If you start learning this one now, then, you’ll be ready to play it by Independence Day!

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1325

This tutorial is beginner level single note melody arrangement of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’.  I also have another, more advanced version for electric guitar.

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1386

And for students with more traditional music tastes, here is a solo classical arrangement.

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1431

Finally, I did a total face-melting version for fun with my Strat for this month’s video blog.  Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vApCViXkLo

I’ve been working on a series of tutorials covering harmony guitar parts.

The entire series is going to be about creating and playing two part harmony guitar lines in pop-rock style music.  This is often accomplished by one guitar part playing a melody, lead or solo part that is harmonized by a second guitar.  I cover the basic theory of melody and harmonization in major and minor key tonality.  I’ll cover the basic types of intervals & contrapunctal motion used.  I’ll also show how variations in tone & timbre play an important aspect with overdrive tone, clean tone, different pickups.

Every lesson will be culminate in a musical example that the student can play along with in order to put the ideas into practice with a working application.

In the process of preparing for shooting this material I did several demos.  This month’s video blog is one of those demos!

This is a technique I learned from listening to Deep Purple, Queen, and other rock bands that played wonderful harmony guitar parts!  I used this technique to an extreme degree in my “Prometheus” symphony of Stratocasters.

https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/christopherschlegel

Enjoy!

Christopher Schlegel Update 07-08-2011

In this new tutorial I show how to connect the 5 pentatonic box patterns using tapping technique ala Van Halen. The idea is to start with a simple lick that involves seeing and playing one pentatonic box pattern with a hammer-on and a pull-off. Then, we see and play the next higher box pattern with a tapping technique. Finally, you apply the idea to all the boxes & cover the entire fretboard!

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1277

This tutorial is meant as a kind of companion tutorial to my other recent ones on rock style guitar; the whammy bar one & the 70s arena rock.

If you aren’t a GT subscriber you can still get a free preview from this tutorial via the GT newsletter:

http://www.guitartricks.com/newsletter_archive.php?xid=aad7cd71fa

http://www.guitartricks.com/courselesson.php?input=bT9lPTFlZzI4OA==

I’ve also added another old song to my YouTube channel, “The Secret Detective”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Ij7b9_hBM

Enjoy!

Christopher Schlegel Update 06-25-2011

In this tutorial I teach some rocking riffs in the style of 1970s arena rock bands. I grew up in the 1970’s listening to and learning the music of Deep Purple, Montrose, Kiss, Van Halen, ACDC. These bands were well known for their powerful, energetic, melodic take on rock music.

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1251

Enjoy!

These are the standard tricks of the trade you hear whenever a blues player grabs the bar.

The previous tutorial on whammy bar was in a rock style and covered more basic info about how the bar works, how to keep it tune (or try!) and approaches the techniques from a rock player perspective.

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1219

But no matter what style you are playing, the basic ideas still apply:

1. Use the bar musically.
2. Aim for specific pitches.
3. Aim for specific rhythms.

And most of all, have fun with your whammy bar!

Christopher Schlegel Update 04-19-2011

Recently, I’ve been publishing a lot of jazz lessons.  I’ve published three tutorials covering the basics of extended harmony chords (7th, 9th, 11th, 13th):

Extended Harmony Chords Series 1
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1166

Extended Harmony Chords Series 2
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1185

Extended Harmony Chords Series 3
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1195

And most recently I did another series on the style of Joe Pass!  Using, of course, my Joe Pass model Epiphone Emperor.  In this one I cover the basics of jazz lead lines.

Joe Pass Series 4
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1205

I’ve also started another project.  I am taking my tunes from “Until”, an older CD that are already published (CDBaby, iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.) & making YouTube videos of them with scrolling lyrics.  Some of these tunes we once sent to singers, arists, publishers with the intention of having them recorded by other artists (for example, people that are better singers than me) and me making money from the publishing. 

But, of course, no one wanted to do my music.  So, as usual, I did it all myself.  My idea is to offer them for free listening to see if I can spark any further traffic or new interest for them.  The first one is up and running here:

“Sad Cafe” from Until by Christopher Schlegel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_m_etU7nJw
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/schlegel2

Enjoy!

I’ve been working on a new series of video lessons for GT on the the topic of Extended Harmony Chords.

An extended chord is one in which the triadic formation process has been extended beyond the normal three notes that form basic major and minor chords. Basic major and minor chords only necessarily contain the
1st, 3rd and 5th scale degrees.  Extending the concept further yields 7th, 9th, 11th and 13th chords.

In earlier lessons I covered the basic 7ths chords: dominant 7th, major 7th and minor 7th.

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=479
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=499
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=500
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=501
http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=513

The first new tutorial builds on those chords and introduces: diminished 7th, dominant 7th/flat 5th, minor 7th flat 5th, and minor major 7th. I show how to play each type of chord rooted on the E, A and D strings. Then, I show how to use them in the context of a ii-V-I jazz type progression.

Extended Harmony Chords Series 1

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1166

The next one covers various 9th chords from a jazz guitar perspective: 6/9ths, minor 9th, dominant 9th, dominant 7th flat 9th, dominant 7th flat sharp 9th (also called dominant 7th flat augmented 9th).

Extended Harmony Chords Series 2

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1185

I have at least one more planned on 11ths & 13ths!  Happy jazz guitar playing.

Christopher Schlegel Update 03-16-2011

The idea here is to demonstrate two distinctly different applications: close mic studio situation vs. room mic.

I’ve always liked the idea of room mic, because WYHIWYG in the actual room with the device. I can extrapolate what that room sound will translate to when I close mic it in the studio. But, this is a skill you learn from experience.

I’ve seen many times an inexperienced or hobbyist player hears that his fave guitarist uses such and such an amp. So, he goes to a music store or gear show and tries the amp. And he thinks, “This doesn’t sound anything like the demo.” These two videos demostrate that difference.

There is just no way to grasp how much the Reason Bambino stack mode sounds like you are close miking a roaring, modded Marshall stack until you put it in the right context. So, I did. And I love to be able to tell interested parties, the sound in those demo is all Bambino. One is close mic’d and run into a multitrack DAW so you hear what you’d normally hear on a studio recorded album. But in both I used no effects boxes or post-processing of any kind. The entire signal chain is: guitar -> cable -> Bambino. That is a powerful argument.

Bambino & Fat Strat Demo Room Mic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXR4LsyUsgg

Bambino & Fat Strat Demo Close Mic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFUxA7HxGxA

http://www.reasonamps.com/

This is also the project guitar I put together on video tape and made into a Guitar Tricks tutorial on how to assemble your own electric guitar! If you have a subscription:

http://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1121

Enjoy!

Christopher Schlegel Update 02-14-2011

My first original music release of 2011 is this CD with 11 tunes of Hammerhead Maestro guitar artistry.

As stated on the CD:

This is an album of original guitar-based rock-style instrumental tunes. I used two 1970s Fender Stratocasters, one Reason Amps Bambino, one Marshall 50-watt JCM800 half-stack, and one Create DXB112. I hope you enjoy the music.

You may be curious about the title. It’s a rough translation of my name in the original German.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlegel

Years ago, I read this in a book about name origins and was very amused by it. I told several people and one of them, Carl King, started calling me Hammerhead; then, the Hammerhead Maestro. So, in effect, the title is, Christopher Schlegel, Schlegel. Now, about the style of music and playing on this CD.

There is the guitar style of playing a few notes, with tact & reserve. Then, there is the style of playing a lot of notes, with less reserve. Then, there is the style of playing too many notes, simply because you can think of many more to play before the song is over. Eventually, we arrive at the style of playing way too many notes, with no reserve whatsoever. At this point we arrive in virtuoso land & the player simply enjoys playing as much as he can think of because his mind is overflowing with wonderful ideas.

There is one more level, beyond even the level of way too many notes. This is the style of Hammerhead. It is a style proudly and unapologetically trailblazed by Ludwig van Beethoven, Nicolo Paganini, Franz Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Art Tatum, Joe Pass, Yngwie Malmsteen, among others. Essentially, my musical heroes.

Anyway, there is no such thing as too many notes. The only question is: how many notes are enough? The answer is: as many good ones as you can think of and play before the song is over without losing the melody. Some of us can THINK of more beautiful notes to play than other musicians. I am one of them and I will not refrain from playing all the good ones I can think of.

Have a listen to the brief samples on the CD Baby page:

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/schlegel9

I’ll be posting more info about the individual songs in future updates. Enjoy!

Christopher Schlegel Update 01-26-2011

Happy new year!

I finished 2010 by succesfully updating all of my Guitar Tricks online classical guitar lesson videos to high-definition video and audio.  At the beginning of 2010, I had a catalog of 161 total video lessons grouped into 24 overall tutorials.  For example, I have a tutorial on Bach’s Bourree from the Lute Suite In E Minor.  Unfortunately, all these vids were standard definition, with amateur production values.  Some of them date back to 2005 when I first started doing online lessons!

This is one of those old vids:

http://www.christopherschlegel.com/files/Private/BachBourree1.flv

So, I spent the second half of 2010 redoing every single classical video lesson in high-defintion video and audio.  And I expanded some of the tutorials to include more in-depth material.  And I created a lot of brand new content also!  It was interesting watching my old video footage as a reference point.  Since 2005, when I started this business of online lessons, I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t in the context of a canned video lesson.  I’ve also learned a lot about video and audio production.

Here is the updated version of the Bach lesson:

http://www.christopherschlegel.com/files/Private/BachBourree01HiRes.flv

By the end of 2010 I was able to say I now have a classical guitar catalog of 304 high-defintion videos in a total of 36 tutorials.  They start with absolute beginner tutorial introductions and exercises, note reading exercises, single string melodies, then gradually build in difficulty through easy, intermediate and advanced skills, techniques & pieces.

In total now I have 1,340 lessons on Guitar Tricks grouped into a total of 198 tutorials.

http://www.guitartricks.com/instructor.php?input=155014

http://www.guitartricks.com/

As a result of all this video lesson work I never did get around to releasing a new CD of music.  So that is the first order of business this year!  I have a brand new CD done and sent to my web vendor.  More info on that soon.  Stay tuned!

For now, please enjoy this private rendering of the Bach Bourree from the Guitar Tricks tutorial.

http://www.christopherschlegel.com/files/Private/BachBourree.wmv

Happy viewing & listening!