On The Beat with Totally Guitars

May 29, 2026 Since last week’s Update was mostly a personal journal of the recent weeks I thought today I would answer some recent questions from students and the TG Community. The topic of the day was intervals, starting with fourths and how the guitar strings can help you remember the major chords in a […]

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May 22, 2026 Today’s Update is a combo of IGC News, mini-vacation report (with a long personal story), and a look at slow 12-bar blues in the key of A minor, with an excursion into a Leon Russell tune. There are some cute photos attached at the end that are part of the personal story. […]

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May 8, 2026 Today’s Update was mostly a rundown of the two Spring International Guitar Camps we just had over the last two weekends. There were just a couple snippets of playing and no real theory to digest. I did have Steely Dan on my mind though and talked a little about Max Rich’s great […]

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May 4, 2026 This Spring we held two International Guitar Camps, due to demand and wanting to keep them very small. Each week we had about 18 students and five teachers spending two full days and three nights together in the Santa Cruz Mountains just outside of Los Gatos. Lynn and Marc were here for […]

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April 17, 2026 I have been entrenched in Beatles songs lately (again, or for about the 500th time) and can’t imaging another band or artist who has more to offer to guitar students in terms of number of songs that are fun to play and offer techniques to master. The variety and breadth of their […]

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April 10, 2026 This week we released The Definitive Rolling Stones Collection, which includes 23 lessons covering a wide range of their stuff. There are electric lessons from Max Rich, acoustic lessons, some Open G riffs and a half-dozen or so solo guitar arrangements. I started today’s Update with a solo stab at Wild Horses, […]

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April 3, 2026 Recently I have had a few students asking about bass notes, and particularly alternating patterns used in country songs (like Folsom Prison Blues). After establishing that usually you want to alternate between the root and fifth of the chord, the question came up of when you might want to use the third […]

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March 27, 2026 Continuing my John Prine kick from last week – this week we added a lesson on a bunch of intros to his songs, which was then added to our John Prine Package, along with a Fly On The Wall lesson. I played some bits of a couple of his songs, which led […]

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March 20, 2026 John Prine was on my mind this week, and on my recent playlists at home. Re-listening to a lot of his stuff, and a request from a student, led to a lesson on his last recorded song, I Remember Everything. It is a great example of his basic approach to fingerpicking and […]

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March 13, 2026 A random improv started today’s Update, followed by some discussion on time signatures and strumming techniques. The time signature thoughts cited Nights In White Satin, Lucky Man and Stormy Monday. The technique primer was on using rest strokes to hit bass notes cleanly. The progression to Mr. Bojangles was used as an […]

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March 6, 2026 I spent some time this week revisiting the early Loggins & Messina albums and realized I had not gotten to a couple lessons that I had planned on years ago. The remedy was to finish up Long Tail Cat and Whiskey, two of Kenny Loggins great tunes. They are live now and […]

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February 27, 2026 Today’s Update was quite different from recent, if not most ones. It was inspired by a comment from a student just this morning who had recently been taken by an old, original piece of mine, Sweet Child. This was a tune I recorded for my 1992 album Yesterday’s News. I started with […]

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February 20, 2026 A little Grateful Dead, some Neil Young and a few classic riffs were on my mind today, but the main thing I wanted to get to was a few thoughts on practicing, particularly with a metronome. At the top I went into some of last week’s TG Live where we went into […]

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