Guitar Lessons

Focus On: Acoustic Rhythm Guitar Playbook

Most acoustic guitar players, including working pros and even accomplished singer-songwriters, have a very limited vocabulary of rhythm patterns and grooves. H...

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Strumming Patterns You Must Know

These lessons are designed to equip you with essential strumming patterns for jamming, accompaniment, cover tunes, and original compositions. And of course, th...

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Write Your First Song (First Steps)

Anyone can write a song! And that’s exactly what you will do with Write Your First Song, an extraordinarily intuitive step-by-step guide from singer-songwriter...

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Songwriter Sideman Licks You Must Know

Supporting a songwriter as the sideman in a duo or band situation is an artful skill that can be very challenging. Usually, there’s a rhythm guitarist -- perha...

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Double Down on Double Stops

As country music and country guitar playing become increasingly more popular, there are several techniques that are crucial to capturing that true country sound...

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Ch-Ch-Changes Playing Chords Efficiently

Playing One Chord: If you think about it, this skill is one of the most fundamental and basic of all we do on the guitar, and one of the most important to mast...

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Lightnin’-Jimi-SRV

A rite of passage for all aspiring blues guitar players occurs when they first move beyond their primary influences and discover the guitarists that influenced ...

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Repertoire: Karen by Adrian Legg

This piece, called "Karen", is named after Karen Carpenter, who I'm a fan of. She did things that were considered pop that I actually grew up with, using 50's p...

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Repertoire: Haba Na Haba by Tommy Emmanuel

The words Haba Na Haba are from a proverb, which translates to "little by little your pot will be filled." Essentially, the saying means if you take things litt...

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Repertoire: Reassuring Response by Sean McGowan

Based on the Charlie Parker standard "Confirmation", and featured on my solo guitar recording Indigo, this étude combines a number of exciting harmonic concepts...

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Repertoire: Roll With It by Robben Ford

Everybody knows that the blues comes out of the south, and was played on acoustic instruments. Then the blues migrated to the cities, and the urbanization of th...

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Repertoire: Ice Man by Oz Noy

There’s a real art to playing rhythm guitar. Creating the perfect rhythm part, staying in the pocket with the rhythm section, staying consistent throughout the ...

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Repertoire: Room 335 by Larry Carlton

I ran across the original lead sheet for this song recently. It was called "Room 314" - Why? I have no idea. I don't know if that was a hotel room I was in when...

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Repertoire: Country Rock by Johnny Hiland

Well alright everybody, let’s solo over a modern country track in the key of C! This one has a real meaty feel to it and I think you're going to have a lot of f...

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Repertoire: Right On Track by John Hatcher

This is an 8 Bar blues tune in C with more advanced use of alternating bass techniques. There's a cool B section that gets us moving around the neck a bit as we...

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Repertoire: Highlands by Jeff McErlain

This tune is called "Highlands", and it's from my record I'm Tired. It uses one of the most common chord changes in popular music, the I-V-VIm-IV. It shows us h...

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Repertoire: Slow Fuse by David Hamburger

I love how the call-and-response approach allows you to reference more of an ensemble sound. More than just putting a few licks over a steady bass, you can star...

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