Three decades into a remarkably successful career, guitarist Phil Collen looks at each day as a new beginning. Best known for his work with rock band Def Leppard, Collen is also involved with a gritty blues-rock trio, Manraze, where he is joined by Paul Cook and Simon Laffy. Their latest EP, I Surrender, was released late last year. His newest project is a blues duo, Delta Deep, with vocalist Debbi Blackwell-Cook. They’re at work on an album. He is also writing his autobiography.

Let’s continue with a topic that I addressed in last month’s column: focusing on the formation of specific scalar patterns, or “shapes,” and how to connect them while traversing the fretboard. To me, this concept and approach offer a sensible way to practice these ideas/patterns in order to build up one’s chops while also increasing overall fretboard awareness and mastery of scales.

Although most fans of Ozzy Osbourne and the late Randy Rhoads have already seen Osbourne's After Hours TV appearance from the spring of 1981, you might want to check out these new "enhanced" versions of two clips.

This lick is influenced by Paul Gilbert and Richie Kotzen and incorporates wide fret-hand stretches, string skipping, tapping and legato phrasing. It starts out with a three-notes-per-string A minor pentatonic [A C D E G] flurry played on the A, G and high E strings. To avoid injury, be sure to warm up your fret hand before diving into this lick.