Bluegrass Guitar Lesson: Relating Chords & Scales
Music theory establishes the backbone of everything that we play on our instruments as musicians. And, while parsing through complex music theory concepts can sometimes feel tedious or maybe overwhelming, the key is to break down one simpler topic at a time and apply it on our instrument. One such concept is the relationship between the major scale and the quality of the chord associated with each note in the major scale. Understanding how the major scale and these major and minor chord qualities relate will help take both your improvisation and rhythm guitar playing to the next level.
Pre-Sale VIP Memberships for “Flatpicking Academy with Tyler Grant” Now Available!
We’re excited to announce that pre-sale VIP memberships are now available for our newest course, “Flatpicking Academy with Tyler Grant.” While the course officially launches in May, joining early grants you access to a handful of amazing perks and exclusives leading up to the launch, including:
Blues & Americana Guitar Lesson: Small Chords & Double Stops with Keb’ Mo’
When first learning to play guitar, most students begin by focusing on full, open-position chords, sometimes referred to as “cowboy chords.” From there, tackling barre chords and learning comprehensive, multi-octave harmonic voicings is next. However, in many styles of music and guitar playing, the use of larger multi-octave chord voicings and barre chords is not always necessary or even encouraged. In Americana and blues guitar styles, for example, smaller two, three, and four-note chords are frequently used and are critical to the aesthetic of the genre and style.
New Course: Announcing “Flatpicking Academy with Tyler Grant”
We are excited to announce our newest course coming in May 2023, “Flatpicking Academy with Tyler Grant.”
New Lessons Just Added!
“Salt Creek” has been updated and two new lessons have just been added! An advanced version of a very popular tune “Salt Creek”, and “Pity the Poor Pinky” to strengthen the pinky! Happy Fiddling!
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New Lessons Just Added!
A new collection of lessons has just been added to Tony Trischka’s school! In these new lessons, Tony teaches a few new tunes, and dives into interesting topics on composing music! You can find these new lessons at the top of each department Beginner through Advanced. Or click through this lesson list! Enjoy!
"Jesse James" - Eric Weissberg
"Raise a Ruckus" - Eric Weissberg
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Bonus Content Just Added! Hawktail Live in Berkeley California
We’re excited to announce that we just added a big batch of exclusive bonus content here for you to enjoy as students of Brittany Haas at ArtistWorks. The crew went out to Berkeley in February to film live concert footage of Hawktail’s set at the beloved Freight & Salvage! Hawktail performs tunes from their three albums Place of Growth, Formations, and Unless. We’ll be adding more great exclusive new content to this new “Bonus Content” section that can be found in the LESSONS section. Check it out HERE!
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Blues & Americana Guitar Lesson: Keb’ Mo’s Approach to Fingerpicking
One of the most beautiful elements of blues, country, and Americana guitar playing is the flow between acoustic and electric tonalities, gritty and clean soundscapes, slow and fast tempos, fingerstyle and flatpick techniques, and more. All of these different approaches and tonal textures are utilized throughout these iconic genres, and thus, it’s important for blues, country, and Americana guitarists to be able to execute all these various methods. An artist who consistently accomplishes this in spades is five-time Grammy Award-winning guitarist, singer, songwriter, and performer, Keb’ Mo’.
Darol gets an Artist-Teacher Award from American String Teachers Association
A nice thing that happened in March: I received the American String Teachers' Association Artist-Teacher Award, for services rendered over 30 years of teaching folks how to achieve their goals on bowed string instruments. ASTA is a fantastic organization and I have learned so much from the other dedicated string teachers from all over the world who convene every year. It's a great honor, and I'm grateful and it makes me want to do better.
Here are my acceptance speech notes, cleaned up slightly. I was admonshed to keep it short, but here is the speech! Guess you have to click on the title above to see it!
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“Americana Roots with Keb’ Mo’” is Now Open!
We are absolutely ecstatic to announce that our newest course, “Keb’ Mo’s Americana Roots: Interactive Video Masterclass Series,” is officially here! As of 10 am PT, the course is officially live and open to all students.