Scott's Lessons

02/12/2021

What are your ideal Tele pickups? Lollar Pickups 52 Set felt like a revelation for me (not a paid endorsement, I just dig them!). The tones I wanted as well as new tones I didn't foresee, especially in the bridge. Finding the right pickups will teach us to find/hone new right hand techniques.

0:35 - Clean Strums2:13 - Overdrive Lead3:11 - Jazz Fingerstyle5:00 - Overdrive Rhythm

02/05/2021

Happy video Friday! Modal Warmup- Been working on a lot of warmups to get the most done in the smallest amount of time and this one has been fun.

PDF Packet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vzoB3nQoVsHQ786qCL9FRXd6_nYifn29/view?usp=sharing0:40 - Warmup #15:25 - Warmup #1 Playthrough7:52 - Warmup #211:...

01/22/2021

Happy Friday! Video Lesson - A fingerstyle arrangement I made based a melody by Seattle blues/jazz guru Tim Lerch. Subscribe to my YouTube channel to get updates of my weekly Friday videos. 

PDF: https://www.dropbox.com/s/aurdkjj8bpwzduv/Tim%20Lerch%20Blues%20-%20with%20Bass.pdf?dl=0Blues/Jazz master Tim Lerch released a lesson years ago, and I w...

09/26/2017

Musicians don't break the rules, they make the rules. Music theory is not law; it is an attempt at explanation for the phenomenon of melody and harmony. All three examples in this article have perfectly reasonable explanations in commonly used music theory.

Here are a few... I'm sure there are more explanations. Any thoughts?

1. Chuck Berry - parallel 4ths/5ths/octaves - Was Chuck Berry trying to utilize 4-part voice leading for Johnny B. Goode? Of course not! Pretty much all blues music that predates Chuck Berry uses parallel movement of entire chords. Also pre-dating Chuck Berry and 4 part voice leading - Gregorian chant.

2. David Bowie - C F G A - you expect a modal climb to Am, but you get A major. Slight twist on the age old Picardy 3rd. Lots of ways to look at this.

3. Rage Against The Machine - F tonality with G major harmonization. The article states F has nothing to do with G Major. Both the Phrygian and Locrian modes of F # utilize G major diatonically.

Sometimes going against common music theory rules ends up being exactly what a song needs. It worked for these three songs.

07/14/2017

06/25/2017

Student recital day! One car: Drum Kit, Guitar rig, extra amp, Keyboard rig, PA, electric bass and one electric!

05/30/2016

My old bandmate and long time Pittsburgh musician Brian Jump wrote a great blog post on the Sonata through the works of Haydn/Mozart.

https://www.facebook.com/brianwjump/posts/10208366737059326

This blog post covers two sublime exemplars of Classical music–Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Also covered is the sonata-form, which was the compositional architecture-of-c…

05/28/2016

Saw this today; was inspired to transcribe the main groove played here. A pic of the part below is posted as a comment!

I'm sure we may all hear the "1" differently, so for simplicity I made the groove start with the starting pitch "D" on the bass keyboard track.

10/06/2015

The site is up, the blog has started and I'm working on an online guitar lesson promo w/ LivingSocial that should go live within days. For now, it's filling content and squarespace learning curves. The good news is, whoever snatched up my domain name after I dropped it in 2011 decided to let it go! Victory.

Here's the first blog post, titled "Tying The Room Together":

http://scotthaskitt.com/blog/

10/05/2015

Website coming soon!

09/25/2015

Thanks everyone for all the support and likes yesterday! Enjoy the weekend!