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.

Guitar Tutorial: Basics of Rhythm Explained

breakdown of meter

A basic understanding of rhythm is crucial for all guitar players. This is true whether you play guitar for pleasure, or have much loftier goals.

When you don’t have the basics of rhythm down, you will find it much harder to play songs than it needs to be.

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Guitar Lesson: A Great Guitar Technique Building Song

F major scale 5th position

Today we will apply alternate picking, sweep picking and string skipping guitar techniques to a fun bluegrass piece from the 1800’s called “Jack Lamson’s Hornpipe”.

This piece offers quite a lot for guitar players. As I mentioned, the song is fun to play and works well at all tempos.

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