Playing pro guitar in Nashville these days is the Olympic decathlon of the music biz. You need big ears, impeccable chops, top-notch improvisational skills, stellar right and left hand moves and be prepared to apply them all on a moments notice – and that's just to get in the door. To further separate the men from the boys, you also need to be able to put it all in high gear over any style of rock, blues, jazz, country, acoustic or pop-music groove. And each new generation of Nashville guitarists step the game up another level. Modern Nashville Guitar is both a bird's eye view of today's game, and an extraordinary educational experience for any late intermediate to advanced player, regardless of your preferred style.

Your Nashville tour guide and mentor for this journey is Ladd Smith, a bonafide young master of the Nashville six string scene. Ladd claimed Guitar Player magazine's Guitar Hero 2007 award, which was judged by Joe Satriani, Steve Lukather, Nuno Bettencourt, Elliot Easton, Greg Howe, and Mike Varney (see the winning performance on TrueFire TV). Ladd is a monster player, veteran singer/songwriter, experienced performer and an  effective instructor.

"I am a visual, audile and kinesthetic learner and that's how I teach as well. It's much easier to watch, listen and play along to learn and internalize new information." Accordingly, Ladd steps you through Modern Nashville Guitar in a cognitive fashion. You'll play your way through the course - no tedious notation, theory or exercises to work through. Each individual practice session with Modern Nashville Guitar will yield an epiphany or two and a few new tricks-of-the-trade that you will be anxious to pull out at the next gig, recording or jam session.

Clearly, the highlight of this course is the extensive series of "Outrun the Train" lessons, derived from Ladd's original composition of the same name (the winning instrumental version from the Guitar Hero competition). "The tune is an ideal instructional tool because it features a ton of my favorite licks. So we can cover a wide range of up-tempo "Tele-melee" content in an ear-friendly way with one common key, tempo and theme for ease of reference."

You'll also work through a variety of other grooves, likewise selected to serve as a educational platform for other moves and skills. Ladd covers the Nashville numbering system, provides gear overviews with each lesson, and drills down on dozens of key skills including hybrid picking, banjo rolls, chicken pickin', chord leads, butterfly hammer-on-pull-offs, unison and pedal-steel bends, train beats, open string pull-offs, vibrato, descending double-stop-runs, triad pedal-steel guitar, sliding 4th interval licks and bends, arpeggiated rhythm, contrary-motion/counter-point lead lines, pedal steel licks, descending banjo effects, open string licks, behind-the-nut bends and whole tone licks.

Whether or not you aspire to be a Nashville player, Modern Nashville Guitar is one of those must-have courses because it's a virtually bottomless resource for any style player. There's enough solid instruction and grey matter herein to feed you for a lifetime.