Strap locks are one of the coolest little guitar gadget style inventions I’ve ever come across.

Have you ever had a guitar strap slip off the hook, or have you seen this happen to someone else? Often times the guitar crashes painfully to the floor, and sometimes, never to get back up.

A close friend of mine destroyed a beautiful $1500 GNL when his strap slipped off by accident.

Not very cool.

So what’s the answer?

Strap Locks.

Considering they only cost about $15 on Amazon, strap locks can literally save you hundreds or thousands of dollars and the grief of a destroyed guitar.

About the only downside that I can think of to using strap locks is that you need to dedicate a particular strap to a particular guitar, if that can even be classified as a concern.

In this video I demonstrate how to install the Schaler strap locks on your guitar. It’s very easy, and boils down to these steps:

1. Remove existing strap knobs.
2. Screw Schaler strap locks back into the same holes.
3. Attach the other end to your strap.

That’s it!

Click Here To Get Schaler Strap Locks ($15-$20)

Today I’ve got another easy finger picking pattern for you and your guitar. I used a very simple and mellow chord progression in this lesson, and there are literally tons of different directions you could go with it.

I tried to give you a couple of different ideas on how you can change up the progression, but I really encourage you to get creative with this one and go nuts on it.

Start with the E Minor Diatonic scale (or G Major -- same difference) as that gives you the root notes you can use from the key of G. Basically any of the notes in those scales on the lowest three strings will qualify.

Keep your drone notes the same all the time -- the open G (3rd string) and the D on the 2nd string. These two notes are the I and V of the key of G, a perfect fifth, and therefore go well with every other note in that scale, which is the reason why its easy to be creative with this one.

In addition to mixing up the root notes, try mixing up your picking pattern once you get the hang of the one I showed you in here. Try alternating different strings, or use the two strings at a time method I showed in the video.

Above all, have fun with it!

I know how much you guys love learning riffs, so here’s another lesson for you to scratch the itch

I love this riff, and although in the lesson I teach it in the Open E position, the fact is, I use these thirds time and time again, regardless of what key I’m in. That’s why its so important to see this riff as coming out of the scale -- that way you learn how to apply it in any key.
Don’t look at this as something you can only do in open E… yeah, it sounds terrific in E, but these thirds work anywhere. The thirds interval is a great one to familiarize yourself with, there’s just so much you can do with it. I’ll probably do a whole lesson on that soon.

The riff I’m showing you here is suspiciously similar to the one in Mary Had a Little Lamb (Buddy Guy or SRV style) and one of the variations was used in Pride and Joy… so you can see that this riff is definitely a good one for your blues arsenal!

One of the most common questions that beginners ask me is “Show me how to tune my guitar!”

So I thought I would make a quick lesson here on how to use a digital guitar tuner to tune your guitar.

Tuning your guitar is incredibly important. If the guitar isn’t in tune, you’re not going to want to play it, because it will sound terrible. It’s pretty much that simple. So if you’re just getting started, there’s nothing that’s more demoralizing than sounding terrible all the time, so that’s something you need to fix!

Thankfully, tuning your guitar only takes a few moments with an electronic guitar tuner, so sit back and learn what you can in the next 8 minutes!