Description
In this week’s guitar lesson, you’ll learn how to take a classic melody and embellish it. Improvise, while continuing to honor the melody.
Free Guitar Lesson
Slow Walkthrough
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Video Tablature Breakdown
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Thanks Brian! This is something that should help and be fun also.
Mike
I’m getting
“An error occurred. Please try again later. (Playback ID: RFwQEZPLJkjM1kEs) “
Seems to be a problem on the YouTube side, I’m seeing the same on any video on there.
Rebooted, working now
Thanks, this will be fun!
Wow!!! Brian, between the major scale, The chords, The intervals, The chromatics, Fun to play Christmas song Great style Don’t get no better than this!!!! Dave
Tis the season. What a fun arrangement Brian.
Not really my ‘thing’, too mid-century commercial sounding pour moi. But, as always, some cool ideas to work on, I particularly like the intro.
You’re just what the doctor ordered for old insomniacs and guitar junkies like me, Brian. Whenever I can’t sleep in the middle of the night I get up and go to Active Melody to learn something about guitar playing or just to listen to the tunes and melodies you create.
This lesson is great, especially during a time when we can all use a little cheering up. I’ll start working on it tomorrow.
Thanks for what you do.
Well, maybe you didn’t “create” this melody, but still there is a lot to learn in this lesson.
Go get some sleep!
This a great tradition Brian. I love that you roll-out a Christmas song this time every year and make it a learning experience!
I hope you had an awesome Thanksgiving.
That was a great lesson on how you embellish a simple Christmas song.
Thanks Brian
Happy Holidays to all at Active Melody
Hope I can learn this before Dec 25!!
Wishing you festive Holiday Season Brian. My big take away from this is the substitution of the two for the four chord. Seems like a great technique for making your solos different the second time through. Does it always work?
Love that you show where the licks come from.
Please keep “repeating”….we forget, but also hearing the concept again in a different context/song really helps reinforce understanding. Thanks for this!
Brian, you continue to incorporate some of the same licks and patterns in various lessons. It helps me able to cement and use them as I guess I’ve carried them along in my head and go ……”Oh yeah, I remember that”. It’s a good part of the process
another good one
Went back and looked at my entry and saw where I put major scale when it was mixolodian.Sorry about that.My allshammers was kicked in. Dave Having a lot of fun with this!!!
What I like about this specific lesson is being able to change a simple melody or childhood song and embellish into something better. Fun to play for my kid. What I am missing though is the steps that I need to take to make this work. E.g. I can play the notes of happy birthday and I can play the song using chords. How to bring this together is where I fail. I assume I start with the chords. how should I approach this?
Hey Brian,
Great lesson. A familiar song that we all know and can (with your help) improvise over. Another one to play this Christmas season.
Merry Christmas Brian and everyone!
Great patterns to learn . Merry Christmas to Brian and all with Active Melody . Having a lot of fun with this.
Excellent! Thank you. Love this sound, for sure Atkins harmony ! Licks are great when learning, learning how to make music is the best and this is an amazing lesson on how!
Brian Iam unable to get the slow walk through video for EP493,also same problem with other lessons,any body else having the same problem??
If you’re on iOS (ipad or iphone) – make sure your software is updated… there have been some issues w/ outdated iOS not showing the Part 2 videos. You can update by going to Settings > General > Software Update
otherwise, you might try either clearing your browser cache, or using a different browser altogether (Google Chrome, Firefox) etc.
The last comment was from Dave Stotesbury,a problem getting the slow walk through. My email address drstotesbury@icloud.com
Awesome Brian! I always look forward to your Christmas songs every year. It’s a great addition to family get-togethers. You mentioned that you constantly repeat yourself….please keep it up! It is an excellent teaching style of yours and it really helps me grow with my playing. Thank you!
Very nice, Brian, really sounds like a chet akins
Hi Brian-
I continue to work to get my head around the application of modes. In this lesson (and actually at least one other recently), you played A Mixolydian over the A chord. It’s an A scale of course, but if I’m correctly understanding—it is the D scale as well with the starting note an A (alternative explanation to flatting the 7th of the A major scale). I guess I still don’t understand the “strategy” of how to use modes to get their various modal qualities in the music. You’ve done a bunch of mode lessons—is there one where you cover this application strategy of modes?
Thanks as always—it’s fun to learn the theory and technique with these holiday songs.