If you’re just learning guitar, getting started with playing solos might seem daunting. It’s a big change to go from strumming chords to your favorite songs, to playing lead lines. The best thing is to start out easy, but not too easy. The more you challenge yourself, the better a guitarist you’ll become. Just remember to take everything in bite size chunks as you’re learning. To help you get started with solos, I’m recommending a couple that I’d learn if I was just getting started - one from three different genres. The feeling of learning and playing lead is amazing. Let’s get into it.
This is one of my favorite issues of Six String Sunday yet! A children's book about pedals, Jim Root's unopened Gibson custom shop, and much more
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Lari Basilio has been one of my absolute favorite instructors on JTC Guitar. She's been tearing it up for a couple of years, and is now announcing her new signature Ibanez LB1 model. It's a beautiful Tele style guitar that comes in violet with gold hardware. Check out the video below to hear how it sounds.
In this week's newsletter I shared that Josh Smith was teasing a new signature series guitar. Late Sunday night, he revealed his new signature FlatV1 Ibanez signature model! Check out the full video below for all the details. This looks like a solid Tele style guitar that has some firsts for Ibanez.
In "you can't make this type of stuff up" news....it turns out, you can! For what it's worth, do you think you could upgrade your vaccine by sending the schematic off to Keeley or Wampler?
Here in Italy people started to share this figure claiming that this is the diagram of the 5G chip that has been inserted in the covid vaccine.
— Mario Fusco 🇪🇺 (@mariofusco) December 28, 2020
In reality it is the electric circuit of a guitar pedal and I believe that putting it in the covid vaccine has been an excellent idea💡 pic.twitter.com/qXKnv7VVly
Mary Spender has been doing a daily guitar show in January - which has been fantastic, and today's episode has her interviewing Vulfpeck guitarist, Cory Wong.
They talk about his daily routine, playing Madison Square Garden, and he also drops news that he's starting a variety show! You can check out the full interview below.
The world is learning today that Eddie Van Halen has passed away at age 65. His son, Wolfgang posted a tweet earlier today:
— Wolf Van Halen (@WolfVanHalen) October 6, 2020
Wolfgang's tweet reads: "I can’t believe I’m having to write this, but my father, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, has lost his long and arduous battle with cancer this morning.
"He was the best father I could ever ask for. Every moment I’ve shared with him on and off stage was a gift.
"My heart is broken and I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover from this loss.
"I love you so much, Pop."
It's incredible to think of how many guitarists Van Halen influenced. Whether it be his explosive licks, his tapping technique, how he built guitars, his use of the whammy bar, and so much more, he was a enormous influence to a wide array of players.
Van Halen was one of the first bands I remember hearing growing up. My family always had vinyl copies of all the VH records, that I still cherish to this day. Eddie was always such a huge influence not only on my playing, but how I thought about guitar as a whole. He will be sincerely missed.
Reach out to me on Twitter and let me know your favorite Eddie Van Halen riff, or better yet, what was the first EVH riff you ever learned?
There’s a certain joy I feel when I open an app for the first time, and I notice that the developer has hit it out of the park in regards to design and user interface. This is the feeling I had years ago when first trying Thomas Grapperon’s app Chord! I’m happy to say that I received a similar feeling when beta testing Grapperon’s new songwriting app, SongKit.
