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Keeping a Guitar/Ukulele journal

Guitar/Ukulele journal

Or bass… or whatever you want to keep track of your effort on, really.

One way that I know to stay on top of your practice and tacking in the right direction is to keep a guitar journal. You can use that to track your practice dates, length and frequency. Use it to note any questions you might have that you can bring up later with your teacher or jot down some interesting lyrics or chord changes… It’s pretty valuable to keep notes for yourself about your playing and practicing in one place!

Whether you’re using a loose-leaf binder and 3 hole punch (I can’t believe how archaic that question sounds) or simply keeping notes on your tablet or phone, there’s some real value to tracking and noting your progress!

Here are a couple of pages to get you started, Blank chord sheets and tab sheets for uke and guitar both, a “circle of fifths” sheet and a page on strumming patterns:

blank guitar chord sheet

blank guitar tablature

circle of fifths

strumming patterns

uke blank tab sheet

uke blank chord sheets

“Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.” ― John Erskine

2026-03-10T07:16:44-04:00
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Ripple

How to play Ripple on ukulele… the first part of “Ripple”, anyway.
“Ripple” sounds pretty cool on the uke to me!

You can do this! Just be patient with yourself and go slowly. There’s a tab, video and an audio file of the tablature to follow along with. I would start with just the first phrase- “if my words did glow”- just that one part. Get it so it sounds as nice as you want it.

You’ll notice in the video you can hear two notes at at time which makes the playing sound a little fuller. That is the melody note and a harmony note which is generally just a chord tone! what that means is that we’ve found the melody note in a chord… and in some cases the adjacent melody notes are all in the same chord, which is pretty convenient because your hand is already in the right place.

The MP3 file below is exported from the MuseScore file that made the tab/notation so follow the tab to see exactly what is happening in the audio file. The video file, I took some liberties (and made a few errors). It is a great song though so give it a try!

PDF tabs and notation

“A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.” – Benny Green

[…]

2026-04-25T19:22:59-04:00
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How to play “8 days a week”

Here’s a great Beatles tune with pretty simple, hand-friendly changes. You can certainly play this just by strumming the changes but you can also pick individual notes out of them- and even better, the melody notes are not difficult to get out of the chord shapes at all. Give it a listen and reach out to me if you’re interested in more information about how to play “8 days a week” solo finger style on acoustic guitar.

Lyrics and chords here!

2026-03-10T07:01:03-04:00
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Building chords from the 5 string

Building chords from the 5 string!

Building chords from the 5 string. We know the C scale has no flats or sharps and also that we can play Major chords (triads) with the 1, 3 and 5 scale notes. We can figure that combination out from any note on the 5th string! For instance a C Major is made of a C, and E and a G (1,3 and 5): C D E F G A B C

major chord from the five stringWe know that the “two strings up and two frets back” rule can give us the same note but an octave up. We can do that from the 6 string and the 5 string. Let’s concentrate on the 5 string first. So C on the 5 string is at the 3rd fret and consequently, on the 5th fret of the G string. That gives us our one note in two places!

Starting with C on the 3rd fret of the A string, we can see D on the open D string, E on the 2nd fret, F on the 3rd and G on the 5th. The G on the 5th fret is important to us! Now we have 1 […]

2026-03-29T18:44:14-04:00
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song lessons for guitar students (by artist/composer)

Song Lessons. Here are some of the songs my students and I have looked at together.
Many have a video lesson, pdf chord and lyric charts and/or tabs and notation.
I offer lessons for any level of experience or aptitude and the first online lesson is always free!

Song Lessons By title, alphabetically

If you’re looking for a song you don’t see here, just reach out-
I’m always adding to the song lesson list! 

Alan Jackson

Allman Brothers

Alice In Chains

Alison Krauss

Allman Brothers

Andrew Bird

BB King

Beachboys

Ben E. King

Bill Withers

Beatles

Ben Bernie

Bennie Goodman

[…]

2026-06-15T16:37:38-04:00
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funk on a classical guitar

There’s nothing quite like jamming out over the top of funk changes and you don’t even need to be plugged in to do that! Once you understand the blues scale- even in one spot on the neck- well, you can either look at it like it’s easier to play reasonably decent lines, or harder to make mistakes. Or both, I guess!

This tune is in C#m, so that’s the 1 chord. Since its a minor chord, the 3rd of the chord is flattened. That tells us what notes are going to work correctly when we play them over the top of the chord. To get started we can play C# (root note) E (flat 3rd) F#(4th) G#(5) and B (flat 7) and if you want to call these guys by their fancy-pants name, that would be “C# minor pentatonic”.

How I generally start with something like this is by remembering that if I’m on the the 1 chord, I need to keep coming back to the 1 note! It might sound crazy to just play one note over the chord but think about it – just concentrating on that single note lets you focus on making making interesting rhythmic patterns rather than worrying about where to put your fingers and scales and modes and all that other stuff. So try this: listen for the 1 chord […]

2026-04-30T08:10:09-04:00
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Distance guitar coaching FAQs

Wouldn’t it be great if you could stop a guitar video at certain points and asks the guitarist “what exactly exactly are you doing there” or “what did you mean when you said that?”

Well now you can. Here are some FAQs that might be helpful:

  • How do we get started?
    First is a video chat, just to get acquainted. Based on our conversation, I produce a video lesson specifically tailored to you!
  • How does it work exactly?
    If you said you were interested in playing a particular song, I make a custom video lesson just for that! I break it down into manageable sections you can play as often as you want at various speeds. During the actual lesson I’ll help you figure out any parts you’re having trouble with. Split screen video show both hands and my face, so you can hear and see just what I’m doing.
  • How much does it cost?
    Distance lessons are $25 per session and the first session is free. Pay for the next session any time before it is scheduled.
  • Do I need to own a guitar?
    Before we start, yes.If you want to use the initial video chat to talk about what kind of instrument you should get, that’s fine! I can show you any of the guitars or ukes in my studio; you can hear them played, and we can […]
2022-04-27T09:27:13-04:00
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