Music:

Buy my rockin' instrumental CD


Barrett now on iTunes!

Instruction:

Guitar Reading Workbook


Guitar Fretboard Workbook


Chord Tone Soloing


Classic Rock Soloing DVD

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Barrett Tagliarino

Upcoming CD Released Free, One Track
at a Time

The tunes are all written, and I'm spending lots of time in the studio now. It's all instrumental rock, with an emphasis on melodic soloing and cool arrangements, with the requisite hot licks and some shredding here and there.

When the songs are all mixed and mastered, you'll be able to download one song for free each month. Every month the free song will be switched to a different one off the album. You can contact me to be notified when the CD is available or when each new monthly song is available. Just state your preference. If you give me your address I won't give it to anyone else. No time for marketing shenanigans. I will only contact you when I have new product!

Of course you'll also be able to buy the CD right away if you want CD quality, or if you don't want to wait for the songs. That would be nice.

Want to Play Better?

I'm always happy to answer questions about my books, about practicing, and about guitar playing in general. When someone writes me, the discussion ends up on my blog, Barrett's Guitar Q&A (with the names changed to protect the innocent!).

My Latest Work

The idea for the Guitar Reading Workbook (click to buy it) came from Reading classes I teach to beginning GIT students. I gave them extra diagram exercises sort of like those in the Fretboard Workbook. They said it helped them learn and made the subject more fun, so I expanded the idea into a complete reading method book.

(Not to be confused with the Guitar FRETBOARD Workbook, which may be what you're after.)

After some concise explanation of a topic, you get a written exercise that solidifies the concept. Early ones might take about 5 minutes to complete. Later ones can take up to half an hour. The exercises differ from chapter to chapter. Sometimes you just have to write the names of some notes or chords that you see on the staff. In others, you write which beat number a rhythm falls on. Later, you'll read some tab and translate it into regular notation, or look at some notes and identify the chord they make, and so on. When you've finished the written part, you pick up the guitar, turn on the metronome, and play the notation.

Throughout the book I try to make everything as easy and clear as possible, so you don't ever have to learn two new things at once. But if you get this book, you should spend at least 6 months to a year with it. Go slowly! It starts out basic but takes you into some reasonably advanced territory.

This new book is available at amazon.com, or you can order it from any regular bookstore (if they don't already have it).

About My Teaching Methods
In every book, I give you exercises designed to reinforce and test your knowledge of the ideas just covered.

Sometimes I'll tell you it is OK to move on while still working on the previous material. In many cases, however, correctly completing the exercises is the only way of getting to the next level. Without mastering the previous section, the next one is impossible.

To get this cumulative mastery, the exercises force you to study the material from different perspectives, roughly reflecting Gardner's popular multiple intelligences theory. While I'm not prepared to argue its validity from a psychologist's standpoint, it does seem to be working for teaching music. The idea is that not all brains learn exactly the same way; various people tend to tackle new information using different methods, none of which is inherently superior to the others but just reflects a bias that can be brought into balance. For example, we can learn...

  • Aurally: We transfer sounds we hear into ideas we can describe or write. We hear the notes on the page as sounds in our heads before we actually play them.

  • Visually: We mentally picture how the notes we hear would look on the page, and how our fingers would look when playing them. We fill in diagrams of fretboard shapes from memory.

  • Verbally: We describe aloud what musical concepts the notation represents. We sing the notes.

  • Physically: We drill the finger motions that correspond to the notation, and we physically write notation for music we hear or compose.

  • Logically: We identify the basic music theory behind the notes. Are they in a major key? Minor? Do these notes form a scale or chord that we know?

    Some of the above approaches will likely appeal to you more than others, and will present the easiest method for initially arriving at an understanding of new material, but all are important. By noticing which you favor and which you neglect, you can compensate to assure you really learn your lesson.

    For example, I occasionally get a student who asks a lot of questions and thinks about music constantly, but doesn’t drill the movements enough to execute what he understands. This student knows what he is playing, but may not be able to play it with confidence.

    Others might practice constantly but refuse to write anything down or give the name of the scale or chord they are playing. This inhibits their ability to compose parts for other musicians or to communicate in a rehearsal.

    The exercises are meant to test your knowledge and get you thinking; visualizing and verbalizing as well as playing the new material. Natural resistance to doing the exercises is probably the source of some of the negative reviews I get occasionally: "I don't like the schoolbook approach," or "it's tedious," etc. I understand that sometimes it seems hard, but the idea is to make sure you GET IT.

  • More Nuggets for Less Cabbage
    Since 2001

    Books
    The new Guitar Reading Workbook is for beginning guitarists or experienced by-ear players who want to get started reading notation. Right-click here (64 kB) to download a pdf excerpt of this book (or left-click if you view pdf files in your browser). You can also use the "Search Inside" function at the amazon.com page to see bigger chunks of this book.

    The Guitar Fretboard Workbook has over 60 customer reviews (thanks, people!) at amazon to help you decide if it's right for you. You can also "Search Inside" this book at amazon. We have reviews from magazines and online forums here. You don't have to read music to use this book or the next one.

    Chord Tone Soloing for Guitar is a book/CD combo that covers different territory from the others. Once you know the fretboard, you still have to know which notes to play, and when! This book has also been very popular; reviews here.

    Instructional DVD
    Classic Rock Guitar Soloing at amazon. On this DVD I play some examples along with a jam track so you can hear how'd you use them live, then I let the track roll on so you can try the licks by yourself.

    It starts with basics like the 5 minor and major pentatonic scale patterns, dorian and aeolian modes, and the blues scale. Then I cover soloing techniques: string bending, vibrato, pull-offs, hammer-ons, and slides, along with some finger exercises to break out of the scalar rut.

    There are then some classic blues and country licks that are essential to the style, with a demonstration of how to use them in major and minor keys.

    Finally I demonstrate phrasing principles using solo excerpts from classic songs, including "Black Magic Woman," Maggie Mae," Already Gone," "La Grange," "Money," "Stairway to Heaven," All Along the Watchtower," and Alvin Lee's "Goin' Home."
    Reviews here.

    Music
    The best place to buy my first solo CD, Moe's Art, in CD or mp3 form is at CD Baby! These are very high quality, about 200kbps VBR, with NO DRM! They'll play on any hardware!

    For you iPod users, iTunes also sells individual tracks from Moe's Art. Read the reviews here.

    You can buy a hard plastic copy of Moe's Art from the very reliable Guitar Nine web site. If you don't want to use a credit card, you can mail order the CD from me. It's $14.00.

    Contact me to be notified when my next CD is completed!

    Free Mp3s for Ya
    Here is an mp3 of the demo track for a recent composition, A Food Fight of Epic Portions, to be re-recorded for my next CD. And here's another one: Mojito.

    There are two more (free) streaming audio files of me playing over on myspace.com.

    More Free Stuff
    The free lessons don't always contain full background info and so might be considered more advanced than the material in the books, which usually start off at the beginner level and then progress to the advanced.

    Here is a free lesson on connecting pentatonics. Yours for the taking.

    There is a free lesson on dominant diminished and streaming audio of the tune it comes from, "The Giant Cockroach That Ate Tokyo." It's a slammin' recording engineered by Billy Burke.

    Here's where you can download more of the latest and some older songs for free, along with lots of guitar-oriented recordings contributed by my friends, in the Monster Guitar Archive.


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