Free Lessons

Indian and Arabic Deep Drones

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Fareed in Free Lessons

Since I was a kid, I’ve been listening to Indian and Arabic music, so I’ve developed a few ways to fake these sounds on guitar. Note: this is not a traditional approach – it’s my own take on these cool, droney lines. Most indian and some Middle Eastern stringed instruments are played melodically on only [...]

Jazzy Sounds for Rockers

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Fareed in Free Lessons

Sometimes, it’s nice to get a jazzier sound when soloing on rock/pop tunes. Especially now that a lot of hip-hop/dance grooves are so jazz oriented, a simple understanding of jazz is useful. Most of the time, guitarists build rock solos around the “Blues scale” (a.k.a. pentatonic), or around one minor or major scale, using that [...]

Building Jazz Chords – A Simple Approach

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Fareed in Free Lessons

Learning jazz chords on the guitar has always been very intimidating. Most books give you pages and pages of chord diagrams to memorize and very little in the way of explanation as to how to use these chords. When I would look at most of those 200 page chord books with nothing but endless chord [...]

Taking the Fear Out of Jazz Improvisation (Jazz Theory Made Simple)

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Fareed in Free Lessons

Aspiring musicians are always approaching me, saying, “I wish I could play that jazz stuff, but I just don’t get all that jazz theory and all those scales and modes…” That whole thing about jazz being complicated and mysterious and intellectiual is just a load of crap invented by musicians/academics who can’t play and want [...]

Playing Scales on the Guitar

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Fareed in Free Lessons

Scales are the basis for the creation of chords and melodies. They are alos useful for worknig on guitar technique and they will help you develop an understanding of how keys work. Generally speaking, scales are NOT used in improvisation. The problem with using scales for improvisation is that they limit us to ONE set [...]