Az Samad Lessons

Fresh after the recent masterclass with Greg Howe, the wonderful team of Electus Academy Singapore hosted yet another insighful session, this time featuring guitarist Andre Nieri.

The masterclass focused on his daily practice routines, improvisation strategies, and professional approach to social media content creation. The session was tailored for intermediate to advanced guitar players.

Talking about key takeaways, two major highlights were when he discussed his warm-up philosophy and his approach to legato playing.

Warm-Up Philosophy: Andre emphasizes playing his own musical lines and songs at a slower tempo rather than doing generic physical stretches. This approach serves a dual purpose: preventing injury and challenging himself to maintain technique and clarity at slower speeds. He stresses that playing slow is often harder than playing fast. It was interesting to see Andre demonstrate this throughout the session.

Technique Focus (Legato): A central theme was his preference for “hammer-on” legato over traditional “pull-offs.” He argues that hammer-ons create a smoother, more dynamic sound suited for rock fusion, whereas pull-offs can sound more aggressive and compressed. Although I’ve heard of this before (and have tried it), watching and hearing Andre show the difference between the more classic Vai/Satriani pull-off sound vs the more rock fusion sound was really enlightening. I could finally see why I would choose one over the other. This just added a whole bunch of new things to my practice routine!

He also discussed improvisation strategies from both systematic vocabulary buidling and also on the importance of developing rhythmic flexibility.

Subdivision Practice: Instead of speeding up the metronome, Andre advises keeping a steady BPM and practicing different rhythmic subdivisions over that constant click to improve timing and “internal clock.” Seeing Andre play the exercises was important as it revealed the practice process and how it relates to actually language.

Vocabulary Building: He emphasizes the importance of learning many patterns, which can then be mixed and matched to create an authentic vocabulary.

Predictability vs. Creativity: To maintain an “X factor” in improvisation, he avoids playing patterns note-for-note. Instead, he manipulates them by changing rhythms and omitting/adding notes to keep the music fresh and unpredictable. This was really cool as we saw him take the original pattern and develop it in the session.

Chord Changes: When dealing with changing keys during improvisation, Andre stresses the necessity of “thinking ahead.” He suggests dedicating the first bar of a new section to loosening up and using the second bar to prepare for the upcoming chord change.

Beyond playing, Andre also talked about his music career and approach to social media. Some key takeaways include:

Strategic Content: Andre views social media as a balancing act between what he personally enjoys playing and what his audience responds to. He uses data from his own engagement to see what resonates without sacrificing his artistic integrity. I was happy that he answered my question on this!

Solo Covers: Regarding his popular solo covers (e.g., Another Day), he warns against “overdoing it.” His goal is to keep the original spirit and recognizable parts of the solo intact while injecting his own personality into the sections that allow for improvisation.

All in all, this was a great session with Andre Nieri sharing so many tips that are rarely discussed. This masterclass was so helpful!

Thank you Anthony Poi for organising this amazing session.

Pros: Great masterclass by a virtuosic player! Full of actionable tips and insights.
Cons: None.
TLDR: If you like Andre Nieri’s playing, this session was info-packed thoughout.

Special thanks to Electus Academy, Anthony Poi (organiser for the clinic) and Andre Nieri for making this session happen.

All photos courtesy of Anthony Poi. Thank you!

Catch the next masterclass this Sunday with virtuoso Luca Mantovanelli.

Sign up here now!

[Review Archive]

I wrote a lot of other book, course and video reviews too.

Check out the rest here:
[Read more reviews]

[Submissions for Review Consideration]

• Are you an author who wrote a jazz, guitar or music book?
• Have you created a DVD or an online video course or subscription based website?
• Would you like me to review your book/course?

Please send me a message at azsamad2 at gmail.com with:

For courses: a link to the course/video/product + access info etc.
For books: a link to the book (Dropbox) or PDF attachment (if it’s small) for review consideration.

Depending on whether I dig the book/course, I’ll let you know if I do plan to review it!

I cannot guarantee a review for every submission & if I’m not too into it, I may opt not to review it. I mean, it’s better to get a good review that for me to write a bad review just because it’s not a match for the kind of stuff I dig right? :p

NOTE: All reviews reflect my honest personal opinion so be aware that I will point out both cool Pros and Cons that I see in the work. You dig?