The acoustic guitar is such an amazing sounding instrument, both for playing stand-alone and for adding an extra dimension to tracks in production. So even if you&#8217;re a hardcore shredder, knowing how to get the most out of an acoustic guitar is essential.
In this lesson I share with you 5 of my most essential techniques for playing acoustic guitar.

Thomas McRocklin

Acoustic

Chords

Music Production

Technique

Tips and Tricks

Essential Acoustic Guitar Techniques

Introduction

Hitting the sweet spot

Loosening up your right hand

Breaking chords in half

Executing the lead in

Filling in the gaps

I love to combine sweeping and tapping together, it&#8217;s a technique I use all the time and in this lesson I&#8217;m going to show you three ways to implement this in your own playing.
Using these techniques together allows you to come up with fresh and interesting note combinations, and spice up boring licks. You can also use them to also unlock something very special which will completely transform your playing and take you to a whole new level!

Sweep Picking

Tapping

Combining Sweeping With Tapping

The extension

Sweep, tap and bend

The position shift

In this lesson I break down the verse, chorus and middle 8 from a track of mine called New Beginnings and show you a variety of techniques that I use to create interesting note combinations and disguise common scales and patterns to elevate otherwise simple phrases.
If you&#8217;re looking to spice up your riffs and create some killer lead sounds using notes and scales that you probably already know then this is a great place to start!

Songwriting

Improving Simple Phrases

Verse

Chorus

Middle 8

This lesson is all about getting you really comfortable playing everywhere on the neck &#8211; without learning any scale positions at all!
This is one of the first things I learned on guitar and is actually how I was able to shred from a very young age. It&#8217;s based on a very simple method that is really easy to learn and will make a huge difference to you when it comes to visualising the fretboard.

Exercises

Theory

Thinking in tones

Getting started

TSTTSTT

Linking it together

Do you feel lost when soloing, or feel like you&#8217;re just reciting scales and struggle to put together something cool and interesting?
In this lesson I show you how to construct a solo from scratch, beginning with following a chord progression very closely and gradually introducing new approaches that you can use to access more interesting note choices and add variety to your playing.

Chord Progression 1

Chord Progression 2

Arpeggios

Improvisation

How To Solo

Following the chords

Introducing arpeggios

Adapting arpeggios

The next progression

Making interesting note choices

Adding some flavour

Putting it all together

When you fire up a wah-wah pedal, it&#8217;s really easy to fall into playing cliche funk lines (which is a lot of fun) but this humble pedal is capable of so much more.
In this lesson you&#8217;re going to learn some new techniques using wah-wah which will add an extra layer of excitement and expression to your playing &#8211; whether you&#8217;re shredding high-gain solos or playing chilled, ambient chords.

Effects

Funk

Wah-wah

Modern Wah Techniques

Pushing the envelope

An extra dimension

Rhythmic patterns

Rocking the wah

In this lesson I show you how practicing can be fun &#8211; but more importantly how you can optimise your practice time to get much more out of it.
No matter what level you are currently at, by following my approach your fingers get great workout, your technique will improve and you&#8217;ll even be left with new material in your back pocket which you can then make really cool songs out of in the future!

How To Practice Effectively

How I practice

Combining practice with writing

Listening to yourself

Refining everything you hear

It's never over

In this video series I provide you with an exclusive behind-the-scenes breakdown of the entire mix process for a real-world track by my band McRocklin and Hutch.
Let me walk you through every aspect of the track&#8217;s production, providing insights into our writing process and mixing approach &#8211; from individual drum sounds and plugin choices, crazy multi-layered guitar solo construction, right through to very final mastering stage.

Behind The Scenes &#8211; Oh Baby!

Intro and drums

It's all in the detail

How to create a MEGA solo

Magic on the mix bus

Neo Soul chords and Tim's solo

Rhythm playing is one of those areas that is often overlooked, whether it&#8217;s because your timing isn&#8217;t so great or you just don&#8217;t have enough elements to create really killer sounding riffs.
This lesson covers every aspect of my approach to rhythm playing, and it&#8217;s packed full of tips and insights that you&#8217;ll be able to pick up and apply to your playing today, whether you&#8217;re just starting our or you&#8217;ve been playing for years!

Alternate Picking

Pinch Harmonics

Rhythm

Riffs

Heavy Rhythm 101

Palm muting

Open strikes

Chord vibrato

Alternate picking

Using silence

The arcade sound

Breaking up chords

Pinched harmonics

Muted picking

Wylde vibrato

Open notes

Power and depth

Adding variations

Alternate picking chords

Rhythmic flair

Welcome to a brand new series where I&#8217;m going to pass on all of the studio tips and techniques I&#8217;ve developed over  the years. Everything from dialling in the perfect guitar tones to which compressor to use on your mastering bus.
Before I became a full time music producer and mastering engineer I used to find all of the little decisions you need to make throughout the recording process really overwhelming &#8211; which really sucked the creativity out of the recording process for me.
This is a continuing series which I&#8217;ll be adding to every week. Follow along for insights and don&#8217;t forget to join the members chat to let me know what else you&#8217;d like me to cover!

Production Tips

My overdrive guitar EQ method

Removing noise from a DI guitar tone

Using delay

Setting levels

Using reverb

Do you want to learn how to create monsterous, massive sounding riffs? In this lesson I&#8217;m going to break down my entire riff creation process from the ground up and give you all of the tools you need to write your own huge, monster riffs easily.
We&#8217;ll look at how we can make our chords sound massive, simple methods to make your riffs more exciting, and plenty of other tips and techniques that will really bring your riff ideas to life.

The Monster Riff Toolkit

Getting Heavy

Driving Right Hand

Square DreamZ

When I was playing on stage with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, one of the ways that I really stood out in some of those shred battles was by introducing some funk in my playing.
Today I&#8217;m going to teach you some of those methods so you use them to create your own fresh sound! I&#8217;m even going to share with you a technique I learned from my time living with Steve Vai which I use almost every time I play guitar.

Backing Track

With Solo

Bring The Funk

Left Hand Rhythm

The Slide

Hitting it HARD

Kick and Snare

Let's Jam!

There&#8217;s a lot of information out there about pick slanting, but what is the correct information for you and how can you start using it to improve your playing?
The good news is: I&#8217;ve done the research for you!
I&#8217;ve put together this definitive guide to the subject, which will explain exactly what pick slanting is and how you can start using it within your playing &#8211; without undoing any of your existing technique.

Tim Hutchinson

Picking

Pick Slanting 101

The Basics

Outside Picking

Exercise 1

Exercise 2

People say that tone comes from the fingers, but this doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s magic or that you can&#8217;t learn it. In reality it&#8217;s just a combination of many small factors that build up to add expression and depth to your playing.
In this lesson I&#8217;m going to break down 5 progressively more complex licks to show you all of the subtle elements that you can build into even the simplest phrases in order to elevate them to the next level.

Full

Text/PDF

Guitar Pro

Say More With Your Notes

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

In this lesson I&#8217;m going to show you my top tips and techniques for creating more explosive guitar solos!
For each of my tips I&#8217;ll breaking down these a lick and show you why they&#8217;re effective and when to use them &#8211; as well as walk you through the more difficult parts with plenty of advice and insights that you will be able to apply to any aspect of your playing. Strap in and let&#8217;s go!

PDF/Text

Lick Breakdown

String Skipping

Explosive Solo Tips

Freeing Your Fingers

Creating Space

Overbending

Position Shifting

Changing Pace

We all know the feeling – no matter how much you practice at home, you pick up a guitar in a store or get on stage and your mind goes completely blank!
Let’s make sure that never happens to you again! Learn these improv tips and techniques and next time you’re stuck you’ll always have something cool to fall back on.

Download

Shred

Don&#8217;t Get Stuck

Percussive Phrasing

Octave Tapping

Bend Extensions

The Shred Cocktail

Hanging On

There are a few things people get wrong when they try to start playing at high speed, so let me show you exactly how to approach playing fast &#8211; from how to practice right up to choosing when and how to apply your new speedy techniques to your playing.
I&#8217;ve also got a great exercise to show you and there are lots of cool tips sprinkled throughout this lesson to get you going from 0-60 in no time!

Speed

How To Play Fast

Practicing Fast

Speed Exercise Part 1

Speed Exercise Part 2

Speed Exercise Part 3

When to Play Fast

We&#8217;re really gonna show the fretboard the finger today &#8211; because this lesson is all about tapping!
I&#8217;m going to teach you all of my favourite tapping techniques and really break them down and show you exactly what&#8217;s going on, how to approach the techniques and why you&#8217;d want to use them in your playing.

Top Tapping Tips

Transitioning to Tap

Why You'd Want to Tap

Legato Tapping

Tapping and Bending

Shifting Octaves

Tapping in Octaves

Open Tapping

Tapping Chords

The Tap and Wiggle

Today we&#8217;ve got a cool lesson coming up on all things vibrato&#8230;
It&#8217;s not just hitting a note and wiggling it &#8211; there are many different types of vibrato! In this lesson I&#8217;ll show you some of my favourite types of vibrato and explain why I like them.
I&#8217;ve also got some cool tips and exercises to show you to help you improve your vibrato technique.

Vibrato

Basic techniques

Bending and tapping

Fourth finger

Digging hard

Going hard on your whammy bar can be a lot of fun, but not everything needs to be crazy wobbles and epic dive-bombs. You can use the trem in lots of different ways, and I like using it for subtle accents, adding expression to my playing, and creating cool rhythmic techniques.
In the intro you&#8217;ll see me using all of these techniques, which I&#8217;ll demonstrate and explain throughout the rest of the videos. Enjoy!

Whammy

WHAMMY!

Dreamy Chords

Flutters

Ducking

Disguising Pitch

Accent Flutters

Tips & tricks

One of the questions I get asked a lot is &#8211; what tuning are you in? I always play in standard tuning, but the way you approach chords and phrasing in different keys can completely transform the way they sound.
This lesson gives you all the insights into my approach to playing in my favourite keys. I&#8217;ll show you how to re-train your fingers to come up with some amazing sounds based on familiar shapes and how to layer harmonics onto chords to create epic soundscapes.

Scales

My Favourite Keys

F Sharp Minor

E Minor

B Minor

In this lesson I&#8217;m going to break down the chord progression from one of my tracks &#8211; Square Dreamz.
But we&#8217;re going to go deeper than that&#8230; much deeper! I&#8217;m going to show you exactly how I wrote this track by using melody to lead the chords without thinking too much about theory! I&#8217;ll teach you this method so you can use it to write awesome sounding chord progressions yourself.

Square Dreamz Chords

Breakdown Part 1

Breakdown Part 2

Solo Section

How To Build Chord Progressions

Finger Stretching Exercise

I use harmonic minor in a lot of my playing and I love the sound it provides, but it can also sound very corny if you overuse it so I&#8217;ve developed a lot of techniques to blend it with other complementary scales so that it sounds unique and different, without being too distinctive.
In this lesson I&#8217;ll teach you exactly how I use harmonic minor and go into detail on some my favourite scale positions (with tabs) to show you the best fingering options available.

Essential Acoustic Guitar Techniques

Tips & tricks

Essential Acoustic Guitar Techniques

Music theory

Thinking in tones

Lick breakdowns

The Most Explosive Pentatonic Lick Ever!

Sweep picking

Combining Sweeping With Tapping

Improvisation

How To Solo

Guest Lessons

Hybrid Picking Legato Lick