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LazyAssGuitarist.Com Presents:

LazyAssGuitarist.Com | August 4, 2015

15 Guitar Hacks FOR LAZY-ASS GUITARISTS

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Contents

How to Use this Book ................................................................................................................................... 2

1. How to Remember Chords in the Beginning .......................................................................................... 3

2. How to Learn Scales in order to Improvise ............................................................................................ 5

3. How to Learn More Chords without Learning More Shapes ............................................................... 6

4. Modes: What to do first ............................................................................................................................ 7

5. How to Make Music from Scales............................................................................................................. 9

6. How to Learn any Technique to Perfection .......................................................................................... 9

7. How and When to Learn Licks ............................................................................................................... 9

8. Don’t Be Scared Off by Long Chord Names .......................................................................................... 9

9. How to Make Your Solos Sound Better Overnight .............................................................................. 10

10. Modes: The Thing that’s Stopping You from Understanding Them ................................................. 11

11. How to Play Outside the Key and Sound Cool .................................................................................... 13

12. How to Play like Your Idols without Learning their Licks ................................................................. 13

13. How to Get Better: The Four Levels of Awareness ............................................................................. 14

14. How to Write Great Stuff ...................................................................................................................... 15

15. How to Get a Great Tone ....................................................................................................................... 15

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How to Use this Book

This book is designed to give you an insight into learning guitar, and is based, not on the lazy way

to do things, but the clever way to do things. There are many so-called teaching methods which are

both redundant and unnecessarily time-consuming, yet still employed by teachers and schools

alike. It takes time to become good at guitar but a lot of that time could be put to better use in

order to reach our goals faster.

I didn’t write this book in any specific order, or for any specific level of playing, so I don’t expect

you to go through it in the same way. Music is a language and therefore has no specific order of

learning, you just pick it up as you go along, so choose a chapter or an area that you feel like

working on and get stuck in!

All the best,

The Lazy-Ass Guitarist







1. How to Remember Chords in the Beginning

Learning chords on guitar is one hell of tedious process. You may even own a variety of chord

books but they never seem to stick. This is because chords need context; a chord in isolation is

relatively meaningless, and learning a bunch of chords in isolation is next to useless. What you

need is a more memory-friendly approach. This can be achieved by using the oldest memory trick

in the book—taking something you already know and modifying it to create something new.

In the following pairs of chords you’re just making a minor modification to create a whole new

chord. Practice with the following chords then when you come across a new chord, try to relate it

to one you already know.















As you can see, these patterns cover the whole fretboard making the other 4 fairly redundant. Theidea here is get the note location down so that you’re free to improvise without running up and

down scales; as soon as you feel you know where the notes are, try coming up with your own licks

and runs.

3. How to Learn More Chords without Learning More Shapes

Most guitarists never question why the same chord can have umpteen different shapes and whether

there’s some sort of logic, or reason behind it. If you were to tune your guitar to all fourths tuning

(low to high: E A D G C F) the first thing you’d notice is that any chord shape can be played

anywhere on the fretboard and the sound will be consistent. This is because in fourths tuning the

fretboard is symmetrical and therefore any shape will be the same on any set of strings. Back to

standard tuning and we see that the fretboard is not symmetrical; it has a ‘bump’ which is also

known as the B string. This ‘bump’ is what spawns excessive amounts of chord shapes but if you

realize what it’s doing then you can use it to your advantage. Look at the following three chord

shapes:

Most guitarists would treat them as three different shape but what I want you to see is that they’re

all the same shape, just modified by the B string. Whenever you move a chord shape across the







fretboard and the B string becomes involved, it pushes the note up one fret, as you can see in the

second Fm chord. If you move the chord across to the next set of strings the B string pushes the

note up one fret and the E string follows suit. It is the same chord shape only warped by the

fretboard!

4. Modes: What to do first

A lot of guitarists get interested in learning modes and start ripping through the scale patterns and

trying to apply them when improvising. What they end up with are solos that don’t really bring out

the sound of the mode. If you know your major scales then you’ve been using modes without

realizing it; the next step, before you go ploughing into the scale patterns, is to introduce your ears

to the sound of each mode. We can do this by using the low E string as a drone and a comfortable

one octave pattern as follows.

The Ionian mode is just another name for the major scale.

The Dorian mode is a tasty minor scale used a lot in rock, jazz and blues.

The Phrygian mode is a darker-sounding minor scale.







The Lydian mode is a major scale with a raised fourth and a good alternative to the major

scale itself.

The Mixolydian mode is another major scale but this time with a flat 7 for a bluesier vibe.

The Aeolian scale is also known as the natural minor scale.

The Locrian scale is the darkest of the major modes and is mainly used over m7b5 chords.

Don’t worry too much about the theory here, the idea is to get used to the sound of each mode in

order to really be able to bring them out when soloing.







5. How to Make Music from Scales

In order to make music from scales you need to first of all restrict yourself, meaning find a

comfortable one-octave pattern in the middle of the fretboard and stick within the confines of it

until you start making music. A lot of guitarists think than to come up with more ideas they need

to cover more of the fretboard, and play more notes. This couldn’t be further from the truth as

what you need to learn to do is to make a handful of notes sound good, and above all melodic. A

one-octave pattern allows you to concentrate on the sound of a few notes rather than the sound of

a lot of notes, and due to its apparent limitations, will force you to be more creative. Try it!

6. How to Learn any Technique to Perfection

If you want to learn any technique to perfection you must practice it as slowly as possible. When I

say slowly, I mean slow-motion, almost at a standstill. Don’t bother with a metronome to try to

build up speed as you want to do this naturally. Repeat the technique over and over as slowly as

possible, almost like a meditation; you may feel a little dumb but believe me this is scientificallyproven. You may think you’re building up speed but what you’re actually building up is control,

speed is just a secondary effect; the more control you have over something, the faster you execute

it. The same is not true the other way around.

7. How and When to Learn Licks

This is a technique I call ‘lick mining’ and involves getting hold of a transcription of a solo, which

doesn’t necessarily have to be a guitar solo if you’re able to read music; jazz solos are particularly

useful for this. What you then do is to analyze, copy, learn and steal the lick below each of the

chord symbols, as if it were your own personal lick library. Note too how the player transitions intothe next chord and plays over the changes. Take a particular chord in the tune and see how the

player attacks it every time it comes round. This is a truly fascinating exercise and one that will

expand your soloing vocabulary in no time, and best of all, doesn’t feel like work.

8. Don’t Be Scared Off by Long Chord Names

If you’ve ever come across a chord like Cmaj13(#11) you probably ran for the hills, and while these

chords certainly seem complicated, their corresponding chord shapes are often quite the opposite.

Check out this Cmaj13(#11) shape:

Easy to remember, right? And there are plenty more where that one came from:







If you can’t find a simple shape for a complicated chord then you may have to suck it up and learn a

finger-twister, but a little rooting around will usually turn up some comfortable, and above all

memorable, shapes.

9. How to Make Your Solos Sound Better Overnight

Okay, the title is a little on the exaggerated side but there is one thing you can do to make your

solos sound better in a matter of weeks—get a good vibrato! Vibrato is a personal thing and you

kind of need to find your own. Sure you can steal a good vibrato from Clapton, Johnson et al, or do

that thing that BB King did. Players with vibrato like a cat’s dying breath will always sound lame

when they solo, it’s like talking without articulating yourself. The first thing to do is to restring your

guitar with Super Light Gauge strings—yes, I’m serious. Super Light Gauge strings will do most of







the work for you while you experiment with your vibrato technique. Don’t feel like a girl for using

them, Billy Gibbons uses them and so did BB King. Experiment with directions; there are basically

two directions you can go in: up and down like Clapton or Eric Johnson, or side to side (classical

guitar vibrato) like Allan Holdsworth. You can also do a combination of both a la Steve Vai which

creates a kind of circular motion, but the important thing is to find a comfortable way of doing it

which doesn’t alter your fretting hand position too much.

10. Modes: The Thing that’s Stopping You from Understanding

Them

The single biggest hurdle to understanding the modes on guitar is to realize that modes are not a

guitar concept, they are a musical concept. What do I mean by this? If you’re trying to learn modes

through any guitar-specific concept such as the CAGED system, the 3NPS system or any other

system that is based on the nature of the guitar, you’re going to give yourself a headache and take

donkey’s years to finally get the modes. You should try to see the modes as follows; let’s take Fmajor as our key. If we look at the notes in circular fashion we see that any one of them can be the

root note. Just follow the circle back to the same note.

If you start on G and go back round to G you have G Dorian, if you start on A and go round you

have A Phrygian and so forth, as shown below.







It should dawn on you that all these scales contain the exact same notes, just the starting note

alters their function.

Chords also work the same way in case you were wondering how to relate modes to chords. Check

it out:

For example, if you’re starting chord is C7 and you play a couple of other chords from the wheel,

your scale will be C Mixolydian. If you have a progression that goes BbM7 | C7 etc. then your scale







will be Bb Lydian, even though both scales contain the exact same notes as F Major! Spend a little

time chewing this over, then see if you can work it out on the guitar without using any guitar-

specific scale methods.

11. How to Play Outside the Key and Sound Cool

This is more mental than anything else, and is inspired by the great bass player Victor Wooten.

Most players think of a key as containing 7 right notes and 5 wrong notes, and when they hit a

wrong note, they think they’ve made a mistake. Victor’s theory is to get comfortable playing the

‘wrong’ notes. If you do this for a while they start to become stepping stones as you create lines and

improvise, and as long as you play them meaningfully and with plenty of groove, they’ll never

sound wrong.

12. How to Play like Your Idols without Learning their LicksIf you’re really into a certain guitar player then I’d recommend finding out how they think about

things rather than learning a ton of their licks and sounding like a cheap rip-off. For example you

could learn a load of Josh Homme licks but it would be more productive to learn the scale he uses,

which is this one:

We’ll call it the Josh Homme Pentatonic as it contains five notes and is kind of a Lydian sounding

scale without the 2 or the 7. Play around with it and you’re sure to come up with some Josh Homme

sounding licks and runs.

In the same vein if you wanted to play like Carlos Santana, instead of learning a bunch of Santana

licks, which serve no real purpose unless you’re playing in a Santana tribute band, you could study

his approach to improvising.

Santana favors the Aeolian and Dorian scales quite a lot but he has his own twist on them;

however, if you want an instant Santana-like sound try the Egyptian Pentatonic Scale over minorand minor 7 chords:







In the diagram above you can the G minor pentatonic scale in red and blue, and the C Egyptian

Pentatonic in blue. It’s difficult to know exactly how he’s thinking but it’s either G minor

pentatonic (red and blue dots) over a Cm or Cm7 chord, or the Egyptian pentatonic in C (blue

dots), whichever way you end up with that Santana sound without having to cop a load of licks.

13. How to Get Better: The Four Levels of Awareness

Bass player Anthony Wellington goes into this in his workshops; he doesn ’t overtly say it but thishack could also be titled: How Things Become Second Nature. He breaks down the learning

process into four levels of awareness as follows:

Level 1: Unconscious Not Knowing

This is where you don’t even know what it is you don’t know; that kind of ignorance is bliss when

you first pick up a guitar and have absolutely no idea of how much there is to learn—this is a happy

state!

Level 2 – Conscious Not Knowing

The previous state of bliss is somewhat shattered because now you’ ve become aware of what youdon’t know. You know you need to practice and learn, and truth be told this is where most people

who pick up an instrument stay —they don’t get past this point.

Level 3 – Conscious Knowing

This is when you become aware of what you know as far as modes, scales and theory are concerned,

and you’re thinking about them while you’re playing. Most ‘good’ musicians will stay at this level

their whole career. This is not a blissful state either because you ’re always having to think about

what you’re doing while you’re doing it.

Level 4 – Unconscious Knowing

This is when you know what you know well that you don’t even have to think about it—things havebecome second nature, and this is a very blissful state as you’re free from the constraints of levels 1

and 2.

You can apply this system either to your playing as a whole or to whatever technique or theory you

happen to be learning. It should also give you some insight as to how far you are along the road to

guitar greatness. It sounds like a daunting task but break it down: if you only know the pentatonic







scale, take it to the fourth level! If you only know the major scale, take that to the fourth level, and

so on!

14. How to Write Great Stuff You may have noticed this when you improvise; the first stuff you play is kind of crappy but after a

while you get to the good stuff. Even the best players go through this, at least at first; they don’t just

pick up a guitar and instantly write a killer riff or tune, you have to sift through the crap first! With

improvisation you can kind of see a speeded up version of this but if you ’re writing songs or tunes

then you’re going to have to suck it up and write some bad stuff first, before you get to the good

stuff. It’s like any other skill and needs to be practiced enough to get good at it. Don’t despair, even

the stuff you think is crap is probably not that bad! Just keep writing.

15. How to Get a Great ToneIt’s a fact that great tone comes from your fingers, not a ton of expensive gear. If you want to work

on your pure tone then just play through your amp. Get rid of your pedals and pedalboards for a

while and spend some quality time with your amp. It’s disconcerting at first and you’ll fiddle with

the dramatically reduced number of tone options to try to find a comfortable sound; just take

whatever sound comes out of your amp and play with it for a while. You’ll notice that your tone

gets better because your fingers are now doing the work! This is a great skill to have as if you’re a

gigging musician or you play at different venues you’ll often have to use other people ’s gear and

setups, which if you’re not used harnessing tone through your fingers, can really throw you off.




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