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Here’s a funky, syncopated 16th note strum pattern, dampening the strings with the side of the hand. We were in a Zoom guitar lesson, and liked how this fit over “Birds of a Feather” by Billie Eilish.

Another week, another Waxahatchee song! Americana, power pop, indelible lyrical images, what’s not to like? In this Zoom guitar lesson we were learning the song from scratch by request, and wanted to see if we could get the lead guitar into our strumming acoustic part. Turns out, you can : )

We were looking at “Three Sisters,” by Waxahatchee, in a Zoom Guitar Lesson tonight, and the student and I were just thinking about what to do for the instrumental parts, in between the singing parts. If you’re playing a solo acoustic version of a song like this, one option is to play the chords of the song using higher voicings. If you learn a few new locations for the G, D, C, and Am in the song, you can actually wander around up high and play a solo, just using the chords of the song! This is one of my favorite ways to get creative with a familiar song : )

Here’s another video demo I made during a Zoom guitar lesson with a student who was learning “Here’s Where the Story Ends,” by The Sundays. I love the chords in this song, and came up with a few optional new voicings to add to the basic version from the recording.

In a recent Zoom guitar lesson, a student who was interested in fingerstyle guitar in the style of Chet Atkins asked about “Landslide,” by Fleetwood Mac. He already could play the accompaniment pattern on the record, so I suggested figuring out how to play the vocal melody on the guitar. After all, Chet could play pretty much any tune over the chords, so why not? It turns out there are a couple of different ways to fit the melody over the chords while staying in the original open position fingerings, so I thought I’d share what we came up with. If you’re looking for a Zoom guitar teacher, please feel free to reach out!

I was working with a student during a Zoom guitar lesson a few weeks ago, and he requested a soundtrack song from the movie “Drive.” He was apologetic, since it didn’t have guitar, but could we look at it? Of course! Adapting non-guitar songs is one of my favorite activities, and I’ve been doing it since I was 13. It’s just music. If it has notes and chords, you can probably play a version of it on guitar. No apologies required : )

I made this demo during a Zoom guitar lesson, for a student who was learning the fretboard. Here, I’m talking about two systems for moving your chord shapes all over the guitar neck.

I make video demos for students during our Zoom Guitar Lessons – in this one, we practice switching between pairs of chords. It’s a play-along, so try to keep up for all 15 minutes!

I’m so proud of all the student performers this past weekend! It was a great return for the Coffee Shop Jam, this past Sunday June 24, 2018 at Local Burger in Keene, NH.

The Coffee Shop Jam is an informal performance opportunity I organize for my students, and this time around, we had 12 student performers who played guitar and ukulele.

Some students performed totally solo, some played duets with me. At the end, we played a couple of big group songs.

The Coffee Shop Jam gives students an exciting (and scary) goal to work toward, and based on everybody’s feedback, a blast was had by all.

The next event isn’t scheduled yet, but I’m aiming to do it again in the fall, possible in October. Keep practicing, everybody!

Here’s the song list from last Sunday:

Crazy Train
Closing Day (original)
CM, guitar

Blitzkrieg Bop
Folsom Prison Blues
CT, ukulele

Blackbird
You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
WI & TD, guitar

Riptide
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
AP, ukulele

Take Me to the Water (original)
Tell Me The Future (original)
NT & TD, guitar

Make It With You
Stewball
JM & TD, guitar

Aloha ‘Oe
Coal Miner’s Daughter
Take Me Home, O Hawaii (original)
SH & TD, ukulele

Dear Prudence
JS & TD, guitar

Marry Me
Little Talks
Safe & Sound
OS & TD, guitar

Message in a Bottle
Greasy Coat
KB & TD, guitar

Daughters
LK & TD, guitar

Jambalaya
Johnny B. Goode
Everybody, guitar & ukulele

I know I’m a little late to this party, but have you heard of Ted Greene and Lenny Breau? They were great solo jazz guitarists who, incidentally, played fingerstyle.

Lenny was inspired by Chet Atkins and developed a magical sounding technique of playing cascading artificial harmonics over jazz chords. Ted picked up the harmonics technique from Lenny, studied fingerstyle jazz with a fella named George Van Epps, and dove deep, deep, DEEP into harmony and chord voicings on the guitar.

I’ve been digging into Ted’s books “Chord Chemistry” and “Modern Chord Progressions,” and have spent several weeks now rediscovering chord scales using various fingerings suggested therein. But it’s playing them fingerstyle, rather than strumming, that’s really made them come alive for me recently.

I’m just kinda taken with the sound of 4-note chords, where you play the notes simultaneously by plucking with your thumb and fingers. I’ve always liked the balance you can achieve this way, where all the notes of the chord appear at the same volume and your ears weigh them all together.

Then you move horizontally up or down the chord scale, and maybe break them up into pairs of notes on each chord, and it generates melodies – melodies that were always there in the chords.

I’m not really dealing with all possible chords interacting yet, I’m staying pretty diatonic. Just sifting through what’s there, like studying the layers of the Earth’s crust. Maybe this diatonic phase of my musical study should be called “Chord Geology.”