If you’re just learning guitar, getting started with playing solos might seem daunting. It’s a big change to go from strumming chords to your favorite songs, to playing lead lines. The best thing is to start out easy, but not too easy. The more you challenge yourself, the better a guitarist you’ll become. Just remember to take everything in bite size chunks as you’re learning. To help you get started with solos, I’m recommending a couple that I’d learn if I was just getting started - one from three different genres. The feeling of learning and playing lead is amazing. Let’s get into it.
I’ve observed hundreds of guitarists over the years from all different skill levels, and the ones who are making a lot of progress often share a lot of the same traits - they have a plan when they sit down to practice, they know the people to go to when they’re facing a hurdle in their playing, and they’re endlessly curious about guitar and music in general.
But outside of all of that, there’s one habit I’ve seen that all of my favorite guitarists have - they practice active listening.
It’s cliche, but everyone has a mini recording studio in their pocket with them at all times. Not only is it stupidly simple to record your audio ideas, you can record yourself via video as well and see everything you were working on at the time, to truly pinpoint issues in your playing. But that’s not the only reason you should record.
Let's dive into three ways guitarists can use recording to see huge improvements in their playing.
It’s cliche, but everyone has a mini recording studio in their pocket with them at all times. Not only is it stupidly simple to record your audio ideas, you can record yourself via video as well and see everything you were working on at the time, to truly pinpoint issues in your playing. But that’s not the only reason you should record.
Let's dive into three ways guitarists can use recording to see huge improvements in their playing.
If you’re reading this post, congratulations! In the past 3 weeks we wrote rhythm and lead guitar, bass parts, maybe even keyboard parts and programmed drums. Last week we worked on recording our track, and now we get to the final week which is all about mixing and getting your song out into the world - this is exciting!
I want to talk about some of the trials and tribulations I’ve faced when mixing my own song, and some tips I’ve gathered over the past couple of decades of mixing music.
Welcome to week two of the Chasing Sound Song Challenge. Last week we focused on getting the basic idea of our song down, and I gave you some ideas on how to spark new song ideas. If you missed that post, you can check it out here.
This week we’re going to work on making sure our rhythm section is solid, and how to compose lead lines on top of our chord changes. I’ll show you some smart ways to get your song going quickly, and what pitfalls I ran into myself.
Welcome to week one of the Chasing Sound Song Challenge for 2023! If you’re not sure what the challenge is, recently in the Six String Sunday Club newsletter, I asked you to join me in writing, recording, and mixing just one song in the month of May. I’m going to share my progress with how it’s going, and I’d love you to share your progress too. I’ll be posting information about the challenge here, on Twitter, on YouTube and more!
Here’s how the weeks will work: Week One (this week) we’ll go over how to get the base structure of your song down (the “bones” of the song so to speak). Week Two we’ll work on getting lead lines, bass and drum parts done. For Week Three we’ll focus on recording the song, and adding any final elements (maybe keyboard, cowbell anyone?) Finally, Week Four will focus on how to mix your song and share it for people to listen to.
The “shredwave” band McRocklin & Hutch did a cool, 2 hour livestream where they showed viewers how to write a song from scratch. If you’re into shred and 80’s synth style music, you should check this out.
