About

I picked up my first guitar at 15 years old, and I haven’t put it down since.  When I started playing, the internet – and all of the incredible learning resources it provides – didn’t exist.  I didn’t have YouTube or immediate access to every guitar tab ever created.  I learned the hard way – by turning on my favorite music and trying to play along with it, figuring things out with my ear, one-note-at-a-time.   Guitar playing quickly became an obsession for me.  There were many days where I played from the moment I woke up to the time I went to sleep.

Like most of us guitar players, I wasn’t able to invest as much practice time as I got older.  Between work, school, and other responsibilities, my playing time dwindled.  I was able to attend Musician’s Institute in Hollywood, California for a time, but had to work to support myself, and didn’t have the time to develop there as much as I would have liked.  The sad reality of the guitar is that it takes a lot of practice time to get better.  If you don’t have the time to invest it is hard to improve, let alone improve quickly.

A few years ago, I got frustrated that I wasn’t playing guitar much anymore, and so I decided to do something about it.  I figured that I would start to put some videos of myself up on YouTube.  This would give me a goal that would require a consistent and disciplined practice regimen and force me to learn new things – something I hadn’t done in a long time.  I wanted my videos to focus on licks, because that is what I always enjoyed most.  I loved developing the technique required to play a lick, and loved the feeling of being able to play a great-sounding lick flawlessly.  I also like licks because they cut right to the chase.  Rather than sitting for a couple hours practicing scales, I can spend my time having fun and actually playing.

Through a lot of trial and error, I have fallen into great routine that I use to produce my content and practice efficiently on a daily basis. Like most things that work well, my routine is very simple: I learn a couple licks, work on my technique to play those licks well, and then I play them over a backing track. This process works for me when I have 30 minutes to play or all day – I always have a great playing session, and I always make progress.

My goal for this site is to give guitarists all the tools to do what I do every day.  Each new lesson that I produce has interactive tabs, tab downloads, and a backing track. My hope is that, regardless of the time you have, you can come to this site and enjoy playing your guitar like I do.

Thank you, and I hope to see you in the Dojo!

-James
guitarlickdojo@gmail.com