This week's issue is full of lessons
Plus, mixing Green Day's guitars
This week’s issue of Six String Sunday has so many different lessons for you to get into. Whether you want to learn modes, CAGED, the major scale, pentatonic boxes and more, it’s all here.
What have you been working on in April? Let me know in the comments, or by replying to this e-mail!
This week’s guitar links!
- The EASIEST Way to Learn the Modes on Guitar! - How many lessons have there been about the modes over the past couple of decades? A million? And how many are really good? Well, I'm happy to say that this new lesson from Ben Eller, where he shows us how to use these smaller patterns, that you can "copy and paste”, is a good one! Really easy concept to understand, and lessons like this help in lightening the load mentally with all the stuff we have to learn on guitar.
- The Key To Connecting The Entire Fretboard! - What about CAGED and playing the blues? Jack Ruch is here to talk about connecting the fretboard using 5 blues box shapes, but keeping the CAGED system in mind. Someone said it best in the comments regarding Jack's teaching style - " you have the instructional presence to scaffold your lessons with repeated "motifs" (caged system, triads, etc.) so each has a sense of "familiarity.”” I couldn't agree more!
- Martin Miller literally wrote the book on Modern Rock Guitar Soloing – so who better to show you how to get more from your minor pentatonic and blues solos? - Speaking of blues and pentatonic scales, you should check this lesson out from Martin Miller. It's a look into his awesome Modern Rock Guitar soloing book from GuitarVivo. The lesson has 5 licks, and both an intermediate and advanced solo to challenge you. I've sang the praises of the GuitarVivo stuff for a long time, and this book is definitely worth your time.
- Chris Lord-Alge mixing guitars for Green Day | Sneak Peek - Mix with the Masters has been around for a while, and focuses on top notch engineers mixing some classic albums. In this sneak peek, we have Chris Lord-Alge mixing Green Day's “Boulevard of Broken Dreams". I love hearing the separate parts all solo'd out.
- How to Get Out of the Box - Eric Haugen is one of my favorite teachers on TrueFire. In his latest YouTube video, he shows us how to connect the pentatonic boxes, by picking and choosing certain notes to create diagonal shapes. Learning these shapes will help cement the 5 boxes into memory.
- Easy Workout To Unlock Any Scale - Speaking of scales - if you want to get a better grip on what you're actually playing, rather than just memorizing shapes, then you should check out Chris Sherland's latest video. Chris shows us a simple 2 note pattern that helps us visualize the scale better, by being constrained just to 2 notes per string. He expands on this simple concept, by showing us how the major scale can be transformed easily.
- “One of the beautiful things about Leo is one of the hardest things to do – forget that you’re playing a guitar and just feel like you’re playing music. He embodies that transcendence”: The lessons Julian Lage learned from acoustic master Leo Kottke - Julian Lage has been dipping back into his acoustic roots, especially on his new album ‘Speak To Me’ - which if you haven't heard, is worth a listen. A couple of months ago, Lage and another giant of acoustic music, Leo Kottke, toured together. In this post from Guitar Player, Julian shares some excellent advice he picked up along the tour.
- “We found the damn thing!” Jerry Cantrell’s original G&L Rampage wasn’t stolen after all – it had just been misplaced - Earlier this week, the guitar world thought that one of grunge's most iconic guitars had gone missing. Jerry Cantrell reported that his G&L Rampage, which was used on nearly every Alice in Chains record, had been stolen. Thankfully, it looks like the guitar was just misplaced, when it was traveling “between photoshoots and the studio”. Crisis averted!