These lessons will walk you through the form of the song in four of the lessons, rather than a list of licks. The form is the key to learning this masterpiece! The solo will also be covered along with a few of the electric guitar fills. Mastering these lessons will guarantee your spot in the next Smokey and the Bandit sequel.

This tutorial will breakdown Concrete Blonde's magnum opus into the few riffs that build this song as well as a lick by lick look at the solo. You'll learn the secrets to the thick tone of the riff and the strange, chorused tone of the solo. You'll find this heavy song is based on a few simple but effective elements.

Step along the dance floor, learning the moves that guys envy and ladies adore. We'll walk you step by through funk picking and timing, the various chords used in the sections of the song, even how to double the bass line. In short, how to get your groove on!

Welcome to a giant standard in the classic rock catalog. In this series, we'll explore how to take simple chords and scales and add a healthy dose of chops to learn Carry On Wayward Son. This tutorial will methodically break down all the major song riffs as well as the solos, the tempos and feels, the rhythmic elements, the tone and gear, and lots more. We hope you are warmed up!

In this series, we'll walk through the basic elements of this Megadeth tune: the verse hooks, pre-chorus, chorus, power chords, and solo, and then put it together in a playalong. Oh yes, and we'll crush the solo, too. Get ready.

Is it a ballad? Is it a rock anthem? My AM radio says yes! This acoustic intro is one of the most recognizeable intros in the classic rock catalog that sets a mood before flowing into one of the most muscular riffs to ever hit an arena in the seventies. Want a ballad that still rocks hard? Look no further. Want a heavy riff that still shows you have some sensitivity? Hang around with bad company and you'll get it. And oh yes, there's a harmony solo to show your musicality and an outro solo that shows you can also melt faces. What do you feel like?

We have salvaged many parts - some perfect, some not so perfect - from a nearby Rock Graveyard. We'll assemble these parts with a bit of science, some secret ingredients (including the forbidden Bucket of Sauce), and the ancient text written by the hand of Dr. Edgar Winter himself! Get ready to learn Dan Hartman's licks and riffs, the rhythm playing, the harmony guitars, the use of wah pedal, and put the parts together in a play along.

We'll break it all down for you. The arpeggiated opening guitar part, the signature slide line, the building riffs and the over four minute solo. You play it like this and they'll issue a "true southerner" membership card in the mail!

Step by step we learn the components that build this classic rock masterpiece. There are only 3 riffs and two licks. Not much there considering the impact this song has on large groups of people, but that's what makes a truly classic riff or lick. The main guitar riff in this song really is one of the baddest of the 70s.

This experiment is broken down riff by riff, lick by lick and sound by sound to show you the DNA of the psychobilly species. You've got your big fat fuzz tones, your retro-reverbed tremolo tones, descending chromatic intro and outro, and licks right out of the 60s. However, no science is exact and you should proceed at your own risk.

In this set of five lessons, Andy Gurley will show you how to play the country standard "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", as made famous by Hank Williams. Andy will dig into the boom-chick strumming in 3/4 time, the lead fills, and as a bonus he'll teach you a solo based on the vocal melody. To close it out, we'll play along with whole song.

In this song tutorial, Andy Gurley will teach you the song "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys", as made famous by the legendary Willie Nelson. You'll learn both electric and acoustic parts in the intro and verses and choruses, plus the 6/8 strumming, that layer to form the perfect pages on which to write the cowboy story being told. We'll pull into the corral with a full play-along performance, with vocals.

In the list of traditional country standards, this is one of the most popular. The 1970 country music Song of the Year is a longstanding classic that features many must-know techniques: solid acoustic strumming, hybrid-picking acoustic guitar and standard electric guitar fills. Learning this song is taking Country 101. Merle Haggard helped write the textbook while the guitarists helping him on this tune were none other than session legends Jerry Reed and James Burton. Get out your solid timing and taste and let's learn Okie From Muskogee.

This tutorial breaks the classic country staple down to its basic elements: Great boom-chick strumming, hooks that sell millions of records (or downloads for you net savvy hipsters), and well-crafted harmony guitars. Let's get to it!

In this tutorial you'll learn the main parts to this classic funk/dance song. There are surprisingly few; it's based on some simple yet effective repeating licks. You'll also learn the proper body glitter to body ratio for stage personae. It's about the pocket so we'll put it all in a groove to top it off.

In this tutorial you will learn a metal classic, "You've Got Another Thing Coming" made famous by Judas Priest. We'll boost your chops with the minor pentatonic scale, hot rod your power chords, kick things up a notch with the riff behind the anthem and the metal rhythms. Then get ready to rock with a full play along!

If you ever had a simple song and needed a good band, the N'awlins recipe says: add The Meters. If you've already got The Meters, add Robert Palmer. It's an all-star groove that will give you a plate full of feel, and we'll break the song apart and see how the layered parts create such funkiness. From the signature guitar hook to the simple open chords of the bridge, to the layers and bits of slide, there's a challenge for all levels here.

These lessons will teach you to make the most of your regular chords. We'll learn 9 Major chord inversions and 9 Minor chord inversions and put them into real time. This will put real spice in your rhythm and lead guitar.

Basic chords in a few keys are used to show some basic country embellishment techniques.

Shows how to approach playing various single note embellishments within barre chords.

This tutorial explains basic arpeggiation: arpeggio means "broken chord". When you break chords down, you put together some of the nicest progressions and riffs in the style.

This series will demonstrate simple, bluesy licks derived from the minor pentatonic and blues scale over riffs that we've created previously in Rock Level 1. Lead guitar work will be discussed more in depth in Level 2, but this will give you the idea of how a rock guitarist borrows from the blues more completely.

This tutorial will demonstrate how to take the three tonal centers of the 12 Bar Blues (the I, IV, and V chords) and create great rock riffs based on each one. We'll borrow these tonal centers to build memorable riffs in the style of your favorite rock acts.

In this series of lessons we'll learn the essential technique of arpeggiation, or how to break chords apart, using barre chords.

This tutorial looks at creating hooks with open, barre, and power chords.

In this series, we'll teach you what a power chord is, how to pull a power chord out of any major or minor barre chord, and how to put that power into some great examples.

We'll take the 12 Bar Blues Form reviewed in the first lesson and treat it with the style of artists such as Jack Johnson and the Counting Crows to demonstrate how rock artists borrow the 12 Bar Form.

This series of lessons will demonstrate how to create and use a bluesy feel over progressions that are not in the 12 Bar Blues Form.

To bring the student along into more advanced rhythmic ideas.

This series of lessons will demonstrate the composition of riffs using open chords and their variations, barre chords and power chords.

We take all the techniques you have learned and put them in the context of new groupings: the parts of a song. We'll learn how these techniques effect the sound of the verse, bridge and chorus of a song. Hopefully we'll get your chops up and your creative juices flowing.

Riffs are a standard part of the Rock vocabulary. This series of lessons will define riffs and teach the fundamentals of building solid riffs using the barre chord as a basic tool.

Scale tones make open chords sound mean, sweet, or symphonic. This technique is used by the best, therefore you should use this to convince your sweetheart you love her/him or to rip the face off "The Man".

This tutorial will break down riffs from the inside out so that you learn to SEE them as well as HEAR them. This will help you get the most out of this course as well as the Guitar Tricks site.

This tutorial sets the tone for what we'll learn in all the tutorials in this chapter. You should see that there is value in learning the blues to put a sharper edge on your playing. Rock has a huge history with the blues and hopefully these candid interviews will give you an idea of how each player is influenced by this history.

These lessons explore simple riff composition based on a two chord progression. This is the kind of progression you would play at a jam session with friends or when sitting in with a band onstage. These techniques are the building blocks for all great riff composition.

This tutorial will teach more difficult ways of playing riffs using power chords and more complex rhythmic ideas.

In these lessons we'll give you an overview of several FX pedals commonly used in rock. We'll start with overdrive and stacking overdrives, then examine distortion. Next we'll compare overdrive, distortion, and fuzz. After that we'll look at delay, chorus, and the wah pedal; followed by compression, the phaser, and the octave pedal and volume pedal. We'll finish with the ring modulator.

This tutorial is better than trying to fight your way through the crowd of weekend window shoppers at your local music store. We take a look at how different models of amplifiers sound. These amps are a good cross-cut of the main models your will choose from in the market today. Also, we pair each model with the main guitar models you probably own to show how this choice changes the amp tone. This is what you want to know in designing your rig and purchasing your gear!

How can you try guitars in your local music store when that kid keeps butchering Smoke On the Water next to you? Let us do the dirty work for you and help you think it through before you get there! We'll give you a good listen to what the most common guitar models sound like - SG, Les Paul, Strat, and more - and how an amplifier can effect that tone subtlely or drastically, so you can make informed choices.

This is a series of non-playing lessons that give you a look at the guitar/amp/effects setups that make rock actually ROCK. You'll be surprised at how simple most setups are (some literally guitar and amp only). Most legendary players use a "less is more" principle. By using the models we give you here, you'll be able to build a great tone from the ground up.

In these 5 lessons, we'll learn how other miscellaneous factors influence your rock guitar tone. We'll first hear how using a pick affects your tone, then the contrast from playing with just your fingers. Next we'll hear how a slide affects your tone in a rock context. A capo is sometimes used in rock, and we'll learn how that affects your tone as well. Lastly, we'll take a look and listen to the eBow.

The 12 Bar Blues form is important to the country style. Don't worry, we won't turn you into a bluesman. Learning the form is an essential part of country music. You'll learn the chords and counts to the form as well as how to play the chords so that you are still being true to the country style. You will still be playing from the same ground that raises all country music. In this ground, however, you'll be raising a new garden!

This tutorial throws all of our chords into the mix. You will no longer single a particular chord form (open, barre, power) out for a riff. You will combine them into riffs that you'd hear on stages and radio stations. It's time to master the chord forms using great riffs.

These lessons focus on creating great country riffs using only power chords. The power chord was a staple of blues, rock and pop music long before country artists got a hold of them. These chords changed the sound and feel of the genre. These lessons will give your hands and ears the tools needed to master this essential tool.

Now that we have a grip on some riffs that use only power chords, it is time to put them to the test and see how well you really know them. We will combine these chords with open and barre chords into riffs that will test your ability to jump in and out of making each voicing. You will become a stronger player and have a deeper insight into how these voicings create great country riffs.

These lessons are less thorough in explaining particular techniques and more in depth in their combinations of techniques. They are a true test to your ears and your eyes, so use them as such. It's okay for it to go slowly. That's the way you accomplish the skills you need to be stage ready. These skills will come more quickly the more you do this. That's a fact.

These lessons will combine all of the fundamentals we've studied into stage ready progresssions. We'll use: open chords, barre chords, power chords, strumming, ghost strumming, boom-chick strumming, arpeggiation, and muting and more. Putting these in combinations with each other means you are getting stronger as a player and you are that much closer to being ready to go and play with others.

So far, we've tackled one technique at a time when learning the basics of country rhythm guitar. It's time to take it up a notch and combine the techniques to show how they work together to form great country rhythm ideas. We'll use open chords, boom chick strumming and ghost strums to demostrate great modern country rhythm.

There are 3 chords in the 12 Bar Blues Form. When you treat each chord as if it were its own key, you can create great riffs around each key. We will walk you through many examples of how this is done and put you on the path to hearing and creating your own great ideas.

These lessons will define what a riff is and teach you how riffs are pulled out of chord progressions. Knowing chords and being able to remember chord progressions is a must to get the most from this series. Riffs are career-makers for country guitarists - so let's put the pedal to the metal and get some great ones under our belt!

Country music has a great library of classic lead guitar licks. Some of these licks borrow heavily from the blues. The main focus of these lessons will be the tool that is the staple of blues lead guitar: The Minor Pentatonic Scale. We will discuss how to apply this scale to the progression you are playing and create great riffs using the scale. The concept of lead guitar is discussed further in the next level of the Country style, but this will give you a taste of what is to come. It's an essential way that country music borrows from the blues.

Power chords were a staple of rock and blues music long before country music found this treasure chest that makes old standards sound modern. In this series we will use power chords exclusively so that you can incorporate them into your playing and make them a standard part of your vocabulary.

In our study of how country music borrows from the blues, we've learned that country music borrows the 12 bar blues form. In this tutorial, however, we will see that country music doesn't always use the 12 bar form. Many times it uses a simple note, bend or chord form that makes part of the song sound bluesy. It's part blues, all country and all style in these lessons.

This tutorial will give you the basic scale shapes needed to play in any key on the entire neck.

Learning the basic rhythmic subdivisions of 8th notes, triplets and 16th notes is the basis for solid pickin'. Practicing the CAGED system using these rhythms will supercharge your chops and make learning licks easier.

These lessons put the rubber on the road. It's time to learn licks that use everything we've learned so far: CAGED scales, rhythmic subdivisions, articulations and playing in real time. Here are some of the licks that built Nashville.

This tutorial will give you a better chord vocabulary. No longer will those pesky 7s, 11s, 13s and so forth be a mystery to you. This tutorial will get you ready for the progressions that follow.

This series of lesson will give you the basic preparation to start making licks of the CAGED scales. We'll learn techniques that give your licks feel and style.

This tutorial covers many exercises and ways of speeding up your pick and fingers. Use these exercises to build the chops necessary to play hot licks, scales and riffs.

Hybrid picking is a hybrid of using a pick and using the fingers to get a snappy, chicken picking sound. This series of lessons will get you started with solid techniques that will get your hybrid picking fundamentals down.

In this series of eight lessons, Andy Gurley will introduce you to the picking styles of Chet Atkins and Merle Travis. First up is the basic picking hand motion, then you'll start developing the use of your thumb. Adding finger syncopation is next, then we'll examine a progression using our basic pattern. Then it's time to develop independence with your fingers and thumb, and we'll conclude with some moveable shapes and final thoughts.

There's nothing more important than knowing how to kick off a song. In this lesson series we'll explore how to build and play your own country introductions.

In this lesson series we'll explore how to create and play the ending to many country songs using techniques learned so far in the course.

This series of lessons will give you what you need to know about the country fill. We'll look at common fills using the scales and chords you know.

In these lessons you'll be putting all of our new chords into real time examples. It's time to put these chords into action and find out why country guitar sounds great when using these techniques.

Functional Harmony and the Nashville Number System are the foundations to country songwriting, session work and gigging. Here is a brief look at both.

Examples of different country riffs, demonstrated with progressions, covering what's been demonstrated so far in this chapter.

There is an undisputable blues taste to Country Music. Just how important is the blues when it comes to learning to play country guitar? We'll interview two of Nashville's stringslingers to find out why Stevie Ray is as important as Billy Ray when it comes to chicken pickin' and country music.

In this tutorial we'll give you an overview of the Telecaster, Strat, and Les Paul tone controls and pickups, plus getting tones from an acoustic guitar. Each of these guitars are commonly used in country music, and in these lessons you'll get an idea of how they sound and the role they play in country music.

In these lessons we take a look at amplifier setups in order to achieve great country tone. We'll introduce you to both tube and solid state amps, then learn about EQ controls and how equalization affects your tone. We'll demonstrate volume controls and how volume changes tone as well, then look at various settings you can use on your amp.

Yes, effects are used in country music! Here we'll travel down a chain of commonly used effects in country music and hear how each can affect your tone. We'll teach you some ways you can use and tweak overdrive, compression, chorus, delay, tremolo, phaser, and a volume pedal to achieve killer country tone.

This tutorial contains lessons on some miscellaneous components that will affect the tones to get in your country playing. We'll hear how using a pick affects your tone, then how things sound when you play with your fingers. We'll get into the sound of the slide next, then look at the use of a capo.

in this lesson series we will learn a traditional country progression, techniques to play that progression, tone and equipment choices to sound like the masters, and who to check out to hear examples of great Traditional Country music.

In this series of lessons we'll explore some of the techniques and equipment necessary to play in the Brent Mason style. We'll show you a couple of example licks that use hybrid picking, inversions, and arpeggiation, and talk about how to get that Brent Mason style tone.

In this series of lessons we'll check out the best players to hear in order to learn the Western Swing style and the way to play a chord progression using the right techniques and equipment for this style.

In this series, the guitarist will know how to treat a chord progression in the style of masters Chet Atkins and Merle Travis and what choices to make to play this style with great tone and equipment. This series also gives a great list of references so that you know which players and recordings to check out to master this style.

In this lesson series we'll look at masters of the Modern Country style and learn which techniques and equipment to use to transform any chord progression into a Modern Country masterpiece.

The use of sequences are a great way to better your technique and heighten your skill as a blues soloist. In this tutorial, we are going to show you a variety of different ways to approach the scales already used in blues to aid you in having better chops and technique. Make sure to develop these exercises even further as you move through this course; as all are great ways to warm up for your next lesson or gig. Let's get started.

These exercises are designed to build dexterity for lead playing.

Andy Gurley takes a look at the blues scale and it's relationship to the minor pentatonic.

This tutorial gives you an introduction to the concept of the riff, as applied to blues.

An introduction to basic open and barre forms of minor and dominant chords.

To take the previous "straight versus swing" lessons into the area of the blues shuffle, the primary feel of the blues.

Andy Gurley takes a look at the minor pentatonic scale.

There are many different kinds of amplifiers to choose from. These are 3 primary amp styles on which most models are based, and here we'll look at 2 tube amps and a solid state amp. Use this demonstration by a pro to get a good idea of what kind of amp best suits your style.

This tutorial will give you the know-how to identify and put together great gear to get the tone you want. With these lessons, we hope to take away some of the work it takes to find the right effects and make the most of your hard-earned dollars. We'll look at overdrive, distortion, tremolo, delay, wah, fuzz, and vibe pedal.

These non-playing lessons will do a side-by-side comparison of guitar tones, amp tones, and the difference in tones created by the most common effects used by blues guitarists. We'll look at several tone configurations to give a good overview of the variety of choices available to get killer blues tone.

In this tutorial we'll walk you through the sounds and electronic configurations available on the most popular guitars in the market: semi-hollow body, Les Paul, SG, Telecaster, and more. You will have a great idea of what guitar will give you the sound you want, to become the blues player you want to be.

In this tutorial we'll answer questions about the tonal differences between using your fingers instead of a pick. We'll also look at the bottleneck slide, then how to use a capo. All these are important components of getting great blues tone and style.

This tutorial has no hands-on examples, yet has some of the most practical advice offered on the site. This is how you should use the information we give you here. This is how you should learn to play in a band situation. This is how you make the most of what you have, even if it's just a few crafty licks. We spend a good deal of time working your vocabulary and chops. Now it's time to make you into a MUSICIAN.

This is a non-playing lesson series meant to give you an idea of how to practice and set goals that better you as a musician. Music is a performance art that is driven by YOU and your interaction with others. Make the most of it!

Non-playing lessons on important components of guitar playing that help you grow as a musician.

In this 2 lesson set, Andy Gurley will be the guest host for the GT channel and teach you one of his country guitar licks, then J.D. Jarrell will join him and they'll give you insights on how to play a dual solo.