The long road to 500!
Plus, tips for making guitar your daily gig
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ve been putting out Six String Sunday for as long as I can remember. It’s been on Mailchimp, Convertkit and now Substack (whose community I love). I feel like being here on Substack has shown the newsletter to even more people, and I love interacting with everyone on the platform.
So what did we hit? 500 subs! I know, it might not sound like a huge number, but that’s 500 amazing guitarists in our little slice of the internet. If you read the newsletter, you likely love learning guitar, talking about music, and geeking out over gear.
If you want to laugh, here’s what the first logo for the site/newsletter looked like. We’ve come a long way!
This newsletter has always been a labor of love, and it’s my favorite thing I do for Chasing Sound every week. Whether this is your first issue, or you’ve been here since way back in (checks notes) 2016, thank you for reading! Now, onto this week’s links.
This week’s guitar links!
You're Practicing These 5 Exercises Wrong! - I loved this video from Chase Maddox. It's filled with great advice on some of the most common things you might be practicing, and how to practice them better. Things like descending scales, using chromaticism, and how you should always strive to practice in a musical, rather than a robotic context. If you watch any video this week, this might be the one you get the most mileage out of.
ADAM NEELY GUITAR LESSON (17 Levels of Neely Pentatonics) - Adam Neely recently sat down with Rotem Sivan to drop a ton of great knowledge about how he practices pentatonics. While Neely is a bass player, this information translates just fine to guitar. There are some helpful ideas that seem to be inspired by the Advancing Guitarist (things like the unitar, etc.). I had a lot of fun watching this one.
Tomo Fujita's Tips For Making Guitar A Career (a video interview) - Back to back to back guitar tips? You know that's what I love to watch! In this video, the always awesome Blake Wyland had Berklee teacher Tomo Fujita on his Tone Mob podcast. Tomo shares his guitar wisdom that'll most likely be helpful for anyone watching - whether you're a student, a teacher, or just love guitar in general. I love the way Tomo thinks about guitar and life, and his passion for both comes through in this interview.
Scott Henderson's Stacked Fifths Workout - Back when I was going to school for music, we all geeked out over Scott Henderson and his work in Tribal Tech. I hadn't heard anyone like him at the time (except maybe Jeff Beck, tonally). In this video, David from Late Night Lessons shows us Scott's stacked fifths workout. Not only is this a great warmup, I think it could also lead to some pretty cool lines, and help you target notes throughout the fretboard.
Self-Doubt, Failure, And Why You MUST Keep Going - Ben Eunson is a monster jazz guitarist. Turns out, he also drops some great knowledge from time to time. His latest video is a short, inspiring video that pushes us all to keep going with guitar, and realize that each guitarist is unique in their own right. This video was especially timely this week as this newsletter has been going on for years and we hit that new subscriber milestone!
The Paul Reed Smith SE (student edition): A Short History - If you've never checked out Five Watt World's short histories series, you should give them a shot. Someone compared them to “bob ross for guitar”. I’m a huge fan of what PRS and co. are doing with their SE line, especially over the past couple of years. I truly feel like they're making some affordable guitars that you could actually gig and record with. FWW did a great short history on how the brand came to be, and all the great guitars that they put out along the way.
Eric Johnson 101 with Andy Wood - I linked to the 100 Guitarists series from Premier Guitar a few weeks ago, but I had to link their latest episode. The guys sit down with none other than Andy Wood to talk all about why Eric Johnson has been so influential over the past couple of decades. Andy talks about EJ's gear, some songs of Eric's that made a big impact on him, and some "homework" on what you should learn to get the most out of Eric's style.
“I asked if I could take six strings off and try it and he goes, ‘If you buy it, you can do whatever you want’”: A new Eddie Van Halen-narrated documentary details how he got hooked on modding guitars – and subsequently created Frankenstein - Icons Remembered have released a free mini documentary on EVH's love for modding his guitars, and how he ultimately created his iconic Frankenstein guitar. The doc. takes audio from Eddie, and also shares some great additional places you might want to check out for more EVH related stories. One of my favorites is another guitar newsletter right here on Substack, which comes from Jas Obrecht. You can check out his posts here.