A Few Suggestions….

[Gary G]

Hi Brian,

Greetings from Santa Fe, NM!

First off I want to commend you on your superb guitar lessons. I’ve really learned a lot from joining Active Melody.

A few suggestions for upcoming lessons….

1) Spanish/Mexican/Easy Classical Guitar Lessons. Below is my attempt at fairly simple classical guitar piece. I actually made it as a joke. At the time it seemed that every guitar lesson was someone from the UK with a very strong accent. Hence my terrible attempt at an Irish accent. Amazingly it has a half million views!!!

Here is the link:

2) A lesson about harmonics. Think Roundabout by Yes, Red Barchetta by Rush, or Midsummer’s Day Dream by Triumph. All exceptional songs.

3) Open String Scales lessons…. Exploring different scales, pull offs, and hammer-ons. Think Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd/Over the hills and far Away – Led Zeppelin.

4) Explore some other Guitar Heroes. I’m thinking Johnny Marr (The Smiths), Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin)…Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top)?

5) Perhaps a lesson on power chords. A basic Ramones lesson could be fun.

Thanks for everything!!

Gary

[JoLa]

Hi Gary,

Since Brian very rarely reads the forum posts, I thought I’d say hi and reply to it.
You have some good suggestions there, Gary! I would also love some power chords dedicated lesson. I know that Brian mentions them here and there but I can’t think of any lesson examples right now.

Even though Brian is mainly a roots-based guitar player/music composer (blues, country, bluegrass, classic rock ‘n roll, swing, ragtime etc) he does sporadically come up with classical sounding lessons. If you haven’t found them yet, check out these examples:

LEG010
EP039
EP205
EP232
EP314
EP479

The AM library also contains a good amount of open strings lessons even though they may not be necessary named that way. The same goes for hammer-ons, pull-offs and other chord embellishments which pretty much occur in majority of the lessons, especially in bluegrass style. Just a few examples of open strings lessons are:
EP357
EP407
EP523

There are also plenty of lessons here on scales and modes already, too many to list.

Billy Gibbons and Jimmy Page are mentioned in EP062, Billy Gibbons in EP122 in case you didn’t know. Those show up when I search the lessons by keyword “gibbons”.

If you’d like to reach Brian directly, the best way is to email him at brian@activemelody.com but since he receives 200-300 emails daily I would not hold my breath waiting for an instant reply 😉

🎸JoLa

[sunjamr]

Jola speaks the truth. Many of the things you mention are already tucked away in various lessons, even though the title of the lesson might be focusing on something else. There are several AM members who occasionally bring out their classical guitars and sometimes play actual classical pieces. And of course, classical pieces by the great masters of the 1900s like John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and Lightening Hopkins are always popular among the AM members.

Sunjamr Steve

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