Teaches Electric Guitar

Tom Morello

Meet your new instructor, Grammy Award-winning guitarist Tom Morello, and get ready to uncover your authentic artistic self.

Introduction

Tom teaches you how to think beyond your musical influences, challenge the traditional boundaries of the electric guitar, and start developing your own voice as a musician.

Developing Your Creative Voice

Powerful, hard-driving riffs are the heart and soul of Tom’s musical legacy. Learn his tips for experimenting with tuning, slides, chukkas, and more, to unleash heavy, rocking riffs of your own.

Riffs

Tom walks you through his basic pedal rig from delays to tuner and wah-wah to whammy. Learn how he uses each to create a diverse collection of sounds and effects.

Gear: Pedals and Effects

It’s not what pedals you own, it’s how you use them. Learn Tom’s creative process for discovering sounds and how you can create your own.

Tones and Sounds

Tom walks you through his own noise chart, including examples from “Guerilla Radio” and “Your Time Has Come,” to show you his system for keeping track of all the elements that come together to create an original sound.

Tom's Noise Chart

A diverse set of musical influences can help you take your playing in exciting new directions. Learn how Tom incorporates the genres that have made an impact on him into his own music, and how you can do the same.

Tom's Influences: Rock, Jazz, Classical, and Folk

You can learn from other artists’ styles, melodies, attitudes, and sounds. Tom teaches you how to fold blues guitar—and more modern, non-guitar sounds from EDM and hip-hop—into your playing.

Tom's Influences: EDM, the Blues, and Hip-Hop

Tom teaches you how to structure your practice time, from balancing technique and theory to segmenting your practice day.

Practice

Tom believes that you have to play slowly to learn to play fast. Learn the finger exercises he used to go from scribbling around on the guitar to confidently shredding.

Technique: Developing Speed

Aimed towards beginner players, Tom demystifies the pentatonic scale and the blues scale to help you start improvising solos.

Beginner Theory: Pentatonic and Blues Scales

In the next step on your soloing journey, Tom teaches you his methods for soloing in any key, anywhere on the neck.

Theory: Unlocking the Fretboard

Learn how to get lost in the music, experiment, and push yourself outside of your comfort zone with Tom’s techniques for becoming a more nimble improviser.

Improvisation

Using examples from guitarists Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen, Tom breaks down his strategies for creating innovative, rule-bending solos with melodies and effects.

Solos

Using his solo in Rage Against the Machine’s cover of Bruce Springsteen's “The Ghost of Tom Joad” as an example, Tom illustrates how a solo can defy convention and transcend genre.

Solo Case Study: "The Ghost of Tom Joad"

Tom demystifies the songwriting process to teach you how to break down the barrier between yourself and the greats. Learn how to stay open to inspiration and patiently explore your ideas to create original, authentic songs.

Rock Songwriting Fundamentals

Get inspired by Tom’s riff-writing process and apply his simple studio recording techniques to begin creating a song of your own.

Riff Rock Writing: Verses and Multitracking

Learn to complete your song by adding a chorus, a solo, and a structural arrangement to the whole piece. Tom also breaks down the arrangement of the Rage Against the Machine classic, “Bulls on Parade.”

Riff Rock Writing: Chorus, Solo, and Arrangement

Learn how to unleash your inner poet to write honest lyrics that come from your soul—then find the melody to fit them.

Lyrics and Melody

Tom takes you on a philosophical and practical tour of his strategies for getting the most out of a studio recording session.

Studio Recording

Tom deconstructs one of Rage Against the Machine’s biggest hits, from inception to recording and release.

Case Study: "Killing in the Name"

Learn how to find your own authentic voice as a performer and combat the nerves that might be keeping you from growing as an artist.

Live Shows: Philosophy and Nerves

From warming up your hands to crafting the perfect setlist, Tom teaches you how to create powerful experiences for your audiences.

Live Shows: Practicalities and Performance

Learn how to find the right bandmates to help grow your artistic vision and how to diffuse the inevitable band problems that surface from creative collaboration.

Bands and Collaboration

Tom walks you through his signature guitars and trusty amps and shares the story behind each.

Gear: Tom's Guitars and Amps

Tom wraps up his class with a few parting words and an artistic challenge to you: “Envision something that goes beyond what anybody’s imagined before—” and never stop pushing.

Conclusion

Tom Morello Teaches Electric Guitar

Separating musicianship from artistry

The "right" gear won't make you a guitar god

There's no substitute for practice

The guitar solo as political speech

Don't overthink the excitement out of it

Everyone had to start somewhere, sometime

All bands deal with some internal friction

The thin line between basement and big stage

The future is unwritten— go write it

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