Guitar Nine Columns: Guitar Technique

Stop practicing with boring scales and start testing your fingers with melodic 'riffs' from Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and more.

An original work composed for solo classical guitar, in tabulature and standard notation.

Learn some substitutions for those tried and true barre chords. How the knowledge of triads can help you come up with original sounding guitar parts.

An arrangement of the Tchaikovsky piece for solo guitar, in tabulature and standard notation.

Some creative uses of digital delay when writing or recording.

Call-and-response practicing to enhance your phrasing and composing.

Stuck recycling the same licks and riffs? Dig yourself out of your guitar playing rut and rediscover the instrument you love.

Stop strumming those simple barre chords, and embellish your chordal work with licks and phrases that blur the distiction between rhythm and lead guitar playing.

Tips for playing arpeggiated chord progressions using string skipping.

Break free of your limiting beliefs about pentatonic scales.

More short lick ideas to kick-start your technique.

Emulating your heroes is fine, but consider how far should you take it.

Nowhere to go with ascending licks but up? Dan McAvinchey confronts the problem and gives you several ideas you can use today. Don't just take the easy way out and start descending either.

A number of short lick ideas designed to kick-start your technique.