Blog Archives

If you aren’t yet playing at the speed of at least 200 BPM in sixteenth notes (but really want to), then Mike Philippov’s latest article will greatly help you to get closer to this goal.

Check this out if you are starting a band or want to tune yourselves up for a more professional sound and effect. It’s easy to start a band. Sounding good is another story.

While everyone will agree that using a metronome can help you develop and improve your rhythm, it is far more important for any musician to learn how to internalize the rhythm of a song or musical piece. Nick Minnion examines ways to help you do just that in Part 2 of “Solving Timing and Rhythm Problems.”

Even though the basics of guitar are the same for everyone, the skill set needed for various musical styles (blues, rock, jazz, folk, etc.,) can be markedly different. In this series of articles, Jamie Andreas will explore the various techniques necessary to become proficient in any specific style. Here, in Part 1, you get a good overview of the basic mindset you need to prepare for getting good at your favorite guitar style.

Numerous guitarists underachieve because they shirk regular practice. Gerald Klickstein describes how musicians can counter avoidance and keep their creativity rolling.

Sometimes the desire to fix every problem a student may have all at once may cause even more problems. Tom Hess describes how to break down a bad habit so that both teacher and student can tackle it in easy, manageable steps.

Whether you are a guitar teacher or a self-taught guitar player you are likely to come across problems related to playing in time and interpreting rhythm. In this series of articles TeachGuitar.com’s Nick Minnion looks at where these problems spring from and what can be done to address them.

As the tutorial resources you have at your beck and call get more and more sophisticated, it gets harder to remember that learning guitar is all about playing guitar. That means if you want to be able to play your instrument, you have to go through all the “grunt work” – that means practicing. And for many players the biggest aspect they need to work on is not using their eyes.

The pentatonic scale is, without doubt, one of the guitarist’s chief tools. Modes, on the other hand, can be confusing. Paul Tauteroff shows how guitar players who are already familiar with the pentatonic scale can learn and utilize the modes in their lead guitar playing.

Is it better to practice a piece slowly at first or quickly? Teachers and players usually recommend slowly, but there are instances where fast might work. Jamie explores why both methods work, but more importantly details how to recognize and determine when one method is better than the other.

If you know how to read notation, specifically the rhythm values of notation, you never have to worry about figuring out strumming patterns because everything is spelled out for you. In this lesson, we’ll use the main guitar parts from Jack Johnson’s song “Taylor” to demonstrate how easy strumming can be.

Practicing the electric guitar can be problematic in the best of situations, and downright hard when you have to worry about your volume levels. Mark Mills returns to the pages of Guitar Noise with a very cool solution that lets you practice at a more than reasonable volume while not disturbing either your family or your neighbors.

How many times have you done something absolutely fast in practice only to flub it in a “real” situation, like playing with your band or just jamming with your friends? Tom outlines and explains seven simple steps to help you work on developing your speed on the fretboard straight away and also to be able to keep that speed you perfect in practice when you perform.

This is an arrangement that most beginners can handle, plus we get into some discussion about choosing keys and chord voicings when creating arrangements.

If you’re traveling along the paths of learning guitar, you will eventually find yourself at a plateau in your learning. Longtime Guitar Noise Contributor, Jamie Andreas of Guitar Principles, explains why simply changing the way you look at being on a plateau, looking at it with the eye of a Guitar Master, can help you move forward in a short time.

Our arrangement of this Jack Johnson song looks at barre chords, rhythm and string muting. Also included is a barre chord free arrangement for early beginners.

Creating memorable live performances can help you get more gigs and can bring more people to those gigs. Here are some great tips from Tom Hess on how to rehearse for all the aspects of performing live.

Here is another interesting and beautiful sounding chord melody arrangement. This time we are working with the old Christmas carol Away in a Manger.

This is our fingerstyle / chord melody take on I’ll Be Home for Christmas, a song from the 1940′s that’s been sung by almost everyone.

In his latest article, Tom explores some of the problems that beginners tend to have making and changing guitar chords. Whether you’re a guitar teacher or just someone starting out on the guitar, you’ll find some very valuable tips here on how to go about practicing chord changes.