Modal Scales – Cascading Lydian Modal Scale

Monday’s scale exercise demonstrated how scales can be broken up into small cascading clusters to create a very useful to warm up routine. Today we expand on this idea and play the Lydian Modal Scale in cascading clusters of four notes. Remember, this technical exercise works with any scale, in any key, on any sort of guitar, [...]

Drowsy Maggie in Forty Minutes

To use a cooking analogy: this morning I wrote a recipe, put it in the oven for forty minutes and then came out with this freshly baked delight. For those of you who are not used to following cooking metaphors; I arranged some Celtic music, practised for forty minutes and made a video. So here it is [...]

Dan’s Cool Warm Up Exercise and Youtube Video

Why not have a go at this fun and enjoyable technical exercise I created at the beginning of the week. It is quite a finger stretcher so make sure you take it take slowly to start with and be careful not to strain your fingers. When I play this exercise I’m thinking 1, 2, 4 [...]

Your Daily Free Electric Guitar Lesson

On Monday’s guitar lesson I shared a couple of finger stretching exercise that I developed on my electric guitar during practice. Today I am going to share part two which will help you to develop another shape that can be later applied to more melodic ideas and phrases. The purpose of these sorts of exercises [...]

Friday Flogging Reel YouTube Video

All you need to learn a playful reel is a good video, a good teacher and a good transcription. Well, that and plenty of practice followed by plenty more practice. Speaking of videos and practice, here’s a little clip of me playing Celtic tune The Flogging Reel which I posted a lesson on yesterday. It took about forty [...]

Wednesday’s Ear Training Guitar Lesson

I think it’s high time we had some jamtastic ear training exercises for all you budding musicians out there. Let’s face it, many of us modern-day guitar players tend to learn scales, chords, songs and pieces by shape and through tab. In my experience choosing to ignore your ears and stumble on through is not [...]