St James Infirmary Travis

If you have played the melody to St James Infirmary and added in the root notes for the chords, you’ll already have an arrangement that sounds good. One of the ways you can develop this further is to add in more bass notes on beats two and four in the bar. This is like combining…

St James Infirmary Chord Melody

In this training we will be working on creating effective arrangements from melodies.

It feels and sounds great to be able to sit down and play a complete instrumental arrangement with nothing but one instrument.

This is not the same as accompanying yourself singing, although that is fun and valuable too. Chord melody is when…

Rhythm guitar techniques: bass note picking

This lesson covers a very effective way of playing chords where you split the sound between the lower and higher notes in each chord. This creates a sense of two types of sound combining, and it has a different character to playing all of the strings at once. You can create very propulsive and driving,…

Chordal picking

This material will develop your right hand technique so that you have some expressive ways of playing chords that showcase the resonant sound of the guitar. When you have worked in this area, you’ll be able to devise your own great-sounding ways of picking chord progressions, and you’ll find it easier to play songs that…