GUITAR COACH MAGAZINE : GUITAR Issue 002 The FREE Interactive Guitar Magazine ISSUE 002 Beginners Bootcamp Blues Riffs & Licks Special Coaching Sessions Songs, Riffs, Guitars & Gizmos Licks & Solos Skills & Techniques Blues Road Warrior Eugene Hideaway Bridges Play JJ Cale, Robert Cray, & Blues Brothers Step by step video lessons Plus guitar news, features, profiles & cool new Apps. MAGAZINE Editorial enquiries: [email protected] Advertising enquiries: [email protected] www.guitarcoachmag.com Issue 002 Contents Features Note from the Editor 5 Eugene on the road...page 35 Guitarist Eugene “Hideaway” Bridges, a native What’s Hot & What’s Not! 6 of New Orleans, with seven albums to his credit and three recent nominations from the The Blues Debate 11 Blues Foundation... The Blues: Then & Now 13 Chord of the Month 18 Nils Lofgren Interview; Part 2 25 Guitar Top 10s 29 Quick Survey 39 Songwriting & Detuning 52 FAQs 54 Dillon teaches The Blues...page 20 Lesson Videos, Tutorials and Tips Jimmy Dillon is an accomplished and award- winning musician, singer, songsmith and Beginners Bootcamp 7 teacher with an impressive record. .. Relax and get into the correct postion to play. Plus an introduction to Fingerstyle playing Coaching Session 15 A great fun session, developing your improv skills, with our cool Blues backing track Skills & Techniques 22 The string muting, bass note picking strum. The eJamming revolution...page 49 It’s got something for everyone! New technology that allows musicians to jam and collaborate anytime, anywhere... Guitars & Gizmos 28 Guitar Makers, plus the latest guitar Apps and tech stuff Riffs, Licks & Solos 40 From The Blues Brothers to Clapton - a series a classic Blues riffs and licks Editor’s note Guitar Coach Magazine 5 Hi and welcome to our Blues insprired issue... In this second issue of Guitar Coach magazine, we’ve gone for a Blues flavour with some of our features, articles and Coaching sessions. New this month, we’ve also got a survey for you. This is your oppor- tunity to get the content you want every month. It only takes 30 seconds to complete the survey, so don’t miss this great opportu- nity to help shape Guitar Coach magazine to suit you! Also keep your questions coming for our FAQs. Contributors And finally keep submitting those ratings and reviews, as they are Many thanks to our contributors: what will help us to grow our subscriber numbers and enable us to continue to publish Guitar Coach free of charge. Eugene Hideaway Bridges Jimmy Dillon So, have fun, and do let me know what you think about the maga- The eJamming team Nick Benjamin zine. Just email me at [email protected] Rikky Rooksby Harrison Marsh And to our writing team: Jonathan Howkins Bob Cianci Editor, Guitar Coach magazine Graham Land Ben Vine Tom Rosier And our special thanks to: Andy Partridge of BandJammer Cover shot: Alyn Coates Keeping it Free! We hope you enjoy this issue of Guitar Coach All you have to do is either tell your guitar play- magazine and we look forward to bringing you ing friends about it, ‘Like’ us on Facebook, or much more great free stuff in the next issue. maybe Tweet about us :) But we need your help :) You help is much appreciated, thank you. In order for us to continue to produce this magazine free of charge, we need to get the word out to as many people as possible - and to do this we need your help. News Guitar Coach Magazine 6 What’s Hot and What’s Not this month! By Tom Rosier What’s Hot... Wes Scantlin, lead singer of Puddle of Mudd, could face jail time after a drunken encounter on a flight because the crew allegedly refused to serve the singer alcohol. Green Day release 3 new tracks from their up coming trilogy of Albums, Uno, Dos and Tre, the first of which is due for release later this month. An eBay auction to support the Randy Blythe (Lamb Of God) Legal Fund for his recent manslaughter charge includes guitars and basses from Slash, Megadeth, Gwar and Five Finger Death Punch. A 13-year-old girl's dream came true Wednesday at the Minnesota State Fair when she got to meet Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx after the glam-rocker saw her anti-bullying video on YouTube. Prog Magazine holds its first ever award ceremony in London. What’s Not... Eddie van Halen narrowly avoids death after tri- alling a diet containing too much cayenne pepper and nearly had his “stomach explode”. A new scientific study has noted that pop music, over the last five decades, has gotten more depressing. A deadly spider which hid in one of Noel Gallagher’s guitar cases prompted an emergency quarantine while experts tried to catch the insect at Jersey Live Festival. An LA store owner and music producer has received hate mail after releasing an album of "new" music from notorious imprisoned serial murderer, Charles Manson. Guns N' Roses have hosted a new auction that includes their old clothes dryer for $110. Metallica frontman James Hetfield says there are too many rock bands, but the best will survive and keep the genre alive. Guitar Coach Magazine 7 Beginners Bootcamp – Guitar basics; Hand positions – Introduction to Fingerstyle Boot Camp Guitar Coach Magazine 8 Playing Basics: Hand positions by Harrison Marsh Any seasoned, acoustic guitarist will tell you about the perils of tendonitis and RSI, but it's not just the professionals that can suffer. The best way to avoid these issues is to get a correct and comfortable technique right from the start. There are a few rules with hand position that apply for both hands; firstly if it doesn't feel comfortable don't do it! New idea's may feel unfamiliar but avoid huge changing between chords smoother. A similar ap- stretches or extreme wrist angles, becasue you proach can be applied to the right hand. will almost always find that there is a more com- A good starting point for the left hand is to as- fortable way of doing things such as changing sume a "one finger per fret" hand position, i.e if the fingering of that chord. your index finger is playing the first fret, your lit- Secondly, just like any exercise, warm up and warn tle finger should be hovering over the fourth. down, ten minutes of scales or simple familiar ex- With your right hand, experiment to find your ercises at a slow tempo before you start will in- own comfortable hand position but avoid strain crease your stamina, muscle memory and avoid on the wrist and try and keep your hand loose. It any strains making playing uncomfortable. can be tempting to tense up but not only will this Though some famously heavy handed players be uncomfortable, your playing will not sound as may disagree, keep everything light. Firstly hitting smooth as you want it to. the strings harder puts more strain on your hands Finally, a few words on how acoustic guitars work. and wrists and is unnecessary, and secondly one Strum an open chord, and whilst this chord is tell tell sign of an experienced player is a good un- ringing out place your hand flat against the body derstanding and use of dynamics. It's one of the just behind the bridge. You should notice that the beautiful things about guitar, and by playing sound has changed slightly, becoming slightly quite lightly, there's room to increase volume and more muffled. The top of an acoustic guitar vi- attack when you want a passage to sound more brates as you play as the sound waves flow dynamic. through it. If your hand or wrist is contact with Try this, hold a chord as you normally would and the top of the guitar you are going to deaden the keep strumming it. Now without lifting your fin- guitar slightly. It's also going to limit your playing. gers from the strings, gradually decrease the pres- You will notice in the video that my hand is hover- sure your using in your left hand until you start to ing over the strings and each finger is resting on get a buzzing sound. Now the amount of pressure the string it's about to play, or just over the string you were using on that last strum before the buzz that is ringing out. Lightly touching the string is the minimum amount needed to play that with your right hand finger will stop any note chord. Is it lighter than you normally hold the gui- ringing and in turn stop notes ringing into each tar? Thought so! Keeping this in mind makes other, making everything much clearer. Boot Camp Guitar Coach Magazine 9 Fingerstyle: Introduction by Harrison Marsh Welcome to this introduction to finger style acoustic guitar; a playing style that has found it's way into every genre of music. Whether it be as an accompanist or solo player, friend with your favourite finger patterns becom- finger picking is a dynamic technique without ing automatic; just don't get stuck in the same limitation. few patterns! Above, and in the video, I have laid out some sim- The rolling arpeggio exercise uses the conven- ple exercises reminiscent of how I got into the tional way of showing which fingers to use as fol- style, over ten years ago. lows PIMA. P= Thumb, I = Index , M = middle, A = ring These exercises are designed to be fluid, giving you a chance to put your own mark on them. Mixing pinching, strumming and rolling tech- Once you can play them to a standard you are niques will give your playing rhythmic variety and happy with, take the same right hand patterns depth.