Hello everybody, In making the three new videos, I wanted to focus on very specific topics. The videos cover three aspects of guitar playing that many players would like to explore-- Celtic Fingerstyle, Alternate Tunings, and Thumbstyle Guitar. The videos are not beginner level. They are for players who already understand the guitar and have been playing at least a couple of years, who want to branch out and learn new techniques.
One of the things I tried to do in these projects is to teach tunes which are interesting, challenging, and potentially good additions to a player's repertoire. There are lots of video lessons which spend time teaching you to play "exercises", but what most players like best is to learn new tunes, hopefully interesting ones, with distinctive arrangements and variations. Each of the tunes on these tapes was chosen with these concepts in mind. Also, each of the tunes was chosen to teach a specific technique, so that while you are learning the tune, you are also getting ideas that you can take into the rest of your playing.
For each tune on the videos, the format is: I play the tune, then I explain the tune in detail, showing all the moves, and spending more time to cover possible problem areas. Then, the screen is split so that you see both the right and left hands at the same time, and I play through the tune again slowly. There is also a full transcription booklet included with each tape, in tablature and notation, of all the tunes in the lesson.
Each tape is about 90 minutes in length, and teaches five to six tunes. The lessons are made to be absorbed over a period of time, and while some players might learn all the tunes in a couple of months, others might take a year or more. That's the beauty of video lessons--the player can fit the lessons into a flexible schedule and go as fast or slow as desired.
And here is a description of what each lesson covers:
The Celtic Fingerstyle lesson
covers things like learning Celtic rhythms--jigs, reels, etc., DADGAD tuning (the whole lesson is done in DADGAD, so it serves as a primer for that tuning too), learning to mimic other instruments using "ornamentation" techniques, and some useful right hand techniques.The Alternate Tunings lesson covers: learning how to get your guitar into alternate tunings by ear using the guitar itself as a tuning reference, how to tune the guitar accurately, the advantages and disadvantages of each tuning, performance techniques necessary to learn each tune. The tunings covered are: Drop D, Open G, DADGAD, and EADEAE.
The Thumbstyle Guitar lesson includes: a short history of the genre, with a demonstration of the characteristic playing styles of Mose Rager, Merle Travis, and Chet Atkins; instruction on the specific right hand positioning and techniques needed to play in the style; details of the characteristic "licks" and chord forms that the great players in this style always used. The lesson is entirely in standard tuning.
I hope you enjoy,
Pat