World-renowned guitar player and blues rock artist Kris Barras has teamed up with AMSonline and musicmasterclass.com to offer a 10 part free lesson series for all the guitarists out there that now find themselves with more time to freshen up their skills.

Part 1

Kris takes take you through the pentatonic scale shapes most commonly used in this style, but makes a point of trying to help get you out of the tried and tested shapes to introduce new licks and vocabulary that will open up your playing to help you find your own voice.

High quality guitar TABs accompany the lessons and can be downloaded from each lesson post.

We will be releasing these videos exclusively every Wednesday, so stay tuned!

Part 2

Kris will show you how to fluently move through the shapes of the minor pentatonic scale that were covered last week. There’s a cool exercise on learning to play on just one string using the same harmonic framework and some new lick ideas that combine pentatonic shapes, and also introduce syncopation for the pick up of a lick.

High quality guitar TABs accompany this lesson, downloadable on this page.

Part 3

This week it’s onto the blues. Kris will guide you through knowing which chord you are playing over in a typical 12 bar blues.  You will learn about what chord numbers mean, and how they relate to a 12 bar sequence.

Then there’s a 12 bar study solo, making use of chord tones from the chords used in the backing track, in addition to the  minor pentatonic and blues scales studied in parts 1 & 2.

High quality guitar TABs and backing track MP3 accompany this lesson, downloadable on this page .

Part 4

So far the scale we’ve been using is a minor pentatonic scale, this week it’s onto more chordal awareness using dominant 7th chords and the mixolydian blues scale.

Kris helps to introduce the new concepts using the minor pentatonic framework taught in the first 3 sessions.

The mixolydian blues scale introduces a sweet major tonality to the new licks that are studied this week whilst keeping things well grounded in the blues.

High quality guitar TABs and backing track MP3 accompany this lesson, downloadable on this page .

Part 5

This week it’s straight into licks.

Kris will guide you through licks that incorporate the mixolydian blues scale studied last week, but this time we’re in different positions on the fretboard. The focus this week is targeting particular chord tones from the chords of a dominant blues progression.

High quality guitar TABs accompany this lesson, downloadable on this page .

Download the PDF from this lesson here:

Part 6

This week we’re into arpeggios.

Kris will guide you through the arpeggios that relate to each of the chords found within a dominant blues progression and teaches licks that use arpeggios.

This lesson is focusing on helping soloists find notes that are within the chords of a blues using an example solo as the basis.

We really hope you are enjoying this free lesson series! Let us know by commenting in our socials.

High quality guitar TABs and a backing track accompany this lesson, downloadable on this page .

Download the PDF from this lesson here:

Download the backing track from this lesson here:

Part 7

This week our arpeggios are developed into a cool example solo.

Kris play the solo first, along with the backing track that you can download on this page. After a full 12 bar demonstration it’s a note for note walk-through of the solo.

We really hope you are enjoying this free lesson series! Let us know by commenting in our socials.

High quality guitar TABs accompany this lesson, and the backing track, downloadable on this page .

Part 8

This week we’re mixing it up by changing to a minor blues.

This time chords I and IV are both minor, with the turn around using a major 7 chord for chord vi and a dominant 7 chord for the V chord.

Kris has written an example solo to help you change up to the new tonality which incorporates the natural minor, or Aeolian mode, and also some pentatonic minor licks that now change dependant on which chord we are on in addition to chord tones from the progression.

Kris will walk you through the solo bit by bit and high quality PDF transcriptions and backing track accompany this lesson.

We really hope you are enjoying this free lesson series! Let us know by commenting in our socials.

Part 9

This week we’re adding some arpeggios to our minor blues.

Kris has written out the arpeggios that come from the chords covered in last week’s lesson, and runs through them first note by note, the TAB is downloadable on this page.

Kris has written another example solo over the same backing track as last week, this time though it’s incorporating the arpeggios that have just been demonstrated.

Kris will walk you through the solo bit by bit and high quality PDF transcriptions and backing track accompany this lesson.

We really hope you are enjoying this free lesson series! Let us know by commenting in our socials.

Part 10

This week we’re adding some speed!

This final lesson is all about how blues players and blues rock players incorporate speed to add some variation to their soloing.

Kris guides you through some example licks, including repetition of a phrase using both double stops and scale ideas from major and minor pentatonic scales.

Next it’s onto sequencing, Kris uses ascending and descending sequences of pentatonic scales to create rising sequences that build in intensity.

Next it’s chromatic runs and how they can inject some creative injections of speed and fluency into your soling, and finally incorporating chromatic runs to link dominant 7 arpeggios.

TAB PDFs are available to download from this page.

We really hope you have enjoyed this free lesson series! Let us know by commenting in our socials.