Try These Exercises for Mapping Triads All Over the Fretboard
Using a triadic approach to mapping the fretboard can help you break out of ruts and develop a deeper understanding of the guitar and music in general.
How to Create Sophisticated Harmonies on Guitar with Cluster Chords
Here are some of the evocative sounds you can create using chord voicings with notes that are close to each other—just a half step or whole step apart.
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How to Use Rest Strokes to Improve Your Flatpicking Technique—and Your Guitar Sound
The rest stroke—similar to the fingerstyle approach used by classical guitarists—is a plectrum technique in which each downstroke lands on an adjacent string rather than passing over it.
Weekly Workout: Using Triads to Negotiate Seventh Chords
Learn to use three-note, three-string triads — you probably already know a lot of these chords, and in this lesson, you’ll find ways to repurpose them.
Weekly Workout: Building Colorful Chords from the Harmonic and Melodic Minor Scales
In this advanced guitar lesson, meet the melodic and harmonic minor scales and then explore the harmonies that can be generated from them.
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Generating Challenging Picking Exercises From Ninth Chords on Guitar
Let’s take a close look at a common extended chord—containing a note beyond the seventh, the venerable ninth.
4 Ways to Improve Your Fingerstyle Guitar Improvisation
This Weekly Workout will help you develop your frame of mind and confidence in solo fingerstyle improvisation on guitar via Tárrega's “Etude in E minor.”
Using Slash Chords to Strengthen Your Bass Lines and Chord Progressions
Slash chords are a small change to a chord voicing that can have a big impact on the sound of a progression, as we’ll explore in this guitar lesson.
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Guitar Lesson: Fingerpicking on the Blues in C Major
Here are three ways to play a 12-bar blues in C major on guitar, seen through the lens of the old blues masters.
How to Strengthen Your Picking Skills Through Efficient Patterns
In this guitar lesson you'll learn economy picking, which includes alternate and sweep picking styles, as well as legato techniques for your fretting fingers.
Try These Fun and Challenging Counterpoint Exercises on Guitar
Contrapuntal lines are not necessarily intuitive for most guitarists, but the approach is certainly worth the investment and yields dividends equivalent to sonic gold.
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Guitar Lesson: Using Augmented Arpeggios to Add Dreamlike Sequences
Lisa Liu teaches fretboard exercises you can use to play beautiful, dreamlike augmented arpeggios for soloing and composing in any style.
Make Your Own Blues Using Classic Guitar Licks and Phrases
If you look to the masters for inspiration—without copying them note for note—you can produce blues verses and solos that sound fresh and exciting on guitar.
Weekly Workout: Add Jazzy Walking Bass Lines to Your Accompaniments
Learn how to play walking bass lines with chords—a cool approach to have up your sleeve, no matter what style you play.
Improve Your Flatpicking Technique with These Mother Maybelle Carter-Inspired Exercises
In this guitar lesson, these arrangements of two songs by Mother Maybelle Carter will help develop your technique and understanding of the flatpicking idiom.
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Learn to Play Rock-Solid Rhythm Guitar
In this guitar lesson you will focus on tightening up your timing on rhythm guitar using a variety of different strumming rhythms.
How to Craft Dynamic Song Arrangements on Acoustic Guitar
Even if you’re accompanying a song with one guitar, you can create the same kind of journey on your instrument that a full band arrangement would.
Try These Fun Guitar Exercises to Build Coordination Between Your Fretting and Picking Hands
Take a deep dive into building independence among the fingers of both hands.
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Weekly Workout: Try These American Roots Licks for Warming Up or Composing on Guitar
Grammy Award-winning roots musician Cathy Fink teaches licks drawn from folk, country, and bluegrass, perfect for warming up or songwriting on guitar.
Weekly Workout: How to Use Harmonics to Add Texture to Your Playing
Learn how each type of harmonic—natural, harp, percussive, and pinch—is produced and how it can be used to add textural interest to your guitar playing.
Improve Your Technique by Practicing ‘Broken Thirds’ Scales
Scales are great for warming up and improving technical proficiency. Challenge yourself with new scales and patterns.
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Video Lesson: Using the CAGED System with the 12-bar Blues
The study of prewar blues includes a heavy amount of time playing in first position—between the nut and the first four frets of your guitar. However, as you learn more and more songs, you might be asking yourself, “What comes next?”
How to Play Thirds Up and Down Your Acoustic Guitar Fretboard
Lines based on thirds present great material for picking- and fretting-hand exercises, and also provide a solid foundation for melodic ideas and solos.
Video Lesson: How to Play Bottleneck in a Range of Styles
Slide/bottleneck guitar can evoke flavors ethereal and lyrical or aggressive and bombastic. From Santo & Johnny’s “Sleepwalk” to Elmore James’ “Dust My Broom” and on to Debashish Bhattacharya’s Indian slide musings, this approach delivers a wide spectrum of sounds, emotions, and cultural touchstones.
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Weekly Workout: Modes Demystified – A Guide to the Seven Modes of the Major Scale
Learn the major scale’s modes and how to use their distinctive sounds to create melodies and chords on acoustic guitar.