I’m having a dry week. I want to post some stuff, but I just don’t have the motivation or don’t really know what to write about. So here is something that has been sitting in my drafts for like a year.

Here is a guitar technique that I stumbled across while browsing some YouTube videos called double down up. It is sort of a switch-up for alternate picking (down up, down up) that you can use when skipping strings. Instead of following the down up pattern when you skip down one string you want to use two down picks and then pick the second string up again.

Once you build up some speed it can be a really great sounding technique as is shown in this video. The first half is really show as he shows the technique, but if you skip to the 3/4 mark you can hear it in action.

I think this guy totally over does it, but if you were to master this and just toss it in for a few notes every once and a while it is one of those tricks that could really make your playing stand out from others.

I have had a lot of hits on the Alexi Laiho video lessons that I posted a while back and I came across a few more that I thought might be helpful for those aspiring shredders. I like these videos because Alexi shows off some of his best riffs. I really am amazed by his ability to write really unique sounding songs.

In this video there are 5 examples played at both normal speed and slow speed for learning. I have also included a Guitar Pro 5 tab file below that includes all of the riffs demonstrated. Here are the riffs that Alexi teaches us in this video:

• Ex-1 is the riff that starts at 1:03 on Are You Dead Yet’s first track Living Dead Beat.
• Ex-2 shows the intro riff that starts at 0:48 from that same song.
• Ex-3 shows the intro and chorus from Downfall.
• Ex-4 shows the intro to Are You Dead Yet?
• Ex-5 shows the riff that starts at 0:42 in the song In Your Face.

(more…)

I have had several people ask me “Have you heard Don Ross??” after learning that I love to play guitar. Well aside from others asking me that question, no, I had never heard of him. I finally decided to check him out, and I wish I had earlier. Don Ross is a Canadian guitar player from Montreal. He started to teach himself guitar at 8 years old and at 26 began to seriously pursue a career in music. He has over 10 albums to his name and has won the U.S. National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship twice.

His musical style can not be classified very easily. It is an instrumental kind of new age fingerstyle acoustic rock. He goes from very relaxing tunes to very up-beat technical songs. Here is one of my favorites from the videos available on YouTube.

If you do a quick search though you can find many more. Three songs I have listened to now and I can already see that he is going to become one of my new favorite acoustic artists.

If you like his music, head over to Don Ross’ official website and buy his CD.

Biréli Lagrène is an amazing Jazz guitarist. He sort of plays his own breed of gypsy jazz and I like it. You hear me talking on here from time to time about “acoustic shredding”. Well this guy can do it… but jazzified.

First emerging as a 13-year-old guitar prodigy in the 80s, Lagrène was often compared to guitarist Django Reinhardt. At that time the boy had been playing for 9 years already. That’s right… started when he was 4. After a few albums Biréli tried to shake the Reinhardt parallels by changing his style to more of a rock-fusion sound. His current music is more jazz oriented, but still has that strong Reinhardt influence.

If you liked the above video, check out Biréli Lagrène’s official website.

I came across this demo video that someone recorded at NAMM this year. The Fender rep goes through all the functionality of the Stratocaster VG guitar pretty quick.

Essentially what we have here is a standard American Strat that also has digital modeling hardware built in. It runs off of 4 AA batteries. The guy in the video says “if you get the high voltage ones that you put in digital cameras it will last about 10 hours.”

Anyway, check out the video.

Video found via Zillinois

I am not really sure what to think about this guys technique. I think the first half is very noisy and it doesn’t really sound that great for what he is doing. However, in the second half he does some really amazing acoustic tapping and then does some kind of slapping as well. I would be willing to bet that he has some experience playing a bass guitar.

Half good half bad. If he had have done the stuff from the second half all the way through I would have been much more impressed. Interesting technique though, and I am amazed with the amount of volume he was able to get with no pick.

Here is todays YouTube guitar fix. This guy has done a cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps on his Ukulele. I know, not quite a guitar, but I still think it is an amazing video. Lots of guitar players could learn a thing or two from Jake Shimabukuro’s playing. He has some amazing rhythm skills.

Here is an While My Guitar Gently Weeps Guitar Pro tab file for those of you who have Guitar Pro 5 and would like to learn it on guitar.

Enjoy.