You have to watch this Eric Gales solo
And, taking a $40 guitar on a national arena tour
I just got back from a work trip to Chicago, and the turbulence on the way back to New Jersey had my life flashing before my eyes - I was so glad to be back on land, writing this week’s issue and getting to play guitar again. While I was away, in the morning at breakfast I’d go through YouTube and my favorite guitar sites and capture anything I thought could be interesting. Then, this Saturday I cut anything that didn’t make sense, so only the best stuff was in this post.
I hope you enjoy this week’s links! Let’s get right into it.
This week’s guitar links
- This is Why You Suck at Guitar: Matching Chords to Melodies! - Ben Eller shows what a huge difference changing a few chords around can mean to how your lead lines sound. If you're writing music and want your your song to sound unique and interesting, take some time with key signatures, target notes and more like Ben explains.
- I Hate Practicing Guitar (so I don’t) - If I've learned anything over decades of teaching, it's that everyone comes to the guitar and guitar practice very differently. Rhett Shull talks about finding a way to practice your guitar that's fun for you individually - that might be using backing tracks/drum loops, improvising rather than just running scales, and more.
- 🎸 Licks We Love ❤️ - Blues, Volume 1 - Weekly Free Guitar Lesson Series - TrueFire - TrueFire is doing a new YT series where they feature licks they love. The first video shows off some great blues licks. While there's no tab for these licks (unless you head to their website), there are 3 camera angles so you can try and learn them by sight. If you want some help with learning guitar on YouTube, I'd suggest picking up a Vidami pedal, which is a killer device for rewinding, slowing down, looping and more. This is my personal link to their site. And if you want to pick up anything through TrueFire, I have a link for them too, which you can find here. If you pick up anything through both links, it helps this newsletter out at no additional cost to you. I appreciate it!
- The Legends Are Back! | Checking Out Marshall's BRAND NEW Re-issue Pedals! - One of the worst kept secrets was that some classic Marshall pedals, including the Blues Breaker were set for reissue. This week we got a flood of demo videos for the lineup of pedals. Steve from Marshall sat down with Peach Guitars to run through the Blues Breaker, Drive Master, Shred Master, and the Guv’nor. Marshall has said these are direct copies of the original pedals. Will you pick any of these up?
- The Mini Humbucker: Gibson’s MISUNDERSTOOD Gem? | Friday Fretworks - Everyone is familiar with humbuckers and single coils, you might even talk about P90 pickups from time to time, but what about the mighty mini humbucker? Chris Buck explains the tonal qualities of this pickup, who uses them, and why they might be "misunderstood” by some.
- Mammoth Steps - Jennifer Batten, Mr. Fastfinger, Mika Tyyskä - The iconic Jennifer Batten fits in perfectly to the new Mr. Fastfinger song "Mammoth Steps”. I’m really excited to hear Mika's new album 'Tremors’, which is due out next month. After hearing so much instrumental guitar, sometimes it's hard to surprise me, but Mika always comes up with ear turning lines.
- We NEED To talk about the FOUR PILLARS of RHYTHM GUITAR - Most guitarists love to play lead, but neglect their rhythm chops. John Cordy talks about 4 pillars of pop/funk/rock rhythm guitar in Prince, Nile Rodgers, Paul Jackson Jr. and Steve Lukather.
- "Meditation" // Eric Gales guitar solo (live in Raleigh) - I couldn't wait to link to this live performance this week. Eric Gales absolutely crushing it with this solo, live from Raleigh at the Cory Wong gig. If anyone could grab the torch from Hendrix, it has to be Gales.
- Jack & Owane - Never Forever Together - Last year, many of my top listened to tracks came from Jack & Owane's 'Guardian Spirits…' album, including this song which they just dropped a video for. Plus, that entrance!
- Unleashing Cosmic Country with @danieldonato - I've been getting into hybrid picking a bunch lately, so I was psyched to see one of my favorite newer players, Daniel Donato hang out with Marty Schwartz to talk about just that! Plus, I'm in love with that Tele.
- You’re not ready for these Teles: meet the rarest Fender Telecasters ever built - And speaking of the Tele, if you want to check out some of the rarest examples of this iconic axe, check out this post from GW.
- 20 ways to improve your Telecaster - And, if you're lucky enough to own one of these workhorse guitars but want to upgrade it, Guitarist has you covered. They go through 20 ways you can upgrade this classic guitar. I'm going to try some of these things on my own Thineline Tele!
- Guitarist plays $40 Harley Benton Strat copy every night of 113-date arena tour - I had to end with this link, because if you've been reading the newsletter for any amount of time, you know that I'm not a huge gear-head. A $40 guitar on a 100+ gig national tour? There's absolutely no way any modern guitarist can say they can't get into guitar because of the gear these days. I love reading stories like this.
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