Tom Morello Teaches Electric Guitar MasterClass Review

At this point I’ve taken most of the MasterClasses and it’s safe to say that I’m addicted. Thank goodness for the All Access Pass making it affordable to devour all of the classes.

So when a really cool new class pops up in my All Access Dashboard, it doesn’t matter if I’m in the same field as the instructor or not. For example, the Chris Hadfield class was one of the best I’ve taken. Am I going to become an astronaut? Heck no. But I still learnt a lot and had a blast. The Garry Kasparov class was also stellar. Am I going to try and become a chess grandmaster champion? No, but beating amateurs on chess.com and having exciting chess games with my friends sure is fun.

So when I saw the Tom Morello Teaches Electric Guitar Masterclass, I had no hesitation enrolling in the class.

I’m not gonna pick up a guitar for a while, but I love Tom Morello’s work with Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, and Prophets of Rage.

MasterClass Limited Time 3-Day Free Trial

So if I could get some insight into his artistic process, I knew I was gonna have a lot of fun, learn a lot of stuff, and pick up a thing or two that I can apply to my own creative process.

I’m not a complete newbie when it comes to music. I’ve taken a bunch of musical classes (in person and online), I took guitar lessons for a couple of years (I didn’t have the musical gene though), was a DJ in college (something I do think I was good at), and am obsessed with music of all kinds and consider myself a connoisseur.

So while I won’t be picking up a guitar for a few months or so, I was very much looking forward to learning what I could from Tom and then coming back to his specific musical lessons in the future when I do have a guitar in my hands.

As Tom says, the class is geared at people who have never even picked up a guitar before to those seasoned ax veterans who want to take their musical craft to the next level.

So I watched with great curiosity and was blown away as usual with MasterClass.

Tom Morello Teaches Electric Guitar MasterClass Review

The nitty-gritty details of the Tom Morello MasterClass:

26 modules and close to 6 hours of video run time
Office hours where you can ask Tom questions
187-page workbook stuffed with assignments
An exciting and thriving student community

So the spec looks great, but what about the content of the masterclass?

The Tom Morello MasterClass kicks off with a lesson about developing your creative voice.

I thought this was an insightful, important, and valuable way to kick of this class.

Morello goes through his influences and how when imitating them he was amassing technique but he wasn’t going beyond his musical influences. Then he gets into how to develop your unique voice.

This is important viewing for anyone that’s been playing for a long time and can’t escape their influences.

If you’ve been trying to sound like Chuck Berry or Jimmy Page for decades, you need to watch this class.

What’s cool about this is that Morello’s advice applies to creative endeavours outside of the electric guitar too. Technical stuff related to the electric guitar (like the pickup toggle kill switch) aside, I found it cool to think about how in my writing I could progress from technique to idea to experimenting with forms I’ve not seen before.

It was very cool to look at the instrument in a different more liberating way – in a way where you believe it actually hasn’t all been done before.

Morello gives you lots of cool thought experiments that can get you sounding original and creating your own creative voice.

One example is if you make a goof or mistake, then you repeat it seventeen times in a row – is it a goof anymore?

This MasterClass is a creative toolkit for changing the way you think about your own craft and artistry.

Morello then goes into the differences between artists and musicians and how ideas and inspiration can create art regardless of your technical mastery.

After the lesson of creativity, we get into the really exciting stuff that I know all electric guitar players are gonna wanna sink their teeth into:

Riffs!!!

The lesson on riffs was pure joy.

This lesson kicks off with Morello showing how your riffs should sound depending on the tone and the type of instrument.

A heavy riff on a Les Paul needs to be different from the riff you play on a Rickenbacker – if one sounds awesome and the other does, it has nothing to do with your skill as a guitarist.

I loved seeing how Morello sticks to a key (like F sharp) but switches from electric to acoustic to demonstrate how you can follow a tone to where it will lead you to a unique riff.

With examples from James Brown and Audioslave and Rage Against the Machine, Morello outlines the philosophy of the “one” in riffing.

90% of my riff writing subscribes to the James Brown theory.

And then Morello keeps building and building on these principles, discussing different beats of the bar, using silence, holes, slides, different picking and strumming styles like the “chukka” effect with more examples from Led Zep, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple.

We get into the tones that Morello favours and why and how they lead into the great heavy, mid-tempo rock that can return easily to the James Brown theory.

It was also fantastically interesting to hear about how Morello came to Rage’s Killing in the Name of riff just by changing one tiny thing on the guitar.

This is the kind of lesson that will lead you to experiment with your own riffs endlessly for the rest of the day…

Heck, for the rest of your life.

Not only is this MasterClass crammed with practical advice for the student sitting there ready, willing, and eager with their guitar to experiment with, but it’s also a rock history lesson that will make you appreciate your favourite bands and the greatest bands of all time with more intensity and depth.

After riffing, we getting into the gear: pedals, effects, and son.

Now this is a very cool lesson.

In a lot of the masterclasses, I felt like the amount of equipment required was a big obstacle to many people interested in their craft, but Morello goes into why none of it matters.

This is a long lesson and there’s a lot of detail but the basic principle all stems from why Morello owns the shittiest base in LA.

The philosophy is about embracing limitations, but you still learn the bare pieces of equipment you should have.

Having said that, there are 7 different bits of gear in Morello’s arsenal.

Next up was the tones and sounds lesson, which was about cultivating wonder, creativity, and naïveté so you can go outside the conventional realms.

Listen outside of music to find influences… It can be any sound you hear.

This lesson is about cultivating wonder, creativity, and naïveté so you can go outside the conventional realms.

It was fascinating to learn how you might replicate a similar process as Morello when he was trying to replicate the sound of a helicopter flying over his apartment which eventually became the intro to Audioslave’s “Cochise”.

What’s really cool about this MasterClass is that you get the hands-on practical stuff, you get the inspiring stuff, you get the motivating stuff (all from Morello’s amiable and charming personality) and you also get a close to 200-page booklet crammed with assignments that will build upon the video modules and take your guitar playing to the next level.

If you use the booklet in conjunction with the video lessons, you’ve got a really valuable and comprehensive electric guitar course here – one that should keep your busy for a VERY long time.

This isn’t a weekend course, but more like something that would take most people a year or so to get through and keep returning to.

The module on Tom’s noise chart was also stellar.

Morello always has this noise chart with him and at rehearsals so that when he comes up with a new noise he can write down what guitar he played it with, what amp settings were, and so on.

This originated from the fact that he has tons of tapes of spectacular guitar sounds that he could never play again because he didn’t write down how he came up with them.

In in this module, Morello takes us on a journey through the entire noise chart, how you can replicate them with all the pedal settings, controls laid out, and how you can start going about creating your own noise chart.

Next I looked into Tom’s influences: rock, jazz, classical, folk, EDM, the blues, and hip-hop.

Here we learn all about how one of the great challenges and ways to find yourself is to find elements in genres outside your own (even ones you may not favour) and find ways to add them to your DNA to make your playing your special and diverse.

For example, out of the many case studies, the ones I really enjoyed was how he learned to do drop d-tuning from Maynard Keenan and learned “outside playing” from jazz-fusionist Allan Holdsworth and so much more with an abundance of assignments and of case studies from artists like Woodie Guthrie to Prophets of Rage to Crystal Method to Albert King.

Next I went to Tom’s lesson on deliberate practice, which was INCREDIBLY valuable.

This lesson was valuable not just specifically for electric guitarists but all musicians and artists.

We learn how to structure our practice time and balance technical practice and theory and how to divide up a practice day.

Morello breaks down practice into the three parts of technical practice, live play, and seeking inspiration and how to go about and structure each.

What’s fantastic here is that Morello really emphasises a work-like approach to play – this isn’t about sitting around waiting for inspiration or just doing what you feel like when you feel like it.

Sure it’s about having fun and you can tell Morello has a blast with every fibre of his being but this is about actually getting creative stuff done.

For example, jamming four hours on the weekend with friends and then practicing again in two weeks one night for half an hour doesn’t work.

Morello shows you the formula that does work and how it works to get you better quickly.

You learn how to make your ability grow exponentially.

This lesson is terrifying and liberating at the same time and kick up the backside to all creatives – this is the lesson that gives you permission to finally progress and grow in your craft.

MasterClasses as a whole, in addition to being crammed with immediately implementable advice, are always richly inspiring. But there’s always one or two or three modules in particular that stand out as pure motivation in the classes and for me the practice class was it and I found I had to stop half way through in order to dedicate more time to my own craft.

You will definitely want to adapt Morello’s 4-block practice routine yourself – sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.

Even if you can’t dedicate 8 hours a day to it (because how many of us can?) you can adjust the time markers and keep the different dedicated blocks and exercises the same.

After putting forth the practice routine template, we then go IN DEPTH on each of them in granular detail.

In the module on developing speed, for example, we learn how Morello, in the technique portion of the practice day, spent his time exclusively doing mind-numbingly boring exercises that would allow his fingers to move around the neck in different ways when called upon to do so.

Stuff like playing the same three notes with his second, third, and fourth fingers a hundred times in a row. Boring, yes – but it was this kind of deliberate practice that allowed him to unlock his potential.

He then deep dives into the specific exercises with a metronome that he recommend you follow in the technique portion of your own practice days.

This Tom Morello MasterClass review isn’t complete!!

I’m not even halfway through this masterclass.

I skipped to the theory and fun stuff, saving a lot of the practical lessons for when I have my guitar in my hands around Christmas time.

I still have TONS of theory stuff, improvisation, solos, lyrics and melody, riff rock writing, studio recording, live show philosophies, band collaboration philosophies, and more to look forward to.

But from what I’ve seen so far, I can tell the rest of the masterclass is going to be golden.

This masterclass is totally geared to guitarists of all calibers.

The way Morello structures it is perfect, with all modules broken down into three sections.

One is geared towards absolute beginners, another towards intermediates, and another for the advanced players.

Morello has put so much thought into how he can help everyone no matter what stage of your craft you’re at.

So if you’re thinking about getting into the electric guitar for the first time, or you’ve been playing for a while and want to take things to the next level, you should totally check out the Tom Morello Teaches Electric Guitar MasterClass.

I would recommend you check out the 3-day free trial whilst MasterClass still have it.