All Along The Watchtower Guitar Chords

All Along The Watchtower is a great song to practice your bar chords on. Many different artists have done versions of this song over the years. It’s a pretty cool jam tune, so if you’ve got a friend who plays guitar as well (or bass), why not rope them into a jam session, and you […]

Cool Arpeggiated Riffs with Triads

Here’s another lesson for you riff-hungry rocksters out there! One cool way that you can start looking for new chords to use is to examine the top few strings of the bar chords. Here’s a tip – if the notes are used in a chord, then they’re going to sound great together in a solo! […]

Guitar Root Notes Explained (With Chart for All Chords)

Understanding root notes is one of the most important fundamentals in guitar theory. Once you grasp this concept, everything else—chord construction, scales, and even soloing—starts to make a lot more sense. It’s one of the most fundamental pieces of chord theory you can learn. In this lesson, I’ll explain exactly what root notes are, show […]

Using Octaves in Guitar Riffs

If you’ve watched my Guitar Scale Patterns lesson, you’ll know that one of the things that I mention in there is the octave pattern. I think I’ve mentioned this in previous lessons as well. It’s a super handy little tool to find notes on the fretboard, without having to memorize the whole neck right off […]

Using Open Notes in Guitar Solos

If you look at your scales, and actually dissect them to see what notes are in each scale, you’ll see that in many keys, some of the notes you’re playing are also available to you as open notes. This lesson is more to open you up to the idea than it is to show you […]

Drop D Tuning: Chord Shapes & How to Tune Your Guitar

Drop D tuning explained: tune your 6th string down to D, then use these chord shapes. Simple power chords, rich bass notes, perfect for D/G/A keys.