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Guitar Drums and Bass performance of ‘Indecisive’ – Rockschool Grade 3 Piece

Many of my students have learned this piece and passed their exams. It’s an enjoyable piece to play with lots of energy and it’s deceptively hard to perform the whole song without mistakes.

The videos were recorded using a phone camera and a Zoom HD1 microphone.

I think these performances would get a fairly good mark out of 20 in an exam. Maybe 19 out of 20 each. I think the guitar performance was probably the strongest out of the 3, as there were small misakes in the others. But overall, I hope this is a good demo of the song and a good chance for students to see how the songs are played by each instrument, and give examples of the type of solos you could play in the song.

Tiberius Guitar Solo Unofficial Example – Grade 5 Rockschool

This grade 5 guitar solo is a transcript of a constructed solo used by a student for their grade 5 Rockschool exam. You are free to use this as a guide or for ideas for what to do at grade 5, but I recommend changing parts or making up your own too.

In the first 3 bars, we have a quick sextuplet legato pattern. You pick the first note and pull off the second and third notes, and then repeat this pattern throughout.

For the 2/4 bar there is a lead part that mimicks the backing guitar part.

For the next 3 bars, we bend the 3rd string using 2 fingers (second and third) to bend up, and keep the first finger in position on the second string without bending it. Play both strings together like a chord and bend up the 3rd string.

The final bar is a quick rundown using mostly alternate picking in 16th notes. There is a quick hamme on and pull off on the (12h13p12) using your first and second finger and for this you only pick the first note.

End on a slide down to knowhere, which means lift off and mute the slide before you get to fret 1.

Next there’s a pretty fast riff to get stuck into so be prepared to go straight into that.

PDF Download – Tiberius Guitar Solo Unofficial Example – Grade 5 Rockschool

Guitar Pro 7 Download – Tiberius Guitar Solo Unofficial Example – Grade 5 Rockschool

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(PREMIUM) – Grade 3-4 Ebook – Scales, Arpeggios, Barre Chords and Guitar Solo Exercises

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The Buy Now button will take you to the product page. There you can download a free 9 page preview by clicking the ‘Preview’ link at the top right of the cover image.

3. Contents
4. Introduction
5. Scales & Arpeggios: Grade 3 – Fretboard Shapes
6. Grade 3 Scales in G
7. Grade 3 Scales in A
8. Grade 3 Scales in B
9-10. B minor pentatonic scale exercises (8th notes)
11 . Grade 3 Arpeggios in A, B and G (major & minor)
12-13. Arpeggio Chord Progressions
14. Notes on the Fretboard for Grade 3+
15. Grade 3 barre chord shapes
16. Part 1 – grade 3 barre chord progression exercises
17. Part 2 – grade 3 barre chord progression exercises
18. 12 bar blues solo in G
19. Guitar Solo in Gm
20. 12 bar blues solo in A
21. Fallout Guitar Solo in Em
22-23. Grade 3 Chords, Scales and Arpeggios Exercises
24. Grade 4 barre chord shapes
25. Part 1 – grade 4 barre chord progression exercises
26. Part 2 – grade 4 barre chord progression exercises
27-29. B minor pentatonic scale exercises (8ths, triplets and 16th notes)
30-32. Grade 4 Chords, Scales and Arpeggios Exercises
33. Songwriting Cheat Sheet

Introduction

Guitar teachers can print the book or single sheets for their students.
Guitarists can teach themselves following on from a strong basic foundation in reading and playing
Guitarists that want to build up a foundation in the core aspects of Grade 3-4.

About the book

This Grade 3-4 ebook is a compilation of almost 9 years of preparation work teaching guitar. I have included guitar lesson sheets that I have prepared and revised many times over the 9 years to be the best they can be for use with my lessons.

To create the book I selected only the best sheets from my selection of many more that I created for teaching with. I printed them all out and arranged them into a coherent order. Finally, I created and modified a few more just to make the book run smoothly.

I have included only the sheets, rather than add lots of teaching text you might normally find in tuition books. This is partly to limit the amount of pages for those printing, and also to give teachers using the books freedom to put their own take on the lesson sheets. Personally when I get a tuition book for myself, I tend to go straight to the exercises. This will probably make it harder for self taught players, so to anyone getting stuck reading the book I would recommend giving it a go and if you get stuck, research how to read the parts you struggle with. There are plenty of youtube videos out there and help articles that you will find to help. Sometimes youtube videos lack sheet music and written parts, so you should be able to use this book alongside these popular methods of learning, if you are not learning with a teacher.

Guitar teachers can use this ebook as a guide for their own teaching. These are the core parts of grade 3-4 but it does not nearly cover every aspect of these levels, so you can dip in and out of this book with your teaching. Let the book provide a fundamental knowledge to the student and loosely give structure and a guide to your teaching and allow yourself to go off on tangents as you and the students move through the book. The key thing here is to tailor your teaching to the students, because they’re all different and will require different paths to explore their own style and learning experience.

Each topic in the book is briefly covered. There is much more depth you could go into, and this is encouraged. So far, I have already released another ebook that works more on rhythms with barre chords in chord progressions at grade 3-4 level called 10 Group Chord Exercise Sheets – Grades 1-4.

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Part 1 – Grade 3 Barre Chord Progression Exercises

Each one of the barre chord exercises involve playing all 4 of the main grade 3 moveable barre chord shapes, found in both Rockschool and RGT grade 3.

Use these 4 major and minor barre chord shapes, and apply them to the positions of the root notes on this sheet.

Objectives: To practice all 4 main major and minor barre chord shapes in each exercise. To use the sheet as an opportunity to improvise various strumming rhythms during the exercises.

Here are the chord progressions included in the download:

G Am Bm C
D Em Bm A
Bm F#m G D
Db Gb Fm Ebm
F#m A D Bm

Related: Both Part 1 and Part 2 of this exercise are featured in the Premium ebook Grade 3-4 Ebook – Scales, Arpeggios, Barre Chords and Guitar Solo Exercises

12 Minor Pentatonic Scale Exercises – Featured on the Guitar Pro Blog

This lesson has been published on the Guitar Pro Blog, so for the full article, click here.

The scale exercises are written for anyone that has learned (or is learning) the 2 octave minor pentatonic scale shape, and are ideal for anyone studying for grade 3 or grade 4 guitar. Those 12 concrete examples are aimed to widen your soloing chops and skills.

To read more and download the guitar pro file, use the following link:

http://blog.guitar-pro.com/2015/04/12-minor-pentatonic-scale-exercises/

Grade 3 Arpeggios in A, B and G (Major + Minor Shapes) – 2 octaves – starting on the E string

This sheet includes:

G major Arpeggio – 2 Octaves
G minor Arpeggio – 2 Octaves
A major Arpeggio – 2 Octaves
A minor Arpeggio – 2 Octaves
B major Arpeggio – 2 Octaves
B minor Arpeggio – 2 Octaves

This sheet has been created for guitarists studying Rockschool Grade 3 guitar (base on the 2012-18 syllabus). It is recommended that you follow the picking as notated. All three keys need to be prepared for, so all three are included in the download. The root notes are located on fret 3, 5 and 7 of the E string.

These arpeggios are also in the Grade 3 RGT syllabus, but you’ll need to be able to play them in any position on the E string. Once you play through all of these though, you’ll soon get used to the 2 shapes.

12 bar blues solo in A – grade 3

This is a nice challenging guitar solo practice exercise for grade 3 level, which could be used in a guitar lesson, or for anyone learning on their own.

There are plenty of techniques, such as bends, legato (hammer ons and pull offs), vibrato, and other things to watch out for like staccato markings. The scale used is A blues.

This guitar solo was prepared as a practice exercise for learning to blues solo in the key of A. After a few exercises like this, students can then start to reuse the creative concepts and make their own improvisations and guitar solos.

As many blues songs are in the key of A, this could also help people more in general, or also provide a good practice exercise to anyone learning the blues. This guitar solo could be played with or without shuffle, and there are also suggested chords in the sheet music for an accompaniment.

A minor Chord Progressions Exercises – Grade 3

I wrote these chord progressions to help students with their Rockschool Improvisation (based on the 2012-2018 syllabus) practicing. I would also highly recommend getting their companion guides, which have official practice exercsies. My exercises are just as an add on to these practice examples, so you can get plenty of practice in (they are not endorsed by rockschool in any way).

You are free to play the chords as open chords or as barre chords – whatever you want. Barre chords would be grade 3-4 level, and open chords would be grade 1-2 level. For anyone not doing an exam, what you do need to do is improvise your own rhythms to make things interesting and to get the most out of the sheet. If there is 1 chord per bar, it will need to last for 4 beats, and if there are 2 chords per bar, you need to play those for 2 beats each.

For the actual rockschool exam though, you only need to follow the same rhythm for each Improvisation & Interpretation exercise, which can be found in the example in the grade book. In RGT, you would be required to develop your own rhythms.

You could extend these exercises into playing them in different styles, tempos, and time signatures (although all the Rockschool ones are in 4/4).

Whilst these chord progressions exercises were written for guitar, you could definitely use these for ukulele chord practice.

G major Chord Progressions Exercises – Grade 3

You could extend these exercises into playing them in different styles, tempos, and time signatures (although all the Rockschool ones are in 4/4).

Whilst these chord progressions exercises were written for guitar, you could definitely use these for ukulele chord practice.

6 Guitar Shredding Exercises – Fast Scale Runs and Soloing Exercises in G minor and F# minor – Lead Sheet – Rockschool

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About the Difficulty Levels

These are written for grade 8 level, but it wouldn’t hurt a grade 5-7 player to try them at the slower speeds. The PDF file in the key of F# minor is the one that fits with the song ‘Lead Sheet’ from the Grade 8 guitar 2012-18 Rockschool syllabus.

Guitar Tab and creative concepts for preparing the faster parts of the guitar solo for the 2012-18 Rockschool Grade 8 piece “Lead Sheet”

These exercises came about from preparing for the guitar solo in the 2012-2018 Rockschool Grade 8 piece “Lead Sheet”. They are not endorsed by Rockschool in any way, but they are designed to help players with ideas of the types of things they could do for this solo – which is entirely from my perspective, as a guitar teacher with 5 years teaching experience.

These 5 exercises are meant to build up your speed for shred style rock solos, which would also work with metal, as the Lead Sheet song is based on a lot of ‘Nu-Metal’ artists, as cited in the book.

You will need to remember that this is a series of 2 bar exercises, and for the “Lead Sheet” song, you will need to prepare an 8 bar solo. Please do not copy these exercises verbatim and stick them together for the exam, but you could draw inspiration from the ideas and make them your own. Remember to build an interesting guitar solo (one that will score the most marks), it needs to ‘tell a story’ rather than ‘filling the air with a thousand notes’, but it does need to show off a competant level of speed and techniques at this level. You need to be musical, and like the example on Track 5 of the CD, the guitarist makes it musical. It has plenty of the fast sextuplet shredding style, but it also has some slower 16th note groovy soloing, which sounds a little funky too. As a whole, the solo seems to be modeled on Tom Morello’s style (Rage Against The Machine), so for more ideas along those lines, go check their music out – they have plenty of guitar solos in their back catalogue.