Since we have done some southern rock sounding chordal techniques, I think it is in line to do a few southern sounding solo licks. There are several "standard" ways you can make your playing sound a bit southern rock/country rock like. One is simply the use of the Major pentatonic scale. Now this is not to say that every time you play the Major pentatonic you are going to have to get your 10 gallon hat on – but...if you want to sound like Skynrd – then the Major pentatonic is good to have in your tool kit!

>> Download Southern Attitude Riffs...

Every guitarist wants to sound different when they take a solo, but one of the most common mistakes they make is listening to and being influenced only by other guitar players. The easiest way to achieve uniqueness is to learn from other instrumentalists as well, like keyboard, sax, trumpet, and bass players.

Students and fans often ask me where I learned such an unusual lick or concept, and it usually comes from transcribing non-guitarists. Adapting their ideas to the guitar makes you see the fingerboard and hear things in a manner different than other guitar players.

Let's take a close look at a pair of great blues licks by two superb saxophonists, Tom Scott and Jay Beckenstein. Much like their forefathers, Junior Walker and Isaac "King" Curtis, they deliver those steamy licks that fans love to hear, and the ideas sound terrific on guitar, too.

>> Download Blues Sax On Guitar...

Although this is ostensibly a Fingerstyle Blues column, regular readers will know that I sometimes roam outside that box. After all, it's nice to use your pickin' skills to play all kinds of tunes, not just blues.

"Somewhere Over The Rainbow" is a monster tune, a real standard that lends itself very well to fingerstyle guitar. It's a song that recently found a new audience with the late Eva Cassidy's sublime version. You can really go to town with chord melody and movement on this one. One of the good things about this arrangement is that it uses virtually the entire fretboard. A lot of acoustic guitar players don't like to stray much beyond the fifth fret, but why limit yourself? You've got a whole fretboard so use it!

>> Download Over the Rainbow...

Doing bar chords (sometimes spelled "barre") is one of those techniques that many students are never able to do, and many other players, even after learning to do them, do so with varying degrees of inefficiency. This is because, even after basic bar chords are learned, students usually remain ignorant of the subtleties of barring, and within those subtleties lies the answer to many of our technical problems. We will take a look at some of those subtleties right now.

>> Download Bar Chord Secrets...

The late, great Skydog was perhaps the greatest slide player in rock history. Here Arlen unwraps the mystique and mastery that defined so many great Allman Brothers jams. He counsels on tunings, damping the strings to cut out unwanted noise, pick-and-fingers technique, various box patterns, and, probably best of all, demonstrates several of Duane's signature licks.

>> Download the pick of the month...

We brought the new Fretlight guitar into the school a couple of months ago. The new model hooks up to a computer via USB, interfaces with various software, and can "light up" thousands of chords, scales, modes, tunes and lessons on the fret board, adjustable to any tempo and transposable to any key. At first, we thought it was a natural for beginners - with two Fretlights, the instructor plays as the student follows. No doubt, a great starter guitar.

But then a few of the studio boys started goofing around with it (Carlton included) and we had to set up a library system to keep track of the loaners. The software that comes with the Fretlight (five others available for purchase) lets you light up any conceivable scale or mode across the entire neck (or at a specific position), and this makes exploring new patterns, chord scales and runs an illuminating adventure for even an advanced player. And now any TrueFire lesson Power Tab can be easily imported into Guitarz 6.5 and then lit up across the neck.

We prepared a little video bench test on the Fretlight. Have a look and if you're interested, let us know, they'll cut any TrueFire member a great deal.

>> View the video bench test...