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- Ben Lacy's Two-Hand Groove Guitar

MP4 | h264 966kbps | English | 720x406 | 29.97fps | 2h 57mins | AAC stereo 128kbps | 1.43 GB

Genre: Video Training

No, we're not talking about one of those evil little midi-crap machines that cats are using instead of real players 'cause gigs just don't pay what they used to. We're talking going solo on guitar and funkifying your six-string grooves with polyphonic techniques for crafting drum, bass, and horn parts a la Ben Lacy and his Two-Hand Groove Guitar technique. If you're familiar with Ben Lacy, we probably had you at 'hello' and you're already downloading the course. For the rest of you, let's put it this way -- go to the big NAMM show or any major guitar festival; look for the biggest crowd of people; fight your way to the front of that crowd, and you'll find Ben Lacy playing his extraterrestrial you-know-what off. You won't believe your eyes and ears.

"Lacy's technique is so mind-boggling it really needs to be seen to be believed. He is a one-man band, providing his own bass and percussive parts while simultaneously laying down rhythmic chords and melodies."

Indeed, Lacy does things on guitar that no other living thing on this planet even comes close to pulling off. In fact, we couldn't come up with a technique category to even classify what he does. So, to be straight up about it, we can't promise you that Two-Hand Groove Guitar will impart everything you need to know to play like Ben Lacy. Nothing short of a mind-meld will accomplish that.

We can however promise that you'll learn to incorporate some of Ben's techniques into your own playing with powerful results. You'll also learn to craft and maintain majorly funky groove in any tune that you apply these techniques to. Plus, Ben gives you a peek under the hood of several of his signature tunes and arrangements.

Ben starts you off with right and left-hand techniques for working drum parts into your playing. You’ll learn how to make snare, kick, hi-hat and various drum fill sounds using just your fingers, strings and fretboard. Once you have the basic techniques down, Lacy shows you how to integrate triplets, quads, polyrhythms and 8-stroke rolls for maximum groove.

To fill out the rhythm section, Ben then shows you left-hand techniques for playing bass lines with hammer-ons on the lower strings. You'll get a grip on this pretty quickly but the challenging part is playing those bass lines along with the drum sounds -- no worries, this too will come relatively quickly once you get comfortable synchronizing the two techniques. You'll find a million ways to spice up your tunes, arrangements and solos with these moves and this alone is worth the price of admission. But there's more.

What better way to funk up a groove than to add a horn section? Lacy drills down on right and left-hand techniques for fingering, plucking, smacking and brushing chords on the high strings to emulate a horn section. Pulling this off while playing the drum and bass parts is a crazy multi-tasking finger-twisting feat but this is still within the realm of possibility for we mere mortals.

So what's the rub? Melody and soloing on top of all of the above. Fortunately, Ben spares us this seemingly impossible task in Two-Hand Groove Guitar. His attitude, which we wholeheartedly support, is that students should first focus on getting their groove on by working the drum, bass and horn techniques until that muscle memory becomes automatic. Once that happens, the melody and soloing will emerge with practice. OK, years and years of practice.

Need a good reason to pick up Two-Hand Groove Guitar?

1. Just to look behind the curtain and see how Ben does it.

2. To incorporate amazing sonic qualities in your own playing.

3. To prove us wrong and learn how to play just like Ben.