Joe Pinnavaia

Joe Pinnavaia walks through his Guitar Techniques eBook on video, demonstrating the warm-ups and technique builders he has used in his own playing for years. For Joe, good technique doesn't mean shredding — it means command over your instrument, so you can play the things you actually want to play. Some exercises draw inspiration from MIT/GIT, Steve Vai's 10-hour workout, and George Lynch's finger-stretching exercises. What's covered Alternate picking broken into separate downstrokes and upstrokes — evening out the weaker upstroke to tighten both rhythm and single-line playing Directional picking and four- and three-note-per-string exercises (pivots and mode-style scale patterns) Cross-string exercises for cleaner transitions between strings, with alternate and hybrid picking options Angular exercises — one-note-per-string diagonal patterns that build toward sweep picking String skipping , displacement, and contrary-motion variations to improve accuracy across the fretboard Finger independence and stretching exercises for wider reaches and four-note-per-string lines Practical advice on muting, tone for technique practice, metronome work, and avoiding hand strain Two short synchronization pieces put the ideas into a more musical context, and the Guitar Techniques eBook is included with the course. Go in with an open mind and use these builders to expand your practice routine — the goal is developing your own musical voice on the instrument.

Joe Pinnavaia shows how to build fresh, modern minor lines over two-chord vamps, using the Dm–Ebm changes of Miles Davis' "So What" as the vehicle. Inspired by the outside sound of improvisers like Michael Brecker — and coming from his own rock-fusion background — Joe works through note choices, phrasing and tension-and-release ideas you can carry into soloing over full chord changes. What's covered Getting comfortable with a backing track: feel, downbeat vs. offbeat phrasing, and honing in on chord tones Pentatonics — blue-note additions, extended pentatonics, three-note shapes, and sidestepping for chromaticism Mixing scales, modes and triads — finding every triad inside one region of the fretboard Building tension with harmonic minor, melodic minor, hybrid scales (blues + Dorian), chromatics and the diminished scale Superimposing pentatonics from related minor chords for different textures Triad pairs — two-string and three-string forms with inversions, and how to weave them into lines A full solo over the track with a breakdown recapping every concept The course is divided into 6 lessons plus an intro and recap, with tabbed examples throughout. Joe provides a link to the funk-feel backing track from Quist's YouTube channel, and you can explore other styles if you prefer a straight-ahead jazz feel. Includes 18 pages of PDF and 7 Guitar Pro files. If you want to add new elements to your improvisation and create hipper minor lines, this course will get you up and running.