Dan Thorpe, Author at Guitar Domination

October 10, 2016 In Aural Skills Tagged as melodies octaves one string scales position playing working songs out By Dan Thorpe 8

A Fun Exercise To Improve Your Ability To Learn Songs By Ear

Recently, I was thinking about an old friend I had back when I was a kid. His name was Ian. Although he wasn’t a formally taught musician, he used to play this game that at the time I thought was a bit silly but, as a full-time musician nowadays, I know now is incredibly useful.

September 14, 2016 In Practice Tagged as learning new songs power burst learning practicing songs Stephen Fry By Dan Thorpe 2

‘Power Burst’ learning – the faster way to learn more on the guitar in less time

Today I am going to take you through a really powerful concept and one that will save you many hours, days, weeks and months learning and improving your guitar playing. If you apply this simple method of learning the guitar you could make a couple of years’ worth of progress in much less time. It […]

August 30, 2016 In Q and A Tagged as Bohemian Rhapsody covers fingerpicking George Benson guitar star By Dan Thorpe 2

Q and A – Five Minutes with fingerstyle guitar star Billy Watman

Billy Watman is a wonderful 15 year-old guitarist from London here in the UK. I first discovered him a couple of months ago watching Guitar Star on the Sky Arts channel. I was instantly wowed by Billy’s skill and the obvious amount of passion and dedication that came through in his playing. You could […]

August 11, 2016 In Blues Chords Tagged as 12 bar blues blues guitar blues shuffle Chord Progressions power chords By Dan Thorpe 2

How to play a 12 bar blues chord progression (just like Marty Mcfly)

As promised after the recent survey, I’ll be more creating a few more blog posts and videos on the blues—particularly acoustic fingerstyle blues. To get started with the blues you really need to be 100% comfortable with the structure, otherwise it will all fall apart quicker than you can say “my baby gone left […]

July 28, 2016 In Chords Practice Tagged as Barre Chords beginner chords chord changes F chord Inversions By Dan Thorpe 21

8 Ways to Play the Feared F Chord on Guitar from Super Easy to Advanced

The chord of F Major is a hugely popular chord on the guitar, but one that causes all sorts of problems for beginners. Some guitarists try to play the big full barre which only leads to lots of buzzing notes and some only play the super mini version, which if not played correctly, can sound […]

July 21, 2016 In Rhythm Strumming Tagged as arranging Creativity Improvising songs strum patterns By Dan Thorpe 6

How to add excitement and interest to any song by combining multiple strumming patterns

I’ve said it many times before, but I will say it again. I’m not a huge fan of when guitarists play a song and use just one strum pattern throughout the whole song. It’s okay when starting out or learning the song but as soon as you are comfortable, start adding more strum patterns, variations […]

July 12, 2016 In Aural Skills Technique Tagged as Aural Skills ear training Listening skills Music Theory working songs out by ear By Dan Thorpe 1

The 3 things that really matter when you start playing music by ear

I get asked a lot by students exactly how I work songs out for myself. That is, by not using any sort of tab, chord chart or YouTube video—nothing but my own hands and ears. Often a student is really keen to learn this skill but they cannot believe it is something they can acquire. […]

July 5, 2016 In Misc. Tagged as Feedback Popular subjects Reader poll Survey By Dan Thorpe 3

Survey Result

Recently, I asked you to fill out a survey and give me some feedback on exactly what topics, songs and techniques you want to learn via this blog. The responses were great and there were way more than I had expected so thank you very much to everyone who filled out the survey. I […]

June 28, 2016 In Q and A By Dan Thorpe

Q and A – Five Minutes with guitar teacher and performer Eric Justen

For this month’s Q and A, we have Chicago guitar teacher and performer Eric Justen. Eric has some real pearls of wisdom to share and some very unique takes on learning and teaching guitar which makes this month’s Q and A really interesting (and not to mention useful) reading.

June 14, 2016 In Practice Tagged as analysis checklist mistakes self teaching By Dan Thorpe 1

8 Crucial Questions You Should Ask Yourself That Will Help You Play The Guitar Better

One of the best bits of advice I was given on how to help students make faster progress is to give them the ability to empower themselves. Many years ago a fellow and more experienced guitar teacher told me about this powerful concept. The idea of teaching you to empower yourself is this: You learn […]