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The Best Way To Learn To Play The Guitar

Ricky — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:20:58 +0000

If you’re wondering about the best way to learn to play the guitar, there are two ways of looking at the question. One viewpoint says you need to learn musical theory and read sheet music. This method of learning gives any student the maximum number of possibilities. The idea is that you have learned to read music and know your theory, it does not matter how talented, or otherwise, you are, you have the knowledge it takes to get a job in a band or as a session musician or a guitar teacher. More success is obtained with this method if you start early in life.

When you are older, you may not want to learn what all the little dots mean; you want to grab the tabs to some songs, and start playing. You learn to play the music you like. Guitar tabs is an easy method of writing music, and you can learn it in half an hour. Using tabs to learn songs depends on knowing what the music sounds like. Tabs show you where to put your fingers, but not how long the individual notes last, or the time signature and tempo of the song. To make the most of learning from tabs, you should have a YouTube video of someone showing how to play the song, so you can pick up some pointers about guitar playing that tabs can’t show you.

Watching guitarists or guitar teachers on video will help you with how to hold the guitar, the way to place your fingers on the fretboard, and how to strum and pick. If you have any technical questions about guitar playing, you can probably find a video clip on YouTube that solves it. The other way of getting help with your playing is to join a guitar forum like Guitar for Beginners and Beyond

Other areas of music such as improvising and song writing are open to you whether you can read music or not. Someone with grounding in musical theory will probably find it easier because he would be familiar with the way songs are constructed, but if you don’t read music, you can start with whatever material you have. If you have a tune in your head, you can put words to it. If you have words, you can fit them to an existing tune, and change it around a little.

The thing that can put you ahead of a person who has learnt music, is the hours of practice you have under your belt. If you have the time to spend a minimum of two hours a day on your guitar, you will have the intimacy with the chords, scales and songs you have learned that will enable you to develop your own way of writing songs or improvising.

The best way to learn how to play the guitar is the way that involves you making use of every opportunity to learn, any way you can. Use every available minute of the day.

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The Best Way To Learn To Play The Guitar

Learn How To Play A Blues Solo

Ricky — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:05:01 +0000

The basis of your efforts to play a blues solo will be the minor pentatonic scale. In the key of E, the scale is: E G A B D. Just five notes, but they are all good ones! If you are new to guitar playing you may not be aware of how many different ways you can play five notes.

e—————————–0–3–0——————————-|

B——————–0–3——————-3–0——————–|

G—————0–2—————————–2–0—————|

D———–0–2————————————-2–0———–|

A——0–2———————————————–2–0——|

E-0–3———————————————————3–0-|

Here is a diagram of the A minor pentatonic scale, and here is a similar diagram with a tutorial on improvising with the pentatonic scale.

You could start the ball rolling by trying to copy riffs by your favorite players, but the sooner you start moving away from what is known, the sooner you begin to put your own stamp on your playing. Take a look at where the notes are on the neck. You can play in straight lines or you can cross from one string to another or move from down low on the neck to up high. Try some variations and see what you like.

As you work your way up and down, and in and out of the minor pentatonic scale, you will get an understanding of the way the notes fit together. This will help you to recognize what the guitar players on your CDs are doing.

You can also mix the minor pentatonic scale with the major pentatonic. The notes you have to play with will now be: E F# G G# A B C# D. You can also add a flatted fifth – called a “blue” note. In the key of E, this will be Bb. Your notes will now be E F# G G# A Bb B C# D.

This video shows a fine example of a simple blues guitar solo:

Learn How To Play A Blues Solo

What Are Beginner Guitar Scales?

Ricky — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 03:43:21 +0000

Well, really there are no beginner guitar scales, just guitar scales. They are all easy to play, but there are some that you should learn as a beginner in order to help you understand the guitar and music in general. It is very important to learn to play guitar scales since they are a fundamental element of music. Learning to play scales on the guitar will help your progress as a guitar player in a number of ways.

If you would like to learn to write your own songs and to improvise guitar solos, an understanding of scales in guitar music will be crucial.

Practising scales will change the way you hear music. If you practise every day, you will involuntarily begin to recognize how note patterns sound, and eventually you will be able to tell which scale these patterns belong to.

A very important aspect of learning guitar scales is how it helps you physical relationship with your instrument. Your hands will be able to move faster and with more precision after some time of regular scale practice.

This video will take you through some scales without giving you note names so that you can begin playing right away. The teacher, Peter Vogel, does tell you the names of the scales and the close up shots of his hands will be a help in learning HOW to play, that is, the way to hold the pick and how to strike the strings at the correct angle.

You could start your daily guitar practice with some scales to warm up your hands. Remember to use your metronome. Start slow and don’t increase the speed of the metronome until your hand feels at ease with the slow speed.

Carlos at learnguitar2.com has published a book featuring seventy guitar scales. The idea behind the book is to help overcome the resistance that some students show that some students show to the task of learning scales. Carlos’ book is available free to subscribers to his newsletter. You can get it here: http://learnguitar2.com/guitar-scales-chart-and-blues-guitar-scales/

Anyone who wishes to get their own copy should subscribe here: http://learnguitar2.com/guitar-scales-chart-and-blues-guitar-scales/

So if you are a beginner, guitar scales will not discourage you if you take advantage of the free lessons on sites such as learnguitar2.com

What Are Beginner Guitar Scales?

The Best Guitar Strings For Acoustic Guitar

Ricky — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:21:17 +0000

There are big differences between guitar strings for acoustic guitar. Their thicknesses are different, the stuff they are made of is different. As a result, guitar strings can SOUND quite different from each other. There are mellow strings, and bright strings. You can experiment with different kinds of strings and choose the best guitar strings that fit in with how you want your music to sound.

There are acoustic guitars that use nylon strings and there are those that use steel strings. Nylon string acoustic guitars, which are called classical guitars or folk guitars, have a very mellow sound. Steel string acoustic guitars have a much louder and crisper sound. The first and second strings are made from steel wire, but the low E, the A the D and G strings are wire with more wire wound around them. The windings could be made from nickel, stainless steel, brass or bronze. When you look at a steel string acoustic guitar you can see that the high E and the B strings are silver and the rest of the strings have more of a golden or bronze colour.

There is also a difference between the high strings and the low strings on classical guitar strings. The first second and third nylon guitar strings – the G, B and E strings – are plain nylon, but the lower E, A and D are nylon wound with copper. If you prefer a warmer, more mellow sound, then the nylon string acoustic is for you. They are also much kinder to the fingers of beginning guitar players.

Here is a video tutorial on how to change guitar strings on a classical guitar:

The Best Guitar Strings For Acoustic Guitar

Kaizen And Guitar Playing

Ricky — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 13:02:24 +0000

Many newbie guitar students want to know how long they need to practice before their practicing becomes playing. The short answer is practice every day for say, half an hour and you will notice you will gradually get some command over your hands and your guitar. But the way we practice varies from person to person.

Here’s a video that discusses the question of how long it takes to get good on the guitar:

Kaizen is a practice that originated in Japan and involves going about our daily lives in a way that produces continuous improvement. You make your work more enjoyable and find ways to eliminate waste.
This practice, or group of activities can be applied to our guitar practice. If you think about it now, you can probably see lots of ways you goof off during your guitar practice time. We all tend to daydream to some extent, or doodle around with old, familiar material when we should be working on new stuff. Or, sometimes we find excuses to cut the practice time short.
We can implement Kaizen in our guitar practice by looking for small ways we can improve. Maybe you could take a few bars of a new piece and see what is necessary to get those right instead of playing through the whole piece endlessly in the hope that quantity of practice will produce quality playing.
One of the common mistakes guitar students make is to try to play too fast. You will often see someone who has learnt a scale to a certain degree who will grit his teeth and try to fit all the notes into the required amount of time. This wastes a lot of energy and stops improvement in playing. The first big idea you will need to put into practice in order to improve is to work WITH your body. Your body has its own way of learning new movements and once you learn to cooperate with your body you will find that the speed and smoothness of your chord playing and picking will increase quickly.

Kaizen And Guitar Playing

Learning To Play The Guitar By Yourself

Ricky — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:30:27 +0000

Many people think that if you are going to start learning to play guitar you just go to your local music teacher. You just show up every week, pay your money, learn your material, go home and practice and you will be playing the guitar in next to no time. Sometimes it takes a shock to learn that that is not necessarily the best way to go. You might find that a friend you have not seen in a while is suddenly an accomplished guitar player. How come you’re not playing like that?

The fact is that the internet can offer you the kind of guitar teaching material that no local music teacher can compete with. And the price comparison is out of this world. Even if you are getting your guitar lessons cheap, even the best of the online guitar lesson packages is only the cost of about a month’s lesson with the local music school. And the kind of lessons you get are way above anything you are likely to find in your town.

If you do not want to buy whole packages of guitar lessons, you can download tabs for songs or just guitar solos. You can see in detail how to play even the most demanding kind of guitar music by watching free video guitar lessons on YouTube.

To make the most of the wide range of guitar lesson material the wannabe guitar player needs to be quite focused. You might already have a good idea of the style of music you like, but get more specific. Get a list of songs you want to be able to play in say, six months. While you are at it get hold of some CDs of your favorite guitar players and spend some time listening. Not listening in the away we all do to music, but focus on how the artist plays the music. Does he use slides or all down strokes, palm muting or any other tricks? Maybe you can’t define what you are hearing to begin with, but you will probably learn whatever you need to by watching YouTube videos.

Make use of your web browser’s bookmarks. Get a folder that you can keep the web addresses of the best free guitar lesson sites you have found. Visit them often. As your experience as a guitar player grows, you will understand more and more about what you are seeing in the guitar lessons on the net.

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Learning To Play The Guitar By Yourself

More Free Guitar Lessons

Ricky — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:06:25 +0000

Guitar techniques lessons by Peter Vogl.
Peter Vogl started playing guitar in 2nd grade and very quickly realized his calling. He played in several bands through his years at Okemos High, and proceeded to study classical guitar in college at the University of Ga. under the tutelage of John Sutherland. In the 90’s Peter met Jan Smith and began to play with the Jan Smith Band performing on several of her CDs including nonstop Thrill, Surrender, and Resurrection. Peter has performed on stage with talents such as Michael Bolton, Cee-Lo, Kelly Price, Steve Vai, Earl Klugh, Sharon Isbon, and Sleepy Brown.The free lessons are generally 5-10 minute video lessons that discuss a technique that will add some flair to your guitar playing. The Premium Downloads are generally around 20 minutes and take a more in depth look at specific concepts. Learning these techniques will help your ability to play lead guitar parts featured in other lessons on the site.
Free Lessons include: Basic Guitar Harmonics, Harmonics: Chord Subs, Right Hand Harmonics, Vibrato, Whole Step Bends, Half Step Bends,
Bending with Other Fingers, Bending Drills, Hammer Ons and Pull Offs, More Hammer Ons and Pull Offs, Arpeggios, Intro to Sweep Picking, Short Sweep Picking, Whacky Sounds, Premium Downloads, Warm Ups and Drills, Complex Drills, More Complex Drills, Sweep Picking, Dorian Mode, Mixolydian Mode, Bends, Double Stops, Altered Licks.
Click here for the free lessons

Technorati Tags: Guitar techniques

More Free Guitar Lessons

Free guitar tabs

Ricky — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:57:22 +0000

guitaretab.com has a buttload of free guitar tabs and a guitar player-friendly interface. Here’s what is on their current front page:

Knockin On Heavens Door – Guns N Roses
Nothing Else Matters – Metallica
Tears In Heaven – Clapton Eric
Stairway To Heaven – Led Zeppelin
Under The Bridge – Red Hot Chili Peppers
Hotel California – Eagles
Smoke On The Water – Deep Purple
Hotel California – Eagles
My Immortal – Evanescence
Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd
Come As You Are – Nirvana
Enter Sandman – Metallica
Johnny B Good – Berry Chuck
Adams Song – Blink 182
Blackbird – Beatles
Complicated – Avril Lavigne
Chop Suey! – System of a Down
Grow Old With You – Adam Sandler
The Scientist – Coldplay
Clocks – Coldplay
Cant Stop – Red Hot Chili Peppers
Nothing Else Matters – Metallica
Paranoid – Black Sabbath
Back In Black – Ac Dc

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Free guitar tabs

Tips For Playing Lead Guitar

Ricky — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:37:08 +0000

Playing lead guitar needs dedication. Here are a few tips for playing lead guitar which will help you make the best use of your practice time.

There are many techniques used in playing lead guitar – vibrato, slides, bends, pull-offs and hammer-ons. You will have your favorites among the various techniques but you will need to learn all of them if you want to be an interesting lead guitar player.

If you are wondering which techniques to practice, just get some CDs and videos of the style of music you want to play and the lead guitarists you most want to emulate. Take note of which techniques are used most heavily and if you need to be working more on chord playing or single note phrases.

As you practice your technique for playing lead guitar you need to learn the notes of the scales. You will be using these scales when you are playing. To practice, you could download free backing tracks from the internet or record your own. Just a twelve bar blues sequence will do. As your backing track plays you play your scale, taking note of which notes sound right or wrong over which chord. Another way of using backing tracks is if you record rhythm tracks using single chords, for example a few minutes of a C chord, a few minutes of D, then G, and so on.

Practice slowly. This applies to all aspects of lead guitar playing. You do not PRACTICE playing guitar the way you want to actually PLAY the guitar. Speed comes naturally by itself as a result of slow practice. You need to be consistent with this – if you are new to playing lead guitar you will have to work on your patience a lot more than you expected to. There are different schools of thought about the use of the wrist or fingers for speed picking, but most guitarists recommend moving from the wrist.

This video shows how to build speed and dexterity using hammer ons and pull offs and how to turn exercises into licks:

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Tips For Playing Lead Guitar

An Easy Acoustic Guitar Solo – Packington’s Pound

Ricky — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:32:37 +0000

Packington’s Pound is a very old traditional melody dating back to the fifteen hundreds. It is a dance tune so once you become familiar with it, let it swing. The technical requirements are minimal so if you are a beginner fingerstyle guitarist you should give it a try to add some zing to your repertoire at modest outlay.

Here is a link to Packington’s Pound tabs

And here is a feisty performance of Packington’s Pound so you can see how it should be played:

An Easy Acoustic Guitar Solo – Packington’s Pound