Six String Sunday is one of my favorite things I've been doing over the past couple of months. If you're not subscribed (link to join below), it's a weekly newsletter that goes out that collects the best of what's been going on in the guitar world. Whether that be something I'm working on, links, videos, or posts from around the net. Yesterday I put up an example of what 6SS is, by showing you my current practice schedule. Here are a few other snippets from the newsletter.
There's been so many good things going on for guitar players over the last couple of months that I could have included nearly everything, but here are six of my favorites:
Different Styles & Learning
I'm going to recommend some fun guitar related materials and gear I've been trying. The first is Jude Gold's Solo Slap Guitar book from Hal Leonard. Jude Gold not only is the editor for Guitar Player magazine, where he also does an amazing podcast called No Guitar is Safe, he also is a killer player!
The Solo Slap Guitar book gets into slapping, popping, different types of mutes, and some serious grooves. He's joined by a great drummer, and I'm learning a lot from it!
I've also been on a quest to try a number of different picks lately. I've tried everything from Red Bear, Gravity, Howling Monkey, signature series Dunlops and much more. I'm going to be detailing my findings of these picks, and what works best, who had a quality pick, what held up under a lot of playing, and what's cost effective.
I've been watching a bunch of different lessons on Youtube. Some of my absolute favorites have been from Music Is Win. Tyler Larson is a great guitar player who graduated from Berklee School of Music. His lessons and videos are interesting because he's also funny! Check him out at Music Is Win.
One of my other favorite guitar players, Greg Koch released a hour long clinic from Denmark. Greg is a beast of a guitar player. His albums are great, his attitude is amazing, and he's a great teacher. Check out the clinic here.
5 Warm Up Exercises - Find a link below to 5 warm up exercises I wrote up. These are some simple exercises that'll get your left and right hand going before tackling anything difficult. There's a pentatonic run, an angular exercise, string skipping and more. Try it out, and let me know what you think! Just click below to access the file.
Chunking - No we're not talking about something gross. I learned the concept of chunking from Troy Grady on the amazing Cracking the Code series. Chunking works for a bunch of different guitar related things.
For one, if you're trying to play fast, you can focus on one note and then the rest will usually follow behind so you don't have to think about a zillion notes flying through at once. For instance, take the 5th warm up exercise (from above) and try to always focus on nailing that 5th fret A note, and just concentrate on accentuating that a little more.
Learn all seven major modes the easy way - This has been one of my favorite lessons for students who are trying to get into modes. Guitar World breaks down each pattern by changing just one note each time. If you ever wanted to open up your vocabulary on the guitar, give this lesson a try.
Lick library - One thing I've found help me develop my "musical vocabulary" is building a lick library. You can do this on paper, or on your computer. Right now, I'm doing a bit of both. On my computer I make 2 folders. One is for riffs I've written, and the other is riffs I've enjoyed playing from others.
Inside of those folders I'll break down the riffs by genre or if they came from a specific lesson series. Finally, I'll use the tagging feature on my Mac to tag the files with genre or technique specific tags (i.e. country, rock, triplets, legato).
Every once in a while, I revisit this library and string together a few licks. It might help me create a song, or at least spark an idea. This library can also be good for practicing.
4 apps to help you learn music - It’s important to have a big vocabulary when you speak, even if you don’t use all the words all the time. The same thing goes for music. To get that vocabulary, you need to know the ins and outs of music theory, even if you don’t use that stuff all the time. Here are 4 apps that’ll help you learn music.
That's it for now! If you enjoy Chasing Sound and the tips above, sign up for Six String Sunday here! Thanks for reading!