GUITAR WARM UP ROUTINE

Guitar Warm Up Routine

A guitar warm up routine to get you warmed up and ready to play in minutes. You don’t want to spend half of your guitar practice routine getting warmed up…you want to be playing! Following this 3-5 minute warm up routine for guitar will get your fingers looser, your hands relaxed…and over time will also help build faster and stronger guitar fingers, finger independence and speed and fluency too!

Warming up is an important part of your guitar practice, but how can you do it? There are lots of ways, but I like to use the 5 short warm exercises here. They use bends, trills, down picks, up picks and alternate picking to get both your fretting hand and picking hand ready to play. To make them easier to remember I decided to put them together into a short warm up routine to use at the start of all my guitar practice sessions.

Remember the goal is to get warmed up: these exercises are not about playing fast! Do them slowly and accurately in a relaxed fashion – this is important! Tension will not help you get warmed up. You can use a metronome if you like, but it’s not compulsory as long as you keep a controlled, solid time feel it’s fine.

So good luck with my guitar warm up routine! I find it works for me, hope it works for you too.

PLAYING A GUITAR SOLO ON A BALLAD (TIPS FOR EPIC SOLOS!)

Playing a Solo On a Ballad

Playing a guitar solo on a ballad is your chance to show the expressive and emotional side of your guitar playing chops! But there are challenges with playing a  solo in this style. How can you play a more melodic guitar solo? How should you use phrasing and space? Are there any tricks the guitar gods use when playing a guitar solo on a ballad and can you use them too? And can you learn how to play an emotional solo which sounds epic, or is it an ability you either have or you don’t!?

Stay tuned, because I think you can learn to play a killer solo on a ballad! And in this guitar lesson, I’ll point you towards 5 powerful soloing tips which are based on what you hear in the playing of ‘power ballad’ masters like David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Steve Vai, Slash and other great players. Follow these tips and explore and practice them and you will hear a difference when you step up to play a solo…and over time and with practice you can become an expressive and emotional guitar solo master!

 LEGATO LICKS – LEGATO LINES FOR ROCK GUITAR

Legato Licks – Legato Lines for Rock Guitar

Legato licks can sound awesome in your rock solos and in this guitar lesson I’ll show you 3 legato lines for rock guitar you don’t want to be without. These legato licks make a great legato practice routine or legato workout too if you want to improve your legato technique and your finger strength and accuracy. And the sliding blues scale shape I show you in this lesson really lends itself to playing legato, meaning with a little practice you can soon be creating legato licks and runs of your own.

After looking at the sliding A blues scale shape used for the lesson it’s time for the first legato lick. It’s ascending the scale pattern using a repeating legato pattern. Break it up into chunks to make it easier to learn and build your legato chops bit by bit.

The second legato lick is the kind of idea you might hear Paul Gilbert play. It’s a repeating blues scale fragment which is a useful addition for high energy rock solos.

The third legato lick descends the scale with a legato flurry moving down in octaves.

Remember to build these up to speed gradually and get the timing solid, it’s easy to lose it with legato licks like these and our fingers can start to run away with us! Also practice using them in your playing so that legato becomes a part of your guitar style.

KILLER METAL RIFFS AND THE ‘DEVILS INTERVAL’

Killer Metal Riffs and the ‘Devils Interval’

Put the heavy into your metal riffs with the tritone or ‘devils interval’! It’s been the secret weapon of heavy metal bands like Black Sabbath, Slayer and Metallica for years, now you can find it and start to use it to create killer riffs of your own. So get ready to learn all about the devils interval or tritone and how you can instantly use it to create crushing riffs like the worlds greatest metal bands.

So what is a tritone? It’s the distance of 3 tones between two notes. Of course what really matters is what it sounds like, and the good news is that it sounds dark and heavy, making it perfect for those doom-laden metal riffs!

Now we know what a tritone is we can look at finding power chords whose roots are a tritone apart. This is where the magic starts to happen! Hear me demo the sound in the lesson…instant Black Sabbath!

The theory behind this is pretty simple, but some example metal riffs using the tritone could be helpful. So see me demonstrate and break down 3 example riffs using power chords and pedal tones. These will help you see some of the possibilities and give you some ideas for killer riffs of your own.