Originally Posted by: Slipin LizardHere's what really helped me: First off, get yourself some fretboard paper (a music shop or guitar store should have it). Pick a key, then a Pentatonic pattern, visualize, and draw the pattern on the fretboard paper, circling the root notes. Any time you need to "cheat" and look up what the pattern is, do so, because its actually not cheating. Repeat until you can draw out all five patterns from memory (notice this does not involve playing the guitar at all).

Now pickup the guitar. This works better with a jam track or beat box that you can vary the tempo with, but a metronome will suffice. Set a slow tempo, pick a key, and a pattern and play a little "solo"... just something really simple and slow. Do not hit any wrong notes... if you need to, slow down. Now, at some point, slide UP or DOWN to the next pattern either above or below the pattern you're on. Remember, the patterns always repeat in order: if you're playing pattern four, then pattern three is below and pattern five is above. Before you slide up or down to the next pattern, visualize the pattern you're going to slide to... but also keep playing a little solo and try to keep it a little musical... keep playing, in time, make no mistakes, visualize where the next pattern is, where your fingers need to move to staying on the same string, and then go ahead and make the move. Now continue soloing in that new pattern. Pick a string at random to slide on, and when you're ready, visualize the next pattern to move to and then move again.

Its important that you keep playing, and you use only the notes in the scale. This will make the scale & pattens "stick" for you in your mind.. with practice, you will be able to skip patterns, making bigger moves up and down the fretboard. Eventually you will be able to visualize all the patterns linked together across the fretboard. You can "test" yourself with this by soloing just on one string, and moving up and down all across the fretboard while making sure you're staying in the Pentatonic Major scale you've chosen.

Cool. I'll try doing that when I get the chance.

I may or may not have unexpectedly reached one of my long-term goals, as well... Yesterday, I came up with this sort of cool-sounding riff while far from my guitar, and I tried tabbing it out so I could play it later. Then, once I got home, I tried playing the riff on my guitar, first clean, then with overdrive and lastly with some distortion, and the overdriven version sounded exactly like what I had came up with in my head. I don't know if this means my ears have improved or if I'm just really good at guessing, but I like to think my ears have gotten better since I started playing guitar...