Blog

How much practice should you be doing each day? This is something I get asked a lot by students and my answer is always the same; “well, how good do you want to get and how quickly do you want to get there?” First of all, let me say practice volume isn’t the be all...

Something I hear a lot from students who're new to vibrato is "when I apply vibrato to a string, the string knocks against the surrounding strings causing them to ring out."⁠ The best way to stop this from happening is to understand how to effectively mute surrounding...

Want to know when playing the guitar starts feeling easy? Well, it all depends - with consistent quality practice and a good teacher, it might not take as long as you think.⁠ There's a definite "pain barrier" stage to learning something on the guitar, but there's also...

Want to know what you need to have for a Zoom lesson with me? Probably not as much as you think. In order to have a good quality Zoom guitar lesson, you'll need 3 things. 1. A webcam. Whether it's an external webcam or the webcam that comes with your laptop...

Want to know what makes solos by Jimmy Page, Slash, Angus Young and other similar players sound so cool?⁠ Mixing major and minor pentatonic.⁠ There are lots of different ways to mix major and minor pentatonic and they each will give you a certain sound.⁠ For example,...

Do you feel uncomfortable using your pinky?⁠So did Andy before he started lessons with me.He was also struggling with synchronisation, feeling stuck in a speed rut and feeling stuck in the 1st position of the minor pentatonic when trying to improvise.⁠The problems...

Would you like to know why you should time your practice? The reason is to help you get MORE out of your daily practice amount. You see, it’s very likely you practice much LESS than you realise. Don’t believe me? OK, let me explain. How many times have you thought to...

Something I see a lot of people doing when they start trying to improve their picking is anchoring the fingers of their picking hand somewhere on the guitar.⁠The most common way to do this this is too rest them on the body of the guitar or the pick guard.I've also...

Want to know a picking question I get asked a lot by students?⁠ Which is better? Alternate picking or economy picking?⁠ This is a fair question, but it requires a bit of an elaborate answer.⁠ First of all, it all depends on what you mean by "better". By "better" do...

Want to know what one of my favourite sayings is? “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.” It’s important to have goals, it’s also important to have these goals broken up into achievable micro goals. But what’s even more important is to adopt guitar playing...

Are you avoiding working on something about your guitar playing that you're not good at yet?⁠ Or maybe your guitar is sitting in the corner of a room gathering dust.⁠ If so, please know every day that comes to you is a day you can pick up your guitar or choose to work...

Fast, palm muted "galloping" groups of 3's on the open low E string are a staple of hard rock and metal rhythm playing. These palm muted "gallops" earned their nickname by the way the sound like a horse galloping. Though this rhythm approach is based around using...