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Rock Lick in A Minor | Guitar Lesson
This rock lick uses two different pentatonic shapes from the previous two licks – Pattern 1 (Major Pentatonic Root 5) and Pattern 5 (Minor Pentatonic Root 5). Like before, we have hammer-ons & pull-offs, slides and bends all combined into one awesome rock lick. Small details like the tuning of your bends, not over-sliding, the clarity\loudness of your hammer-ons and pull-offs will make or break this lick so it’s... -
Bearded Blues Lick: Bending | Blues Guitar Lesson
Bends carry a lot of emotion and feel. That is why solos usually begin or end with tasteful bending. You can bend a note up e.g. from the 7th fret to the 8th, or down e.g. from the 17th to the 15th fret which is called reverse bending and means you start on the higher note and end on the lower one. The best way to attempt a bend... -
The Bearded Bluesman: Ruan Graaff
Guitar Excellence had the privilege of recording some awesome blues licks with Ruan Graaff. So we decided to ask him a few questions about his influences and about his guitar playing. His “Bearded Blues” video guitar lessons are all available in our FULL ACCESS members area. Enjoy! What made you pick up the guitar? My mother’s side of the family was very musical. My grandfather played guitar in a band,... -
Setting Up Your Own Electric Guitar
Many of you new guitarists out there who can only afford basic entry-level electric guitars, get really disheartened when you pick up your friends’ guitars that are 3 times the price of yours and realise that theirs feel much nicer to play on. Although it’s true that you get what you pay for and there’s a good reason for the price difference, it doesn’t mean that you can’t make... -
Basic Lead Guitar Technique | Guitar Lesson
In this video, we will be doing an overview of the basic lead guitar techniques in the upcoming lessons. There are a lot of techniques to be covered so we will be just touching on the subject of each with a very simple example of what the technique involves. We will be looking at the following basic lead guitar techniques; the pull off, the hammer on, slides, bending, trills and... -
Open Major Chords – A, E & D | Guitar Lesson
These basic open major chords give us a strong foundation to start off with. There are hundreds of songs that use these same three open major chords, so by getting them under your belt, you will be able to start playing your favourite tunes in no time. The reason why they are called ‘open chords’, is because they make use of the ‘open strings’, which are the strings you see in the... -
Crunch Guitar Sounds
Crunch guitar tones are now part and parcel of the pantheon of recorded rock guitar. Everyone loves the sound of an electric guitar that screams! From the earliest rock ‘n’ roll recordings, where amplifier speakers were torn on the way to the recording. This results in a clipping and distorted sound EG: Rocket 88. To the early recordings with effects pedals that ‘distort’ or crunch the guitar sound like... -
Why This Is The Year To Start Playing Guitar?
Why is this the year to start playing guitar? Well let’s examine some brief history before we tackle we answer that question. On Woodstock farm on August 18, 1969 Jimi Hendrix played what is today considered one of the most prolific guitar performances. A few years later great blues guitarist Duane Allman and The Allman Brothers played one of many magical nights at the Fillmore East. Fast-forward to December... -
Guitar Love: Ibanez Hollowbody Guitar
The Ibanez hollowbody guitar and its’ various ranges has a strong grip on the Jazz community of guitar players. When I was looking into getting into jazz and getting a hollowbody, the first place I looked at was the Artcore range. The price was doable and the guitars were pretty good quality. The first model I owned was an AS 73 and I was really chuffed with it at... -
Learning Theory Through Chord Melodies
What are chord melodies? Why learn chord melodies or learn to arrange chord melodies? And how can learning chord melodies help me understand theory better? These are 3 questions that you may ask when looking at the topic of this blog. Firstly, what are chord melodies? Chord melodies, as the name suggests, are exactly that: the melody of a song mixed with its chords. The melody of the song is what the...