Month: January 2018

This tutorial has been conceived for beginner guitar players who want to go beyond strumming chords and start playing scales all along the fretboard. Learning how to play scales is a great way to expand your musicality and exercise your fingers agility; one of the easiest scales to learn at the beginning of your lead guitar adventures is definitely the scale pentatonic. We’re going to see the pentatonic scale in open position, that means that the shape of the scale uses some open strings. This decreases the complexity of the fingering and makes easier to play great melodies. What is a Pentatonic Scale In the word “pentatonic”, “penta” means “five”, in fact a pentatonic scale is composed of 5 notes (in this tutorial we’re not going to investigate the historical…

Photo by Karen Ferreira / CC BY So why get an expression pedal? Well, no matter how dexterous you are or how well you have your equipment arranged, there’s no getting around the fact that you only have two hands. A good expression pedal can give you even more options, with the range of features that you can use it to control limited only by the settings of the device you plug it into. Of course, if you’re like most players, you’d rather spend your money on the gear itself than the peripherals you use to control it. Still, there are plenty of pedal options that give you smooth operation and easy control without breaking the $100 barrier. Below are our list of the 4 best cheap expression pedals on…

2018 A Fresh New Guitar Year Ahead Of YouJanuary 4, 2018 By Klaus Crow 4 CommentsWow, time flies doesn’t it? Another year has gone by. I realize, you really got to take time to pause, reflect, and keep figuring out what you want in life (and what you don’t want) before it passes you by. Life is too darn precious and too darn short.Luckily a fresh new year is ahead of us. An entire year of new blank pages to fill. You can start over, start from scratch, change your direction, experiment, improve, grow and learn new things.Well, let’s make time for playing guitar. Let’s make it a priority. Let the trivial things in life not get in the way of the things that matter to you. Schedule dedicated daily…

Cool Gear Alert: Kiesel Zeus Headless Posted onJanuary 9, 2018AuthorPeter Hodgson As many of you know, my current main guitar is a Kiesel Vader V7. I love that little thing! It’s very comfortable to play and sonically very flexible. Kiesel has now followed up the Vader design with the Zeus, a slightly Telecaster-esque outline which addresses my one complaint about the Vader: that sometimes the way I rest the guitar on my leg interferes with the tuners at the back. And it’s not just a Vader with a different outline: the Zeus is bolt-on whereas Vader is a neck-through guitar, so the sound will be a little different. It’s available in 6, 7 and 8-string standard and multiscale, or 4, 5 and 6-string bass. You can learn more about…

Guitar Nerd Rig Fun Posted onDecember 27, 2017AuthorPeter Hodgson I’m currently in the throes of a good old-fashioned riggin’. You may not be able to tell much from the pic but this is kind of my dream rig. Lemme explain how it will work.  First up, the heart of my tone is the Marshall DSL50 JCM2000. I love these amps because they’re totally no-bullshit: they put out whatever you put into them, putting that legendary Marshall stamp upon it in the process while remaining very faithful to your playing dynamics and phrasing where some amps mush all that stuff together. I usually stick to the Lead channel (in its Classic mode instead of the higher-gain, scooped-mid ‘Ultra’ mode) with the gain control at around 6.  I sometimes use other…

Photo by Arnaud Abadie / CC BY So why get a blues amp? Simple: whatever genre of music you play, your amp will have a huge role in getting the right tone. An amp that’s perfect for a metal player might not be quite right for someone in a funk group, and vice versa. With the blues, you don’t need an amp that’ll get window-shaking volume or one that has a lot of flashy effects. The blues genre in general is more about soul and feeling. What you’re looking for in an amp is something that lets your technique and the natural sound of your guitar hold center stage, enhancing them but not changing the core tone. A lot of blues players prefer tube amps to solid state models because…