By Jay Graydon http://www.jaygraydon.com This is the first in a series of columns on recording the guitar – and recording in general. I’ll share numerous tips with you, as well as interesting stories from my career as they relate to the process of recording guitar. The “Recording the Guitar” column will cover recording in detail and will help you achieve the best possible tone and recordings, whether you’re working in a home or pro recording studio. Check back eve....

By Jay Graydon - http://www.jaygraydon.com I know you’re eager to jump right to the recording process, but before you can hit that red record button, you’ve got to set up your gear. Baffles are an important part of that set up, both because they help eliminate leakage and because they just might keep the neighbors from calling the police on you. They’ll also help save your ears for hour upon hour of recording session wailing. So here is Part 2 of my ongoing series, “Recor....

By Jay Graydon - http://www.jaygraydon.com Now that we have the best mic position set and the mic stand and cable is anchored down (read previous part) and the amp baffled if needed, before we EQ the guitar signal, you may ask the guitarist to change amp tone control settings. Of course, if you Before we get the mic's out, a word about amplifier speaker cabinet grill cloth, grill cane, or metal grill covers. These things are passive frequency filters, meaning they hurt frequency response and ca....

By Jay Graydon - http://www.jaygraydon.com Dialing In The Guitar Sound for "Clean" (Non Distorted) rhythm playing for Pop, Rock, Country and any other similar styles. Most of the information in this article series is based upon a separate mixer and recorder. Yes, in this era, computer hard disk recorders have built in mixers and are becoming the norm. Throughout the series I'll make sure to note how to work with computer hard disk recorders/mixers, but I'll default toward separate c....

By Jay Graydon - http://www.jaygraydon.com Dialing In the Guitar Sound For The "Clean Lead" Sound Or "Hand Muted Single or Double Note Pseudo Rhythm Guitar." In my last article I explained the mixer and recorder setup for tracking and EQing the guitar for clean rhythm sounds. If you missed that article, click here to read it before proceeding with this article on recording clean lead guitar tracks. So, without further delay, here are the EQ settings that will help you rec....

By Jay Graydon - http://www.jaygraydon.com Dialing in the Sound of a Jazz Guitar In the third installment of this column, the article titled "Recording the Guitar -  Part 3 Miking the Guitar Amp," I explained the microphone, and the mixer and recorder setup. If you missed that article, click here to read it before proceeding with this article on recording and EQing jazz guitar tracks. A Few Tricks You Might Need to Try First Before I get to the EQ settings for recording great....

By Jay Graydon - http://www.jaygraydon.com Dialing In The Guitar Sound for Chord Melody Solo Electric Guitar Sound In the third installment of this column, the article titled "Recording the Guitar -  Part 3 Miking the Guitar Amp," I explained the microphone, and the mixer and recorder setup. If you missed that article, click here to read it before proceeding with this article on recording and EQing for chord melody solo electric guitar tracks. Many Jazz guitarists love to play....

By Jay Graydon - http://www.jaygraydon.com In the third installment of this column, the article titled "Recording the Guitar -  Part 3 Miking the Guitar Amp," I explained the microphone, and the mixer and recorder setup. If you missed that article, click here to read it before proceeding with this article on recording and EQing for distorted guitar tracks. Dialing In The Guitar Sound for Distortion Guitar Again, refer to Part 3 Miking the Guitar Amp for mixer/recorder/micropho....

By Jay Graydon - http://www.jaygraydon.com In the third installment of this column, the article titled "Recording the Guitar -  Part 3 Miking the Guitar Amp," I explained the microphone, and the mixer and recorder setup. If you missed that article, click here to read it before proceeding with this article on recording and EQing for distorted guitar tracks. For those of you who are not familiar with the term "crunch sound," it is the sound between clean and major disto....

By Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com Compressing the Guitar Signal on the Mixer Around 90 percent of the time, we want to compress the guitar, and for a few reasons. We typically use the compressor to kind of “even up” note or chord levels, and to add “punch.” “Punch” in this case has nothing to do with “punching in” on the recorder. Instead, it is energy applied to the attack of a signal to create excitement. For those of you who do ....

By: Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com In the last article, I forgot to mention a few other possible modes, which are hard knee/soft knee and response. After running those down, we will get into the side chain and stereo mode stuff. Hard Knee/Soft Knee Some compressors offer a switch-able hard knee/soft knee mode. If there is no such option on your compressor, the compressor will incorporate the hard knee circuit. The hard knee/soft knee option controls how the amplitude curve res....

By: Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com This is a trick I use if I want major compression “punch” without “smalling“ up the sound. This application can be used with almost any instrument as well, not just guitar. The concept is to split off the guitar signal from one master module to two other mixer modules. One mixer module runs through a compressor and gets compressed big time causing a very small sound. The other mixer module does not use compression and is....

By Jay Graydon - http://www.jaygraydon.com The following applies to all analog outboard gear and digital outboard gear that allow analog routing. Even if using a digital mixer or a mixer/hard disk recorder, the odds are good there will be analog inserts for outboard gear. There are two basic gain structures used for recording gear. Inexpensive to mid-line gear usually incorporates a –10 dB gain structure. Some mid-line through pro gear incorporates a +4 dB gain structure. Some units have....

By: Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com Get ready for interesting experimentation! There are so many possibilities when using more than one microphone, such as close miking with two mics on one speaker, close miking with two mics on two speakers, close miking with three mics on three speakers, close miking the front and back of an "open back" speaker cabinet using two mics, using room mics, etc. When using more than one mic in a close mic amp miking situation, the key is t....

By Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com Important! For all of the following, do not use any effects that alter pitch and tone, meaning pitch shifters, wah-wah, etc. If you will use such effects when recording your track, plug them in after reading the next article in this series, on comb filtering. Before you attempt to digest this info on comb filtering, you will probably want to open the previous article, “Part 14 Using Two or More Mics for the Guitar Amp Speaker(s),” fo....

By Jay Graydon – www.jaygraydon.com This article is on using two or more mics on one or more speakers miking in front of the speaker(s). I suggest reviewing the archived article “Part 3 Miking the Guitar Amp” since so much important physical set up information will not be covered here. You may also want to review “Part 1 Microphones Explained,” which describes mic choices per application When using more than one mic in a close mic proximity amp miking situation, t....

By Jay Graydon - jaygraydon.com Important! For all of the following, do not use any effects that alter pitch and tone, meaning pitch shifters, wah-wah, etc. If you will use such effects, plug them in after completing the comb filtering tests. You should open the previous article for important details as both articles directly relate. Comb filtering got its name because the waveform looks like a hair comb. This is caused by one sound source and two (or more) mics picking up the sound when the ....

By Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com This article is on using three or more mics on three separate speakers miking in front of the speaker(s). We will also cover using two mics on two amps in a stereo set up. In this era, guitarists such my very good friend Steve Lukather, uses three separate amps and three separate speaker bottoms. One amp and speaker bottom for the non-effected sound and the other two amps and speaker bottoms for stereo effects. The non-effected speaker bottom i....

By Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com You should open the previous article for important details as both articles directly relate. Here is the deal. This is based upon a three amp, three mic set up. The odds are good a comb filtering problem will not be in play if you’re using only one mic on each of the three speaker bottoms. The reason being is that the middle amp is the dry non effected signal and the other two amps are used for effects such as reverb, pitch shifting, dela....

By Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com This article is on using two amps and speaker bottoms with a twist — the 2nd amp and speaker bottom is a sub woofer system. To keep things simple, we will use two mics, one on the typical guitar amp speaker and another on the sub woofer speaker. If you want to use more amps and/or more mics, refer to previous articles for details. So why use a sub woofer? In this era, many rock bands tune town to “Eb,” “D,” or lower....

By Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com This article is on using a close mic on the guitar amp and one or more room mics. You may wish to use more than one close-mic on the guitar amp in addition to a room mic or two, so simply adapt as needed. As with this multiple mic series, I suggest reviewing the archived article on “Miking The Guitar Amp” (Part 3) since so much important physical set up information will not be covered here. Before we get into detail, there is one mo....

By Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com This article is the second installment on using a mic on the guitar amp (close-miked as usual) and one or more room mics. It’s most important to review article #21 for miking details, etc. We will now dial in the sound on the mixer. Signal Path For Two Mics to Two Recorder Tracks This is different from the routing we have been using in previous articles. If you are using more than one close mic, refer to Parts 14 through 20. Set your lev....

By: Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com The Advantage: When monitoring over control room speakers, the distance from the speakers to the guitarist’s ears is typically at least five feet. Let’s use five feet for the example. As mentioned in other articles, sound travels at approximately a millisecond per foot, so when recording guitar in the control room the delay from the monitor speakers to the guitarist is approximately five milliseconds. That’s five milliseconds b....

By: Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com The direct box recording method was common in the ’60s and ‘70s for recording the guitar direct Also, the guitar amp may be miked as well. No matter what kind of electric guitar will be used, the set up and options are basically the same. At some point in time (I guess somewhere around the early ‘60s), “direct guitar” became an option instead of miking the amp. Some engineers recorded the direct signal as well as r....

By: Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com OK, in the last article we had plugged the guitar into the direct box and the direct box output into the mixer. Note that if the direct box is mic level output (typical), it plugs into a mixer module mic input. If it’s line-level output, it plugs into a mixer module line input. On some mixers, that may be the same input using the mixer module trim pot to set the gain.          If you are using a “channe....

By: Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com This article is on EQ for melodies and solos regarding the guitar direct. Refer to the previous article, Part 25 Recording the Guitar Direct (Part 2) for routing details, etc. When we were dealing with rhythm guitar EQ, for the most part, we wanted the sound to be transparent not wanting upper lows and lower mids to fog out the sound. When dealing with solos and melody lines, we want the sound to have body. Single notes leave more sonic room th....

By: Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com OK, we now add in the guitar amp into the equation, meaning we will record both the direct signal and the amp signal. So why do this? Why not! OK, that was a silly statement but always remember that experimenting is important to find different sounds.          The typical reason for recording the miked amp and direct signal in this era is to get a nice big clean sound for solos and melody lines. OK, consider this:....

By Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com In the previous edition of this column, Part 27, we left off with, “Now unmute modules #7 and #9 to get a basic blend.” Note that if you hear major frequency cancellation when the signal levels are the same, an inverted phase problem is in play. Here we go with my standard rap – but note that this is slightly different than in past articles on the subject of the inverted phase fix, since we are dealing with a direct box in the ....

By: Jay Graydon -  http://www.jaygraydon.com If the direct box and mic sound are totally different, meaning the direct box signal is very dark sounding and the amp is very bright sounding, you may not notice a comb filtering effect in the upper frequencies because the two signals would produce waveforms that are not very similar. In any case, there would still be some comb filtering happening in the upper frequencies, so it’s always best to fix it. In other comb filtering fixes usi....

By: Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com In the last article, we covered the comb filtering fix before recording the direct box and guitar amp. OK, we could delay the direct box path as in the last article but even better would be to put it in the future to keep the performance feel in tact. If you’re using a hard disk recorder format, or any digital recorder format that allows timing offsets, we can deal with the comb filtering after recording. Here we go. The Comb Filtering F....

By Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com In this era, amp modeling is a way to get many amp sounds in one box. Amp modeling is a process in which the manufacturer dissects guitar amps, analyzing (and then modeling) waveforms from the beginning of the input chain and through all stages of amplification. It’s a long story but the concept is very good, especially if you need to quickly dial up a great or specific amp sound. OK, in most cases, a great sounding guitar amp “mike....

By: Jay Graydon – http://www.jaygraydon.com This article will not use any analog routing — just digital routing. As mentioned in the previous article, before we get into routing, etc., I’ve got to say a word on using/chaining digital gear. Let’s say you are using a digital effect in front or after the amp modeler. Digital gear causes a delay. If routing analog, add approximately another 2 milliseconds of delay. Add another digital unit in the path and you’ll have ....

  "Ah! THAT's where I stashed them!" was my reaction when I found the guitar maintenance leaflets that were freely included in the boxes when I bought my 2 ibanez guitars, which I had lost, again, while trying to put them somewhere easily accessible. The concepts described in these manuals for these guitars can be usually applied to other guitars as well. Even if optimum measurements may vary slightly, I think these documents are a good source for getting started. I met many ....

Preparing to audition singers is a very difficult task. You have to have an idea of what you are looking for, be open for something completely unexpected to change your mind of what you originally wanted and have a way to compare all of the candidates. I have auditioned many singers for Evil Kitty. The band over its tenure had 5 lead singers: Olivia, Kurt, Jenn, Jamie and Sue – 7 if you count our short lived side project (a pop rock group called k-12). In between each of those singers we a....

I am going to write to a great extend about a scale I use a lot in soloing, and which is in the same time a great finger exercise. The scale in question, as you figured out from the title, is the Whole Tone Scale. A lot of people haven't even heard about it, but if you are into Progressive Metal, or Jazz, you must have heard it a lot of times. Those of you who enjoy classical music can hear a masterful use of this scale in the music of Claude Debussy and the other Impressionist era composer....

Starting a band is much like parenthood, you know you want to be in one and dream of being an international superstar but how does one go from wanting to be in a band to writing and recording to hitting the stage? What if you have a bad show? What really happens behind closed doors? I am about to begin this process and thought I would document the Journey for all to see – with some luck it will end at international stardom and make this a more interesting read years from now – but ev....

These are some tips for beginers on using the Major Pentatonic Scale. It is very simple I am amazed at how many young guitar players dont know it. A lot of younger players get on the Minor Pentatonic, learn it well and learn to blaze it. It's funny how when I move down 3 frets and it puzzles them. I hope this will clear things up.....

Hit CountersThis is how I played the recording I submitted for the guitar.com challenge.  http://www.icompositions.com/music/song.php?sid=81324  So if it interests you in any way, shape, or form you can see how it was constructed. This is a good exercise for practicing hammers, pulls, and use of pinky finger. JTC Challenger (incorporate hammers/pull's and slides as needed to move thru the piece) [Intro] [Guitar 1] |----------------------------------| |---------------------------....

<Click here for a free tablature writer! I'm going to put riffs here.  Just TABS to riff's Ok, not complete songs and stuff.  Basically, whatever I think will be easy to tab out or what I'm currently messing around with.  If you like leave a comment.  If it sucks tell me and I'll delete this whole blog.  Hope it helps.  Rock On! m/ ******************************************************R I F F  # 1 Here is the first one.  Can be used as ....

Hello once again musical faces of Guitar.com it is I... that crazy strange guy that always wears wigs and beards in his videos. today, i would like to talk about a couple tech tips that can make your guitar sound better and keep it gigworthy for years to come.       Many Guitarists eventually want more from their guitar in some way or another, and in many forums i have seen people asking about what kind of pickups they should install in their guitar, while this is a per....

Free Web Counter Many people dont even realize that just because you have an electric guitar, doesnt mean that the wood it is made of doesnt have anything to do with the sound. in fact, it has EVERYTHING to do with the sound! so what is the right wood for you? how are woods different? are there any drawbacks to certain types of wood?? thats what we are here to discuss!  BODY WOOD       The wood you choose for the body of your guitar is VERY important. the body act....

Oscar Ortega interview - This shredder-on-the-rise gives us some tips on the industry What steps have you taken to forge a career in the music industry? Read as much as possible about the music industry and its laws. I bought a few books before starting a mentoring program that Tom Hess has created. I am currently in this program and have not needed to purchase any more books. However, I am confident in recommending the following books: Legal Aspects of the Music Industry by Richard Schulenber....

I can't teach anyone much about guitar, but there's one thing I know very well, and that's singing. I have been singing forever, and so I'm going to impart that knowledge to the masses of guitar.com. Because you might want your songs to have lyrics. ;o) Here's some tips for opening your range and improving your projection:   Start off by clearing out your throat. No dairy products for at least an hour, no soda, no smoking. Drink a highly acidic beverage, such as lemonade....

    THE TEMPLE OF THE KING - Rainbow   In my search for a simple tune that would help improve my (and hopefully your too) sliding along the neck, the solo from temple of the king winked at me :P . It is the perfect candidate - few notes, big spaces: the key for a successful first tune to play with a slide.   If you have no clue about how to play slide, consult my introductory article and video: http://www.guitar.com/kimonf/blog/tutorial_slide_guitar   So here's t....

    There are tons of online resources and tools to help you find and form chords. But what if you can't have access to them all the time? This is a practical guide aimed at the beginner who wants to be able to play chords when only their name is given or to name chords when the shape is given. What I won't discuss is theory subjects like how to put different chords together to form tunes. I leave that to the experts.   The guide is divided in 4 parts. In part 1 we'l....

I've discovered a routine of exercises that worked for me and might work for you. I like to do these practices once a day and it really works if you want to pick up the speed on your soloing and help with alternate picking. It is all up and down hits and if your not that experienced in fast up and down string hitting then this practice might not be for you.    ------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------- --9-12-9---------9-11-9-----------....

Attack of the Clones By Paul Tauterouff http://paultauterouff.com/   Like a lot of people, I probably spend way too much time goofing off on the computer. One of my favorite pastimes is checking out other musicians/ guitarists on the internet and particularly myspace.com. I have a page on there myself, in addition to my own personal website, and I often get requests from other musicians to add them to my friends list. I have heard a lot of great musicians on myspace.com but, I have also he....

How to Become a Professional Guitarist & Musician ~ Facts and Myths - Part 1 by Tom Hess  "What does it take to become a professional guitar player and musician?" The answer remains a huge mystery for the vast majority of people. Traditionally, conventional wisdom has offered three separate statements that are supposed to be answers or explanations to the question. I choose to call them what they are...MYTHS! Here they are in order of greatest levels of falsehood. MYTH numb....

How to Become a Professional Guitarist & Musician ~ Facts and Myths - Part 2 by Tom Hess  To get the most out of this article, it is critical that you read Part 1 to this series before reading on... ...There are few things more tragic than a person who has invested all of himself/herself into a life-long dream (such as pursuing a big professional music career) only to fail because of a single bad choice or a single important, but overlooked or underestimated, fact. Sadly it happens a....

How to Become a Professional Guitarist & Musician - Part 3 ~ Acquire an Accurate Map by Tom Hess  (*The basic map analogy used this article was inspired and adapted from author Steven Covey's book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.) Imagine you are taking a trip to an important destination inside an unfamiliar city without an accurate map? Now imagine the city is filled with hundreds of thousands of other people, 99.8% are also lost and without an accurate map. Asking peop....

How to Become a Professional Guitarist & Musician ~ Part 4 ~ "Making it" by Tom Hess You want to "make it" in the music business, right? Does it seem almost impossible to make it happen? The perceived realities of the music industry seem too harsh, too risky, too difficult and too unstable to pursue a lucrative long term music career. The Myth:   Most people believe there are only two possible outcomes when trying to become a professional musician: You either &qu....

7 Common Problems with Learning Sweep Picking and What to do About Them by Mike Philippov www.mikephilippov.com www.thenextstepguitar.com Sweep picking is considered by many to be a technique that separates average players from highly advanced players. Unfortunately, there are many challenges to be overcome with this technique before one can successfully adapt it as part of his or her style. First, for anyone who may not know, sweep picking is a technique used by guitari....

Misconceptions of Practicing For Speed By Mike Philippov www.mikephilippov.com It is a fact that the majority of lead guitarists want to increase the speed of their playing. Having virtuoso playing ability is a wonderful way to add a new tool to your arsenal as a musician. However this tool is also one of the most difficult to attain. There have been many articles written on the topic and the most common advice that is often heard is “practice slowly and use a metronome.” Of....

  Well, here is the most over-bloged kind o' article on the site: SCALES. You can read the same over and over again from many members here but, the more, the merrier i just say. Here is my quick review over some of the most common scales used. I'll be to the point without to much technical info. All my posted scales are going to be in C as root for comparison purposes. So let's begin: Your First Scale:   From my point of view & experience(also by default) the first scal....

Certainly one of the darker experiments in the Beatles catalog but beautiful none-the-less. The rendition performed in the video is in C# harmonic minor. Only because of apparent legalities, that I'm still a bit foggy on, there is only an excerpt of the original. What the hell, I'll put up the other segment next week. So anyway, here are the chords that the first section of the tune employs...   The progression of chords is like this where each chord lasts for one bar in 4/4 time.....

  Hi folks,   In all this years of practice, training, jamming & gigging i've come with a question for all of you... what's the most difficult thing you've come to face in the guitar world? ...From all the experience i've gattered in tone, music, technique & other instruments i have come to one aspect that really afect all... INSTRUMENT CARE. Really; the care you put in your instrument afects directly the handling and performance of the instrument overall. You c....

I am starting to build an instrument that will be given as a wedding present. This is an interesting build. Considering that I have never met the future owner. I have been commissioned by his brother to build him and his wife a themed acoustic guitar. The interesting part of this instrument is that it will be painted black on the face with a tree design reversed out of the black, showing the natural Spruce through. I have done this type of finish before on an electric guitar I have. It's....

I have cut the soundhole and added the rosette inlay on the Spruce top. It came out really nice. I will be adding a tree design to the front and painting it black lacquer. The back and sides are Rosewood with a Cocobolo binding that has a thin strip of maple. Once the back had dried I scraped it and started adding the supports. I'll show that on my next blog.         ....

The title of this episode of my blog says it all about the sound of the melodic minor scale. It's bittersweet, luscious, devilish, and hopeful. Melodic minor implies that as the scale ascends from the root note the intervals are W H W W W W H.   G A Bb C D E F# G   Now when the scale descends from the G back down the octave you'll find this...   G F Eb D C Bb A G   From the standpoint of melodic creation, the full melodic minor scale [with the raised 6th and 7th scal....

Hello all...  yeap, the sucky alien is in da'house. He will bring you a brief info about what he do to ARPEGIOS. We all know that arpegios are nothing more than CHORDS played note by note through positions(for the acoustics cleans & shreds alike).  But for the shreders out there that always look for something new for the arsenal i may have some weapons to sell. But first let's get some background info over the arpegio thing. For starters, arpegios come from the r....

    With THREE hands-on videos (approx 20mins total) and pictures :D What more can you possibly ask for?   I'll cover the process of restringing in the first video and the process of setting up the balance after a tuning change or string gauge change as well as a few points on setting the intonation in the second vid. The third vid raises a point to blocking the bridge. So help yourselves!   You can hunt for additional videos on youtube. There are many out there, present....

A teaching video how to play a blues solo on guitar. This is for intermediate players.....

   Ok, i will start with the so call pedal points. For those who already know this may not be a great discovery or anything but should give it a look anyway. For those who know, you mention pedal points and instantly come to mind one thing, clasical music. This is actually acurate but not necesarily anymore. This technique is used virtually in all kind of musics since the begining, but clasical movement stress it quite impresively; so much that you heard any guitarist play neo-classica....

You can find more lessons like this at my site: http://www.guitarteacherworld.com Objectives Learn how to play a tap harmonic. Practice tap harmonics. Tap harmonics are a form of artificial harmonics that are produced by fretting a note, which is the fundamental, and tapping directly on the fretwire either 12, 7, or 5 Frets above the fretted notes. By tapping on these node points, the harmonics are sounded. 1st Harmonic - 12 Frets Up - Octave Higher 2nd Harmonic - 7 Frets Up (or 19 frets u....

If you ever want to fuse a 12-bar blues with jazz, and have some sweet chords in it, check this out.   | I713 | IV79 | I713 | % | | IV79 | IV#°7| I713 | VI+7 | | II-9 | V713 | I79 VI+7 | II-9 V713 | so in C, it would be, | C713 | F79 | C713 | % | | F79 | F#°7 | C713 | A+7 | | D-9 | G173 | C79 A+7 | D-9 G713 | chord diagrams for these chords   Root 6 Dominant 7th 13 e|---|---|---|-x-|---| B|---|---|-x-|---|---| G|---|-x-|---|---|---| D|---|---|---|---|---| A|---|-x-|---|---....

I'm definitely a guitar junkie. Been playing for decades, still playing lots of shows -- my band, The Almost Brothers Band, played with Kiss, Hinder and Three Doors Down last weekend (7/21/07) at Rock-Fest in Wisconsin. I'm the former Editor In Chief of Guitar.com -- so you might remember my byline from days past when this site contained several hundred celebrity interviews and hours and hours of celebrity video lessons. I edited or produced most of that stuff and had a blast doing it. ....

The guitar has vast possibilities. Chords can be voiced in a multitude of ways but more often than not we find a couple that work for us and that's enough. In this lesson we'll take a one octave scale and harmonize just three chords from it.    In E major, the pitches are E F# G# A B C# D# E. You arrive at this by taking the starting pitch, E, and then using the following formula of whole steps and half steps to get the remaining notes...   W W H W W W H.   So the sec....

    To be able to play what you hear, you gotta train your ear to identify intervals and scales and chords and tones... Poking around blindly until you find the right note is very frustrating. That's what I'll help you fix here.   Unlike learning your fretboard so that you KNOW where you are (see my other blog: http://www.guitar.com/kimonf/blog/tutorial_learn_your_fretboard_finding_the_notes ), learning to HEAR the fretboard is not something you can accomplish in an hour....

This Guy teaches this song really well. I enjoyed learning it, And i hope you will to. I plan on having my camera fixed so i can post some guitar lessons i have made up on the site soon, till then check out this guys site and enjoy the lesson.http://www.thenextlevelguitar.com/....

The foundation of reggae guitar as an accompaniment instrument is rhythmically structured on the and of a beat. This video might help the beginning to intermediate player develop better counting chops while building a cool groove from the ground up. One of the techniques employed is left hand staccato. This technique will allow the six string aficionado to mute sounds produced in a single note or chordal context by lifting the fretted notes off of the fingerboard while maintaining contact with t....

When I was nine or so years old I tore open the bag from the local record store with an LP copy of 1984 by Van Halen and a 3-pack of blank cassettes. The store didn't have any copies left on tape so I bought the vinyl (which I still have...somewhere) content with the idea of making my own mix of the new album. I wanted to just sit in my room and listen to it but I didn't have a tape player up there, hence the need to endure scowls from my siblings as they watched Looney Tunes in the adjo....

A little Angus Young anyone? Enjoy this video guitar lesson for "Back in Black" by AC/DC.   ....

Here's a little RHCP for you. Enjoy!  ....

Enjoy this Billy Joe Armstrong piece: "When I Come Around".   ....

I still to this very day regard music as the organization of sound and silence. Being able to account for the spaces between sounds with a set of values is what gives us our understanding of rhythm and meter. I often asked what rhythm actually was and, in turn, heard and saw many definitions to this illusive word. But today I like this one...   …”a general term used to refer to the position of musical events in time. It specifys the beginning of an event and the duration (how l....

A Good intro lesson on funk guitar. Enjoy!....

I'll be adding to this particular segment as the days and weeks progress but this site www.jazzimprov.tv is completely ridiculous! A wealth of knowledge and information for players who need to know what's up with jazz from many points of view.   Check out one of the featured players, Mimi Fox, on the Jazz Anatomy Channel at jazzimprov.tv and the vid of her performing her arrangement of When The Saints Come Marching In. Good times!  ....

A fine greeting to all of you on such a fine day!   This segment will focus on an arrangement I did of a tune by the late Jaco Pastorius called Portrait of Tracy. Jaco was an amazing bassist and as many of his closest friends described him, "The best self-proclaimed electric bassist in the world". He played with Weather Report, Pat Metheny, Mike Stern, or should I say they played with him? Jaco fanatics would probably prefer the latter. That's fine by me, no worries. Here'....

This is a close up of me playing Little wing by Jimi Hendrix, it should be easy to learn it from this video. This is the eaxis bold as love version.....

"Message in a Bottle" is a true classic from The Police. Enjoy! ....

this guy shows you how to play Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody on the classical guitar. he plays it great, but his teaching isn't the best, but what he doesn't teach you, you can easily pick up. It sounds great, enjoy!....

   I discovered this little system while in World Music Cultures class at Humber College. While talking about scales and modes used by ethnic groups in Eastern Europe, the Hungarian Minor Scale popped up.    The Hungarian Minor Scale is basically a Harmonic Minor Scale with a raised 4. Its interval spelling is 1, 2, b3, #4, 5, b6, 7. Note the Chromaticism around the 5th. Some interesting stuff happens when you harmonize this scale in thirds.    When Harmonizing....

A great many recreational and semi-pro musicians find themselves saying to themselves, "I know the riffs of the players that I idolize, but something is missing"   All of this here should be helpful in building a greater rhythmic understanding. Everything here is written with the beginning guitar player in mind but each successive post will get more in depth.   Quite often, that missing something is rhythm. Executing rhythms with charisma and feel is an art in and of itsel....

Today's topic is speakers. I'll explain how speakers work and highlight some of the characteristics of different speaker sizes as well as some of the physics behind a speaker's behavior.   We al know what a speaker does. But how does it do it? basically, a speaker moves air. Over the years, inventive minds have come up with a number of ways to make working speakers. Some of these include moving coil, electrostatic and piezo-electric.  But we guitarists use speakers of the m....

    Slide guitar is one of those highly cherished styles that few people dare to venture in. It is also one that can be very frustrating to figure out on your own. My own first attempts where pathetic until I saw Eric Sardinas on a youtube.com video and it all suddenly made sense.   TUNING While you can slide on any tuning, things will come a lot easier if you start on an open tuning like open D (D A D Gb A D) or open G (D G D G B D). I use open G because the 4th, 3rd and 2nd st....

Tremolo study is a technique that enables the player to sustain a repeating melody note while playing a bass accompaniment. One the most famous pieces illustrating this technique is Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tarrega. Other notable composers such as Augustin Barrios Mangore and Federico Moreno Torroba also employed the technique. This lesson is going to take a simple etude by Matteo Carcassi who looked like this...   The tremolo effect on the guitar is produced by playing the b....

I'm a former electronics technician, recording studio owner, life-long hi-fi guy, hobbyist speaker designer guitarist and singer. These days I'm a computer professional, but I've never lost my interest in electronics.   I'm of the opinion that there are a lot of misconceptions about how amplifiers work. In this blog I'll attempt to explain as much of what I know (and sometimes what I think I know) about what's going on inside these devices that put the elec....

Bill Jehle – Born and raised in the South, way down in Mississippi. Presently living in Decatur, Alabama.  I’m 39 years old, closing in on 40, and probably for the first time in my life, happy for where I am and who I am. I’ve been a guitarist for as long as I can remember, first having the urge to play at age 5, and I’ve also had this urge to take things apart to see how they work probably before that.  I never was able to get my sisters record pla....

Most guitarists just don't want to do it. That's alright...there's tablature, but this style of notating pitches is exclusive for just the string instrument for which it's written. Here's an example from a piece for Vihuella.       Here's the question then: how does the string player, who reads and writes their ideas in tablature, communicate their original idea to another musician who plays an instrument like piano or tenor sax or whatever? Already it'....

Jason McGuire slows down the very intense bulerias compas for anyone who's interested to see. The Bulerias is a flamenco rhythm (compas), counted in 12 beats. I laughed out loud at myself when I first tried learning this because my mouth/mind would stop counting just to spite my hands and vice versa.   The compas looks like this with the accented beats in bold. The x's signify the golpe (a finger/right hand) tapping the face of the guitar to accent the beat. Flamenco guitars have ....

I thought Captain Fantastics "You Must Love The Chords" lesson was so cool, I just had to add my .02! For all of you who are interested in the scale he was playing, here is A Harmonic Minor in my own scale sheet, done in iScale. Instead of dots and fingerings, I give you the note names. It's really going to help you learn the neck if you start to look at notes and not just dots. You can of course make this big neck into smaller positions, and I think you should break it up. Now wh....

Neither g'day or good evening, but rather good life and prosperity!   This day we discuss the construction and performance of the chords formed in the key of A harmonic minor. We'll then compose a short, four bar repeating form over which to improvise a melody.   First the scale itself. Harmonic minor, no matter the key, is formed when you take a natural minor scale, in this case A natural minor...   A B C D E F G A   And raise the 7th scale degree   A B C D E....

    You have probably heard of the so called "Circle of 5ths". Consult Captain Fantastic's blog for some info on it: http://www.guitar.com/greighgripearce/blog/the_circle_of_fifths     So why am I making this blog, if the 5ths have already been discussed? To point out some "rules" behind the concept of the circle that will hopefully help you memorize it and recall and use it easily.   So I created what I call the "Star of Fifths" . It ....

Hey Folks: In addition to the open position, it's a really good idea to know how to read in the 5th position. Here's a chart I made to show you where all of your notes are. As always, feel free to add the #'s and b's as you need to by lowering one fret for a b (Flat), or raising one fret for a # (Sharp). Here you go:     In addition to being a resource for reading notes in the 5th position, this is also a great place to play the A Minor scale. If you know abou....

I call this bad boy "Changes."  It is arguably in the key of E major.  Now get this, this is just the most dopest song I ever wrote.  A song for Organ, Bass, and Drums. A section: ||: A° | Cmaj | Bmaj | % :|| B section: ||: E- | % | Gmaj | % | D/F# | % :|| So this is just a wild progression in general (at least the a section).  But it gets better.  The bass plays an E pedal every once in a while.  When it's not playing the E pedal do you k....

Check it.  This is one hell of a ride if you play it nicely.  Treat it like a pretty girl who you're about to take on an expensive date.  The kind that you don't just throw back on the street when you're done.  The kind you treat nice.  Like a cool progression. Here it is: | E°  F- | Bb7  Eb- | Ab7  Db | Ab-  Db7 | % | F#  C° | First some justification/analysis of it all, then a little hint on how to play it sweet. Anal....

Greetings,   So... while guitar.com was in hiatus I spent some time answering questions and helping out folks on the home recording forum over at ultimate-guitar.com. It wasn't long before i realized that, within the span of just a few days, i was literally seeing the same damn questions over and over. Those questions are: 1. Why don't I have any volume in the wave form? I have all my gear cranked up and I can hear it, but it's not being recorded or it's barely there. 2. Wh....

  The concept   You have a guitar with a given range of tones and you want to get more out of it. You can achieve quite a bit by redesigning the circuit inside the guitar. It may sound baffling at first but it really isn't that hard. My goal here is to provide you with some ideas and instructions on how to achieve different sounds, by changing the ways your pickups are combined. Diagrams are included, but they are local diagrams, so that you can integrate them in bigger scheme....

I hear way too often from beginning players 'why do I need this?', meaning scales, and so we then start talking about what they listen to. You can't compose, improvise, or otherwise create without scales. Enough, no more soapboxing for me, but here in this lesson is the beginning of a multi-part conversation that begins with C major and it's relative A minor. They're relatives because they share the same notes. The C scale reads like this...   C D E F G A B C   And....

    Knowing where to find each note on the fretboard is important in finding your way around, especially when you try to locate where the next chord should be or where to play to be in the key your friends are playing in etc.     Here I present two ways: One with help of software (very efficient) and one with no need for either a computer or a guitar.   The software is the following one, suggested to me by another Gdotcom member: Member: Jason Messick http://www.fre....

I find with my new students, and even some of my peers, that often times they aren't up to par on knowing where they are in a progression while improvising or if in fact they know what chord is being played are unable to choose which notes fit the chord. Try holding an F against a C major chord...it sounds almost out of tune, like you either need to have the chord change or the F has to go somewhere for it to sound resolved.   Enter the Circle of 5th's. This tool is the beginning of....

What's up cats? This next installment is brought to you by coffee. Coffee got me out of bed today and it'll keep me up tonight.   Lucid and free is the legato technique. It provides fluidity to melodic runs which accentuates the playful and deepens one's sorrow. The technique is achieved on the guitar by slurring between notes via hammer-ons, pull-offs, bending, sliding, or belching. Well, minus the belching part.   In the first example, pick the first note of each trip....

In this episode of Captain Fantastic Plays For You, we begin to discuss how to develop a melody. It begins with two chords: Dmi7 and BbMaj7. In the video, we begin by creating a vamp between these two chords, one measure per chord. The convenient thing about using these two chords is that they share three notes...   Dmi7 has the notes D F A C BbMaj7 has the notes Bb D F A   These two chords as they are voiced [or fingered] in the video are shown below     Over these two ch....

Zakk talks about his influences, practice ethic, style, what he listens to and what makes him different from other guitar players. The only problem is, you can barely hear the questions being asked because he never stops playing during the interview! It would have been cool if they turned off the t.v. in the background too. Very cool tips, however, from Zakk Wylde, the musician. ....

Andy talks about improvising. Not so much about note choices, but more about time and space. He talks about improvisation being a narrative between people...the musician and the listener, rhythmic phrase placement, and some more abstract qualities that he looks for when playing or appreciating a great solo. He also talks about practice techniques for becoming more proficient as a soloist. ....

Hey now everyone here tonight! Andy Summers unveils the simplicity behind the very tragically hip Roxanne and Message in a Bottle. This video retrospective is a bit scattered in the delivery of the information. Don't fret [pardon the pun] fore it's still way cool to see Andy dissecting a couple of tasty Police anthems chord for chord and note for note.  ....

No, not the girl you knew in high school who has gained eighty pounds, but rather the ideas that ex-Police guitarist Andy Summers presents in this video. Things begin to hit home in this video about note choices while improvising, chord voicings, chosing a key on the guitar for greater ease when doing arrangements of standards, and some really nice chord solos of 'Round Midnight and Think Of One.   ....

Unfortunately, the gracious contributions of Moneychords.com take the artistry and mystery out of contriving cool progressions. Maybe today is just a down day. Come on, I'm kidding! Tons of incredibly cool chord progressions lace the decor of this site.   Check it out    ....

Affedis.com is a great resource for those who are beginning to broaden their musical outlook to points east across the pond. Informative articles, history of players and examples of techniques pertinent to Flamenco. Once you find what you're looking for, buy whatever you need from http://www.flamenco-world.com. ....

The quint-essential, must have, you're friends will faint, good smelling like a substitute teacher, Chord and Scale Finder. This is one of the best tools for budding guitarists we've seen. The only thing you need to know now is when to use them and when it's stupid to. What now?!? ....