Fretmeup.com is just another website offering free guitar lessons but with a slightly different theme. The aim is to cover lessons and advice on anything guitar related but the predominant theme is centred around the blues / rock lead guitarists stuck in the rut.
Who am I and what is the guitar rut?
My name is Lee Nicholas and I’ve been playing guitar for over thirty years, mostly self taught. I spent many of those years practicing lead guitar everyday but not moving noticeably forward. No matter how many books I read or videos I bought (also had some private lessons) I still found myself looking for new ways out of the pentatonic scale and couldn’t figure out what it was I needed to learn or practice to improve my improvising skills. I hit a brick wall and stayed there! This is the guitar rut and it’s very common. When you hit a brick wall and stop improving no matter how much you practice, you are in the rut. I had most of the techniques down okay but all my solos sounded the same, predictable and boring.
One day I was playing around with some ideas and suddenly hit a Eureka moment. I was finally over the wall and moving forward again. All those years of trying to avoid the pentatonic scale I suddenly found myself getting deeper back into it, only now it didn’t sound like the same boring stuff I had been playing for years. I also realised that the music I was into is actually dominated by the pentatonic scale when it comes to guitar solos. Boring, predictable solos aren’t caused by a limited scale but by limited knowledge and experience of how you use it.
The lessons on this site will explain how I got out of the rut. I still have tons of lessons to add but can only update when I get the time. This is a slow process at the moment but it’s getting there. If you’re in the rut then don’t give up. Everyone can get out of it!
I hope you enjoy the lessons.
Lee
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