This post is a tribute to freedom, democracy, peace, and sanity — that last item being something many people on Earth should strive to learn more about.

I’ve posted the music and tab for the “Star Spangled Banner” below.

There’s a guitar lesson in this simple piece, read on.

Click the image to enlarge and/or print:

You Can Learn A Lot From the “Star Spangled Banner”

This song, in this key (C major, and played at the open position) follows very closely along the arpeggio for your basic open-stringed C chord, with a few additional scale tones thrown in (and even one non-scale tone, F#). In fact, in the opening notes of the song, if you simply hold down the complete C chord, your version of this song will sound better, because you’ll let those first few notes work and ring together with the beautiful harmony of that C chord.

Here is a diagram of the complete C arpeggio, compare the notes in the song to this diagram: 

Now compare that to this diagram of the C Major Scale played right there over the top of that C major arpeggio and you’ll see where most of the rest of the notes of the “Star Spangled Banner” (with the exception of that F#) come from:

Now Try This

Once you become comfortable with the fact that this song is simply following a specific chord shape/arpeggio, and sticking mostly with the notes from the corresponding scale pattern, you’ll be on your way to demystifying the fretboard.

All melodies (or guitar solos) simply follow an arpeggio or scale pattern.

Do you see why it’s so important to learn your scales, and after you’ve got those mastered, your arpeggios?

Try moving this song up the fretboard — yes, into a different key — by simply moving your scale and arpeggio up the fretboard.

For example, try playing the “Star Spangled Banner” placing the pattern at the 4th fret, with the pattern shown below. Hopefully you can see that it’s the same scale pattern, just moved up the neck a few frets (the same arpeggio is among these notes too!).

Hint: The first note of the melody is on the 4th fret, third string . Play that note using your first finger. That note is followed by the 6th fret, fourth string (third finger); and 7th fret, fifth string (fourth finger). You should be able to figure out the rest…

You Take It From Here

You can find other melodies in these patterns too, if you put your mind to it. Try figuring out simple kids’ melodies, or folk tunes, or early Beatles tunes, or whatever you can think of. They aren’t all going to fit this scale/arpeggio combo, but you’ll find plenty that do.

You need to be able to understand a scale pattern in this manner — to be able to have the pattern memorized and be able to pick out simple melodies by ear — before you’ll ever excel at playing lead guitar. No one can do that work for you, it’s up to you — but hey, that’s the fun of the guitar.

Enjoy the discovery process and gain motivation from your successes, and determination from your failures. Understand that we all fail at this instrument at least a little every day, but the successful musicians just become more determined by those failures.

You Can Do This!

At the end of my video sample titled “Following The Chords,” I played some riffs over something other than a I-IV-V chord progression. Instead, I showed how this same simple technique of moving your riffs right along with your barre chords can work with almost any chord progression.

To watch the video, click HERE, and scroll down to play video 2.

In this case I played over an Am-G-F chord progression, a very common set of chord changes (not just used in “Stairway To Heaven,” as I mention in the video, but in many, many songs).

Example 83, below, shows the tab and sheet music for the riffs I played over those chords.

This Isn’t The Only Way To Follow The Chords

While the above exercise works nicely in a lot of musical situations (and it’s a lot of fun) it is not the only way to follow the chords — it’s not even the best way to do so. This exercise, and those shown in my last two blog entries, will start to sound pretty tired if you use them too often.

Use them once in awhile, alternating with other techniques of following the chords, such as using the appropriate arpeggio-based riffs over each chord in the progression, or simply staying in one area of the fretboard, but focusing on, or highlighting, or emphasizing the root note or other chord tones of each chord.

If you’re saying, “Huh?????” right about now, well, I explain those concepts in great detail within my Logical Lead Guitar course, and I demonstrate them repeatedly on the DVDs and in the tablature, sheet music, diagrams, and the nearly 600 pages of text you get with the course.

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I can’t stress enough how helpful it is to use this simple technique of following the chords not only in your playing, but in your practicing as well. And like I said before, it’s not just a good idea, it’s a lot of fun too. I do it all the time.

Find a riff you like — any riff — and slide it up and down the guitar fretboard to play it over the I, IV, and V chords. For that matter, you could play it over the ii, iii, and vi chords too — I’m not gonna discriminate!

Either way, it’s an excellent way to accomplish a bunch of guitar goals at once:

1) It provides excellent ear-training.

2) It’s a great workout for your fret-hand fingers.

3) It’s a great workout for your pick-hand technique.

4) Of course it’s a great way to continue to better synchronize your fret- and pick-hand motions.

5) It drills the positioning of the I-IV-V patterns into your subconscious, making all future soloing easier and more fun! Being able to find and competently solo over the I-IV and V chords in various keys is an essential skill, especially for anyone whose interests lie toward classic or blues-based rock (or blues and country, too).

In this installment of this series of lessons, I’ve got the tab and sheet music for Example 82 in the Following The Chords video. Click Here to get to my sample videos, scroll down to video 2, and click the arrow in the middle of the video image to watch (video 1 includes a completely different lesson, described in more detail here). Make sure you have your speakers on.

Ex. 82 “Following The Chords.” (click image to enlarge):

What To Do Next

This example — an excerpt from my four-hour DVD-based Logical Lead Guitar course — shows you a very basic, Chuck Berry-inspired riff (or at least I like to refer to it as such, though it’s been used by just about every guitar player ever since…).

Try this exact riff as shown, then try coming up with your own variations on it. Remember, this riff comes straight out of the main pentatonic scale pattern.

Wanna Learn This Stuff Inside and Out?

Well, that’s what my course teaches. Get Your Own Copy of Logical Lead Guitar Today!