Here's my backing track. It follows the arrangement of the single version. Another great bass line too. Maybe I should start up a bass channel and go through some of these as well? On second thoughts, I don't think that's something I'd have the time for at the moment! Enjoy playing along!
2020-09-11 11:21:30 +0000 UTC View PostHi patronz!
A punk classic for you this week from Dead Kennedys. And even if you're not that into punk you might still like to give this one a go: this is punk with great songwriting and great musicianship.
Here's a link to the lesson: https://youtu.be/V7LTZk8hgSc
There's lots of nice DKs live footage for this song, but this live in the studio performance is particularly good: 2020-09-11 11:13:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi everyone. This week, in celebration of the genius of Ennio Morricone, I've put together a little arrangement of one of his best known pieces - the main theme from spaghetti western The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.
Here's the link: https://youtu.be/bEID_VT4GFw
Plenty of interesting things to work on here - octaves, fast picking, triads, chord melody, dynamics. Music/tab can be found below. Hope you enjoy l...
2020-09-04 10:52:15 +0000 UTC View PostHere's my backing. I spent an unnecessary amount of time trying to replicate that weird drum effect you can hear in the intro. In the end I decided to use just the reverb return from a snare drum (muting the dry signal) which I then distorted a bit. I'd love to know exactly how it was done on the original.
The backing follows exactly the arrangement of the original recording. Enjoy playing along!
2020-08-28 15:45:20 +0000 UTC View PostHello all. I've had quite a few requests for this one, so I sat down earlier this week to try and figure it out. Makes you realise what a great and underrated guitarist Robert Smith is. Here's a link to the video:
There are lots of great live performance videos of this song. I particularly liked this one from 1980. An incredibly tight live band, even that early in their career:&...
2020-08-28 15:38:35 +0000 UTC View PostHello!
Hope everyone's doing OK. It's Nice Lick time once again, and today I have a short, stylish blues lick for you. This one gives you a great way to smoothly connect pairs of pentatonic patterns. Here's the link:
Tab is below.
This week I've also spent some time transcribing and preparing a few new song lessons, including some tracks which have been requested on here. ...
2020-08-21 11:43:34 +0000 UTC View PostHello all! This week I'm taking a look at the weird and wonderful whole tone scale. There's some theory, some famous examples from Monk, Fripp and Debussy, and I discuss how you might actually use it in your playing.
Here's the link: https://youtu.be/IF1uIu6q_o8
I've written out everything I talk about in the video in the music/tab below. (Apologies to any music theorists who are shocked by a few mis-spelli...
2020-08-14 13:29:59 +0000 UTC View PostHello all,
This week I'm looking at the Black Sabbath track Snowblind. It's quite rare that I look at proper ROCK music on my channel but I really enjoyed learning this track and putting the video together. Maybe I should do it more often?
Here's a link to the video:
It's Black Sabbath, so obviously we have lots of mighty riffs. The 2 solos are fantastic too. As I say in t...
2020-08-07 16:23:47 +0000 UTC View PostMorning all! I've had few requests for more acoustic videos, so this week I'm bringing you a nice little fingerstyle blues piece. I've tried to keep things approachable for most players. The 1st chorus is quite simple, the 2nd a bit more challenging.
Here's the link: https://youtu.be/Ywdz3SXtYuY
You can find the tab attached below. I think the music and tab can be particularly helpful when learning pi...
2020-07-31 09:37:42 +0000 UTC View PostHere's my backing track. It follows the arrangement of the original recording. Enjoy playing along!
2020-07-24 11:08:17 +0000 UTC View PostThis week, a beautiful surf instrumental that was new to me until fairly recently. It's part of the soundtrack to a 1966 surf film (which I still need to watch...)
Really fun to play, and not too hard.
Here's the link (recorded a couple of weeks ago, hence the return to my lockdown hair-do): https://youtu.be/IE-ctpnGthU
The tab can be found below. Backing track to follow shortly.
Have fun and sp...
2020-07-24 11:03:49 +0000 UTC View PostHere’s my backing track. It’s not the entire song, just the chord progression underneath the solo (which is the same as the chorus chords I think). I've repeated it four times. Use it to practice the actual solo, and it might also be fun to try out some ideas of your own. F major pentatonic will work well throughout, but you could also think about outlining the chords with triad or arpeggios. Have fun with it.
2020-07-17 17:39:02 +0000 UTC View PostHello all! This week I’m taking a look at a short but perfectly-formed solo from country guitar great James Burton. You can hear it on Gram Parsons’ first solo record, GP. (If you don’t already know this record, I highly recommend it.)
Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/H3RylVW_uU4
There’s lots of good stuff here - hybrid picking, pedal steel bends, playing the chord changes. I’m attaching my transcrip...
2020-07-17 17:30:51 +0000 UTC View PostHello all. Hope everyone's doing well. This week, I have a very different top 5 for you: my favourite riffs from The Stooges' Ron Asheton. Simple, brilliant stuff from one of the great rock n roll guitar players. Here's a link to the video:
Find the tabs attached below. This kind of thing is quite hard to notate accurately, so just use my tabs as a rough guide and feel free to interpr...
2020-07-10 13:37:42 +0000 UTC View PostWe're getting funky in this week's video with a rundown of some of my favourite Nile Rodgers guitar parts. I'm also talking about how to get a good funk guitar sound. Here's a link to the video:
I'm attaching the tabs below. It was easiest to do each riff in a separate tab, so you have 5 PDFs, and the same tabs in Guitar Pro format as well if that's something you use.
Enjo...
2020-07-03 13:35:07 +0000 UTC View PostAs promised, here's a quick look at the rest of Cornell Dupree's parts on Rainy Night In Georgia. I suggest printing out the tab and following along. Hope you find this helpful. See you on Friday for this week's main video!
Link:
2020-06-30 18:23:13 +0000 UTC View PostOK, here's the backing. It's the full song, arrangement as per the original recording. Enjoy playing along!
2020-06-26 14:50:04 +0000 UTC View PostHello all,
Sorry I'm a bit later than usual with the new video - a couple of last minute technical issues, but I got there in the end.
This week, I'm looking at Cornell Dupree's masterful soul rhythm style. Here the link:
The tab can be found below. As I say in the video, I'm planning on doing a little bonus video where I will take you through the bits of the song I didn't...
2020-06-26 14:45:04 +0000 UTC View PostHere's my backing. It follows the arrangement of the original recording. Drums and fuzz bass. For those of you who are into recording, it might be fun to import the backing to your DAW of choice and try adding some layers of guitars of your own.
Have fun!
2020-06-19 14:24:44 +0000 UTC View PostHello everyone,
Hope you're all doing well. I though it was about time I looked at some shoegaze - I'm sure many of you on here are fans of this style of music. The song I've gone for is Dreams Burn Down by Ride. A beautiful, easy to play track. As I say in the video, I may well look at one or two more shoegaze songs later in the year, so let me know if you have any particular requests, and I'll see what I can do.
Here's the link:
Hello all,
This week I have another improv session for you. I play over a backing in the style of the Albert King classic Crosscut Saw. Then I go through various soloing ideas, from some some easy stuff to some more advanced concepts. Everyone can have a go playing over this.
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/CM7SFPW0QPo
The backing track mp3 is attached to this post.
In news rel...
2020-06-12 11:47:57 +0000 UTC View PostHere's the backing to accompany this week's video. I had fun programming the TB303-style bass parts. It follows the arrangement of the original recording, and fades out on the outro section, which is just the main riff repeated.
Enjoy playing along!
2020-06-05 12:38:02 +0000 UTC View PostHello all,
You asked for it, and in this week's video I'm looking at some Orange Juice. I've gone for what's probably the obvious track - Rip It Up - their first and only hit single from 1983. (If you still want more OJ, I might well try and look at another song in one of my Patron-only videos later in the year.)
Here's the video: https://youtu.be/mUIuZMmoHQU
There's so much good guitar stuff happening in t...
2020-06-05 12:32:40 +0000 UTC View PostHere's the backing for this week's lesson. I had fun trying some Serge Gainsbourg-style bass licks. I've looped it to make it a bit longer so you'll be able to play the exercise several times. Feel free to come up with your own variations - change the picking pattern, change the order of shapes, add some embellishments etc. You can also of course use the backing track to solo over - both the A minor pentatonic, and natural minor scale would work, and you can also try using the triad shapes to...
2020-05-29 11:45:47 +0000 UTC View PostFollowing on from the fun major triad workout video I did a little while back, here's the minor edition. I can't stress enough how important it is to really know your triads, and this exercise is designed to help you get to grips with all of the common minor triad shapes and their inversions. Here's a link to the video:
I'm attaching the tab below in the usual PDF or Guitar Pro format...
2020-05-29 11:40:46 +0000 UTC View PostHello everyone. In this week's video I'm taking a look at River Man by Nick Drake. It's quite an intricate fingersyle piece in 5/4 time, but not as hard as you might imagine to play.
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/l3Uq1UmVKxU
And find my tab below. (Just re-uploaded to correct a couple of inconsistencies in the naming of the chords. All chord names are relative to capo.)
Enjoy playing it. See y...
2020-05-22 11:19:52 +0000 UTC View PostMorning all. Hope everyone's doing well. As I mentioned a couple of week's ago I'm going to occasionally be doing some extra little Patreon-only videos. Yesterday I filmed a quick exploration of the fantastic Velvet Underground song I'm Set Free. Here's a link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGpvf2wq0Ms
I've scribbled out some music/tab below as well.
Hope you enjoy it. Main vide...
2020-05-20 10:25:44 +0000 UTC View PostHello all. This week I've been playing around with this hybrid-picked country idea, and I thought I'd share it with you. As usual with these lick videos, I show you the lick but also talk a bit about how it works so you can come up with some variations of your own. Here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alZE-9Q-EKc
Tab is below. I've included the picking notations - the 'm' indicates a no...
2020-05-15 11:35:47 +0000 UTC View PostHere's my backing track. I've looped it so you have 2 verses and 2 choruses. This one's a little repetitive without the vocals in there, but I hope you enjoy playing along. You could always use it improvise over - E minor pentatonic, or perhaps E dorian would work well.
2020-05-08 10:54:53 +0000 UTC View PostMorning all,
Perhaps a slightly obscure choice of song this week, but it's a gem of a track by the band Crime and the City Solution, featuring some excellent twangy riffs from one of my favourite guitar anti-heroes, Rowland S Howard.
Here's a link to the video: https://youtu.be/JSqxdzlbR0g
And I'm attaching the tab below. Backing track to follow in the next post.
Hope you enjoy the lesson.