- Instructor Since: March 5th 2006
- Total Lessons: 95
- Latest Lesson: Turkish March - Rhythm Guitar Demo
Ben Lindholm
Ben was born in 1983, and grew up in Gothenburg on the west coast of Sweden. He started playing piano at age 10 and guitar at the age of 12, but it was after seeing Jimi Hendrix light his guitar on fire in a TV documentary at age 13 that he started practicing seriously, proceeding to learn virtually every Hendrix song under the sun. Though mostly self-taught, Ben took private lessons from several Swedish guitar teachers while in his teens, and received a scholarship for his overall musical skills.
After gigging around Gothenburg in various bands, including a Dream Theater cover band, Ben moved across the pond to Los Angeles to study at Musicians Institute. While there, he honed his skills with Russ Bolton, Jean-Marc Belkadi, Takeshi Akimoto, along with fusion and blues master Scott Henderson and top session player Carl Verheyen.
While mostly a metal player in the vein of Hendrix, John Petrucci, Jimmy Page, Yngwie Malmsteen and the like, Ben has listened to and absorbed the influence of jazz and country players like George Benson, Pat Metheny, Mike Stern, Chet Atkins, and Brent Mason.
He also ventures into funk, blues, country/bluesgrass, and acoustic fingerpicking.
Now back in Sweden, Ben is busy composing songs (mostly acoustic instrumentals), teaching guitar privately, and playing live and in the studio.
For more personal information about Ben, go to the "More Instructor Info" tab. You can also post any questions or comments directly to him in his personal area of the Guitar Tricks forum.
Turkish March - Lead Guitar Demo
Turkish March - Rhythm Guitar Demo
Harmonize Simple Arpeggios
This is the first video I made for Gibson.com, and it shows how you can harmonize simple triad (mostly) arpeggios to develop a cool melodic soloing idea over a metal type backing track. To be able to construct your own arpeggios and harmonize them it is a good idea to learn the different shapes of triads on the guitar. With that knowledge, it becomes pretty easy to harmonize them, as you play one shape of a particular arpeggio with Guitar 1, then move up to the next shape you've learned of that same arpeggio, and play it with Guitar 2. The arpeggios now become harmonized...
Pentatonic Shred Up the Neck
Here's a cool pentatonic shred lick that sounds best when played at light speed. It's very simple in theory, just go up the pentatonic scale using the top B and E strings. You start on any given note, and go down four, move up one position, and do the same thing again until you feel like it's time to land!
Pedal Notes
Here is the second video I made for Gibson.com, and it shows you how you can use pedal notes with arpeggios to create melodic sounding lines following a chord progression. A pedal note (or pivot note) is a note you keep coming back to in between other, changing notes. I basically just use the notes within the arpeggios of chords in the backing track, with an added 9 to some of the chords. This just makes it sound sweet! As for picking goes, I use strict alternate, but starting with a DOWNSTROKE on the pickup note. This means I'm playing all the DOWNBEATS with UPSTROKE...
Blues Turnaround 1 (Contra Movement)
Here's the first of my blues turnarounds in this tutorial. I'm going to start off every video clip with the last 4 bars of a 12-bar blues - the V and IV chords (E, and D if you're playing blues in A) - so that you can clearly hear where the phrase is supposed to start. In the notation, however, I will only note the actual lick. Note that all the licks in this tutorial will end on the V chord (E in the key of A) and thus expecting another 12 bars of blues to follow. You can of course change the last part of every lick to make it fit an actual ending to a whole song, by makin...
Turkish March - Part A Lead
Zakk Wylde - Introduction
In this tutorial I'm going to show you a bunch of licks in the style of great Ozzy Osbourne guitar player Zakk Wylde - meaning full blues and pentatonic shredding mayhem. First of all - get these three scales really under your fingers: The Minor Pentatonic, The Major Pentatonic, and The Blues Scale. Zakk Wylde mixes them up a lot, but it's really useful to be able to separate them both by ear, and when you're playing. Preferably, learn these scales in ALL keys, and all positions, so you can move around all over the neck with ease. If you're just starting to learn t...
String Skipping Arpeggios
Here's a cool technique that could help you build some speed when playing arpeggios up and down. Just move the third note of each arpeggio (which happens to be the fifth in all of the arpeggios in this lesson) to the same string as the fourth note, which lets you play two notes per string, rather than two, one, one, one, which would probably require sweep picking if you want to play fast. In the case of a Dm arpeggio starting on the minor third, F, you're going to move the fifth, A, which is on the 10th fret of the B string, down to the 14th fret of the G string. Same no...
Zakk Wylde 1 - Chicken pickin'
In this video I present to you a few licks that are quite useful when developing your chicken pickin' technique. Zakk uses chicken pickin' a lot, and apart from the difference in sound, this technique really opens up new ways of playing, making things that could be really hard to play with just a pick, seem quite easy. Practice chicken pickin' with both your middle and ring fingers.
Turkish March - Rhythm Guitar Intro
Welcome to my tutorial on the rhythm guitar for Mozart's Turkish March, or Rondo Alla Turca, as it's really called. This is a pretty tricky piece, especially when played on an acoustic guitar. A good tip is to practice it first on an electric guitar and then move over to the acoustic if you feel like it. I use chicken picking/hybrid picking (i.e. pick and fingers) for most of the rhythm guitar part, but if you're not yet comfortable with that technique, feel free to try other ways of playing it.
Zakk Wylde 3 - Pentatonic shred lick
This is a classic pentatonic rock/blues lick that is very useful. I'm showing you the main idea here, but take it to all kinds of different patterns and sets of strings and go up and down the neck! It's a real eternity lick that can go on forever (but make sure you practice escaping too).
Blues Turnaround 2 (Fast Straight Blues)
Turkish March - Part A Rhythm
Zakk Wylde 4 - More shred licks
Turkish March - Lead Guitar Intro
Welcome to my tutorial on the lead guitar for Mozart's Turkish March, or Rondo Alla Turca, as it's really called. This is a pretty tricky piece, especially when played on an acoustic guitar. A good tip is to practice it first on an electric guitar and then move over to the acoustic if you feel like it. Rhythm Guitar Tutorial Turkish March - Rhythm Guitar Intro
Blues Shred - Common Lick in E
This is one of the most common blues shred licks out there, and it's used by all sorts of players. It takes a bit of picking technique though to really make it stand out as you need to play it quite fast in order for it to sound good. This lick sounds best with lots of distortion. Also, try it with your wah pedal on. Move the lick around to all the positions of the pentatonic scale.
Tapping Arpeggios
Well, the title says it all. This lesson is all about tapping arpeggios. I'm using the tap-pulloff-hammeron-pulloff pattern for all of these but there are many other variations you can experiment with. I find this pattern to be the easiest one. As for choosing what notes to play, just play the notes of the arpeggios of the chords in the backing track. In this case Dm, F, C, G. Find the notes in each triad on any one of the strings and tap away!
Blues Turnaround 3 (Standard 6ths)
Zakk Wylde 5 - Pinch Harmonics
The use of pinch harmonics has become one of the trademarks of Zakk Wylde's sound, and in this lesson I will show you how to make these overtones come out. I put up a simple little tab just so you can see how pinch harmonics are written. You'll learn best by watching the video.
Blues Turnaround 4 (6ths Reversed)
Blues Shred á la Zakk Wylde
Now this is a typical Zakk Wylde lick that he executes with perfection! It's a pretty simple lick based off of the F# blues scale but in order to make it sound really good you really have to work it up to a high tempo, and while you're at it, add some crankin' distortion and your favorite wah pedal and shred away!!! I pick everything using alternate picking to make it more aggressive sounding but it sounds fine using legato too! Just not as shreddy!
Zakk Wylde 2 - Some more chicken pickin'
The Nokia Ringtone
After hearing the famous Nokia ringtone a million times on buses, trains, and wherever else I went where there were people, I decided to learn it. It's indeed a very good way to annoy people, or catch their attention at your next performance. Anyway, it's not an original Nokia composition, but in fact an excerpt from Francisco Tárrega's Gran Vals, only that the last A note is placed an octave higher in Nokia's version. I here include two ways of playing it that I like, one up high and one in the open position with some open strings ringing together. Enjoy!

