Whenever I hear my favorite guitarists, I can tell who’s playing in just a few notes, sometimes even just by the timbre of their tone. Think of BB King, Alan Holdsworth, Wes Montgomery, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana, Steve Vai, Eric Johnson, Jimi Hendrix. These players have unique musical signatures, all great players do. While some of the elements that make up these signatures can be easily analyzed, some are harder to decipher. You can copy the notes and phrasing of a solo, but still come away missing something when you play it back. Replicating the whole package is next to impossible.

I’m going to show you how to identify the more subtle elements that make up a guitarist’s musical signature, and how to find others on your own, not so you can make your solos sound like someone else’s -- but so you can make your solos sound like yours alone.

Equipment plays a role, of course. But there’s more to it -- any one of the guitarists named above could play on any guitar, through any amp and still retain their signature. It’s the more intangible elements -- the tone, touch, timbre and the small details in the way they play that are just as integral to defining a unique musical signature as the notes, chords, and techniques employed.

In this book, I’m going to help you shift your attention to what makes up the more mysterious side of the musical equation. As you build your ability to recognize these elements, you can incorporate them, just as you would when you work on a new scale or chord voicing. The elements I’m talking about are exposed through shifting the lens that you look through when you analyze your own playing. The details of what you do, how you do it, what notes you play, and why -- these shape the more elusive dimension of who you are as a lead guitarist.

I’ve designed this course so you can change the way you think about playing and to help set the stage for an expanded approach to the choices you make as a musician. Less technical or theory-based than much instruction, this course is about listening, thinking and feeling while you play, so you can operate confidently within the constraints of your knowledge and technique and cultivate your ability to make great music.

The book includes 14 chapters, 12 video demonstration/lessons and 6 downloadable backing tracks.

Table of Contents

• Introduction

• The pursuit of technique

• Constraints

• Target Notes

• Sufficiency

• Dump Your 1st Idea

• Create Space

• Touch and Tone

• Picking Patterns

• Long Form Scales

• Major and Minor Swapping

• Transposing Licks

• Bending and Vibrato

• Conclusion (incl. backing tracks)

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