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by Brad Carlton

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In this 4-part video guitar lesson series, Brad Carlton explores 40 timeless tips from 40 guitar legends featured in Guitar Player Magazine. Each lesson explores a lick or an exercise in the style of a great guitarist complete with the video guitar lesson, power tab, chart, and more. Now dig in and supercharge your chops!

11. Frank Gambale

Gambale pretty much owns sweep picking, and this was the lesson where he first divulged his secrets to GP readers. Whether you devote yourself to the sweep or simply use it in addition to your alternate picking, this is a powerful technique. Remember what Gambale told us: “Always practice with a metronome or a drum machine, making sure the notes are clean and even. Be critical and honest when evaluating yourself.” Word!

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12. Randy Rhoads

No one did more to bring the classical aesthetic to mainstream metal than the late, great Randy Rhoads, whose epic Vivaldi- and Paganini-esque solos on Ozzy Osbourne’s first two solo albums marked the golden age of baroque shred. Of course, Rhoads’ acoustic side was equally hypnotic. Directly inspired by Leo Brouwer’s “Etude VI” from Estudios Sencillos, Rhoads’ layered intro to “Diary of a Madman” is an alluring, arpeggiated expl#3 and #4 oration of A major, A minor, and everything in between. (Tip: The grids show you each chord shape you’ll need to fret.)

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13. Tuck Andress

Though he’s not typically classified as a funk player, solo jazz phenom Tuck Andress-who simultaneously comps chords, plays melodies, and handles bass lines with unparalleled precision and pocket-is one of the funkiest guitarists the world has ever known. Whether you play this example fingerstyle (as Andress does) or hybrid style (picking the bass line; plucking the chord stabs with your middle, ring, and pinky fingers), this 12-bar walking blues in G offers the perfect gateway into the spectacular style of solo jazz/funk guitar that Andress so brilliantly pioneered.

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14. Joaquin Lievano

This exercise revolutionized a lot of picking chops in the ’80s and it’s a great way to wake your hands up and get your pick and fingers synched up. Although Mr. Lievano recommends starting low and moving up the neck, it makes a lot of sense to start high, where the frets are closer together, so as not to traumatize your hand with big stretches initially.

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15. Eddie Van Halen

Eruption-it remains unsurpassed as the ultimate hard rock guitar cadenza, and in this issue (which featured EVH’s cover story, “My Tips For Beginners”), future GP cover artist Steve Vai transcribed the instrumental’s molten maneuvers note-for note. The excerpt below presents the light-speed bursts of A-minor pentatonicism [0:47-0:53] that open the song’s third “movement.” The beautiful thing about these and other signature Van Halen passages is how easy they are to play fast-once you’ve internalized the moves. (Low action and a white-hot lead tone will help.) These phrases get their magic from a commonplace 1st-finger/3rd-finger, fifth-position A-minor pentatonic stance that uses convenient pull-offs to open strings for a most uncommon migration up the neck. (Note: There are other fretting options, but no fingering is more simple and intuitive than the one presented in the tablature here.) Bar lines would only be confusing, so we left ’em out.

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16. Chet Atkins

If you want to learn about three-finger banjo-style rolls, you can’t find a better teacher than Mr. Guitar, Chet Atkins. “Banjo players have always known,” he said in this lesson, “that you can produce very exciting sounds using a fixed fretting-hand chord and a fast plucking-hand roll. Of course, most of the work is in planning your moves so that the execution is effortless.”

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17. Will Bernard

Symmetrical scales have strange sounds, but once you know some ways to apply them, you’ll be pleased to discover they have conveniently repetitive fingerings-provided you take the diagonal approach. For instance, as modern jazz ace Will Bernard detailed in this article, if you apply a three-notes-per-string approach to the whole-tone scale-or a four-notes-per-string approach to the whole/half (fully diminished) scale-you’ll find they blaze up and down the neck with easy-to-memorize diagonal patterns. (Tip: The only hiccup in these patterns is the added distance of one extra fret between the third- and second-string neck positions.)

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18. Arlen Roth

Instructional legend Arlen Roth can bend with the best of them. Here he outdoes himself with these triple-stop tendon busters where you hold one note of a chord and bend the other two up to pitch. “To play these licks in tune,” said Roth, “you’ll need to apply different amounts of pressure to each bent note.” He makes it sound easy, but it ain’t. It is, however, totally worth the effort.

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19. Craig Chaquico

Taken from Chaquico’s lead in Jefferson Starship’s FM radio mainstay “Ride the Tiger,” this is a pentatonic workout with some interesting twists that could be a cool warm-up or a bitchin’ part of a solo. “A lot of guitarists use these licks as springboards,” says Chaquico. “Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, everybody! It’s where you take them that makes you different.”

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20. Johnny Smith

Judy Garland’s rendition of “Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz was mesmerizing indeed, but so was jazz legend Johnny Smith’s three decades later in this early issue of GP. To hear the timeless ballad framed in Smith’s handsome harmonies and colorful chord substitutions, hum or sing the tune (starting on Eb) and strum through the grids with the phrasing indicated. (Tip: The opening lyric, “Somewhere,” gets two beats per syllable.)

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