February 20th, 2024
Electric Beethoven 2
The next in the series of Beethoven’s piano sonatas arranged for Stratocasters, bass & drums.
Piano Sonata 3 in C major, Piano Sonata 4 in E-flat major & Piano Sonata 8 in C minor (Pathetique).
November 1st, 2021
Climb A Little Bit Higher
This is an album of original songs with vocals!
The title track is one of my favorites.
October 13th, 2021
Electric Anthems
This is an album of instrumental rock anthems.
Apollo 11 was written honor the Apollo Moon landing mission.
June 29th, 2021
Symphony 3 & 6 Remastered
Last year I made time to remaster two of my old symphonic works.
Symphony 3 ‘Virtues’
Symphony 6 ‘Values’
November 11th, 2019
Combining Rhythm And Lead
I recently finished updating some of my favorite older tutorials that cover bridging the gap between playing rhythm and lead playing. Here’s a play along excerpt from one of the tutorials.
This is something that I’ve seen many students struggle with: making the transition from strumming chords to playing licks. This is because they require distinctly different physical techniques. Rhythm guitar techniques require relatively large size motions, strumming chords and riffs. But lead guitar techniques require much smaller size, precise motions in order to play a series of single notes that make up a lead lick or fill.
With that in mind I developed a series of exercises that combine both rhythm and lead techniques. You alternate between them, playing a simple chord or rhythm part for a measure or 2, then you switch to a lead fill idea for the next measure or 2. I started with very simple exampes & then gradually increased the difficulty.
I started very simple with one chord for the rhythm part and 4 quarter notes for a fill part.
The next one turns it up a notch by expanding the single chord to 3 chords to form a whole 12 bar blues and the licks are bumped up to 1/8th notes!
The 3rd tutorial in the series moves the idea to a fretted key. So it’s still a 3 chord 12 bar blues, but using all barred chords, while the lead fills are expanded to playing all the pentatonic boxes.
The 4th tutorial is a classic rock move using diads for the riffs and the fills!
The final 2 tutorials really ramp up the ideas to include fun and classic blues riffs and fills.
https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1849
Enjoy learning and playing some rhythm and lead guitar skills!
July 5th, 2019
2 New Star Spangled Banners
This year I made 2 new Star Spangled Banners! The first one is a solo classical guitar arrangement.
A few years ago I did a GT tutorial on how to play this version.
https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1431
The other Banner version is an electric guitar harmony arrangement. 4 part harmony lines with 3 Stratocasters & a bass! Enjoy!
January 20th, 2019
Gravitas
This is an original instrumental rock piece with harmonized Stratocasters.
Also on Spotify!
August 19th, 2018
Building a Blues Arrangement
I did a brief demo on using dynamics & variety in a dramatic way to build and release tension over the course of many repeated passes at a 12 bar blues form.
Then I did a whole GT tutorial teaching the ideas & skills involved in building a blues arrangement.
Enjoy!
June 6th, 2018
More Funky Originals
Work continues on the funky original tunes! I’ve got one with funny, freaky vocals and two instrumentals. I have lyrics for these. Maybe I’ll get around to recording them eventually! Enjoy!
May 2nd, 2018
Funky Original Songs
I’ve been working on some original songs. I spent some time last year covering a bunch of old funky tunes. One of my goals with this project was to learn about songwriting, arranging, recording & production by having to completely rebuild these great tunes, learning & playing all the parts.
It was also a great way to prime my creativity to write some funky originals of my own! Enjoy!