View post (Guitar Soloing and the Caged System)

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maggior
Registered User
Joined: 01/27/13
Posts: 1,723
maggior
Registered User
Joined: 01/27/13
Posts: 1,723
05/03/2017 3:56 pm

Personally, I think you are making it too hard on yourself. Though you can change the scale you play over each chord in a song, usually solos are played from the scale that represents the key that all of the chords fit into. CAGED could be used then to help you target chord tones.

Usually, improvised soloing is introduced with the minor pentatonic scale. When used over the chord progressions used in a lot of rock or pop music, there are no wrong notes. There are note choices that are better than others, but any note in the pentatonic scale will sound OK over any chord in the progression. Take the chord progression A, D, E and play Am pentatonic over it...and it works. For a different flavor, you can use A major pentatonic...A major pentatonic takes the Am pentatonic shape and slides it back 3 frets.

This is useful because it allows you start to explore improvisation without having to focus on note selection. You can focus on things like phrasing, rhythm, and dynamics.

You can then build upon this and start targeting chord tones, which may or may not be outside the pentatonic scale. Here you have to start being mindful of the "outside the pentatonic notes" you are playing because they may or may not work over the chord you are playing over.

That's one way. It has it's advantages and disadvantages. If you search "pentatonic rut" on the internet (or this forum), you'll get lots of hits. The danger of this approach is you can find yourself locked into certain scale shapes. I will say this though...when you think your soloing is stagnating...the answer is usually NOT a new scale, the answer is learning to use what you know more creatively.