Fingerstyle training: Outside In

This pattern sounds great in its own right and prepares your hands for other patterns.

You’ll see that the pattern uses all eighth notes, and that the second half of the bar is an exact repeat of the first half of the bar. It’s called outside in because your right hand is using the thumb,…

Essential Grooves Part 2

You can never have too much rhythmic confidence and range! You don’t want to be stuck with the same three strumming patterns for all situations, whether you want arrange your own songs or join in jam sessions.

When you’ve explored this material, you will be equipped to play at different speeds confidently. You will…

Essential Grooves Part 1

When it comes to developing rhythm skills, working to broaden the number of strumming patterns, grooves and feels we are comfortable with helps us in a variety of ways:

It means there are more rhythms that are available to you in your own composition and accompaniment choices.It becomes easier to hear and transcribe rhythms present in…

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,…