Most of you have seen or heard my name.  Tony has been the musician behind the lessons, and I have worked with Tony as the marketing guy.

Don’t worry, I am not going to try and take Tony’s place and teach you guitar. However, what I hope to do is to provide you with some quality material from other guitarists I know.  Believe me I have plenty of things to do.. so I have no interest in wasting your time or mine with junk.

Let’s go ahead and get started:

The first guy who I am going to borrow some material from (with his permission of course) is Will Landrum.  Of all of the teaching guitarists I know… Will is one of the best players.  He has agreed to allow me to share with you some of the material he is using with his online students.  Below are two teaching videos from Will:

Palm Muting and String Silencing
http://tinyurl.com/7f2kcaq

Strumming and String Isolation
http://tinyurl.com/7zkpfta

If you are more advanced in your playing and what something more challenging, then I would recommend this video tutorial video Tony put together several months ago, on using geometric patterns to your advantage when learning to take solos.

Anchor Points and Geometric Patterns
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B6GAPTp940&feature=related

http://www.songsurgeon.com/page/ssweb.html

NIGHT & DAY Difference! Both fantastic! Both fill a need! The electric guitar is nothing without its pickups. You can’t hear any sound without them. The single coil pickup, traditionally thought of as being found on the FENDER STRATOCASTER guitar, is made in such a way that it has a distinctive, clean, crisp and thinner sounding tone than the Humbucker pickup. Some good examples of what Single Coils sound like are heard on the songs: “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” by THE HOLLIES, “That’ll Be The Day” by BUDDY HOLLY and many of the early songs by THE BEACH BOYS like “Surfin’ USA.”

The Humbucker pickups are typically thought of as being found on Gibson guitars, such as the Les Paul model and the ES 335 model. They have a fatter, more dense sound than the single coil pickup. Some great examples of what a Humbucker pickup sounds like, are found on CARLOS SANTANA’S “Black Magic Woman”, BLACK SABBATH’S “War Pigs” and THE DOOBIE BROTHERS’ “China Grove.”

Humbucker pickups were developed because of the way that single coil pickups were made and the problems that were inherent in their design. They would “Hum” when played near florescent lighting or if the amplifier was plugged into a wall socket that was noisy due to bad electrical grounding. Humbuckers are essentially 2 single coil pickups that share a large magnet at their base. Each coil of a Humbucker is wrapped differently, so that the RF (radio frequency) signals they create cancel each other out. The only purpose in creating Humbuckers was to “buck” the hum that single coils created. However Humbuckers did not, and do not, sound just like single coils without hum. Since a much larger magnet was used and there were 2 coils of wire, the Humbucker created a much louder signal.

Today, with the advances in electronic technology, we also find guitars that have single coil pickups that do not buzz (Fender Lace.) You can also find guitars that have a combination of both single coil and Humbucker pickups on them, such as certain Fender Telecaster models. This is a nice option that can give you many combinations of sounds. I suggest you go to your music store and check them both out before committing to one type or the other.

Hopefully this little intro to the differences in these two pickup configurations, will encourage you to audition the two styles. With Christmas coming I suggest you hurry out and make your choice! I also would like to wish you all a Happy, Healthy and Holy Christmas season and New Year.

As I began to search for a really good topic for this week’s newsletter, I thought I would take a look at what the other guitar courses are saying out there. I even checked out “i-phone/i-pad” and “Droid” guitar apps. Quite frankly, what I learned was stunning and sad! You see, there’s only so many ways you can package and re-package the same old guitar instruction. For example, you may have heard of the “CAGED System” of understanding chord/Barre chord usage. Once you have learned that concept, you’re done learning it. Once you learn how to play a hammer-on or a pull-off, you’re done learning it. Once you learn the notes on the fretboard or are able to play complicated chord fingerings, again, you’re done.

While that stuff is important the question is: What do you do with these techniques and knowledge? Do you become frustrated because you have to go through months of theory in order to play the lead to “Mary Had A Little Lamb (the nursery rhyme?) Where have you gotten? What’s the real goal? What’s the next step?  

After learning the basics referenced above, it will normally take years thereafter for a guitarist to get to a point where they can think on their feet fast enough to learn how to improvise when taking a solo.

And….  THAT IS THE NEXT STEP 

Even if you learn the lead to “Hotel California” (a lead I absolutely love to play and respect as one of the best) it will not help you take solos on your own. So you see it’s just not any solo or song, but 4 very specific ones.

So, how can you learn to play improvisational solos in THE QUICKEST AMOUNT OF TIME? The answer to that question is simple but not obvious to see.  It took me 40 years to understand something that I knew back in 1975 and then a couple of additional years to develop it into a simple soloing system.

You see, I’ve played and continue to play as a full-time, professional guitar player/singer. I’ve played 1,000′s of songs. And after almost 40 years of playing and taking solos, a BOMBSHELL of a realization went off in my head a couple of years ago..It was this fact:  There were 4 songs that have LITERALLY changed my life.

They changed my life because after I learned them, I was able to IMMEDIATELY gather what I needed to solo on any song I wanted. And because of that, I auditioned for and got the spot as full time lead guitarist for one of the nation’s busiest Rock groups. Because of that, I’ve travelled the country playing with and opening for acts such as: The Beach Boys, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, The Pointer Sisters, Edgar Winter, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Ray Charles, The Dixie Chicks and on and on. Because of that, I have over 13 released CD’s and live my childhood dream of being a full-time musician — All because of four songs.

You know what else??  I knew these songs and was already using this system back in 1975 – I just didn’t know that’s what I was doing. That’s how I ended up being the guitar player in the 5th Division Army Band instead of an Avionics mechanic that I was drafted for. 4 Songs!
 
What do you want to do as a guitarist? Would you like to be able to just sit in your house and jam along to a CD? Would you like to get good enough, quick enough to join a band and be their lead player? Or maybe you just want to learn these four songs to catapult you into the next level, as I was blessed enough to get to.

You need the knowledge/tools and you need the chops to do it and then when the opportunity comes…you’ll be ready.

So, if you want to play solos that you make up yourself, if you want to take what you know already and use it to its maximum potential, don’t waste another second. Commit right now to take that NEXT STEP to getting where you deserve to be as a guitar player. It took me 40 years to figure out that just 4 songs can change your life. It did for me and now I want you to have those actual songs and the instruction to go along with them so that they will change your guitar playing life too.

But wait there is more…

In order to help you say yes to what is already is a bombshell of a deal…I am going to throw in a 2 GB Mp3 player (valued at $49) to all purchasers. 

Here is what you will get:

~~> Learn2Jam                               $79       ($68 savings)
~~> GL Master Volume                   FREE.   ($97 savings)
~~> 2Gb Mp3 Player                       FREE      ($49 value)

That is a whopping $214 in discounts and free gifts.

Learn2Jam will make a great gift for you or another musician in your life, and you can either KEEP the Mp3 player for yourself, OR include it as part of the gift and make a BIG impression.  

To get this entire package you MUST use this special link below. When you click this link the page you land on will display a window showing you the FREE mp3 player

http://guitar-1.com/sc/order/  

If you don’t see the picture it that our inventory of this item is depleted and  though you still get the 40% discount and FREE copy of the Master Volume, the MP3 player won’t be included.

p.p.s. An unsolicited customer comment:

Just want to say I enjoyed the Learn to Jam Course. I have a lot of CD courses from others. Some I picked up and played once or twice and they are still sitting on the shelf. With yours I’ve played the CD’s so many times now, I feel like I know you.

I’m an intermediate player but I think your course is very unique in that you approach the subject so that even a beginner can understand. I love the old school rock and roll and blues. In fact I have the SG just like the one you are playing.

Just a note to say thank you for a great course. If you should come up with a follow up course let me know, I will be interested in purchasing it.

R. Robinson

When you take a look at people that are successful and good at what they do, and analyze why this is so, there are several factors that can be identified.  Talent, dedication, experience, education, hard work and practice are all important components.  But another one, often overlooked is tools.  Tools can play a much bigger role that you might expect. If you don’t have the tools you need, things just takes longer… sometimes much longer.

Take a look…(click to go to video)

The BBQ Hero Guitar Bundle continues for about another week.  I mentioned this special promo to you last week.  If you haven’t yet taken a look – I would suggest you do so.  I

f you don’t buy that’s fine… but I just don’t want you to NOT BUY because you didn’t take the 30 seconds necessary to review it.  They’ve got all the biggest names in the business, such as Jamplay, Songsterr, SongPond, Singing Success, and Song Surgeon. They are offering and incredible package that gives you all of these tools for your toolbox at a 75% discount.

To cap the summer off, my fellow band-mate and Texas Blues guitarist, Hadden Sayers of Houston, TX. released his 6th original CD called “Hard Dollar.” Hadden truly is a fantastic blues guitar player who writes, plays and sings his own music. While attending his CD Release party last week, I had ample to time to sit back and listen to what makes him such a special guitarist. Not only does he have a killer guitar tone, his writing anything but predictable and his chops and technique up there with the Best of the Best….but his solos contain an element that is so, so, important to playing leads, and I’d like to tell you about it.

One of the most important performance rules is: “What you don’t say is every bit as important as what you do say.” In other words, leave spaces! Leave holes! Leave room for “dead air.” Let it Breath! What do these phrases mean? Well, when I take a solo, I think about what I want to play based on what my brain is telling me. Usually, my brain is telling me quite a bit and so I play it as I hear it. However, while I was listening to my friend Hadden’s solo work, I can tell his brain was also feeding him what to play. But there was one big exception: he left alot more space in between what he was saying in his riffs. He’d play a phrase and then pause. Sometime the pauses were longer than others, but I found that he was creating “tension.” The tension left me wanting more!

Now, I have heard and played with this technique from time to time, but I never realized just how effective it was from a listener’s point of view, instead of the soloist’s point of view. So, what I am going to encourage us all to do is take time to think in between phrases as you play a solo. It can range from fractions of a second to a second or two. This will allow us all a little more time to form our ideas before playing them. (Kind of like taking time to actually think about what you’re going to say before actually saying it.) In this way we will actually be creating better sounding solos. I would encourage you to try this technique. It will be another weapon in your guitar soloing arsenal.

It’s good to be back at my computer and writing newsletters again. Thanks for your patience and allowing me to tour the country doing what I love to do. Talk to you next week when I will share another soloing tip I have learned having to do with “building.”

Now that the blistering pace of the summer gig season is over, I have more time to work on a new product concept that I would like to tell you about.   Many of you are familiar with my Guitar Leads Master Volume set which contains 425+ practice segments, each with full and half speed audio, and tablature. 

Many of you are also probably familiar with my newer, Learn2Jam course, where I teach you how to solo by using four cornerstone songs as a foundation.

The new product on which I am working is a combination of the both of these concepts.  You see, every song is a teaching tool. There is something that can be learned from it. So what I am doing is creating a new lesson format that will contain full and half speed guitar audio and tablature just like Guitar Leads, but in addition, these lessons will contain video in which I discuss the takeaways from each song, and what we can learn from them that helps us become a better guitar player.

I hope to have an example of one of these lessons completed within the next 1-2 weeks. When I do, I will share it with you and ask you for your comments and feedback.  Please stay tuned.

By the way, I have listed our schedule below. If you live in or near any of the following cities and would like to say hello, feel free to stop by.  To find the specific venue in each of these cities, use the link below.  http://tinyurl.com/3bwxd6c

• ~~> Bay City, MI
• ~~> Clio, MI
• ~~> Kenton, OH
• ~~> Centerville, OH
• ~~> Malone, NY
• ~~> Mt. Vernon, OH
• ~~> Portage, IN
• ~~> Wise, VA
• ~~> Delpho, OH
• ~~> Mt. Gretna, PA
• ~~> McHenry, MD
• ~~> Beckley, WV
• ~~> Chicago, IL
• ~~> Weyauwega, WI
• ~~> Crossville, TN
• ~~> Mohegan Sun Casino, Ct

Once we get passed Labor Day, things will slow down a lot, and I expect to get back to a normal newsletter schedule.

What I decided to do for the remainder of the month of August, during my absence, is to run a 2-fer-1 special on Learn2Jam and The Guitar Leads Master Volume.

Buy  ~~> Learn2Jam

And I will GIVE you a copy of  ~~> The Guitar Leads Master Volume
 
And to sweeten the pot even more, I will knock the price down of Learn2Jam by 50%.
So instead of paying $149, you can grab it for $74.50. Both products run on Mac and Windows OS.

http://guitar-1.com/sc/order/

It’s a crazy deal for a crazy month and should more than make up for the absence of newsletters during the remainder of August.

Learn2Jam – Learn2Jam is a truly unique system that teaches you how to jam or take a solo by working with you to master 4 songs.  That’s it… just 4 songs!!

These four classic rock songs, once learned, will give you all of the skills, techniques and rudiments required to jam or take a solo to any song.  

This system is something I developed over his 40 years of playing the guitar– it’s a practical hands-on approach that I use every time I perform -- all 17 times this month — so it’s a real world system that works… not some musical theory that sounds good but is not grounded in reality.

Guitar Leads Master Volume – This is my original Hear It, See It, Play It course that features over 425 practice segments from more than 80+ classic rock songs. This lessons are bundled in flash files, which allows continuous playback at either full or ½ speed. Each audio segment is coupled with accurate tablature that allows you to follow along with the audio I have recorded and then, when you are ready, to tackle each of these licks yourself. 

This is a MASSIVE, must-have library, for any classic rock guitar enthusiast.

http://guitar-1.com/sc/order/

“…Why is it difficult to find a teaching course that stresses mechanics of playing, that is, tricks to help develop speed such as that exhibited by George Benson, Jay Soto, Albert Lee, Tommy Emmanuel and others.  I know about sweep-picking, hammer-ons, pull-offs, hybrid picking, etc. – maybe the “secret” is to use these techniques along with endless repetition until the whole mess is drummed into my head and fingers.  The problem is in my opinion, no one teaches these speed techniques.  Could it be that these are not taught, for example with video, by the pros because that would be giving away too much. After all, there are millions of guitar players out there.”

First of all, let me say thanks to “Moe” who sent me his question. I think he has hit the nail on the head. I myself have purchased a few instructional videos by Larry Carlton, Steve Lukather, David Gambale (Chick Corea’s Electric Band), etc… and although each one taught different methods of playing particular soloing styles, none of them taught the components of what it takes to accurately play the licks they play at full speed. David Gambale teaches you how he plays his scales and plays from slow to lightening fast, but doesn’t offer any help on how to anchor your hand or how to flat pick through the strings, for instance. Lukather shows you his solos to a few songs but again, doesn’t offer any means to playing the notes at speed.

I believe there are probably a few reasons for this lack of information of which I offer here. Like my friend Moe, I believe there’s a certain amount of “This is who I am and I’m not going to show you everything I know” going on here. There is also a certain aspect of them perhaps taking for granted that if we’re watching a video for intermediate or advanced players, that we better come prepared to be able to play at the speed necessary to cut it. And there might also be an aspect of the fact that soloing is such an individualized component of playing (wrist/finger/palm/pinky positionings) that it can’t be shared effectively. I personally believe it’s a combination of all of the above and maybe others not mentioned here.

In light of the lack of available teaching tools out there, let me propose something.

How about all of you who are reading this e-mail, go to my blog (http://blog.guitar-leads.com) and leave a comment offering your experiences and technique for playing in proper time? Everyones comments will then be available for all to see.    

This will be a great way to share what we all know in response to learning how to build up speed while taking solos, whether we are beginning, intermediate or advanced. I will go ahead and read them and in my next newsletter, condense the best ideas and offer them to all of you. This will be a blast and has to lead to improvement for all of us. I will also add my personal techniques for speed soloing. (I’m not a speed monster, but I will tell you what I know and do to perform.)