Soloing with Triads
In this week's video I'm sharing one of my favourite tricks for spicing up triads in a soloing situation. Here's a link to the video -
Below you can find a tab for my solo at the st...
2021-09-24 17:17:11 +0000 UTC View Post
In this week's video I'm sharing one of my favourite tricks for spicing up triads in a soloing situation. Here's a link to the video -
Below you can find a tab for my solo at the st...
2021-09-24 17:17:11 +0000 UTC View PostAfternoon all! Today I'm looking at a brilliant but lesser-known track by The Verve. It's a wonderful, atmospheric guitar part played - I think - in an open G6 tuning. Here's a link to the video -
2021-09-17 14:06:30 +0000 UTC View PostHere's my backing track. I can't of course reproduce the magic of Martin Hannett's production, but I hope this is adequate to play along to! It's a pretty repetitive track without the vocals so I chose to fade it out after a couple of minutes. Enjoy playing along
2021-09-10 16:10:01 +0000 UTC View PostHello everyone! I thought it was about time I looked at another Joy Division track, so here's my take on their song Disorder.
Here's the link -
We have a great riff and an eas...
2021-09-10 16:06:47 +0000 UTC View PostHello all! I was reminded the other day that I've not done much rockabilly lately, and I thought I'd fix that today with a look at an all time rockabilly classic, featuring some dazzling playing by Cliff Gallup. Here's the link -
Hello all. I'm now back in London after my summer break. It's feeling a bit like the start of a new school term as I get back to work. This week I'm bringing you another Smiths classic. As I say in the video, I wasn't really intending to look at more Smiths quite so soon after the fairly recent G...
2021-08-27 19:39:02 +0000 UTC View PostHere's the backing track for this week's lesson. I quickly put down some real drums on this one - a bit wobbly in places as I'm - very - out of practice, but I think it just about does the job. Hope you enjoy playing along!
2021-08-20 14:28:48 +0000 UTC View PostHappy Friday all! I'm still away for the next few days but - fear not - I am able to bring you a video this week. This one was recorded 2 or 3 weeks, ago and is a detailed look at a fantastic Cramps song. Here's the link -
I have a bit of a summer special for you this week, with an in-depth look at this fantastic Hüsker Dü track. I thought this would be quite a straight-forward song to figure out, but there's a lot more going on here than there seems. Great songwriting and riffs, and some interesting soloing towa...
2021-08-06 12:23:23 +0000 UTC View PostHere's the backing track that accompanies this week's video. Not quite sure what I was thinking with this one, it's a kind of weird funky groove with a synth bass. But hope it's fun to play over. Remember it's a 4 chord cycle: Cmaj7, Ebmaj7, F#maj7, Amaj7. Just play overt using the appropriate ma...
2021-07-30 17:15:03 +0000 UTC View PostHello all! This week I'm continuing my series of lessons looking at 7th arpeggios. And it's the turn of the beautiful sounding major 7th arpeggio. As with the previous videos, I go over the theory, explore the 5 CAGED patterns, and give you some exercises and improvising tips. Here's a link to th...
2021-07-30 17:12:02 +0000 UTC View PostHello all!
This week's video: https://youtu.be/Fs2TBQ_v-0E
It's been a little while since I've looked at any fingerstyle, and this is one of my favourite fingerpicking songs. This lesson is based on the Nico recordin...
2021-07-23 16:47:57 +0000 UTC View PostHere's my backing. Just bass and drums. Hopefully it follows the arrangement of the original recording. Listen to that to figure out which riff goes where, how many repeats etc.
Have fun!
2021-07-16 17:02:16 +0000 UTC View PostI was in the mood for a bit of Pixies this week. Hope some of you are too, since today I'm looking at the track Hey, from their Doolittle album. The solo is brilliant, but there are also some excellent rhythm guitar parts. Here's the link -
Here's my backing track. It's verse/pre-chorus/chorus and I've looped the whole thing 3 times. If you're struggling with the tempo it might be an idea to slow the backing down and gradually work your way up to full speed. There are plenty of apps etc. that will allow you to do this.
E...
2021-07-09 17:47:18 +0000 UTC View PostSo I thought I'd attempt to learn a few of the solos from last week's video properly. And this week I'm looking at Glenn Tilbrook's fabulous solo from the Squeeze classic Another Nail In My Heart. It's quite a challenging solo to play at full speed, but like with anything else, if you take it slo...
2021-07-09 17:45:04 +0000 UTC View PostFollowing on from the recent video I did looking at my favourite 'alternative' (whatever that means) guitar solos, here's a fabulous selection of weird and wonderful solos as chosen by you lovely people, either here on the Patreon page or in the YouTube comments. I talk a bit about each solo and ...
2021-07-02 22:16:44 +0000 UTC View PostHere's the backing track for this week's lesson. A kind of funky A minor blues. Got out my old Phase 90 pedal for the rhythm guitar parts, such a great sound.
Use this to practice your minor 7th arpeggios, but it will also sound great if you want to just use the A minor pentatonic.&nb...
2021-06-25 20:40:01 +0000 UTC View PostHello all! Hope everyone's doing OK. Following on from the recent lesson on dominant 7th arpeggios, this week I'm giving minor 7th arpeggios the same treatment. There's a bit of theory, I go over the 5 CAGED patterns, and then I discuss making music with them. Here's the link -
Here's the backing to accompany this week's lesson. 2 bar count in. I've looped it, so we have 3 choruses in total. Enjoy playing along!
2021-06-18 19:07:09 +0000 UTC View PostThis week a fabulous country solo from Tele master Roy Nichols. Here's the link:
I've tabbed it all out below. And I've included some picking suggestions too (just what works for me; feel...
2021-06-18 19:04:05 +0000 UTC View PostHere's my backing to go along with this week's lesson. I had some fun trying to do a bit of a Hannett-esque production. Drums are from an Arturia Drum Brute. Bird noises are Moog DFAM. Have fun playing along!
2021-06-11 18:05:24 +0000 UTC View PostHello everyone. This week I'm looking at Sketch for Summer by The Durutti Column. This track came out in 1980 on Factory records, features production by the legendary Martin Hannett, and the sublime playing of unsung British guitar genius Vini Reilly.
This was a fun and challenging video to...
2021-06-11 17:59:42 +0000 UTC View PostHello all! This week I'm discussing rhythm guitar fills and embellishments in a loosely Jimi Hendrix kind of style. It's a really good style to have under your fingers that can be applied to all kinds of different chord progressions. I approach this by thinking about the basic chord shape, then I...
2021-06-04 15:33:23 +0000 UTC View PostThis version of the backing track contains the acoustic and second electric guitar parts. (A version with just the acoustic guitar can be found in a separate post.)
2021-05-28 15:21:48 +0000 UTC View PostHere's the backing track with just the acoustic guitar and drums. (A different version with the second electric part can be found in a separate post.)
2021-05-28 15:21:10 +0000 UTC View PostI'm a big Elliott Smith fan but this is the first time I've looked at any of his music on my channel. I've chose a great little instrumental track from his debut solo record Roman Candle. I didn't intend for the video to be quite this long but I ended up going into lots of nerdy detail about all ...
2021-05-28 15:20:25 +0000 UTC View PostHere's my backing. This was fun to put together. The bass line is excellent and quite hard to play - I didn't have time to totally nail it, so this is my rough approximation. Enjoy playing along!
2021-05-21 17:00:45 +0000 UTC View PostThis week, a fun early Blur track. (This was requested by someone a while back. I keep a huge list of every request I get, then at the start of the week if I'm stumped for ideas, I'll see what jumps out at me from the list.) This one contains lots of inventive riffing from Mr Coxon, and I've tabb...
2021-05-21 16:58:15 +0000 UTC View PostHere's my backing track. The hardest thing is to know when to go to the bridge, since most of the song is just the repeated A groove. You'll either need to count the bars really carefully, or perhaps make a note of the track time when it changes (1st bridge 0.54, second bridge 02:05) If you were ...
2021-05-14 16:54:12 +0000 UTC View Post