Drop D Guitar Riff

Guitar riffs don't always have to be difficult to sound cool. This guitar riff is pretty basic. I am tuned down to drop D if you want to play along. The main part of this guitar riff only uses three notes with a chromatic walk down at the end. I will be looking at some solo ideas over this progression later on my website www.getintoguitar.com if your interested.

Questions, comments requests? Let me know on twitter @jimifan

*note in the tab I repeat the section without the walk down three times I forgot to notate that in tab and music notation.

Chromatic Country Guitar Lick

Today we look at a chromatic country guitar lick in the key of G. The lick uses open strings and pull-offs and is centered around a 16th note rhythm pattern. Practice this slowly with a metronome before you try playing it up to tempo and beyond. I've including a slowed down section in the video.

Any questions let me know on twitter @jimifan

Melodic Guitar Lick in the Key of D

I don't know a lot about Ed Sheeran. He seems like a nice guy though and I like that. I do love his song "Thinking Out Loud". I decided to learn it after it was tabbed out in a recent issue of Guitar World magazine - August 2015 if your looking for it. As millions of people already know it is a really great song. It is really fun to play on guitar and has some nice rhythmic phrasing if you want to practice muting on an acoustic guitar in a strumming pattern.

The chord progression for the main part breaks down to basically a simple I IV V change using D G and A major. This progression is the basis for thousands of songs. After I learned the song I wanted to try and come up with a melodic lick over a similar progression. The guitar lick itself is pretty easy but I like the way it sounds. I threw in a few improvised licks in between. Here is the tab for the main lick:

Fusion Guitar Lick

A break from the vinyl inspired guitar licks today. I was messing around with a chord progression and came up with this fusion sounding guitar lick.It is based around the E Major scale.

The chord progression is based around these chords.

 Here is the tab for the guitar lick.

Vinyl Guitar Lick - Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse of Reason

Today's guitar lick was inspired by the Pink Floyd song 'On the Turning Away' I drew inspiration from the great solo Gilmour plays on this track with his iconic blues rock tone.

The chord progression goes Em|C|Em|C|D|C|Em The lead guitar lick is based around the E Minor Scale.

Vinyl Guitar Licks - Def Leppard - Hysteria

Today's guitar lick is inspired by the great Def Leppard album 'Hysteria'.  This was a favourite of mine when it was released and it still sounds great today. The production on this album is amazing and it has a huge sound that is still clear and clean thanks to producer extraordinaire Mutt Lange. Guitarists Steve Clark (RIP) and Phil Collen have a great interplay and both sound fantastic.

I was inspired today by the song 'Love Bites'. I tired to come up with a lead melodic guitar part  played over a moving chord progression. The chord progression I used was:

G5  |  Eb5  |  C5 |  Bb5 C5 |

Here is the guitar tab for the lead part. In the video I played the tab as written a couple of times then just jammed over the progression.

Vinyl Guitar Licks - Leo Kottke - Greenhouse

Our guitar lick today is inspired by the album 'Greenhouse' by Leo Kottke. I really don't know a lot about this guitarist. I know he plays some mean finger-style  acoustic guitar and incorporates a lot of different musical genres into his playing. I tried to come up with a funky yet folksy  riff. I'll let you decide how well I did that. I couldn't find the album on Spotify but I was inspired by the funky riff on 'Bean Time'.

I did not spend a lot of time getting the  standard notation in the tab exact so please listen to the video to get the rhythm down. Here is the guitar tab. I'm a very novice finger-style player and prefer a pick most of the time but this is my attempt.

Again please note I did not tab out the rhythm parts in standard notation generally I let the notes ring longer than the eighth note duration indicated especially in the second part.