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Transcription Set Review: Atomic Improv Vol. 2 by Nick Johnston

December 16, 2019 by azsamadlessons Leave a Comment

Atomic Improv Vol. 2 continues with more transcriptions of Nick Johnston’s beautiful improvisations. This was originally released on March 2015. As with the previous volume, Ryan Fisher transcribed these improvisations for us to study.

As before, you get:

  • Videos of the 3 improvisation (MP4 video files)
  • Transcriptions in Standard Notation & TAB (PDF & Guitar Pro files)
  • Improvisation Insights by Nick Johnston (PDF files)
https://www.instagram.com/p/BsqRRztAYiz/

Improvisation #1 features Nick playing on a Fender Telecaster bringing some different flavours of his playing that I didn’t hear in the first volume of Atomic Improv.

Improvisation #2 is an acoustic guitar improvisation which features more alternate picking, acoustic shred kinds of sounds and also some tasty lines that lead into beautiful chords. Nick’s style still shines on this one with a lot of nice flowing lines.

Improvisation #3 is a full on in your face shred-unleashed fretboard crushing lines that goes on high speed. Nick doesn’t take any breaks in this particular improvisation giving us a chance to discover how he navigates over a C minor tonality on full shred.

So what do I think of this package? I think this is a really nice one. For one, you get 3 different kinds of approaches from Nick. There’s a lot to unpack from these improvisations and the hardworking guitarist will benefit from learning these.

Pros: Great lines, nice compact package. The Improvisation Insights PDFs are helpful to understand the thinking behind the improvisation.
Cons: No instruction or breakdown on video for the licks demonstrated. This is basically a lick + transcription package.
TLDR: If you dig Nick’s playing, this is great opportunity to discover 3 different sides of Nick’s amazing guitar style.

You can get Atomic Improv Vol. 2 here: https://nickjohnstonmusic.com/atomic-improv

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Filed Under: Guitar Technique, Licks, Music Theory, Philosophy, Practice Secrets, Transcription Set Review Tagged With: atomic improv, guitar lessons, guitar technique, improvisation, improvisational playing, legato guitar, nick johnston, shred guitar

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