This week, I'm sharing a couple of tricks I use to quickly shift between the major feel and the minor feel - this instantly gives your blues playing more depth and makes it sound more intelligent!
Give it a go and let me know how you get on:
Riff Builder Box Major/Minor Switching.
The Riff Builder Box is the position I shared with you a couple of weeks ago which is a minor pentatonic position box down in the open position that is great for creating grooves and riffs.
Here is a recap of that position in case you missed that one: https://youtu.be/GJIaIYUrh4w In this position you spend a lot of time launching off the third fret to the open strings on strings 5 4 and 3.
To quickly switch this to a more Major feel you can launch from the second fret instead. You will need to watch the video of this in action to see what I mean, have a look here: https://youtu.be/QZL20D97UEI
So with just a subtle change you can shift the emphasis from minor to major and back again - handy stuff!
12th Fret Box Major/Minor Switching
You can do the same up at the 12th fret position we talked about last week.
To play minor pentatonic up here you are emphasizing the all important minor 3rd not on the 11th fret of the 2nd string which creates a really useful diagonal shaped box.
Now let's take that trick we used to pull this into a more major feel and apply it here. We can take the same box and instead of leaning into that 11th fret note on the second string we can go from the 10th fret on the second string and squeeze it up for a major bluesy feel. Check out the video to see this in action: https://youtu.be/6i7D6I5kzKA
So another handy little trick there for switching between the major and minor feel.
3 Fret Box Slipping
Finally, let's look at moving that 12th fret box down 3 frets to give us another really useful major metatonic position.
As I mentioned in one of the earlier videos if you take any minor pentatonic box and move it down 3 frets it becomes a major pentatonic and vice versa.
A really handy trick, check out the video to see this in action: https://youtu.be/dnqvpOKRVKY
All of this was part of my Slide Success course for members this week.
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