Lick: Hammer-On From Nowhere based lick.

Here's a lick which heavily focuses on legato techniques for the guitar, this lick includes hammer-ons, pull-offs, tapping and hammer-ons from nowhere (heavily heard in a lot of Greg Howe's playing).

The notes conform to F# Mixolydian, but the lick could be used in other applications.

Here's the tablature and the notation for the lick:

While the tab ends after two repeats, it is possible to repeat this lick over until you feel comfortable with the legato pattern.

To get the most out of this lick, transpose it to other keys, also come up with your own licks which use a wide array of legato techniques.

Black Napkins style backing track.

Here's a new backing track, in the style of the song "Black Napkins" by Frank Zappa. This backing is a two chord idea in 3/4. The two chords used in this song are C#m7 and Dmaj7. Appropriate scales that could be used are the C# Natural minor, minor pentatonic, or Dorian scale, similarly to some of the ideas which are played in the original recording of the song Black Napkins. Though I would recommend experimenting with different notes over the Dmaj7 chord.

Here is the link to an mp3 file of the backing track:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15967191/Black%20Napkins%20Style%20Backing%20Track.mp3

I'll note that this is not intended to be an exact backing track to Frank Zappa's Black Napkins, it's merely a tool to aid the practice of soloing and improvising, however, as my demonstration video shows, it is possible to play the main themes to the original song over this backing track with no transposition.

I hope this helps anyone and I hope you have fun jamming to it!

Thanks!

Steve Vai style sweep picking exercise.

Steve Vai's sweeping technique often sounds much deeper and more developed than the average sweeping that's heard throughout metal music and neo-classical style shredders such as Yngwie Malmsteen.
I spent a lot of my early days of playing guitar wondering how Steve Vai got such a different sound to other virtuoso guitar players and it perplexed me!
This of course changed once I got into Jazz and other genres in which this sort of sound was more common. The incredibly fluid and decorated sound to Steve Vai's sweeping is the use of extended chords as opposed to the average minor arpeggios you'll hear quite commonly from sweepers.

Of course Steve Vai isn't the only guitarist to utilise extended chords in his sweeping, but it's a pretty good example to use!

Now, in this lesson we will take a look at one sweeping excersise which I have developed to give you an insight to this idea of sweeping with extended chord shapes.

First, here's a sweeping shape which is used in a few "Steve Vai style" sweeping lessons around the internet, it's found in the solo to Shyboy by David Lee Roth which featured Vai on the guitar, this sweep pattern outlines a Minor 11 chord (though I could stand corrected by some chord gurus!):

This particular pattern outlines a D Minor 11 chord, I would suggest practicing this shape up and down (and in different positions on the neck) as it is quite good for improving your sweeping, it also sounds very impressive if you're into flashy playing!

To finish off the sweeping excersise we will add a Major 7 arpeggio onto this Minor 11 shape:

This shape outlines an F Major 7 and is a very intuitive sweeping pattern making it feel a bit more comfortable than some odd shapes which are out there!

So the whole excersise will look something like this:

It's a very short and simple (if you're already comfortable with sweep picking that is) exercise, but hopefully it will spark some inspiration in coming up with extended sweeped arpeggios.

As with any excersise, try to implement it musically into your playing, move it to different keys, and practice it over a backing track to make sure it's used correctly!

I hoped this has helped and if you have any questions you can email me at rory.guitarist@gmail.com
Or you can contact me on any of my social networking pages:
http://www.twitter.com/Rerellison
http://www.youtube.com/roryrockssocks
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Rory-Butler/135674026499846

Beginners: Introduction to playing the Guitar (part 3)

This is the final installment of my series of beginners guitar lessons.
In this lesson we'll cover the basics of using scales and how to read tablature.

A scale is a group of notes which sound good together (to put it into very basic terms!).
The most common scale for modern guitarists would be the Minor pPntatonic scale, which is a 5 note scale heard very often in blues playing (though a lot of rock players use it, i.e. Slash, Jimmy Page, etc, and some metal players enjoy to utilise it i.e. Zakk Wylde, Kirk Hammett, etc. It's also a scale which can be used effectively in genres such as Jazz).
Other common scales used by guitarsts are the Major, Major Pentatonic, Natural Minor, Harmonic Minor and Melodic Minor scales. Though we won't look into these in this lesson.

To move back onto the Minor Pentatonic scale, I have transcribed the E Minor Pentatonic scales in tablature (tab) here.I have chosen the E Minor Pentatonic as it gives an easy starting point for grasping the "shape" of the minor pentatonic scale due to a large number of open notes:

You may be a bit confused by this if you haven't come across any tabs before.
What tablature is essentially is a visualisation of the fretboard. With each line representing a string (the bottom line being your thickest (E) string). What the numbers represent is the fret number. So for example a "0" will mean that you play the string without fretting a note. Where a "3" means you put a finger on the third fret (on most guitars this will be the first fret which has a dot on the fretboard).
If you've followed my previous lessons or have searched the internet prior to this you will most likely find it rather simple to fret these notes. If not you may find you have to press quite hard on the string to allow the note to ring out correctly when you pick.
However this is just a case of getting your fingers used to the guitar.

What I suggest you do with this scale, is play each note as it is written in the tab, then play it backwards, like this:

This will get you comfortable with the scale, and eventually with practice you'll be able to play this faster each time.
Also, similarly to my previous lesson on rhythm, I suggest you change your picking pattern up occasionally. So while you may instinctively think to down-pick each note, try alternate picking the scale (which is a down-up-down-up pattern), or even try only using up-strokes, this is a bit unorthadox but it may help with your up-strokes (which always feel the most un-intuitive to do).

I want to point out that this scale shape I have taught you, is not the only shape in the E Minor Pentatonic, the notes which are in the E Minor Pentatonic are repeated across the entire neck of the guitar. But I won't go into that here, if you want to go further into the pentatonic scale there are loads of lessons on it online and it will be very easy to find the other shapes on the neck online.

Also, I'd like to state that this shape can be used across the neck, though this will change the key of the scale. The example I've given is the E Minor Pentatonic because the root note (the note it starts on) is an E.
If you moved this shape to start on the fifth fret of the E string it would become the A Minor Pentatonic, as it starts on an A, like so:

Hopefully this lesson has given any readers a good grounding in scales and reading tablature, I suggest that you practice these fairly often as you will start off playing them quite slow, though in using these scales as excersises you will find that your playing will speed up, not just when playing these scale shapes, but in general.

Now that you've read these beginner lessons you are pretty much able to tackle any simple tab or chord chart that you may find online!
What I'd suggest now is to learn a few of your favourite songs to see how these sort of things are implemented in music.

I may do some more lessons in a similar manner to these last three which will tackle things such as slightly more advanced chords and more scales if there is any interest.

I hope this helped anyone and I thank you for reading.
If there are any questions regarding this lesson email me at Rory.guitarist@gmail.com or reach me through any of my social networking pages:
http://www.twitter.com/Rerellison
http://www.youtube.com/roryrockssocks
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Rory-Butler/135674026499846
Thanks!

Backing Track: Smooth idea in C#Dorian/E Lydian.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7UMlcfNIno

This backing track is simply two chords. C# Minor and E Major 7. This ensures that you can easily practice modulating between Dorian (C# Minor) and Lydian (E Maj7) ideas.

To download this backing track follow this link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15967191/C%23%20Dorian%20E%20Lydian%20Smooth%20backing%20track.mp3

Beginners: Introduction to playing the Guitar (part two)

In this second part of my beginner lessons for playing the guitar we will put what was learnt in the first part into context. Playing single chords can be fun in itself, but it's nothing compared to actually putting those chords with other chords and bringing us closer to our goal, which is creating music.

This lesson will aid you in the daunting task of changing chords, and will bring your into the wonderful world of rhythm.

Let's start of with a very simple excersise in chord changing.
This will use the D chord, the C chord and the E chord.

Look at this diagram:

What this diagram means, is that you play the D chord four times (note that there are 4 "slashes"), the C chord four times (again, look at the slashes) and then the E chord eight times (to ensure you keep correct timing think of this as two lots of four strums).

Play each chord for the same amount of time (it may help to have a metronome or go to a website such as metronomeonline.com going so that you can play a chord each time the metronome clicks) to keep the rhythm even.

For this excersise I would recommend using all downstrokes (meaning you pick towards the floor).
At first it may feel awkward and hard to change the chord position, but if you keep practicing it will get much easier.

Some other chord progressions that sound good for this excersise are:

A G D D

Am C E E

Dm G C C

Em C D D

Also try to put your own chord progressions together, work out which chords sound good with each other!
If you feel comfortable changing chords at a steady pace with down strokes try adding some up strokes in (meaning picking towards the ceiling).

Some common picking patterns are:

Down Up Down Up etc etc.
This is an alternating pattern where you move your picking hand up and down as you play the chords. This can feel more natural than all downstrokes (or all upstrokes!)

Down Down Up Down etc
This pattern gives your playing a bit more of a spontanious dynamic, often heard in "campfire" songs.

Try out your own picking sequences, mix down and upstrokes together to find some interesting sounds.
I hope this is of some help!

Thanks for reading.
Next lesson we will have a brief look into scales.
If you have any questions, please comment on this blog post, email me at rory.guitarist@gmail.com or get to me at any of my networking sites:
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http://www.myspace.com/roryrockssocks

Backing Track: Calling Card style jam track in Gm.

This jam track is very reminiscent of Rory Gallagher's song "Calling Card".
It is in the key of G Minor and in the time signature of 12/8 and is based around two chords, a Gm7 and a Cm. So the G natural minor or minor pentatonic works well throughout the backing track. But it can add a nice flavour if you play in C Dorian over the C Minor chord.

The backing track, similarly to the song has various stops which last for one bar. These stops are every 11 bars. So if you count as you play you'll effectively be able to pre-empt these stops and work some cool licks into them.

To get this backing track follow this link:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15967191/calling%20card%20backing%20track.mp3

Enjoy!