Articles Published by Dennis Winge

Practicing and Taking Lessons

Developing a Great Practice Routine

How Taking Music Lessons Taps Into One of the Biggest Keys to Success in Life

How to Best Use Technology While Practicing

How to Master Difficult Musical Passages

Hurry Up and Relax

Not Wanting to Come to Lessons Because You Haven’t Practiced

Practice ‘In Time’

Practice Smarter, Not Harder

Practicing Guide

Reflections on How and Why Recitals are Useful

The Fly on the Wall in Your Practice Room

The Growth-Minded Practice Ghost

The Lag-Time between Practicing New Things and Using Them on Gigs

Using Concepts You’ve Practiced in Live Improvisation

What Happens When Students Take a Break from Lessons

What I Have Learned About Teaching from Taking Lessons Again

What Regular Practicing Brings to Live Performances

Philosophy of Playing Music

Becoming a Musical Jedi

Becoming a Self-Effulgent Musician

Cultivating Inspirational Dissatisfaction

Developing Musical Awareness through Pure Play

Elevate Your Peformance Consciousness (without substances)

Enhance Your Creativity with One Simple Action

Enjoying the Musical Now

Four Agreements part 1 – Your Word

Four Agreements part 2 – Don’t Take Things Personally

Four Agreements part 3 – Don’t Make Assumptions

Four Agreements part 4 – Always Do Your Best

Free Yourself From Musical Ideals

How Musicians Uplift People’s Spirits

Life Skills Enhanced Through Playing Music

Listen Then Play

Making Friends with Silence

Music is a Team Sport

So You’ve Got Talent – Now What?

Stillness and Musical Mastery

Smile, Soft, Simple, Swingin’, Space, Shape

What is Musicality?

When You Wonder If You’re Not Cut Out to Be a Good Musician

Why Develop Your Musicianship?

Jamming, Performing, & Music Business

Big Picture Performing Tips

Comparing How Amateurs and Professionals Jam

Dealing with the Stress of Booking Gigs

Getting Paid for Performances

How to Design a Set List

How to Jam

How to Manage Your Guitar Volume

Making Up Contracts for Gigs

Never Run Out of Ideas During a Solo Again

Notes from the Movie The Gig

Taking Gigs for Fun

Taking Gigs for their Learning Potential

The Two Kinds of Musical Performers

Why The Fast, Cheap, Good Pyramid Doesn’t Apply in the Music Business

Balancing Volume Between Lead and Rhythm Playing

Transcribing

How Knowing Your Harmonized Scales Can Help You Transcribe Music

Rough Guide to Transcribing

Stolent Moments Guitar Transcription

The Magical Power of Transcribing

Why Learn to Transpose?

Chords

3 Different Types of 9th Chords

9th Chords Simplified

Diving Deeper Into Chord Embellishments

Learning to Embellish Chords with the Open Add9 Chord

Major and Minor 11 Chords

More 11 Chords Than You Could Possibly Need

Slash Chords

Suspended Chords

The 5 Chord Families

The Augmented Chord

The Diminished Chord

The Half-Diminished Chord

Triads On Every String Set

The Ultimate Guide to Voicings for Advanced Chords on Guitar

Music Theory

A Harmonic Analysis of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Chord Theory and its Immediate Usefulness

Common Scales and their Intervals

Common Types of Slash Chords and How They Function

Constructing Major Scales

Creating Modal Chord Progressions

Deck the Halls with Coltrane Changes

Exotic Scales

Horizontal & Vertical Improvising

How to Create Grooves using Harmonized Scales

How to Harmonize a Melody, part 1

How to Harmonize a Melody, part 2

How to Harmonize a Melody, part 3

How to Harmonize a Scale

How to Simplify Complicated Chord Progressions

How to Write Modal Progressions

Improvising on Guitar without Accompaniment

Introduction to the Modes

Jazz Theory – Analyzing Tunes

Jazz Theory – Diminished Scale

Jazz Theory – Rhythm

Jazz Theory – The Magic of Guide Tones

Jazz Theory – The Many Uses of Melodic Minor

Jazzing Up your Rock Playing – part 1, Harmony

Jazzing Up your Rock Playing – part 2, Rhythm

Jazzing Up your Rock Playing – part 3, Melody

Make Up Cool Chord Progressions Easily

Melodic Patterns

Memorizing the Modes

Music by Numbers

Quick and Easy Guide to Modes

Rough Guide to Classical Harmony

The Lesser Known Musical Elements – Dynamics

The Lesser Known Musical Elements – Texture

The Lesser Known Musical Elements – Timbre

The Lesser Known Musical Elements – Form

The Power of Simple Sequences

To Loop or Not to Loop

Tritone Modal Relationships and the Circle of Fifths

Using Minor and Major Scales in the Same Guitar Solo

What Scales to Play Over What Chords

Rhythm

Developing Rhythmic Coordination on Guitar

Feeling the Afro-Cuban 6-8 Polyrhythm on Guitar

Give Your Solos a Dose of Polyrythmic Adventurousness

How Konnakol Makes Difficult Rhythms Accessible

How to Feel Half-Note Triplets

How to Make Your Blues Playing More Rhythmically Interesting

How to Perform Any Polyrhythm

Interlocking Rhythms

Learning Syncopation with the Partido Alto Groove

Gear

Guitar Effects for the Technically Challenged

Songwriting

3 Easy Ways to Write 2 Complimentary Sections

A Broader Perspective for Singer-Songwriters

Turning Off the Inner Critic

Using Eastern Harmony in Western Compositions

Writing Parts for Other Musicians

Solo Guitar

A Look Inside Chord-Melody Playing

Don’t Stop Believin’ Chord-Melody

Go Trade with Yourself

The Art of Solo Guitar

Reading

Self-Managing Your Reading Studies

Why Learn to Read Music?