I’ve been planning to make some new videos for quite some time and finally got around to recording them last month. Most are short product profiles with me detailing what the items we feature are all about. Book profiles discuss what you’ll learn from a particular title and usually include a song or two or three from the book. Accessory profiles tell a bit about the product and how it was created. Other videos are lessons or expanded profiles that teach techniques or suggest ways to use our books, audio, or videos. We hope that these casual and personal posts be useful to you and also offer you a little more information about our products. We plan on posting more product, lesson, and playing tip videos in the future.
—Dix Bruce
Here’s a listing of the new videos. Click the links to go to each.
Product Profiles:
Gypsy Swing and Hot Club Rhythm Complete
Other videos
What is Crosspicking?
Over the years I’ve received quite a few questions about crosspicking: What is it? Is it difficult? How do I get started learning to crosspick? If you haven’t heard or used the technique yourself you might have similar questions.
Crosspicking is a somewhat advanced though beautiful way to play the guitar or mandolin. I’ve published two books about it: Old-Time Gospel Crosspicking Guitar Solos and Christmas Crosspicking Solos for Guitar. To answer questions like those above and to hopefully encourage people to explore crosspicking I recorded a short video discussing and demonstrating how it’s done. The video is called What is Crosspicking?
Sweet Georgia Brown Mandolin Chord Lesson
One of my favorite jam tunes over the years has been Sweet Georgia Brown. I love the tune’s chord changes and audiences always seem to recognize and enjoy hearing it. Sweet Georgia Brown is also kind of right of passage for all styles of developing musicians. It’s a challenge to learn these more advanced chords, combine them into a progression, play the melody, and eventually improvise solos. It’s a challenge but a rewarding one that opens the door to many other songs of this type.
Learning Sweet Georgia Brown taught me about a set of chord changes called “the cycle of fifths” which is everywhere in pop, country, and bluegrass music. After learning the progression in Sweet Georgia Brown I began to recognize it in hundreds if not thousands of other songs. This new video teaches mandolin chords and the cycle of fifths progression in depth. I may have to do a similar lesson for guitar. Let me know if you’d like to see one.
Sweet Georgia Brown Mandolin Chord Lesson
Happy Spring and here’s hoping you enjoy the new videos.
Best,
Dix Bruce