I have written music since I started to play guitar.  Even when I only knew 3 chords I was writing songs with those 3 chords 🙂

tripfuse is a writing project I started in 2004 and 2024 has marked the beginning of a social media experiment involving writing daily and sharing on multiple social media platforms.

write - grow - share -teach

Fleetwood Mac - Landslide - Intro and Verse

I love this little lick.  It is an Em7 arpeggio played at the end of the main melody in Eric Johnson's Cliffs of Dover.  This has been added as a Bonus Arpeggio Lesson in the Arpeggio Series.

This is a song I quite like.  There are 3 different chord progressions used throughout this song however they all use the same 4 chords.  It can be fingerpicked or played with a pick.

Before You Go

The challenge like learning anything is to see (or in this case hear) progress with minimal frustration and to have fun without getting bored or finding yourself playing the same things over and over.

For myself, learning to practice efficiently and effectively has been a life long journey and I feel I have learned a few things I would like to share with you:

1. Don't concern yourself with how long it will take to play something, simply play it each day.
2.  Break what you are working on into small pieces that you can repeat over and over.
3.  Practice slowly and gradually speed up and put the pieces together.

It is important to see, hear and feel progress and you will by breaking everything into small parts and practicing daily.  Use the practice time as therapy, as a form of meditation.

The Prince cartoon was done by my father.   You will see various cartoon musicians and artists done by my father throughout the new site.  The guitar guy below is called "Gitman" and was done for my site when it started in 1999.

Arpeggios

Made a few short video examples of arpeggios:

Arpeggio Lesson 10  -  D Minor Shifting from 5th to 7th to 10th Position

Minor Arpeggios - Added A Minor Shifting from 5th to 7th to 10th Position

Arpeggio Lesson 19 - Dm7 with Shifting and a Pattern

Arpeggio Lesson 22 - E7 in 4th Position (Includes Jam Track for Practicing)

Arpeggios and Improvising:

This past weeks stream has been added to the improvising page on soloing over Dm to Am.  The page itself shows a few examples to play over the jam track however the stream focuses primarily on using the 5th position A minor arpeggio and then moving the same shape to 10th position for a D minor arpeggio.

Improvising 2 Chord Dm to Am

Arpeggio Lesson 18 - Ebmaj7

Live Streaming - Gm arpeggio - Added some material to go with last weeks live stream on improvising and using arpeggios:

I will add a jam track and put this material all together on one improvising page.

Improvising

Jazz Blues Jam Tracks

Improvising in B minor

F Minor Jam Track

Improvising:  New Jam Tracks Added

Improv Page

Riffs and Songs

Summer Song Solo Excerpt - Cool G blues scale one string pull off/hammer on excerpt from the Joe Satriani tune Summer Song.

Perfect  - how to play Perfect by Ed Sheeran

Secrets - how to play this cool One Republic song using a 3 string arpeggiated pattern.

Run to You - how to play the Bryan Adams song called Run to You.  Fun and easy riff played on 3 strings plus 4 open chords and easy strum pattern.  All Levels.

Lost by Coldplay- So I have been busy on so much material that I'm not sure where to start.  I just finished adding material to go with the Coldplay video I did for Lost.  The video is old and I would love to redo it someday but the content is still valuable.  So just want to share with everyone.  It is a fun one to play and sing.  Also has a rather challenging percussive part you can play if you want or you can strum the open chords for a much easier way.  Here is a link to the video:

Scales 

Scale Lesson 20 - C Major in 9th Position

LIMDAP - a fun way to learn modes, your fretboard and train your ear.

5 Scale Forms - For those working on understanding the fretboard, I added the 5 scale forms to the main scale page.  Try using the jam tracks to practice your scales.  It is a lot more fun and lets you get a feel for how to use scales when improvising or writing.

tripfuse

Thought I would share a page with some writing ideas happening for a few new tripfuse tunes:

tripfuse writing

Fingerpicking:  Leyenda
Made two videos for Leyenda.  If you have never fingerpicked, this is a great piece of music to learn how.

Part 1

Part 2