guitar columns

In this first lesson on accompanying yourself with guitar we focus exclusively on using arpeggios to create interesting song arrangements.

There’s a very simple reason a lot of solos sound more like someone playing scales rather than solos and it all comes down to how you practice. Learn how to solo by learning how to practice soloing.

Some beginners give up on guitar after a short time. David explains why the physical shape of your first guitar may be why your first efforts at playing are more frustrating than they should be.

As the tutorial resources you have at your beck and call get more and more sophisticated, it gets harder to remember that learning guitar is all about playing guitar. That means if you want to be able to play your instrument, you have to go through all the “grunt work” – that means practicing. And for many players the biggest aspect they need to work on is not using their eyes.

If you know how to read notation, specifically the rhythm values of notation, you never have to worry about figuring out strumming patterns because everything is spelled out for you. In this lesson, we’ll use the main guitar parts from Jack Johnson’s song “Taylor” to demonstrate how easy strumming can be.

In our latest lesson in this series, we look at a basic rock progression and examine the choices we can make in terms of scales for soloing. Plus we get a look at the Mixolydian mode as well as discovering a new use for the Dorian.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, here’s a Celtic arrangement of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “All I Can Do Is Write About It” done in DADGAD tuning. A wonderful way to remember your home, whether home is in Alabama or Caledonia.

Before moving onward with modes, it’s important to grasp the concept of “target” notes as well as to understand that a target note doesn’t have to be a part of the chord in a chord progression. Here we’ll look at how single notes can used to create far more interesting solos than simply using “safe” notes.

Knowing a single major scale opens the world of modal soloing to you, if you know how to read the signs. We’ll take a look at how to recognize when to use the Dorian scale, and also take a moment or two to compare and contrast it with the minor pentatonic scale.

It only takes a single note to change the minor pentatonic scale into the “blues scale.” And what a world of difference that one note can make! As in the previous lessons in this series, we’ll provide you with MP3 sound files in order to help you create your own solos.

You never know who you’re going to meet in life. And, given the way things are these days, you also never know who you’re not going to meet yet still get to know and appreciate. Joining FODFest the past two years has hammered home, to me at least, the point that every life can make a difference in this world.

Guitarists nowadays think of rhythm in terms of “up” and “down,” the motions of strumming, instead of thinking of rhythm in much simpler terms – numbers and counting. In this, the first of a series of four articles, we begin to hone our strumming techniques so that any rhythmic pattern will be within our grasp.

Last time out we sampled the different flavors the major and minor pentatonic scales offered us as tools for soloing over blues progressions. While each had its owns merits, we can create an even more tasteful (not to mention useful) solo when we combine the major scale with the blue note elements of its own minor pentatonic. Come listen!

While it’s vital to use a chord progression to help you decide on a scale, knowing the style or feel of both a song and a scale is just as important. This lesson focuses on the minor pentatonic scale and why it is used so much for blues (and other genres) in major keys.

After spending our last lesson looking at all the notes in a scale, this time we’re going to just look at a few. One of the best things you can do to get going as a soloist is to minimize the number of notes you use in a solo. Focusing on one, two, three or four notes will help you on both rhythm and phrasing, which make a solo a lot more interesting than just stringing as many notes together as fast as you can.

Putting together solos is not easy for a lot of people, and the conventional teaching (“just use your scales”) doesn’t always make sense when you’re just starting out. In this, the first of a series of articles, we take a listen to the differences in tonal color between the major scale and the major pentatonic.

If you’ve read Part 1 of this tutorial, you’re probably amazed at how easy basic finger style guitar can be. Now, by simply changing one small thing that we learned last time out, even beginners will be able to find themselves playing a little Dust in the Wind…

Finger style guitar is easier than you think! In this lesson we’ll start with the very basics and get you going on some very cool (and very simple) finger picking patterns. Plus, we’ll toss in Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind as an incentive to help you practice more!

We’ll be spending a lot of 2008 looking at song arrangements, so it’s best to start off with a discussion on strumming patterns and the trap that you can get into by letting a strumming (or picking) pattern be your major concern.

Here’s another Easy Song for Beginners’ Lesson, using our continued study of walking bass lines to help us create an arrangement where the bass line also helps us move the song along by shadowing the melody. Once the basics are in place, you can make the rest of the arrangement as simple or as complicated as you’d like.