In this installment of How to Teach Composition to Guitar Students, classroom guitar expert, Mike Christiansen, discusses composition form, the form of the song you are writing. Writing a song is like writing a story. Like writing words, the melody and the chords have to work together to make sense and have direction…Read More.
Creating a Fingerpicking Solo
Have you ever wondered how to go about combining a melody with a fingerpicked chordal accompaniment to create a solo guitar arrangement? If you don’t know the process it can seem like an insurmountable feat, well beyond the reach of the average guitarist. In this week’s Expert Tips video blog entry Mike Christiansen will demonstrate Read the Rest…
Chords, Chords, and More Chords
As a harmonic instrument the guitar offers the possibility of literally thousands of chords and voicings, yet most guitarists only know a handful of them. So which ones should you learn? It depends on the context. Each style of music has it’s own distinct signature in both the chord progressions and chord voicings that provide Read the Rest…
Spice Up Your Teaching with Guitar Licks
For this blog, I want to take a detour from the pedagogical material and show classroom guitar instructors a few licks that can be learned quickly and played while the students are strumming chords, or playing alternating bass, or even fingerpicking. Written below, are four licks (short, catchy phrases) that will work with G and Read the Rest…
