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The Fretlight Guitar Blog
The Fretlight Guitar Blog

From Scales To Music

One of the most common questions I hear from my private students is "I know I have to learn my scales, but when do we get to play some REAL music with all of this stuff?" My answer to this question is the topic of this post, which will hopefully provide you with some insight into the balance you must achieve between practicing scales versus applying those scales to real music.

One thing that I've encountered in my many years of teaching is that a lot of instructors as well as many instructional books and videos seem to place ...<< MORE >>
Posted by Nate Comp at 6/27/2009 8:41 AM | Add Comment

Fretlight Studio Software Now Available ... FREE!!!

Hey Gang,

I wanted to tell you that we do listen to our customers and as a result we have just released the NEW Fretlight Studio™ software for PC. We wanted to make having fun with your Fretlight as easy as possible so the Fretlight Studio combines the following apps, M-Player, Improviser, Lesson player and Video Player into one convenient application and it’s now FREE. Oh, and by the way, all the Mac apps are free as well.

PC users can now enjoy one download and one program to access the Fretlight applications. Now you can play songs, take video lessons, ...<< MORE >>
Posted by Rusty Shaffer at 6/16/2009 5:31 PM | View Comments (3) | Add Comment

Defining Your Influences

When working with my private students, one of the most important things that I focus on is defining their musical influences. This helps me to really understand what styles of music they have an interest in playing, but more importantly, it helps me to lead them down the path to finding their own style or "voice" as a player. I tell all of my students that developing their own personal style will come from the constant repetition of this simple three step process:

1. Imitation
Defining your musical influences and learning to imitate their unique style of playing. This group of influences ...<< MORE >>
Posted by Nate Comp at 6/9/2009 10:33 PM | View Comments (1) | Add Comment

Organizing Your Chords - Part Seven


This is the seventh and final post dealing with the topic of "Organizing Your Chords" and focuses on my favorite chord category to deal with, which is "Other". Going back to the outline that I gave you in the first post of this series, I like to use six different chord categories to organize all of the different chord types that I use to build progressions. The category of "Other" is reserved for chord types or chord forms that do not easily fit into one of our other five categories. Like ...<< MORE >>
Posted by Nate Comp at 6/1/2009 3:55 PM | Add Comment

Organizing Your Chords - Part Six

In this post I'm going to outline some song ideas for you to work on that focus on our next chord category which is Triads. When playing songs and progressions using Triads, you will be using chord forms that incorporate combinations of three different notes played on three different strings. Triads can be built using a combination of ANY three strings, and just like our previous two categories, these chord forms can be moved up and down the entire fretboard. When learning progressions using Triads, it is important to understand what TYPES of chords you are playing as well as ...<< MORE >>

Posted by Nate Comp at 5/24/2009 10:56 PM | Add Comment

Organizing Your Chords - Part Five

As you've seen in the last series of posts, I've been outlining some song ideas for you to work on that build upon  each of the various chord categories I outlined previously. I'm going to continue on this time by outlining some song ideas that focus on one of the most common chord categories for all guitarists to master, which is the category of "Barre Chords".

No matter what style you play, you will find that the category of Barre Chords includes some of the most important chord forms that you will ever use. One great thing about studying Barre ...<< MORE >>
Posted by Nate Comp at 5/12/2009 7:45 PM | Add Comment | Trackbacks

Organizing Your Chords - Part Four

In the previous two posts I outlined some song ideas for you to work on that all fell into the categories of "Basic Open Position Chords" and "Open Chord Variations". This time around I'm going to outline some song ideas that focus on one of the most commonly used chord types in music, which is the "Power Chord", also known as the "5th Chord".

As a rhythm guitarist, you will find that the category of Power Chords is one of the most important chord families to develop in your playing, simply because these chords are an essential ...<< MORE >>
Posted by Nate Comp at 4/18/2009 10:46 AM | Add Comment | Trackbacks

Organizing Your Chords - Part Three

Hello again Fretlight players!

In the last post I gave you some song ideas to work on that all fell into the category of developing your "Basic Open Position Chords". In this post I'm going to continue where we left off with some more song ideas for you to work on, but this time we'll be dealing with the category of "Open Chord Variations". This category includes many different chord variations that can be created by modifying the basic open position chord shapes. These variations include "Suspended" or "Sus" chords (Sus 2 and Sus 4) along with Minor 7th ...<< MORE >>
Posted by Nate Comp at 4/13/2009 6:32 PM | View Comments (2) | Add Comment

Organizing Your Chords - Part Two

In this previous post I outlined the importance of organizing your chords when developing your rhythm guitar playing skills. In this post as well as the next several short posts, I'm going to give you a list of song ideas to work on to help you develop each specific category. To quickly review, in the last post I outlined the six different categories that I use to organize the study of harmony and chord playing, which were the following:

1. "Basic Open Position Chords"
2. "Open Chord Variations"
3. "Power Chords / 5th Chords"
4. "Barre Chords"
5. "Triads"
6. "OTHER"<< MORE >>
Posted by Nate Comp at 4/4/2009 10:11 AM | Add Comment | Trackbacks

Organizing Your Chords

In this post I'm going to talk about one of the most important aspects of developing your skills as a rhythm guitarist, which is organizing your chords. With my private students I group the study of harmony and chord playing into six basic categories, which are the following:


1. "Basic Open Position Chords"
This category represents the "meat and potatoes" chord shapes that all guitarists begin with. Regardless of what style of music someone plays, all guitarists begin by learning these basic chord forms. (These are the chords that are taught in Lesson Pak One that comes included with the Fretlight Lesson ...<< MORE >>
Posted by Nate Comp at 4/1/2009 5:53 PM | View Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks
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