In this week's guitar lesson, you'll learn how to play a Western Swing style lead by playing the chord changes (changing scales to match the chords). This is designed to teach you how to play more melodic and interesting sounding leads when improvising. … [Read more...]
A Practical Approach to the CAGED System on Guitar – EP273
In this week's guitar lesson, I'll explain a unique way of looking at the CAGED system, which allows you to play chords in multiple locations up the neck of the guitar. Once you understand this system, you'll be able to enhance your rhythm and lead playing by being able to easily identify all of the chord shapes throughout the entire neck of the guitar. This lesson comes with 3 practice compositions (at 3 different levels) to help you incrementally build up your understanding of this system. … [Read more...]
Slow, Melodic Lead Guitar Lesson – Learn About Soloing With a Relative Minor Chord – EP269
In this week's guitar lesson, you'll learn how to play a VERY slow, and melodic lead over a basic chord progression. I'll explain what a relative minor is and how you can use the same scale to solo over a relative minor and it's relative major. This lead is made up of both blues and country style licks. … [Read more...]
Jam Band Style Lead Guitar Lesson – How to Jam on Guitar – EP266
In this week's guitar lesson, you'll learn how to play a jam band style lead (think Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers). This lesson is designed to help you understand how to improvise in this style. You'll be using the major scale for most of this solo, but will touch on the minor pentatonic scale and the mixolydian mode as well. … [Read more...]
Classic Minor Key Blues Lead (in C Minor) – Blues Guitar Lesson EP256
In this week's guitar lesson, you'll learn how to play a minor key blues lead in C minor. You'll be playing the chord changes as well as staying within the key of the song (explained in the video). This is made up of influences by Santana, Eric Clapton, and David Gilmour. To learn how to play the R&B style rhythm for this lesson, visit MicroLesson ML055 … [Read more...]
Learn How to Play Harmonized Leads When Improvising – Country Guitar Lesson – EP242
In this week's guitar lesson, you'll learn how to use harmonized leads when you improvise and how to connect those leads to basic chord shapes so that you can easily find them. I'll show the pattern for playing both harmonized 3rds and harmonized 6ths. … [Read more...]
Soulful R&B Style Lead Guitar Lesson – Using the Major Pentatonic Scale – EP222
In this week's guitar lesson, you'll learn how to improvise a soulful R&B style lead using the major pentatonic scale. I'll explain which patterns the notes come from and how to connect them back to chord shapes so that you can start to visualize leads like this when you're improvising. … [Read more...]
Slow Country Lead Guitar Lesson in C – EP173
In this guitar lesson, I'll show you how to play a slow and easy country lead in the key of C. This lesson is full of takeaways, including how to play around chord shapes, pedal steel licks, and double stops. I've tried to keep this one slow and fairly easy, so that anyone can follow along. Even if you can't play all of the specific notes of the lesson, I'll show you how to improvise so that you can play along with the jam track and use whatever notes you want. If you like this lesson, here is … [Read more...]
Creating a Melodic Guitar Solo Using Chord Voicings and Arpeggios (PART 2) – EP166
This lesson is a follow-up to EP164, which you can view here. In this guitar lesson, I'll show you how to create more melodic sounding leads by incorporating chord voicings into your solos. This is meant to be additive to what you already know, but hopefully allows you to view the fretboard in a different way by visualizing the chords and using them in your lead. This lesson includes both a practice exercise as well as a melody, and the jam track is in 3 different keys to help you practice … [Read more...]
Harmonized Lead Guitar Lesson (Latin / Hawaiian Style) – EP157
In this guitar lesson, I'll show you how to play a harmonized lead (2 strings at the same time). I've provided the background theory in this lesson so that you understand how to find the major scale, how to stay within the same scale even as the chords change, and how to improvise the harmonized scale from the major scale in different positions on the neck. I've also included a bonus lesson on how to play the rhythm part, MP3 jam tracks and tab included. … [Read more...]