Lesson Series
Part 1: Fretting pressure. In this guitar lesson, Nick Jennison shows you how to instantly play cleaner and more accurately by hot-fixing your fretting technique.
Pull-offs are easy, right? Well, there's a little more to this essential guitar technique than you might think. In this lesson, Nick Jennison shows you the two kinds of pull-off you NEED to know to truly master this fundamental technique.
"Brush" and "pluck" style pull-offs both have their place in your guitar playing, but if you use the wrong one at the wrong time, you might be leaking energy and allowing tension to creep into your playing. Fix this, and you'll unlock incredible speed, stamina and consistency in your legato playing.
So now you've fixed your pull-offs, what about hammer-ons? This is another area where unwanted tension can creep into your guitar playing if you aren't careful. In this guitar lesson, Nick Jennison will show you how to find the perfect balance between clear projection and relaxation.
By optimising your finger placement along with the speed and pressure of your attack, you can unlock incredible consistency and accuracy in your legato playing.
More than any other guitar technique, perfect string bends can be incredibly elusive. We're constantly told that we need to bend "in tune", but rarely shown HOW to bend in tune. In this guitar lesson, Nick Jennison draws on the technique of top-level violinists to show you how a relaxed fretting hand might be the key to getting your bends perfectly in tune.
Using the "master cue" from lesson one, you'll learn how to make lightning fast real-time adjustments to your intonation for perfect sounding bends. Your guitar playing will sound the best it's ever sounded!
Much attention and many column inches have been devoted to the role of the left hand fingers in playing the guitar - but what about the thumb? Your left hand thumb can be your technique's best friend, or it's worst enemy.
In this guitar lesson, Nick Jennison shows you what your thumb should (and shouldn't) be doing when you play - and it might not be what you think!
In lesson one in this series, we discussed how a tense left hand can "spill over" to your right hand and make your picking feel slow and clumsy. Of course, this goes both ways - if your pick grip is too aggressive, you might find your left hand is tense and unresponsive. Even worse, it can be very difficult to figure out what's causing this tension, since it's not even coming from your left hand!
In this guitar lesson, Nick Jennison shows you how fixing your picking grip can give you better tone, better dynamic control and greatly increased accuracy - in both hands!
Dynamics are an absolutely crucial part of sounding musical and expressive while playing the guitar. The ability to produce notes that are loud, soft and everything in between can really take your playing to the next level.
However, it's not quite as simple as "just hit the guitar harder". In this lesson, Nick Jennison shows you how to find your guitar's dynamic range, and the best way to control your dynamics. Get this wrong and your playing will sound and feel unnecessarily clunky and clumsy - get it right and you'll sound more musical than ever!
You may have heard that your picking movement should "come from the wrist" - but what does that mean, and is it even true? When we look at great guitar players we see a whole host of picking motions that seem to be equally effective. Whether it's just fingers, just wrist, a rotational movement from the forearm or even an elbow-based picking motion: it seems like it's perfectly possible to make any of these techniques work.
In this guitar lesson, Nick Jennison shows you how to find a picking motion that works for you, and gives you some key technical pointers to make sure you're getting the most out of your chosen method.
One of the most challenging aspects of playing the guitar (especially at faster speeds) is getting the pick from one string to another cleanly and accurately. In this guitar lesson, Nick Jennison demystifies this seemingly complex technique using a very simple cue.
By paying attention to the contact points on your arm and the guitar's body, you can effortlessly control the path your picking takes so that you can cross strings reliably, quickly and cleanly.
Have you ever watched a guitar player with playing with incredible technical control and thought: "I wonder what they're thinking about while they're playing"? Or perhaps you've wondered what you should be focusing your attention on while you practice?
In this guitar lesson, Nick Jennison shows you how to use broad, simple "cues" to make your hands do exactly what you want them to do, without getting in your own way. You'll also learn about what to do when you make mistakes, and how to react when something goes wrong.