Today is Tuesday February 09, 2010
JamPlay Guitar Lessons
This is a teaser video from Jamplay.com but the guitar playing here is excellent. Anyway take a look at the video and see what you think. Jamplay offer some fantastic guitar lessons at a very reasonable price. The use of video as a teaching method makes learning new songs and tricks really easy.
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Guitar Arpeggios
It is easy to forget how important arpeggios can be in improvisation. These small melodic units will really help outline the harmony and chord progressions in a song making your solos sound more composed and thought out. Arpeggios should always be part of your improvisations if you want to sound more melodic and professional.
All arpeggios come from scales and the chords they produce. You can use a Cmaj7 arpeggio over a Cmaj chord to really outline the sound. Try to find some of these arpeggios within the basic scales. For example the C major scale contains the following arpeggios
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Modes Of The Harmonic Minor Scale
The harmonic minor scale has some really interesting modes but they are rarely used or heard. The two most important modes of this scale are the classical sounding harmonic minor and the eastern sounding phrygian dominant scale.
If you’ve ever listened to anything by Swedish guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen then you will have a pretty good idea what this scale sounds like. It also crops up frequently in classical music.
Lets look at the chords of the harmonic minor scale. We can see that they are more interesting and unusual than the standard major scale chords. Note the more harmonically rich augmented and diminished type sounds.
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Guitar Interval Sequences
In this lesson I will show you some interesting ways to make scale practice more rewarding and interesting. As well as playing scales straight up and down you can also practice them using scale sequences. Playing scales using intervallic sequences is one of the best ways to get to know the sound and shapes that can be found within the scale. Some of these examples also make great technical exercises, which can greatly develop both your left and right hand. In our final exercise we will look at sequencing the major scale using triad arpeggios.
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Modes Of The Major Scale
In this lesson we will look at the seven modes of the major scale. A thorough understanding of these modes is essential for many musical styles and will greatly improve both your technique and versatility as a soloist. Using these modes will give you a much richer musical palette to work with and can be used to great effect when composing music.
An important step in understanding modes is to realize what chord the mode applies to. It is the underlying chord that creates the sound of the mode itself. Therefore you must make sure you fully understand what chords each mode is related to.
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Drop 2 Chord Voicings
Drop 2 voicings are some of the most important chord shapes you can learn. These shapes are used by all sorts of guitar players to provide an easy way to learn chord voicings all over the neck.
We create a drop 2 voicing by dropping the second voice down to the bottom of the chord. For example a C major seven chord has the notes C, E, G, B. We can drop the G down to the bottom of the chord to give a voicing of G, C, E, B.
We have three sets of voicing for each chord type. There are chord shapes for the low, mid and high strings. It is important to learn all three types so that you can call on them when required. Try playing some simple chord progressions and see if you can switch between the chord shapes in different parts of the fretboard.
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The Whole Tone Scale
The Whole tone scale as the name implies is made up of whole steps. This is a really interesting and beautiful six note scale that all guitarists should know.
Because of the symmetrical nature of the scale it only has two real positions on the guitar neck making it very easy to learn and remember. The nature of the scale lends itself to licks based on repeating patterns.
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Beginners Guitar Chords
Welcome to this lesson on playing basic guitar chords. One of the first things we want to do when we pick up the guitar is learn to play songs and these simple chord shapes will help you do just that.
These chords are probably one of the best things to learn when you start playing guitar. They form the basis of hundreds of songs and knowing these chords will let you play real music.
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Guitar Chord Theory 1
In this lesson we will answer the frequently asked question
“How are chords constructed?”
Understanding how chords are put together is not as difficult as you may imagine.
Triad chords
The first thing to understand when learning chord theory are triad chords. Triads, as the name implies are made up from just three notes and they form the basic structures on which all other chords are based. Triad chords are based on thirds and there are two types of third interval
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Andy Mckee
I am going to see Andy Mckee play live this month and so I thought I would share this video with you all. This is a great example of Andy’s amazing playing style. He is one hell of a guitarist and I hope you enjoy this video.
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