Lessons

Michael Romeo is the whirlwind guitar player with prog metal greats Symphony X. As far as neo-classical shred guitarists go he is defiantly one of my favourites, especially for his very unique approach to tapping within arpeggios and pentatonics. In this style file were going to take a look at some tapping shapes which will instantly give you that Romeo sound. Also there will be some arpeggio shapes and then a very cool way of shredding pentatonics in lick 5.

My first time was in the early 90's. I was about 17 or 18 at the time and the experience still gives me sleepless nights to this day!

A sigh of relief is heard over the streets of LA. The desolate chaos gives way to a peace which hasn’t been felt for some years. There is the slight sting of regret, but it subsides to the sight of freedom, a sign of hope, and the breaking of chains which bound hands for the best part of a decade.

Hi, my name is Les Davidson and over the next few months I’ll be giving you a series of Guitar lessons from the essential basics to the more advanced.

These have been filmed exclusively for you at GuitarX in London. I hope to remove some of the mystery from this thing called music and get you feeling comfortable all over the neck of the Guitar.

This first lesson is using the CAGED system for chords.

The what!!!

George Lynch’s lead playing is legendary. He is one of the rare breed of players who has the magic touch. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is about his playing and whether there was some collusion with an other worldly force for him to be able to play the way he can…hmmm, I wonder if he went down to the Crossroads like Ralph Macchio in the film of the same name. Was there a duel with a gentleman named Jack Butler, who just happened to be a spitting image of a certain Mr. Vai??? An interesting thought…

Hello again! I hope all you readers have been experimenting and creating new rhythms. In this installment we will be taking a look at 3/4 time as well as triplets, but first I would like to talk a bit about practicing rhythms so lets get stuck in.

Practicing Rhythms

A lot of students including myself in the past tend to just approximate the rhythm they are trying to learn, hoping that they will get it right eventually, but are unsuccessful, and wasting a lot of time, not to mention losing patience.

 Hi, it’s John Wheatcroft here and welcome to the second in a series of video lessons filmed exclusively for Alloutguitar here at Guitar X in London. Over the forthcoming months I’ll be showing you a range of techniques and concepts that I employ as part of my personal take on guitar playing. I’ll break each down and show you the component parts. Then I’ll give you some guidance on how to develop each approach, whether it by physical, conceptual or a combination of both and show you how you can then begin to integrate them into your own personal guitar style.

Hi, it’s John Wheatcroft here and welcome to a series of video lessons filmed exclusively for Alloutguitar here at Guitar X in London. Over the forthcoming months I’ll be showing you a range of techniques and concepts that I employ as part of my personal take on guitar playing. I’ll break each down and show you the component parts. Then I’ll give you some guidance on how to develop each approach, whether it by physical, conceptual or a combination of both and show you how you can then begin to integrate them into your own personal guitar style.

One of the most popular scales in the metal genre is the Harmonic Minor Scale but a common misconception is that this scale is used purley from its root note. However, it is more likely that you will find that most chordal backings for this scale centre around its 5th degree. This shift in the tonal centre results in it becoming a mode of the Harmonic Minor and this is known as the Phrygian Dominant Mode.

Let's look at the notes in an A Natural Minor Scale:

Ok, so what the hell is a semitone? Well, it’s the smallest interval available in western music. Now, whilst being concise and factually correct, the explanation above leaves the novice and sometimes even the more experienced player none the wiser. Before we really get going on this I feel it only fair to point out that I’m a self-confessed “geeky nerd” when it comes to harmonic accuracy and musical grammar!