Guitar Principles Lessons

These articles were contributed by Jamie Andreas of Guitar Principles.

Measuring Your Progress By Jamie Andreas In order to make Vertical Growth as players, there are some very important conditions to be met. One of these, and one very often lacking in a player/practicers approach, is a systematic, scientific, method of measuring results.

Shifting By Jamie Andreas All guitarists must deal with Shifting, unless you remain a first position player, which is fine, but you will never look really cool when you play! Playing up in the higher positions immediately makes you look like an advanced guitarist!

Changing Bad Habits By Jamie Andreas I am always trying to convey to people that if you have tried to learn the guitar and failed, it is not you, it is the approach to it all that is at fault. If you are stuck at a certain level of development, it is not you, it is your approach that is keeping you there. Change the approach, and you will create different results.

Changing Bad Habits Part 2 By Jamie Andreas If you do not have sufficient understanding of how things work, of what really happens when you sit down to practice guitar, you will not be able to change bad habits. The only way you get to be able to change bad habits is by understanding how you got them in the first place.

Why Should I Learn to read music By Jamie Andreas There is a lot of confused thinking out there when it comes to the subject of reading music, especially being a guitar player and reading music. I want to examine what some of this confused thinking is, and how people get this confused thinking into their heads, and why it stays there.Why do some people think they shouldn't learn to read music, when they should? Why do some people think they should, when they shouldn't (at least not right away)?

Why Should I take guitar lessons By Jamie Andreas Playing the guitar is a very sophisticated mental/physical process. Like many activities, such as various sports (tennis, golf, basketball) it has evolved over many years, and continues to evolve, becoming increasingly complex, and new standards of excellence being set all the time. To hear a beginner ask should I take guitar lessons is like a five-year-old saying they want to be doctor or lawyer when grow up, and asking if it would good idea went elementary school!

Changing Chords - Having a little trouble with those easy chords? By Jamie Andreas Many people begin to play the guitar by learning a few chord changes to their favorite song. In fact, I learned this way. There are many things to be aware of while doing this. There are things to know and do that can make it easier, and guarantee you will have success. There are also many things that can go wrong, and guarantee trouble.

Stage Fright: Part 1 - What It Is and What It Isn't By Jamie Andreas For a performer the effects of stage fright are devastating. How ridiculous, how cruel, that you have spent perhaps hundreds of hours practicing, studying, working and sweating to learn these pieces and prepare this concert, and go out on stage and have a severe traumatic experience!

Stage Fright: Part 2 - How It Works, And Why It Works By Jamie Andreas Now that we have this stage fright thing more properly defined as what it really is, People Fright, we are in a position to get some where with it. Many people, including professional performers, never slay this dragon. They may learn to live with being in it's presence, and learn to perform even though they must do it while their knees are wobbling!

Stage Fright: Part 3 - It's a Concert, Not a Contest By Jamie Andreas So far we have talked about what Stage Fright is, and what it isn't. We have looked at how it is done, and why it is done. We have seen that it is not something that happens to you, it is something you actually do. Well, if Stage Fright is something we DO, I think we can all agree we would rather NOT do it. But how do we not do it? The answer may surprise you.

Thinking: What a concept! By Jamie Andreas When it comes to my growth as a player, I have always been more interested in how a great player practices, than in how they play. When I watch them play, I am seeing the result of their practice. But I want to know how they GOT that result. So I want to know how they PRACTICE. And when I want to understand how they practice, I look for one thing: how do they THINK about what they are doing?

The True Teacher By Jamie Andreas I am now going to write about something for which I feel the utmost passion. If I could only get across one message, and for some reason wasn't allowed to say anything else, this is what I would want to say. I want to tell you what I have learned about The True Teacher, and what True Teaching is.

Confront Your Confusion By Jamie Andreas When a muscle is locked in contraction, it cannot move. When the mind and it's attention are locked in contraction, it cannot think. This locked up mental state is what we commonly call confusion. One thing about confusion is: it's comfortable, in the comfortably numb sense of the word!

Relaxation By Jamie Andreas I think very likely there exists a very common mis-conception about this word that we hear all the time, and one that I use often as well: relaxation. I will make my best attempt to bring your understanding of this subject up to a higher level.

The Fundamentals of Fun By Jamie Andreas Anyone learning to play guitar should have two goals in mind: one, making sure the technical foundation being laid is correct, and strong so that continuous growth is possible, and two, making some MUSIC as soon as possible, something, anything that that turns you on, that gets your emotional juices flowing, whether it is Bach or Rock.

Student Abuse By Jamie Andreas It is possible for any normally functioning person to play the guitar well enough to fulfill the goals of the average aspiring student. Further, it is possible for any normally functioning person to achieve the professional level of playing if they put the same amount of time and focus into it as one would for any highly sophisticated skill or profession, AND if the student receives competent instruction every step of the way.

The Glue of Repetition By Jamie Andreas One of the joys of knowing how to practice correctly is the feeling of confidence when you decide to learn a new song, piece, or exercise. When you first sit down to practice you have the same feeling that a craftsmen has when he/she sits down to build a new project. There is no doubt about the final result, you know what you are doing. You have done it many times before.

Goalines not Deadlines By Jamie Andreas If we are dedicated to our growth as artists who play the guitar, we must be very smart to get the best out of ourselves. Part of the difficulty in doing so lies in combating the forces and conditioning of the world around us. The world around us tends very strongly to condition us in ways that will lead us far from our goals as artists.

Real Life Scenes from Dr. Jamie's Studio - Another Guitarist Brought Out Of Musical Coma By Jamie Andreas I have often felt that I run a Hospital For Dead And Dying Guitarists. The cripples hobble in to the emergency room, or are carried in on stretchers, and I diagnose their case. I take their medical history, and assess the harmful, and sometimes fatal effects of what some teacher has done to them, and/or what they have done to themselves through ignorance and bad practice.

Teachers Lounge - You Treat A Thing The Way You Define It By Jamie Andreas How do I define teaching the guitar? If you were to ask that question, you may get some kind of flowery description, but if you really want to know how your teacher defines it, then look at how he or she treats it, what they actually DO as a teacher.

Get The Juices Flowing By Jamie Andreas There's a big difference between playing a bunch of notes and playing music. Jamie discusses the importance of feeling and expressing what the music is all about. Sometimes simply enjoying your playing is the key to making yourself sound better. PLUS: A bonus lesson on the finger vibrato used by Angus Young in the AC/DC classic Back In Black.

Lost In Time By Jamie Andreas From the beginning of playing the guitar, I jealously guarded my time, spending it like a miser, and investing it like a Wall Street tycoon, setting weekly practice goals, writing down schedules, and grading myself for how many hours I got in each week. This was the single biggest reason I got real good real fast.

Guitar Practice Organization and Procedure By Jamie Andreas When we think about what makes a good guitarist/musician, we think about dexterity, good ear skills, or even a comprehensive grasp of theory. How about simply being organized? Jamie Andreas points out how organizing is essential to the guitarist. This is a great read for all guitarists regardless of skill level.

Climb Every Mountain By Jamie Andreas The higher up you go, the easier it becomes to sit back and look at the view. But then we'll sit and complain that we're not getting anywhere! Jamie has some wonderful advice designed to help you develop the right frame of mind towards practicing.

Double Trouble By Jamie Andreas There are times when the best way to solve a difficult problem on the guitar is to begin to work on a problem that is twice as difficult. By making the difficulty even more difficult, by doubling the trouble I found the original difficulty much easier!

Perfect Intention By Jamie Andreas There is a magical moment when playing that the music actually seems to be playing itself and you are just part of your instrument. I know it sounds pretty Zen, but it's true. Jamie's latest article for Guitar Noise explores what it takes to achieve this incredible state in your own performance.

Scales, Who Needs Them? - Why and What For, Anyway?! By Jamie Andreas Learn about what scales are, what they can actually do for you as a guitarist, which ones are important to you and how you should go about practicing them.

Discover Your Discomfort! - Why Are So Many Guitarists Masochists? By Jamie Andreas Have you ever had trouble playing something on the guitar? Have you ever seen or heard someone play something, tried to do it yourself, maybe practiced it for a long time, and ended up with only frustration and bad feelings about yourself as a player? Could be you're not paying attention to the little signals your body is sending you. Jamie tells us how to listen to our body and to become better players as a result.

The Secret of Speed - Finding the Incredible Lightness By Jamie Andreas Gaining comfort and ease is just the first step to becoming a smoother, faster player and Jamie Andreas provides exercises to help us recognize and develop the ability to play without tension.

Your Growth As A Guitarist: Vertical or Horizontal? By Jamie Andreas This piece of Jamie's, originally from 1999, has never been more timely. Being honest about your growth as a guitarist will help you to take the steps toward learning how to grow in the direction you desire to.

Work And Play By Jamie Andreas Work and Play may seem to be two separate activities, but the guitarist must learn to combine the two. Jamie Andreas' latest piece discusses the importance of both work and play and details how to use both to get the most out of your practice and performance.

Removing The Barriers To Musical Expression By Jamie Andreas It's the age-old argument - style versus substance, or, in the case of the guitarist, technique versus emotion. While everyone admits that we truly need both, we're quick to point out any number of technically gifted, yet soulless players. Yet it is not possible to express musical feeling without technique adequate to the task. Jamie Andreas takes a look at this seeming paradox and offers some much needed advice and encouragement.

Review Is Required By Jamie Andreas Reviewing a lesson or piece is an essential, if often overlooked phase of the learning process. Jamie tells us why it's so important and gives us reasons why to include reviewing old material as part of our regular practice routine.

More Lessons »
Sign up for the latest site news and ramblings »

Learn To Play The Guitar in 30 Days
Is your guitar playing stuck in a rut? Fantastic results in 7 days. Guaranteed.
Become a serious guitarist. Complete, step-by-step method shows you how.