line number one. Let's listen to it again a couple more times. First to tempo and then slowed down. [Music] [Music] Arpeggio line number two is played over the same part of the progression as the previous line, the turnaround of the minor blues, which is the chords E minor 7, D minor 7, and A minor 7. This time we're using identical arpeggio shapes for the E minor 7 and D minor 7 chords, but this time they are played on the second string set, which just to remind you is the D, G, and B strings. Right? So here's the shape for the E minor 7 arpeggio. And we're using the exact same shape for the D minor 7, just shifting it two frets lower. And let's just take a quick look on screen to see how these arpeggios actually fit within the notes of the A aolon mode. Remember that these minor 7th arpeggios are not something that you are adding to the scale. They're already within them. You've just got to practice targeting them in your solos and mixing them in with notes from the scale. And that's going to help you to to visualize them inside the scale patterns when you're soloing. That's exactly what this bonus module is designed to help you with. So, this phrase ends with some notes in position three of the A minor pentatonic scale. And I'll show you exactly what I play and how I phrase everything in a moment. But let's just first listen to the line slowed down. And I'll put the tab on screen so you can follow along at home. [Music] All right. So, starting out with the E minor 7 arpeggio. Instead of beginning on the root note of this shape, I actually slide into that root note from two frets below. And once I've done that, I arpeggiate the rest of the shape from low to high before finishing with a whole set bend from the flat 7th. Okay? So, as soon as I pick that flat 7th, I'm bending up uh a whole step. [Music] For the D minor 7 arpeggio, I basically repeat the exact same melodic and rhythmic pattern that I just applied to the E minor 7. So that's sliding into the root note from two frets below. Then arpeggiating the rest of the shape from low to high and finishing with a whole step bend from the flat 7th. [Music] And after that bend, I play this very simple A minor pentatonic phrase. Okay, that's coming from position three of the minor pentatonic. So, let's connect all of that together. We've got the E minor 7 arpeggio, then the D minor 7 arpeggio, and then the A minor pentatonic phrase. [Music] Let's listen back to this line over the backing track a couple more times. Once at the original tempo and then again slowed down. [Music]
Now, before we move on, let me quickly circle back to something I mentioned earlier. The two aolon notes we add to the minor pentatonic are the natural second and the flat 6th. You've already seen how powerful the natural second can be, but what about that flat 6th? Have I left it out? Well, here's the cool thing. In a aolon, the flat 6th is the note F, which is the same note as the flat third in the four chord, the D minor 7 chord. So whenever I'm targeting that chord, the D minor 7 with arpeggios, I'm automatically hitting Aolon's flat 6th. It's just heard as the flat third in the chord. That's how I like to sneak it into my lines. It shows up naturally in the harmony, so it always sounds musical when you hit that note over the appropriate chord.
Before we move on to the Dorian mode, there's one last Aolen soloing concept I want to share, and that's how to blend Aolon with another seven note scale called harmonic minor. Let's quickly compare the two. Aolon is 1 2 3 4 5 flat 6 flat 7. Harmonic minor is 1 2 flat 3 4 5 flat 6 7. The only difference there is the seventh. Aolon has a flat 7th which is two frets below the root. Whilst harmonic minor raises it by a semmit tone to get a major 7th or a raised seventh which as you can see is just one fret below the root. That raised seventh adds instant tension to your aolon solos. perfect for turning heads at the bar. And the best part is you don't need to memorize all seven positions of harmonic minor to use it because there's a simple hack that lets you drop it in whenever you want that extra spice in your solo. Now, here's an example of exactly what I'm talking about. [Music] In that line, I played the raised seventh G sharp at the sixth fret of the D string. But notice the two notes around it. They form an E major triad, E, G sharp, B. And this is where it gets powerful. Instead of thinking of harmonic minor as a huge new scale with patterns to memorize, you can just pull out the triads that exist naturally in it. So in harmonic minor, there are two triads that contain that raised seventh, that G sharp note. The first is a C augmented triad, which has the notes C, E, and G sharp. This is built from the flat third of the scale. And the other is an E major triad, which I just showed you. It contains the notes E, G sharp, and B built from the fifth degree of A harmonic minor. Both are great ways to inject that Ray 7th into your solos in a way that feels musical instead of, you know, sounding like robotic scale pattern wandering. Now, let me share two lessons from the Aolon vocabulary vault. The first shows you how to use the E major triad to sneak in that raised seventh. And the second shows you how to use the C augmented triad to do essentially the same thing. [Music]
All right, this line is actually played over a different part of the progression compared to the other five that we've covered in this module already. It's played over the final four bars of the 12 bar progression, also known as the turnaround, although technically it's the last five bars since the first three notes are played in the bar right before the beginning of the turnaround, which is where the five chord E minor 7 is played in the progression. So, let's begin by listening to it at a slow tempo with the tab on screen to begin with. [Music] All right, the first part takes us into the five chord, the E minor 7, with a very simple A minor pentatonic based phrase that ends on the note E. As soon as the E minor 7 chord is heard in the progression, the next part moves into the D minor 7 chord, beginning with an A blues scale phrase and ending with some harmonic minor heat. All right. So, this is simple a blue scale phrasing with the flat five at fret eight on the G string. Right? But this sounds a lot spicier, right? That's because I'm throwing in that raised seventh from a harmonic minor with the note on the D string. But look closely at the two notes either side of that raised seventh. What does that look like to you? If you said E major triad, you're 100% right. This has appeared in other harmonic minor lines in this subm module and I explained the concept in the Aolen soloing mastery core module. But one more time, if you're looking for a creative way to add the raised seventh from harmonic minor into your solos, do this. Play that raised seventh within the major triad that is naturally built from the fifth degree of harmonic minor. Here's the last part of line number six. Pretty standard A minor pentatonic phrasing on display here. moving from position one up to position two and finishing with a slide into that A root note on the B string. Okay, let's piece all of that together and play through it at a slow tempo. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Line number eight starts in the third bar of the 12 bar minor blues progression and it ends in bar seven. Remember that the first four bars are dedicated to the one chord. The next two bars after that switch to the four chord and the bar after that brings back the one chord. So that's sort of what we're playing over here. Although we're starting in the third bar of the one chord. So, we've got one full bar of the one chord before we get to that four chord, the D minor 7. We'll begin by listening back to the line played at a slow tempo and with the tab on screen. [Music] Here's [Music] the first part to learn. All right. So, this starts out over the A minor 7 chord, and we've got a slide from 9 to 10 on the D string that launches us into this C augmented triad shape. This C augmented triad is built naturally from the third degree of A harmonic minor. And as mentioned in other lessons, this augmented triad contains the raised seventh of a harmonic minor, G sharp, which is the note at fret nine on the B string. So this line jumps straight into that harmonic minor heat. And even after that augmented triad is outlined, you play that raised seventh again on the B string. [Music] And when the chords change to D minor 7, you finish with this bend on the B string, which is bending to the pitch of the note D. [Music] This line is quite short compared to the others. And so the last part is this. [Music] This is still played over the D minor 7 chord. And it's position three a minor pentatonic phrasing with the addition of the natural second from a Aolon. When the A minor 7 chord comes back, you hold on to that last A root note at fret 10 on the B string. So let's listen to that all together at a slow tempo once again. [Music]
We're about to shift our focus to the Dorian mode. But before we do, I want to quickly mention that everything you're learning in this free master class comes directly from my full course, 8020 lead guitar mastery. This is the biggest lead guitar program I've ever created. over 16 hours of video lessons that go deep into every single concept that we're covering here with Aolon, Dorian, Mixelyian, and Ionian. If you're serious about breaking out of the intermediate lead guitar rut once and for all, click the link in the description box to check it out. Now, onto the Dorian mode. Structurally, this mode is very close to Aolon. Both are minor modes, but here's the difference. Aolon 1 2 flat 3 4 5 flat 6 flat 7 versus Dorian 1 2 flat 3 4 5 6 flat 7. That natural sixth is what separates Dorian from Aolon and it gives Dorian its distinctive funky flavor. A classic Dorian chord progression is a minor one chord moving to a dominant four chord. For example, with A as the root, that would be A minor 7 to D7. [Music] That's the exact progression I'll be using for the Dorian licks that I'm about to show you. It's a simple progression, just two chords. But before we dive into soloing concepts, take a moment to play through this progression with me. [Music]
The first Dorian concept we'll cover is the same starting point we used for Aolon using the minor pentatonic scale as your framework. Why? Because minor pentatonic is already baked into the Dorian formula. The only two notes Dorian adds are the natural second and natural 6th. You've already seen how powerful the natural second is when we looked at Aolon. And the great thing is it's present in every mode we're covering today. Once you learn how to find it in one, you can use it in all of them. So, the real focus here is learning to spot Dorian's natural sixth alongside your pentatonic positions. So, here's a lick that does exactly that. It's built around positions three and four of the A minor pentatonic, and it targets the natural sixth in three different places. on the high E string in position four, on the G string in position three, and on the A string again in position three. [Music] So now check out this lesson where I break down that line step by step and show you how I've phrased that natural sixth in my minor pentatonic positions. [Music] This line is working out of positions four and three of the A minor pentatonic and it's got a real funky rhythm to it. Let's listen back to it a couple more times at the original tempo and then again slowed down before we break down each part. [Music] [Music] here. Here's the first part. [Music] Right away, we're getting in the natural sixth at fret 14 on the high E string with this sequence of notes played across the G, B, and high E strings. [Music] Now, this is one of my favorite microphrases to use in Dorian improvisation, and I think it sounds great over a funky backing track like this one. You'll probably hear more examples of this in the other lines, so just wanted to point that out. The next group of notes in this phrase goes like this. [Music] And it's the slide from 14 to 12 on the D string that takes you into position three of the A minor pentatonic, which is where the rest of this line is played. So here's the part that comes after that. [Music] Here I'm using a chromatic passing note at fret 10 on the G string to lead me into the natural sixth in a Dorian which is one fret higher. So here's the passing note and here's the natural sixth. This chromatic passing note has appeared in a couple of other licks in this same module. And just to explain it a little more, this is an F, which relative to the root note of A is a flat 6th. Remember that Dorian does not have a flat 6th. It has a natural sixth. Aolon is the one that has a flat sixth. And so you don't want to use this note in the same way that you would when playing over an Aolon progression because if you lean on it for too long over a Dorian progression, it's going to clash with the chords. But you can use it as a means of getting to the natural 6th which is in Dorian. That's how you make that F, that flat 6th of A work in a Dorian context. And that's exactly how I'm using it here. The next part goes like this. [Music] This part begins with a pulloff from 10 to 9 on the D string. And that note at fret nine is the natural second in a Dorian. [Music] And at one point I'm also hitting fret nine on the A string, which is another natural sixth also from Dorian. [Music] So hopefully these line lessons are helping you to familiarize yourself with the location of these Dorian notes, the second and the sixth in relation to the minor pentatonic scale patterns. To wrap this lesson up, let's listen back to line number five again a couple more times. [Music] [Music] One last thing to take note of here, the final time that that natural sixth shows up in the lick, it's being played over the D7. 7 chord. Now in a dorian the natural 6th is F sharp. F sharp also happens to be the major third of that D7 chord. That's why it locks in so well musically. It's not just a scale note. It's acting as a chord tone there. And when you understand things like this, how notes connect to certain chords, that's what transforms pattern wandering into solos that sound really connected to the chord changes. It's the same concept we talked about earlier with Aolon. The flat 6th of Aolon doubles as the flat third of the minor four chord. Connecting those dots is what makes your solos feel harmonically grounded and not random.
The next Dorian soloing concept I want to share with you is something known as a Dorian triad pair. Here's a quick example of a line that uses the major triad pair found in the Dorian mode. Once you've heard this, I'll explain what it is. [Music] Okay. Okay, so now I want to share with you a full lesson on what this Dorian triad pair soloing concept actually is so that you can understand how to use it in your own Dorian solos. Once you've watched this lesson, I'll then give you a full lesson on the Dorian triad pair line that you just heard me play. [Music] Something I recommend you do with any seven note scale when you're trying to play musical lines with it is look at the triads that are built from each note in the scale. We've explored this a bit in the Aolon modules and in the previous lesson in this Dorian module. You know, I talked about using triads from the melodic minor scale. But in this lesson, I want to focus on my favorite Dorian soloing hack by looking at the triads built from its notes. So let's look at the triads built from A Dorian. A minor, B minor, C major, D major, E minor, F sharp diminished, and G major. Now I want you to forget about every triad I just played apart from the C major and D major triads. These are two major triads that are separated by one whole tone. So if I play a root position C major on the fourth string set, I only have to move that same shape up two frets to play the D major. Right? This is what you would call a triad pair. Identical triad types that sit right next to each other on the fretboard now. Now, if you look on screen, you'll see that the notes in this triad pair make up six out of the seven notes in the Dorian mode. The C major triad, which is built from the flat 3, it covers the flat 3rd, the fifth, and the flat 7th in Dorian. The D major triad, which is a tone higher and built from the fourth scale degree, it covers the fourth, that natural sixth, and the root note. Now, when I improvise with Dorian, I like to build lines around this concept, the major triad pair. So, I'll often play lines like the one you heard at the start of the video, which by the way is taken from the Dorian triad pair subm module in the vocabulary vault. Let's listen back to it. [Music] And the reason I'm telling you this now is that I make use of the triad pair in the second solo which you're about to learn. So becoming aware of it now is going to help you to make sense of my note choices when I break them down in the following lessons. For now, I want you to spend some time familiarizing yourself with this triad pair across the fretboard. So, I'm going to show you a simple exercise played over the slow version of our Dorian backing track. And all I'm asking you to do is play through three inversions of the triad pair on each of the four string sets. I'll show you the exercise now and then I'll explain it to you. So, like I said, you're playing through three inversions of the major triad pair on each of the four string sets. You'll start on C with one inversion. Then you'll move the same inversion shape up two frets to play the D major. Then you'll move up the fretboard on the same string set to play another C major triad with a different inversion shape. And you'll move that new shape up two frets again to get the D major. And you'll repeat that one more time on each string set. You're going to start on the lowest string set, the low E, A, and D strings. Then you'll move to the third, then the second, and end on the first string set. So these are the inversions you're going to play on the fourth string set in the order that I played them in when I just demonstrated the exercise. So you'll start with the second inversion C and D major triads. Then you move up to play the root position inversions for C and D major and end with the first inversions. Moving to the third string set, the A, D, and G strings. You'll start with first inversion C and D major triads. [Music] Then move up to play second inversion shapes. Then move up again to play root position shapes. Moving on to the second string set, the D, G, and B strings. You'll begin with second inversion shapes. Move up to play root position shapes. Then move up again to play first inversions. And for the first string set, the G, B, and high E strings, you'll start with root position shapes. move up to the first inversions and finish with the second inversions. [Music] Okay? So, you may want to rewind and go over all that again, but when you feel ready to try playing them together with me over the backing track as I play, I'm going to show you the triad shapes on the fretboard diagrams. Here we go. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Hey girl. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] Hello. [Music] Heat. [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey, [Music] hey, hey. [Music] Oh yeah. Hey [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Okay, so now that you've learned what the Dorian triad pair is, let's take that knowledge and put it into action by learning a melodic line that uses this concept. [Music] All right. In this subm module, we're going to focus on a new melodic device inside the Dorian mode, and that's the major triad pair that naturally occurs in the scale. Specifically, I'm talking about the C major and D major triads in a Dorian. These are built from the third and fourth scale degrees. And as I mentioned in the Dorian soloing mastery module, when combined, these triads contain six out of the seven notes in the Dorian mode. So, let's check out the first line. We'll hear it twice, once at full speed, and then again slowed down to 70 BPM. [Music] [Music] Okay, let's break this one down. Here's the first part. [Music] Now, this part is outlining a D major triad. But you might be thinking, wait, how come there's four notes that you're playing if it's a triad, which you know typically has three? Well, technically there are only three notes that I'm playing here, but the first and last one are the same. They're both a, which is the fifth in a D major triad, or the root in a Dorian if you want to look at it that way. So doubling up on that note allows you to transform a major triad into a four note major arpeggio. [Applause] Now it's all played over an A minor 7 chord, which is what really helps the Dorian sound to come through. You're outlining a major triad against a minor chord, which is one of the magic tricks of Dorian soloing. Now, yes, they do have different root notes, and that's important to note as well. Now, here's the thing about the third in the D major triad. It's the note F sharp, and it's played over the A minor 7 chord. So, it's really being heard as the natural sixth in a Dorian. Now, from there, we're going to shift down to a C major triad in the exact same kind of shape. Again, we've got the fifth of the C major triad doubled up on the high E and G strings. And so I'm just descending through the notes in this four note major arpeggio shape like so. [Music] So now you've got backto back major triad arpeggios. D major followed by C major. Both of which are naturally found inside a Dorian. [Music] This kind of playing is just a killer way to break out of typical scale runs and, you know, highlight the notes of Dorian in a creative way. It's a great addition to the kind of material we went over in the previous subm module with the Dorian pentatonic lines. Speaking of which, the next part of this line ventures into more of that kind of pentatonic based vocabulary. It goes like this. [Music] I'm visualizing position four of the A minor pentatonic here. And the slide from 13 to 14 on the high E string is a chromatic passing note. That fret 13 note is an F, which isn't in the Dorian scale, but it slides you neatly into F sharp at fret 14. And that F sharp is the natural sixth in a Dorian. If you've worked through the Dorian pentatonic lines module, then this should sound very familiar to you. Now, in the final bar, I introduce the flat five from the blues scale, [Music] the flat five from the blues scale. That's the note at fret 13 on the D string. And that's how I play it. That's going to do it for Dorian triad line number one. Let's listen back to it again before we move on to line number two. [Music] [Music]
The last Dorian soloing concept I want to teach you today is blending Dorian with a scale called melodic minor. Here's a full breakdown of what that means. Remember [Music] the solos from the Aolon soloing mastery module? Some of those lines blended Aolon with the harmonic minor scale. A scale that's nearly identical to Aolen except it has a raised seventh, not a flat 7th. That one note added a nice touch of tension and release. Now, since Dorian is also a minor tonality scale, you might be wondering, can we do the same thing? Can we blend Dorian with harmonic minor to create that same effect, that same tension and release? Now, the short answer is no. Dorian does not pair well with harmonic minor. But there is another seven note scale that does work beautifully with Dorian, and that's melodic minor. Let's take a quick look at what makes melodic minor the perfect match for Dorian. I'm going to play melodic minor on one string. 1 2 flat 3 4 5 6 7. That's melodic minor. Now let's compare it to Dorian. 1 2 flat 3 4 5 6 flat 7. See the difference? Dorian has a flat 7. Melodic minor has a raised seventh. Same difference we saw between Aiolon and harmonic minor. It's all about that seventh note. So why did Dorian and melodic minor work well together and not Dorian and harmonic minor? Because like Dorian, melodic minor has a natural sixth. Harmonic minor like aolon has a flat sixth which would clash with a Dorian chord progression. But melodic minor keeps that natural sixth which preserves Dorian's funky flavor whilst adding that spicy raised seventh. Now here's the cool part. In the Aolon module, I pointed out that there's a couple of triads inside harmonic minor, like the E major built on the fifth and C augmented built on the third, that helped to create that tension because they both contain the tension note in harmonic minor, which is the raised seventh. Well, good news. Those same triads exist in melodic minor 2, which means you can use those exact same approaches, those same triad shapes to add color and tension to your Dorian solos. I'm going to put a full fretboard diagram of a melodic minor on screen now. And let's just highlight some E major triad shapes to show you this. [Music] And now let's highlight some C augmented triads. [Applause] Okay. So now that you've been introduced to the concept of blending Dorian with the raised seventh in melodic minor, let's put that knowledge into action and study a line that blends the Dorian mode with the triads built from melodic minor that contain that raised seventh. [Music] [Music] Okay, this is melodic minor line number seven. Now the first bar here is just basic minor pentatonic phrasing working out of position one and using the flat five from the blues scale on the G string. Goes like this. [Music] [Applause] One more time. [Music] In the second bar after the rest, you slide from five to seven on the D string. Then you're going to pick fret seven on the B string, which is the natural sixth in a Dorian. And from there, you play this pulloff sequence from that note down to fret seven on the D string. Here's what that goes like. [Music] Let me just play that together with the first part so that you can get a feel for the rhythm. Uh I particularly get to hear the rests between those two phrases. [Music] Next, there's a hammer on and pull off from the natural second at fret four on the G string, which leads you into an E major triad shape that you're going to descend. [Music] Now, where's that E major triad coming from? It's built from the fifth degree of a melodic minor. And remember, it contains G sharp, the raised seventh in melodic minor, which is the note that adds tension to the line. And that tension is resolved when you land back on the root note to finish this lick. That root note being a by the way the root of a dorian minor pentatonic melodic minor not the root of the E major triad. So that's it for line number seven. Let's hear it again from start to finish and then we'll move on to line number eight. [Music] [Music]
Now, let's move on to the mixelyian mode. A scale that is used in countless classic rock, southern rock, blues, and country solos. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] So, mixelyian is constructed like so. 1 2 3 4 5 6 flat 7. With Aolon and Dorian, I showed you how to blend those scales with minor pentatonic patterns. Since the minor pentatonic is baked into those scale formulas with mixelyian, the approach is kind of the same but with a little twist. So in the next three lessons, I'm going to show you how I visualize the mixelyian mode in my own solos. It's by using concepts I call the dual pentatonic hybrid and the mixelyian note pallet. Later on in this same module, I'll be teaching you a full solo study built entirely around the mixelyian mode. But before we dive into learning that solo, I want to show you my preferred approach to playing Mixelyian. Let's kick things off by listening to the solo in full. [Music] [Applause] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] If you're wondering where the tabs are, don't worry. They'll come in the later lessons of this module. For now, just sit back and listen. So, what exactly do I mean by my preferred way of soloing with mixelyian? Well, if you've been through the Aolon and Dorian soloing mastery modules, you might have noticed something. I never taught you Aolon scale patterns or Dorian scale patterns. Why? Well, both of those modes are minor in tonality and they already contain the minor pentatonic. It's it's baked into their scale formulas, right? So instead of drowning you in three note per string modal shapes, I used minor pentatonic patterns as the framework and I simply showed you where the other notes from each mode fit in. That approach makes phrasing more musical and it keeps you from sounding like you're just running scale patterns. Now with mixelyian, I'm going to do something similar but with a twist. Take a look again at the mixelyian scale formula. 1 2 3 4 5 6 flat 7. Now compare that with the major pentatonic scale formula. 1 2 3 5 6. You'll notice that the major pentatonic is already baked in to mixelyian. So you might think, okay, Ross is going to use the major pentatonic as the framework and then add in the other two notes from mixelyian. Well, kind of. But here comes the curveball. My favorite way to solo with mixely lydian isn't just using the major pentatonic. It's combining major pentatonic and minor pentatonic scales with the same root note. So in a that means mixing a major pentatonic and a minor pentatonic. And just to be clear, I don't mean thinking of like the relative minor pentatonic of a like this would be a major pentatonic, right? And this would be F sharp minor pentatonic. That's not what I mean because that's the same set of notes as a major pentatonic just with a different route. What I mean is literally blending the notes of a major pentatonic with the notes of a minor pentatonic. Now listen back to that solo you heard at the beginning of this lesson. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Can you hear that? That mix of major pentatonic and minor pentatonic vocabulary. That is how I approach soloing with mixelyian. And it's also how many of my favorite players use a mixelyian sound in their playing. Guys like Joe Bonamasa, Eric Clapton, Slash, Brad Paisley, and more. They all do this. They all combine notes from the major pentatonic and notes from the minor pentatonic scales with the same root note to create what is essentially a mixelyian sound in their solos. whether they realize it or not. From this point on, I'll be calling this concept the dual pentatonic hybrid. And in the next video,
I'll break it down for you step by step. In the previous lesson, I mentioned that I won't be teaching you Mixolydian scale patterns in this module. That might sound counterintuitive right now, but the reason is simple. I believe that there is a far better way to create musical solos with Mixolydian, and that's what I call the dual pentatonic hybrid. This approach means combining the major pentatonic and minor pentatonic scales that share the same root note. For example, a major pentatonic combined with a minor pentatonic. Take a listen now. Here's me improvising lines that blend the two.
[Music]
[Applause]
Now, let's break down exactly why this works. To remind you, the Mixolydian scale formula is 1 2 3 4 5 6 flat 7. In A, that gives us the notes A, B, C sharp, D, E, F sharp, and G. The major pentatonic formula is 1 2 3 5 6 with A as the root. That's A, B, C sharp, E, and F sharp. Every single one of those notes is baked into Mixolydian.
Now, the minor pentatonic scale formula is 1 flat 3 4 5 flat 7 with A as the root. That's A, C, D, E, and G. Compare that to Mixolydian, and you'll notice something important. You've got the root note A. You've got the fourth D, the fifth E, and you've got the flat 7th, which is G. The only outside note is the flat third, the C. That's it. One note. And how far is that flat third from Mixolydian's major third? Just one semitone, one fret apart on the guitar. Flat third, major third.
Now, some players hear this and think, wait, doesn't theory say that you can't play a flat third over a major chord with a major third? Well, let's test it. Here's me holding that flat third, that C, over an A7 chord drone, which has a major third in it. Yeah, it doesn't sound great if you sit on it like I just did. It clashes, but that's not how you use it in a solo. The magic comes from moving between the flat third and the major third, weaving them together in your solos, in your licks. We've all heard this a thousand times in blues guitar solos, right?
[Music]
That's a classic cliche blues phrase, and it combines the flat third with the major third. So technically, it breaks the rules, but it works because theory, contrary to the lie fed to countless guitar students, is not a set of rules. It is just a language we use to describe what we play, or what other people play.
So, here's the takeaway. There's nothing stopping you from combining major and minor pentatonic vocabulary to channel a Mixolydian sound. That is the dual pentatonic hybrid. And it's one of the most powerful, fun ways to solo with the Mixolydian mode that doesn't require you to learn, you know, seven different three-note-per-string Mixolydian scale patterns that you're just going to run up and down mindlessly anyway. This is how you play music with Mixolydian.
Okay. Now, in the solo breakdown lessons, as well as the Mixolydian Vocabulary Vault, I'll be using minor pentatonic scale patterns as the main framework for the fretboard diagrams, just like I did in the Aeolian and Dorian modules. Of course, I will also highlight where the major pentatonic and Mixolydian notes have been added in, like the natural second, the major third, and the major sixth. I'm choosing this approach to keep things crystal clear rather than constantly switching between minor pentatonic and major pentatonic fretboard diagrams. And even though the major pentatonic is technically more closely related to Mixolydian, I still find myself visually and mentally rooted in the minor pentatonic patterns. That's just my preferred approach, and it works because I have a deep understanding of where the surrounding Mixolydian and major pentatonic notes are.
Now, right now, that's probably not the case for you, but it will be soon enough, provided you keep doing the work and paying attention to the lessons in this module. Now, before we wrap up, it's worth mentioning the flat third isn't the only outside note that I like to slip into my Mixolydian solos. I also love using the flat fifth from the blues scale. Back in the Aeolian and Dorian modules, I mentioned that whenever you're working with the minor pentatonic, the flat fifth is always there for the taking. Honestly, I don't even think of minor pentatonic and the blues scale as separate. The flat fifth just lives naturally inside that vocabulary. It's, it, it just feels right using it.
Okay, so let's pull everything together. We're combining Mixolydian with the minor pentatonic and that flat fifth from the blues scale. Remember, the major pentatonic scale is baked into Mixolydian. So we don't really need to list it separately. Now, when you combine it all, you get this full set of scale degrees: 1, 2, flat 3, 3, 4, flat 5, 5, 6, flat 7. This is something I call the Mixolydian Note Palette. In the next lesson, I'll show you the best way to think about and pull from this palette of notes so that you can start building Mixolydian solos that will sound 10 times as musical when compared to simply running through large Mixolydian scale patterns.
So, in the last couple of lessons, I explained that when I solo with Mixolydian, I don't just stick to the seven scale degrees of the mode: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, flat 7. Instead, I expand it by adding the flat third from the minor pentatonic and the flat fifth from the blues scale. Put all of that together, and you get these scale degrees lined up in order: 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, flat 5, 6, flat 7. I call this the Mixolydian Note Palette.
Now, in this lesson, I want to show you how to actually use this palette. But first, let me show you how not to use it, or rather, how not to think of it. Here's the mistake you want to avoid: treating this like a brand new scale with patterns that you need to learn and memorize and run up and down. That's not how you approach this. This is a palette of possible notes to pick and choose from, not a strict sequence to ascend and descend. Think about how a painter uses a palette of colors. Sometimes they'll use every color available, other times just two or three. The art comes from choosing the right colors for the right moment. And it's the same idea with this Mixolydian Note Palette.
Now, here's why scalifying this does not work. Let's take position one of the A minor pentatonic.
[Music]
Now, if I start adding all of the other Mixolydian palette notes onto that diagram – the two, the major third, the flat fifth, and the sixth – what do I get? An absolute mess. If I play from low to high...
[Music]
Oh, wait. I forgot one.
[Music]
If I play that from low to high, it sounds like what I just said, like a mess. So, it's definitely not something you want to practice in the way that you would practice an actual scale.
Now, this is why I often scratch my head when someone leaves a comment on one of my videos where I'm either just like noodling on my own, unaccompanied, or over a backing track, and they ask me, "What scale are you playing?" I always scratch my head when I, when I get questions like that, because the truth is, I'm usually blending several things. It might be mostly minor pentatonic with a major third here, a flat fifth there, maybe a triad, maybe a nine or a flat nine. So the answer is, I'm not playing a scale. I'm drawing from a palette of options. And that's the big lesson here in lead guitar improvisation. There is rarely a single scale that neatly explains everything you're doing. There isn't always a one-scale-fits-all approach, right? You've already seen this with Aeolian and Dorian, and it's exactly the same with Mixolydian.
So, at this point, you might be wondering, well, how do I actually practice this? How do I internalize this Mixolydian Note Palette? The answer is by studying vocabulary that draws directly from it. Studying licks, solos, phrasing. That's exactly what you'll get later in this module through the Mixolydian solo lessons and the melodic line lessons inside the Mixolydian Vocabulary Vault. But before we dive into full solos and licks with bends, slides, and varied rhythms, I want to give you some very straightforward exercises to practice this right now. These aren't about phrasing or technique. They're about mapping the palette onto the fretboard and building your fretboard visualization. Specifically, seeing where the natural second, major third, flat fifth, and major sixth fall in relation to the five minor pentatonic scale positions.
So, I just finished up by talking about the Mixolydian Note Palettes. And now I'd like to share with you an exercise that helps you to visualize those palette notes, in addition to box one of the A minor pentatonic.
[Music]
So, exercise number two is rooted in position one of the A minor pentatonic. Let's listen back to it once more and then break it down.
[Music]
Okay, so here's position one.
[Music]
And here's the first group of notes in the exercise that we'll focus on. So, the notes from the palettes that I'm adding to the minor pentatonic here are the flat fifth from the blues scale on the A string and the major third at fret six on the G string. Now, notice how the major third is preceded by the flat third in the minor pentatonic. The flat third is essentially acting like a passing note, leading you up to that major third here. Let's move on to the next set of notes.
Okay, right off the bat, we're beginning with the natural sixth from Mixolydian and the major pentatonic on the D string. Then, on the G string, we introduce two notes from the palette. The first is the natural second. Then we're going to hit that flat third, which is minor pentatonic, and then we're going to combine it with the major third once again. And on the B string, I'm playing the natural sixth once again.
Okay, the last group of notes goes like this. So, we start with the flat third to major third combo with the first two notes on the high E string. And then we do the same thing on the G string as well, before finishing on the root.
[Music]
That's going to do it for note pallet exercise number two. Let's play it together now.
[Music]
All right. So, we've covered what Mixolydian is and the key approaches I use when soloing with it. Now, it's time to look at how to actually spot and identify a Mixolydian chord progression. So, in the next lesson, I'll break down the progression behind the classic rock Mixolydian backing track that we use inside the Mixolydian modules for 80/20 Lead Guitar Mastery, and you'll see exactly why Mixolydian is the perfect fit over that progression.
In this video lesson, I'm going to break down the chord progression that makes up the A section of the backing track you'll be using for the Mixolydian solo, as well as everything you'll learn in the Mixolydian Vocabulary Vault. As I do this, I'll also explain how to recognize a chord progression that's a perfect fit for Mixolydian. Let's start by just listening to the A section of the track.
[Music]
[Music]
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Okay, it's a really straightforward progression using only basic power chords or, or major triads. So, bars one to four are A. Then in bar five, you move to G. And in bar six, you move to D. And in bar seven to eight, you go back to the A. Then that eight-bar progression repeats. So, the whole A section is simply A for four bars, then G for a bar, D for a bar, and A for two bars, and then you repeat that all over again.
Now, what is it about this progression that tells me it's Mixolydian? Well, let's look at the triads built from the A Mixolydian scale. You've got A major, B minor, C sharp diminished, D major, E minor, F sharp minor, and G major. So, the key detail here is this: the progression moves between A major and G major, which are the one chord and the flat seven chord. That flat seven chord, in this case G major, is the giveaway that tells me that it's Mixolydian. Because in a regular A major key, chord seven would be a G sharp diminished or G sharp uh minor 7 flat 5, sorry. Because the major scale has a major seventh, not a flat seventh. Mixolydian has a flat seventh. And so the basic three-note triad, three-note chord built from that flat seventh in the key of A is a G major triad. Because this progression leans so heavily on that A chord, your ear should recognize that A is the tonic, the tonal center, which tells you to solo from scales with an A root note. Right? But here's the giveaway. We also get another major chord that's one whole step beneath A, or below A. That's G major, the flat seven chord. And remember, a flat seven is always found a whole step, or two frets when looked at on one string, below the root. Okay? So, here's the one, two frets below it is G, the flat seven.
Now, this one major and flat seven major sound, it shows up everywhere in rock, country, and blues. I mean, take "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC as an example.
[Music]
Okay, as you can see, it's got an A major, but it's also got that G major there as well, which is technically a flat seven major chord. Same thing with, um, "Welcome to the Jungle," Guns and Roses.
[Music]
Something like that. Anyway, as you can tell, that riff has an A major in it, which sounds like the tonic, right? But it's also got that G in there as well. And now that we've covered the chord progression, I'd like to now show you some examples of me applying my favorite Mixolydian soloing approaches. So, in the next couple of lessons, you'll see me break down the first two lines of the Mixolydian solo study in 80/20 Lead Guitar Mastery. These lines draw from concepts like the Mixolydian Note Palette, which you learned about earlier, as well as approaches that I use for chord tone targeting when highlighting the flat seven and four chords in the progression.
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
You just heard line number one of the Mixolydian solo in isolation. So now let's break it down. This line is played over the first four bars of the progression, which is just an A power chord. So, we start out in position three of the minor pentatonic, and I add in a few notes from the palette, like the natural sixth, natural second, and major third. The natural sixth is played a couple of times at fret 11 on the G string. Then I introduced the natural second and major third on the B string by picking fret 12, which is the natural second, and bending it by a whole step to hit the major third of A. After that phrase, I move into a descending run on the B string, starting from the root note, going down to the flat seventh, then the natural sixth, and then the fifth. But after each of those fretted notes, I also pick the open high E string. This creates what's called a pedal note. Now, a pedal note is simply a single note that stays constant whilst other notes around it change. In this case, the open E string acts as our repeating anchor or repeating pedal note. Now, hitting that after each fretted note and leaving it to ring out creates this cool droning effect. The last phrase in this line is simple. It moves from position five down to position four of the A minor pentatonic. So you start out with a grace note slide on the B string, which is where the transition from position five to four happens. And then you simply finish like this. That's it for line number one. Let's listen back to it a couple more times.
[Music]
[Applause]
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Line number one was played over the first four bars of the A section in the chord progression, which was just the A power chord on its own. This second line is played over bars 5 to 8, which consists of one bar of the flat seven chord G major, one bar of the four chord D major, and then a return to the one chord A major for two bars. Now, for this line, I made a real effort to highlight those chord changes with my note selection. So, let's look at what I played over the G major chord. For this phrase, I'm not thinking about scale patterns. Instead, I'm visualizing two G major triads on the first string set, a first inversion and a second inversion. But you may have noticed that I leave out the notes on the B string in each triad and I just play the outer two on the G and high E strings. When you play triads like this, you call them sixths, or you can call them six because the outer two notes are six letter names apart in the musical alphabet. For example, in this first inversion, the note on the G string is B, and the note on the high E string is G. So, if we go through the musical alphabet, B, C, D, E, F, G, one, two, three, four, five, six notes apart. Okay. Now, since we're playing the notes of these G major triad shapes over the G major chord, of course, it sounds very connected to the harmony. And I phrase these notes by starting with the open G string and then sliding into the bottom note of the first triad before picking the, before picking the top note, sorry. Then I pick the bottom note in that triad and I slide up to the bottom note in the next sixth. And from there, I pick its top note. And after that, I play these two notes. Now, that very last note is actually a G. So we are kind of playing all three. Well, we are playing all three notes in this second inversion, just not in strict ascending or descending order. We've got this note in between.
[Music]
Now, that leads me nicely into the next bar, which is where the D major chord comes into play. So here's what I play over the D major chord.
[Music]
Now, there's a couple of ways we can look at these notes. One is to view them in the context of position one of the A minor pentatonic. So, that first bend on the B string starts from fret six, which relative to the A root note is a flat six. So, that would be considered a passing note. It's not really in our note palette. It's not part of Mixolydian. But the important part here is that I don't linger on that note. I use it, I play it, and then I bend up one semitone so that I reach the pitch of the natural sixth, which is, of course, part of the Mixolydian Note Palette. And then I play these notes on the high E string, which are the root, natural second, and flat third relative to the A root note. So that's one way of looking at these notes. However, that's not exactly how I look at them. What I'm seeing on the fretboard here is kind of a fragment of a D7 arpeggio, which looks like this.
Now, remember, this is played over the D major chord. And, uh, when you're playing Mixolydian, the four chord, even though it's major in this backing track, you can kind of treat it as if it's a dominant seventh chord, right? So that's why I'm saying, you know, I'm visualizing a D7 arpeggio. So that bend from fret six on the B string, if we look at it relative to D, is essentially starting on the flat third of D and then bending up to its major third. And of course, that major third, that F sharp, is in the D major chord that these notes are played over. And so then the notes on the high E string at frets five and eight relative to a D root note are its fifth and flat seventh. Okay. And yes, we've got another note in between those two, which isn't in the arpeggio shape, but it still works well in this context. If you care to know, it's the natural sixth of D.
[Music]
So, as you can tell, over the G major and D major chords, the flat seven and four chords in the progression, I'm kind of moving away from thinking of the Mixolydian Note Palette or scale patterns, and I'm leaning more towards a chord tone targeting approach. And then to finish this line, when the A chord comes back, I play a descending sequence of notes that include the flat fifth from the blues scale. Now, as soon as I finish that run, I slide up to the major third on the low E string, the major third of A. And then I'm going to hammer on to the natural sixth on the A string. And then I'll finish on an A root note on the D string. So, here's what that sounds like. One more time, and together with the minor pentatonic blues thing that I just played before it.
[Music]
So that's more of a, a major pentatonic sound I'm channeling with this part. Although you could also view this as based around a first inversion A major triad shape. That's going to do it for line number two. Let's listen back to it a couple more times.
[Music]
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The last mode we're covering in today's master class is Ionian, which is just the modal name for the major scale itself. Its construction is simply 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Take a quick listen to this short solo that uses Ionian.
[Music]
[Applause]
Now, for Aeolian, Dorian, and Mixolydian, I talked about combining those modes with the minor pentatonic scale. Ionian is the one mode that you don't want to do that with, and for good reason, which is that it's the other pentatonic scale, the major pentatonic, that is the best fit for Ionian soloing. The major pentatonic is baked into the Ionian scale formula. It's 1 2 3 5 6. So when I solo with Ionian, I'm mostly visualizing major pentatonic scale patterns, but I'm also aware of where the two surrounding notes from the Ionian mode are, like the fourth and seventh. Another concept I use all the time with Ionian is chord tone targeting through the use of triads. That means using those tools to hit the notes that make up the chords in the progression so that my note choices sound connected to the harmony.
Before I get into those concepts, let's look at the chord progression that is used in this A major backing track. It uses chords 1, 5, 6, and 4 from Ionian. That gives you A major, E major, F sharp minor, and D major. So, let's just quickly play through that chord progression together now.
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Music]
So now we're clear on the chord progression. Let's look at an example of a melodic line played over those chords.
[Music]
[Applause]
Okay, so this is a short solo that kind of brings together all of my favorite Ionian soloing approaches, using the major pentatonic and adding the fourth and seventh from Ionian and chord tone targeting through the use of triads. The first part is played over the A major chord, the one chord, and it uses a couple of major pentatonic patterns plus some chord tone targeting. So, here are the A major pentatonic patterns that I use. And here are the A major triad shapes I'm visualizing for the chord tone targeting. So, the first phrase is built around this first inversion A major, which is also part of that position of the A major pentatonic scale. Right? All three notes are right there. So I play this. And so right away, I'm hitting all the chord tones of the A major, the root, major third, and fifth, as well as the major third again with this bend. Okay, let me just play through to the end of that first part to show you what else I'm visualizing. Okay, so after the bend, I introduce a note that is not in the major pentatonic but is in Ionian, and that is the fourth. In A Ionian, the fourth is D. And as you can see, it's not part of this major pentatonic pattern. Okay, but it is part of A Ionian. So you can throw it in there for, you know, extra color and depth.
[Music]
Now, that bend there, that semitone bend that goes up to the root note A is coming from Ionian's major seventh. Okay. So right away, we're getting in the fourth and the seventh from A Ionian inside this major pentatonic box. And as you can see, I end by just sliding down one position of the major pentatonic. Moving into the E major bar, I take less of a scale-based approach and move into strict chord tone targeting. So, let me just show you what I play at this part.
So, what am I visualizing there if it's not scales? Well, the answer is three different E major triad shapes. Okay, the first one looks like this. The second looks like this. And the third looks like this.
[Music]
Okay. But there's something interesting to note about the way that I outline these triad shapes. In each one, I'm leaving out the note in the middle. So, I'm just playing the outer two notes of each shape. So, this is the full first E major inversion. Okay? I leave out the note in the middle and I just play the outer two. Then the second E major triad shape is this one. I leave out the note in the middle and I just play the outer two. And for the third E major triad shape, again, I leave out the note in the middle and I just play the outer two.
[Music]
Now, when you play triads in this way where you're leaving out the middle note and just playing the outer two notes in each shape, you can call them sixths. And that's because those outer two notes are six letter names apart in the musical alphabet. For example, in this first shape, the bottom note is a G sharp and the top note is an E. So if you forget about sharps and flats and just think G, A, B, C, D, E, working through the musical alphabet, counting G as one, G, A, B, C, D, E, one, two, three, four, five, six letter names apart. Okay, so that's the approach I'm taking there, using sixths with E major triads in mind. And you know, since that is played over the E major chord, it sounds very, very connected to that chord. Moving into the F sharp minor chord, the six chord in the progression. This is what I play.
Okay.
Okay. So, we're working out of this position of the A major pentatonic.
[Music]
But I'm adding in the major seventh on the high E string, as well as the fourth on the B string.
[Music]
And also, it's worth pointing out that the bend I play here is going up to an F sharp. And again, I'm playing over the F sharp minor chord. So that makes it sound very connected. Even though I'm not necessarily thinking about chord tone targeting with the use of triads here, I, I am hitting the root of that chord with this more scale-based kind of phrase. Now, for the last chord in the progression, I switch back to more of a triad-based visualization and I target chord tones for the D major chord. So, this is what I play.
Now, what I'm seeing there on the fretboard is this D major triad shape, as well as a D sus 2 triad on the first string set. A sus 2 triad is basically just where you take a regular major triad with a root, major third, and fifth, and you drop the major third by two frets so that you get a second instead. Has quite a cool modern sound to it. And here's how I phrase those two triads together. So I'm finishing on the note C sharp, which relative to the D chord would be its major seventh, but relative to the A root note of A Ionian, it would be its major third. So that's how I approach soloing with Ionian. For the most part, it's using major pentatonic patterns as my main scale visualization framework and then adding in those other two notes, the fourth and seventh from Ionian for extra melodic depth, plus using triads to target the chord tones for each and every chord change.
Okay, we have reached the end of the 80/20 Lead Guitar Master Class. If this master class helped you to connect the dots, imagine what will happen when you work through the full system. Once again, it's called 80/20 Lead Guitar Mastery, and it's got 16 hours of step-by-step video lessons focused on the four modes that pro guitar players actually use in genres like classic rock, country, pop, and blues. You won't be grinding seven modes or memorizing giant three-note-per-string patterns. You'll use pentatonic frameworks you already know and then simply layer in the additional notes from the modes. Learn how to target chord tones with triads and arpeggios. And most importantly, play solos that sound like music, not scale drills. The course comes with my Vocabulary Vaults, bonus modules that contain 30 lick lessons per mode, fully tabbed and broken down in detail so that you build phrase vocabulary fast instead of being left with a bunch of scale patterns and not having a clue how to make music with them. Plus, you'll get these bonuses. You'll get soloing mastery ebooks, vocabulary vault ebooks, all of which contain tabs and fretboard diagrams. You'll also get Guitar Pro and PDF tab files, custom-made backing tracks from Jam Tracks channel on YouTube. You even get downloadable video lessons for offline practice. And my entire website is fully integrated with the Vidami Blue foot controller if you own one. And your purchase is protected by my 90-day make progress or get your money back guarantee. If you're tired of starting every solo from box one of the minor pentatonic, if you're ready to finally learn how to play what you hear in your head, and if you want to finally understand how to connect your solos, your note choices, to the chord progressions that you're soloing over, just click the link below to join 80/20 Lead Guitar Mastery today.