You want to be able to develop your ideas, not only chord voicings,

but your lead work and all kind of fills, by taking an area of the
fingerboard and seeing everything that exists within it that is
applicable to the chord.

A block form is a large chord voicing out of which you can extract
various voicings and inversions.

Level 1: Just using the 3 components of the triad (R 3 5). You can
play them as single notes, double stops, triads, etc. Take it a step
beyond just seeing a chord and strumming it. The best thing for you
to do is to start lean. Play fewer notes, listen to how it fits against
the track, find your spot, express yourself and leave room for the
other musicians.

Level 2: add in the pentatonic scales

Level 3: add in the full scale/modes

The beauty of the guitar is that you can learn a pattern and always
rely on it. That’s dangerous because you can end up not thinking
and just seeing patterns. I’m going to take you a step beyond that.
But to get you up and running, you want to coordinate as many
different ideas together on the neck and not have to think so much.

See the chord tones as destinations, as targets.

If you add 2 notes to the major triad, you get the major pentatonic
scale: 1 2 3 5 6

Brad’s system of pentatonic scales is as follows: On strings 6

through 2, if you’re playing a major pentatonic scale, your fourth
finger will always play the locating root for the major pentatonic,
your first finger will play the locating root for the minor pentatonic.
For example, on the sixth string root pentatonic at the 7th position,
your D major pentatonic root is played by the pinky and the B minor
pentatonic root is played by the index finger. The reason it has more
than one name is because you have to analyze the notes in any
scale or chord against a prevailing bass note. If D is our bass note,
we have 1 2 3 5 6, if B is the bass note those notes change
numbers, you get 1 b3 4 5 b7, so you get a different sound. The
beauty of this is that any time you have a progression that involves
a major chord and a minor 3 frets lower, you can stay in one
pentatonic scale.

Don’t try to learn too much too fast.

Get comfortable at linking two positions together where don’t have

to think anymore.

See the chord, the arpeggio and the pentatonic scale in each
position.

Spend plenty of time on each position. Go through every key, get

really comfortable at identifying the chord form with the pentatonic
so you can really see it and understand it in your mind’s eye.

Most people learn the pentatonic scale very early on in their career
as a guitar player. The problem with that is that you’re not really
starting on the ground, on the foundation. That’s why Brad is a big
advocate of spending time restricting yourself for several days,
several weeks, whatever it takes to just the roots, thirds and fifths.
You’ll be more melodic, you’ll have strong punctuation points or
periods at the ends of your phrases, you’ll sound better. Don’t get
caught up playing and not listening to what you’re doing.

Spend enough time in one area to know it thoroughly, then learn the
next position which links to it. Gradually work your way. It doesn’t
matter how long it takes you to get this, just get it thoroughly. Don’t
leave gaps in your information.

How to play through changes: you’re either on the chord or on or it’s

the chord that’s coming up. No matter how complex the chord
changes are, you have to think about the chord that’s coming up,
not just the one that you’re on. That keeps you ahead of the game.
One of the biggest challenges it seems is for guitar players is to
break out of the blues rock bag and the modal bag where they don’t
have chord changes, to be able to execute efficiently the scale
navigation on the neck and to understand what your strong and
weak tones are and to play in a seamless manner instead of just
riffing away over the chord changes.

The most common approach will be for people to move their hand
to accommodate the chord change. If you know licks in one form
you can move it around to other keys and play the same licks you
know in that form.

Soloing and coming up with rhythm guitar fills are all the same as
far as Brad is concerned.

Brad doesn’t like to be limited to having to move every time he has

to make a chord change. Pretty soon your fingers will do the
walking. You end up not having enough time to think of something
new and the next thing you know is you’re playing some boring
stuff.

One way to bust out of that rut is to force yourself to stay in the
same position and use different scale forms and chord forms to lay
the information out. (as an aside, one thing you can do is notice the
common tones between the scale forms).

In progressions you have patterns (and in all music you have

rhythmic patterns, melodic patterns, harmonic patterns). For
example, a lot of songs have two major chords a whole step apart,
and within any given position of the CAGED system the relative
placement of the chord forms will always be the same. So you’d
have the D form and the C form in D position, the C form and A form
in C position, etc. for two chords a whole step apart. So if you were
to spend a reasonable length of time working on a chord
progression involving two chords a whole step apart, you could
master this particular part of music and you’d have it, you wouldn’t
have to think about it, you’d already know it. No different than when
you say I’m going to play a blues, I know how to get through the I IV
and V chords.

Spend a reasonable length of time on each area until you’re

comfortable with it then go to the next area, practicing with a play-
along.

Brad can keep the lines going because he can automatically see
the next pentatonic scale, the next chord form, the arpeggio.
There’s a lot to be said for having your head ahead of your hands
and your eyes seeing the information. Study this. Use your ears,
and if you stay close to the arpeggios and apply good phrasing and
you can’t go wrong.

Make sure you spend plenty of time on each position and know
each one really solidly before you move on to the next.

There’s a lot of study available. You can spend a very long time,
weeks, months, a long time working on one progression to really
master these areas. But ideally you want to see the whole neck as
an integrated flow of notes and scales and arpeggios. Brad is
chopping it up into these very strict positions. If you learn two
positions that are adjacent, with time you can learn to blend them,
and ultimately, you’ll see this approach is nice even when you’re
playing in a linear sense. If you’re moving up and down in a linear
sense you can still see that you’re moving in and out of those block
positions. Playing in a linear sense is much more lyrical but you
can’t rely on patterns as much. Learn this because then it helps you
a lot no matter what chord progression you may encounter. Brad
started out as a position player.

Once you’ve mastered staying completely within one position,

practice linking two positions at a time, taking pieces from adjacent
positions for your licks.

Common tone principle: the diatonic triads are built using every
other note of the scale (intervals of thirds). Any two triads a third
apart will share two common tones: the I and the vi, the IV and the
ii, and the V and the iii (you can also see it as the I and its relative
minor, the IV and its relative minor, and the V and its relative minor).
Each of those pairs of chords shares the same pentatonic scales. In
the key of C: C maj & Am: CDEGA; F maj & Dm: FGACD; Gmaj &
Em: GABDE.

Once you have mastered using the triad and the pentatonic scale,
you can start adding in the remaining two scale tones (4 & 7 in
major, 2 & 6 in minor). You’ll need to think about what your parent
key is because that will determine the sound. If you’re playing a I IV
in the key of C, you want to avoid playing the 3-sus4 move on the F
chord because that will add a Bb note that modulates you to the key
of F.

3 levels: triads, pentatonic scales, modes (what you get when you
add the two extra notes)

Taking small fragments of big block chord voicings is a great way to

get fresh ideas for your comping and fills.

Go through the positions, spend some time on a progression,

preferably common ones that are diatonic, learn them and every
time you play a song, analyze the song and you’ll see those
common chord patterns reoccurring. If you have prepared yourself
well, you will automatically know how to handle a series of common
chord changes no matter what key they’re in because you’ve got all
these positions that are always steadfast. Learn this information
and weave between single notes and accompaniment and be a
complete guitarist.

Pt. 2 (starting with the 21st video marked “C Form Part 1”): Brad
shows some licks in each position, how to play over changes, and
how to move between the positions

The register that you play a passage in can “make or break” your
music. When you play with another chordal instrument, be aware of
what register they’re playing in and choose a contrasting part
accordingly.
Don’t look at things in terms of fingerings. Fingerings can change
according to what you play around it. Look in terms of fretboard
shapes instead.

Sliding fourths can be viewed as the “sides” of the pentatonic scale.

They have a high side (the notes you play with the 3rd & 4th
fingers) and a low side (the notes you play with the 1st & 2nd
fingers). To make those licks you pull notes from each side.

A common harmonic tool is the playing of different triads over the

same bass note. You can either move on the neck using the same
form to accommodate the new form or use different forms to allow
you to stay in the same position.

The more you understand about the guitar, the better player you will
be. That sounds pretty obvious, but most people don’t want to study
the instrument, they just want to play music. If you study how things
are laid out on the neck, it’s going to help you know where to find
those licks you want. There are some licks you can only get in
certain positions.

Take the same licks into different parts of the neck and see how to
organize them and what different techniques (such as bends, slides,
hammers) each position lends itself to.

One of the big keys to having success when learning to play

through changes, you have slow it way down so you can not only
see where you are but also see the one that’s coming up. Loop two
chords at a time. Extend the length of each time for each chord if
you need to. Don’t try to play too much. Start very simply and then
build off of that.

Brad’s goal is to teach us to teach ourselves.

As a musician you need to pre-hear things, such as what the root-2

move sounds like.
On minor chords, you can add the 9th to the minor arpeggios of the
vi and the ii chords but not the iii because that would modulate you
into a different key (ex. in the parent key of C, F is the b9 of Em)

You should get to the point where you can play over a track for
10-20 minutes and never repeat yourself.

You can play the same note in a lot of different places, but if you
organize information it can really expedite moving around the
fingerboard. Memorize where the exact duplications of notes are on
each string group between positions. Ex: 2nd inversion triad on
strings 3-2-1 of the C position = 2nd inversion triad on strings 4-3-2
of the A/G position = 2nd inversion triad on strings 5-4-3 in the D/E
position = 2nd inversion triad on strings 6-5-4 in the C position an
octave above. Rehearse those things so that you can find them
automatically without thinking. See your licks inside your chord
forms and pentatonics and using this duplication principle, you’ll be
able to play them in every position on the neck. Duplications are
generally found 5 frets above if going up the neck or 5 frets below if
going down the neck.

Plot out the CAGED/EDGAC forms in terms of scale notes.

Memorize where the exact duplications of notes between string

groups, such as the first inversion triad on strings 5–4-3 of the C
form and strings 6-5-4 of the C form or the root position triad on
strings 3-2-1 of the A form and on strings 4-3-2 of the E form or the
first inversion triad on strings 5-4-3 of the G form and strings 6-5-4
of the D form. It’ll always be between every other chord form. You
can also use this principle to duplicate licks.