Berklee Student Reviews Lead Guitar: Techniques For Creating Solos, Featuring John McCarthy

Kyle Hume is a featured guest writer today for The Rock House Blog. Kyle has used and looked over the material in newly released Rock House DVD “Lead Guitar – Techniques For Creating Solos featuring John McCarthy”.

Kyle is an experienced musician and a current student at The Berklee College of Music. Kyle is attending school for percussions and has played guitar for 9 years. He plays several other instruments but those are his main two.

The following is his review of Lead Guitar:

In the top right of “Lead Guitar, Techniques for Creating Solos” you will notice it says “Expand Your Arsenal” and it means just that from the beginning of this DVD all the way to the end. This DVD will teach you so much more than creating solos it shows you ways to work with the entire guitar using the whole neck.

One thing I really like about Rock House DVD’s is that most of there programs pertain to all styles of music rock, metal, blues, or whatever you might play. Now on to the DVD, right from page one you already are using new areas on the guitar with full neck runs, arpeggios, and sweep picking but make sure you start these off slow and if you practice this right you can have more variety in you arsenal for soloing. Not only will you be working in areas of the guitar you may have not played in before but also there are plenty of exercises more focused on achieving more speed like the pentatonic speed run and the sextuplet speed run.

As I watched and played this DVD I found it very hard not to skip ahead because there were so many things I had never heard of or used before such as bi-dextral scale hammer ons and violin effects and I had to know what they were, this DVD will keep you busy for hours and is a must have for guitarists. The explanations by John are very clear and easy to understand as with all of his DVD’s but, it is very important to take each exercise slow and be patient with them some may test you.

The 5 lessons that I found most appealing among the many in the DVD are:

1) Advanced One Hand Rolls

2) Full Neck Run Follow Pattern

3) Sweep Tap Arpeggios

4) Sextuplet Speed Run

5) Speed Run -Howling Speed

If you hang in there while learning the techniques from this DVD you will have lots of surprises the next time you are playing in your band or showing off your new skills to you friends.

More info can be found on Lead Guitar - Techniques at http://www.rockhousemethod.com/estore/storeproducts.aspx?categoryid=2