GUITAR
Juan Coronado has won several awards in Canada and the U.S. and appeared on Guitar Player magazine’s “Top Ten Guitar Heroes” list
twice. His new album is being released on video first and many songs are already available to stream. His albums Renewal and Ultrasonico
are available on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, CD Baby, and his websites: www.juancoronado.com and www.ultrasonicostudios.com.
By Juan Coronado
Re-Shaping a Common
Sonic Element
Part 2
Ex. 4
Picking up where we left off in part one, we’re now mov-
ing on to the major scale. I’m going to show you a very
easy concept. Anything that happens on the low E and A
strings can be played exactly the same way on the D and
G strings and on the B and high E strings when you move
your lick in OCTAVES. Ex. 4 is a basic example in G major.
Playing that run fast makes it sound quite exciting and far
from what it really is, which is just a group of six notes on
three different octaves.
How about we try a major scale sweep/run by only using
the I, II, III, and V notes of the major scale with a little sweep
picking like in Ex. 5.
Ex. 5
Since I mentioned anything should work with this octave
“trick,” let’s try the G minor run in Ex. 6 using the I, II, III, and
V notes of the scale.
Ex. 6
You can shake things up by changing the patterns you are
used to playing while still using the scales you are familiar
with. Ex. 7 gives a G major scale an interesting vibe by
playing three notes per string using economy picking but
changing the order of the notes.
Ex. 7
Ex. 8 is another super cool trick where you can play the
same notes while skipping strings. Note that the picking
pattern should try to accommodate where the next note
will be found and that the bottom two strings (B and high
E) have a different pattern than the previous exercise:
Ex. 8
Visit Juan’s YouTube channel at
YouTube.com/JuanCoronado
to watch the video lesson that
accompanies this column!
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 25