Category: Tricks & Techniques
Increasing Your Speed and Nailing Hard Licks
“Why does it feel like you go over a lick or part of a solo, start slow, work on it over and over again and … put in a lot of time just for that one part … and still can’t nail it? How long does it take to get a lick or solo down and […]
Clean Up Your Lead Guitar Playing
‘When going up and down a scale, is it OK if your little finger touches strings below the one that you are fretting?’ This is a great and very common question – and one that’s especially critical for lead guitar playing – so to answer it we put together the following: ‘A big part of playing […]
Hey There Delilah. The Plain White T’s
Hey There Delilah. This is a tremendously popular song to learn, so we decided to include it in this edition as part of an instruction of how to learn a complete song, using basic finger picking. Something we have not ventured into before. And to make it really interesting, we have recorded a backing track […]
Easy Improvisation & Soloing: The Eminor Pentatonic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6h10Ry31Y8 Easy Improvisation Let’s be honest, most of you must have had some dream about being on stage and improvising a guitar solo at the lead singer’s request and launching into an amazing medley of notes, melodies, riffs and tricks that will have the audience drooling for more; only to think, “I’ll never be able […]
Learn Songs on Guitar Quickly (and Well)
As a guitarist who plays with more one than one band, also playing with a variety of artists and constantly learning ‘new’ material, one of the subjects that comes up time and time again is learning new songs. Here is the process that I use to learn songs on guitar. This has served me well […]
The Best Way to Learn Guitar
There is an amazing amount of guitar information everywhere these days, so what I want to talk about is the best way to learn guitar from whatever source you choose, because there are universal principles for learning that are true for everyone. The most important thing is to understand how the brain learns things, so […]
Major Blues Scale
Playing in major is challenging to many guitarists, the major blues scale is no exception. I think one reason to why many guitar-players prefer the minor scale is simply that it is the first scale you learn. Also, a lot of rock and pop songs are based on minor blues, I don’t think there are many […]
Strumming Songs
Strumming Songs: Mr. Jones by The Counting Crows, The Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer and More Than A Feeling by Boston have 3 distinctive must know strumming patterns; each one completely different and deliberately picked to help you improve your muscle memory and strumming ability. As with many of our sessions in this month’s issue, we will be stringing them all together, […]
Guitar Picking Exercises
Here are some guitar picking exercises, and warm up routines, that are geared towards the intermediate hard rocking metal guitarist, that wants to become a shredder. This lesson plan will increase your music theory and dexterity on the guitar, allowing you to be creative and add to the lesson plan. Performance notes: Doing these warm ups […]
What Is Legato?
Smooth Operator – The Legato Technique Legato is a term that you will hear a lot once you start getting into lead guitar playing, but what exactly does it mean? The literal meaning of legato is ‘tied together’ but in musical terms it means that you should play the notes in a smooth manner, not […]
Fingerstyle: Caledonia
This month I got in touch with one of the biggest names in Scottish folk music, Dougie Maclean, OBE. Below is my arrangement of one of Dougie’s best-known pieces, Caledonia. Many different artists have done their own take of Caledonia, but I urge anyone not familiar with Dougie to check out the original. As well […]
Guitar Chord of the Month: E7#9
I can’t believe we are already 4 issues to the good, and, therefore, by definition, discussing our 4th chord of the month. It was only a matter of time before we added the “Jimi” chord, E7#9 into the mix. Before we go on to look at why this is commonly a Hendrix specialty, let’s look […]
Dominant Chord Tricks
Dominant Chord Tricks: How to Make Chords Interesting. A chord symbol is the starting point, not the final destination for your rhythm playing. A few tricks can make your performance much more fun and interesting.! Let’s focus on dominant chords. They’re frequently found in blues, jazz and funk pieces. They are usually presented with […]
Become A Confident Live Performer
Both Buddhism and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) use techniques to achieve desired states of consciousness. As musicians, we can greatly benefit from using techniques from both Buddhism and NLP to overcome any nervousness or anxiety associated with live performance. I myself have had to use many of the techniques to overcome issues that prevented me […]