Everything You Need to Know About Minor Scales, Essential Tools For Touring, How to Learn Fast Licks

And a much happier take on "Bark At The Moon"

Photo by Jordan McDonald on Unsplash

Here we are at the end of August already. What’d you work on this summer? Did you take some time away from the guitar, or did you spend some extra time practicing and playing? If you still haven’t achieved what you wanted, just remember we still have 4 months left to make a difference. Rather than waiting for a new year to drop, get ahead of it with Sept-Dec! If you ever need any help with guitar, recording or music, just let me know. I’m available in a number of places - including this newsletter(on Substack), Discord, social and more.

Hey, one more thing before we get into this week’s issue - I’ve always selectively worked with different causes, based on what means a lot to me. St. Jude and what they do, is one of the best organizations in the world. I’m doing a small fundraiser for St. Jude, and am already about 1/3rd of the way to a $300 goal. If you’d like to donate, you can do that by clicking this link. Every little bit helps!

Alright, let’s get into this week’s links!

• Joe Bonamassa’s "Instagram Do’s & Don’ts with a 1955 Fender Strat | Rig Rundown Trailer - A quick video, where Bonamassa talks about not being so precious with your guitars. At least that’s what I gathered from it. The comments section on this one was interesting to say the least.

• Guitar Tech REACTS - Q&A #12 | Guitar Tech Tips | Ep. 105 | Thomann - I loved this Q&A video from Thomann Guitars, but you really need to skip ahead to 1:26, where they go over some essential tools for touring players. If you’re playing more gigs, or going out on the road, these are tools everyone should have.

• 3 Minor Scales Guitar Players Should Know - Great video from Tyler at MusicIsWin, where he talks about the 3 most popular minor scales - natural, melodic, and harmonic. The video clocks in at just under 7 mins, but is packed with information on what makes each scale different, and what scales they work over.

• Your Minor Solos Suck… So Try This! - If you want even more minor goodness, check out this new video from Ross Campbell. Just like Tyler’s video above, Ross breaks down some minor scales, shares some licks, and gives us even more theory to wrap our heads around. Between this and the video above, that’s 20 minutes of minor scale knowledge you can get into your practice routine.

• Ozzy Osbourne - Bark At The Moon (Major Key) - Had enough minor stuff for a bit? What about Ozzy’s “Bark At The Moon”, but in a major key? Took a little while for my brain to get used to hearing it that way, but I kinda liked it!

• How I Learn Fast Licks - And Why You Should Too! - John Cordy shows how he learns fast/difficult licks. After picking a lick that you’d like to learn, it’s great to break it down into smaller bits and pieces. This is something I teach all my guitar students. Make sure that you pick something you really love, and that fits your play style. After that, set a time limit for yourself, where you’ll work on transcribing the lick, using tools like a DAW or even YouTube to slow the phrase down. Check out the video for Cordy’s full process, including a ton of helpful tips and some real time transcribing.

• How Much Do I Have To Practice? - This video is great for every type of musician. If you want to know how much, when and what counts when it comes to practice, this video hits it out of the park with its explanations. If you’re just getting going setting up a practice schedule for yourself, spend 10 mins. and watch this video first.

• Tomo’s Tips - How do I Know What Key? - Tomo Fujita answers one of the most common guitar questions - how do I know what key I’m in? Tomo gives some straightforward tips on how to easily figure it out. Also, make sure that you’re practicing where note names are on all strings, so you can easily find chords from anywhere - keep an eye on this newsletter, as I’ll be talking more about this in the weeks to come.

• The Marty Friedman Arpeggio Primer - I’m a huge Marty Friedman fan, so I enjoyed watching Ben Eller talk all about how he approaches arpeggios. It’s even cooler that he teaches the lesson on a Abasi guitar. Later in the week, Ben put out a fantastic video on how to make scales make sense. Not only is it important to know the scales themselves, it’s integral to know what chords they go over. Check out that video here.

• 137 Guitar Speed And Coordination Exercises | CHRIS BROOKS - I’ve long talked about how much I love Fundamental Changes guitar books - most of them are $20 in paperback, and half that price in Kindle format. I must own 4–5 Chris Brooks books already, but I just picked up his latest, because it’s one of the questions I get most from my students - how can I make sure both of my hands are synced up properly? It’s often that either the picking or fretting hand lags behind. Chris’ new book helps in a major way with this problem, with examples and his process that he made years ago to combat this issue.

• Robert Fripp in-depth: his quest to combine Hendrix and Bartók, what made King Crimson “problematic” and why he has “no interest in gear at all” - Robert Fripp graces the cover of the latest Guitar Player magazine. Getting an interview with Fripp, or anyone from King Crimson is extremely rare, so it was cool to see his answers to a number of questions on his lack of care towards gear, how he developed his playing style, and his 32-disc box set of solo work.

• Kingfish: The five pieces of gear I can’t live without - Speaking of gear, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram recently was able to announce the launch of his Fender Kingfish Tele Deluxe signature model. He also sat down with Guitar.com to talk about a handful of other gear he simply couldn’t live without.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading Six String Sunday!

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