The Hacking the CAGED System series was inspired by my own, and other guitarist's frustrations with the infamous CAGED System for learning guitar. It all started back in Music College in the early 2000s, at the ACM in Guildford (UK) to be precise, where we were handed, by none other than Guthrie Govan, an inch-thick binder containing all manner of shapes and patterns for the CAGED system, including chords and arpeggios. I duly slaved over the book...

This is a soloing system I came up with for intermediate guitarists based on exploring the sounds of blues-rock improvisation which involves minimal theory, while focusing on concepts you can apply to your playing right away. Here we dispense with scales, arpeggios and whatnot in favor of just 3 positions on the fretboard that will allow you to get a wide variety of blues-rock sounds under your fingers in no time at all. This is accomplished by focusing...

Picking up a Guitar and Making Beautiful Music Is a Great Feeling Whether you're young or old, there's no better feeling than learning to play an instrument. Sadly, most people believe that they will never learn how to play Guitar. Local guitar teachers seem like a great option at first, but you could risk getting stuck with a wannabe rock star who can't really teach you. Or you could try YouTube but most of those videos go way too fast and they...

Ever since my first guitar teacher introduced me to the music of Allan Holdsworth in the late 90s, it has been an ongoing apprenticeship. I became fascinated, not only with his music, but with his approach to music itself, and the way he thinks about chords, scales and improvisation. Allan's REH video was a blessing for me as I was able to glean enough insight into his playing to understand the way the great man thinks, and more importantly to begin...

Tune your B and E strings up to C and F respectively and you're in all fourths tuning. The first time I did this it was truly a revelation to me to have a symmetrical fretboard and get rid of that major third 'bump' from the G to B string in standard tuning. Everything suddenly became far more manageable and logical, and I began to experience a freedom on the fretboard that I'd never quite found in standard tuning. To be honest, there isn't much...

To play great guitar, you need to know more than just notes and chords - you need to know the words! What does "guitar action" mean, and how can it make your guitar playing smoother and easier? What are "arpeggios", and how can they improve your finger strength and take you creativity to the next level? And what on earth is a "jazz box"? Find all the answers, and more, in this quick reference guide Guitar Terms for Beginners A-Z. Guitar Fun Grows...

There's a beautiful symmetry about modes in fourths tuning (E, A, D, G, C, F or any variation thereof) that's well-worth exploring, which is why I've dedicated an entire book to it. With that B-string bump out of the way, we're free to explore modes both as scales in their own right and as parent scales belonging to a key. There's just something about fourths tuning that makes the transition from theory to practice, and then mastery, a fairly effortless...

Following on from, 'Fourths Tuning, Chords and Inversions', I wanted to share a number of ways to see scales and arpeggios in fourths tuning that really take advantage of having a fretboard with a symmetrical layout. This book is divided into three sections. In the first, we look at how to transfer your knowledge of scales and arpeggios from standard tuning to fourths tuning, so as not to have to start again from scratch. In the second section,...