Tapping With Modes

  Two-handed tapping is a fun technique that allows you to grab ahold of notes generally outside of your reach and often leaves audiences dazzled by its flashiness. While you shouldn’t learn tapping purely because it’s flashy, most guitarists would be lying if they told you that it wasn’t at least part of the appeal. But for all the awesome things a solid tapping technique has to offer, a surprisi

  A lot of guitarists will either jam on a scale or play chord shapes they already know. Scales and chords are often taught as separate entities, and many guitarists never think to blend the two. However, this kind of thinking can be pretty limiting. Within each scale lies all of the chords in that key. If you learn how to find chords in a scale, It can be easy to incorporate them into otherwise s

It can be difficult to keep track of all of the different types of chords, as well as their relationships to each other. However, understanding different chord qualities is important for songwriting, improvising, or just all around being a musician. I’ve found it helpful to think of different chord types as a spectrum, much like the color spectrum. Below is a simple version of this spectrum that c

Why Are Inversions So Important? After getting past the beginning stages of guitar (open and barre chords, strumming patterns, learning songs) playing rhythm starts taking a back seat. For many, lead guitar becomes too appealing to ignore. Improvising and learning solos is a no-brainer when compared to repeatedly strumming the same chords over and over. Did You Know That You Can Improvise with Cho

Sixth chords are often overlooked. They sound great and can add some wonderful color to a chord progression, but, like many other chords that break-away from tonal music’s standard pattern of nothing but stacked thirds, they don’t get much attention. Guitar methods and class curriculums often exclude them, teachers seem to sometimes forget about them, and many guitarists just never get around to r

  Have you ever been having fun jamming with some friends, only to have one of them yell “Let’s try a blues in D!”. Then you watch in abject horror as everyone else effortlessly jumps into a set of chord changes you don’t know and no one takes the time to explain to you? Teary-eyed, you watch your friends tear through some righteous blues licks as your unplayed guitar grows in your lap. When I fir

  Chances are that you’ve heard the word triplets before. You might even be able to play them, intuitively sensing how they fit into broader rhythmic structures. But there’s also a good chance that you don’t know exactly what a triplet is, even if you can play them accurately. Personally, it took me longer into my journey on the guitar than I care to admit before I was able to define what a triple

  When you first learn to play guitar, the focus is generally on big open chords that use all or most of the guitar’s strings. However, something that may surprise you is that some of the notes in many of your open chord shapes aren’t really necessary. This is because all of your basic major and minor chords actually only have three unique pitches in them. As a result, any basic major or minor cho

  Although power chords are a staple of many guitarists’ toolkits, many players remain unaware that power chords can be far more versatile than they are generally given credit for. By altering just one note on a common power chord shape, you can create an entirely new chord that still retains many of the sonic qualities that have made power chords so beloved. Additionally, it’s easy to

Trying your hand at songwriting can be an intimidating process for reasons, not the least of which is not knowing where to even start with chords. There are many chords to choose from, and not all of them will even work together by most conventional standards. In this piece, we’re to dip just a tiny bit into music theory in order to have a framework for coming up with chord progressions to your so