Lesons Introduction

Lessons from the world’s greatest teachers and schools...

Music editor Jason discusses what you’ll learn from this month’s selection of lessons.

Choice is an important factor when creating, and it’s greatly enhanced when we have a decent sized pool of knowledge to draw from. It’s also an underlying principle that fuels Guitar Techniques in regard to styles, artists and ability levels; we want breadth so all articles have appeal and ‘real world’ use. This means if you want to play E major in different fretboard positions you will have gleaned this from learning How Can I Keep From Singing (p50). If you want to add some fretting-hand stretch to your rock legato, Example 6 from 30-Minute Lickbag will inspire (p59). If you’re keen to add 4ths-based vocab to your Mixolydian playing, we demonstrate how this can be done in Creative Rock (p82). And if you’re after some magic moments to sound more like guitar heroes, we do that too (Bob Marley on p32, Gary Clark Jnr on p60, Grant Green on p68 or Brad Paisley on p74).

As you can see, this issue is a great example of the benefits of choice, from the first article on Electric Guitar Mastery (gear, theory, technique, etc) to the last, where we present fresh alternatives to the 7#9 or

‘Hendrix’ chord. Think of all those iconic moments in guitar music that choice enhanced; Eric choosing to knock the control back for his ‘woman tone’; Ritchie choosing thumb and first finger to play Smoke On The Water’s double-stops; Tony doing a pre-bend behind the nut for the intro to Iron Man; Eddie using his picking hand’s second finger to tap on the fretboard inspired both by Jimmy’s solo in Heartbreaker and classical violin arpeggios; Slash fine-tuning a finger exercise to create the intro for Sweet Child O’ Mine; Hetfield choosing an unusual fingering for the clean guitar intro for Enter Sandman. And as you watch the wonderful Brett Garsed soloing with a slide this issue, consider how his choice of putting the slide on his second finger allows him to execute phrases not possible any other way. All these and many more are magical moments driven by creativity and choice. All of us at GT hope that you find this issue hugely inspiring for all manner of reasons, but primarily because we provide you with more choices to getting better as a rounded musician. Enjoy!