From the category archives:

Guitar Lessons

Don’t be a Guitar Center doodle-wanker! A short tasty phrase is worth 10,000 notes.Did you ever think maybe you loved soloing too much? Sure it’s great to be able to whip out some impressive lead chops, but if this comes at the expense of the rest of your playing, you might want to reevaluate your practice regimen. [click to continue…]

{ 0 comments }

Most people begin taking guitar lessons with two expectations: that they want to learn to play guitar, and that they’ll never really be that great at it. I suspect people approach most things in their life like this; after all, how can we be experts at everything? I guess that’s the definition of a hobby: something that we’re interested in but that we except we will never excel at. [click to continue…]

{ 3 comments }

Recently my wife turned me on to an author: Malcolm Gladwell. All his books are fascinating, but I think “Outliers” is his best work, at least as far as offering up a new and original philosophy. He presents three main ideas: [click to continue…]

{ 1 comment }

It seems like whenever people decide to get more serious about their guitar playing “The Modes” inevitably come up. There are countless books and videos on the subject and yet I rarely have students come to me really understanding them, either how to accurately define them or recognize them. Understanding the Modes from a theoretical point of view is essential to anyone who wants to use them in their playing, but that will be covered somewhere else. What I want to share here is how I teach my students to hear and recognize the modes. [click to continue…]

{ 1 comment }