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Marty Friedman (far right) played guitar in Megadeth for nearly ten years

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Marty Friedman has never been a traditional guitar player. In Cacophony, Megadeth and on his recent solo projects, he combines rock licks with exotic sounds. In this video lesson, Marty shows you how you can breathe some life into your guitar playing and break out of a rut.

Marty is playing in D major here, but he throws in notes from outside the scale. These ‘outside’ notes are really just filling in the gaps between the scale notes. By doing this, you’ve got a bunch of new sounds to choose from.

The secret to making this sound good is to make sure that you start and finish your licks on strong scale tones. “You can’t lose focus of what key you’re in,” says Marty. He often ends licks with an arpeggio or a chord so it’s obvious where you’re going. If you hold an outside note on a strong beat (like beat 1), you’ll sound like you’re lost.

Click here for full-sized tab, or check out our tab guide (.pdf file) for help with the notation.

For more information, check out the official Marty Friedman website.