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Learning guitar solos by ear  is hard work.  I remember many years ago, a friend of mine managed to secure a copy of Ritchie Blackmore's guitar solo to Smoke On the  Water slowed down to half space.  Suddenly we could hear how clean his runs were and how many notes he was actually playing.

I still love playing that solo note for note because it was the first real guitar solo that I ever  learned and the great thing was that it taught me so much about phrasing, light and shade and what notes not to play.  And I have to say that without being able to listen to the guitar solo at half pace I would never have attempted to study it the way I did.

Fast forward a quarter of a century or so and learning guitar solos is still a challenging and time consuming process – but technology has zoomed way past whatever reel to reel tape system my friend accessed to get that solo slowed down.

A great piece of software on the market is the recently updated Riffmaster Pro.

Riffmaster Pro saves hours of time and frustration by instantly enabling you to

• Slow down music to a pace you can play Without changing the pitch
• slow down Mp3, slow down Wav,wma,Mp4 , Ogg Vorbis and AFF files directly from your computer
• play any Riff or phrase over and over
• Zoom right into the wave allowing  You to find the exact phrase you want to work on(down to the note)
•  Save your own user settings
• Slow down an entire song so you can play along at your pace.
• Change the key of a music file for convenience
• Rip audio directly off a cd and save as mp3 or wav.
• Save a slowed down loop for training purposes
• Transcribe music of any song (tab or transcribe what you hear)

The benefits of Riffmaster Pro are simply awesome.

• You can master ANY Guitar solo faster than ever before
• You can master Any Guitar Riff faster ever before
• You can master the Chords To Any Song faster than ever before
• You can build and maintain Amazing speed of Any solo or riff
• You can master difficult phrasing like never before
• You can master any guitar solo, lick or riff Note for Note.
• You can learn the lyrics to Any song quickly
• You will discover the Magic of “Playing By Ear”
• You will learn any song Fast
• You can transcribe music of any song FAST

Riffmaster Pro is the Perfect Speed & Ear Training tool for all musicians  -from raw beginners to advanced.  I have bought this for myself – simply as a teaching tool to help me quickly teach students their favorite riffs, solos and tunes.

This is the shortcut to playing good quality guitar solos – slow down guitar solos learn them and increase the speed to full tempo as you master the solo.

I highly recommend Riffmasterpro

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Heavy metal riffs are the basis of most of the great heavy metal songs and in most instances are reasonably easy to get a handle on.

Heavy metal evolved out of the blues and many riffs draw heavily upon the blues or pentatonic scales.  If you spend a little time to learn and master these basic components of guitar playing, you will find that you will be able to figure out many guitar riffs .  These scales are not difficult to master and if you focus upon training your fingers and ears to become proficient with them you have taken big steps towards being a capable all round guitar player.

Some of the earliest Heavy Metal guitar riffs put together by pioneers like Tony Iommi and Ritchie Blackmore pretty much pointed the way for all Heavy Metal players.  Classic tracks like Smoke On the Water, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Speed King and Paranoid  all contain the essential elements of a great riff and to my mind are essential listening for all prospective guitar players.

None of these riffs are particularly difficult  and Smoke On The Water and Paranoid are perhaps two of the simplest straight forward songs but their brilliance lies within their simplicity (With the exception of Blackmore's solo in Smoke which is simply outstanding).  Both tunes make great studies and the riffs are easy enough to master.  Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Speed King are a little more difficult structurally containing multiple riffs and phrases within the tunes,but the basic riffs contained within these songs again are easy enough to get a handle on.

Once you have several heavy metal riffs mastered you can begin to work out heaps as many patterns are similar.

If you want to progress further quicker, a great resource I found is this Heavy Metal Guitar guide written by a heavy metal player for heavy metal players

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Steve Morse is the only "shredder" on my list of influential guitar players and that's primarily because although Steve has an amazing picking technique that enables him to play faster than what I thought was humanly possible, he uses the technique sparingly and to great effect.

In the mid seventies Steve fronted the seminal fusion outfit the Dixie Dregs, and the band enjoyed tremendous critical acclaim, winning numerous Grammy awards and Steve personally forcing Guitar Player Magazine to change its reader's poll awards by inducting him in to their Hall of Fame after he won the player of the year five years running.

In the eighties Steve withdrew from the music industry, and became a Commercial airline pilot for several years but re-emerged with the Steve Morse band in the early nineties, a three piece outfit with a slightly harder edge than the dregs.  In 1994 Steve was approached by Deep Purple to replace Ritchie Blackmore on a permanent basis and after some initial misgivings about joining, Steve found that he fitted right in to a band that has always placed a high emphasis on improvisation and musicianship.

The resultant album Purpendicular saw a greatly refreshed Purple produce work comparable in quality to their classic material with Steve's classic guitar work on tracks like Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming  and Cascades establishing his identity with the band.  

Morse remains with Purple whilst continuing to perform with his own outfit.  His playing remains clear and distinctive and his style is instantly identifiable.

Several years ago I had the pleasure of attending a workshop conducted by Steve and his playing and knowledge were extraordinary.  Besides his obvious talent Steve appears to be completely unaffected by his status and is very humble.  His success with Deep Purple and his acceptance by the vast majority of fans as a replacement for Ritchie Blackmore has given him the opportunity to reach a far wider audience than what otherwise would have had teh pleasure of listening to this guitar virtuoso.

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Heavy metal (well, Hard Rock in any case) inspired me to pick up the guitar and start thrashing away, learning the riffs to such classics as Paranoid, Smoke On The Water and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

At a base line level learning Heavy Metal is easy – its all power chords, bass notes and the occasional splintering fourths sequence thrown in  -Smoke On The Water -  is played in fourths (as most of Blackmore's famous riffs were) not fifths like every kid in every guitar shop plays.  But to master heavy metal guitar playing is no mean feat.  The virtuosity of players like Kirk Hammet, Eddie Van Halen and Yngwie Malsteem has raised the bar and it has to be said that fans demand a very high level of musicianship.

Pioneering Heavy Metal bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath drew heavily upon a broad range of musical influences including  jazz, blues, classical and eastern music (Zeppelin's In the Evening and Rainbow's Stargazer spring immediately to mind) and todays players have pushed the envelope even further.

As with anything, a sound foundation is required to play Heavy metal properly.  I would recommend a solid grounding and knowledge of basic chords, before learning how to play blues guitar, as Heavy metal is often simply the blues turned up very loud with distortion.
This basic knowledge will give you a solid grounding before progressing further with  Heavy Metal guitar.  Once you have the basics, you can progress to more difficult lessons.  There are some great guitar lessons for Heavy Metal guitar available at guitar tricks,alternatively, there are some great Heavy metal guitar lessons  through the following sites

• Guitar Burning Speed- the ultimate Shred Guitar Course
• Burning Metal the fundamentals of guitar from beginner to advanced

Each course is priced quite reasonably and will help you on the road to learning Heavy Guitar.
 
 

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I teach guitar in Ararat, Victoria and charge $20 per half hour session. 
The rate is cheap and within half  an hour I can usually take a typical student through a particular piece or technique, gt them familiar with it and set them some practice exercises.
While I enjoy teaching and I dleiver a quality service, I cannot compete in a straight out value sense with online guitar lessons.
Programs like Jamorama charge a one off fee for a set number of lessons which will honestly take me over a year to deliver to the average student – if they practice and remain motivated.
The immediacy of online guitar lessons is is another huge advantage, allowing the student to progress at heir own pace through a set structured program.
The better courses have video instruction and allow the student to play the piece over and over again until they get it right.
While one on one lessons provide for an individual approach, there is only so much that can be delivered in a weekly session.
My sincere advice to people seeking guitar tuition is to investigate online guitar lessons. from a program like Guitar tricks which offer some free lessons to start with.
If you find that you like the delivery and style, I would highly recommend using this cheap guitar lesson alternative

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Ronnie James Dio, front man for guitar greats Ritchie Blackmore and Tony Iommi passed away today.
Ronnie was a great vocalist who used his voice as a foil to Blackmore’s guitar work in particular and his vocals on tracks like Kill The King, Tarot Woman, Stargazer and man on the Silver Mountain served to showcase Blackmore’s guitar work while packaging and presenting what essentially were guitar tracks into real marketable songs of substance.
Simply put, Dio while a virtual unknown prior to his involvement with Blackmore was a perfect partner in Rainbow and his contribution in those early years served to forge Rainbow’s reputation as a super group in the mid seventies.

When he left Rainbow, Dio recruited Vivian Campbell (later lead guitarist for Def Leppard ) to put together some fine solo albums under the name of Dio.

Shortly after he perhaps enjoyed his greatest commercial success with Black Sabbath.

While Dio was not a guitar player, he was an incredible influence upon me as a young wannabe rock musician.

I could not let his passing go unnoticed.

I cried today.  He will be sadly missed.

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Beginners learning guitar should ideally focus on getting the basics right.
Learning the Guitar in many respects can be likened to building a house.  You must lay true foundations so that you can build your guitar technique and your playing ability consistently.
Beginner guitar player’s must concentrate on the basics – learning to hold the guitar properly – thumb positioning for the left hand willl vary greatly depending on what type of guitar and style that you want to play.  Classical guitar players especially MUST pay attention to this, while Rock players would do well to realize that their left hand thumb will be required to hold notes down occassionally.
The names and sounds of the notes that you learn are especially important – be sure to invest in a tuner so that you play in tune all the time.  You are learning music, not gymnastics – you must learn to recognize what each note and chord sounds like.
Make sure that you learn how to replace a string.
Really concentrate on holding down chords properly and train your right hand to “automatically” strum in various feels and times.
But above all, make sure that it is fun, when you enjoy what you do, you will learn more quickly.

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Here’s a quick video I put together showing you the G Major pentatonic scale in 2nd Position
Pentatonic Scales (or variations thereof) are the building blocks for 95% of all rock and blues scales.  I intend to put together a series of basic videos explaining how they work.
I’m using a battered old nylon string acoustic that I use to give most of my lessons on.
It’s just convenient to use 

Hope you get something out of it

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Watching great musicians jam is one of the most magical experiences that the ordinary mortal can have the pleasure of witnessing.  They seem to be able to follow each other through key changes, mood and tempo swings almost as if they’re reading each other’s mind.

The truth is that they’re not magical – gifted definitely, but in the large part the gift is a learned skill.  It’s the ability to recognise the tone and pitch of the note instantly with ears trained to do it.

So how do you learn to recognise pitch?

The first step is to make suer that you always play in tune – not just with yourself – AT CONCERT PITCH!

This may mean investing in a guitar tuner.  Take it from me it’s the best investment you will ever make.  

Once you’ve got your tuner, make sure that when you tune up make sure that you can hear those six notes as you tune them – you want to know what those six notes sound like.  It’s the first building block to successful ear training.

From there it’s a step by step process of recognising how different notes and chords sound.  Its a gradual process and the key is to concentrate on what you’re doing, by concentrate  I mean really listen to the chords and notes that you play.  I’ve even gone to the step of recording chord progressions  and playing them in the car over and over again, with a voice over saying “G chord” and playing several bars then Cm chord and playing several bars – its probably not as entertaining as your current music selection but it helps you learn to hear and that’s one of the key ingredients to really being able to play the guitar.

A great short cut to training your ears is this very affordable ear training power course only recently release, the course will help you train those ears to recognize melodies, chords and progressions and play them on your guitar right after hearing them. And it significantly reduces the amount of time necessary to figure out solos and songs.

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Learning to solo is hard work – you have to learn your scales and licks and then practice improvising them and the only way to do that is to practice improvising them over music.

This can be a terrifying experience for the novice guitar player – there is nothing worse than fumbling around with your licks in the presence of others who seem to have their chops together.

When I started, I used to painstakingly record chord progressions on a small tape recorder and then play my solos over these progressions.  It worked, but it was time consuming and limited in as much as I only had my one guitar to play over – there were no drums or bass.

Thankfully, in today’s digital age  there are some great options that allow you to improvise over professional backing tracks for relatively very small cost.

The best of these I’ve found to be the excellent 50 Blues Backing tracks provided by Zack Roberts.  Zack is a blues professional, having been a regular contributor to Guitar Player  and Guitar World Magazines and he has provided an exceptional package for the serious blues guitar player.

The backing tracks cover a variety of styles, speeds and keys and Zack include no less than nine special bonus’ including

• Ear music education software
• Blues Guitar essential course with 20 additional MP3 tracks
• Digital Guitar Tuner
• Learn to play guitar eBook
• Learn to read sheet music report

This is a priceless resource and I highly recommend it

Check it out now buy clicking here

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