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As most of you are probably aware Ozzy Osbourne recently released his latest album “Scream” replacing a decade long relationship with Zakk Wylde in favour of Greek young-gun Gus G. You can read my review of the album here.

I decided to record a lesson based on the intro of Track 1 “Let It Die”, make sure you are using a Drop D tuning before attempting this lesson. I have split the lesson into the Rhythm part and the Solo that Gus plays over the top. The rhythm is a bit tricky because it alternates between a bar of 7/8 and 4/4 make sure you listen to the track a few times to get a feel for this rhythmic pattern before playing along. The Solo is fairly straight-forward but you need to concentrate on a clean slide with your little finger on the top E string in the string skipped section and try not to get confused by the underlying time signature changes.

NOTE: There is a slight difference between the TAB that I have provided and the video lesson as I realised after I had uploaded the video that I had made a little error, the part that I thought initially was a G# strummed 3 times is in fact what I say is at the end of the second repeat of the riff which is a G# - Bb - G#. Anyway it is a minor point really as the G# works well too.

You can download the Rhythm TAB here and the Solo TAB here.

Welcome to part 2 of In The Style Of: Eddie Van Halen, in this lesson I show you how Eddie uses tapped harmonics to create melodic patterns and chord progressions and special effects. Below is the TAB for the “Women In Love” intro from the album Van Halen II which is the first example in the video above. The second example in the video doesn’t really need a TAB example as it is self-explanatory and is down to your own experimentation. Hope you enjoy the lesson and find it useful, maybe you can integrate Tapped Harmonics into your own tracks and solos?

Today is the first in what I hope will be a series of many guitar lessons that focus on techniques of various influential guitar players. To start the series I have chosen my biggest influence when I first picked up the electric guitar back in 1988, Eddie Van Halen. Now Eddie is such a ground-breaking guitar player with a myriad of techniques that I couldn’t possibly squeeze them all into a single lesson so I have chosen to break Eddie’s techniques up into different parts, Part 1 focusses on Tremelo Picking and Wide Vibrato. The TAB for the section of the “Hot For Teacher” solo that I have chosen to use is available below, hope some of you find this lesson useful and make sure you check out Part 2 coming soon!

You can check out the video for Hot For Teacher on YouTube here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0XLKcMoXRE

Yes you read that title correctly Martin Taylor is giving you the chance to download a free lesson from his new online instruction site the Martin Taylor Guitar Academy, I reported the launch of this site last month and it has had rave reviews. The site also had a record breaking opening week. Use the widget below to download your free guitar lesson from Martin Taylor.

It is time for another post from Ysrafel, this is a great article for anyone interested in learning how to start writing their own songs. There are a set of questions that can be applied to any song to help you analyse the form, harmony, structure etc. so that you can apply these techniques in your own songwriting.

Find out more about Ysrafel over at his website www.ysrafel.com.

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One of the most important parts of understanding how to express yourself with music is to be able to analyze specific musical elements in order to find out how they affect the listener. The more you know about specific ways to create an idea, the more clear of an idea you can make when you write a song.

There are many various ways to express the same idea with music. For example, if you wanted to create the idea of “sadness,” you could achieve this in many different ways. You could use a minor key, you could focus on scale degree 2 of the minor scale in your melodies, you could use a slow tempo, you could use descending melodic lines, and so forth…

The more you analyze music and practice song writing, the better you will become when it comes to expressing your ideas in a clear understandable fashion. When you stop to think about how to express musical ideas, where did you get those ideas from? You got them from hearing music that other people have made. So by listening to more music, you can increase your capacity for understanding how to create certain emotions with music in different scenarios. This doesn’t mean you will blatantly take a melody from someone else’s music, but rather you will use the same musical idea for when you create your own music.

I’ve created a very powerful list of questions for you to ask yourself in order to analyze a song. I’d like you to use this to analyze other people’s music, and to analyze your own music. Doing so will help you to get a clear picture of what is being expressed, and how to express it.

1. What is the form of the song?
What is the overall song structure? How does this form structure affect the feel of the song? Some examples of organizing form could be Intro - Verse - Chorus - Verse - Chorus - Break - Chorus, or perhaps A B A B C B, or on a more advanced level specific types of “classical” forms like binary, fugue, sonata, etc. Observe how the length or shortness of the different sections in a song affect the feel of the melodies, phrases, or rhythm. Also, observe the length of the phrases and song sections.

2. What harmony is being used?
In other words, what chords are used? What is the key of the song or the different sections in the song? Identify what the actual chords are(note sounded harmonically, or at the same time), and what the chords are which are implied by arpeggios or melodies with notes occurring one after the other.

3. What emotions does this piece portray? What harmonies give these emotions?
What is the overall main feeling of this song? Is it just one feeling, or are there more than one feeling(usually different sections)? Observe how you feel when you hear specific chords throughout the song.

4. How does the rhythm affect the feel of this song? or any specific part?
Do the rhythms used in the song convey a specific idea? Can you feel a building of momentum at any point due to the rhythm of the notes used? Does rhythm play a strong part in the overall feeling of this song?

5. Does the song seem to repeat common themes or phrases?
Sometimes music will repeat melodies (or “motives”) in order to emphasize a specific idea or emotion. This is also used to create unity within the song to help give balance or to help tie the music together.

6. If there are modulations, what emotions do they evoke in the music?
Modulations are when music changes its tonal center (the note that every other note functions to go to or delay going to). This can be used as an effect to generate a sense of new arrival. If you can, identify the specific modulatory techniques which are used (if any). What feeling do you feel when the music modulates to a new key?

Just as a quick side note, I want you guys to know that I have made a free printable .pdf file of this lesson available here for all of the people who sign up for my free newsletter. My free newsletter contains guitar tab lessons, professional guitar advice, informative articles, songwriting tips, and more exclusive cool stuff. Alright, alright, enough with the blatant advertising right?! OK, let’s continue on…

7. What keeps the song interesting over the span of a few minutes?
What are the major parts of interest? What do you think is something about the music which compels the listener to continue listening?

8. What kind of texture is there throughout the song?
Does the music contain a thick texture with many different parts happening at once, many melodic lines stacked on top of each other, or full chords (like a 6 string guitar chord, a full orchestra band, etc.)? Does the music contain a think texture with few parts happening at once, few melodic parts stacked on top of each other, or chords which only contain a few notes (like a 3 string guitar chord, piano playing a triad with only 3 notes, etc.)?

9. What kind of dynamics are there?
Are there various instances of different dynamics? How do they effect the feel of the piece? What is the overall loudness of the song? Does this change at any point? If so, how does it affect the feeling of that musical idea or section?

10. What kind of timbre is used?
What are the instruments used in this song? What techniques are used by these instruments, and what kind of feeling do these techniques create in the music?

11. What is the harmonic rhythm of the various sections in this piece?
How many chords are there per measure? A fast harmonic rhythm will contain many chord changes in a certain period of time (for instance, 4 chord changes per measure), a slow harmonic rhythm will contain few chord changes during a certain period of time (for instance, 1 chord change every 8 measures). Harmonic rhythm has a strong influence on the momentum in a song. It may change at various parts in order to create a certain feeling.

To start using this lesson to help you get better at song writing right now, choose 20 (no less) songs to analyze (must be someone else’s music). Try to find songs which you think are highly expressive. Analyze these songs over the next month or two (2-4 songs a week). This will take a bit of time for each song, but will be well worth it. Over the next month or two, you will notice a very significant increase in your musical expression skills and your overall ability to create ideas off the top of your head in any given musical situation.

As a last note, if you pick all songs within the same genre, this will drastically improve your potential to write for that genre. You will begin to notice specific patterns in the way the music is written, which will enable you to be able to think off the top of your head with great ease when writing for that genre. If you pick songs from various genres, it will give you a much more broad perspective of how to express yourself in various scenarios.

Gain free access to more guitar technique and songwriting tips here.

To celebrate the release of Slash’s new album I have created a lesson on how to play the main riff from the track “Watch This Dave” which is an instrumental track featuring Dave Grohl and Duff McKagan. The riff is pretty easy if you follow the tab below, I have chosen to play it using open strings but you can also shift this up to the 12th fret on the low (dropped) D string or around the 5th fret (D) on the A string. Check out my video above for a breakdown on playing the riff.

Check out Slash’s site for details on how to buy the new album.

Click here to download the tabs.