Lessons | Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons

Fingerpicking for Beginners

8 July 2010

Today’s article is a guest post from guitarist Brett McQueen. I think fingerpicking was one of the hardest things I had to learn for guitar. I always had problems getting my fingers to be steady and independent enough to cleanly pluck a string. However, like anything else, you have to start somewhere and it just [...]

Exotic Scales

7 July 2010

0 Comments

Scales, scales, scales. They are what makes the world go around. Without them we would have to rely on boring creativity and originality. (Just kidding.) Having a healthy dose of scales at your disposal is essential to becoming a good guitarist and composer. Scales open up compositional doorways that might otherwise be closed to us [...]

Jam Track Friday

2 July 2010

0 Comments

In lieu of a traditional blog post where I wax philosophical on the musings of being a guitarist, I decided to spend my time today adding a bunch of jam tracks to the site that I’ve been meaning to do for a while. They are all on the Downloads page, and include ii-V-I progressions in [...]

Rhythm Changes Jam Tracks Added

1 July 2010

0 Comments

As promised in my Rhythm Changes article, I have added jam tracks with the chord changes for a typical Rhythm Changes tune. There are four tracks: two basic tracks and two advanced tracks. The basic tracks are the normal, standard chord progression. No surprises, with one at 110 beats-per-minute and the other at 200. The [...]

4th Chords and Quartal Harmony

30 June 2010

2 Comments

As I have discussed in previous posts, traditional harmony/theory constructs chords in intervals of a third. There is another type of chord construction that is quite common in jazz, called “quartal harmony” or sometimes better known as “4th chords.” Quartal harmony is most commonly associated with the modal jazz of the late 1950′s and 60′s. [...]

Upper Structure Triad Soloing

21 June 2010

4 Comments

Triads are cool. Without them, Bach probably would have been a hay baler or something to that effect. Without triads, I would probably be writing about air guitar or something mundane like the proper way to stuff your spandex before playing that 80′s high school reunion you got tapped to do. A triad, as you [...]

Rhythm Changes for Dummies

16 June 2010

0 Comments

Now before you get your panties in a bunch, the picture on the left is just for fun. There is no “Rhythm Changes for Dummies” book, though I’m sure someone has thought about writing it. If you’ve ever wondered where the “Rhythm” in “Rhythm and Blues” comes from, now you know. “Rhythm Changes” is a [...]

Jazz Blues Lines

15 June 2010

0 Comments

Sorry there was no post yesterday, everyone. I was quite under the weather yesterday due to a bad allergy attack from spending time in a house with three cats. Needless to say I’m not their biggest fan. Anyway, I wanted to start off the week by giving you some actual material you can practice with. [...]

Improvising Pentatonics

8 June 2010

2 Comments

I’ve been digging into pentatonics since starting my new practice regimen for my Six-Month Challenge. I’ve mostly been starting with Jerry Bergonzi’s “Pentatonics” book, which is very good. There are a lot of very cool pentatonic applications over certain chords that will give some very interesting sounds. I’m going to show you a few, but [...]

Chord Substitutions

26 May 2010

2 Comments

One thing common to jazz but found less often in other styles of music is chord substitutions. In its simplest form, this is the process of playing one chord instead the one originally specified in order to spice up the harmony, create different voice leading, or take the song in a different harmonic direction. If [...]