Simply put guitar scales are groups of notes that sound good together. In Western music, we make use of 12 different notes. (The reason thereare many more notes than that on the guitar fretboard is that thesesame notes are repeated in different places either in unison or at theoctave. For instance, if you play the […]
Playing double stops on guitar simply means playing two notes at the same time. When we play guitar licks and solos we usually play one note at a time. Double stops offer us an option to spice up our improvisations and compositions by harmonizing one or more of those notes with another note. Double stops […]
When people talk about “the blues guitar scale” they’re usually referring to the minor blues scale, a hexatonic scale (6 notes). In reality there are two kinds of blues scale – the minor and the major blues scale – but since it’s used more commonly, the minor blues scale seems to have earned the title […]
Building a vocabulary of guitar licks is one of the first things you need to do if you want to play the blues. In this lesson, I’m going to assume you’re quite new to the blues but already have some knowledge of guitar techniques like string bending, vibrato, hammer-ons and pull offs, and slides. If […]
Do all your minor pentatonic guitar licks and riffs seem to sound the same? Do you feel like you’re recycling the same ideas over and over again without ever creating anything new? If that’s the case, I have good news for you. You’re at the end of the first phase of learning how to use […]
Though heavy metal was the reason why I picked up the guitar in the first place, I couldn’t start playing my favorite genre from the start. When I heard heavy metal guitar techniques like fast legato runs or sweep picking being played I believed that it would take me ages before I could even start […]
In this lesson, I gave you a set of exercises to train yourself to play the guitar with a pick. In today’s lesson, we’ll take guitar picking an extra step by using the pick together with the remaining fingers: Hybrid picking. In order to execute hybrid picking technique, your thumb, and index finger hold the […]
Learn what sus chords are, how to play them, and how to use them in songwriting. In this lesson we’ll go into three aspects of suspended guitar chords.First we’ll see what they are made of, from a theoretical point of view, and what makes their sound so distinct from other chord types. Secondly I’ll give […]
If I had to try to answer the question “How many guitar chords are there in all?”, my answer would be inaccurate, incomplete, and completely useless to your guitar learning progress anyway. The reason is that the answer to this question would depend on variables such as whether: We’re including every position of each chord […]
In this lesson we’ll explore 7th guitar chords: How they are formed from a theoretical point of view, how to play them (chord diagrams) as well as how to use them in a musical context. Part 1: 7th Chord theory A major or a minor guitar triad is made of the 1st, 3rd and 5th […]