The Guitar Master

What I’m playing / learning: “Hey Oh” by the chilli Peppers

The intro to “Hey oh” by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, from disc one of their latest album “Stadium Arcadium”. The discs are named “Mars” and “Jupiter”. Truly inspirational.

The Chilli Peppers rock and that’s all there is to it.

They’ve written some of the best music to listen to and to learn, forcing the trainee guitar master to stretch their fingers quickly into various uncomfortable positions. Excellent for stretching and strengthening the muscles used in playing the guitar.

I’ve been playing this my own way on my Spanish guitar using Am (hammer and pull with 4th finger (pinky)), a modified F (H&P with 4th again), C (hammer with 1st), and a three finger inversion of G starting with the first finger on the 2nd string 3rd fret. Second time around I play a normal G and hammer / pull with 1st finger again. If this sounds confusing and you are interested, please let me know and I’ll create a tab using “songwrite” for Linux.

To play the intro properly, use an electric guitar and bar chords higher up the neck.

Any questions? Please email me.

Good luck

The Guitar Master

Most inspiring music / musicians – Cat Stevens

I will myself be adding occasional crtiques on whoever I happen to be listening to, and I invite you to do the same.

Today it’s Cat Stevens. Click on the link (left) to visit his wikipedia entry if you are interested in his history.

My first experience of the music of Cat Stevens was as a very, very young child when my father used to play and sing Moonshadow to me on his guitar.

More recently I have found his lyrics and guitar work to be quite incredible. Whilst never showing off with loud riffs or long solos, the inner subtleties of each note and the way it flows into the next are so perfect that I doubt many artists have bettered them since.

Listen to the albums “Teaser and the Firecat” and “Tea for the Tilerman” with headphones on a warm summers day at the top of a hill in the countryside or on a cold winters evening in your car on the way home from work. Wherever you happen to be, his words and music will make you realise the beauty and tragedy in this world and have you pondering the next.

As a guitarist, you may want to try playing Moonshadow. It’s very simple and quite satisfying. I like to play my own guitar based version of Sad Lisa (which is a song about the inner child in the writer, and I suspect in all of us). Another good one is If I Smile, which requires the guitar to be either retuned into E, or into D with a cappo on the second fret.

If anyone wants to try these and cannot find a tab on the net or would like some help, I can post tabs or more instructional, erm… instructions.

Until next time… (hopefully soon) Bon soir.

The Guitar Master

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The Guitar Master

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After learning some basic lead guitar tricks like the pentatonic scales, you may feel ready for something a little more challenging.

The next logical step is to begin practicing arpeggios and trying to employ the sweep picking technique. Sweep picking is a technique where the plectrum is literally “raked” or “swept” up and down the strings in a constant action, whilstthe left hand fingers go crazy trying to keep up. This tutuorial is an excellent, excellent place to start. (If the link does not work then please email me.)

See how you get on.

Who is the greatest guitarist of all time?

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