Truefire - Joe Dalton's Fretboard Epiphanies

A bona fide master of Nashville-style guitar and monster session player, Joe Dalton is the guitarist's guitarist. He's also a much sought-after instructor and has been teaching pros for the last two decades. As you can imagine, his guitaristic trick bag overfloweth and that's what Fretboard Epiphanies draws so effectively upon. Dalton's "epiphanies" show you how to take full advantage of the guitar's unique harmonic and physical characteristics to create an extremely versatile palette of sounds, textures, motifs, moods, melodies and grooves. You'll find that most of the grips in Fretboard Epiphanies are familiar and super accessible — but the application of those moves is what will have you grinning ear-to-ear.

Joe kicks off the course with a bit of basic theory that you might even already know - but this simple theory unlocks key principals. This fires up a series of epiphanies based around the E Major scale with Diatonic Triads on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th strings. Joe continues with cool moves utilizing drones and bass notes, and then reveals similar "epiphanies" in the key of A Major. Melodic development in both of these keys cap this set of lessons.

Fretted notes with drones followed by D Diatonic tricks of the trade and some Drop-D tuning moves continue the adventure with similar wow impact. Dalton then shows you a bit of magic with the good ole E, D, and A chords. Non-harmonic tones, upper and lower neighbors, simple but highly effective embellishments, and a few ideas for creating songs will likewise captivate your imagination and fretboard skills.

Then the coup de grace – five arrangements, each worthy of nailing just for your own repertoire, but each also chock-full of epiphanies you can apply in thousands of tunes, across virtually any style. These arrangements for Laura's Song, Song for Ally & Julie, Silent Night, Wayfaring Stranger and Amazing Grace will blow you away. Amazing Grace however, is a course of study on its own as Dalton applies a new set of embellishments with each new chorus.

Whether you flat pick or go fingerstyle, unplugged or electrified, Fretboard Epiphanies is a candy store for we of the six-string. If you've got a sweet tooth for creative indulgence, there's enough here to feed you for a very, very long time.