About Don J MacLean

Don J. MacLean is one of the world's leading authorities on accelerated learning systems for guitar—with students using his methods in more than 50 countries worldwide. Don is the author of over 60 books including The World of Scales, the Absolute Essentials of Music Theory for Guitar, How I Got Killer Guitar Chops While I Was Still in High School: Confessions of a High School Shredder, 21 Secrets to Learn any Guitar Song Super-Fast, and Guitar Essentials: Chord Master Expanded Edition.

How to Avoid the Trap of Making Guitar Christmas Tab Songs Hard to Play

Playing Christmas songs on guitar for your friends and family can be lots and lots of fun.

Unfortunately, for the beginner or even intermediate guitarist, learning to play your favourite Christmas songs on guitar can be confusing, frustrating and time consuming. But there is a better way…

Continue reading

Guitar Lesson: Making Sense of Common Guitar Chord Symbols

chord-symbols1

Translating guitar chord symbols onto the guitar fretboard can often be frustrating and confusing.

Today we will demystify some of the most common ways that guitar chords are symbolized, so you’ll probably want to bookmark this page for future reference.

Continue reading

Guitar Tutorial: An Effective Finger Coordination and String Skipping Exercise to Improve Your Guitar Technique

finger stretching switching ex

In today’s tutorial we will look at an exercise that actually performs double duty. This exercise will help improve your finger coordination as well as improve your string skipping.

Continue reading

Guitar Practice Checklist: The Top 10 Things You Must Have to Not Waste Guitar Practice Time

Guitar Practice Checklist

One of the keys to getting the most out of your practice sessions is to make sure you don’t waste any of valuable practice time. Here is checklist to help save you time…

Continue reading

Guitar Solos: Using a Cool Hybrid Pentatonic Scale to Add Variety to Your Own Guitar Solos

hybrid pentatonic scale fingering 1

It’s quite common for guitar players to get stuck in a pentatonic rut. All your guitar solos start to sound the same. The good news is there are many ways to break out of this pentatonic rut. We look at one here…

Continue reading