Work, with Miles Okazaki

Here we extend the exercises of symmetrical picking into triples, and all of the cool stuff you can do by combining twos and threes (all other numbers can be made from these). A worksheet with some additional ideas is attached.

Singles and Doubles together allow us to make paradiddles, one of the most common and fundamental drum patterns. I think this one is really fun to practice and very useful for buildng technique. I go through the exercise that's on the attached sheet.

Here we get into double and triple paradiddles, and I demonstrate one of my favorite exercises, which is in Fundamentals of Guitar. The written exercise are attached on the patreon page.

Following up on the last video, here's a thing on double strokes. Also an interesting observation on "Boogie Stop Shuffle" and "Mr. P.C.," two minor blues tunes with a bunch of doubled notes in the melodies, almost the exact same tempo, recorded a week apart in May of 1959. PDF attached for the exercise.

Here I give an introduction to Symmetrical Picking, something that I developed while writing "Fundamentals of Guitar" about ten years ago. I outline how the strings could be thought of as left and right hand drum stickings, and show an exercise for string skipping. See attachment for a written version.

This is the beginning of a new series on articulation with the pick. It's one of my favorite subjects, and I've put a lot of thought into developing exercises that get results, regardless of the style of music you play. This is an introductory video, where I talk about various ways of holding the pick and then give a couple of basic accenting exercises.

Here's a fairly long video showing my approach to the melody of a classic, "Donna Lee." This video is open to free members. Please share and tell friends about the site if you dig it.

Here I take a look at a passage from a Grant Green solo brought up by a member. This leads to some discussion about the Melodic Minor scale, and how it's often used in a jazz context.

This videos jumps off of the questions from the last episode. I talk about "Stardust," "Embraceable You," "Night and Day," phrases by Charlie Parker, and then demonstrate some exercises and ideas.

This is a response video to a couple of questions from the last post, which was pretty complicated. The main thing is looking at options of how to think about pathways, which can boggle the mind pretty quickly. I give some of my shortcuts and tricks.

By introducing mi6 chords, we've now doubled the number of dominants available at any given time. I get into this idea here, with a very short explanation that ties into the diminished thing we started this series with.