Guitar Tutorials and Videos

An advanced technique, to master this technique takes years.

Not looking at your right hand while playing guitar helps with chord changes because it allows you to focus your attention on your fretting hand and the chord shapes. When your eyes are on your picking or strumming hand, you might miss important visual cues from your fretting hand that help you prepare for smooth, accurate chord transitions.

Also, not watching your right hand encourages you to develop muscle memory and touch sensitivity, so you rely on feel rather than sight. This makes your playing more natural and frees up your attention to listen, keep rhythm, and coordinate both hands better. Over time, this leads to smoother chord changes, better timing, and overall more confident playing.

Major Scale movements, having some fun.

Super handy tip, make changing strings painless and quick.

Messing with the 8 string with backing track.

You should learn things you enjoy on the guitar because enjoyment fuels motivation and consistency, which are the keys to long-term progress. When you play songs, riffs, or styles that you love, practicing feels fun rather than like a chore, so you’re more likely to stick with it regularly. Enjoyable material keeps you excited to pick up the guitar every day, making it easier to push through challenges and improve naturally.

Plus, learning music you’re passionate about helps you connect emotionally with your playing, which makes your practice more meaningful and your performances more expressive. Simply put, when you enjoy what you’re learning, you learn faster and play better.

This is a great way to create a pulse whilst you play.

Making the click become hidden by playing so close to it is a powerful practice technique because it means you’re perfectly locked in with the rhythm—your notes and the click are almost indistinguishable. When your playing lines up exactly with the metronome’s beat, the click fades into the background, and you’re essentially “grooving” with the pulse instead of just following it.

This shows you’ve developed a deep internal sense of timing and feel. Instead of just reacting to the click, you’re moving with it naturally, which is a huge step toward playing with other musicians or in a band setting. It helps build confidence, tightness, and musicality, turning timing from a mechanical task into an intuitive skill.

Vibrato is a great way to help pinch harmonics scream because it adds movement and intensity to the harmonic note, making it sound louder and more expressive. When you apply vibrato—by gently bending or shaking the string after producing the pinch harmonic—you create small fluctuations in pitch and tension. These fluctuations amplify the harmonic’s ringing, giving it a richer, more powerful “squeal” that stands out.

Without vibrato, pinch harmonics can sound thin or quick to fade. Vibrato keeps the harmonic alive longer and gives it character, helping it cut through the mix and grab attention—especially in rock and metal solos. Plus, vibrato adds emotion and style, turning a simple harmonic into a dynamic, screaming effect.

Was prepping for a show for the Ards International Guitar Fest and was working on some tones and additional licks.

When fingerpicking, you should move only your fingers and not your whole hand because this gives you more control, precision, and efficiency. Moving just the fingers allows each one to pluck cleanly and accurately, keeping your hand stable and your playing consistent. If your entire hand moves, it becomes harder to hit the right strings, and you waste energy—which can lead to sloppy or uneven playing, especially at faster speeds.

Keeping your hand relaxed and in place also helps you develop good muscle memory and finger independence. It’s similar to typing—your hands stay steady while your fingers do the work. This technique makes fingerpicking smoother, more fluid, and easier to maintain over longer periods without fatigue.

Hitting the strings harder creates a better tone for metal because it produces a more aggressive, punchy, and defined sound—which suits the intensity of the genre. When you strike the strings with more force, especially through a distorted amp or pedal, it drives the signal harder and emphasizes the attack of each note. This gives your playing more clarity, tightness, and presence, helping riffs and palm-muted chugs cut through the mix.

In metal, tone isn't just about gear—how you play affects the sound just as much. A heavier picking hand adds weight and power to your tone, making everything sound more controlled and intentional. It also helps lock in tighter with the drums, especially for rhythm-focused metal styles. Just be sure to balance force with technique to avoid sounding sloppy or tense.

Solo is based around B minor. Focusing on the Minor Pentatonic Scale and Natural Minor Scale.

Saw them in the Ulster Hall. Never heard this track before and wanting to learn it.

Quick downpicking thrash improvisation.

Practicing just downpicking is a better way to get better at it because it builds strength, endurance, and precision in your picking hand. When you focus only on downstrokes, your hand has to work harder than with alternate picking, which helps develop the muscles and control needed for tight, aggressive rhythms—especially in rock and metal. It also forces you to lock in with the beat, making your timing more solid and your playing more consistent. By isolating downpicking, you eliminate distractions and can focus purely on technique, helping you play faster and more accurately when you eventually apply it in full songs or mix it with other styles.

Messing with new Tom Morello plugin from Neural DSP.

You have to play guitar slowly in order to play fast because speed comes from accuracy and control, not just moving your fingers quickly. When you play slowly, you give your brain and fingers time to learn the correct movements, build muscle memory, and develop good technique. This means fewer mistakes, cleaner playing, and smoother transitions. If you try to play fast too soon, you’re more likely to build sloppy habits, miss notes, or create tension in your hands—all of which slow you down in the long run. By practicing slowly and precisely, your fingers learn to move efficiently, and over time, your speed increases naturally and with control.

Splitting your guitar practice into 80% difficult material and 20% easier material is a smart way to grow faster while staying motivated. Spending most of your time on challenging things—like tricky chord changes, fast picking, or complex riffs—pushes your skills and builds muscle memory more effectively. But focusing only on hard stuff can be tiring and frustrating, which is why mixing in about 20% of easier material gives your brain a break and helps you stay confident and motivated. Playing something familiar or fun reminds you of your progress and keeps practice enjoyable. This balance helps you improve steadily without burning out, making it more likely that you’ll stick with your practice long-term.

Slowing down songs on YouTube can help you learn guitar faster because it allows you to hear and see every detail more clearly. When a song is played at full speed, it’s often too fast to catch all the notes, rhythms, or subtle techniques. Slowing it down helps you:

🎸 Why Slowing Down Songs Helps You Learn Guitar Faster

1. Hear Every Note Clearly
   You can identify exactly what’s being played—each note, chord, or riff—without guessing or rewinding constantly.

2. Improve Timing and Rhythm
   Playing along with a slower version helps you lock into the correct rhythm and develop solid timing, which is key for clean playing.

3. Understand Technique
   You can observe picking patterns, slides, bends, hammer-ons, and other techniques that might be too fast to see or hear at normal speed.

4. Build Confidence Gradually
   You can start slow, get it right, and then speed up in steps. This builds muscle memory and prevents sloppy habits from forming.

5. Practice With Less Frustration
   Slowing things down reduces overwhelm and gives you space to focus, making practice more productive and enjoyable.

Using YouTube’s playback speed feature (gear icon → Playback speed) is a simple but powerful tool for learning songs and improving your playing.

Testing out some new lighting and having a jam.

There are multiple ways to fret chords. In this video, the switch I may was to move the G Major chord to a G(add11).

The names of chords can be quite confusing to get used to however by experimenting and trying to combine the chords into one, you can use your ear to feel if it fits. By doing this we can make chord changes easier whilst possibly creating your own twist on your favourite tunes.

Since shooting this video I read that it is sometimes referred to as ‘Travis Picking’. This is a nice classic fingerpicking technique to get started.

Palm muting on an acoustic guitar helps change the tone by dampening the vibrations of the strings, which produces a softer, tighter, and more percussive sound. When you lightly rest the edge of your picking hand near the bridge while playing, you reduce the string’s ability to ring out fully. This shortens the sustain and removes some of the brightness and resonance that acoustic guitars naturally produce.

Instead of a full, open sound, you get a muted, punchier tone that’s great for adding dynamics, groove, or a rhythmic feel—especially in strumming or fingerpicking patterns. It’s also useful for creating contrast between sections of a song (like verses vs. choruses). So, even though palm muting is often associated with electric guitar, it’s a powerful tool for tone control and expression on acoustic as well.

Using octaves is one of the smartest and most efficient ways to learn the notes on the guitar fretboard. Octave patterns repeat across the neck in consistent shapes, so once you know where a note is in one place, you can find it in others quickly. Here's how it works:

🎸 How to Use Octaves to Learn Fretboard Notes

✅ 1. Know the Common Octave Shapes

There are two main octave shapes you can memorize:

• From the low E (6th string) to the D (4th string):

  • Example: 5th fret on low E is A → 7th fret on D string is also A.

  • Shape: Two strings down, two frets up.

• From the A (5th string) to the G (3rd string):

  • Example: 3rd fret on A is C → 5th fret on G is also C.

  • Same shape: Two strings down, two frets up.

💡 If you remember where the natural notes are on the low E and A strings, you can use these shapes to find those notes all over the neck.

You should only strike the guitar string with a small amount of the plectrum because using just the tip reduces the surface area that hits the string, which minimizes resistance and friction. This allows the pick to glide smoothly and quickly across the strings, making it easier to play fast and precise notes. Striking with too much of the pick can cause it to catch or drag on the string, slowing down your picking hand and causing tension. Using a smaller part of the pick also improves control and helps maintain consistent speed and accuracy when playing faster passages.

A little of jamming in between shooting some guitar tutorials.

Reduce the size of your barre chords by switching them to power chords. This reduces the amount of fingers needed whilst still giving you enough of the chord itself to playing your favourite tunes. Over time starting adding the additional fingers needed for a full barre chord and you’ll have them nailed in no time.