The Guitar Hour Podcast

The boys take a break from modes, legato and practise to share some of their musical social media mishaps over the years. They explore the blurring of the lines between private and public personas and the potential career pitfalls that can come from musicians doing this. In other news, (completely ignoring the above sentence) Jake has a hangover and Beebs has accidentally locked his wife in the kitchen.

The podigal son returns! After several months away from the mic, Dan Smith rejoins the lads to talk about practise strategies. Inspired by Jake’s recent deep dive into ‘Miss Jones’ they weigh up the pro’s and cons of working intensely on one thing vs. many different things in moderation. They also reflect on their own experiences and break through periods of guitar development, follow up on last weeks legato madness and Beebs has the verdict on the Laney FRFR amp modelling cab experience.

Huge week as the guys launch Patreon! They also follow up on the poll and Beebs reports on his first use of the Laney FRFR cab. The deep dive comes off a discussion group post re: improvisation & the speed of technique & mental processes. Beebs puts this to Tom framed around legato, & they all delve into the nature of improvising at speed & get into the back story of Tom’s modern legato tutorials. Thanks for listening and all your support!(This weeks after hours banter bus: Ron Burgundy's Phantom Fart)

The team convene deep down the harmony hole to discuss a listener email about modal harmony. They discuss a specific example to do with Phrygian and answer the question when is modal harmony, not modal harmony? Also there's a listener poll to check out in the discussion group and tease of a new TGHP project.

After a few weeks of high emotions and even higher theory, Beebs, Quayle and Willson attempt to take things easy talking about 3 albums and 3 players that shaped their lives. This is not before Jake pulls everyone into a half hour musing on free will, where our ideas come from. This was an honest attempt to answer a listener email in follow up to the Rick Beato interview! What’s your 3 x 3? Tell us in the facebook discussion group. Thanks for listening to the podcast, and welcome to all the new listeners

Tom Quayle & Beebee chat with one of our most requested podcast guests - Rick Beato. They discuss Rick’s diverse skill set, musical background & rise to YouTube phenomenon (he will have just ticked over a million subs as you read this!) before delving back into ear training and Rick’s upcoming ear training course. There’s word of The Beato Book v3 & Club and of course Beebs says the words fretboard visualisation at least once.. We always say this, but.. it’s a great one! Strap in and enjoy :)

Here we have a pre-recorded interview with Joe Mulholland and Tom Hojnacki, authors of the Berklee Book of Jazz Harmony. This conversation delves into the background, context and scope of the book, harmony at Berklee, the source of conflation for tonal and modal harmony problems in guitarland and much more. This is a shorter episode than normal, but it gets heavy and spawns some new avenues to spiral down with further research, reading and exploration. Huge thanks to Joe and Tom for coming on.

Beebs & Quayle welcome the incredible Jack Gardiner to the podcast to talk about playing Satch-n-Vai songs on tour with Stu Hamm, China Crisis, his current projects and upcoming E.P. There are some Beebee nerd questions in the middle before the big topic. The guys revisit the area of mental health and musical identity in light of Jacks’ recent (and excellent) YouTube video, where in he opens up with his struggles of the of the last few years and recent return to social media.

Quayle, Willson & Beebee reconvene for a follow up on playing consistency, which, quickly turns into a discussion on how to measure ones guitar progress in a healthy objective manner. Beebs guinea pigs an example of Giant Steps with legato and discovers that consistency may not be the issue after all. Light is shed on the effects of always playing at the edge of ones ability. Finally the guys cover some Facebook discussion group chat and ponder why students find descending scales harder than ascending.

Changes afoot at TGHQ. Beebs sits-in on The Book of Mormon show. Tom, Jake and Beebs answer listener email before diving into a deep discussion on achieving consistency of performance.

Beebs & Jake are joined by the immensely talented Tommy Emmerton. They discuss Tommy’s life as a guitarist on The Book Of Mormon in the West End of London. They also talk about his work as Jazz harmony teacher at Guildhall, his original projects and what it’s like to play the ‘Beat It’ solo for Quincy Jones’ on tour! There are some deep dive side quests into modal harmony, chord scale theory, technique, and they even ponder the nature of what it means to be a ‘jazz musician’. Strap in and ner

The guys take a break from ear training, crack a open some orthentik Brewdogs and get ranting about the Gibson 'Play Authentic' video, it's backlash, latest response and most importantly, the sweet memes. To quote a true hero - "These are the headlines. God I wish they weren't."

Beebs and Tom welcome back Martin Miller to give his thoughts on audiation, playing what you hear and the ear training beast of recent episodes. Tom and Martin compare and contrast different aspects of their aural skills and also shed a bit more light on the visualisation in the process. It was nice to catch up with Martin again, and a really interesting episode - there’s some truly great info in this one guys!

Beebs returns from Budapest and talks to Jake Willson about getting out of practise slumps. They discuss some of the positive and negative mindsets that can set in when working through practise problems before getting onto guitar setups and their new axes that are in the works.

Beebs recovers from an inner ear infection (irony?). Dan dances in Denmark. Do amp modellers struggle at gig volume? And why does Beebs' wife have good ears?! Short but sweet this week!