Hot Licks - Exercises and Creative Tips for the Acoustic Guitarist (2 DVD Set) - taught by Alberto Lombardi

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In this double DVD lesson I explore my approach to lick techniques on the acoustic guitar. I have been an electric guitarist for most of my life. I had to adapt the things I do on electric to the acoustic guitar. I had to learn how to incorporate these techniques to my thumb picking arrangements.

Obviously the biggest challenge was doing alternate picking with a thumbpick and not a flatpick. I also found that hammer-ons and pull-offs needed a bit more strength, as the strings on my acoustic were heavier than my electric guitar. My approach and method has been almost exclusively the “rock approach” that uses repetitive patterns and then combines them, as opposed to the jazz way that studies entire phrases over changes.

In this lesson we will study:
• Legatos,
• Alternate picking with the thumbpick
• Hybrid picking
• Harmonics - natural and artificial
• Finger strengthening exercises
• Lots of Hot Licks

The aim of this lesson is to build a collection of patterns and ideas to develop a basis for further expansion and personal adaptation. My recommendation (and I cannot stress this enough) is to start very slowly. Use a metronome and slowly build up your speed. Practice at a tempo that helps avoid mistakes. Undoing errors can take more time than learning the licks and exercises properly.

But most of all have fun!
Alberto Lombardi

160 minutes • Level 2/3 • Detailed tab/music PDF file on the DVD

Review: In the blink of an eye, 52 bite-sized “Hot Licks” flood out, as Alberto Lombardi uncaps a geyser of fretboard moves just itching to be copped. The 160 tutored minutes are meant to be raided, made all the easier by slow-motion split-screen reiteration. The deep pool of modular patterns are ideal for mixing and matching and snapping together to form whole phrases that, in turn, boost and build solos or arrangements. Beyond building a stockpile of actionable ideas, Lombardi’s exercises also nicely double as finger calisthenics that hone coordination between hands. Each bite-sized flurry of activity, pulled right from the session player-turned-soloist’s personal practice program and repertoire, is taught with an overarching goal in mind, rather than randomly spilling out.

Although the lion’s share climb up and down the frets generically, a handful of designs trace to sources as high profiled as “Yesterday” and “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” or Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles. With harmonics, legatos, arpeggios, rolling barres, triplets and triads also figuring into the plan, these “Hot Licks” are anything but quick, empty calories for your strings. – Dennis Rozanski/Blues Rag