“In France they Kiss on Main Street” (Jaco Pastorius)
This inspired piece of bassage from the febrile fingers of the late great Jaco Pastorius graced the smouldering live Joni Mitchel album, “Shadows & Light” and has long exerted a spell over me. I finally settled to transcribe the first verse and interlude and discovered a wealth of fascinating lines, infused with great rhythmic and […]
Piano Practice Tip of the day #1
Practice for pristine fast passages: Raised Fingers Raised fingers in slow scale practice. If you’ve ever listened to the great pianists play, it’s dazzling how pristine their single line fast passages are. Magical and pearl like evenness. The solution to this is the raised fingers approach in scale practice. When practicing scales and arpeggios slowly (and you should be practicing them slowly), raise each […]
Troubleshooting Chord Strumming On the Guitar
Strumming chords is essential “bread & butter” technique for accompanying songs with the guitar, and yet it is suprisingly hard to do well. Here’s a short checklist you can run through each time you practice to ensure that you’re getting the best possible sound. Fretting Hand Are all the desired the notes ringing […]
Ten Essential Principles of Productive Practice
Practice is the key to progress, but without effective tactics, you’re liable to get nowhere fast and give up in frustation. Here are ten red-hot tips for enhancing your practice sessions and making sure you get the most out of your precious practice time! 1 – “Break it up!” – the undeniable utility of “Small-Chunking” […]
▶ ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’ – Mr.B The Gentleman Rhymer – YouTube
The inimitable Mr B playing his unique take on the George Formby classic… Originally posted 2015-06-19 23:00:39.
Rockabilly Swing Rhythm Guitar
Hey folks…here’s a little Rockabilly / Swing to wet your appetite, inspired by messing around with “Stray Cat Strut” by The Stray Cats (doh!). What’s interesting to me is how you can combine a variety of subtle techniques to add depth to a simple chord progression…welcome to the lost art of rhythm guitar! Here’s the […]
5 Perfect Practice Points to Picking Perfection
(or “What to should I be practicing on the guitar???”) So you’ve finally decided to take learning the guitar seriously? Good for you! You love the music, you’re enthusiastic and you’re raring to go… Or maybe you find yourself longing to play well but daunted amount of information about how to play….we are living […]
Improvising Blues Basslines
A Short Guide to Improvising Blues Basslines Improvising Blues basslines is a very important skill for all backing players. This is the ability improvise variations on a basic bassline while playing. In this lesson I’ve chose a very basic stock groove that you’ll have no doubt heard before and then demonstrate various ways you can create […]
Paul Barton Piano Tutorials
Hey folks, I just wanted to big up Paul Burton for making such great tutorials on youtube. He’s a fantastic pianist as you can hear on his channel here http://www.youtube.com/user/PaulBartonPiano , and he’s also done some fantastic tutorials on learning some wonderful but advanced pieces of the repertoire. His insights and ideas about practice methods […]
Roleplaying for Guitarists
(or 101 things you can do with a guitar) Hey folks…I’m back again and I’m here to tell you about all the wonderful things you can do with a guitar! Seriously…aside from music you can employ it for a variety of manual tasks such as improvising a hammer, a cricket bat or even going as […]
