Stuck in a Rut?

OK, today’s post comes especially with inspiration in mind. Do you ever find yourself stuck in a rut? I mean, do you ever find that- although your technical ability is improving- everything you play and/or improvise is starting to sound the same? Well, you may have heard that the best way to get out of [...]

September 21, 2011 at 4:00 pm | Practicing and Practice Routine | No comments

Making More Mistakes?

Last week, we looked at 5 out of the shortlist of 15 main mistakes that guitar players make in their playing. Hopefully you’ve heeded the warnings in that post and are on your way to correcting those first 5 mistakes (if you do them at all…). So this week we’re continuing with common mistakes 6 [...]

September 20, 2011 at 11:00 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | 2 comments

Are You making these Mistakes?

As a teacher, there are certain mistakes that I see people make again and again in their guitar playing. Now, these guitar players aren’t idiots, or even particularly bad players; they might be just like you or me. The worst part is: these people don’t even realise what they’re doing wrong until I point it [...]

September 13, 2011 at 11:00 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | 1 comment

How to Solo (part 2)

The second video in this series is about spontaneity, and being able to keep the groove going with no “gaps”. You know what I’m talking about: when you’re taking so long to think about the next note that it’s now too late to play it… Using the above exercise should start to get you over [...]

August 25, 2011 at 11:00 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises, How to | No comments

Guitar Lessons: How to Solo

This post is about a lesson that was on my site a while ago, where I talked about how to improvise. No, I’m not talking about “what scale should I use over this?” or “what mode am I in?”! I’m talking about actual “improvisation”. Basically: How to make stuff up. How to Solo (part 1) [...]

August 18, 2011 at 3:00 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises, How to | 3 comments

Exercises: Warm up Stretch

This exercise is basically a more advance version of this one but we’re going to increase the stretch. The original exercise used these four shapes in sequence (either played up and down as individual notes, or as chords- it doesn’t matter): e———— B-8–8–5–5- G-7–6–6–7- D-6–7–7–6- A-5–5–8–8- E———— The exercise tabbed is to be played in [...]

August 1, 2011 at 7:21 pm | Exercises | No comments

10 Ways to Increase Guitar Speed (revisited)

A remake of an old video on guitar speed (from way back in 2009!). This video includes some updates on the previous video and I also go into a bit more depth on some of the points covered. I think that I’ve learnt a lot myself since way back in 2009 and I thought I’d [...]

July 5, 2011 at 11:17 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | No comments

How to Transcribe Rhythm

I had to wait a while to release this post because if you want to transcribe the rhythm of a piece, you first have to understand how time signatures work, and also have a good grasp of the different note durations. If you understand all of the above, then it’s time to read on… Counting [...]

June 30, 2011 at 2:00 pm | Developing Your Ears | No comments

Guitar Speed

I made this video because I was asked how fast I can actually play. I have given out lots of advice about how to play faster, but not really demonstrated these techniques in a video before. No, I’m not the fastest player in the world, and I’ve never tried to be. The idea behind this [...]

June 20, 2011 at 8:53 pm | Practicing and Practice Routine | No comments

How to Transcribe: Chords

So, here’s the next issue of the “how to transcribe” series (where I basically explain how you can get better at tabbing stuff out and figuring out songs…). We’ve already covered the lead sheet method and how to start figuring out the tune or melody. This week, we’re going to start working out the chords. [...]

June 16, 2011 at 3:42 pm | Developing Your Ears, How to | No comments

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