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Guitar Tips by Angelo Jannotti : Hexatonic

In the last guitar tip, we talked about guitar players (all of us) having the tendency to play the same licks and phrases. We mentioned some ways to break the mold and tap your creative juices, for developing your own style, licks, and phrases.

The first thing mentioned was that we all have a unique voice and talents. Chances are, you haven't fully tapped your potential. Not many people ever do, in the course of a lifetime. We're too busy trying to fit in and be like everyone else. I call this, the "strive to be average" factor. It spans from the clothes you wear, to the TV shows you watch, to what body parts you pierce (I've recently pierced my savings account), and to what you play on your instrument.

Another thing mentioned was for every lick or phrase you learn, create two of your own.

You can shorten a lick, add a couple of notes, change the rhythm from eighth notes (i.e. 1 and 2 and 3 and etc.), to 8th note triplets (1 and a 2 and a 3 and a etc.). You can invert, or play it backwards, as Ozzy would say going forward in reverse. You can alternate direction; two notes ascending (up two notes), two notes descending (down two notes), adding distortion to a lick that was played clean, can totally change the feel of a lick. To change a lick into your own vocabulary doesn't have to be a lot of work, instead, it can be a lot of fun. Next time, I'll give a more complete list of ideas, for morphing licks into your own. For now, we'll look at a couple of examples.

We'll be using the hexatonic scale. This is nothing more than the pentatonic, with one added note (the second or ninth). It is commonly used by blues players, and is generally viewed as the pentatonic. See diagram:

Example one is eighth note triplet feel. Try this with straight eighth notes.

Example two is straight eighth notes. Try this with a triplet feel.

Also, try combining these into some standard blues rock licks. See you next time!

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