Learn to play guitar with weekly video lessons & print-friendly guides! Learn your favorite songs & techniques with step-by-step tutorials that actually explain how to get from here to there.
🎸 Small Chunks = Faster Learning! ft. Johnny Cash
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LESSON #629 ▶️ Click to watch free video lesson Hello Reader – in this week's new lesson, I unpack a must-know practice tip that will help you learn any extended riff, solo, or instrumental guitar part. Specifically, I demonstrate how you can learn faster and with less frustration is breaking things into small chunks. Learn each chunk by itself, and then chain them together. In this new lesson, I show a specific example of this approach using the intro sequence to Johnny Cash’s classic I Walk The Line. Instead of powering through measure by measure, I break things into six manageable pieces. After carefully learning the basics of each piece, I show you how to chain them all together step-by-step. You can apply this technique to almost anything you learn. It will get you to your end goal much more quickly, with far less headaches along the way. 👉 View full lesson Looking for More Johnny Cash? If you'd like a more structured teaching I Walk The Line, I two earlier lessons to help you out. View them both here... though be aware, one of them is very old (my 6th lesson ever recorded, from back in 2013). The more recent of the two is a bit more helpful: I have many other Cash tutorials, which are listed below. Some of these are a bit older than others, meaning the quality of the recording (and lesson presentation) doesn't quite match my recent standards... but hey! This is a good problem to have, in my eyes. If you think any of these lessons could benefit from a re-recording, reply to this email let me know.
Looking for More Practice Tips? Tips for Effective Practice – where I explain my thoughts on what makes for a good practice routine, whether or not you need to work on drills & exercises, how to set realistic goals, suggestions for choosing songs, and much more. Tips for Memorizing Song Lyrics – where I share strategies that work for me, starting with paper (print them out or write them down)! From there, it’s a process of active listening, focus, and repetition — and that’s all before you bring in the guitar parts, which can be tough to combine. Tips for Singing & Strumming at the Same Time – which is probably the most common question folks send in. This can be enormously difficult at first, especially as you’re learning new strumming patterns. I’ll share with you the 4-5 most important tips on this topic, each of which I consider essential to include in your practice toolkit. Thanks and Enjoy! I hope you find the new lesson helpful. Likewise, may you find something of interest in the older lessons I've shared above. I've been watching tons of Dolly Parton videos the past week, after her passing. So many good ones. My favorite is her spontaneously sitting in to play Coat of Many Colors while at a pub in Ireland. Watch the guitarist's eyes as he plays... he seems quite aware of the magical moment at hand: I'll leave you with that... have a great weekend my friends! David |
Song Notes by David Pots
Learn to play guitar with weekly video lessons & print-friendly guides! Learn your favorite songs & techniques with step-by-step tutorials that actually explain how to get from here to there.
LESSON #628Rock n' Roll Fun with Runaway ▶️ Click to view free video lesson In today's lesson I'll teach you to strum your way through Runaway, the #1 hit from Del Shannon released in 1961. This song is a blast to play, as it features an uncharacteristic key change (A minor to A major) and includes plenty of strumming flourishes. In my tutorial, I'll guide you through all of this — showing you how to work your way up to the full song, bit by bit. Don't miss my practice guide available over on...
LESSON #627Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming... ▶️ Click to watch my free guitar lesson In today’s lesson I’ll teach you to play Ohio, the Crosby Stills Nash & Young protest classic from 1970. This one came in by request a few weeks back… and though I’d heard it a hundred times in the prior twenty years, it immediately hooked me this time around. And so, after learning it the past couple weeks… here’s my latest lesson. I teach you how to play the main riff & strum the chorus, with my usual...
NEW PDF & 6 STEP-BY-STEP VIDEOS!How I Learned Travis Fingerstyle with John Prine First up, an update to one of my older lessons. Back in 2018 I managed to finally get over the Travis Picking hump, thanks to John Prine's classic Clay Pigeons. In lesson #173 (below) I outlined the step-by-step series of exercises I created to get the hang of things: Today, I'm excited to share some new additions to this classic lesson. I overhauled my 7-page PDF guide from scratch, giving you detailed...