Alex Graf

When I was about 14 my dad took me to NYC to see his favorite guitar player of all time: jazz guitarist Pat Martino.

I liked Pat's playing a lot at that point in my life and was learning a…

Just like light, improvising — and more specifically, taking a solo — is not just one thing.

A lot of players think taking a great improvised solo is either fully spontaneous, channeling the muse out of nowhere, or fully prepared…

"Okay, this is the last question of the interview. You can only answer with one word. What's your favorite mode?"

The answer: "Ionian."

The interviewer — a guitar teacher — laughed, thinking it was a joke. It wasn't.

For those…

Over the years there have been some hot takes on the internet about how there is supposedly a "wrong" way to improvise and take a solo in bluegrass and other genres.

Any dogmatic approach to music will have serious blind…

Ten years ago I was deep in the world of bebop but I happened to catch Ricky Skaggs at the Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance near Ithaca, NY.

Jake Workman was playing in his band at that point, and…

A lot of people misunderstand how to sound "unique" on the guitar.

Developing your own voice on the instrument is worth putting a premium on. But here's the counterintuitive truth: copying other players is a very necessary part of the…

Song memorization is a huge topic in bluegrass — and in jazz, where there's an equally vast repertoire of common tunes and standards. In bluegrass there's a little less harmony to memorize, though this creates its own challenge: so many…

Last week's post covered how there is no one "correct" right hand technique for bluegrass guitar when it comes to bracing, floating, single escape, double escape, and so on. But there is one clarification worth making.

There is only one…

This might be controversial: there is no one "correct" right hand technique for bluegrass guitar.

There are bad habits and un-ergonomic tendencies that can cause issues, but the dogmatic things that come up occasionally in the bluegrass guitar community about…

Not all speed work has to happen with a metronome running the whole time. Here's one approach to fiddle tunes that are really fast — breaking them down phrase by phrase in bursts.

Why This Works

If you're struggling to…