Typically, when a person gets comfortable in a routine, and has a firm understanding of the routine, over the course of time the process becomes a bit boring and predictable.

In the case of a guitarist it represents the musical vocabulary. If you have a narrow musical vocabulary to draw from, your progress will be limited due to the lack of licks and chops.

Lack of inspiration also dulls a guitar player’s full potential, but keep in mind that lack of inspiration is usually the direct result of a narrow musical vocabulary.

The great news is there’s a powerful remedy for this. It brings back inspiration and widens your musical vocabulary. You’re simply going to feed your starving musical mind the food it needs to continue it’s growth and communicate better musically.

Doing this will keep you from ever bottoming out in a rut again.

Solution:

You need to gather up five to ten cool sounding, well constructed guitar licks and learn them. The thing you want to do is remember the techniques being used from each of the licks as you play them over and over. This is the main focus.

Now, as you start to understand and unlock the techniques being used within the licks, you can expand further by changing a couple notes within the techniques being used. Even if you only change two or three notes, you’re going to have a completely different sounding lick, based off of the technique you were using. This is super cool, and I’m sure you’ll also be surprised after trying it.

You’re now able to split many other lick techniques into several other sub-licks, all spawning from the main lick you initially learned. You’ll start developing many new ideas including a vast array of additional licks on demand. It will totally fire up your inspiration, because you’ll have all this new musical phrasing and cool new sound to utilize within your music.

REMEMBER: You need “quality” guitar licks, methods, and techniques to learn from; this assures everything that spawns from it will be just as killer as the quality lick you started with.

Once you begin working with your killer rock guitar licks and techniques, you want to be sure to only work with one lick at a time, and very slowly. You want to sketch each lick into your mind thoroughly and individually to get maximum long term results.

Play each lick no less than 100 times in a row. You’ll be surprised at how little time it actually takes to play the lick 100 times in a row, and the payoff is well worth it. Watch every move your fingers make and try to get as comfortable as possible with the mechanics between the right and left hand. As you continue on, you’ll notice yourself expanding upon the initial guitar lick without even trying. It’s works like magic every time, and gets you out of any rut.

Killer Rock Guitar Licks directly injects “Horsepower” into your guitar playing.

More Soon,
Bob

Please share your comments below…

Just wanted to let you know that Part 2. of the Major Scale Modes Connections is now available. Judging from the feedback I’ve received from the first Mode Connections video, people are really  looking forward to this Part 2. video.

Don’t forget you can still get the complete Killer Rock Guitar Licks package before it expires. Keep your eyes peeled for Part 3. Coming Soon!

Please Leave a Reply If This Video Helped You.

All suggestions are welcome!

Thanks, Bob

Ask Bobby Molton Your Guitar Related Questions:

1. Ask in the comments section, or
2. Email Bob Molton at Bob@BobMolton.com
3. I’ll be sure to answer back ASAP!!
   Thanks alot

Here’s a question from Klint

QUESTION:

1. Hey Robert… thanks for the lessons… I appreciate you going to all the trouble posting those lessons. I’ve got one question…How do you create a chord using the modes? I mean, your chord progression in the Lydian mode sounds sweet, and I wanna how learn to do it. How do you do it? thanks…

ANSWER: Another Great question! One of the things I teach all of my guitar students is that just because you don’t know the name of a chord doesn’t mean it’s not a chord… With that being said, every mode has it’s different shapes and petterns, which makes it slightly different from the one before it, or ahead of it. Although they are all the same notes as the original scale, the notes are in a different order and that creates different shapes and patterns.

EXAMPLE: If I’m playing in the Lydian Mode, it has a certain pattern that must be followed, and within that pattern you can experiment with playing any of those notes together. This is how you create chords within a mode. You can play two notes together, or three, four, five notes together, and then you tie all of it together with little runs from within the mode.

Overview - you’re playing several notes together using only the notes within the mode pattern, and stringing them together with single notes from the same mode as well. This all goes back to what I was saying about how it doesn’t matter whether you know the names of these chords or not, as long as you can apply them musically and be comfortable doing it. You can always learn the names later. This method gets the ball rolling much quicker in a musical sense.

Re-apply this method to all the modes and you’ll soon be creating some real musical compositions.

Hope that sheds new light on the subject…Please leave me a comment to let me know how this helps you. Be assured, others will learn from your questions and comments as well.

More soon…

Bob Molton

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Ask Bobby Molton Your Guitar Related Questions:

1. Ask in the comments section, or
2. Email Bob Molton at info@topfuelguitar.com 

I’ll be sure to answer back ASAP!!
Thanks alot

Here’s a question from Tyler Davis, WI .

QUESTION:

1. I’m gathering information about building my own guitar and was wondering if you could give some insight on what the different types of woods sound like for an electric guitar body…

ANSWER: Great question! The wood tones from an electric guitar can really vary, because wood really does sound, and resonate differently from each other. It also varies from the shape and thickness of the cut. The best thing to do is research several different wood types and see what type is closest to the guitar tone you are going for. Then start with that wood.

EXAMPLE: If you want a real bright sound with lots of punch and sustain, you might lean more toward maple wood. If you want a real dark sound with lots of bass and growl, you might lean toward mahogany.

So you can see that the wood is the most important place to start.

Here’s a video to give you further insight…

Hope that sheds new light on the subject…Please leave me a comment to let me know how this helps you. Be assured, others will learn from your questions and comments as well.

More soon…

Bob Molton

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I’m answering your questions in the order they come in.
Please ask your question in the comments section, or email me at bob@bobmolton.com

I’ll be sure to answer back ASAP!!
Thanks alot

Here’s a question from Mike in Barrie, Ontario:

Hello Robert, my name is Mike, Ive been playing guitar for about 4 years now and i am looking for some advice to spice up my guitar playing. I feel i have used the pentatonic scale far too many times and that is why i am going to learn the scale modes you have put on You Tube.

QUESTION:

1. I would like to know when you would use these different modes and some of the patterns i can incorporate into them.

ANSWER: You would use these mode patterns to play more melodic, and with much more feel. You see each mode has it’s own unique tonality to it, and the key to using the modes, is to bring out the unique tonality each mode has to offer. Keep in mind that modes are just ONE SCALE’S worth of notes played in seven different orders. They are always the same notes, otherwise it would become another Scale instead of another mode. Each scale has it’s own modes that follow, including the pentatonic scale. The pentatonic scale has five modes instead of seven because there are only five notes in the PENTATONIC SCALE. It can get overwhelming if you try to learn to many scales and their modes all at once. The most important mode system to learn is the MAJOR SCALE MODES. This is what i teach in the guitar mode videos. It’s the guidlines for everything. In my opinion the second most important modes are the Pentatonic Modes. I’ll be releasing a whole series on the Pentatonic Modes in the near future.

====================

Another question i have is about amps. Right now i am using an LTD EC-1000 LP with a Boss Ds1 and a chorus pedal through and old Yorkvile Sound Bass amp from 1972 called a Sonax 550B (solidstate). 
 

QUESTION: 

1. I would like to know if there is an amp out there around $1,300 that provides a nice beefy but still “rectifireish” tone.
   ANSWER: Well, since you mentioned you wanted something “rectifireish” I would keep a close eye on eBay and find a killer Boogie Dual Rectifier for under $1300.00. I know you can find them because i’ve watched them from time to time and you can actually get deals lower than that. The key is to keep your eye on the auctions and watch them for a week or two before you actually get one. This allow you to know what your up against by the time several auctions have ran their course. Also, wait till the last few minutes to bid because you don’t want to drive the price up too early. You may have to bid a couple times but know your limits and stop if if it’s beyond your budget.Me personally, I would buy a used Marshall JCM 800, Mid 1980′s, master volume, vertical input, and drive the front with and old Boss Overdrive (OD-1). That Set-up will always deliver the goods!!

    

Hope that sheds new light…Please leave me a comment to let me know how this helps you. Others will learn from your questions and comments as well.

More soon…

Bob

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Hello Guitar Players,
I wanted to share the answer to the question that many people seem to be asking.
Guitar modes can be intimidating, and more confusing than they need to be. Here’s a brief example of how to view them more clearly. 

Here’s a Question from Jordan Mackie: Well, I am confused by this whole mode business. I have previously learned 5 caged shapes for the major scale.

Are modes basically just giving names to all those shapes?

Say I wanted to write a solo in ”A Lydian” am I limited to that one shape on the neck that you did in your video, Or does the Lydian scale have other shapes all around the neck?

Good Question, first off, I think it’s very important to understand the difference between modes and scales.

• Scales: Scales are a series of notes that create a particular sound. Typically, there are seven notes within a scale and the eight note is the octave.  Whatever the notes are within that scale, are what gives it it’s tonal identity. To identify the scale by name you would use a name such as “Harmonic Minor” or “Melodic Minor” etc… The important thing to remember is that anytime you change a note within that scale it’s becomes a different scale entirely, with a different name, and a different sound, and different feel.

• Modes: Modes are the particular set of notes (that make up a scale) played with different orders, but always the same exact notes. For example, if you had the scale – (ABCDEFGA)  the next mode would be (BCDEFGAB) and the next mode would be (CDEFGABC) and so on… 

You’ll notice that the notes never changed, only the order in which they were played. The way you bring the tonality of the mode out is by leaning on the beginning note of each mode. It takes practice and ear training to get a good grip on the tonality differences, but rest assured your ear will begin to pickup on the sound very quickly.  This should make things much easier to view in your minds eye.

As far as the different positions you’ve learned, it really doesn’t matter as long as you are playing the same notes, such as if I would play a G major scale in 3 or 4 different positions, it’s still the G major scale, it’s just played in a different position. A mode only changes when you change the order of the notes used in a particular scale.

Hope this sheds more light on the subject.
Please comment on how this has helped you.

More Later…

Bobby Molton

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If you’re interested in learning some helpful tips and some insider information, I highly urge you to go on over to Top Fuel Guitar and check out the cool resources available for all guitarists.

You’ll find some killer free videos to get you rolling in the right direction.

More Later…

Bobby Molton