I hope you had a great Summer. My Summer has been amazing as this year, my family and I spent two weeks having fun in Disney, Orlando. What an amazing two weeks! It was even better than I could have possibly imagined. I would certainly love to return one day.

A few days after my return, I decided to get back into adding content to this site as I have many ideas for new content. To my horror, Most pages did not work! I presume that my site must have been hacked as I faced major problems the closer I looked into what had happened.

Facing the horror of having to try and resurrect my site which I could see was going to take a great deal of time (that I did not have!), I decided to contact my hosting company. Once again, the service from my hosting company has been exceptional and they restored my site to full working condition. The hosting company is called Tsohost and whenever I have faced problems, they have always dealt with anything I throw at them. Their customer support is truly amazing.

My previous hosting company was not good, with terrible support and lack of functionality for what I wanted to achieve. After much research, I decided to try Tsohost and was so glad that I did! Easy site migration (they do all the work!), daily site backups, all the tools I need, an easy to use interface and as mentioned, phenomenal customer service are just a few of the benefits of using Tsohost.

There is a vast amount of content available in the member’s area of this site, which mainly consists of chapters from the Paul Hill Guitar Theory And Technique Book, videos and notation. The new modules section will be very helpful as it focuses and expands upon individual ideas. This will really help to incorporate the available content into your playing and help you to come up with your own ideas. Individual topics such as the new sight reading module will also be included in this section of the site.

To start things off, the first module focuses on the dominant pentatonic scale. If you are not familiar with this sound, you will certainly enjoy the new flavour that this easy to use sound has to offer. As always, links to the book are included so that you can learn to easily visualise this new scale in all keys, everywhere on your fingerboard.

That’s all the news for now. I mainly wanted to send out apologies for the temporary disruption in service. Hopefully that won’t be happening again soon!

See you in the member’s area!

Paul

It has been a busy few months behind the scenes at guitartheoryandtechnique.com. You may have noticed that the home page and other areas have a different look. Many improvements have been made ‘under the hood’ and might not be immediately obvious but as the site grows, changes have to be made to cope with the ever growing content in the member’s area.

There is already a vast amount of material to learn in the member’s area and I always try to think of new content that will be helpful to guitarists.

One big addition that is currently in development is a section dedicated to sight reading. As a guitarist, do you need to be able to sight read? Many great guitarists are not able to sight read and this has not held them back, however being able to sight read – even if only at a basic level – is a valuable skill that opens up more levels of understanding.

The guitar is a difficult instrument on which to sight read. One big hurdle to overcome in learning to sight read is understanding how the guitar fingerboard is laid out. This is where the concepts taught on this site and in my book can really help. Learning to sight read at the same time as learning to play the guitar can really slow down progress in both these areas. Using the fingerboard visualisation concepts taught on this site can really help to speed up the process of learning to sight read.

If you would like to be notified when this new section will be added to the member’s area, please sign up to my newsletter and you will receive email notification as soon as the content goes live.

There has always been a feedback form in the member’s area. I have now added a support page which is easier to find if you need help with anything. Along with help if you are unsure of specific concepts, it is also helpful to have feedback on what areas of the site you enjoy most, suggestions for videos, any mistakes that I might have missed or anything that you think could improve the site for yourself and other users.

Do you want to earn commission by promoting this site?

If you are enjoying the content and would like to spread the knowledge, why not become an affiliate? All you need to do is register an affiliate account and use your affiliate referral link to promote this site via a website or any social media platform (including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and more). You will then earn commission for any member that purchases a subscription package.

I recently purchased a 2017 Fender American Elite Telecaster and had some fun experimenting with ideas over a backing track from Coffee Break Grooves. I used a Marshall profile on my Kemper Profiler and was pleased with the tone achieved by my new toy!

That’s all for this blog post. Have a great Summer!

Paul

If you have been considering purchasing one of the subscription packages, the great news is that there is now a 24 hour, free trial period built into each subscription level. I have wanted to add this functionality for a while although it has not been possible until now.

Having a 24 hour free trial period gives you the chance to try the site risk free, so you have nothing to lose if you are unsure about whether to subscribe or not.

If you sign up to any of the three subscription packages, payment will not be taken until 24 hours after you have registered.  Whether you choose credit/debit card or Paypal as a payment method, both methods have a 24 hour cooling off period. If you decide that the site is not for you (which I am sure you won’t!), you can cancel your subscription within the first 24 hours and no payment will be taken. If you do not cancel your subscription within 24 hours, payment will be taken and you can enjoy using all the tools available in the member’s area to improve your guitar playing for the duration of the chosen subscription package.

I have put a great deal of work into this website and will continue to do so as I strongly believe that the systems presented in my book will help you to understand your guitar fingerboard and will help you to greatly improve your guitar playing. The addition of videos to support the concepts in the book and to provide a vast amount of extra, useable content will give you so many new ideas that you can use in your guitar playing, no matter what style of music you like to play.

If you have already purchased the Paul Hill Guitar Theory and Technique Book from the iTunes store, enter the last chord named in the Chord Substitution chapter as your discount code to receive £10 discount on the yearly membership.

I am very excited by finally being able to offer the 24 hour free trial period. It is always good to have a ‘try before you buy’ option, so I feel that this is a much needed addition to this site.

Hopefully see you in the member’s area soon!

Paul

After a difficult 2016, I am now able to fully concentrate on guitar playing. 2017 is off to a great start and my creative juices are flowing once again. So much new material has emerged over the past month, both for my own guitar playing, and for uploading to this site. New videos uploaded so far have included:

• Pentatonic scale phrasing ideas
• String bending
• Diatonic chord inversions
• Chord substitution
• Finger Tapping
• Melodic sequences
• Open string ideas
• Pedal tones

As you can see, there is a wide range of ideas to get your fingers and brain working on and as always, I try to link everything back to the core principals presented in my book. This gives a more cohesive system of learning and in understating what you are doing, any ideas learnt can be used in other playing situations.

At the end of one recent video recording session, I decided to finish by recording an improvisation over a backing track, incorporating some of the ideas I had just recorded for the video lessons. I was happy with the light, delicate tone that my Strat and Kemper produced so uploaded the video to YouTube.

More videos will be added to my YouTube channel soon so if you enjoyed this video, please subscribe!

If you have signed up to one of the paid subscription packages, you will have noticed that some of the recent videos now use a white backdrop. I am constantly evolving my video set up and recently installed a backdrop system that allows for a much quicker setup. I prefer the white background to the black background so future videos will be either white or another colour choice. Being able to set up my equipment quickly makes life much easier!

If you are thinking about signing up to one of the great value, paid subscription packages, I should have some exciting news in the next blog post. So that you don’t miss out on the exciting news, why not sign up to my mailing list? Your details will not be passed on to anybody else, you will not be bombarded with spam and you can easily unsubscribe at any point.

Keep practising and I’ll hopefully see you in the member’s area!

Paul