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 [...]
Lesson 2: 12 Bar Variations – The Texas Shuffle
There are many variations of the 12 Bar Blues. These variations are found in the chords and rhythm. The previous lesson showed a standard 12 Bar Blues with a shuffle feel. A variation on that is the “Texas Shuffle”. This uses the same chord progression with a shuffle feel but a few more notes added.
The [...]
Lesson 1: The Blues In A
The guitar is a highly expressive and powerful instrument. It’s capability of endless tones is astounding. No matter what style of music you choose to play it’s all found within the 12 notes on the guitar. The fundamental elements such as scales, chords and especially rhythms are really what define a style. However, through my [...]
Finger Picking Pattern 2: Landslide by Fleetwood Mac
Our second finger picking lesson is another example of pattern picking. “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac uses a similar picking pattern to “Dust in the Wind”. However, the chord changes here require more movement.
For your convenience, the chord shapes and fingerings are as follows:
Click here if you’re not sure how to read the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Improvisation: Am7 FMaj9 Progression with MP3
This is a slow and moody groove that is wonderful to solo over. Start of by working with the A Minor Pentatonic scale over this progression. Try to play it in the 3 positions mentioned in the A Minor Pentatonic [...]
Scales: The D Major Scale Harmonized 3rd and 5th degrees
This lesson is almost identical to the A Major Scale Harmonized 3rd and 5th degree. I have added it in order to show how once one pattern is learned, it can often be used on a different set of strings.
These are [...]
