Teaching Artists May Recap: The Bass Rumble, Jazz-Blues, Map Your Fretboard with Intervals, Musical Travis Picking, and Summer Goals
May was a busy month for the TA community, here’s a recap of all our activity!
In April 2025, we debuted the Acoustic Guitar Teaching Artist series, a program designed to help you grow as a guitarist. Our cohort of instructors—Isa Burke, Lisa Liu, Sean McGowan, Mamie Minch, and Thu Tran—is committed to helping you discover new musical and creative territory throughout the year, offering one new video lesson each week, plus virtual concerts, roundtable discussions, and more. You can unlock access for just $5 a month.
May was a busy month for the TA community, here’s a quick recap of all our activity!
Mapping the Fretboard with Isa Burke
“This was one of the things that really helped me understand how the fretboard is laid out and get more comfortable playing past the fifth fret,” Isa says of this interval-based approach. Rather than memorizing where every single note and chord is on the guitar, Isa suggests identifying landmarks that help you get oriented in any position. “Hopefully this will help you get more comfy playing up the neck,” Isa says, and remember, “the dots on the fretboard are here to help us!”
12-Bar Jazz Blues with Sean McGowan
While a typical 12-bar blues is built from just three chords—the I, IV, and V—jazz versions take things to new heights by adding colorful chord voicings and substitutions. In this lesson, Sean introduces three jazz blues progressions, moving from simpler to more advanced. Don’t be intimidated by some of the more involved chord names—if you can play a barre chord, you can play an Eb13sus4!
Mamie Minch Teaches the Bass “Rumble”
In this lesson, Mamie (and Pablo the dog) explore the bass rumble, a syncopated fingerstyle blues bass run. Using “(Hot Tamales) They’re Red Hot,” an up-tempo blues by Robert Johnson, Mamie shows us how to add rhythmic interest to our fingerstyle blues.
Exploring Diminished Arpeggios with Lisa Liu
In this lesson, Lisa explores the dark, intriguing sounds you get by playing diminished seventh arpeggios over dominant seventh chords. “What’s really cool about the diminished arpeggio is that it’s all separated by three half steps, so if you’ve learned one [of these patterns] on the guitar, you’ve learned them all!” After showing you a few of these arpeggio patterns up the neck, Lisa puts them into context with some creative examples. As always when learning something new, start slow—and really try to wrap your ear around things as you work through the notation.
Musical Travis Picking with Thu Tran
In this Travis picking lesson, you’ll focus on the groove, not the pattern. Thu shares three examples, and a novel approach to learning by singing. “Connect your voice with your hand to get the groove,” he explains. This lesson is great for guitarists who are new to fingerstyle or Travis picking, but more advanced players can apply the concept to their practice as well. “I hope that this method provides another access point in your fingerstyle journey,” Thu says. “Have fun with it!”
To me, this annual transformation is not unlike the perennial process of learning new music and improving on the guitar, which can take on many forms but always requires a considerable amount of work and faith in the process. You put in consistent effort, and then one day, seemingly overnight, you’re able to play a song fluidly and perfectly. All of a sudden, you’re able to connect new areas of the fretboard, easily discern the harmony behind one of your favorite songs, or flawlessly play a flatpicking solo that once seemed technically out of reach.
Springtime in Colorado requires patience, fortitude, and faith. But then something magical occurs: Seemingly overnight, a world of black and white becomes technicolor with blooming daffodils, tulips, and forsythia; barren skeletons of trees and bushes are suddenly painted with the pink, lavender, and royal blue shades of lilacs and apple blossoms. Like someone decided to flip a switch—the world is instantly green, renewed, and full of promise.
Summer Goals | AGTA Virtual Roundtable Replay
Mamie Minch, Thu Tran, and Isa Burke (and viewers like you!) gathered for our freewheelin’ late-May roundtable. The theme was Summer Goals, and in this hour-long discussion the TAs shared a ton of valuable insights and played a few tunes. We covered approaches to practicing, learning new skills, singing while playing, and more.
Click here to see more AGTA lessons. Your $5/month support unlocks access to the full archive of lessons, plus the Song of the Month (TAB and notation) and monthly live workshop archives, too.
