Guitar Tricks Blog

Being able to shape tone on your own is an important skill for any guitarist. Throughout your journey, you will most likely find yourself plugging into an array of different amps, pedals, and equipment -- and you'll want to know how to find the best tone possible in any playing situation.

Many guitar players think that you need 5 or 6 strings to play most chords like G, C, or Em, but the reality is that these chords are made up of only 3 notes (a triad) and can often be played on only three strings! Four of the most common open chords, in the most common guitar key of G major are the chords G, C, D and E minor.

Since the pentatonic scale has no half steps, and is constructed of whole steps and minor thirds (1.5 steps), it lends itself well to sliding up and down the fretboard from position to position.  One great way to connect the patterns as we slide between them is to take advantage of the finger friendly 2x2s or 3x2s in each of the 5 vertical patterns of the pentatonic scale.

The Circle of Fifths is a concept used in music theory that shows the relationship between all of the musical keys. The circle is also used to show the number of sharps and flats in a particular key, which is helpful to understand the relationships between major and minor keys as well. Finally, the concept gets its name because the Circle of Fifths is presented as a circle of musical keys, these are all separated by degrees of a fifth. 

In this video, Gary shares three classic blues riffs, or bits of vocabulary that are inspired by classic sounds we’ve all heard before. If you listen to the blues greats, you will hear ideas very similar to these. What you want to do is see if you can play them exactly as I present them with my guidance, and THEN, take the most important step, which is to reinterpret them, develop them, change the rhythm, start them the same, and end them differently, change when they start within a measure (we go over this in depth), change their direction. The possibilities are truly endless.

Everyone learns in their own way. Some don’t want to be told how to go about certain things and leave lessons learned in exploration and experimentation (myself included). Others may want to skip the long hours filled with headaches due to an overabundance of coffee and trust in what they already know and are comfortable using. With this guideline, I hope to convey a sense of where one might begin when piecing together their sonic arsenal in the form of the ever so popular and no longer elusive pedalboard.

Do you struggle to nail a crisp-sounding barre chord?

When we stop to consider the challenges that face us as a people, rarely, if ever, do we count lefties among the disadvantaged. But southpaws, those 10% of the population who are left-handed, live in a world that caters to the right-handed. Things like spiral notebooks, scissors, car radios, computer keyboards, and handheld can openers are all designed with a right-hand bias. So are things like guitars.

The playing style of guitar legend Jimi Hendrix has been analyzed quite a bit over the years, and as a result, there's a huge list of things you can do to replicate his distinctive guitar playing. However, you should always start with the following 5 core concepts that are absolutely fundamental to his playing.