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The Brilliant Benefits of The Blues Scale

The pentatonic scale is a great scale to start out with when you’re learning to play lead guitar. But once you got that under your belt you can quickly move on to the blues scale. Even for guitar players who have kept their chops limited to the pentatonic scale for years, it will be enlightening to see how the blues scale can help out.

Although the blues scale doesn’t look that different from the pentatonic scale, the benefits are tremendous and can have a great impact on your soloing and creative expansion.

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons that make the blues scale such an important and valuable scale. We’ll show you how to play the pentatonic scale and the blues scale in different positions. And further we’ll explain how it can benefit, grow and open up your playing.

Top 30 Easy Guitar Rock Songs For Beginners

By Klaus Crow 3 Comments

There’s nothing like strumming a good rock song. It’s that thrill when you play the songs you’ve always been listening to. You feel it when your fingers are blazin’ across the strings through the gain of the amp. Total bliss!

But what songs do you pick when you’re in the beginning stage? There are plenty rock songs out there, but most of them are pretty challenging to play to say the least.

To tackle this problem I selected 30 easy rock songs for beginners so you can start practicing. Don’t forget to turn the amp up and play that electric guitar loud and dirty.

To be fair, it is recommendable that you own some beginner skills and try out some easy acoustic guitar songs first. You need to know a few basic chords and easy strumming patterns. Having said that, I know you are here for rock ‘n roll so some easy guitar riffs might excite you as well. I don’t want to overload you with material but I just want you to know it’s here if you need it.

Now let’s get rocking!

Easy Guitar Riffs & Intros for Beginners (Tab incl.)

By Klaus Crow 17 Comments

When you’re learning to play guitar you practice chords, strumming patterns, fingerpicking patterns, guitar songs and scales in order to become an an accomplished guitar player. That stuff can be hard and challenging sometimes so it’s healthy for you to take a pleasant break now and then. That’s where easy guitar riffs and intros come in.

Indulging in the best and easiest guitar riffs is good for the soul. It’s motivating and will keep the fun alive while working on your regular practice workout.

What is a guitar riff?

A guitar riff is a memorable sequence of notes or chords that has a main part in the song. It has a strong melodic or harmonic pattern that is used as a repeated catchy hook and makes the music stand out. Riffs can be found in all styles of music from rock to latin all the way to classical music.

While riffs are usually short in duration, there are examples of longer riffs and they can differ in complexity from really simple to super challenging riffs.

How to practice a guitar riff

Before you start practicing a guitar riff you want to listen to the riff a couple of times. Put on the original track and carefully listen to the notes (the melody or harmony), to the duration of the notes, the beat, the rhythm, the tempo, the timing of the notes, any dynamics or accents of the notes in the riff.

Analyze the riff with your ears in anyway possible. This is a really important process and skill to learn and gives you a great advantage before you really start learning any riff on the guitar.

Once you’ve listened and analyzed the riff you look for the Tabs (see the easy guitar tabs list below) and try to figure out the riff note by note. I recommend you first try to figure out the riff using only the tabs and your ears and when you’re stuck you watch a video guitar lesson. Trying to work out the riff on your own is so good for developing and improving your guitar skills, it’s huge!

50 of The Best Metal Songs of All Times

By Klaus Crow 20 Comments

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The first metal band I really digged was Iron Maiden. I guess I was about ten years old.

I loved their music instantly. What was there not to love? All the songs had catchy guitar riffs and Bruce Dickinson’s voice was superb.

Years later when I went to high school I got to know some dudes that were into death metal. The genre was something I had to get accustomed to. To be honest, it really had to grow on me, but there was something that fascinated me and I was drawn to it.

The degree of loudness in the music was introduced to me backwards. Starting with Slayer and Obituary and followed by more popular bands like Metallica and Megadeth.

I got hooked and started listening to a lot of different metal bands and styles. I also started transcribing and playing a lot of metal on my guitar. My favorite metal bands became Sepultura, Death, Slayer, Pantera and of course Metallica and Megadeth.

I was hypnotized by Max Cavalera’s (Sepultura) heavy and diverse rhythm guitar parts, Marty Friedman’s (Megadeth) melodic speed soloing and Dimebag’s (Pantera) crazy wild bombastic riffs. There was so much creativity going on in all of these guitar players. An endless source of inspiration. Continue Reading

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