Zakk Wylde Guitar Lick in the A Minor Pentatonic Scale

Video Transcript

"Alright here's a really cool lick in the key of A Minor. I'm going to use the A Minor pentatonic scale. It's one of my favorite licks to play because it is in the style of Zakk Wylde from Ozzie Osbourne's band. I'm going to play for you four times and note the alternate picking that I use so let's see what it sounds like, three, four. O'kay let's take a closer look at this lick. It's really simple. It's got four notes from the A Minor pentatonic scale starting on the eighth fret of the high E string which is a C. Then you've got your A here on the fifth fret of the high E string and then you've got two notes on the B string, a G and an E. Now I like to play things pretty aggressively so I picked all four of the notes with a straight alternate picking motion meaning up, down, up, down, the whole way but you might want to try pulling off each note on each string to get a smoother sound. I guess it depends on the kind of music that you're playing this lick with so if you do it ultimately slowly it will sound like this, three, four or if you pick it it will sound like this, three, four. Either way it will sound great and then at the very end when I hit the final A note I like to give it a little bit of vibrato which means shaking the string back and forth to give it a singing quality, not too much, not too fast but nice and smooth. Now let me play it twice slowly with our backing track so you can hear it, three, four."