Claude Johnson sells guitar tuition materials. Like many others I was a bit skeptical,
until I saw a link offering "free" information that would take me to guitar hero status
instantly. But it seems even the free offerings are not worth the cost; not fraud, but
equally way short of the hyped promises. The "useful" content is so miniscule as to be
non-existent, and buried deep in spam. To sum up the (mostly obvious) info from Claude's
prolific annoying texts, for those who (wisely) didn't sing up,...
Guitar control is the sum of technique, fretboard knowledge and guitar control.
Technique - to play any desired notes without stumbling - requires patience and practice
of major, minor and pentatonic (eg A C D E G) scales all over the neck, plus bending,
vibrato, string skipping licks and arpeggios.
Fretboard knowledge - knowing where the notes are on the fretboard, and their various
combinations in scales, modes, chord voicings, etc. Eg, for the A minor pentatonic scale
(A C D E G, a subset of the C major and A minor scales), play two notes per string from
the 5th fret A string (D) to the 8th fret high E string (C), notice all the degrees of the
scale, the intervallic relationship to every other note, the 2 frets + 2 strings in the
first octave, the V (5th) note (E) on the B string at the 5th fret, and how the A minor
chord falls over the scale notes. Repeat for other positions, scales and entire chord
progressions. It's far more useful to remember relative than absolute note positions,
scales and chords. Eg the 8th fret on the B string is G, but it's more useful to know it
as the VII (7th) note on any A scale, and belonging to any A chord, along with all the
notes around it, such as the A on the 10th fret B string (the root). And you should be
able to see that the G is one half step above the F#, which is the third of the D chord,
which is the IV chord in the progression. And you should be able to see the relationship
between the A7 chord and the D7 chord, and the smooth transition from the G down to the
F#. There are vast numbers of such relationships, which must all be so ingrained as to
require no thought or effort while playing a solo. This knowledge also lets you fall back
on what you know if you get lost.
Guitar control - the direct brain-to-hand connection - completes the picture; eg practice
nailing the first note of a phrase. This one sentence is the sum total of useful "new"
information in Claude Johnson's free "secrets of guitar control", for which one must read
endless self-indulgent waffle, sign up and then endure endless spam emails directed
towards extracting money for even more "secrets". Maybe the non-free course is a lot
better, but after going through so much to get so little, I'm not about to pay money for
more.
Tony