Songwriting Guitar Lessons

Do you ever wonder how you can identify certain guitarists as soon as you hear them play a few notes? In this extra-special lesson, I’m going to take you on a journey to create your own unique sound on the guitar.

The best thing is you don’t need to spend hours and hours learning theory and scales to do this! In fact, you’ll be shocked at how much mileage you can get out of the notes and scales you already know once you begin to apply the right techniques, and I’ll show you exactly how to do it.

This lesson is all about how to transition between two sections of a song. Whether you’re moving between a verse and chorus or two different parts of a riff, this underrated skill will have a huge impact on the quality of your songwriting.

Mastering this technique will not only take your playing to the next level, but it will also blow the roof off your songwriting ability, and it’s actually quite a simple thing to master, so let’s get to it!

In this live lesson I’m going to invite you along with me on a real practice and writing session where I work on refining some licks that I’ve been working on recently.

One thing that can kill your progress on guitar is practicing in the wrong way – it wastes so much time and ends up leaving you feeling frustrated at your lack of progress. Follow me on this raw, uncut session and you’ll see exactly how I identify and fix issues with licks in the most efficient and productive way.

This is undoubtedly one of the most important lessons I’ve ever recorded and I feel it contains some of the best advice and information I could give you.

We recently ran a very special solo competition and the quality of entries completely blew me away! But there were a few patterns I noticed that I wanted to address. This lesson was originally intended to be posted directly to the players who put themselves forward and entered the competition but the 5 key points are crucial to anyone who plays guitar.

If you’re looking to enhance your chord progressions and often find yourself stuck in the same old patterns and shapes every time you pick up your guitar, this lesson is for you!

In this session, I demonstrate my exact method of stacking notes to create compelling chord sounds and help you identify melodies within chords, which can elevate simple progressions into captivating compositions.

I want to show you a really cool lick that I’ve been playing around with for a few weeks which combines multiple techniques in a very cool way. This concept lends itself to many variations and that’s where your creativity comes in…

In this lesson, I’m going to walk you through the techniques behind this lick, but instead of playing it note-for-note, I want you to apply your own note choices to it, then share what you come up with over in the McRocklin Discord – I can’t wait to see where you take this idea!

What if you could unlock a brand new approach to note choice – and add some really fun and exciting new licks to your arsenal at the same time? Stop playing those same old boring notes, because we’re about to spice things up and have a blast while we’re doing it!

In this lesson, I’m going to show you how to combine different notes using several concepts that make playing so much more fun and exciting. With this approach, you’re always on the brink of creating something brand-new, a sound nobody has heard before, and something that is uniquely YOU.

Do you tend to gravitate towards certain note choices and fretboard positions? If so, it’s time to get out of your comfort zone and join me as we trade licks and jam!

In this lesson, I take a backing track of a song idea I’ve been working on and use this as a jumping-off point to show you which note choices and phrasing I feel work well over these particular chords. This is a live, uncut lesson packed full of approaches and insights designed to help you unlock more melodic and meaningful approaches in your playing, which I think you’ll love.

I like to continuously change and flow through different techniques while playing, and this lesson will teach you how to do that too. It’s all about mixing up notes and techniques to come up with something fun and exciting.

You know that feeling when you’re in the zone, coming up with new licks and note combinations effortlessly? That’s what we’re going for and I’m excited to show you a lick I’ve been working on that really embodies that approach.

Hi, I’m Al Joseph and today I’m going to teach you how to play the last solo section of my song “Elemental”.

This solo makes heavy use of legato techniques, and in order to help you understand how it’s put together, I’m going to break down the harmony and patterns that I used to build this solo so that you can nail the mechanics and be able to apply these techniques to your own playing in different situations.