South African Music Magazine
Welcome to our first tutorial in 2013; I have decided to tread on new territory and will take this lesson and the rest of this year to try demystify and unlock the modes of the major scale. We will begin by looking at their names and looking at some of the players that utilise the Read More »
In this article I carry on with the country style and explore some more rhythm ideas and getting the correct tone. I was lucky enough to have spent time with both Albert Lee and Jerry Donahue back in 2003 whilst I was studying at the Guitar Institute in London. Both these guys are absolutely at Read More »
As I mentioned last time I wish to carry on with our country style of music and look at various rhythm styles for the different genres. We will begin with Ballad country style and look at what we can do to make the rhythm part interesting. Once again this is aimed at the guitar being Read More »
I have just returned from a trip to America and the first thing you see are these diners and for some reason I would constantly think about horses, cowboys and twang. Country seems to be everywhere in America and appreciated by most of America’s population. During my trip I met many working guitarists and most Read More »
In this issue of Play Better Guitar I have decided to talk about technical facility. So what does that mean? Technical facility would mean in music the ability to play your instrument, physically without any tonal and or tempo loss. So how do you attain this measure of technical facility? That’s easy to answer; PRACTICE!!!Practice Read More »
Welcome to play better guitar. I have decided to choose a topic that many beginners battle with and to be honest I have seen experienced guitarist also struggle with this; I am talking about bending and vibrato and the combination of the two together. Let’s start with vibrato. What is Vibrato? Vibrato is a musical Read More »
In this latest installment of the Play Better Guitar series we’ve decided to look into the lives of a couple of seasoned professional guitarists to see how they got to where they are as working musicians today. In this article we spend some time with Michael Bester who plays for Mango Groove and Loyiso Bala, Read More »
Tutorial Play better Guitar Escape the Shape Welcome back to play better guitar. I have thought long and hard about what I should cover in this article and have decided to look at the aural aspects of music and how to escape the trap of shapes. Let’s begin with shapes since as you learn guitar Read More »
Play Better Guitar “My question is, how much about sound lies in the ability of the player?” In this article I have decided to talk about the journey of sound, and the reason I call it a journey is because the pursuit of sound never ends.I think there is a huge lesson to be learnt from using Read More »
Recently I had a chance to play around with three of the new TonePrint guitar pedals from TC Electronic. Construction At first glance the TonePrint pedals each look like a mini brick and picking it up I couldn’t help thinking “okay I could build houses out of these if I had enough of them.” They Read More »
