How To Master Your Guitar Phrasing

It's not 'what' you play, it's 'how' you play it that matters most!

Guitar Phrasing is the core of great guitar playing. Developing good lead guitar phrasing is challenging because it is focused more on how something is played rather than what is being played. As guitarists we spend a lot of time learning what to play—scales, arpeggios, chords, techniques, etc. But we rarely invest time into developing 'how' we can best play these things in highly expressive ways that make us (and the listeners) feel great!

Unfortunately, guitar phrasing is something that is rarely taught (and very rarely taught well). As a result, most guitar players lack great guitar phrasing and just don't know how to fully express themselves on their guitar.

Nick Layton and I have developed 3 different Guitar Phrasing Courses to help you become a 'more complete' musician. Each of the courses specifically addresses the concerns mentioned above as they apply to rock and metal guitar soloing. Each course focuses on different elements and concepts of guitar phrasing.

Guitar Phrasing Concepts for Rock Lead Guitar Soloing

Phrasing Concepts for Rock Lead Guitar Soloing is the most general course in terms of presenting the basic, essential concepts of rock guitar phrasing and how to begin developing your own phrasing skills now.

The information is designed to grow with you so that as you become a better player you will also find some of the concepts more relevant. This course is a perfect starting place for anyone new to the idea of guitar phrasing and is also a good choice for lead guitar players who want to become more expressive and play with more authority in their soloing. It is focused on acquiring an understanding of what guitar phrasing is and why it’s such an important skill to develop.

Innovative Arpeggio Guitar Phrasing for Advancing Metal Players

Innovative Arpeggio Phrasing for Advancing Metal Players is focused specifically on improving your guitar phrasing vocabulary with arpeggios. Essential theory is explained so you’ll know how to choose the right arpeggios to solo with. Various techniques for playing arpeggios are examined including sweep picking, string skipping, tapping and combinations of techniques.

Most importantly however, this guitar phrasing course is designed to help you become more expressive in your use of arpeggios and to open your mind to new ways to be creative and melodic while injecting some fire into your guitar phrasing skills!

This guitar phrasing course is perfect for intermediate and advancing metal guitar players who are into players like Randy Rhoads, Yngwie Malmsteen, Vinnie Moore and Michael Romeo.

Killer Rock Lead Guitar Legato Phrasing

Killer Rock Lead Guitar Legato Phrasing explores guitar phrasing with a legato approach similar to players like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Allan Holdsworth, George Lynch, Eddie Van Halen and many others. Well developed legato guitar phrasing sounds very smooth and fluid and can add a new element of expressiveness to your style.

There are tons of licks and concepts to work through and best of all you’ll discover new ways to apply legato guitar phrasing in exciting ways in your own solos.

This course is a great choice for guitarists who are at an intermediate level or above and want to add legato phrasing to their arsenal of soloing skills. You’ll also find a lot to chew on if you are into any of the above-mentioned players.

Rock and Metal Guitar Licks

The Rock and Metal Guitar Licks Course will show you how to move beyond simply "learning guitar licks" into the league of the great guitar players by instantly adapting cool guitar licks to ANY song or musical context you want! In other words, this course teaches you how to adapt your lead guitar phrasing to any type of song.

You will be guided step by step through the process of how to creatively adjust any lick to fit any music using sample variations of many exciting licks over inspiring jam tracks in a variety of rock/metal musical contexts.

After completing this course, you will no longer struggle with finding and creating cool things to play over any jam track or song.

“As an aspiring guitarist, these three courses are a must have if you want to expand your musical vocabulary, technique, and creativity.”

What's great about these courses is that it is not just lick after lick of technical significance or content, but rather an in depth explanation of each lick and how they could compliment a piece of music.

If you are having trouble breaking out of playing scales up and down the neck or struggling with arpeggios and legato guitar playing, I strongly suggest checking out any one of these great guitar phrasing courses.

Joseph Murphy, New York, USA

"Phrasing Concepts for Rock Lead Guitar Soloing and Innovative Arpeggio Phrasing for Advancing Metal Players are in the top 10% of what is available anywhere.”

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Why? Because they don’t teach you licks, They teach you strategies based on a compilation of easy-to-understand methods.

These two great guides give you a much greater understanding of the fretboard and how to make it come alive through your OWN applications of these concepts.

Lee Gattenby, Professional Musician and Guitar Teacher, Kenai, Alaska