From playing with Santana in the early 1970’s, to Journey and other projects, Neal Schon’s lead playing is about melody and taste. In this guitar lesson I’m actually going to show you 5 licks. This is the entire intro solo to the song “City of the Angels” from the 1979 Journey album “Evolution”. I am going to break it down into the 5 separate guitar licks. The notes of this solo are mostly out of a C major pentatonic and C minor pentatonic. The guitar licks can be used in most major key rock/blues situations.
Neal Schon City of the Angels Solo – Full Solo Audio
Neal Schon Guitar Lick #1
Neal Schon City of the Angels Solo – Lick #1 Audio
For more information on how to read this, check out the lesson on Reading Internet Tablature. The red number is the note that you should use as your guide. In this case the red note is an C. If you wanted to play this lick in the key of D, just move everything up 2 frets so that the red numbers would be the note D.
This guitar lick comes out of a combination of the C major pentatonic and C minor pentatonic scales.
Below are the full C major pentatonic and C minor pentatonic scales in the same position that lick #1 is in.
Neal Schon Guitar Lick #2
Neal Schon City of the Angels Solo – Lick #2 Audio
Lick #2 also comes out the C major pentatonic scale above
Neal Schon Guitar Lick #3
Neal Schon City of the Angels Solo – Lick #3 Audio
Lick number #3 just plays straight up the first 6 notes of a C major scale. These 6 notes can be memorized as a scale fragment and used as addition notes for improvisation in this position.
Neal Schon Guitar Lick #4
Neal Schon City of the Angels Solo – Lick #4 Audio
One way you could look at Lick #4 is just the notes of a C major pentatonic scale with an added note.
Neal Schon Guitar Lick #5
Neal Schon City of the Angels Solo – Lick #5 Audio
Lick #5 also comes right out of the scale fingering above.
