Exploring 7/8
This piece is not meant to be a theory lesson in meter and time signatures. Rather, it is meant to help you open up some new doors and hopefully get your creative juices flowing!
Most of us have grown up listening to music characterized by the familiar time signatures of 4/4 or 3/4. 4/4 is the [...]
Victor Wooten: Amazing Grace Bass Solo
Victor Wooten is arguably one of the most skilled bass players on the planet. His musical virtuosity and remarkable technique has amazed and inspired countless musicians. Three-time winner of Bass Player magazine’s ‘Bass Player of the Year’ award, Victor Wooten was the first person to win the award more than once. I first became aware [...]
Pat Metheny: Letter From Home
If you are a guitar player and you are not familiar with Pat Metheny, then you are missing out on a truly remarkable player and uniquely gifted musician. Always melodic, always interesting, I hear new things every time I listen to him play. It is my opinion that a century from now, history will look [...]
A personal tribute to Carlos Santana
Song For Carlos
I wrote this song in 1996 as a personal tribute to a guitar player who over the years has had an influence on me. That guitar player of course is Carlos Santana.
I hope he gets to hear it one day! The song is track 2 on my CD, Old Dog New Tricks which [...]
Little Kids Rock
Between 2000 and 2003, twice a year my job would take me to Anaheim and Nashville to attend the NAMM shows. The NAMM Show is one of the largest music product trade shows in the world. For a musician, it’s like being a kid in the largest candy store you can possibly imagine. I saw [...]
Exercise and trust your ears!
Years ago, I jammed with an incredible pianist. Classically trained, he could play anything you put in front of him. Not only was he a great sight-reader, he would also put a lot of feeling into everything he played. His only problem was that without sheet music, he was lost. If we played a 12 [...]
A Promenade With Your Muse
Have you ever had a dry spell? You know, where you can’t get motivated or inspired to play your instrument? If you’re like me, you might even put a few of your guitars out on stands and leave them where you will always see them hoping that the sight of them will encourage you to [...]
Exercises: Mirrors
This exercise is aimed at improving your technique, building strength in your hands and improving your double picking across strings. It may also help you to develop some interesting and original chops that you [...]
Scales: Exercises 123 234 345
This exercise is aimed at improving your technique and offering you extended scale phrasings. The basic idea in this exercise is to play the first 3 notes in the scale, then, starting at the second note in [...]
Improvisation Blues in A (Swing Feel)
This is standard blues progression with a jazzy feel to it that is great to solo over. Work with the A Minor Pentatonic scale over this progression. Try to play it in all 5 [...]
