Category: Lessons
-
Using Minor Pentatonic Scales for Dominant Chords in Blues
It’s another week of “classic” lessons as I wrap up my online summer classes. This is a favorite lesson of mine because it is one of the simplest ways for me to get students to sound better quickly with their pentatonic scales when they play blues or even over a static dominant chord such as…
-
Harmonized Lines for Blues Guitar
I am in gig and school meltdown this week so I decided that instead of rushing through a new lesson I would bring back a classic for you. This is one of the videos that I made for the Truefire.com “Next Top Guitar Instructor” contest a few years ago, and in the lesson, I am…
-
Playing in the Pocket – Static Lick Ideas
This lesson is about my favorite kind of repeating licks. I realized that I have a few good examples of this in my own recorded repertoire so I used bits from the last rock album that I did with the band Felt back in 2002. Apologies in advance for the editing on this one. My…
-
Playing in the Pocket with Chuck Berry and T-Bone Walker
This week we are continuing to work on playing single note ideas and solo bits in time by working with a few classic blues and rock and roll licks that we all play to death but don’t always play in time. Click here for the PDF: Playing in the Pocket with Chuck Berry and T-Bone Walker…
-
Playing in the Pocket with Yngwie!
This is the first in a series of lessons where we work on playing single note lines in time. One of the most common issues that I run into with students who have played for a while before coming to me is that they generally don’t have a concrete concept of how time in music…
-
Putting Your Lines in the Pocket.
Another of my Truefire.com “TNTGI” contest lessons but I think that it will be useful as a primer for the upcoming lessons that I am producing new for the site next month. Because of the origin of the video there is a lot of talking in the beginning but I think it’s all worth checking…
-
Building Better Blues Lines
This is another of the lessons that I did for the Truefire.com “Next Top Guitar Instructor” contest in 2014. The PDF linked below has a transcription of the sample solo and the backing track I play over is in the media player right below. Click here for the Building Better Blues Lines PDF. Box shuffle backing…
-
The UnCAGED Fretboard
This lesson is one of a series I made for the Truefire.com “Next Top Guitar Instructor 2014” and I still use it to this day with my students as a primer or introductory lesson before we actually start discussing fretboard layout. The “CAGED System” is a useful tool for students but it is only a…