I met with Jimmie before his CD Release Party at Buddy Guy’s new club. Not only was Buddy there, but Jeff Beck also showed up to celebrate his birthday. The next night I met up with Pete Huttlinger to record to lesson videos:

The rest of the summer I will spending getting settled into my new house in addition to cranking out lessons for GE and PG. I will also begin teaching at the Marion Music Academy this fall, so if you are interested in lessons, send me an email and I can get you the info.

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As you can probably tell if you have been to my blog before, I am a big fan of guitars and workshops. In my opinion, the benefit of being surrounded by like-minded guitarists for an extended period of time is invaluable. Even private lessons fall short because you are only exposed to one teacher. This year Austin Peay State University is holding their first annual summer guitar workshop and competition. Christopher Davis (who is finishing his Master’s Degree at APSU) forwarded me the info and it looks like it is going to be an amazing event.

The Facutly will include:

Stanley Yates

Stephen Aron

Richard Smith

Bill Pilburn

Roger Hudson

And several more.

This workshop will be focused on classical and fingerstyle styles and will be held on the campus of APSU from June 27 through July 3. Each day will be a mix of masterclasses, lectures, ensemble rehearsals and performances. The cost for the workshop is $550 for a residential student and $390 for a commuter student. I have been doing workshops and logistics for these types of events for years and I don’t think I have EVER seen a quality workshop that is this great of a deal. If you are considering going to study guitar in college, you MUST do everything you can to attend this workshop. I really wish I would of had something like this available to me before I started my freshman year at MSU.

I am sure my guitar teacher felt the same way.

(pic via Made Underground)

Here goes:

Alex Skolnick writes a great blog and recently has been posting about how some of his favorite songs have horrible lyrics.

I recently have been becoming an avid reader of AudioTuts+. Ear training was always difficult for me in school, so I was very happy to see them to a roundup of the best ear training websites around. My personal favorite is IWasDoingAlright.

Christopher Davis is not only a great classical guitarist, but he runs one the best guitar blogs around. To celebrate my recent move back to the Motherland (Iowa), here is an interview Christopher did with Iowa Luthier John H. Dick.

I have sung the praises of The Bad Plus here before. Ethan Iverson is usually to blame for their excellent blog, Do The Math. Recently, he posted a in-depth interview with Cedar Walton and a transcription of Walton playing “I’ll Remember April.”

Every musician has a particular way that they warm-up before a practice session or a gig. Guitarist Cameron Mizell outlines some of his favorite exercises in a recent post. I think this week I will write up some of my favorite exercises as well, since I just got a new copy of Sibelius.

Hopefully you take a minute and check out these posts. If you like them, leave a comment and let them know.

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It was over.

It might be hard to believe, but I was quite the rocker in my youth. I wasn’t at all familiar with Petrucci, or Dream Theater but I had never seen anyone play guitar that fast and was able to explain it that clearly. Since then I have seen a few really great DVD’s and a LOT that weren’t so great. Below I have listed my top 10 all-time desert island instructional videos. I encourage you to check one out that maybe you think you wouldn’t be into. Netflix has a lot of these on hand and also check out your local library for hidden gems among the copies of “Gone With the Wind” and “Howard the Duck.”

In no particular order:

John Petrucci: Rock Discipline

Even  though this earns a spot on this list for sentimental reasons, the information that John gives is incredibly solid. He covers many topics that guitar teachers everyday go over and over with students. In later years I viewed this from a purely technical standpoint since my musical tastes were changing. If you need to really get some technique together, this one is for you.

Pete Huttlinger: A Guitarist’s Guide to Better Practicing

It is a constant and never-ending journey to make your practice time more efficient. Going through 6 years of music school really helped me, but that isn’t for everyone. You can tell Pete spent a considerable amount of time practicing and thinking of how to improve his methods. In this video he talks about everything from making arrangements to working with a metronome and even some killer right hand fingerstyle techniques. I make all of my students watch this to not only see what is possible but to see how a world-class guitarist keeps on pushing to be the best.

Danny Gatton: Strictly Rhythm Guitar

There are very few guitar players who I could sit and watch play rhythm guitar all night. Danny Gatton is one of them. He has a complete mastery of his instrument that few musicians ever attain. Throughout this video his guitar sounds like a B-3, a fire truck and at times a hurricane plugged into a Twin set to stun. Even for the sheer “Wow” factor, you should have this around.

Eric Johnson: The Fine Art of Guitar

I first heard of EJ when I saw the video of the G3 tour he was on with Satriani and Vai. Eric’s music was infinitely more interesting to me at the time than the other two guys, so I saved up my allowance and bought this (at the time) two VHS set. It was amazing to see the facility Eric had and his playing really internalized the sound of the Pentatonic scale in my ear. The biggest thing I remember taking away from this was that I needed to be WAY more accurate with my bending.

Jim Hall

As one of my earliest and most important jazz guitar influences, Jim Hall’s music spent a lot of time in my CD player. This DVD has him playing some trio pieces and then taking them apart. I have been lucky enough to see Jim give a masterclass and this is an important document of how a legendary musician thinks about music.

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I was lucky enough to be asked to contribute some articles to the April issue of GuitarEdge magazine. This is starting to become a regular thing for me and I am really enjoying contributing to a magazine that is more focused on education.

Here are the links for the articles:

Style File: Russell Malone

TipJar: Rootless Voicings

Workin’ Band: Superfly Samurai

The article on Superfly was especially fun to write because I have known and played with those guys since I was 17 and they were sneaking me into bars. I would also encourage you to check out the tabs and print them out ASAP as there are a limited number available.

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Here are the links to the lessons I wrote:

Tip Jar: Alternate Tunings

John Mayer – “I Don’t Need No Doctor” (live)

Twisted Sister – “I Wanna Rock”

Three Days Grace – “Break”

Boston – “More Than A Feeling”

Alice in Chains – “No Excuses”

These transcriptions are only available for a limited time, so make sure to check them out soon!

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The book begins with a very helpful look at alternate picking. In this section Breakstone analyzes several common jazz rhythms and gives suggesting picking for each. A common myth is that all alternate picking is strict up and down. According to this article, all downbeats should be played with a downstroke and upbeats with an upstroke.

The etudes are in the category of easy to intermediate, but they are very melodic. A recording accompanies the book where Breakstone plays each etude and then demonstrates certain passages. Along with each example, there is a corresponding lesson that discusses the concepts used in each etude. To me, these are the most valuable part of the book. Similar books are not uncommon, but where the disconnect occurs with students is how someone got from point A to point B. This book demonstrates exactly how certain phrases and techniques are created.

Overall, this is a great book for students who want to develop their jazz vocabulary. Another added benefit is that these etudes are great for getting your sight-reading together. Many times while working through this book, I would just open to a random page, start the metronome and begin to play. Highly recommended.

Go check out Joshua Breakstone at www.joshuabreakstone.com

Disclosure: The author sent me a review copy.

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For many jazz musicians, Giant Steps represents an ultimate goal.  If you can play over this tune at a fast tempo, then you are a “jazz musician.”

Not true.

This is merely an exercise in becoming more flexible on your instrument.  That is exactly why Coltrane composed this tune and once he got it under his fingers, he moved on.

Here I want to show you how to break down this tune and make it into easy, understandable pieces. The first part of the lesson will focus on how to reharmonize a ii-V-I progression using a three tonic system.

Here are the basic changes of the tune.

As you can see, there are only two tricky parts to this tune.  Measures 1 through 3 and measures 5 through 7.  The rest of the tune consists of basic ii-V-I progressions.  Nothing too crazy.

First let me show you the basics of how these changes work.  Let’s start with an easy ii-V-I progression in the key of C.

The progression Coltrane used in Giant Steps is based on a three tonic system. Since we are in the key of C for this example, the key enters for this progression will be C, E and A flat.

The next step is to place our key centers.

Once we have established our key centers, we will approach each major 7th chord with it’s diatonic dominant 7th chord.  Like this.

So now that you understand how to reharmonize a basic ii-V-I using Coltrane’s Giant Steps progression, start to work on voicings that will allow you to move through this progression at a reasonable tempo.

In the next lesson we will start to learn how to solo using some digital patterns.

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Fingerstyle or classical guitar seems daunting at first.  Like any other style of guitar, however, the basics apply to everything.  The purpose of this article is to get you playing some beginning patterns with the right hand fingers.

The Basics

Right hand fingers are labeled with letters.

p=thumb, i=index, m=middle, a=ring, and c=little finger.

While playing fingerstyle it’s important to keep a generally straight right wrist.  Try this:  make a fist with your right hand.  Place the thumb along side the fist.  Then relax the hand and let the fingers curl gently, the wrist should drop a bit too.  That’s what your hand should look like on the guitar!  Just “freeze” the wrist/hand in place and play it over the strings.

Now place p on the fifth string, i on the third, m on the second, and a on  the first.  This is home position.  Just like with the left hand, the right hand use is limited mostly to the fingertips.  Avoid putting  the fingers too far back and having the strings touch in the pad of the fingers.  Here’s a few photos of my right hand in home position to give you an idea.

Now Make Some Noise

So far we’ve covered the basics:  finger labeling, the wrist/hand, and home position.  Now make some noise.  Keep your thumb in place on the fifth string.  Now snap all the fingers off the strings, and bring them back into the hand.  That is, play the strings, but curl the right hand fingers into the hand — it’s the same motion as making a first.

Do this exercise a few more times to get a feel for it.  This motion of the fingers back into the hand is the norm for all right hand playing.  When you’re just starting with fingerstyle playing, it’s better to exaggerate the motions at first, and work on refining and shrinking them down later.

Some Basic Right Hand Patterns

First, a word on planting or preparation.  It’s very hard for a right hand finger to miss a string if it’s already on it.  That’s the idea behind preparing or planting the right hand fingers.  As the following patterns move up the strings (going from the lowest string to the highest), we’re going to do a full plant.  At the start of each arpeggio all the fingers are on the strings.  Some of the pattern move back down the strings, in these cases work on bring the finger back to the string right before it plays.

p i m

Plant/prepare the thumb, index and middle fingers on strings 3, 2 and 1 respectively.  Now peel them off one at a time.  Or…

1. Plant all the fingers
2. Play p
3. Play i
4. Play m
5. Return all the fingers to the strings and start over

p i m i

Plant/prepare the thumb, index, and middle fingers on strings 3, 2, and 1 respectively.  This pattern is a little bit different, as it requires the index to return alone before it starts over.

1. Plant all the finger
2. Play p
3. Play i
4. Play m, while m plays return i to the second string
5. Play i
6. Return all the fingers and do it again

A great practice method for this arpeggio is to just do steps one through four, then stopping.  This just practices the return of i to the string, one of the things students have the most trouble with.

Eventually the beat of planting is combined with the thumbs motion.  This would turn the p i m arpeggio into…

1. Plant all the fingers
2. Play p
3. Play i
4. Play m
5. p plays, i and m return to the strings and the arpeggio starts over

Playing fingerstyle for the first time always feels awkward.  But just checking out some videos of great classical or fingerstyle guitarists leaves no doubt that fingerstyle players can be just as capable and virtuosic as the usual guitar icons.  Some right hand chops will only add to your skill as a guitarist.  Good luck! and thanks for reading!

One of the most effective ways of injecting excitement into a riff is syncopation. In a nutshell, syncopation is when you play a note on a beat where you probably wouldn’t expect a note. Now, when I’m playing guitar I tend to approach rhythm differently at different times. When I’m soloing I’m led by whatever melody pops into my head. As a result, the rhythm can be a bit unconventional. But when I’m playing metal rhythm, I’m all about the 16th note pulse. I keep the 16^th notes in mind even if I’m not actually playing them – for example, even when I’m playing a chugging 8th note riff I’m listening to the notes in between as well, and every now and then I might fill those spaces with little accents. Try it some time: picture the musical bar as a version of that board game Mastermind, except instead of four rows to put the pegs in, there are 16. Each peg represents a note or chord, and there’s ya rhythm.

As an example of syncopation I present to you a couple of riffs from my song ‘Just One Thing,’ which you can hear a rough mix of on my Myspace at www.myspace.com/peterhodgson The first riff has a note on every one of those 16 spaces, but some of them are accented chord stabs and others are palm-muted. The result is a steady pulse punctuated by jarring but kinda cool chords in places where you don’t really expect them, and this track has burned the brain of many a drummer for the first few listens. Initially it seems like an odd time signature, and it’s fun to watch a drummer take out the slide ruler and metronome to try to figure out where the ‘one’ is, only to realise the underlying beat is so simple that even a guitarist like me could come up with it.

Another way to approach this riff, if you’re not into the whole ‘thinking in 16th notes’ thing is to run the riff through a few times then only think about the fretted notes, letting the open-string notes in between take care of themselves by going on semi-autopilot with your alternate picking. That’s a method I find especially handy playing some Muse riffs where I’d rather enjoy the riff than think about the maths behind it.

The autopilot alternate picking method ain’t gonna help you in Riff 2 though. This one is purely chord-stab, with no chuggy muted notes in between. You need to pay close attention to the rhythm to get this one to work. Once again, imagine 16 slots. Okay? Okay. Now, in the first bar of this section, the chords fall on sub-beats 1, 2, 5, 10 and 15/16 (the last two actually being a three-note chug). Let’s try this with capitals and lower-case letters: BA-BA-ba-ba-BA-ba-ba-ba-ba-BA-ba-ba-ba-ba-BADDABA.

Obviously this kinda stuff is best used as a springboard for your own riffs and ideas. You could probably even use a 16-sided dice (you have one in your junk drawer, right?) to help you come up with random note locations. Above all, just have fun with it and don’t hurt yourself.

Download the TAB (PDF)

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