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Guitar Courses

Beginning Guitar

Learn to play guitar from scratch and sing some of your favorite songs with simple but powerful chords and strum patterns. Includes 24 great songs to play, with chord and lyric sheets.

Roots and Bluegrass Rhythm Guitar

Learn the essential techniques of roots and bluegrass rhythm guitar by playing classic and contemporary songs, with flatpicking technique tips and strums, bass runs, and fills.

Fingerstyle Guitar

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn to play fingerstyle guitar, from traditional Travis-picking tunes to arrangements of contemporary fingerstyle tunes, song accompaniment and more, with acclaimed performer, teacher, and entertainer Stevie Coyle.

Intermediate Flatpicking Guitar

Learn to play fiddle tunes and other bluegrass and roots melodies, with an emphasis on alternate picking, simple scales, and developing good picking- and fretting-hand technique. Designed for guitarists just starting to play melodies as well as intermediate players who want to work on their flatpicking technique.

Fingerstyle Blues Guitar

Orville Johnson

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn to play fingerstyle blues, with a bottleneck slide and without, through songs from blues legends Mississippi John Hurt, Big Bill Broonzy, Lightnin' Hopkins, Tampa Red, Blind Willie Johnson, and more.

Roots of Jazz Guitar

Learn to play the 1920s and ’30s chord melody and rhythm guitar styles of Eddie Lang, Nick Lucas, Freddie Green, Carl Kress, and other early jazz greats. With chord melody solos to popular swing melodies, advanced rhythm guitar techniques, and acoustic jazz picking techniques.

Advanced Flatpicking Guitar

Learn the essential techniques of bluegrass flatpicking guitar through classic and lesser-known songs and tunes, from bluegrass blues to old-time fiddle tunes to country swing sounds.

Irish Backup Guitar

Learn to accompany jigs and reels and other traditional Irish dance tunes in the style pioneered by Irish guitar greats Paul Brady, Mícheál Ó Dhomhnaill, and Dáithí Sproule and used at Irish seisiúns. With chord voicings, rhythm patterns, and practice tracks.

Orville Johnson

Intermediate / Advanced

Become a complete blues player through these lessons in country blues fingerpicking, blues lead guitar, and bottleneck slide, with great technique lessons and blues songs from Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, and more.

Western Swing Guitar

Intermediate / Advanced

• Monthly Updates

Learn to play the classic western swing rhythm style pioneered by Eldon Shamblin, as well as “twin guitar” solos from Bob Wills’s guitarists and the soloing styles of greats like Junior Barnard, Jimmy Wyble, and others.

Irish Flatpicking Guitar

Intermediate / Advanced

• Monthly Updates

Learn to play traditional Irish dance tunes such as reels, jigs, and hornpipes on the guitar in the style of Paul Brady, John Doyle, Arty McGlynn, and others. With technique lessons on jig picking, triplets, and other techniques derived from traditional Irish tenor banjo playing.

Maybelle Carter–Style Guitar

• Monthly Updates

Learn to play guitar like the legendary Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family, whose recordings are one of the backbones of the old-time country music and bluegrass repertoire and helped create the country music genre. Includes transcriptions of Maybelle’s thumb-lead style on classic songs.

Alternate Tunings Fingerstyle Guitar

Alternate tunings can create beautiful guitar sounds that are impossible in standard tuning, and make some things easier to play. You’ll learn to play fingerstyle melodies in a variety of popular alternate tunings, including favorites like dropped D, DADGAD, and open G, as well as more unusual tunings.

Bluegrass Guitar Fingerboard Mastery

• Monthly Updates

A step-by-step approach to decoding the mysteries of the guitar neck through the lens of bluegrass, old-time, and country music.

Clawhammer Guitar

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn how to use the traditional clawhammer style of old-time banjo on the guitar to play traditional dance tunes with a powerful groove or sweet, contemplative melodies. With clawhammer technique exercises and 12 great tunes to play.

Learn to play reels, jigs, airs, and other traditional forms, both fingerstyle and with a flatpick. Celtic guitar master Tony McManus walks you through melodies and shows you how to bring tunes to life with the ornamentation that defines Irish and Scottish traditional music.

Advanced Fingerstyle Workshop

Meet 15 of the best players in the international fingerstyle guitar community, as they demonstrate their techniques, playing styles, and signature tunes.

Weekly Guitar Workout

This series of exercises will help guitarists learn the fingerboard and expand their knowledge of chord and scale theory, with handy tips on picking and fretting techniques that will improve their sound. Includes 100 workouts.

Guitar Chord Theory

Mark Goldenberg

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn guitar chord theory in-depth with Mark Goldenberg, a respected touring and session guitarist and a student of the legendary Ted Greene. You'll explore basic major and minor chord inversions all over the neck and on all string sets, as well as wide-triad voicings; harmonized major scales; major, minor, and dominant seventh-chord voicings; and more.

Swing Guitar Soloing

Intermediate / Advanced

Study classic swing solos from Charlie Christian, Louis Armstrong, Django Reinhardt, and Lester Young, and learn key guitar techniques that will help you create a voice of your own.

Creating Bluegrass and Roots Music Solos

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn to create interesting solos with this applied theory workshop. You’ll learn how to use scales and arpeggios to create melodic lines, about thematic soloing and improvising, how to create lines with a sense of forward motion, how to combine the melody of a song with fills, melodic variations, arpeggios, and more.

The Song According to Matt Munisteri

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn to improvise through chord changes and expand your knowledge of the fingerboard and music theory by exploring some of Matt’s favorite songs from a variety of sources: jazz, folk, country, and 1960s pop music.

Mandolin Courses

Beginning Mandolin

Sharon Gilchrist

Get started off right on the mandolin, with basic techniques, scales and chords, and simple and popular bluegrass and old-time tunes to play. Includes downloadable Play-Along audio practice tracks for rhythm and melody on all tunes, advice on embellishing melodies and playing tremolo, and more.

Theory for Mandolin and Fiddle

Beginner / Intermediate

Learn the basics of music theory as it relates to four-string instruments tuned in fifths. Chad’s practical approach will deepen your knowledge of chords, scales, and arpeggios, and help you integrate them into your playing.

Bluegrass Mandolin Fingerboard Method

Sharon Gilchrist

Learn to play solos to any bluegrass song in any key with Sharon's intermediate-level method for learning the fingerboard, based on arpeggios, chop-chord shapes, and double stops.

Bluegrass Mandolin Jam Favorites

Learn the essential instrumental tunes you’ll encounter at bluegrass jam sessions everywhere. Designed for intermediate level mandolinists, with tunes, techniques, and solos from mandolin greats.

Old-Time Mandolin

• Monthly Updates

Learn to play old-time fiddle tunes and song melodies with mandolin master John Reischman. Includes advice on picking technique and playing old-time rhythm on the mandolin.

Intermediate Bluegrass Mandolin

Sharon Gilchrist

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn to play solos on classic bluegrass songs and instrumentals using bluegrass mandolin techniques like tremolo, double stops, two-string melodies, and more.

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn traditional Irish mandolin, with an emphasis on playing the dance music of Ireland with an authentic Irish feel and rhythm.

Monroe-Style Mandolin

Intermediate / Advanced

• Monthly Updates

Learn traditional bluegrass-style mandolin as exemplified by the father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe, with original transcribed solos and tips on reproducing Monroe’s sound, rhythm, and feel.

Melodic Mandolin Tunes

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn great traditional and original tunes in a variety of styles—old-time, bluegrass, Latin, jazz, and more—from a modern mandolin master.

The Advancing Mandolinist

Intermediate / Advanced

• 113 Lessons

• Monthly Updates

Explore all the modern mandolin techniques, from tremolo, chords and double stops, and soloing and improvisation tips, with plenty of bluegrass, old-time and swing tunes to keep you moving forward.

Chord Melody Mandolin

Aaron Weinstein

• Monthly Updates

Learn how to combine chords and melody to play jazz standards in the style pioneered by jazz mandolinist Jethro Burns and guitarists like Joe Pass and Bucky Pizzarelli.

Swing and Jazz Mandolin

Intermediate / Advanced

• Monthly Updates

Learn to play swing and jazz melodies and classic solos from jazz legends like Lester Young, Miles Davis, and Django Reinhardt, as well as swing mandolinists like Tiny Moore and Jethro Burns. For each song, you’ll learn the melody and a solo, along with tips on technique, phrasing, and improvisation.

Octave Mandolin

Intermediate / Advanced

• Monthly Updates

Learn to transfer what you know on the mandolin to its bigger cousin and how to exploit the octave mandolin’s potential for more complex, guitar-oriented accompaniment styles. For intermediate mandolin, fiddle, or guitar players with a basic knowledge of their instrument.

Melodic Embellishment

Sharon Gilchrist

In this workshop, Sharon will use common bluegrass and old-time tunes like “Old Joe Clark,” “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” “June Apple,” “Angeline the Baker,” and more to demonstrate her method for teaching students how to embellish and vary melodies as a way to begin to improvise.

Brazilian Choro Mandolin

Intermediate / Advanced

• Monthly Updates

Learn to play Brazilian choro music on the mandolin with young Brazilian virtuoso Ian Coury, from the classic sounds of Jacob do Bandolim to the modern style of Hamilton Holanda. Includes play-along tracks with Ian’s Brazilian backing band.

Improvising for Mandolin and Fiddle

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn to improvise on fiddle tunes, create new melodies over chord changes, practice the arpeggios and scales you need to play jazz tunes, and more. Joe lays out his approach to improvising and practicing improvising, with exercises and solos that illustrate his unique, widely acclaimed, freewheeling style.

Swing Mandolin: Rhythm and Chord Solos

Aaron Weinstein

Learn to play swing rhythm mandolin and how to create rhythmic chord solos, using eight classic jazz and swing tunes, with one of the world’s greatest swing mandolinists, Aaron Weinstein.

Banjo Courses

Beginning Banjo

Beginner / Intermediate

The driving sound of the banjo is at the heart of many styles of roots music. Get started with basic chords, strums, and fingerings, along with simple bluegrass rolls, accompaniment patterns, clawhammer style, and more.

Bluegrass Banjo

Intermediate / Advanced

• 100 Lessons

Learn to make your banjo drive the band or play sweet melodies, with solos to well-known songs and tunes, backup techniques, and more.

Clawhammer Banjo

Beginner / Intermediate

Learn old-time clawhammer banjo from the beginning, with basic clawhammer technique exercises and lots of great old-time and traditional songs to play.

Intermediate / Advanced

• Monthly Updates

Learn the tunes and techniques of some of the legends of old-time banjo, taught by one of the icons of contemporary old-time music.

The Banjo According to Danny Barnes

Intermediate / Advanced

Roots music iconoclast Danny Barnes reveals his systematic approach to the banjo, with one-of-a-kind insights on improvisation, reading music, getting a good sound out of the banjo, rhythm and timing, and more.

Contemporary Bluegrass Banjo

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn the style of contemporary three-finger banjo used by Béla Fleck, Noam Pikelny, Ron Block, and others. With lessons on single-string and melodic style, fingerboard theory, improvisation, and more. For intermediate to advanced players.

Earl Scruggs: A Player's Guide

Intermediate / Advanced

Earl Scruggs: A Player’s Guide picks up where Earl’s renowned instruction book Earl Scruggs and the Five-String Banjo leaves off, teaching tunes and techniques that will help each student become a more complete Scruggs-style player.

Melodic and Single-String Banjo

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn the two bluegrass banjo techniques that were added to Scruggs-style to create exciting bluegrass music from the 1950s to the present day, melodic-style and single-string.

The Banjo Style of J.D. Crowe

Intermediate / Advanced

Next to Earl Scruggs, J.D. Crowe is the most influential five-string bluegrass banjo player in the history of the instrument and The Banjo Style of J.D. Crowe provides an overview of his long career, teaching tunes and techniques from J.D.’s earliest days with Jimmy Martin through his classic recordings with The New South and his remarkable work with The Bluegrass Album Band. The series is designed for intermediate to advanced banjo players, and features guest banjo stars Ron Block and Ron Stewart.

Fiddle Courses

Beginning Bluegrass and Old-Time Fiddle

Learn how to get that fiddley sound by learning beginner-level fiddle tunes and bluegrass songs, with technique tips for both hands and basic theory.

Beginning Celtic Fiddle

Learn to play the fiddle from scratch using traditional Scottish and Irish melodies. With essential techniques for both hands.

Intermediate Bluegrass and Old-Time Fiddle

Learn classic bluegrass and old-time tunes and improve your playing with fiddle techniques like unison drones, slides, pulses, and more advanced bowing patterns, as well as advice on improvising and soloing on bluegrass songs.

Old-Time Fiddle

Intermediate / Advanced

Get deep into the roots of Southern Appalachian old-time fiddling. Bruce breaks down the melody, bowing patterns, rhythms, and embellishments of each tune he teaches so you can really learn to play like Bruce and the old masters he learned from.

Advanced Bluegrass Fiddle

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn fiddle in the styles of Kenny Baker, Stuart Duncan, Vassar Clements, Bobby Hicks, and other bluegrass greats by learning classic tunes, with improvisation exercises and advanced techniques.

Western Swing Fiddle

Intermediate / Advanced

• Monthly Updates

Learn to play classic western swing melodies and solos from western swing fiddle greats like Johnny Gimble, Joe Holley, and others. For each song, you’ll learn the melody and a solo, along with tips on western swing fiddle technique, phrasing, improvisation.

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn traditional Irish fiddle, with an emphasis on playing the dance music of Ireland, including jigs, reels, polkas, slip jigs, hornpipes, and more, with an Irish feel and ornamentation.

Fiddle Styles Workshop

Meet some of the best fiddlers on the planet in these intimate workshops that get to the root of a host of individual fiddle styles. Includes 24 complete tunes and transcriptions.

Old-Time Fiddle Styles

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn a variety of old-time fiddle tunes in different regional styles from great players of the past. Bruce teaches a variety of classic tunes, with advice about bowing, double stops, ornamentation, and ideas for more listening and learning.

Improvising for Fiddlers and Violinists

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn to improvise and connect to your own creative impulses through musical games, simple exercises, and fiddle tunes. You’ll explore improvisation fundamentals of rhythm and pitch, learn how to create and vary melodies, use small building blocks or motifs to build a solo, practice scales and arpeggios, and much more.

Creative Jam Skills

Lauren Rioux and Brittany Haas

Learn techniques to take a new tune or an old tune you love to the next step—with bowing and phrasing ideas, chordal and rhythmic exploration, and soloing practice.

Theory for Mandolin and Fiddle

Beginner / Intermediate

Learn the basics of music theory as it relates to four-string instruments tuned in fifths. Chad’s practical approach will deepen your knowledge of chords, scales, and arpeggios, and help you integrate them into your playing.

Dobro Courses

Beginning Dobro

Beginner / Intermediate

Learn the basics of the lap-style resophonic slide guitar, with essential tips on right- and left-hand technique as well as arrangements of classic tunes and songs.

Intermediate / Advanced

Explore a variety of dobro styles, from bluegrass and fiddle tunes to blues and contemporary sounds, and get insights on technique that will help you clean up your playing, while learning the techniques of Jerry Douglas, Josh Graves, and other dobro greats.

Ukulele Courses

Beginner / Intermediate

Start playing easy versions of your favorite songs on the ukulele today. You’ll learn the basics, like strumming, first-position chords, and keeping solid time, all while playing a variety of songs that sound great on the lovable little “dancing flea.” Then move on to more intermediate-level techniques with more fun songs to play. Includes Play-Along Tracks so you can play along with Marcy.

Bass Courses

Beginner / Intermediate

Learn to play upright bass from scratch with advice on right- and left-hand technique and in-depth lessons on playing bass patterns, scales, and melodies in most common keys. With bass lines from great roots music songs so you can play along.

Musicianship Courses

Learning by Ear

Lissa Schneckenburger

Learn to pick up tunes on the fly and increase your ability to interact with your fellow musicians with this valuable ear-training course. With lots of exercises and advice on mastering this essential musical skill.

Creating Bluegrass and Roots Music Solos

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn to create interesting solos with this applied theory workshop. You’ll learn how to use scales and arpeggios to create melodic lines, about thematic soloing and improvising, how to create lines with a sense of forward motion, how to combine the melody of a song with fills, melodic variations, arpeggios, and more.

Theory for Mandolin and Fiddle

Beginner / Intermediate

Learn the basics of music theory as it relates to four-string instruments tuned in fifths. Chad’s practical approach will deepen your knowledge of chords, scales, and arpeggios, and help you integrate them into your playing.

Improvising for Mandolin and Fiddle

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn to improvise on fiddle tunes, create new melodies over chord changes, practice the arpeggios and scales you need to play jazz tunes, and more. Joe lays out his approach to improvising and practicing improvising, with exercises and solos that illustrate his unique, widely acclaimed, freewheeling style.

Improvising for Fiddlers and Violinists

Intermediate / Advanced

Learn to improvise and connect to your own creative impulses through musical games, simple exercises, and fiddle tunes. You’ll explore improvisation fundamentals of rhythm and pitch, learn how to create and vary melodies, use small building blocks or motifs to build a solo, practice scales and arpeggios, and much more.

Creative Jam Skills

Lauren Rioux and Brittany Haas

Learn techniques to take a new tune or an old tune you love to the next step—with bowing and phrasing ideas, chordal and rhythmic exploration, and soloing practice.

Fundamentals of Good Singing

Beginner / Intermediate

Learn fundamental skills that can make all the difference in your singing. Learn to breathe like a singer, gain a clear understanding of breath support, power your voice the right way, release tension, and sing with greater expression.

Vocal Courses

Fundamentals of Good Singing

Beginner / Intermediate

Learn fundamental skills that can make all the difference in your singing. Learn to breathe like a singer, gain a clear understanding of breath support, power your voice the right way, release tension, and sing with greater expression.

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Mair: “Snooze Button” | L.R. Baggs

Singer-songwriter Mary Meyer performs "Snooze Button" at Nashville's Middletree studio.

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Sign In

● Courses

● Live Workshops

● Instructors

● Sample Lessons

● Play-along Tracks

● Notation Guide

● For Beginners

Instruments & Gear

● Instrument Demos

● Vintage Vault

● New Gear

● Fine Lutherie

● Workshops

● Advice

● Repertoire

● Recordings

● Events

● Breaking News

Featured Videos

● In The Studio

● Live Onstage

● Backroom

● New Products

● Inside Look

● Performances

● Partner Pages

© Copyright 2020 PegheadNation.com