A sticking point for arises for many guitarists when attempting to solo over changing harmonies.  A straight forward approach of matching one scale to one key is effective when improvising over many rock tunes, but when it comes to the more sophisticated approach of matching your scale choice to the chord of the moment, many

Chorus Pedal User’s Guide  The last of the delay-based modulation effects we will discussing is the chorus unit.  When two acoustic instruments play the same notes in unison there are fractional differences in each of their pitches and timing.  These tiny discrepancies produce an effect called beating, an oscillation in volume equal to the difference

Blues Rhythm Guitar Lesson 10: Hammering On  The Major Third and Mixing in the Relative IV/5 A major characteristic of the blues tonality is the tension created between the major and minor third.  Utilizing the blues scale or minor pentatonic scale over the dominant seventh tonality of the twelve-bar blues creates this relationship melodically.  We

Scale Geometry: Two-string Horizontal Major  Scales Shapes Once major scale shapes are mastered in position, many guitar students come to the erroneous conclusion that they have mastered the diatonic scale.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  There exist an endless manner in which scales can be approached and expressed.  One that is particularly helpful

Guitar Improvisational Phrasing Lesson 1:  Introduction to the Play/Rest Approach and Basic Groupings It is painfully simple to distinguish a novice improviser from one with more experience  by listening not to what each plays, but what each does not.  A novice prattles on endlessly, stringing together ideas thoughtlessly and without rest, hell-bent on impressing the

The Three Basic Song Forms Quality songwriting is an interplay of variation and repetition.  Themes, motives and lyrics must occur often enough to build audience familiarity while providing enough new content to consistently engage their interest.  In order to facilitate this dynamic, contemporary songwriters have developed a few common song forms that recur frequently.  This

Flanger Pedal User’s Guide  Flanging is the aural cousin of the phase-shifting effect, using a time-based method to create similar interference.  Like a phaser, the flanger begins by splitting the signal into two pathways.  While one is unaffected, the “wet” signal is delayed by an amount indiscernible to the human ear (usually less than 20

Blues Rhythm 9: A New Form While the form we have used so far is one of the most common in contemporary blues, frequently blues progressions will add an additional IV chord in the second measure and a V chord in the twelfth bar. | I7  | IV7   | I7   | I7 |

Electric Guitar Tone Series: Phaser Effects Pedals  Having covered the more common effects of distortion and delay, we will now venture into the more peculiar territory of modulation effects.  The most common modulation effects are phase shifting, flange and chorus, which each split the guitar signal into two paths, shift the waveform of one path